Tunnel Snowy Cacophony

Prompt given by Nick Winney. Dark fiction/dark fantasy

Horns blare in the underground metro station, my head leans softly on the glass. Disconnected from reality beneath the wreath, the surface of my humanity. Tunnels that went on for miles, yet seconds for me. The colors drip from my skin, incoherent. People on the metro around me become shadows with eyes that glare, that glow in pitch darkness. I taste them on the tip of my tongue, budding with life. When I open my eyes, I am embraced by the loneliness and the puttering of the train. Outlines of their body remain, their coats, and their hands different colors of skin part from my eyes. Disjointed, I hold the leatherback book close to my chest. My thoughts were cluttered, despite the distinct certainty that lived somewhere far off. 

Emptiness goes on for two minutes in a lifetime. We live in the in-between world now. A rugged terrain, my fingers press the notches of my glasses closer to my face. I don't make eye contact when I reach my destination. It feels like pulling canvas off the windows when you step through. A surreal feeling ready to detonate. 

She was as I expected, my inheritance passed down from generations. Tattoos covered her face in symbols that imprinted the crown of her head to underneath her neck. She had a gold nose ring, dark long hair and crystalized blue eyes, changing colors when she talked. 

"Are you sure you want to do this?" She lit a cigarette in this underground city. It was the layer between death and life. My fingers clenched the notebook and I rested it in my bag. 

"Don't lose my satchel, when we cross the threshold. I want him to feel madness when his life goes out. And I need it for when I return to life."

"We're just shadows in the dying world." She said with a chime watching me cut my finger, my blood warmth. Silently, I place a line on her temple. Followed by a deep sigh that brought about industrial noises scratching the surfaces of my brain, I slipped my silhouette into her body. A shared mind, a unity, her name was Amara, and she picked up my satchel, pointing at the two lanterns floating up toward a metal gate. A hole with nothing beyond it. 

Black bird feathers shake out of her coat as she talks to me in her mind. You must hate this motherfucker. I warm her skin until it turns to a golden brown as we reach the gates. There is no world where hollow justice can't be given. Besides, it's a life that deserves a longer night. 

She laughs hands curling on the gates. I love it when your family calls upon me to create havoc. You'll stay with me for a few years, as trade? 

I imagine kissing her cheek. 

Always my love. We treasure your power. Our lineage sacrifices what it must to keep you alive. 

Amara opens the gate, there's a swirling white and grey portal standing between her feet as she laughs passing through it. 

***

Devoid of life, Amara walks in a field of plush snow. Life without bodies circle her coat, rambling. One of them grabs her coat jacket screaming about how he can't feel his legs. She begs the stars to guide her, looking for patterns in the fields. We were searching for someone still stuck in the in-between. It's a place where people get stuck in for centuries unable to pass on. They've become festering wounds. It smells sterilized in a sea of white. The suffering slink past us with eyes made of snow globes. World's trapped behind them. 

She presses her pointer finger together with the middle and whispers her mother's tongue, pressing a deep thundering glow in the lines of her fingers. A map wiggles from the soil and reaches to her hands. Her breath is icy with our surroundings and coughs about how much she dislikes this travel. Parchment that feels like human skin. Its containment showed the names of the bodies around us wandering and she chimes a little snicker. We watch the name B circle around a tree, we can hear him chewing through his fat bloody lip. Rambling about the cribs of fear, the sounds of a bow violin slides against a guitar violent. Love is part of psychosis, a place where the suns bleed and burn out the heart. His hands are weathered to the bone. 

In flight Amara lifts her boots in the air heading towards the tree to find this particular B. She doesn't recognize him from the waking world because she never has to deal with the phobic nature of humanity and its lawlessness. Apart of her pities him, staring at his saggy skin that drags around the snow. Body color of a corpse with a bloated liver. 

"The world is not done with you yet. Desperate for your words." Amara smiles, his eyes look up with anger and tries to weakly squeeze her hands. "Have you been to the prison that suspends you in the air and makes you relive your greatest fears?"

"I am done with life. Let me rot here. Unless you want to fuck. If that's what you want. You can have this limp dick."

Amara pushes his hands out of the way and rips into his body pulling out his liver. Its soft squishy fruit bloated with disease, swelters over her skin. He's a tricky little imp, ain't he? It amazes me how many people worship his filth. There are worse, yes. I find it curious. How tortured he already is and I wonder if he'll like what comes next better. 

