Time

Pieces and bits collected from the expedition journal.

Muriel Francis Gerrick writes:

I miss you. Mother.
I wish Father would see that. He drags me around to meet all these people. Smile, dress sharp, smile. Dr. Robert Gerrick, adventurer extraordinaire. Needs money to finance his forays into the unknown. Look at his happy kid. Look at how he has raised her single-handedly. Now, give him the money so he can drag her to some cold and barren place and engage in his scientific pursuits.

Dr. Gerrick writes:

The mountain looms upon us. We reached the base yesterday. Under the watchful eyes of a sickle moon. Osmond, dashing fellow and a geologist of some renown joins us. Peters, a local interpreter  rounds the team. Tonight we rest.

The weather seems to be taking a turn for the worse. I sneaked a page out of Father’s notes. He talks less to me, day by day. I can make out nothing from it. There is a word underlined on it. I can’t read it. Some kind of ancient scrawl.

It is stifling. The dark presses on me. My legs hurt from the running. I can’t see where I am running to. Suddenly the land under my feet gives way, I fall. Yet, it does not feel like I am falling. Then it happens. The darkness pervades me. It forces itself inside me. It covers my body and its grubby fingers grope for my face. But, then I wake up.

Father was standing over me. He hauled me roughly to my feet. I dared not question him; such was the fury in his eyes. Something dreadful had happened.

As we walk on, I realize that Peters is not with us. Personally, I couldn’t care less. 

I tried reading the page again. It bored me and the weather wanted me to sleep. The letters seemed odd. It was almost like they wanted me to speak them out loud. That is all I remember. When I woke up, I was being carried on a gurney by the two slaves. I pretend to be asleep. I hear snatches of talk between Osmond and Father. I try listening more. One of the slaves realizes I am awake and signals to Father. He glances at me and the discussion dies.

Everything looks gray here. I never really found out what happened to Peters. I see the word in my dream again. It seems real. I try to touch it but It moves out of my reach. 

This time I do not fall.

The cave is huge. We do not need to walk far. Even by the light of the slowly fading day, the thing can be seen. It stands upright. It is a mere stone. I go for a closer look, hoping to find something of significance. Osmond confirms what has broken my heart.

Osmond wants to run some tests on it. I leave him at it. I shouldn’t have lost that page. It was torn off from a tribe’s compendium. That is all I know. With Peters gone, there is no way I can get these locals to talk.

This rough data is gathered from one of the local slaves

Gerrick woke up in the middle of the night. Osmond was missing. Muriel ran in after Father. Osmond was lying on the ground, shrieking like a madman. Father touched him and was taken aback at how cold he felt. Muriel looked at the purple rock. There was something alive about it. Muriel was transfixed. Osmond was beyond help. He sat up now, muttering again and again. It was necessary to get Muriel away from there and as far away as possible. Father grabbed her and ran. He looked behind but there was nothing. Osmond made no attempt to get up.
Sorry bastard. The elements would kill him. But not soon enough.

I ran and stumbled in the dark. Something cut me, I could feel warm blood oozing down my cheek. I made it safely to the camp. He had laid Muriel down and checked her for fever. She was as cold as Osmond. I used the transmitter and sent the distress signal to the base camp. I prayed silently for them to make it here in time.

Muriel’s mouth was moving, forming words. Dr. Gerrick moved closer to listen. There was no sound. He tried reading her lips but in her delirium, she was speaking to fast. He held his daughter’s head in his hands and looked into her eyes. He must have read the word in her eyes. I knew what would happen. I ran.

The page :

The mountain. It was the center of an ancient kingdom. The gods were angry and wanted to punish the land of the mountain. So, they sent it to the peak. It was not of this world. It did not understand the ways of men. It was to men as men were to ants. Powerful yet inconsequential. It existed across time. A speck of existence divided over centuries, perhaps. It could manifest in different places. It could very easily transcend most physical boundaries as a human could stamp on an ant. But the ants have no idea of what a human is. In the same way, it did not regard this universe.

It could be and not be at the same time. Exist simultaneously across eras. Showing up in points of time. It flexed one of his great hands, there was a flood in the East and there was hail in the West. The North and the South were mere points on a line for it. So it would grow and the humans would not be aware of it as their frail mortal minds could never wrap themselves around the concept. They could see the destruction and they had questions to ask. But they never knew when to ask them.

The Gods, as is their nature to meddle with things that outweigh them in importance, decided that it had to be stopped. They knew that the being could never be restrained. So, they fashioned a cross for the thing to bear. 

A corporeal existence it must have if it is to exist at all. But the price for creation, was destruction itself.

Confidential Report :

The locals have been debriefed. All priors are investigated. This is accessible on a code 4 clearance.

