I just published my first novel with my friend Charlie Lathe!
You can go to lumenmarcia.com to learn where to purchase it and read other short stories about the world of Lumen Marcia!
All was Right with the world
All was right with the world
He glimpsed the world through one black eye; a slanted half-lidded shape that studied intently when open, despite moving very little.
It had been a great passing of time since he could last remember moving his body. The earth had become his body. Flesh fused with root and a rhythm that shook his bones.
Of course this was only a feeling, for when he stood up his ancient bones creaked and his dark ebony skin seemed to regain its elasticity.
His hand along the walls of the cave—his resting place—gliding whimsically but without pattern on the black stones.
Were one to look into the caverns open maw, one would (not) see but shadows, for his skin mimicked them perfectly.
Only the wetness of his eye shined of slight as it gazed cruelly from the darkness—completely black and focused as a lens.
He no longer had skin covering a majority of his face. As time moved and sanity lost its power, the ritual had begun and progressed.
It started with the removal of his lips—no tool more suited than sharpened stone heated over open flame—and teeth filed to a point; both due to poor upkeep and his habit of chewing on the gravel and debris scattered about his home.
Before long the geography of his face (would) drastically change each time he awoke from the long slumbers.
Much of the architecture beneath his skin had been revealed now. After his lips came his nose and then his cheeks all the way up to the bone.
The remaining skin raggedly sewn and stitched to bone, sinew, and muscle left him with a sickening grin that revealed the yellow, pointed teeth as a constant.
His jaw opened and he gasped: a yawn escaping the inside of his dry and cracked throat—a hellish groan, demonstrating all that was left of his communication skills.
He stretched his thin form and aching limbs, gazing thoughtfully at the light filtering about him. With a suddenness, a sharp pain struck the empty socket where his left eye had once been.
His hands yanked back the wild main of black hair that had grown to his thigh and, with practiced ease, his pointed nails reached in the parted lids and plucked a writhing black form from the hollow.
He gazed at it with his remaining eye. After so much time spent in this place he'd forgotten to consider this aspect of removing that particular eye. In this place, where there was an opening there was a life, and so it held true as his jaws opened once more and his teeth closed around the living thing with a loud "clack.”
He stood contemplating as he felt it lashing about all the way down to his stomach. Its sting was powerful, but its venom was useless on him after so long.
Had he lips, he would have smiled.
Instead, he moved at last to the opening of the cavern and gazed from the rock into the world around him. As was usual, little had changed.
Empty shells of buildings stood covered with local fauna and were long grown over. The stone pathways reclaimed by the earth. He'd mostly forgotten what had happened to this world as he stared at its gutted remains, but he knew that it made him happy, and that he was glad he'd made it this way.
The sound of wood creaking caught his attention and he turned to find a figure creeping beneath his perch.
Its body, covered by obtrusively sewn garments, made him only slightly aware of his own nudity. The creature beneath him was frozen; a look of shock and horror on its face. It took some time before he remembered the name of the creature.
"Human," he said, but it came out as more of a guttural groan due to his lack of lips.
With this sound the creature began to slowly back away. He sighed inwardly having expected this. Swiftly he was upon the other, rending flesh and parting skin. He tore at the thing with a swift savageness that gave it little time to make its screeching noises.
It was not long before a sudden silence fell, but for the wet sloshing sound of his chewing. When he had finished, he wandered toward the river, took his fill of its contents, and returned to the shadows of his cave, settling to the floor.
His eye half-lidded as slowly he dozed off once more.
A Thought...
All was right with the world.
Unliving
He had settled in, a comfortable plateau of inaction and minimal responsibility. A most likely candidate to host the demon of apathy, seeking a void to contain the vast amount of depth he carried inside of him. He had found it, just as he did where ever he went. A way to create stillness around him to displace the inner sanctum of his chaotic existence.
His demeanor, much like his environment contradicted that rage of his deliberation, but the extent of which if reflected, represented a running animal, cold and calculating and with a violence hungered to create a void from what was life.
It is no wonder his need to delve into a sphere of distracted indifference was so strong.
His calm acceptance of undoing
his peaceful contentment to be discontent
his concurrent lack of need for social activity.
his complete willingness to avoid new relationships.
It was easy, loosing himself in a vast imagination , in his multi-talnted devices. Contact to him was a thing of science and experimental progression. Activity was reason to not be doing what he wanted.
The world outside his window was just an ever-changing still-life
To never leave the walls of this place.
His complete state of unliving.
The Great Calamity
It was a wonder she was even considered human, her life demonstrated the existence of humanity's Great Adversary. She was a hungry animal, with a conscious depravity to inflict hell on earth, and violence on its patrons.
Atavism disgusted her. Her basic need for procreation was replaced by a far superior sense to cause degradation, to engage in coitus for her was as much to inflict pain as any want to destroy. Her trail of victims were shallow husks without her. A Mental and emotional suffering, that kept them coming back.
For shallowness she awarded an ironic sense of false security and appreciation, that was much attributed to simple fascination.
for all her violent persona, the spectrum of her thoughts, was but a single peaceful sphere. almost basic in design, but the emotions so overly complex, it limited her communication.
Because of this, she could not speak.
Not in anyway most people could discern.
They saw a beautiful girl, her expression seemed to denote an anxious desire. her pupils always dilated like a hunter waiting for optimal conditions. Her grin though lovely, made people uncomfortable and unnerved.
And still despite such a hostile aura, she held in her wake a trail of dedicated followers and wistful suitors, calling her name like the undead
She had no need for such concerns though. She was only passing through as it is. To watch and manipulate the actors was a simple distraction to curve her boredom.
Even when sometimes she forgot herself and got caught up in her own constructs
Often this was the cause of her calloused fists. Her want for a tangible sense of pleasure from her anger, placed her on the frontline of many assaults, Her arrest record, had she not charmed the hearts of local law enforcement would have listed her status as DETRIMENTAL
As for her mental status, "sociopath" was found to be insufficient. Psychiatry created a new listing in the DSM specifically for her case, but she could not be detained long enough to further complete their study.
Law enforcement knew her by name, Officially they had her listed as a Jane Doe, but they called her " Calamity Jane".
As often happened, this replaced any real name she could have gone by.
More than anything it was a warning. Her victims would sullenly and regretfully say
"There she goes, and I am her dejected husk. Shed by her so willingly and without remorse. I find no honor in this status and yet, her will has caught me and I cannot even fault her for it. I am taken by her completely and love would never describe this attachment, oh no, not when this obsession is in fact, so unrequited. And not while countless more wait in her shadow just to be in her presence. What she instills in us , ruins us with great calamity. "