GuNNhead

A morning mist rests upon the lake. Loons call out into the early morning air. A figure breaks through the mist, and shambles onto the shore. Enchanted by an ancient magic, something in the world has reawakened its water-logged corpse into reanimation. What goes through its soggy mind? It cannot be known, even if it does have thought. A summer day’s walk along an abandoned path dries out its soggy innards. A gurgling and spurting turn into a haunting moan as the air flows through the inlets, valves, and flaps of decomposing flesh, acting as a sort of gruesome bellow.

The autonomous cadaver continues down the path, until it meets a paved road. A slow turn and a shuffling of feet realign its mysterious yet deliberate course. Cars zoom by, thinking nothing of this figure. Minds distorted between reality and fiction, what is real has been turned to fiction, and subsequently ignored in reality.

It continues to walk down this long stretch of road. A mission from elsewhere. Its feet drag along the sand and dirt by the roadside. No one stops. He walks on into the night, into the a new day, and once more into the night. A wolf begins to gnaw on this jerked bit of animated meat, but soon gives up, it is not a flavor worth savoring.

One watching this death march would perhaps boldly and openly wonder why is it doing what it is doing; what is it doing? The simple answer is that it is unknowable. As for what, that answer does not arrive to us, and not even for this drone. It will arrive, to be sure. It has an unflappable tenacity to achieve, like all of its kind. It must do what it must do, whatever that may be. It is both frightening and heart-warming, the way in which it unlives.

It crosses paths with another. This is the only recognition they receive, for their masters exist within them, externally, commanding things they do not understand, it simply gets done by them with no realizations. However, for this moment, there is a recognition between two who live under death. Socket contact, for the most part, but eye contact, in essence. A nod forcing out mutual moans. In large groups, these moans would be overpowering, a cacophony. Mindless in the company of others, doing what must be done.

Eventually, its task is complete. It is sent to rest. At the bottom of a lake, it is safe below the water, deep underdeath.

The clock strikes twelve. I’m in the study, reading. The arbitrary alteration of the clock’s hands go unnoticed by myself. I turn the page. Books line the walls of my mahogany and maroon room. Older books tend to emit a musty odor, but in my study, that disappears, replaced by the rum and maple scent of my pipe tobacco. I don’t know how long I’ve been reading, it’s unimportant, really. The amber lamp on the small table to my right fills the room with a bright, relaxing light. I take a sip from my teacup and set it back down on the saucer. I turn another page.

Slime crawled up the walls as I began to read to words aloud. Screams came out of the air, bombarding me though I was alone for miles in my country estate. Wind encircled me, and yet I continued to speak the words. In my mind I cursed it all, everything that this world is. I’ll be glad when the new world I am summoning will overtake it all. What never was shall always be. The floorboards in front of me begin to lift up and break apart. Billowing smoke shoots out of the hole. The ceiling sets aflame and the walls melt away.

Then, It arises from the depths.

The It that death dare not speak its name. The creature oozes insanity, I lose my mind a thousand times over simply by witnessing it claw up from the portal. Then, inciting countless horrors from its abysmal realm to flood my mind, tearing it apart to make their homes, It speaks without sound.

“It is I, The Mid.” Each word echos and reverberates through my brain, every aspect of my reality shatters. I cannot believe the world that I have lived for over 40 years is but an illusion to stop one from unleashing these arcane terrors. I have transcended, learned, I can no longer live in the world of man. It speaks again to me.

“It is lunch time.”

I’m pulled down into its realm, where I am to suffer for eternity within a life without death. Neigns feast upon my dreams and live in my nightmares. Unable to move, unable to see. They taunt, and feast upon me from the inside. There is nothing I can do, It is beyond all.

I turn the page.

An insane asylum. A place filled with visions that no sane person can conceive of. Reality exists solely unto the individual. Entire stories and universes exist within minds that only they can comprehend. An imagination gone out of control, no one can say what is reality, what is true, truth comes from within. Those here lost themselves to the inner workings instead of the outer. The truth, for some, is that their innermost mind is a place most odious.

I close the book, and place It back on the shelf.