Lightening curled and twisted in the hellishly pitch night sky like thick yarns of blinding neon. Ribbons of light arched and looped through the air, setting it ablaze, if only for an instant, then fading to black. Tendrils of smoke languished in the thick warm air that ran foul with the smell of warm rotting carrion.
The electromagnetic chaos of the storm above wreaked havoc with Eddie’s internal compass. His inner ear gyroscopes spun in every direction, setting him wildly off balance as he continued to run through the hellish nightmare that lay before him.
Booming thunder pounded at his chest and face. Waves of pain crashed through his mind as Eddie realized he was running across a massive field in early twilight.
What am I running from, he asked himself as he bound effortlessly across the dead plain. Eddie was dreaming again. It was the same dream he’d had as a researcher after “The Unrest Event” when he was a considerably younger man.
Eddie’s toes dug easily into the warm clumped earth as he ran. Field upon field of blackened soil surrounded him, curving off into the wide horizons. Scattered oil fires dotted the landscape before him, belching spires of filth and black smoke high into the sky. He struggled to breathe in the thick marinade of brimstone and carrion atmosphere that surrounded him. It filled his nostrils with a lingering foul stench as he ran. His instincts told him to run like hell. Where or why he was running to or from, they would not tell. The one thing he did know for sure was that he had to keep running.
Eddie felt his toes sink into the warm soil as he ran. It wasn’t an entirely unpleasant feeling and he didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger aside from another cluster of coiled lightening that was still miles ahead. Looking to his right as he passed bodies strewn along the road, he realized he was devouring massive distances with each running stride.
Another flash of light illuminated more horror for Eddie to marvel at in this strange dream world; the skin of his strangely massive hands and forearms had been replaced with thick, purplish leather. His arms, chest, legs… his entire body, all had taken on the same protective covering. Eddie’s feet resembled something more like the talons of a bird or lizard than anything human. Toenails and fingernails had been replaced with wide, blunted black claws. Another flash of light lit up the sky from high above as he stretched out his hands. He gaped at his appendages as if they were completely alien. He stared for a moment longer when suddenly, a flash of electricity cracked to the ground just yards ahead. He hadn’t been paying attention and had subsequently run headlong into the massive, low altitude, electrical storm. The bright flash of electric terror had sent the natural metals of Eddie’s inner ears spinning again, tossing him sideways once more with the momentum of a drunkard in the throws of a binge. Slowing his pace, Eddie loped cautiously forward, shaking off the disorientation in his mind. He felt nauseous but he knew he had to keep running.
Must keep running, he told himself. The feeling of nausea eventually subsided as he cleared the worst of the storm. The world around him returned to its dull AM-radio hum and crackle as he resumed his mantra; running, must keep running. Eddie had regained his balance enough to quicken the pace and shake off the desire to lie down next to a cool toilet and puke his brains out. This was an empty place that creeped him out and he wanted nothing more to do with it even if it was just a dream.
Why? What am I running from? Where am I going? His internal thoughts continued. He knew he had to keep his wits. I can get through this, he reassured himself, resolving to continue on regardless of his fate. He had no choice but to keep going.
As he turned his head to catch a glimpse of the rising sun to his left, crippling pain shot through his back and right shoulder like barbed wire tendons being pulled through muscle. Eddie’s mind raced with fear as a reflex action to touch the pain overcame him. Reaching for his back with his thickly hided, yet sensitive “fingers”, Eddie was careful not to move too quickly. The flesh of his back had been flayed open, as if a butcher had prepped him for portioning the best cuts. There was no telling how far up his back the carnage continued, but he could feel at least the first three ribs exposed close to the spine. Blindly groping further up, Eddie discovered the shattered, broken remains of something protruding out of his back between the third and fourth ribs. Imagination clouded his mind with a slide show of gory scenarios: a thick spear, a javelin fragment, a pool cue stick. One thing he could be sure of was that something had punctured his flesh, torn its way through muscle and lodged itself in his upper back.
Still running, Eddie mistakenly took hold and yanked at the foreign object. Tendons and flesh strained as searing pain momentarily paralyzed him. Unable to scream, white spots danced in the peripherals of his blurry hazed reality. Another reflex action, though far more unique, immediately ensued; two wings unfolded from extra limbs that had lain sleek against the spine of his back. Muscles in Eddie’s back swelled and strained, revealing an intact left wing and a broken right. Air currents grabbed his remaining left wing, picked him up off the ground for a few meters and sent Eddie gliding sideways through the air for only a moment before diving face first into the putrid world that surrounded him.
The warm, foul soil saturated with the soft and waxy adipocere of death filled his mouth and nostrils like fetid, brandy-soaked cakes. This dark world’s twilight had hidden the fact that the soft clumps Eddie had felt between his toes while running were actually rotting human skulls. They had all been buried standing up with their heads exposed. Thousands of acres of skulls surrounded Eddie in this field of human misery. Eddie realized that the dead must stretch for miles around him.
