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Sunday, December 8, 2013

Listening For That Sweet Tune: Chapter 30-Reprobate Pt. 1 and Pt. 2






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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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