Prison of the Gods: Your Mind is the Key

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The butterfly gradually flutters down under the gnarled tree limb like a falling angel. Blown by the breath of death’s hungry minions, it lands on a mossy blood stained boulder, its legs sticking to the spongy moss with the thick layers of red and black blood soaking it. The butterfly's wings flap fast and helpless, unmoving, stuck in the blood, a single purple stain amid the buzzing dreadnaught army of feasting flies and the sea of blackened red. Though its death will be slow, it will not die alone…

The wind of change blows from the mouths of whatever bitter life spawns it, a new despair for the world of men soon erased. The prayer that is muttered thousands times over, now before battle, the chant rises like entrails on flying vultures gory beaks, Death be Swift and Quick to Ashes, thousands of mouths pronounce it in the three languages of the different tribes before battle begins, as no longer hidden, the stench of death lurks everywhere, from inside the eye sockets of screaming skulls, to widowed maiden’s fallen swords.

In the valley below, a disorganized mass of men and beast lay. Bodies, in a balanced artwork of gore, overlap each other, littering the mountain city and the once quaint villages of the valley, now empty shells, cottages burnt and smoldering, with death, on the scale of annihilation. Every few feet a corpse lays, wounds bled out. They are all slaughtered soldiers now, even the young pups, no stranger to war, villagers who have learned the art of killing well from the teachings of death. Struck down, their bodies will stay posed in deadlock till the meat on their bones rots off. Broken pikes and sword hilts, splintered axe shafts stabbing through heads and necks, arrows finding the opening in the eye slits of helmets, and dented shields, ineffective, found broken in half, can be found on the bodies sprawling across the dirt road leading up to the mountain temple, the trampled bodies lay motionless, trickles of blood congealing in the lake of drenched red soil, in a shared grave, lives spent so cheaply destroying the other, enemies sharing and giving the other the gift of their irreplaceable lives painful ending, bent on destruction, but far from a lasting peace.

They burn their own when they have the luxury. The Mons enjoy human flesh and worse, dead comrades, friends weeks before sharing the cherished wine from each other’s flagon, now the vineyards ash, and the battlefields full of lurching undead with arms outstretched and moaning in a shuffle of lunges, yellow eyes bottomless, mouths, hollow sores, their skin is a sickening purple blood clot hue, stained in punctured misshapen dried bloodstains where they have their death wounds. Zombies. There is no crueler fate.

Agonized shouts and screams pierce the midnight air as the moans of the wind fight against the moans of the wounded and dying. Savage howls follow with the clinging of swords crossing, singing with steel deep into the sleepless night. All futile, they have but one last card to play, soon their world will crack open.

Once lush and green, Kidney Stone Mountain where the first tree grows, is now consumed by fire and molten rock sliding out and bubbling from pores. The earth bleeds from its wounds.

The wizard motions to the gathered party, My power is drained. Once inside I will not have the strength left to teleport us out. We will not make it back.

Cement of Dwarves, Magnolia of Manitrees, undo their straps and let their loads drop. Bane looks at his starving son, Moss, and he prepares a lighter pack for Moss to carry. Bane gives a curt nod at the dwindling pack of warriors, so few of them now, and clasps arms in bittersweet goodbyes.

No words spoken. A hug, a goodbye forever, his son, eight years old, picks up the pack and places the mail hood over his head. He reaches up and touches his father’s eyes, making the sign of the sun over them. He holds the pack close to his chest, in a tight embrace, his son understands, his father is already dead.

Bane wipes his son’s dirty face with his hands, untying it from his belt he hands his son a small leather bag, You have your mama’s eyes, he says kindly. Moss removes a jar from his pack, opens it, and places his mother’s eyeballs in it. The jar is full, with the eyes of his friends and family.

With an embrace, a wordless goodbye, he feels the spirits of his family rising up in his son. Moss manages a half teary-eyed smile.

I will not let them eat yours, says Moss with determination. I will find another way in! I will bronze your eyes into bells and hang them from our family tree!

Make a ring and hold hands, time is running out! the wizard commands and in their blood stained and blistered raw hands they each hold together tight, hanging on for dear life. Chants rise, reaching deep pitches. The stone of the mountain and the few scattered trees shake; slowly at first and then more vigorously until their images blur before disappearing all together leaving ripples in the fabric of life, aura shadows, ripping out holes and a loud 'CLAP' fills the air.