He began to dry heave and wretch again. His mouth and nasal passages erupted with the contents of his gut, forcing its way up and out. The thick putrid soil of the dead that he’d harvested with his open mouth tasted of putrefied flesh. His stomach now empty, the smell of death still filled his nose and mouth as he continued to dry heave.
Moments later Eddie sat wiping his chin with his slick, leathery forearm. He pushed himself to his feet and slowly stood up, swaying a bit as he stood. Having regained his balance he shook his head again, throwing phlegm in all directions like a wet mongrel. Alternating his index “finger” from one nostril to another, he took turns blowing each one clear. Eddie finished up with a forearm wipe across the face and quickly threw his arm outward, flicking the phlegm, vomit and death residue away with one swift movement. He took a moment to survey the strange world around him. His eyes fell upon an empty place and a feeling of overwhelming sadness came over him. Before him lay billions of skulls, their owners buried standing up, with only their heads sticking out of the ground. Rotting skulls embedded in mounds of creeping soil surrounded him, motionless and cold with their mouths wide open in an orchestrated silent universal scream.
This was a place completely void of life yet teeming with movement. The rising sun to his left was dirty and yellow, pregnant with the industry and filth of man. The morning light filtered through the soot and ash of the foul atmosphere, distorting the sunrise’s hues in gradients of red and purple to pitch night high over head. The air was sweet with the carrion and offal of uncountable numbers in this field of death. Hundreds of thousands more lay in random mounds along the roadway splayed southward before him. The road seemed to go for as far as the eye could see.
Further ahead Eddie could make out something that appeared to be a cluster of vehicles sitting at a crossroads. A huge blown out bus, a few dozen burnt out cars and an overturned pickup camper punctuated the abandoned roadway. The vehicles had all been heading west, away from the rising sun when whatever happened here, happened.
These people died running from something, Eddie thought as he slowed to safely navigate a toppled pickup camper combo. The rig had been tossed on its side by a blast from a large tour bus further up at the crossroads. A huge, gaping hole had been ripped from the center of the bus, twisting the front and back ends of the massive vehicle in opposite directions like a pastry canister. Just to the west of the smoldering bus Eddie saw a strange, fat little man rummaging through the carcasses and wreckage for baubles and booty. The odd man was fat in the sense that he was round like a billiard ball but his long slender legs and wiry arms created an overall slendering effect as he went about his scavenging. The fat little man’s lithe movements and bountiful circumference simply added to his strange contradictions. He wore a dark blue velvet suit and matching top hat that seemed to shimmer in the early twilight. Underneath his starry blue velvet suit the fat little man was attired in a frilly, red and white striped ruffled shirt with flowing lapels and cuffs.
From his vantage point behind the overturned camper Eddie was able to focus in more clearly on the round-bellied man. Eddie watched as the strange man picked through the pockets and purses of the dead. The fat little man struggled to roll a body over and then picked through the pockets, taking things of value and putting them into his own. Eddie focused in with powerful eyes and noticed the stripes in the man’s white blouse were actually spatterings of dried blood. The blue velvet suit that seemed to shimmer before was simply laden with cheap shiny stars poorly stitched to it. The fat little man had a rounded head with skin that looked strange, like fine, weathered china. His shiny white buckteeth made him look a bit like a pale sinister beaver. The fat little man’s belly appeared to be perfectly spherical, with legs, neck and arms jutting out from their various sockets. His suit perfectly fit his odd corners and girth, almost as if he’d been painted with cloth. Jet-black slicked hair crested with a perfect widow’s peak and curled up to his shoulders in short dirty clumps. The fat little man reminded Eddie of a cartoon he’d once seen as a child; the one where an odd man with a pencil thin moustache would reply ‘Reeeeeeeeeeeaalllly?’ over and over in a funny way.
Just then, the fat little man seemed excited to have found something of extreme interest. Rustling in the wreckage, he surfaced with what looked like an intact human arm and hand. All smiles, the fat little man shook the amputated arm to rid it of debris and insects. He cautiously held it up to his nose and sniffed at it expectantly. Apparently finding its odor and condition to his liking, he licked his long sturdy white teeth with a split serpent tongue. The fat little man took great care as he prepared to eat his meal. Judging by the fat little man’s excitement, human appendages were apparently a delicacy in this place.
The fat little man began his dining ritual by inserting the rotting pinkie finger into his mouth and biting down on it quickly like a pickle. He then used the backside of his teeth as leverage to peel the fleshy meat from the bone while sucking the loose flesh into his mouth like a buffalo wing. Finished with the pinkie, the fat little man pulled a white kerchief from one of the many pockets in his star-spangled suit, wiped his chin and cheeks with his free hand and then tossed the kerchief aside. Moving to the next finger, the fat little man repeated the process with horrific delight, each time procuring another white napkin from a different hidden pocket in his star-spangled suit.
In this manner the fat little man continued his grizzly meal and after a short while a pile of white napkins began to pile up around him. He chewed slowly, relishing each bite, wiping saliva and juices from his chin with a fresh new napkin each time only to toss it away and begin again for the next meaty digit. He saved the thumb for last as he danced his little dance of glee after each napkin dropped.
