Tag: Strange

The Emperor

Resting on a palanquin lined with furs the Emperor looked disinterestedly at the lines of slaves who’d been instructed to leave behind their rusting blades and walk the fields to create a fence of flesh along the dusty road in order to pay their respects to this; their leader. Unmoved by the normal sight, he passed the time by filtering out the menfolk and instead focused on the women whose bowed heads hid their expressions. What you cannot see is more erotic and he daydreamed about leaving behind the palanquin and stepping down to brush away greasy lank locks to stroke eyelids, to trace his fingertips along their forms before roughly pushing them to the ground and forcing himself on them. He leant back at the thought and sighed heavily as repression and longing caressed him. He was bored with the women that came to his room late in the evening; dressed in colourful lace, pearls and silks. They were too eager to please him and the only aspect he found titillating was knowing they did it out of fear of what would happen if was not satisfied. What he longed for was to search out a woman of his own and take her outside where it was forbidden; where they might be caught. He made a mental note to do this someday.

The dying grasses of the fields yawned open to reveal the wall of the citadel and as the great iron wrought gates were laboriously pulled apart, he stretched his legs idly wondering what they had prepared for him to eat that day. The four slaves who had carried him carefully set down the palanquin and his favoured man, Chien, lifted away the heavy scarlet curtains and bowed courteously as the Emperor heaved himself out of the crimson cushions and set himself down heavily onto the ground. Adjusting his robes he shuffled past the lily ponds and dragon topiary to step inside the shaded inner court where a table had been set for him. Settling down into the throne at the furthest point away from the garden swathes of servants appeared as though by osmosis and silently placed steaming bowls of rice, fermented pork rolls, cha tom, sour prawns and rice wine before standing back to flank the grand table while he ate his fill. As was customary for him, he noticed the sharp lines of their cheekbones, the saggy nature of their clothes as they hung from bones that needed fat and he felt content knowing that they were watching him, expressionless but salivating while he ate his fill.

The afternoon was tiresome; there was paperwork to complete, documents to read and act upon alongside monotonous meetings with dignitaries whom he had little interest in, particularly the ones who made the most effort to compliment him and feigned savouring every word he uttered. To pass the time more enjoyably, he poured himself small cups of spirit until his senses were suitably numbed and the colours that surrounded those he was meant to be listening to were blurry. Without thinking he signed numerous sheets of paper with great swirling violet flourishes until finally they tiptoed away.

The Emperor leaned back onto his sumptuous cushions and looked from under half shut eyes at the lattice work on the windows and the carvings on the furniture. He listened lazily to the caged bird at the other end of the room sing its melancholy song.

‘Emperor?’

The voice was unfamiliar to him. In his stupor he only moved his head slightly to the right and mumbled,

‘Who are you?”

Without answering he could hear someone shuffling across the cool floor, the robes sniffling like rodents behind the ankles of whoever was approaching.

Being accustomed to having no need to fear anything or anyone, the Emperor did not pick up the fact the bird in the cage had stopped singing.

Whoever it was had stopped behind him and was emanating a subtle scent of myrrh and another oil the Emperor was unable to identify.

‘How was your day today?’

This was not a question the Emperor was accustomed to being asked. Intrigued finally, he tried to move his head but discovered he was more intoxicated than he had thought was as his neck seemed suddenly to be made of lead and unable to move.

Mumbling he tried to respond but gave up.

‘You were fed well?’

The Emperor tried to nod.

‘Nothing was of discomfort to you?’

Puzzled the Emperor tried to shake his head.

‘Did you enjoy seeing your subjects?’

He tried to shrug.

‘Have you ever really seen your subjects?’

Suddenly a small globe was offered to him by the unidentified person behind him. He couldn’t tell whether they were male or female. Even the globe was held by a hand that was hidden by a long dark blue sleeve that was decorated with golden thread that included an embroidered circle with spokes, an ever decreasing spiral and dots. The swirls in the globe shifted into shapes that looked like ghouls bending over, howling and holding onto their shrunken bellies, there seemed to be dark shapes bent over working and sweating in the midday sun, dead babies lying skeletal in shallow graves beneath the shadow of a buddha.

