Clearance

This can never just go simply. I was doing my job, I was doing what you told me to do. Faggot bastard. I was following them when he interrupted me, swaggering in with that checkered suit and slicked-back hair. Did they give him a new body?

WE'VE MADE SOME... SYSTEM UPGRADES, SHALL WE SAY. YOU WON'T BE TRYING THAT AGAIN.

I hate the bastard.

I asked if Blackwelder had given him that meatsuit as a reward for turning on me. His response was, in effect, that he didn't need any incentive for that. As if it was my fault that our Slender friend got him. I only set him free, I didn't tell him he had to meddle so deeply.

I'm to keep an eye on Ridley. For what? That pyre off the exit? They could hardly permit the sheep's liver to inflame the volumes. Did they really think that seventeen pyramids? These are the shoals of afghan.

The Russian won't know what hit him.

The bastard turned back and stared into me with those black eyes.

DAVID DOESN'T EXIST. HE NEVER DID YOU KNOW.

Everything. And I am nothing. After I brought them back, they've robbed me, left me in this condition. You know, you believe. The water. Fill yourself gorge yourself full and feast as you were promised. The white doe escapes from the wrath of Pharaoh, curse of the Pharaohs, golden sands and the sky is red...

Oh.

Tiny monsters breed from the aborted currents. Revolution and genocide. She calls she calls the still the stiff green gallop. Consent and be still. A pan of fresh whiskey bread sits cooling on the sill of the window. I smell freshly baked fumes wafting on the breeze, carrying, carrying far and over the city. Do you hear it? You bastards, all of you. The soul of humanity is dead and behind this mask nothing. Still, she pines for that which was.
Carrying, falling, breaking. The scent fails as the winds carry it out and beyond. Everything is gone, my revenge. The bastard stares hard through me. Does he know? He will. She screams, plunging the knife again and again into the soft moist flesh, the blood flows freely, no more the screams falling to the ground with a plop and a splat, dripping, spilling, the crimson liquid puddles together and flows downward, the ground sloped, into the cracks of the tile into the drain. She stands, a grin revealing her teeth stained red with blood not her own. The other woman on the table on the floor here now there and everywhere. She has missed the taste of human flesh her palate now sated she reaches into the still warm carcass ripping off slabs of meat she tears she rips she shreds the juice dribbling from her mouth as she chews greedily you bastard what have you done

RAVAGED AND PLUNDERED AND RIPPED HER AND BIT HER

He stands gazing out the window into the night, ignoring the scene behind him. His thoughts are heavy. Has he forgotten something? The last time that they met Ridley said something to him, something important. He could not remember. He turned, kicked over the nearest desk and looked at her hunched over on the floor with a chunk of arm between her teeth. He strode over to her and kneed her in the face, knocking away her meal. She frantically scrambled to retrieve another piece but fell, her wrist slipping on the wet floor. He grabbed her by the throat and lifted her to her feet, forced her face to his, the iron taste of blood on his tongue as it into her mouth. She struggled but a moment before there was one hand. It cut the curtain smooth as the gravel in the parking lot outside.

Ridley? They had tried to take him before, at the warehouse. He had been ready for their ambush, but they had anticipated the likelihood of that. Hired guns frozen from the concrete placenta, your gods brighter than a thousand exploding suns all going off at once. Can you taste the formaldehyde? Ridley let his guard down and she took him; he was disarmed and pinned, a dagger to his throat when the Sgt. entered.

"Well now, here we all are again," he crooned, a grin positively shit-eating plastered across his pale face. "One big happy family."

The girl smiled too and whispered sweet nothings into Ridley's ear. He of course was his usual self, making with the wise-cracks, the smart-ass remarks. But in good company. The Sgt. swore profusely, telling our intrepid gangbanger just how he was going to pay him back for leaving him behind in Indiana. Ridley laughed.

OH, I FORGOT TO MENTION THE NEW SECURITY FEATURES.

"You two dumb fucks, here's a little secret for you."

