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Previously on Listening For That Sweet Tune:
I stood over my body with immaculate
perfection, bloody and scarred as I once was. I looked down to how weak I was
and I felt sick to the core. What is the point of a body if you could become a
Wretched? Weak and torn as all people are. To become powerful amoung all means
and there is nothing to hold you back. How pathetic I was once but now I
am.
I began to walk forward looking around
for Lana and there she was. Hovering over me for hundreds of feet looking down
to me but she was not alone. She carried a woman with her in her arms and she
had just let go. The woman screamed as she approached the ground but everything
happened too quickly. She hit the ground legs first and bones splintered out of
her knees. She screamed with agony as I walked up to her she begged to let the
pain to stop. Did I have empathy for this woman? Not a single day passed when I
was me that I didn't look to help others but here I was. Crouching down I
put my hand on her shoulder as if I was to comfort her but my body stood motionless.
A part of me wanted to help this poor woman but that part was dwindled to a
tiny speck now and I did not know if I could be that way anymore. I searched
for my compassion as I looked deeply into her eyes and I guess she saw
kindness. She began to cry and thank me but I knew not of what she was talking
about. I was to do nothing to ease her pain because I felt nothing for her or
this situation.
I got up to walk away and she began to cry even harder. As I continued
to walk down the road she wailed for help hoping that I would come back but I
did not. Moments later she would bleed out onto the dirty street and become one
like me or even Lana. No more no less. She would become just another pawn in
the great plan and that would be that. She would suffer from no more pain; she
wouldn't even remember pain. Her body will lay motionless and it will decompose
like the rest. Lana floated over the body a few seconds longer and dropped
black nothingness on top of her. As she screamed for mercy the black corroded
through her bones and she melted as if she was just an ice cube. Her head
melted last and as it shrunk her jaw—petrified open—fell apart into several
pieces just to disappear.
Lana moved forward as she floated across
the city above me and looked for remaining survivors. I followed underneath her
looking into houses to see if anyone was hiding. I kicked a door open to reveal
a small room with a dirt covered wooden floor and red painted walls. Directly
in front of me I could see into the kitchen but nothing was there. White walls,
white lights, white cupboards a white tile floor and a semi white table in the
center. I left the kitchen and looked down the hall to my left. There were
three doors here—one to the right, one to the left and one directly in front of
me at the end of the hall. I began to walk down the hall and placed my
hand on the first door—the one to my left—and just before I was able to twist
the knob I heard a slight whimpering coming from the end of the hall. I ignored
the door that was in front of me and walked down the hall till I reached the
last door. Just then I heard footsteps behind me and there she was, Lana in all
her glory. Barefooted and dirty she continued to walk down the hall I was in
and placed her hand on the other side of the whimpering door.
Lana swung the door violently open to
show a children's room. Two bunk beds several craft tables and a scared family
huddled down in the far corner to our left. It was a father and his three
children. Suddenly the father got up from the floor and rushed down the wall to
his right and tried to open the window. Pushing it up as fast as he could it
stayed in the closed position so he began to hit it. Punching a hole in the
glass the man pulled his arm back in the room showing to him that it was
covered in blood. Lana began to walk towards him slowly as something
glowing appeared in her palms as she raised them in front of her. The man was
scared and tried to open the window again but it was too late. Lana grabbed the
man’s hand and he fell to his knees and just then I heard it. It could have
been going on a while now but I had only just begun to pay attention to
it.
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov created a
symphonic suite in 1888 titled Scheherazade. It was composed into four
movements and movement three—The Young Prince and the Young Princess—was
beginning to take form through the air. Loosing my attention towards Lana and
the poor family I looked up into the corners of the room spinning in circles
trying to figure out where it was coming from. Momentarily I realized that so
were Lana and the family but I could only figure that they were looking for
something because I was looking for something not because they could hear the
sweet music as well.
I ran outside tripping over furniture
while getting dust all over my knees. As I got back to my feet I looked around
and the fog was thicker than ever. I looked down to see the ground but I
couldn't even catch a glimpse of it. Looking around trying to figure out where
the sun was all I could see was a slight bright light surrounding me. The music
turned up in volume and it seemed to push the fog away. I then could see down
the street and see he houses—which were all still on fire. I heard a crash
behind me so I turned around quickly to see that the father of the little
children was thrown through the window on fire and the children began to
scream. I walked towards the father slowly to see that his ears were missing
along with his tongue, he was of course now dead. A large squeal of metal
spinning roared from out of the building and the dwindling children screams as
the black oozed over the window and onto the father corroding every inch of his
being.