Osmond had apparently impaled himself on one of the sharper rocks. Peters was never found. Muriel was rescued by the search party. She was taken to the general hospital and declared a vegetable. Her Father, Dr. Gerrick was found near the mouth of the cave. Foam lined his mouth, his eyes were a pulpy mass. They had bust due to internal pressure. There was no semblance of a brain in Gerrick.

He was found lying on his back, his shirt torn open, a bloodied knife in his hand and a single word carved on his chest. 

AMUD


This started it all -> https://twitter.com/#!/doppelhanger/status/65350291209469952

Irony

"all in the game..." - Traditional, West Baltimore

Sunday:

“Stop resisting. It will be over soon.” He continued strangling the woman lying on the kitchen floor. The woman was dead. The man was making sure she was. He pretended to not notice the sharp tip of her umbrella, lodged in her. He gave up soon and walked into the living room.
The man wore a tweed jacket. It had Monday engraved on the lapel. He was called Monday. He glanced at his watch. It was about time someone showed up. He picked up his sawed off shotgun, poured some Scotch and sat in the chair, infront of the door.

Friday:

Monday was up on the roof of a brown brick. His binoculars focused on the park opposite. Kids ran in circles. Parents pretended that they were in control. Some conversed. His gaze sought out one man. Aquiline noise, sharp eyebrows, olive skin. Red jacket and a copy of Moby Dick in his hands. This one was called Bensharif for some reason. They all had names. Bensharif was not here with a kid. He was here to pick one up. Bensharif preyed on the little ones. Monday was not here to judge. He was here to plan. Bensharif would leave in half an hour. The route was tracked, the exits were marked. He would take him in the proverbial dark alley.

Wednesday:

Annie was a writer. She always had a pen with her. The pen was her. She was such a sweet soul. Monday never wanted to kill her. He had stalked her to the supermarket and seen her be nice to all the people there. Like a bottle of bottled sunshine. Bright, warm but never quite free. He had waited at her house patiently while she was out on one of her supermarket trips. He hid inside her closet. When she came back, he surprised her. With violent death.

Thursday:

The sky was yellow. The air reeked of pleasure derived from pain. Loco was a special man. He hurt people 

to make them happy. They even paid him for it. Monday never understood that concept. He did not get pleasure. Giving it was out of question. Loco was a big man who could take care of himself. But, Loco liked wearing his mask too much. And, Loco liked his boy toy Andre even more. All Monday had to do was hold Andre hostage. Loco came rushing in. Monday threw Andre aside and pumped a shot into Loco.

Tuesday:

He loved her brooch. It was delicate, effeminate yet so powerful in its simplicity. He liked her the best out of the seven. Mercy she was called. Did not ask for it even once. She was dying anyway. The injection did her in. As silent in death as in life, when her husband had beat her. Sometimes, close enough to feel death standing near. She was in a happy place now. He took the brooch. He shouldn’t have.

Saturday:

Stripes. Cop. Mean. Twirling his lighter. Stripes was investigating a series of murders across town. None of them connected to each other. Stripes was a good cop. He did his job, was only as dirty as everyone else. Stripes ate pork sandwiches, drank beer and shot some pool. He went home to a wife and a kid. He abused his wife and whacked his kid around. Even, broke the kid’s hand once.
He found a dead hotdog vendor that day, a bottle of gin inserted into his innards.

Stripes caught a homicide call late on Tuesday night. Mercy had cancer and a history of domestic violence. The brooch was missing. He had a photo of the brooch. The next day, he got Annie too. Annie, the writer, who drowned her own kid in the pool and wrote about it. She got money. She was found in her bathtub with thin perforations in her lungs. Dead as her dead kid. He would have usually dismissed the murder of a local thug as a gang shooting. But, the state the witness Andre was found in made him suspicious. Registered sex offender Bensharif was stabbed in the alley next to the park where Stripes had to take his kid the next day. He saw the man with the brooch running. He stared transfixed at the falling body and rose to action only when he heard mothers scream. The man had moved out of recollection by then. On his way home, on Saturday, Stripes found the dead guy near the police department. This was starting to get out of hand. Sunday when he heard noise of a scuffle between his neighbor Marge and a visitor, he grabbed his gun and decided to pay her a visit.

Monday:

The moment Stripes opened the door, Monday shot. Trust Stripes to not die so easily. He managed to get a shot off. He felt nothing initially. Feeling returned and realization dawned.

He had won the game. He was now free. He had finally managed to beat them all. He was better than all of them. @luckybroochm, @penannie, @maloco, @bensharif7, @atomichobo, @umbrellarge, @stripes 

were beaten.

The game was beaten. He was free. Dead on a Monday.