"Oh, I want that and so much more." Amara pushed him deeper in the snow and shoved an emblem into his forehead until it glowed. "After I'm done with you, you'll no longer plague my planet."

***

You ever hear about the Goddess of Dreams? Surely, you must've. There have been many depictions of her. Drawn out over different mediums, colors, and how they shift. They say she protects us, and in a way, you couldn't be wrong. Our family found her trapped inside this ornate box, it was a puzzle box you see. It needed 78 exact numbers to let her loose. We've never asked how long she was trapped there or who trapped her there. We made a blood pact for centuries, keeping her alive and changing the direction of memories in this world. Now, I get it. You must think how fucked up it is to take away a whole person's memories. Erasure of books, erasure of art, or even filth that harms communities. 

And you'd be right, it is wrong that we take that from the planet. We need symbols that show us how not to be. Usually we take from small fry humans. People who don't make an impact. Amara takes the soul that is erased and consumes it. Splits it into fragments and shoots part of its ugly around the planet that attaches to someone else like a budding disease. Not enough to create the repetitive memory, but just enough to weigh the balance without getting caught. 

The one our family chooses has their memories by the thousands erased. Our prisoner is unique to their worldly connections. This one will change textbooks and literature. It would be one less misogynistic bastard. Amara says they exist to weigh the scales, but I'm crueler. I don't believe they deserve to exist at all.

Suppose that's why I let her take the years off my body and go on holiday with her. I love her, you see. It's not just the power behind her, it's her personality. My body would never allow me to be immortal like her, nor can she make me that way. Eventually, I will die. And the next person in our lineage will meet her. The story will continue. Our blood pact. Just the way we have always done it.

I'm sure many of my ancestors have loved her. She has existed centuries before us, our exchange is simple. Blood for life. And the bottom feeders, as you can expect aren't worth much years. I would've thought at least ten for this one. No, only three. That's how much damage he created by existing. It's a shame for people like him. There's not that much of a trade. I like it better this way. It gives me time to ponder who our next victim will be.

That's why they must die. Don't sympathize with me. I take things that don't belong to me. I learned along time ago to not have regret. 

***

We transported back to February 8, 1994, because Amara only wanted a month to gather up enough evidence of the creature, as she put it best. She created from memories an apartment flat he used to live in, down to the very core of his memories about women and then replaced it with hope. She said in his in his final hour he would see the truth. This world would be different, she said it would be matriarchal, but we'd rarely go outside. The houses would be built like Italy, but in some sun bathed US state. Where? She refused to deliver. Amara would play house wife, and listen to records. The mask she wore looked like one of his dead wives. It would have to be meticulous. Inside his mind was trauma and world's that rejected him, and caused fear. Amara decided it would be better to show a different side, and if he slipped she would remove a body part until death. 

B woke up in the early hours of the morning, the dewy air awoken by sweat from some fever dream. Amara stood at the balcony in the late morning hours smoking a cigarette, watching the eclipse she created in the sky. The sun blanketed by the blackness of the moon. She didn't notice the stir of the air that shifted when her control stuttered. B slipped on moccasins and wandered aimlessly into the kitchen. There was bottles of different alcoholic drinks lined up on the kitchen counter as if it were a conveyor belt to be lavished by. Each had ribbons with gifts naming H & L presented as old age wedding presents, celebrations dusted over in time. The dust was thick when he pressed one finger down he spread it from the top of the bottle down to the label. Underneath the label, of H&L said the word bad, bad, bad. B took a bottle by curiosity, unscrewed the cap and perched his fat lips to sip it. Gluttonous by nature. 

Within seconds his head swayed, and memories of sleeping in the cemented kingdoms, half pissed himself and being naked next to nameless faces of women he's never met. Their eyes were gone, plucked from the birds left to rot. Little flies clung to the softness of their curves, just bodies around him. One of the women stuttered, "Do I look like someone you could love now?" Her toothless grin shines with the bleeding bubbles of her gums, the color of abscess purple. He's screaming into wakefulness, the bottle shattered next to his feet. 

When his eyes crest from the tension of the fever dream, he blinks. In disarray all the bottles have been replaced by sparkling water, and his left foot has been replaced by a sturdy wooden peg. On his ass cursing he reaches for his foot, but notices it has disappeared. Into the thin air of his reality.

