This was written for National Novel Writing Month. I didn't finish the 50,000 words called for, but this stands up well as a novella and part one of a longer story.
Global Weirding - Part Two
My job is very boring, I'm an office clerk.
Worse. I'm a data analyst for a utility company. I'm the man who decides it's time we sent a salesman round to your area to pester you into changing suppliers.
Don't hate me. I need the money.
I can geek out about it really hard, and I think I can tell you which postal sector I'm in at any given moment. I've started mining the data for myself, seeing if I can spot any trends. Not ones that have anything to do with selling you electricity or gas, just, well, trends.
Customers are allowed, encouraged even, to write in and change the details as held on the system, to keep it up to date. There's been a trend toward slightly odd titles. Somewhere on the Altrincham border there are ever more Brothers (br.). Brothers of what, they don't say, and I can't find any mention of a monastery anywhere in the area. I know I'm not supposed to, but I've got the postcodes tagged on a Google map overlay, and every time a new brother appears on the system I check to see how they relate to the others geographically. There are twenty now, and they form a ragged circle around a small patch of woodland. I'm off there when the hangover eases.
The sign said 'Beware of the God'. It wasn't a mis-spelling. There was nothing that said the wood was private property, only this one threat of theist violence, so I went in. A short way into the trees the path became so rough with roots that I got off the bike and walked it along.
It may have been in the physical centre of all the trees, I couldn't tell, but the clearing was obviously the heart of the wood. At its centre was a strange structure. I'd seen these flat topped pyramids before, marking the tops of closed off mine shafts and the like, but none had ever looked so old. It had the dark stain of ages on it, and moss and vines climbed up it. As I got closer it became obvious that someone had chiselled details into it, individual stone blocks and grand steps leading up it. It looked more and more like a Mayan ziggurat, or the sort of thing Conan would plunder. As it was under three feet tall, Conan would have to be a toy soldier to get in and fight the serpent at its heart.
There was structure on the top, a pagoda of sorts, with an altar on the roof. Grimly, there was a dead mouse atop the altar, its innards splayed out as if it had been butchered with a modelling knife. All the blood had washed away in the most recent rain, but I could see the channels it was supposed to drain down. They led to holes at either end of the altar, which would drip through the ceiling of the pagoda onto its occupant.
Under the blood holes there was a small statue. Ensanguined as it was, the details of its carving were hard to make out, but it looked like an octopus swallowing a pig, with hands on the ends of some of its tentacles. I reached in, trying to ignore the stickiness that rubbed off on my hands, and grasped the statue. It was slippery, but when I finally got a good grip it moved. I slid it out of the pagoda. It took a few goes because I had to turn it around and over until it fit between the tiny pillars. I put it in a plastic bag, wrapped it up tight and stored it in my back pack. Sadly I didn't take my camera, because the whole set up deserved recording. For some reason I didn't think it would be there if I returned.
I must have disturbed something getting the idol out because as I walked away there was a cracking sound and when I looked around the pagoda had collapsed and the roof was sliding down the steps. If it hadn't been for the dead mouse I'd have felt guilty about my theft and vandalism of someone's handiwork. I wiped my hands clean on a handful of grass and headed home.
I got a bit Lady Macbeth at home. My right hand was itching where it had got ichor all over it. I washed it three times, using a different soap each time, then smeared a bit of E45 over it to see what that did. If I stopped thinking about it it became less irritating.
Then the whole process began again because I had to wash the idol. I put it in the sink, squirted washing up liquid (Ecover of course) over it and then covered it in warm water. An hour later the water in the sink was a scary inky red. I drained it and checked the idol. It wasn't perfectly clean, there were still grim little crevices that germs would love, but I could see more of the detail.
It had a wild boar's head protruding from the part of an octopuses body that I'd charitably call the forehead. Six of the octopuses tentacles kept the beast upright, whilst two reached out and had hands on the ends. I don't know what it was cast from, but the surface was soft and smooth and slightly pliable. It made me shiver to run a finger across it, and not in a good way. I decided to sacrifice a scrubbing brush to clean out the crevices and attacked the idol with yet more Ecover.
When I was done the idol glistened in sickly shades of green, yellow and brown. I dried it and took it to sit beside the twig with a face on the window sill. But the twig wasn't there. I found a suitable place for the idol and looked around. The twig was sat on the sofa, beside the remote control. I couldn't remember when I'd put it there, or leaving the television on standby when I went out. In fact, I couldn't remember turning the television on at all. I took the stick fellow back to his place on the window sill.
There's a community, somewhere in the hinterlands of the United States, where the women have started giving birth to chimps. Or something very close.
It seems some of the community decided to home school their children rather than have them subjected to the horror of being taught such perversions as science, particularly evolution. If their children could just hear the word of the Lord then they would grow up to understand the Truth.
It might be that in-breeding is inherent in that sort of community, or it might be that evolution abandoned them the after they abandoned it, but they've been giving birth to throwbacks ever since. I shouldn't laugh, it must be horrible for them. Though I guess they'll just accept that they have in some way sinned and pray for forgiveness whilst trying to coax their little ones down from the light fittings.
The octo-boar invaded my dreams last night. I was back in the wood, only this time I was a toy soldier sized Conan climbing the steps of the ziggurat. I hacked away at branches that blocked my way and clambered over lumps of moss.
