Cacophony

Jeremy leaned against the rough brick wall of the clothes shop at the corner of Davey Place and Castle Street. He couldn’t remember if the shop was still a Monsoon and he didn’t check; another unresolved thought in his head was all the better.

He nodded to the big issue seller, closed his eyes and listened.

He could hear two off-key flautists busking down the street; the shuffling conversations of passersby; the thump of bass from the Panasonic shop; the Royal Arcade’s Christmas music; some Asian singer warbling from the Thai takeaway.

He couldn’t hear the voices.

What blissful cacophony.

Acolyte

I denounce my body.

Is the first commandment. You are but fertile ground for the red plague: let it inside you, let it become you.

I denounce my bonds.

Is the second. Forget your past, forget your family and friends. Those things have no meaning.

I embrace my thirst.

Is the third. It will be all you know.


She licks the warm, sticky gore from her hands, trembling as it slides down her throat.

She looks at the flesh that lies around her, broken, torn and hollow. It had names yesterday. She had family yesterday.

Today she has the plague.



(originally written for Lily Childs' Friday Prediction)

Fever

Tied down with burning sheets.

Her cool hands are excruciating relief; soft flutters of calm; gentle bulwarks against the storm I can feel swelling once more, drenching the linen and washing me away. My wife shush-shushes me as I am tossed between lucidity and patterned blindness. In the distance I hear someone crying for their wife, my wife. My wife is long dead. I am seeing everything and too much and none of it makes sense. My limbs writhe of their own accord, seeking some form, some sigil that is free from these panic-laden eddies.

Drowning in my own mind.

Glory

Leaves swirl around her. She becomes the centre of the eddying wind, the sudden focus of the world.

No longer just a passing stranger, she is transformed:

A hidden princess – no, too old, too lined: a queen – discovering the truth and power of her ancient, Elven lineage. A web of invisible arcana reaches out from her, pushing at reality.

She is transformed:

Her dabblings in arch-diablerie catch up with her and the demons she thought contained dance about her, stirring up the leaves, cackling, unseen by everyone else.

The wind shifts again, she walks on, once more just another passerby.