Amara rushes to pick up B with a strength a woman of her stature would not have, and disappears the glass with a flick of her wrist. She leans him up towards the balcony where he can watch the eclipse, glasses over his eyes, for a future he will never experience. Chalk it up to nightmares, she reminds him, the things we fear the most only become our reality when we refuse to see them as they are. 

They do not discuss the missing foot, but she gaslights him and tells him he's always had it gone. Records play a swizzle of songs from his childhood, and she wonders when the memories will find him. His eyes are blank pages waiting to be filled. At the crinkle of his eyes are fear, and disgust. He doesn't realize the memories are his, and he doesn't remember, who he is or who he was before the fever dream. Amara gently taps the tops of his hands and talks about tortured artists. 

"There was a time when men needed to feel powerful over women to complete themselves. Society used to deliver men out into the world and force them to hide their emotions. Called it a weakness. And when the tortured artists came they wrote, sang, painted, created things to become powerful in a powerless world."

"Why, women?"

"It's a power imbalance. It was just the way things have been for centuries. Women are at war with men because of their refusal to acknowledge them as equal. Quiets the strong minded and separated them. You see, women were abused too, but it was different. They found their power by surpassing the humiliation, the shame, and the difference to express themselves at their cost of their deaths."

"Men didn't die?" 

"Men died differently. They left their emotions alone. They cried silently, until the tears no longer formed. Power meant greatness, and emotions was leverage that could be used against men to remove them. With enough power, men can do terrible things. And it's easier to pluck someone from society and deem them weak. Control, abuse, and destroy. In return men lost. They replaced their humanity with curses they would fight for the rest of their lives. Dead bodies in a sea of haunted dreams."

"Am I dead?"

"Not yet. We're just enjoying the last month, until you die."

"I thought you were my wife? Who are you?"

"I am a dying god, and you live in my world now. Sleep now, Hank. The world is a merciless place, by tomorrow you'll forget this conversation."

***

By week three, he had become barely abled. He had no arms and no legs. A body and a head. Well, they were mostly soft stumps. Amara would have to wheel him around a wheelchair as he cursed her to get on with it. She changed back to how she looked like with the tattoos and he truly was fearful of her. We decided there was no point in erasing his memories the more grotesque he became. It was a lost cause, I told her. She said he was a miserable shit and couldn't handle it any longer.

You see people don't like to lose their autonomy. You can't blame B for that, but when his memories came back he returned to the miserable misanthropic misogynistic, called her names, tried to strike her lost both arms. Wanted to blame her for his death. Kicked her, lost his other leg. He craved a world immortal where he could experience the pain in repeat. We think he enjoys any attention, regardless if it’s positive or negative. He knew his time was coming soon. 

Amara kept chiming in different ways to talk about pain as a way to heal the mind. Hoping for some sort of revelation, the way that humans think they can change rotten cores to healing riches. It's a wrong assumption, I told her. You see, people have to kill parts of themselves to free themselves from that pain or it just cycles. It repeats. And the repetition is part of what shows us new things each time. It gets worse before it gets better.

Do you even watch us, Amara? 

No, I drink tea and read books. Humans are disastrous, it's a pain to watch it. I like the escapism aspects much better. 

B was watching Amara talk to herself, and was saying something about how mad she was and insane as him. He thought he loved her. He wanted to fuck her, but Amara made him a eunuch.

She was indifferent to him. Barely responded to him most days as the bantering got worse. Together we realized, his power lived in the ability to be noticed. The more we ignored him, the more he screeched the dirty realities of men that the world already knew. He had nothing to offer that was different or prolific. People made him prolific because they felt he was the only one to write about the horrors of a tortured artist, but as Amara suggested to him, he wasn't special. The world could look everywhere and find one, could be a neighbor, an uncle, a brother. It wouldn't matter, his existence was futile. 

***

On the eve of March 8, 1994, B was sitting at the balcony coughing up blood, the black lung of his existence. Amara sat over the balcony watching him die, the way he died the next day in history. Her cold eyes looked down upon him and saw a crinkled, sad pathetic little man. Well, a cursed useless man. He would wiggle his stumps in distress, cursing her between each blood splatter from his lips. It was as though he was trying to die sooner. Amara wasn't amused. Her face was cross, a jagged blade. In every reaction, the dull expression lingered. She kept looking at the time, impatiently. Tuning out the noise.