The house that I was once in began to
spark inside and flames started to climb up the walls. I saw Lana walk in front
of the window, grinning while the screams echoed through the air and I did not
feel pity, I did not wish for the screaming to end. I couldn't help but smile
seeing Lana in such a good mood. I felt happy for her, negating any and all
other emotions that could come back to my hardened heart. The screaming
stopped soon after the flames engulfed the house and moments later I saw Lana
exit the burning house in a slow but steady pace. Still in her pajamas she
walked up to me and took my hand to lead me further down the road and it began
to rain. I tilted my head back feeling the cool water run down my face but it
was warm. I soon reopened my eyes to look down to Lana and the rain falling on
her was tinted red. It was not blood fully it was merely diluted but that did
not change the fact that raining from the skies was the life force of most
things living. I wondered if I still had blood pulsing through my veins or if
it was this black ooze that was simply known to me as 'darkness'.
Lana led me to a semi large building and
stopped me at its steps. She then looked up to me with her cold black eyes then
walked forward without me. Pushing the French doors open I saw a one-room
schoolhouse that has been modeled to be like a church. I walked in right after
her to see that the remainder of the small town had been waiting for us in
here. They all mumbled in a language I could not understand as they were
praying while on their knees. Lana walked between two large groups that were
assembled in circles in their retrospective sides of the schoolhouse. In the
center of each circle was a man in a red robe while the rest wore white. The
man in red read from a large book and pronounced the words as if he was in
song. The room was barely lit with candlelight which made the wooden building
give off an old vibe that dark things happened here and curiosity made me
wonder what.
Lana continued forward through the crowd
to the very front of the class and sat on a wooden alter that had been
weathered and broken but it withstood her weight. She sat there smiling as she
swung her feet back and forth as she hummed to herself. I was shortly behind
her and I noticed that the tune she sung was in perfect harmony to the ones who
were reading but I listened further to still hear Scheherazade but now in
its fourth movement. The song they were singing and the song that was playing
were two different songs. Both of them seemed like they would coincide within
each other but something told me that this was not intentional. Now standing
beside Lana she began to giggle then clap her hands. I looked at the hardwood
podium behind her and walked behind it to see that a hard covered book was
sitting on top of it. The book was made out of leather and wood, as the
pages were thin and white. A dark stain set into the material that bound the
book making it appear nearly black. I touched the book thinking that I was
going to be sucked into a hole filled with darkness but it was only an ordinary
book. Opening the book to the first page it had a large symbol taking up the
majority of the page. The symbol seemed familiar yet the meaning of the symbol
couldn't be further away.
"Burn Down the Forest," Lana
said in a mature voice. "That’s what the title of the book is." She
never turned to see what I was doing but knowing The Wretched, I wasn't
surprised. I was surprised, however, to hear a fully developed voice coming
from Lana. I guess it made sense the fact that she was a Wretched but how a
Wretched worked still confused me profoundly.
"What's it about?" I asked.
Lana continued to look forward towards the crowd and responded.
"Its about a mother doing anything
for her child and the fierce journey it takes her on."
"The people are treating it as if it
was a religious text," I said.
"It is," Lana said nearly
spitefully. "I wouldn't say it's our religious text but it is a religious
text." Emphasizing "our" and "a". I continued to flip
through the book trying to make heads or tails out of the strange symbols that
filled the pages of the religious text and Lana spoke again. "...But
there's no helping these people, they're already dead."
Lana stood up on top of the alter and
raised her arms into the air as if she was going to catch something falling
from above us. She then turned around to look down on me smiling showing
me her now sharp teeth then turned back around to look at the groups of people
that were praying for salvation. A darkness creped into the room crawling from
underneath the door and windows and put a small layer of mist on the ground and
ceiling. The people in the room grew quiet and looked around themselves
examining the mist that was pushing its way into the room. The men in red robes
started prophesying to the rest in their group saying that their god heard
their cries for help from the daemon—or Lana—and was going to grant them
salvation in his kingdom and the people rejoiced but they were merely waiting
for The Wretched to take them away to a better place but it doesn't get
better.
