Canto V: Dance of the Dead(R)

[abstrect-christ]

Wake up,

blood.

wander,

side bleeds;

hurts.

No food, water,

sleep, dawn.

Dead rat, side hurts,

sleep,

comfort in the

blank.

Warning.

 

Eyes go thin;

me on my knees,

arms out, bathed in blood;

roof an open vein --

Hunger to be quenched.

 

I.

Pulling up to the house,

it had been abandoned since the news

of its former residents hit the papers;

 

faded blue and cracking, the paint was

almost dissolving, shingles drying and shrunk

they would be as flammable as the exposed grey wood

that lined the windows and surrounded the porch;

the once golden colored boards closing off the broken windows

were as faded as the wooden gate that once held white

and protected flowers now wilted or

blown away, replaced by Cirsium Arvense, Taroxcum Officinale and Medicago Lupulina.

 

Walking inside I could smell the mold,

the black streaks contouring the walls.

Needles in corners, blankets abandoned;

evidence of rats and roaches, kitchen left with

flies and their offspring feeding off sandwiches and cans;

Shit in one corner, smell of piss in another.

Careful, I ascend the stares, the creaks and the rustlings

of a house this old and sun beaten

threatening like that of one on 112 and Ocean Avenue.

 

II.

Entering the first room on the left,

I see wrinkled sheets and a green blanket;

walls once bare and white now appear

grey from the dust and yellow stains the corners and edges.

I move to Alisha's room;

blood stains gone

cleaned or replaced sheets and carpet now grew familiar stains and the knife

still lay on the carpet underneath a noose now empty.

 

"The source of the memory this soul is lost to

is an extension of itself,

attack It's memory you draw It out."

 

III.

Like an open well the swell of

gasoline was attacking my sinuses with zeal

and virulent remorse the more her bed

played succubus to the noxious fuel I froze in the moment the clear liquids

vitality was completely exalted

and gases went a'blaze:

 

That familiar Aera across the whole city

like a megaphone call car alarms rang,

lights stay dim, cold laments rampant;

tears flood canals that feed the river

which begins at a porch,

kicks out the door frame and glides up the stares,

 

"sorry kid, but you don't belong,"

It moves close in retaliation, the unveiled crux entering It's chest,

penetrating the superior vena cava and right atrium --

hemoglobin mixing with hemoglobin the creatures black surface

resembles her grave, skin flecking rather than boiling,

It's knees sunk into carpet and board;

I reach for a satchel revealing a leather clad crimson tome.

 

"Before you intone this must be said five times;"

"what's it mean?"

"In the house at r'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."

"Who is?"

"Your Messenger."

 

Finding blood held pages together I turn to a marked

incantation and croon:

"Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah' nagl fhtagn,"

then continue the inaudible mantra -- my voice

somehow Eric Zann's violin to the creatures own lament

making the river that flows from It an empty shadow;

the pentagram centered between us has us

pillboxed by a series of symbols each representing a plain of existence

and their respective spirits,

 

shattering, the cement foundation, floor boards, and beams

crumble and warp; where dirt and mud exist

only infinite evisceration, torture, decapitation and mutilation,

fire had now spread to the room right of its source.

 

"Once you start, you can not stop,

lest you get drawn in with the Wraith."

 

IV.

wood, shingles, frames all assail

willed by shockwaves 2 miles wide --

Messenger has arrived:

Long, narrow wings chameleons with the abyss

they extend sending more foundation and rubble out

creating new views of the devastation outside,

veil of the abyss shrouding Cthulhu's head;

it's body though anthropoid in appearance was scaly like a creature of the desert

raising its red cedar arm it had a hand congruent

to its testament in size, the hand reaching into the sigil

fully extends, finger tips taper off on an apex,

 

eight sifts languidly diverge then arc -- diamond back ready to strike --

fast hearing the fissure of a bare chest and frenzied fray

the first in It's shoulder through the trapezious

second below it in the greater pectoral collapses alveoli

and clefts It's left wing finishing the job the first had started,

half the wing falling into embers, tissue floating like paper in the flame;

 

third to fifth are concentrated on the rectus abdominis

halving the liver, lacerating two lumbar and one thoracic.

Sixth in right, seventh in left, incisions in oblique external muscles

severing one inch of large intestines and one rib each;

the eighth had blinded It, fangs entering the orbicularis oculi

performing trepanation on the cranium, temporal lobe, pons varolii, and cerebelum

before exiting and dispersing, joining the venom spreading

across It's back weighing the right wing down

and fusing with It's face, legs completely eclipsed,

I hear choking gurgles as the pathogen moves through and up It's throat

and seals It's chest, It's anima clear as Cthulhu recedes its leviath appendage:

"No- No, no!

Not the Abyss, Not the-"

 

He struggles, the symbiont crystallizing; His clavicle, scapula and ribs

visible in the hardened obsidian.

Flame now reaching the stairs and room to the left

I take steps back for when the Monolith fades.

 

V.

Through nostalgic gray and white

I smell spaghetti sauce; the luring

aura of tomatoes, onions, and fried meat

make my sialorrhea rebel.