Coldness from the old metal on the balcony pained her skin to touch. In reality, we were on the cusp of winter. His greedy hair waved out in madness and the stubble on his chin cupped his sunken in face with sags of delight. After a week in silence, she finally spoke to him. Her eyes gleaming with thirst. 

"Today is international women's day. The day you were supposed to die. Together, we'll celebrate it. If you objectify another lady, I'll take your tongue."

"I have no redeeming qualifications. Yet, you are my executioner. Who are you to judge me?"

"I am a dying god. You live on my planet. You die on my planet. I'll humiliate and shame you forever. And then I'll pluck one strand of your hair. The sting at the beds of your demise. It will disappear. Into a dream. My dreams. I'll cut up the pieces and consume you. I'll watch my dreams kill you. Words, literature, everything erased on your planet. You are nothing and will remain nothing. I feel no regret. This is the blood pact of my master. She chose you. Only few are so lucky to cease to exist."

B begins to weep, out of fear or out of gratitude, it isn't clear. There's something twisting in his eyes that is filled with anguish. This lack of control. This world a lie. False hope. False love. A repeat of his past. Masculine insecurity about the inability to perform greater than he is now and forever will be.

If you had the opportunity to sever from your past, wouldn’t you seek peace?

B continued to destroy himself. No matter the cost. Hank emerged out of anger, he felt we owed him more for having gone through the trials twice. A last fit of rage to fight against the grain. It was all too hopeless.

Amara scolded him clicking her teeth as if he were her horse. Stepping on the tops of the balcony she looked at him searching for newness.

“This is why I prefer people who believe they don't own women. You're just a sad boy without a crown.”

Amara jumped backwards into the air and her head moved forward pushing part of my face out of her skin, we looked like a two headed woman floating in the sky. The ghosts beneath us moved like a film playing on repeat choking on the same words verbatim. A dream, you can't move from. A dream that never continues to the next slide. Where it remains in stasis, in the ether swallowing all creativity of life from the air. 

My arms pulls out from her sides, we’re this monstrosity. His eyes unable to turn away. Colors flashed of purple and red hues as I materialized from her body. Amara grabbed my wrists to prevent me from falling. The colors of her iris changed into green, it beamed emeralds.

B tried to close his eyes as he opened his mouth his voice getting dryer, an ash at the back of the throat. Time slowed as she used her wrist to pull him into the air. His voice shifted letting out a cacophony of industrial noises from the bowels of his body. There was something in his eyes she wanted. It was his fear. Closing her fist she impaled him on the balcony in stargaze. Circling her hand, she pulled him apart as his brain stayed awake never straying from her purpose. Consume. Erase. Oyster slurps of his soul rolling around in her mouth. 

Tombstones covered with washed away notes disappeared with flashbacks of his horrific life played for us. Projected in our vision we tasted the pain from others who were not him. Suffering that stretched from a point leading to the beads of his creations. Mountain lions cry, women wept, bloodstained carpets. Smells of booze living on the floorboards, in the walls and through our skin. 

All the fuck me forever crown prince of some dirty realism so to speak. It made me feel ill, even when Amara ate what life he had and began the work of total annihilation. The only regret I feel is having gone through it. It's a task that has grime that never washes off. I saw the world I never wanted to capture. My skin ached subconsciously imagining the future, where I’d be scrubbing off his scent for weeks. In five years time, I’ll forget his name. By the next day, he will be gone from others lives.

Waiting for the fever dream to crumble around us. Rain became steam until the dream was clearer. Amara's skin burned into a amberish hue before dissipating to that golden glow. B's excess blood dripped off the corners of her skin as though his life became her sweat. Holding up the broken alcohol bottle glass in her hand she blew on it before it became liquefied. It was his soul ripped into pieces. Unforgiving she shot it elsewhere, dimensions beyond us. Her tongue wickedly licked her lips.

Have you ever read an entry in Women by Bukowski? 

Who? 

That's right he's gone now. Vanished. Taken by the Goddess of Dreams. 

A half person. A half life. A pie slice. 

Pieces of him missing for eternity. Searching for hope. Searching to be whole.

[ This took longer than I wanted because I’ve had the flu for two weeks. From the Stream of Consciousness POV Workshop, this prompt is brought to you by Nick Winney, we will return sometime in November. ]