Inside Magnolia gasps as the others squint and flinch. Their earlier potions of cat-eye draughts, in this light, blinds their senses as they refocus, momentarily in wonder, at the dazzling light. It mesmerizes them. Light, a luxury for those who have lived under eternal nightfall for the past decade, with the leech on their sun. Here, reflected endlessly, light emits from the bark of a tree, and is mirrored by the ice, intensifying it, its limbs stretch out in all directions.

The walls look and smell like scrambled eggs. In the middle of the cavern, the tree of light grows.

Its sways even though there is no wind and from its bark’s fiery glowing depths, rise embroidered faces charging, floating up to the surface in silent screams before submerging.

Where fire and ice meet the first tree grows, bearing the seed of the Creator’s Soul, whispers niX, but it’s tainted!

The tree's roots soak in the fire of lava, the roots reach out for them as if in desperate cry for help, and its branches spread outwards into the icy prism of the ceiling, but continue curling, as if in pain.

They ready themselves, cautiously, niX walking, rubs his tired wrinkled hands over his wooden staff, he shakes his head These tools of our creators are not meant for our hands, yet we must correct what was wronged.

The Mosquito Man, they know all too well, as ancient as he is evil, a creator’s riddle. Against all life, fueled by a rage and hunger insatiable, he holds them all in a chokehold, enslaving their planet to oblivion.

Crack of ice and a curse of interruption, as the Mosquito Man, awakes annoyed from his flesh cocoon dangling from the tree. A god some call him, the maggot lord, as half of him is a giant maggot, but with legs stabbing out his torso, and wings as if in half-transformation of a fly, and the bulky limbs and large pumpkin head of a man complete him.

The four intruders stand their ground, sharing a calm of ones who know death is near and are comforted by it. They will gamble this hopeless battle, where fighting does not ensure victory. They know as he toys with them that death by his hands is just a beginning for the tortured souls in his collection. Around the lake the Mons, demonic beings, gather, jeering with cat calls and banging of swords on shields and the thumping of weapons on the floor.

He fights them alone, for passing amusement, for the sport.

I’m the Mosquito Man whispering in your ear, his voice shatters into their minds, with amused indifference, echoing inside their heads planting seeds it grows roots all around, bursting their will, singing the songs you know you love to hear.

He stops singing, his voice such a beautiful sound, that even against their will they wish he will continue and repeat it, as playfully he dives at them. With his voice still vibrating in their ears, his clawed talons grab at the wizard, snatching him up like a rag doll.

The Mosquito man flings niX’s body down against the cavern floor.

niX choosing to attack rather than break his fall, commands his energy tentacles, and a light casts off his fingers, before he collides propelled and topples over the rocky boulders on the cavern floor, remaining very still.

The spell does its job; the Mosquito Man’s wings are now on fire with blue flames melting his skin. The Mosquito Man cries out in worm tongue as the blue flames die and his wings, glow, healing back to life. His laughter echoes as the Mons cheer and give hooting cow calls.

Magnolia’s ready arrow strikes as Cement and Bane charge with axe and sword. The arrows puncture the Mosquito Man in his face, yellow blood gushes out like slow sap, before solidifying.

Suddenly they hear voices in the air all around them, they turn quickly, but there is no one there.

Damn niX? Damn! We’re what? Screwed! Impossible I say! I have a bad feeling about this! rumbles Cement as he blinks out then back again behind the Mosquito Man, and lifting up his axe he severs through one of the giant stilt legs. He curses as the wound bubbles, and grows out the beginning of another appendage, hesitant at first then pushing a large pincer from out a shattered watery egg yolk, the Mosquito Man’s limb regenerates back in place.

Their weapons and arrows are made from the special forged limbs of an ancient sacred tree drinking from the lava similar to the ancestral first tree. They hoped the lineage of the ancient tree would pass down some of the heritage of the one tree’s magical potency, that it would be enough to kill the Mosquito Man.

It appears the elders were wrong, shouts Magnolia, What now?

Cement and Bane advance hacking and slashing their way, towards the torso of the beast pushing him towards the tree, his prison.

How the spider catches the fly, now it’s my turn to suck you dry. The Mosquito Man laughs. His torso lifts up and he stands on his eight legs, rearing up with deadly clawed fingers. He lowers his staff and parries their attack with his claws while raising his stinger to strike.