We anticipated the arrival at this point. On the train, Conner knocked over the crates onto us as the forest burned outside, blazing red shadows filtering through the glass, unfazed by the gleaming fluorescents above our heads. The sound of wood scraping against metal and a crash, splintering, wood and bone, cutting through flesh, streaks of blood along the grating. The princess screamed and the black prince, his many arms silhouetted against the inferno behind the glass, appears, the howl of a despairing wolf echoes through the car, through our minds. A single black rose. Fire.

Oh.

We tasted the autumn scent, burning leaves, the cold air caressing and dismembering, ashes strewn about the pavement. Somebody's stolen the car and you can hear the footsteps, the faces in the plaster, the hum of the electricity. Fire. He can taste the flesh she was chewing and throws her to the floor. Thick soot coating the interior, steam pouring out through the holes. Something is missing, something he forgot. Pencils and papers scattered over the floor, fallen from the small desk he kicked over, soaking in the blood still spreading, covering all, filling the cracks in the tile. Something catches his eye. He turns back to her.

"Clean your damn self up."

A spiral bound notebook, its cover pink and silver glitter, lies among the rest of the scattered papers, ashes and filth. He turns away from her, back to the notebook, stares intently at it. He winces, a sharp pain suddenly arising at the base of his skull. The sound of the sink running on full and her wet, stained clothes hitting the floor. He closes his eyes, his head pounding. You bastard, does it hurt? Remind you of lying still in the brush, in mud mixed from blood, your own and that of your comrades? The caw of a raven from somewhere amongst the trees. Does it remind you of the knife between your ribs, the feel of club striking against your skull, of your body smacking against stone steps again and again as you tumble down from the temple?

He picks up the notebook and flips the pages, quickly skimming the short simple sentences and arithmetic in scrawled handwriting. His head was pounding louder; the sound of water splashing out of the sink, onto the floor, the walls, mixing with the blood as she wipes her skin. Grammar exercises share the page with drawings, then the drawings are the only thing on the pages, and they become more complex. A tall, shadowy figure with a blank face. A marionette with long hair and grinning face. A skull draped in colored robes, beads and flowers. A figure in a hoody and gas mask. A plague doctor. A Pharaoh. And there-

She jumped when she heard him scream followed by another desk flying across the room and smashing against the cabinet, sending more paper and random objects sprawling over the floor.  Witness the dark stand, your full accompaniment in the glass. There it appears, the man in the mask all of us wearing masks and they look at him from out of the glass. He can see their mocking false faces may the gods be quick with death and greed. Your soul is tainted even as mine. Working against the pawns that Ridley moved against them.

Full-bodied and serene as the wanton destruction, scattered school supplies mingled with the blood and meat of the professor your checkmate temporary and unintentional. There was no Nazi witch-doctor. Flesh and bone and blood, consume and be made whole. A person not a man of mere flesh and filth, arise in spirit; purity. The sound of the cold steel slicing through tainted meat fills the afternoon air. Screams and sweet flesh, the god of Apollo, raping and devouring.

DO YOU WANT TO SEE WHAT'S INSIDE THIS WATCH?

Ripping and tearing, chewing, vomiting, kill and eat like animals you salad lapping dogs. Forks in warm flesh. The flood is the life is the meat of artificial light, the heat of the fluorescent bulb against your skull. Schwarzwald. He is outside; no eyes follow you as you go about your work. Hands stained red smudge the page as they write line after line after. Outside a truck puts on its brakes. Jerusalem Black. He remembers what he did. He remembers how he allowed it in, allowed it to consume him and it wasn't the Tall One, something more, something far more.

He cannot remember what he said to him at the warehouse.

If Eternity should fail, if the night watchman is allowed to reach the broad of the road. The water rolls down her skin in droplets as she walks to the cabinet, moves away the remains of the desk, and begins looking for something to put on. Across the room he is hunched on all fours over the notebook, breathing heavily. He tears the last two pages out and stuffs them in his pocket, then stands and straightens his outfit. He walks to the door.

"I said to get yourself cleaned up. Get something on and let's get out of here," he yells at her. She's already put on a coat and followed him to the door.

"We'll go to the next place, see if Glory went there."





You're right, damn you. David never existed.