by Dan Black
Behind a great wooden door – etched with the very history of the man in himself, in carvings so small a magnifying glass barely helps – a white bearded mystic absorbs the life from a stiffening filing clerk with a penchant for cheating. Cards, wives, work. The body lays neatly on a sanded slab of glowing blue stone. It’s cold, save the smoldering chest where an intricate symbol made of smoke rises up, hitting the old man’s face and dissipating upon impact. Minuscule threads of matter whirlpool below his hands, stretched to the brink with a silver ring on each finger above the torso. Nothing his study hasn’t seen before.
A crusted servant made of Earth dismembers and disposes of the cadavers when need be; he’ll drop the drained pieces down a chute leading to a stone chamber, buried underground holding a creature not from this Universe. A diseased man with machine parts for a face gave the creature to the mystic in exchange for a spell in a jar, it evolves at an accelerated pace. The study ceiling encloses four stories up. All the way to the top, the walls are covered with bookshelves. Filled with a barely mortal life’s worth of knowledge. Encyclopedias, records, maps, novels, texts, journals; walls stocked of history and tragedy. All sorts of globes spin slowly, orbiting around the room. He once said it resembled his “perfect solar system”, before he lost his vocal chords. Rows of chambers trace a curved walkway on the floor. They’re golden, complex locking mechanisms with a small oval window. Inside each window pieces of slippery flesh squirm for freedom. The mystic’s lidless black eyes wander up to a dull silver knife on a shelf as the study fades and time shifts.
He’s a young man. He grips a heap of long blurry hair with his left hand, slamming the thief’s head onto the market table. Right eye splits open, splinters of wood barb into the skin. People are shouting. The young mystic tears open the man’s shirt with the same knife, revealing the veins of his wet neck. “NO!”, a woman cries behind him. He pushes her backwards, mob hands grab her. The star of light gleams onto the steel. As he places the thief into a catatonic state, the woman breaks free and grabs him from behind. He instinctively shoves at her again without looking. The woman begins sobbing, barely audible through the angered crowd. At this, the young mystic turns, eyes fading to blackness. The woman collapses to the ground; it is his own mother, face soaked with tears. He drops the knife and falls to his knees with her. As an onlooker picks up the blade and slices the man’s throat open wide, he returns to the empty shell in front of him.
The body of the cheat steadily starts shaking as the mystic drains out the last bits of self. Purify the wicked by draining them dry. Something’s wrong though. The shriveled corpse turns to fire, not stone, in the mystic’s vision. Blue flame hot. He reaches a thin hand up past his flowing white beard to his nose. It’s bleeding profusely, ears too; blood flowing out of each, down to his neck. He keels over before the flaming corpse, he singes his palm grasping at it with desperation. His obsidian eyes peer to the far wall, second shelf, a thick frayed book marked only with a symbol of circles large and small. He crawls towards it, struggling to retain consciousness. The blood from his face and neck drips onto the wood floor. SPLAT – as loud as a gunshot. Just short, the mystic falls forwards, smashing his face onto the bottom of the shelf. Motionless except spastic twitches.
The collision knocks several books down, pages flapping as they land on or near the decimated old man. The symbol of circles falls opened to page 638: …citizens of Univ.Y3 – E1 will not resemble their Univ.X2 – E1 counterparts physically or spiritually, they may or may n… Across the room, closer to the door, a beautifully carved brass and marble washbasin stems up through the floorboards. It’s engraved with ancient writings in a continuous pattern around the outside. Filled with water that changes color based on a triangular clock attached to the edge. The water begins to bubble and steam wildly. From inside, a man dressed in red and white traces a pattern onto the water’s changing surface. He’s writing something, a message: “luferac eb … nepo altrop 1E-2X\\1E-3Y”. This, the mystic did not know.
Dan Black is a resident of St. Paul, Minnesota and has been published on the websites Weaponizer and Surreal City, a webzine called A Penny Dreadful, in MP3 form on The Telling of Tales, and in several local college literary magazines. Visit him at The Sonny Wilkins Chronicle.
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