4/18/11

BLOOD OF THE SPRINGTIDE (PART VII)


Steadily, feeling their way along, they lowered themselves from the tunnel into the oddly warmer water of the pool. They descended and their feet touched the ground, the water coming up to Rafael’s shoulders and to David’s chest.

“It’s warmer, why?” asked David.

Rafael didn’t answer the question because he could not, but noticed faint light coming down through another tunnel ahead.

“Look! Light!” He grabbed David by the shoulders and positioned him so that his friend was looking ahead. David smiled and felt hopeful for a moment, but that began to fade as the water became even warmer and a soft bluish green glow began to emanate within the liquid all around them. The chime ended abruptly, and a dry aching silence pushed into the room. A foul presence, heavy and thick, entered with it, quaking and pounding, thudding and cracking the concrete walls causing wispy gray clouds of dust to float into the air. The cyan glow within the water brightened as seconds passed, and the boys headed for the tunnel with a combination of swimming and flailing. By the time they had reached the tunnel’s lip, the glow was approaching a blinding magnitude and had become a rich teal. It lit up the entire room, and the walls and ceiling appeared as if covered in seaweed and phosphorescent slime.

The water had become hot, causing the boys to sweat, and steam rose into the air. In the center of the pool it began to bubble and then boil. They felt it, dark and ubiquitous, like claws scratching at their guts, but they could not move, to escape the pool. It began to rise through the boiling center and they were physically drawn to it like electrons to the nucleus of an atom. Mentally they knew they must leave, their conscious minds screaming within their skulls for them to flee, to pull themselves into the tunnel and escape. Physically they were trapped, their bodies bound to the force rising from the water, pulling at them. And they turned to face its rising form, tears streaming from their eyes.

The familiar rainbow feathered plumage matted together with straw and mud and sewn into a tan cloth, arose slowly from the churning center drawing the surrounding water into it. The tinted ocular lens now reflecting the color of deep teal, its right eye half opened behind the long knotted hair that did not appear to be wet. The lower half of its malformed face now clearly visible, scarred with healed incisions and scabs, its mouth agape, every tooth a fang. The black robes billowing about its monstrous frame as if caught in some phantom wind, crisp and dry, the inscriptions lightly aglow in a pitch-dark complexion unknown. Eventually it towered above them and stretched out its arms to either side. It seemingly floated there, the bottom of its robes caressing the churning water below. Its arms then fell to its sides and the gloved hands reached underneath the robes, when they were revealed again each held a glinting machete. It raised them high to its sides and formed a dominating pose. The churning water increased in intensity, boiling viciously. The temperature of the water rose almost to the point of burning the boys’ skin.

The teal light magnified, causing the boys to squint, and it appeared to climb up from the water and saturate the thing’s black robes. Eventually the robes were no longer black, except for the scriptures and delineations which remained that unknown sable, like the deepest, darkest hole in the ether. Once the teal had penetrated every fiber, an assortment of pigments pulsated in a myriad of shapes and lines throughout the area of the fabric, moving and flashing brilliantly. The boys’ eyes grew wide and then dilated as an euphoria consumed them; a thick dull joy that numbed them to their predicament. They had become mesmerized by the colored light display. The water boiled all around them now, so hot it burned their skin and yet they could not feel the pain. Their eyes were wide and their minds far away, riding comets through aqua marine landscapes of colored coral, fauna and flora. The miscreation looked down upon them; a rainbow beam of light surged forth from its ocular lens and bathed them in humid warmth, like the inside of a moist flesh walled oven. With ease it brought the machetes down upon them and cleaved the heads from their necks as if they were dolls, which tilted to the side, pulled on the skin and clinging viens, and then rolled off splashing into the frothing water. The headless bodies convulsed violently but remained upright, blood spouting from the open necks and spilling into the water where it was instantly drawn to the robes. As copious amounts of blood spurted forth, from the subclavian and jugular veins, and ran into the water, the robes absorbed every bit until they were exclusively sanguinary and the water clear as mountain dew.

Eventually it seemed as if every bit of blood had been drained from the bodies, now pale, the boiling water having caused the skin to peel and blister. The symbols unknown and unrecognizable throbbed and brightened and filled with white and red cell and platelet, until the robes were black once again. The sanguine symbols streaked through limitless ether, moving beyond stone, water or earth, showing brightly to unseen eyes. Where planets were like molecules, rotating existences in pulsing fluid clear and thick, receiving the fresh essence burning with power, new and unfettered. To saturate and enhance, formulating within a living spectrum unheard and unseen. That deep at its core is needing, yearning, the fluid thinning. It taketh for plentiful nutrition, to heal, weave and grow. It taketh intrepidly without mercy, without concern for consequence.

The transfusion complete, the coil fabric enriched, the miscreant lowered into the ferment until no sight of it was present above the pool’s surface. The water calmed and became cool and still, the bodies, less of skin and flesh and showing bone and organ in place and point, slipped into it. The light bulbs lit again and the water resumed its slow, steady current down the concrete aqueduct on its way to the reservoir.


THE END


No comments: