The fire toddler’s flame burned wildly and the child emitted stupid hollers as it grabbed a winch which attached to a set of pulleys reaching high into the voluminous sickly cloud cover above. Working the mechanism, Espe struggled and sweated, until with unearthly shrieks the vibrating taut thread—which had the appearance of stretched organic matter, perhaps an improbable tendon or gut fibres—travelled up there and returned. At this Kattar jumped, shaken by an intense cry coming from behind him. A tall man dressed in tennis gear, its white material discoloured with a multitude of effluent stains, leaned over a slab upon which struggled one of the burned figures. The tennis man wrestled the distressed figure to submission and—reaching into a barrel marked toxic and retrieving a set of small white items—placed forcefully, and against the recipient’s will, a pair of glass eyes into each of the person’s charred sockets.
The figure rose, in despair, reaching ahead desperately, the whites shining out from the scarred black flesh of its features as the eyes rolled back in a fit of purest agony. At this the dopey queue awoke, and their eyes too clambered for the backs of their skulls.
Kattar leaned back, quick and nauseous breaths. The line started to move, slow steps full of acute pain, the plight of vocal chords in a fight to communicate their agonies creating strange and mellifluous frequencies.
Forward they went, and Espe upped the pace of the winch, and the whole place sang with poisoned voices.
As the chorus amplified with refrains of decomposition, Kattar once again found himself on one knee, proposing that the price of his ticket to the EXIT was too high, that what he’d set in motion with the clatter of the bang of a bolt gun had made him a fool.
The helmsman of the queue stopped and bowed in front of a single scorched brick that appeared on the pathway. A radiant aureole enveloped the figure as it stooped further, slashes of red ripping across its back as the crusted flesh gave, tearing cracks into the penitent flesh. With speed the second in line was upon the helmsman, a violent embrace from behind, a battlecry for connected flesh, a rebellion against tottering off numbly, annihilation into the other’s flesh the only answer at the end.
The figure impacted onto the helmsman and forced the flesh into mush, skin sloughed to run freely away, viscera a gift given, a prayer of rancid organs liquifying to meld with another, then the ragged bones falling to the ground, devoid of everything but the scraps. One after the other the figures approached and ended themselves on the heap, initiated by the helmsman but morphed into a unified hill of gloop.
At last the final figure buried itself until its bones fell and the voices quietened.
Kattar, stunned and dumbstruck, turned to the child. Espe swung around, small cherub frame shaking after the exertions. The fire toddler let out its most idiotic laugh yet and took off.
The Fohnemaz vibrated in his palm. He lifted the object to inspect it. Dark sparkles fleetingly glowed deep within as the hum took on greater complexity. As Kattar absentmindedly moved the Fohnemaz gently side to side the intensity of the hum rose and fell depending on the direction he pointed it. He followed the hum as it grew in strength, and it led him to the opposite side of the gloop hill and the single scorched brick still placed before it on the pathway. These souls and flesh had fed the Fohnemaz, kneeled to the brick.
Kattar placed the Fohnemaz onto the reddish and sooted brick, and stepped back.
dek kvar
Kattar awoke to his face leaned against softness. A velvet wall rested beside him, which he stroked as he righted his stiff body, wincing to free himself from his recumbent awkwardness. Around him the enclosure was a perfect cube, no more than ten feet square, lusciously coated in red wine velvet, a jewellery box oubliette. Above him a dark hatch loomed, wooden and closed.
He sunk against the cushioned wall, pushing clarity to return to his vision, breathing a semblance of rejuvenation into his exhausted muscles. The room comforted. He was too tired to have enquiries, especially on EXITs.
Many lucid inconsequential conjectures later—after wakefulness taken in lost memory—the hatch rumbled.
A harness descended, fashioned to be stepped onto at its lowest, a leather pouch designed for a foot with hand grabs at the appropriate height. Dingy light followed from the space above, dust sinking into the oubliette’s own blank light of unfathomable origin. The place should be black.
With an uncomfortable heave Kattar stood and reached for the harness, struggling a little to secure himself, uncaring of who might raise him up or where he would be headed. The moment he felt bound safely the harness ascended quickly and steadily, up through the open hatch and into the murky light ahead.
A dark laugh emerged from behind him. The harness drew him fully from beneath as he clenched onto it strongly.
“Don’t worry. I’m empty,” a voice said, a smile in it, a voice he recognised, the voice of the suited man.
Kattar swung around to view the man in his suit, a dead man, or so he’d thought. The suited man sat against the scenery of the hallway, waving his pistol around, showing Kattar that there were no more bullets.
“Anyway, I don’t want you anymore. Our little spat seems petty now, considering what I’ve done.”
The suited man motioned with the pistol, pointing to the opposite end of the scenery hallway. Kattar followed the line to Mr Wayfarer, collapsed face down, pink flesh glistening and sunken, still.
“I know. I’m as surprised as your face is gormless.” The suited man tensed his feeble body, his pallid skin bruised deep down, without his jacket, shirt sleeves rolled up ready to do his job, track marks staining his arms with squid ink. He rolled his eyes back, just like the burned figures with glass pupils.
“I’m sitting exactly where I was when we first met. Isn’t that romantic? You gonna help me this time? You give me your word?” He laughed again, then coughed and swallowed hard.
“Looks like you don’t need my help,” Kattar said, releasing himself from the harness and standing hunched over slightly, eyes darting between the suited man and the porcine corpse of Mr Wayfarer.
“Oh, the Queen’s going to be out for my blood now. She’s worse, if anything. Don’t think she liked Wayfarer much, but he was hers. She won’t like that I’ve ended him, as in her eyes that should’ve been her privilege.”
“I thought I saw you being torn apart.”
The suited man cleared his throat, his head nodding, ready to topple. “We sparred no kidding. He wrestled me but I had some tricks. See, he was newborn, because of the star. All it took was for him to try it on me, the way of the flesh, and I could remake myself, unlike all the others. I’d been watching him, but he hadn’t been watching me back and all I had to do was wait for the right time. In a way, you did keep your word, friend, although you didn’t know it. You busted his world up, unleashing that star as you did, and all that was left was for me to aim real good.” He chuckled. “I knew he’d go straight back to his old ways, wandering this place in a tantrum like a bratty kid. If he’d sat down at the head of the table, usurped the chairman as was possible, then we’d all be kneeling to him without question. Idiot. We are all creatures of habit, are we not?” He dropped the pistol and protectively rubbed his bare forearms.