26 Red Twilight Demon of the Flowers chapter 26

Chapter 26 Fractured Memories part 5

The tape plays, it looks like some time of a student/ avant-garde, expressionistic piece. The film is grainy, and the images that flash by the screen seem softly out of focus and in gratinate grayscale. The first image on the screen is a musty looking tome on a turntable, it starts to spin, slowly at first but then to excessive speed. A white flash dissolves, then the image turns to what looks to be the antique mirror in the hallway, somehow the cameraman stays out of frame. Next picture is a boat, a barque perhaps, the image jumps nauseatingly from the side of the ship to the sails then back to the water, next to the helm in a sequence of quick cuts. Then on the screen flashes a murder of birds, then a snake of some sort, then back to the book on the turntable.

My eyes catch the faintest glances of words flickering on the spine of the screen.

"I"

"am"

"The"

"lord"

"there is no"

"escaping"

"I am"

"Everywhere"

"love"

"me"

"I am"

"truth"

"grace"

"peace"

"I"

"am"

"Cravixs"

"worship me"

The next image on the screen is a candle lighting, it is a reversed shot, so the light never comes into view. Instead, the flame burst to life. Trees, the sun, more words flash by:

"Have"

"you"

"Seen"

"IT?"

I look to Samur to see what she thinks, she has leaned forward on all fours sticking her tail up as she is fiddling with the TV settings trying to adjust the focus. I call to her "Samur!"

She looks over her shoulder at me wagging her tail "what?"

"what was that?" I ask

"don't know, couldn't see it."

"rewind it, I want to see it again."

Samur rewinds the tape, she plays it again, we find nothing but white noise on a second viewing Samur looks at me with a concerned gaze "I think I broke it. What was it?" Unable to find a simple way to sum it all up I shake my head and lower my ears in jittering melancholy. With a smile and a wave, Samur calls to me "we can get back to this, I am still hungry."

When we go back to ground level, my ears are assaulted by strange sounds, copper clanging, hissing, chattering. I watch Samur seeing if she reacts to the strange noises, but if she can hear them, she is showing no outward signs. When we reach the dining room, the otherworldly echoes stop all at once.

Samur yells of Griswold, he appears in the room with some sort of alien lifeform pulled across his face. I jump out of my chair backing away manically. I point and scream to draw attention to the flesh-toned scorpion-like monster wrapped around Griswold's eyes, its tail clearly growing out of his back.

Griswold tucks his hand behind his back paying me no heed, Samur fails to react as well as the tow of them start talking about what is on the menu for the day. I gain my faculties and grab the chair I had leaped form with the intention of smiting the intrusive alien with the utmost of zeal. Griswold places one hand on the back of my chair holding to the ground with surprisingly little effort.

Griswold asks me what I would like for my supper. I can't seem to pull my eyes away from the grotesque cancerous mass attached to his face. Samur recommends something, but my thoughts are too far distracted to tell what she had ordered. Griswold turns and vanishes into the kitchen area.

I shoot Samur a shocked glance, there is just no way she hadn't seen what I had seen. I try to ask about it, but she insists that she simply could not see what I sow. I force myself to calm. Griswold emerges from the kitchen with our food. Two bolls of boiled onion, steamed roots, and squid with ink sauce. This time Griswold is devoid of face eating parasites.

After eating Samur takes me to the library to search for anything we can on the mark we had seen earlier. Taking notice that my privet journal is running short on pages at this point I ask for another book. I come to find there is no shortage of journals to be had in the library.

Samur hovers over the spines of books for a time before turning to face me "where do we start looking?"

"Marks, churches, river gods, Cravixs, I don't know."

Samur starts picking up books "that is much ground to start with." Samur is happy to sit in the library with me diligently pureeing over books looking for any trail that could help me understand the things I am seeing. I can't help but wonder, why is she not as frightened by the mark as I am?

It is well past sundown before Samur seems to find something of interest. Like an energetic child, she leaps to her feet and pushes the books at me, she nearly lays on my back as she guilds my line of sight "the Icon of Chaos. 'Chaos is a primal goddess, the youngest of the Gardeners of Eden. she is a mother god, with the power alter life.' It seems to say."

"Alter, what does it mean alter?"

"that part is not clear."

"what about the other name Cravixs?"

Samur sits on my lap wiggling till she is comfy then leans forward to flip through the book for a few more pages looking for the name. "Cravixs is the anti-god, one of thousands of names given to the Void."

"Anti-god? Some sort of a demon?" I find myself asking.

"looks more like a negative god, a god that has the power to wish out of existing things that other gods wish into existence, a neutralizing power I guess."

"why would such a thing exist?"

"why wouldn't it? If the universe IS by necessity, and the universe sees fit to create a lifeform that had all conceivable power then like an antibody the universe may have created by necessity something that has the power to take away all conceivable powers."

"then why have gods in the first place if you are going to create a god that lives to kill other gods."

"maybe the gods were part of some sort of first-draft, an attempt to create a universe wherein there is space of all things, a universe where nothing isn't." Samur seems to have thought about this one before, as she already read this book and is merely remembering it as we talk?

Samur turns around sitting on my lap facing me, her lags find my hips and her arms my neck, she squirms about making me rub up against her body. "is there anything else you would like me to look for so long as we are here?"

I express that we have read enough for one night. I take the book that Samur had found with the description of Chaos and Cravixs in it. I tuck the book under my arm and start to make my way back to my room with it. Samur fallows, she takes one of my arms and holds it to her side in a pseudo hug.

My hand finds her crotch, I feel around slightly playing about I feel something unexpected. When I rub past the thick firm mass between her thighs her head lifts in a pant, and I look down confused. I just came to terms with the idea that Samur is a girl but what I touched doesn't feel like anything I have seen on a girl before.

I fumble about trying to ask what I just did to her and my ignorance seems to affined the hyena, with an annoyed growl she shoves me into my bedroom then takes off in a huff. Are dogs so far removed from cats that I they have such different hardware to work with? I just hop at this point my stupidity hasn't done irreparable damage.

I lay down to read, I keep my notebook alongside me, I have decided to give this notebook a name. I am calling my new journal "The Mark" and I engraved the cover with the 'Icon of Chaos' in obsession I record my every thought as I read from the pages of this moldy book.

Just as my eyes get too heavy to read my ears spring to life, a crackling inside the walls triggers my survival instinct, white light is bleeding past walls. I stand up and walk to the crack in the wall of my room. I look into the TV room to find the television has been moved into center frame form my hole in the wall. Yellow paint masks the screen, there is the Mark burned into the static on the screen. The screen flics back and forth between white noise and images of snakes and worms swarming.

It haunts me, it hunts me. The Mark. What does it want? What is it drawing me into? It wants me. It needs me. It whispers in my ear in a tongue I cannot speak.

I have seen it!

I have SEEN IT!

"I have seen the Mark."

Saying those words out load seems to have momentarily appeased whatever spirt hides in the dark. The TV turns itself off. My room goes dark. The night falls into silences. "I have seen the Mark," I whisper again.