‘At least they are free to do what they choose, they don’t have to do dull paperwork, can eat whenever they can instead of waiting for people to serve you’ the Emperor mumbled slurred irritably at what he saw as a needless reminder of what just a few people had to live through; he knew that the vast majority were fine, working and earning money. Those that suffered probably deserved it because of their laziness to find better work, he thought.

‘You seem to feel imprisoned in your current life. What if I could offer you the chance to return to this life free from paperwork; a life where you won’t have to answer to anybody; where you will be completely free?’

The Emperor smiled and sighed, ‘yes’.

The globe vanished and just the hand remained holding a tiny pot of dark liquid from which rose a faint metallic smell.

‘Dip the end of your plait into this and sign my hand’ the voice instructed.

The Emperor’s long black tail of a plait slithered over his shoulder and with some difficulty he placed the end in the pot and signed his name onto the waiting palm. As he did so, the hand seemed to shape shift into a paw but after a blink the flesh remained pale and the fingertips smooth with short nails.

Exhausted, the Emperor fell back into a stupor and slept until the dawn painted his eyelids with a carmine flush.

Years later the Emperor would look upon the events of that afternoon as one would a strange dream or hallucination. The only troubling issue for him was that the ends of his plait always seemed to have a reddish hue when he stood in the light but he simply put that down to age and gave no more thought to it than he did his starving flea ridden subjects.

He lived a long life, which was not surprising. As the decades drew on he moved less and less only moving his corpulent figure when absolutely necessary, demanding more from his concubines and insisting on visiting his subjects in the palanquin so he could check they were all contributing to society and working hard. He seemed incapable of looking beyond the swollen mounds of grain and vegetables in order to recognise the hollow cheeks, sullen eyes and angry clenched fists.

Finally, the morning arrived when Chien entered the Emperor’s bedroom and found him on his back, mouth open like a fish and only the rancid reek of his final breath gave any hint that the body on the bed had ever been alive.

The mourning period was brief and obligatory. Having fathered as many illegitimate sons as a man possibly could, the eldest was chosen to be the heir and after his father was sunk into a deep pit in the grounds of the citadel, the boy quickly made it clear that he had no intention of continuing his father’s gluttonous and selfish ways. He was heralded as revolutionary and the people quietly celebrated the passing of the old man.

So what of the Emperor and his strange meeting decades earlier?

After death, he had woken with a start in a stinking quagmire that offended his sensitive nose. His eyes wouldn’t open and when he opened his mouth only a squeak came out. Panicked he tried to move but discovered he couldn’t co-ordinate in the manner that he was accustomed to. Terrified he snuffled closer to the warm bodies around him and found their musty scent to be of comfort although inexplicable. In the background he could hear a muffled roar, clanging and voices that sounded vaguely familiar to him although he couldn’t identify what they were saying or who they were.

Gradually, his panic subsided and a sudden drowsiness cloaked him so he slept as he entered the welcome numbing of sleep he thought that he’d wake the next day and feel much more like his own self.

Except he didn’t.

In fact, every day he would wake, confused, disorientated and afraid. Not being able to open his eyes was particularly disturbing and he’d try to cry out but only helpless squeaks would form  and in his frustration he would reach out and paw at anything and everything.

Nobody came to his rescue.

A hellish week or two ensued and although he became accustomed to what had happened to him, the morning he woke and rubbed his eyes to be met with hazy and blinding light was such a relief. Nothing came into focus for a while but when it did he sat up in alarm. He was surrounded by giants. Giant dark eyes, giant paws, giant tails, giant noses. He backed away in alarm but the largest of them all opened her jaws and he cowered in fear as the dark cavern drew closer but she only engaged with the ruff of his neck and promptly deposited him back in the litter with the rest of his brothers and sisters. He’d become a dog.