 

Walking to the kitchen

a siren taunts:

"Scar tissue that I wish you saw

Sarcastic mister know it all

Close your eyes and I'll kiss you ‘cause

With the birds I'll share,

With the birds I'll share

This lonely view..."

 

"Mother!"

I run to see her multi-flowered summer dress.

"What's this for?"

squeezing her waist tightly both our happiness transparent,

as she kisses my hair;

"I missed you,"

our eyes meet and a tear dispels.

"I've been here this whole time,

I'll always be here, now go put a good shirt on,

Micheal's joining us for supper."

Whites turn negative, windows a crimson dusk --

focus fluxes like paraffin in conflagration --

"what?!"

"I told you."

"No, he's not!"

"Yes, he is!

Now go to your room and change!"

"No!"

She moves her hand to the sink;

"Now!"

Reveals a knife, hand clasped-

 

"I'm sor-

I'm sorry!"

Dropping the knife I lapse on my knees,

her throat waned, transcribing the dusk

Rhine river overflowing, delugion cloaks my eyes;

"no you aren't, you little prick!"

Already knelt her hand boasts the blade

then limply rises acknowledging my shock:

"Can't you tell?!"

 

Foraying her sternum,

each notch consecutively on a decline

then perpetually the same angle;

blade dropping from the pyramidalis

hands entrenched uprooting ribs and intercostalis.

She reaches into her unfurled rapine

digitus medius and annularis around the left auricle,

minimus manus left ventricle;

manus right atrium --

primus housing the direful limelight

of her distorting haul

congesting, causing exsanguination

the cadaverous congea inundating;

my eyes caustic, AC/DC shirt sodden.

 

A torrent collapses the red-brown brick foundation,

thermal insulation, plasterboard and light frame wall behind me,

glass fragments, collapsed table tops and chairs vaporize then dew;

heart shed, beset into the river Yellow

mother combs her sacrospinalis

reeling her gray fief --

illusory the Nexus who complects

the clammy film entwining my neck

and fusing the five pronged gallow along the Thames --

then she joins the dew, crimson river impels my house

I am left hanging by my Nexus in the Abyss.

 

Pale gray Abstrect approaches --

the calidity of Limbo abridges my sorrow,

the Collective Twilight’s final afflection

and silent acknowledgement my Everlong Infernia.

 

VI.

Monolith abated, ambience vanishing

I take steps to alight myself with exposed floor board,

the flame now reaching the bathroom and engulfing the hall,

roof of the room to the left had folded,

to the right drooping --

the super massive gravity well that sanctioned this room

was only a dime in the dirt, wood and concrete

closing with the momentum of a coronal mass ejection

smothering the portion of flame that possessed Alisha’s room

and tunnels extinguishing the hall and stairs.

 

Legs biting in the residual mass that held together the patch

I’m vigorously fleeing having seen the amount of concrete,

wood and metal that inhabits the crevice Cthulhu’s vector had created;

circumventing a pitfall, flame quickly dousing the vacant carbon black

accelerant, shingles falling through the droop

then falling under the weakened structure to an untouched kitchen;

 

running down the stairs, lungs twinging, smoke, treated wood

perspiring the oxygen around me expeditious descension

decaying the quality, fire had maliciously advanced from the kitchen

to a table in the room next to it, paint already peeling;

door held by a hinge, sleeving my hand,

vapors cultivating a sulfur gray,

I open the door vexed at my ladder.

 

Going unnoticed, a navy blue car, headlights off,

behind my own -- shades exit; black overcoats,

matching fedoras, white button down shirts

one a red tie, the other matching the overcoat

approach, revealing in the light of the forgotten memory

a featureless physiology, their faces change from yellow to brown,

eyes blue to silver; hands pocketed they approach with animus

polished shoes clicking concrete stone, one shuffles to a stop

three feet away from my observation post on the porch,

other pursues its intent stopping at the foot of my post:

“Hello Kastle -- we have much to talk about,”

turning a frequency to match a males

taking a misty nebula from its pocket;

this abstract creature offers a handshake;

grip is sturdy and confident.

 

“You cannot sedate all the things you hate”

-- Marylin Manson

 

by Jeremy Swyck

(refurb:10/10/10)

Edited May 4, 2011 by abstrect-christ

[Tinker]

Wow Jeremy, This was a marathon but worth the time. You masterfully use words here to tell a complicated tale. I think I will need to reread this a few times to grasp it in total. I can only admire your fluidity.

 

~~Tink

[tonyv]

The house is a real hellhole, Jeremy. Been inside a few of them, but I couldn't have composed this had I slept in one. Yet the house is just incidental, and I'm flabbergasted by the amount of detail you've incorporated into it and every other aspect of this sordid series. It ends exactly as it should: unabashed, unapologetic, without judgement, ready to be judged.

 

Tony

[abstrect-christ]

lol I like details... and thanks tony and tink for reading it all. Not an easy read I know that; this started out a refurbishing of my first epic(trust me it's a planet of an improvement, there wasn't any feeling in it first time round or detail -- really awkward read) but it turned into something larger.

 

However this is still stand alone in its intent.