This is a work in progress and much of it is subject to change. A fair chunk of it (the ending) was also written under the weight of alcohol's heavy hand, so the last paragraph or so is in need of some serious reworking.
I hear the moan of tired gears grinding to a peculiar halt amidst the shrouds of dank, jade mist. The pounding heartbeat of the Earth deteriorates into a distant din, a soft hum… silence. The frayed veneer peels away and as the mechanism dies, the fog retreats to reveal the ancient plains of impossible motion. Primordial fields of over-grown emerald struggle their way through the thinning haze and bloom callously beneath my feet. This is the world behind our eyes. This is the space between the walls. This is where the road began.
I tread cautiously through this alien dreamscape, taking extreme precaution not to disturb the thick silence that clutters the air. I notice the squalid aroma of empyreuma clinging inexorably to my nostrils, but the timeworn wheel of the sky overhead remains unscathed by smoke. Scanning the horizon of the surrealist landscape, I notice a hulking, gothic structure, far in the distance, where the land meets the sky, seeming to pin the two together. Being the only object, other than myself, to so brazenly intrude upon the emptiness of the vast plains for miles around, the importance of the structure seems immovable. It swims in and out of focus, dancing on the edge of the earth as if it were simmering in the heat of some mid-afternoon sun.
I make my way towards the building, hoping to find refuge from the unfamiliarity that surrounds me; the construct seems to be the only thing human in this world beneath worlds. The small comfort it offers is enough to entice me towards it. I begin to close the distance between the building and I, carving my way through the vast ocean of emerald as the cosmic wheel of the sky continues to turn above me, indifferent from my growing feeling of displacement. Its apathy unsettles me. My pace quickens.
I wade noiselessly through the swamps of jade; inexplicable anxiety wells in my heart and my eyes dart frantically back and forth over the empty plains. Darkness begins to fester in the sky. Time feels broken here. It fluctuates back and forth in long, warbling arcs like a pendulum at the bottom of the ocean. It holds no surprise for me that the foundations on which our beliefs were built would be so unstable; so maddeningly unintelligible. The sky grows darker still, and I become aware of a creeping, incongruous presence. I realise that it’s my own. My pace quickens further. I begin to run.
As I dash across the rolling plains, the world around me seems to shift. The radiating humanity of the approaching construct grows cold and dies. The angles of its architecture grow incomprehensible. The colours become all wrong. I make pains to drag my eyes away from the new, sick majesty of the monolithic structure looming on the horizon and find myself gazing into the sprawling heavens above. The stars are out, but these are not my stars. Polaris has been doused. Orion has been swept away. The sky is littered with lunatic spheres of light, clung together in twisted constellations. I close my eyes against them and my steady dash quickens to a frantic sprint.
As I tear closer, the structure reveals itself to be a colossal cathedral, ludicrously overrun with coarse ivy of innumerable eternities. The roof of the building teems with sodden moss and broken gargoyles. Dead eyes, sunken deep into malformed stone heads, perched atop hideously carved perversions of the human form gape at me from the dizzying heights of the gargantuan cathedral’s slanted roof. I run blindly towards the cathedral and throw my weight against the contorted, oak doorway. The doors give begrudgingly as its prehistoric, rusted hinges shriek in silent pain. Once inside, I slam the doors shut behind me – they do not make a sound – locking it all out; the hot malevolence of the gargoyle’s vacant stare and the cold unconcern of the ancient sky. My breath rips out in short, rasping tears. I stare at the large oak slabs blocking the entrance way. The gargoyles avert their gaze and the sky takes its indifference elsewhere. They dare not touch this place. It’s all I can do to prevent myself from asking why. I dust myself off, though there is no filth to be dusted, and turn my eyes upon the interior of the cathedral.
The cathedral is not, as I had expected (hoped) abandoned. The pews are occupied. My breath is momentarily confiscated as a silent congregation fills my vision. Frozen in disturbing tableaux, they sit, transfixed, staring eternally towards the rotten pulpit with eyes that have withered to black pulp in their sockets. Their peculiar tranquillity has allowed the same creeping vines that have swamped the exterior of the cathedral to grow over them, ensnaring their withered bodies to the stiff, knotted wood of the pews and cutting ruthlessly into their gnarled flesh. I wonder who (what) in the name of God would allow such calamities to go on living; and to what avail? I stagger awkwardly up the nave, unable to keep from gawking at the peculiar cavalcade of loyal followers. I draw closer to the head of the room and a dark figure swims into view, partially obscured by some unexplainable veil. I feel the silence deepen around me and I tremble under its weight. I soon approach the pulpit and weakly raise my head to meet the eyes of the flock’s shepherd.
I find that she owns no eyes.
I find myself staring straight through her - into a shadow of pure lunacy.
Her form has been cut from reality. What remains is neither black, nor white – a resonating, God-shaped fracture in existence. I am staring behind the darkness of space. My eyes cannot relay the immense density of the information it is receiving to my mind and my head begins to throb in dull, pulsating thuds. It throbs underneath the stress of unlimited knowledge. A searing pain cracks down my skull as I feel my brain buckle and creak. My head swarms with questions that know no bounds – and she answers them.
Every
Last
One
I scream.
Countless millennia’s worth of pent-up silence is shattered in one single moment. The shards come crashing down and every eyeless, time-trodden face in the cathedral turns upon me. They stare dumbly through the darkness in their sockets, their eternity-long oration interrupted. One by one, slick, twisted grins creep across their faces. A gnarled face in the fourth row begins to bleed from its mouth as it bites down on its own tongue in a wretched effort to sport its own malignant smirk. The flow thickens and turns to a bubbling spray as the jagged blades in its rotten fissure of a maw sever its tongue into two scarlet-sputtering halves. The dead half of the tongue drops to the floor with a wet thump and lays lifeless on the cold stone, oozing thick, black bile into the pew in front.
I return my attention back towards the Piper and find myself struck rigid by her presence, unable to move. She turns her featureless face towards me and shrieks in noiseless outrage. I take a glimpse through her and into the world that lies in her pestilent shadow. My sanity snaps like a thread and reality falls away.
I sit in the Halls of Perpetual Motion, bound helplessly amongst the throngs of rotten worshippers and shattered time. She stands at the altar, bleating her sermon in harsh, frenzied, silent yelps…
And we weep for her.
This is where the road began.
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