Astounded he spent days trying to work out how this could be and how it could have kept his knowledge of his past life to the point that he was all the more acutely aware of the terrible imprisonment he found himself in. The horror of the early days of realisation soon subsided when he realised that at least he was safe with his pack, his mother was forthcoming with milk and he was protected. He almost became accepting of his fate until of course the day she didn’t come back and one by one his brothers and sisters left him behind the bins of the building site that they had called home for so many weeks. Thus his life on the streets began. Initially, he had been confident that he could persuade people to part with scraps if he behaved well, or looked at them innocently and in fact this did work before the fleas crept in and snuggled into the roots of his fur. As his appearance grew more and more unkempt his hunger likewise grew. Eventually, his fur hung in thick greasy clumps before large sections fell out. Once, he was chased out of a shop and ran straight into a motorbike that crushed his paw and he spent weeks hobbling in pain until eventually the bone mended into a permanent bend and he had to hop from one filthy street to the next. Always he would bemoan his fortune and fate, not understanding why the gods had bequeathed him this fate.

And then, as happens, the answer came. He’d been dragging his broken and itching body around the streets of Hue sniffing at mouldy jackfruit in the gutter when he looked up and saw a group of peasants sitting low on stools and quickly slurping noodles. They were talking in low voices but seemed friendly enough. Hopeful, the dog hobbled over and sat looking with sad eyes at the feast sat on the table straight ahead of him. Steaming plates of beef laced with coriander sat next to fresh spring rolls, spicy prawns and elephant fish. Salivating he whimpered. He overheard one of the peasants say

‘Shall we take pity on that poor thing and give him some of our food?’

At this the dog sat up wagging its tail looking from one face to the next. Most of the group looked up and acknowledged him with sympathy and one even began to reach over to pick up some beef to place on the ground next to him but he was stopped by the large, hard faced man whose skin was freckled from too many afternoons spent working in the sun.

‘No. We have to work all day for a pittance and need our strength to harvest as much rice as we can. That dog doesn’t need as much food as we do. He’s free unlike us. He can go wherever he wants and eat whatever he finds. Don’t pity it.’

And with that he sank began into his hot bowl of soup and took to slurping again. The others followed his lead.

Stunned the dog sat back on its haunches staring helplessly at food he wouldn’t be able to touch. Out of desperation he launched himself up onto the table to try and steal a bite but was quickly beaten back down with the swipe of an anonymous hand and had to admit defeat. Morbidly, he slunk away and went to lay his bony body out on the baking pavement. Ringing in his ears were the words

‘he’s free…he’s free.’

Posted on by nelsonandemma 0

A Taste for Murder

SKELETON 1

I originally wrote this for a website that was being set up in Ho Chi Minh called ‘Sonder’. The website never seemed to get going and my story got ripped to shreds by the editor Brad but he did make some good points. So here is the story that was going to get published in all its post-Brad glory…

Grainy. Blurred. Too far away for details. But definitely, unequivocally, him. Racking my brains to think of when I last saw him, I finally remembered the day we picked up our A Level results. His, of course, had been four straight As (no A*s in those days), and a stellar future awaited him outside the school gates. I stood beside him picking open my envelope, dreading it really because I knew my results couldn’t possibly be as good as his and of course they weren’t. Three Bs which was fine but somewhat ‘ploddy’ as my father used to say. For some reason he always liked hanging out with me. I used to think it was because I made him feel better about himself, but now I laugh at the thought. He had been brilliant at everything he turned his hand to. What would he have gained from hanging out with a scrawny, pretty average sixteen year old like me? So I had gone along with it and for the time we’d been at school, I recall being fairly happy at being in his shadow…a little in awe of him, too. Of course, on that day, we went our separate ways at the gate; him towards Cambridge and eventually a career in law and myself towards a less than impressive establishment and then teaching.

Twenty years ago to the day.

I considered writing him, but every time I picked up a pen and letter paper (no emails then!) I thought better of it. He was at Cambridge, socialising with the best minds from the best families; what could I offer him now if I never offered him anything at all?