You do not understand, my children, his voice blossoms flooding their heads with pleasure, I am the father of all life, so I forgive, you can no more kill me then a knife can cut its own blade, I will always live.

Bane charges and leaps on his head plunging his sword deep in the Mosquito Man’s mouth, severing the tongue. Thrashing, the Mosquito Man shakes Bane off, and his tongue splits into three separate black ones. Bane struggles to get up but too late, the Mosquito Man impales Bane with his large stinger. Bane gasps out, screaming and vomits out blood as the stinger, stabbing, shoots a yellow poison into him. Bane’s body fills up with venom till his abdomen and chest expand out like a giant ripe peach, ready to burst, veins of blue poison coursing all over the top of his skin.

The others pause shocked for a moment then as if accepting this fate fight on.

The moaning of voices echoing in the cavern turns into a chant and vibrates through the walls. There is still no visible source from where it comes from. The Mons along the sidelines, between cheers, look around also, as if also startled by the chanting sounds all around them.

Magnolia shoots more arrows, plunging into his face and he, thrashing, digs at his eyes as the arrows stick deep in them, he pulls his eyeballs out he throws them at Magnolia. A new sack of eyeballs grow in their place. Magnolia screams, as they stick in her, covering her legs and chest, they lodge their eye roots deep inside her flesh and open wide, the eyeballs roll around in every angle, staring, from their new found socket holes, out with pure hatred.

I see with my eyeballs you have a baby inside you, my dear. Laughs the Mosquito Man, he will make a good socket to root my eye stems in to watch the end of man’s crumbling tier! She cries as she feels the eyeballs digging inside her, and then shrieks in horror as they begin to crawl inside her, pulling at them in a frenzy, ripping them off of her as they try to enter her womb. They pop and multiply, pinning her down, they cover her body until she cannot move and is forced to lay there, an eye sack for the Mosquito Man to gaze out of as she watches helplessly the destruction of her friends, in the twelfth dimension from hundreds of different vantage points.

The air, thick, interwoven in chanting voices, so heavy with sound it threatens to crush them.

Suddenly there is a loud, WHOOSH!

A giant hole opens from between the roots of the tree. A hole of darkness in the light shows a portal into the night. They are pulled toward it, the portal freshly open sucks at them drawing them in, their voices are lost in the vacuum. The source of the voices grows, the Mons around the lake of brimstone run away, escaping out the chamber as the vacuum, force of a savage hurricane, pulls at them.

Through the hole, an image shines, a dark portal. A glowing shadow of a shrouded tower can be seen across the threshold.

Hear the call of sin, my children, and know this, I will always win. the Mosquito Man cackles in amusement lumbering towards the first tree. With a giant scream he stabs the tree with his staff, red and blue magicka pour out as the light from the tree gets sucked in the staff. The tree grows dim and dimmer then completely dark as the Mosquito Man is drawn towards the vacuum of the portal.

Cement sees his comrades dying, being pulled in, he has a chance, as he also is caught in the stream of suction. The Mosquito Man is distracted, Cement blinks out, then blinks back, appearing on the Mosqutito Man’s back, he rips the staff out of the Mosquito Man’s hand, and stabs it into the Mosquito Man’s maggoty back.

Screaming, thrashing, the Mosquito Man quivers, blue blood squirts out and flows in gushes from the wound, the blood turns black as the Light begins to enter the Mosquito Man. Cement digs pushing the staff in further, he feels the Mosquito Man thrashing body under him sag. He is so close!

The Mosquito Man shakes his head, reaching behind but can’t pull out the staff. Cement screams as he is grabbed and crushed in the beasts fist, Ah, my little man, you did it... here you deserve, a... here, let the kiss of your god turn you into a prince, my little pathetic tadpole! his venomous black tongue enters Cements mouth and as he screams lowers licking his eternal organs. You can be my egg! What greater fate I ask, my love? The Mosquito man vomits thousands of maggots on Cement. Wiggling in agony, every inch of the dwarf is bleeding and covered with maggots squirming and digging into his flesh, they enter his mouth and anal glands, they worm into his skin, Cement’s scream never ends.