When I reached the top of the stairs I found the interior of the pagoda enveloped in a pink mist. Shapes moved inside that I did not want to think about. There was a chanting, but it was coming from the pagoda roof. Ladders led up there and I went silently up the nearest one.
Atop the pagoda, arrayed around the altar, were six priests. Dressed in flowing robes with head dresses decorated in gold and precious stones they were chanting whilst staring at a seventh, far older man. He held a long knife in both hands, its blade curving like the snake etched into its surface. It was raised ready to strike the victim tied to the altar.
She was a Frazzeta perfect fantasy maiden, her skin the colour of lovingly applied oils, her body voluptuous and perfectly defined. She looked vaguely familiar, I think my subconscious was pasting the face of someone I knew onto the body. She stared at the blade and struggled against her bonds.
My muscles tautened and I leapt over the ledge like a tiger. My blade was out, it whirred through the air, separating the two nearest priests from their heads. I pushed between the falling bodies, leapt the altar and ran the old man through. Minna be damned, but his body wedged on the hilt and the sword would not pull out of his limp body. The remaining priests were coming out of their trance. I hadn't noticed before, but they each had a long sword at their side and now they drew the weapons.
I hefted my sword with the old man on it. He was not so heavy, but his bulk hindered my movements and I could not swing or thrust the sword because of it. There was a clatter behind me, the old man's sacrificial blade. With a roar I threw him and my sword at the nearest priest, pushing him over the edge of the roof. I grabbed the blade from the ground and brought it up just in time to block the first blow from the next priest.
The priests' swords had a longer reach than my sacrificial blade, but the old men were not as fast or strong as I. I dodged a second blow and swung the blade around back handed to drive it under his ribs and up to his heart. As he slumped I took up his sword. It was smaller and lighter than the blade I had brought with me, but the edge was sharp and the balance good. I left the sacrificial blade in the priest and turned now to the last two.
They charged together, swords above their heads, one slightly behind and to the side of the other. I whirled, matching their screams, parrying the first and bringing the sword around to sever the other's elbows. He staggered on, a confused expression across his face as his companion tried to stop and turn. I was around faster, driving my blade between his shoulder blades.
I pulled the blade from the priest's back and wiped blood off it on his robes. The armless one was screaming obscenities at me in a language I did not understand, his life squirting in rhythm out of his severed arms. I gave him a sharp shove and he flew off the pagoda roof and fell to the forest floor below. It was a mercy rather than dying by heartbeats.
The unwilling sacrifice was straining against her bonds, only now I believe she wanted free for a different reason. I cut the bonds that held her and she wrapped her lissom limbs around my blood and sweat soaked body. We would have kissed and she would have offered her body to me, but the structure began to shake.
I took up the sword again and looked around. Tentacles were rising from the interior of the pagoda and reaching over the ledge, searching for us. The creature below had received plenty of blood, but the life liquid of the priests was not good enough for it. It required its luscious offering and it required it immediately. I could not allow that. I hacked a tentacle, severing it with two blows, took up the wench and ran for the edge nearest the steps.
We leapt between two flailing tentacles, sailed a long way out over the stairs and finally landed safely in a tangle of moss and branches. I led the way to the path I had cut on the way up.
There was a crash from above. The pagoda had collapsed. Tentacles still waved around its edges and it began to move. Now we ran down the steps, jumping down several at a time. A grinding noise indicated the creature had pushed the roof aside. It did not stop. I chanced a look behind and saw the great stone roof sliding down the steps toward us.
We were near the bottom of the structure now, but the stone was gaining on us. I grabbed the girl's hand and pulled her to the side, leaping over the edge of the ziggurat away from the danger of being crushed. Soft foliage cushioned our fall.
There was rumbling behind us. The creature was at the top of the steps, tentacles flailing, dragging itself toward us. I was too battered to put up much of a fight when it reached us, so we should move if we could. I tried to rouse the girl, but it wasn't working.
There was a scream from the ziggurat, the sound of stones sliding over each other as the structure began to collapse in on itself. The creature disappeared into the cloud of dust that replaced the building.
And then there was silence. The dust slowly settled. The girl came round. "Are we safe?" she asked.
"Aye, we are. That beast has returned to whichever hell birthed it."
"I owe you my life, kind sir." She smiled seductively.
"Tell me girl, what is your name?"
"Jan, kind sir. How can I reward you?" She was wearing nothing, I remembered, and I had but a loin cloth to slip out of.
"I shall think of a way." We moved together to kiss, her hands went to my loin cloth.
And then I woke up.
I hate it when the dream ends at the good bit. I woke with a raging hard on but too apathetic to do anything about it. Rolling over onto my stomach trapped it, and thinking about soap operas made it go away.
Of course, I couldn't get back to sleep after that, so I just lay there and listened to the sounds of the building. I'm pretty sure there are mice in the walls, I can sometimes hear scampering and scraping. Tonight they seemed more active than normal, like the Jerry collective had decreed that they should congregate above my bed and have a rave. I buried my head in the sheets and tried to think of something soothing to lull me to sleep.
In the morning I found the idol on the floor. It had lost an arm when it fell off the windowsill, and I was sure the shape had changed. I tracked the arm down and left both pieces on the table for future supergluing.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine
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Technorati tag: Fiction, Fantasy, Weird
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