Picking up the Sunday Paper that bore his face on the front page, I paid and meandered slowly home, the weight of the paper heavy in my back pocket. So apparently he had been arrested the night before. For Murder. Was pleading guilty. ‘Deranged,’ according to one doctor. His terribly fashionable East London flat had been described as ‘a ghastly scene of dead bodies, body parts and blood.’  Was this the boy I watched come first in the 100m sprint on Sports Day? The boy who expertly dissected a frog in Biology (oh how grisly a memory that seemed now) and then in the same day held a charity ball in the sixth form that raised hundreds of pounds for a local hospital? As my gaze fell to the wind outside, I toyed with a fallen leaf in wonder. What must happen to a person to turn them from promising young child prodigy to heinous serial killer? What horrific things had befallen my friend to make him become this way?

Over the weeks and months that followed, his trial was screened in bars, pubs and covered the newspapers and TV headlines. I felt like I became reacquainted with my friend virtually. Eventually I admitted to myself that he had indeed caused pain and suffering to hundreds of people and didn’t appear to regret it at all. My curiosity aroused, I decided to finally make contact with him.

Having never moved in criminal circles, I wasn’t sure what to expect from the secure unit he was held in. It had been an epic task to even arrange the visit, such was his notoriety by that point, but manage it I did. Standing outside the austere high-security Ashworth Hospital in Merseyside I felt as though I were the prisoner and immediately assumed a confusing mantle of guilt, which set me wondering if prisoners themselves ever felt that way.

Walking through countless stark white corridors, the smell of ammonia was thick in my nostrils, to the point I wanted to gag. I hadn’t really been nervous about meeting him again until I found myself in that desolate place of lost souls shouting and moaning behind locked doors, and when they told me the final door directly ahead was truly the only thing between me and the man responsible for not only murdering but consuming countless animals and people…I fought the urge to turn heel and walk away.

“How are you?”

We were in a cramped room ostensibly designed to suggest alienation, however I was conscious of a thousand eyes and ears monitoring our every move via secret means. A thick pane of reinforced glass prevented us from speaking face to face properly, yet his image appeared clearly none-the-less.

“It’s been so long.”

I was unable to speak. He was mesmorising. His blue eyes were so bright and alert and in such contrast with the white clothes the nurses had dressed him in; when he smiled, his eyes crinkled and made him look so friendly. So harmless. He still had the charisma and charm that had made him irresistible as a young boy, and I fell for it all over again. I started as he moved forward to take a closer look at me. I was appalled by his eyes. What had they seen?

Limited time meant I had to find my voice and start talking if I was to ever find out what had happened to him. There was no room for pointless small talk and false niceties. So I asked him straight out. The narrative that followed was told me in as earnest a voice as one could hope for given the nature of what he was conveying, and often he would rise gracefully from his chair as he mulled over what next to disclose, sometimes picking at the paintwork in the wall, sometimes staring out to space.

“Dear friend, I do not expect you to believe all that I am about to tell you, nor am I justifying the terrible things that I have done, for that they are, but addiction too is an abhorrent predicament and I was addicted to the means of capturing a person and savouring them. It’s a powerful drug…the knowledge that once you have crossed the line between honouring the sanctity of life and destroying it, you no longer care. You’ve done it once: It can be done again, and again. Your soul is already lost.

“You may recall that when we were eight years old I was like you and, please do not take offence, I was like you in that I was average at everything. I possessed a good brain but not one that would ever make me stand out. By the time I turned nine however, my grades and reports in general were reflective of someone with an IQ and emotional intelligence far higher than the one I had originally been born with. How had I managed this? I’ll tell you.

“One weekend, my father was at home after having been away in the Lake District for work. He had brought with him venison. The meal that evening was celebratory as my father had been away for a long time; my mother was delighted to have him back and I, having never tasted venison before, was taken with the richness of the meat. You are probably wondering why I’m telling you this. I’m telling you because this was the start of it all. The following day was sports day and as usual I had to run the 100 meter sprint, something I had been dreading, as usually I came either close to the end or was the end itself. That day as I ran I remember feeling as though my legs were not my own, they seemed possessed of a natural speed and agility I had never experienced before. I came first and hadn’t even really tried! The adulation that followed made me giddy, my friend, giddy. My peers were in awe, and my House won…truly it was a wonderful day for me. As I lay in bed that night I tried to figure out what had changed, and the notion occurred that it had something to do with the deer I had consumed. I decided to experiment with my hypothesis the following morning, which was a Saturday.