Light came out of Lana's palms once more
and people began to scream in terror. The thin mist soon grew various rods in
the floor and ceiling and they entered the room a few feet. Soon after, the
rods began to take another form. I looked towards Lana seeing that the light
was leaving her palms in the shapes of funnels. What the people saw within
the funnels could only make me wonder of the horrors that they were soon to
face and I couldn't help to feel good for them. The now victims of a
murderous child now scratched at the doors and windows trying to get out—much
like the father from earlier—but no doors, not even widows could be opened. The
rods coming out of the floor and ceilings turned into arms and as the arms grew
hands I heard a woman shriek in terror. Everyone turned to look at the woman
and one of the arms drug a man down to the ground into the abyss below the
floor. People started swatting at these hands but they only turned into smoke
to take a form yet again. People started to scream in absolute horror to what
they were seeing and there was nothing to save them.
The doors to the outside started shaking
though no one was near to shake the doors. They swung back and forth violently
though the doors stayed latched together and windows started to shatter inwards
cutting up several people's bodies as they cried out in pain. One after another
people were being dragged down or picked up by these misty hands till about a
dozen shrieking men and women were left cold and motionless. It was not over,
not yet. I could feel in my veins that the carnage was just beginning.
Everything was all quiet and Lana still stood with her palms up in the air as
all the people stared down the center of her palms. It was as if they were
mesmerized to what they were seeing but they weren't comfortable in the
slightest. The wind began to howl through the broken windows making this high-pitched
squeal then it got real dark. The candles in the room went out and the only
light was coming from Lana's palms. A sound of something oscillating came from
nearby and I looked around to see where it was coming from but I could not
figure from where. Then a sound of spinning metal overpowered the oscillation.
Grinding gears rotating like clockwork then marching in unison. All of these
sounds rotated around me as I looked at the last remaining followers looking
towards Lana.
Footsteps. Quiet footsteps approached the
door outside and thee grew louder as they got closer. What was first a small
sound began to grow in intensity till it became louder than the thoughts in my head.
Thump, thump, thump. Thump, thump, thump. Then it stopped. The sound grew quiet
once it was at the door to the outside and the people within the room grew so
curious that Lana was no longer the center of attention. The room soon turned
so cold I could see my breath and for a slight second I could hear a key
twisting and turning the pins in the keyhole that unlocked the front door. I
scrambled for breath as the air was growing lighter within the room and my body
was so cold but I forgot everything when he entered the room.
His name was Reprobate that I would soon
find out and even though he was just a low class Wretched, he is—with the lack
of a better word—the most violent creature I would ever meet. The door was
busted open and turned into shreds lodging several pieces of wood directly into
each and every follower that was left within the room. He looked no more than
an average man but a large cloak and hood covered his body and face leaving him
to remain mysterious within the darkness. The remaining followers saw the
outside and ran towards him hoping that they could get past but he made sure
they couldn't. As each and every person passed him he took out a knife and
immobilized each and every one. Some he stabbed in the eyes, others he made
huge gashes throughout their bodies but the most deadly of them all he cut
their Achilles heel leaving every step in furious pain making every step non-existent.
As all the people sat and lay in pain he picked up each and every one and cut
off their fingers, toes, eyes, and tongue but leaving their ears so they could
hear their demise. It took a few minutes to do and I tried to cry in pain every
step along the way but it was useless. I felt nothing and I would remain this
way.
After he was done he stacked every man
and woman in the center of the room as they screamed in agony and drew a circle
around them in blood using the nubs of fingers and toes as a medium. Outside
the circle he drew figures and shapes connecting and not connecting to the
circle making it a real piece of art. Lana soon sat back down and started
reading from their holy book several select passages revealing the struggle and
pain the main character of the book had to go through in order to move on and
if they had eyes I am sure that they would cry. I fell over midway through out
of exhaustion of what was happening and my breath remained shallow but I could
still see what was going on. Soon Reprobate finished his masterpiece and threw
the remaining appendages within the circle. Lana stopped reading and all was
quiet for a moments time but Lana raised her palms again and the machinery of
rotating gears and spinning metal began to sound again and then the circle the
people were in began to spin and then a god awful noise began. Whatever
Reprobate did it enabled him to create some kind of gear underneath the followers
and they were being funneled down within it to be crushed and squeezed and
juiced till they were no more. The crunching of bones against metal and the
dieting voices of every man and woman began to blend in with each other as the
gears grew faster and faster till everything was gone. I struggled for air till
I couldn't anymore. For a moment I think I threw up all over myself and Lana
moved my head so I would not choke. She smiled at me and she looked so innocent
but I think that would be everyone's demise as they fell by her hands. She was
pure but she was the devil.
Up next in Listening For That Sweet Tune:
Chapter 31
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