WAMP! the portal opens completely sucking them into its vortex. The members of the party, dying, are unable to escape and fly from across the room into the portal’s vacuum. They hear one word from the Mosquito man, he whispers one word, barely audible above the noise of the chanting, the word they hear but do not understand, Transmitting he says his head rocking in laughter as he lets go of the floor and leaps into the portal.

niX, Magnolia, Bane and Cement, follow, sucked into the portal, leaving the aftermath image of the tree’s light burning into their retinas.

One of the tree limbs reaches out and touches Magnolia, wiggling in pain as she is propelled into the portal, ‘Why this tree is made of metal and bone’ is the last thing Magnolia thinks before a surge of power jolts through her body and she too falls into darkness.

CHAPTER 2 MIND STONE

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The moon shines like a full breast exposed to the night, its nipple winking, twinkling far above the tide, rising to drown the weak, forever sealing their souls in cocoons, in the place where light merges with shadow and darkness is in the hearts of all.

Small ripples of water lightly kiss against the glass cheeks of bottles, hollow and rising half afloat among puddles of bloated paper and trash; hypodermic needles connect to wire synapses and circuitry bob aimlessly amid disposable diapers, bloated match books with illuminated covers of bouncing breasts and turquoise lips partially concealed by spongy transparent bodies of fur and flesh lining the water’s surface, overturned phone booths, like floating coffins, barnacled to structures by mounds of algae layered over coats of caked on paint covering the walls with words and slogans suggesting to ‘Smoke Napalm’ and No Allowed. It is the seaweed of a city long dead.

In the space of every ten meters skeletons jingle together in harmony with the wind. Hanging on long, metal utility poles; the bleach white bones rap against one another in a dance of the dead. Lines of wire and circuitry, ribbons and plugs hang loose from empty eye sockets and connect to dead power boxes on their torsos to make the network. Nothing but the crows give them second thought, as visible to all onlookers, they add to the stench of the city air. The city generators once fried; now they rest ignored by the ignorant. Long dead, the bones reminisce of the better days, when free power was just a condemned prisoner away, and state of the art technology was breaking through everyday.

Ashton is below sea level, an inverted mountain fifty miles inland. A city laid to waste by the corporate war and the wraith of nature. It is still habitable, but only barely.

The ocean’s fingers slowly climbing overtook the city sewage system, till bladders full; they defecated up through the grates, flooding the street with waste. The water level now rests comfortably six inches above concrete.

A figure detaches itself from the surrounding darkness. Vague in appearance, shrouded in shadows, his features are lost to the night and indistinguishable. A bleak form, he walks beneath bristling building bridges, and smoldering pipes, like circuitry, which web along the city’s surface.

Blight pulls his trench coat tighter around him, automatically digging his nose beneath his collar. The stench of his own sweat is far more preferable then that of the city, and with the price of water, that is saying something.

Around him silent erections of concrete and steel make love to the night, their towering tops submerged in the womb of darkness. High overhead, bridges and archways span the gaps between the skyscrapers, the method of travel for the rich and corporate executives, of which Blight falls into neither class. While the rest of the city wades through their own shit, they walk above the clouds.

Blight can feel anti-loitering turret guns following him step for step as he walks down Whale Song Street whistling a sour tune. The melody takes a few notes before he remembers the words.

‘Hi low’ the common greeting, a bad joke taken from the verse of the song ‘Die low’. The song churns over in the back of his memories, ‘How’m I gonna die? low Why can’t I see the sky? low...’

He mechanically walks down the middle of the street, where the water is deepest, but he is safe from any garbage spewing out of the chutes and pipes, which web down the sides of the buildings. The executives’ solution to the sewage problem.

To his right, a small group of people huddle close together on the street corner. Next to them on the building wall, the word Produce is spray painted with an arrow pointing up towards an over-hanging green pipe that juts off the side of the building. All of the produce garbage chutes are marked, and there is always a crowd standing beneath them, ready to receive.

Their faces, straining upwards, are stained in the residue of food; vegetables blended into juicy strands, spoilt yellow lumps of dairy products, the colorless jelly formaldehyde used to keep the meat fresh, and dried blood and gore, all of which lump their hair together, and stain their clothes in a collective blandish brown.

All are waiting for a meaty chunk of bone, or a slab of meat to slip through the blades of the disposal into their outstretched hands. At first the sight of them, searching on their hands and knees in the water for a bone, fighting over a raw chunk of flesh, had disgusted Blight, but since then he has been tempted more than once to join their ranks. Another follower of the garbage disposal god praying for offerings.