Apparently not caring for the tendons and bony bits of the hand, the fat little man pulled the skin from the back of the hand in one large piece like the skin of a fried chicken breast. He popped it into his mouth like a hungry fat child and chewed with delight. He pulled out yet another napkin and repeated his dinner dance. The oddly dressed little man seemed to have an endless supply of napkins and pockets from which to pull them. Next, he quickly turned the arm around so that the hand-end, still attached to the forearm by the tendons of the wrist was in the air like the business end of a Louisville Slugger. Grabbing the bare upper arm ‘baseball bat’ style, the fat little man bashed the hand end of the arm onto the pavement with crack. Then he turned the arm over and took a few whacks at the bumper of a nearby car. The wrist severed with a pop, tendons ripped as the unwanted hand came off like the tail of a shrimp. Instantly the fat little man rejoiced and danced his little dance once again with glee.
Eddie couldn’t watch any more after he saw the fat little man take his first gluttonously bloody bite of the fleshy arm. It took him less than a minute to devour it, rotating it as one would when eating corn on the cob. Finished with his gruesome culinary delight, the fat little man tossed the now bare bones aside and procured more white kerchiefs from his many little pockets. After wiping his hands and face, the fat little man procured a whiskey flask from inside his coat pocket. Standing in a pile of napkins that had drifted over his shoes and up his ankles like a blanket of snow, the fat little man quenched his thirst, screwed the cap onto the flask and slid it back into the breast pocket of his suit coat.
Eddie decided to get a closer look at this strange little cannibal, assuming the fat little man was even human. Eddie was more than twice his size and could easily handle himself if things were to go awry. As he transferred his weight to his right foot Eddie accidentally bumped the fender of the pickup truck he was hiding behind and knocked loose a piece of chromed taillight trim.
Eddie had broadcast his position. The sound seemed to echo for an eternity as the metal ring rocked back and forth on the blacktop, taking an eternity to teeter-totter to a halt.
The strange, fat little man in the blue velvet suit with the red and white striped shirt had now seen Eddie. Startled, he busily kicked the drift of napkins away and proceeded to groom himself with various combs and containers of grooming waxes procured from even more pockets. The fat little man finished by pulling out a small compact and admiring himself in the tiny mirror. Then, the fat little man touched up his lipstick and fixed his hair. Satisfied with his grooming, he admired himself one last time with a gesture of approval before snapping the compact close and hiding it away into yet another pocket.
“Vain little bastard”, Eddie muttered to himself as he cautiously approached the fat little man. Eddie noticed that the man’s complexion wasn’t the fine china porcelain it had appeared from a distance. Closer examination revealed the man’s skin to be more of a soft grey with hints of blue and red veins, like the flesh of the dead. Each had seen the other and while both were curious of their new fellow traveler, they each reacted cautiously, moving slowly but facing each other at all times. Suddenly the fat little man opened his mouth and took in a great breathe with which he used to begin shouting in the most horridly shrill voice that Eddie had ever heard.
“A quart of wheat for a day’s wages and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and wine!” The fat little man yelled out his decree as if half warning, half greeting. Then he continued to shout his portent over and over as Eddie approached the crossroads. The man’s matching blue velvet top hat and black foppish shoes whoppled and warbled up and down as he leapt and bellowed his reprise. Motioning and pointing to the rising sun, the fat little man cackled and danced as he repeated his dire proclamation, though now with more fear and conviction than when he first started his broken prattle.
Eddie focused his eyes in the direction the man was pointing, far to the eastern horizon. Coming towards them at a steady gate rode a pitch-black horse and rider. The dark, faceless apparition riding towards the crossroads held high a set of scales that swayed to and fro with the rocking stride of the steed beneath its weightless form. The darkness of the pitch equestrian seemed to defy physics, stealing what little light there was in this twilight place. Eddie’s eyes hurt if he stared at it for any length of time, like a sucking headache in his eyes. He had to continually look away, all the while the fat little man continued squalling his burning premonitory.
Squinting his eyes, Eddie focused once more on the coming shadow. The sun rose as if defiant of man and his spires of filth that had polluted the sky. Despite centuries of industrial abuse one could still see the hazed outline of the sun. A once worshipped stellar body beginning its daily journey across the sky of this nightmarish place. He knew too little about the stagnant, decaying world around him to be properly terrified. The fluid canals of his inner ears swirled for a second or two followed by more pain as another thickly yarned bolt of lightening struck the ground a few hundred meters ahead.
The storm he had passed earlier had caught up to Eddie at the crossroads. Instinct overtook him and he leapt forward, landing on agile fours. He turned to snarl at the fat little man and then quickly turned his head east to sniff the air.
The fat little man recoiled at Eddie’s audacity, catching himself mid stumble with an exaggerated “harrumph!” and another tissue from yet another pocket, which he used to dab his forehead and cheek indignantly. Smelling the oncoming easterly breeze, Eddie could detect famine and death in concentrations that made his eyes water. Flexing his massive legs for a start, he quickly surveyed what lay before him and sprinted off towards the dark horseman at full gate.
Once again Eddie was traveling through the dark world, running… The Demon running…