JANISSARY PROJECT: Book VI
Grab it and Growl
in Fantasy Land, (or)
Washington, DC suburbs
A skull, half ravaged
from the beginning of time
Strange fire, a savage fire, ebbs and surges in his
frightened blue eyes. The skull burns but is not consumed. Benny wiggles against
bonds of raw human skin.
Maggots squirm, fat and white.
Nibbling.
Nibbling.
Like grotesque snow they fall from leering eye
sockets, from grinning teeth, from gaping, flaring holes where the cartilage of
the nose has been eaten away. Down, down the eye sockets stare, into a small,
serious face now filled with terror.
This little one, a child born of Wolf and Bear to
destroy someone so great as the Mohawk-Buu. No. Never shall it be. Eagle-Woman
and her hordes of Children will suffer. Into the streets and their own homes
will they suffer. Thou son of a befouled road warrior, die.
mold
grave soil
a mourner's dirge
The high priest of this shon:gili coven raised his
knife, a hissing, squirming incubus-skean dubh brought from the Old World of
Hell’s black fire and ice, from the shores of a distant land. For the third
and final cut, it goes up, over the helpless man-child bound upon the Witch's
Stone.
The victim is perfect. Young, without sin. The victim
is his own grandson, Benjamin Greylov the Third.
The priest smiles.
“Good-bye, Benny.”
And the knife plunges, down into a thin, heaving
chest.
The priest shouts, “For the darkened-sun god, our Mohawk-Buu. Soon he will walk among us in this fleshly abode.” Cheers raised
from among the mass of dark forms surround the altar. “See the proof. Look
upon my son, Ben, raised from the grave.”
With blinding joy the Owl priest smiled at the
bewildered young man standing naked beside his struggling daughter-in-law, the
mother of the sacrificial lamb, Benny. Dazed and shocked the pair looked on.
Greedy, feeding, the incubus-skean chortled an oily,
greasy sound that turned the stomachs of those partaking in the mass. When it is
done, the flesh will be parceled out. The bones dried, then burned. Then will
come the miracle, the Owl rising from the bones of the dead boy.
The boy, the knife deep in his heart, stares up at his
grandfather's gentle smile.
Pain radiates from the cut throughout a dying child. Pain.
White-hot, it surges along raw nerves, gnawing away
the life force from child, racing to an eager lord of the dark.
More terrified of the dark-sun, the Owl, than he is of
the pain and death, he struggles, shrieks against the bonds of human skin,
stripped from the bodies of past victims.
He is only six years old, and his short life is nearly
at an end.
A skull, half ravaged, from beyond the edge of time .
. . .
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