An old man sits on a dumpster, wearing baggy pants and a torn jacket. In his lap he holds a guitar, with but one string, he thumbs it as he sings.

"Gonna go o o back to Mindville,

where the ro o oses grow.

can’t take this reality shit,

no, no."

He pauses for a moment then replays the same verse, his bare feet rapping against the dumpster for rhythm.

Blight leaves the small crowd and continues up the street, the old man’s words follow haunting him a short ways before dying.

For the most part, the streets are gratifyingly empty and quiet. The peaceful solitude only vaguely disturbed by an occasional shadow moving behind a boarded window, or a muffled shout echoing off a distant concrete wall.

He cuts through a parking lot on his side, weaving through the antique corpses of automobiles water logged and rusting in their watery graves. An occasional face peers out from the cars’ windows as he passes. Shadowed faces, they sink, full of mistrust and fear, weary and wary of their own vulnerability. They stare at him for a second before they fall back into their bundle of rags and blankets, which make up their beds. Nothing to fear, it’s one of our kind, another wet, hung out to dry, bum being eaten away by the streets. Many of the faces he passes don’t peer up and probably never will.

Blight stops in front of a padded door. Overhead a neon sign sputters on and off. It reads ‘The Dead Penguin.’ A smaller sign underneath it, appearing to be held in place only by the soot and gummy siding that barnacles the filth, reads in scribbled words. ‘Bones for sale’ with a list of names underneath it. They are all fake aliases, just an empty account to bone up into, a name is not worth much except as a temporary user identity, and they are all users here.

Blight scans down the list; resting on one familiar account name scratched out, Flamingo Eddy. His eyes flicker momentarily as a light comes lit in their depths and that old familiar smile returns to his lips. It is good to be home.

CHAPTER 3 BAR BENDER

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Inside the bar swells with people and the stagnant smell of sweat and waste staggers through the midnight air. Most are jacked into the network, masked figures in their webbing, their bodies convulsing as they experience untold pleasures. In shadowy corners deals are being struck at soundproof tables, an exchange of pirated goods.

Thousands of bars like this stretch across the countryside, still no matter what city he travels, the smell of greasy funk, the smell of home, the familiarity and sleaze of his own welcomes him. Home sweet Home! Here he can submerge into the grime underside of the fish’s belly, the living being of the net, Mindville. He spent his youth in places like this running pirated hardware or hacking corporate holdings.

A girl approaches Blight, stopping at one of the stations to jack into.

Hey Baby. She says, lips pouting.

Blight turns and sees her standing behind the pole, her thin hands clasping around it, as if for support, and one of her cheeks pressing against its side.

Her flaming red hair, bonded with grit and grime, bunches together in thick strands, long and flowing headless snakes, which sliver down her back. Her lips are cracked and parted, as if in a silent prayer, and sunken trenches highlight her bright green eyes.

She has a hunted look about her, but also something else, a hungriness, a savageness, a drawing animal magnetism, which swallows him whole. A truthful yearning which undoes all the years of frivolities that society has strove to maintain, unmasking all the splendor before the naked eye; the school teachers preaching of immoral sin and wrongful doings, all the while her eyes unconsciously drifting downwards, to those naughty, private places; a coroner, dissecting a healthy, female body, hands savagely fondling her liver and heart, all the while waiting for closing time, when with the smell of raging formaldehyde burning his nostrils, and a bottle of baby lotion; all the years which humanity has fought to separate itself from the animal kingdom, beneath lavish clothes and locked doors, all undone in an on gazers stare at this fragile, frail girl.

Want to connect? She says softly and holds up a wire with plugs on either end, she brings it up between her lips and runs her tongue over it, exposing the ridges of wire synapses sewn.

Her eyes stare at him with an unemotional, detached look, a vacant, empty stare, while she wraps her legs around the pole and presses her body tightly into it, wedging it between her breasts, so that it pushes them out on either side like a car jack.

Some other time princess, I’m late. Blight says edging past her.

She swings around the pole, and with the friction of flesh, plastic, and metal screeching, stops in front of him, her long bunched up braids of red hair spraying wildly before falling back into place. She stands on her tippy toes and brushes her lips against his cheek while she slides an address chip into his pocket. Access me if you get lonely, she says, I'm always on.