“I woke up before dawn and crept downstairs before heading out into the garden. It took me a while but eventually I came across a mouse cowering in my mother’s herb garden. Grabbing an empty plant pot, I quickly placed it over the mouse, trapping it, enabling me to slip a tile beneath so I could carry the creature back into the kitchen. I knew I had to be quick so I decided to boil it first before popping it under the grill. The mouse tasted bitter and there had only been a shred of meat on its mangy bones, but I could barely contain my excitement to see if anything would happen to me the next day. Sure enough, when I awoke on Sunday morning—I never had such a keen sense of smell. The stench of life around me nearly made me vomit. My bedsheets which the day before had smelled so fresh now stank of stale boy; on the landing I could only inhale my father’s cigars and sweat whilst my mother’s perfume brought on a migraine. Although ill with the assault on my olfactory senses, and forced to lie in bed most of the day, can you imagine the thrill of discovering the secret of how to enhance your natural abilities simply by eating the flesh of one that had the preferred endowments?

“Maybe I should have been more afraid but from then on, at least once a month I would kill an animal and enjoy the feeling of being slowly refined and sculpted into something better. The length of time the effects lasted varied from animal to animal. The larger the animal, the longer the duration.  Soon, like any addict, I was hooked. It was intoxicating to have found an easy way to become brilliant. My family was happy, for I performed better academically, but of course, like so many things, it soon wasn’t enough, so I sought stronger and better means of transforming myself.  In a year I went from murdering small rodents and insects to pets (to this day our then next door neighbour has no idea that it was I that killed his pet cat, Ed, and buried his remains by his front door—a delicious irony I found quite funny for many years after) to larger animals and, eventually…humans.”

At this point he stopped and looked at me without expression. I didn’t want to catch his eye, so I picked at the skin around my thumb nail. I asked him how the transition between animal and human had been made. Turning his back to me, he laid his hands against the wall and leaned his face against the brick work closing his eyes as he remembered.

“Shortly after my 17th birthday I had an argument with a girl I was seeing at the time. You might remember her…Elise?”

I shook my head.

“I don’t suppose you would, she attended the Girls’ Grammar School across town and she was naturally brilliant. The type who could do anything. I so badly wanted to impress her, and for her to want me the way I wanted her. But when we argued, she implied that I wasn’t good enough for her! ME! With all of this newly enhanced prowess! I was so incensed I remember getting into my brother’s car in a foul rage, driving too fast and for too long out of town and off into the countryside. I was out of control, but I just could not stop myself swerving around the lanes, nearly veering into hedgerows as it was gone midnight.

“I felt like I wanted to kill myself, or destroy something, anything, and then I came around a blind corner and smacked straight into a man who had been walking back from the pub in the village. BAM! Just like that. I was so shocked I remember sitting in the car for ages in the pitch black looking at the darkened figure slumped in the road ahead of me, his grey hair lit up by the moon. Eventually I calmed down and then, like a trickle of poison, the thought crept into my mind that I could use this as an opportunity to see if the same principles that applied to animals applied to humans.

“Without truly thinking, I got out the car and dragged the man back and into the passenger seat. I didn’t really know what to do with him but eventually decided to head towards the fields where you and I had sometimes gone wild camping in the summer. It was easy enough to build a fire and, although my pocket knife wasn’t particularly sharp, I was still able to cut off his ear and roast it. The fact that I went on to kill many more people should prove to you my theory’s veracity. That man had a wonderfully keen sense of hearing. The next day I was able to differentiate between birdsongs for the first time in my life.”

“But how did you get away with it for so long though? How do you dispose of a body if you don’t eat all of it?” I asked, incredulous.

“There are two things you need to know. One, the natural cycle and order of life ensured that anything I didn’t eat and left out in the countryside would eventually be eaten by other animals or simply decompose. Second, you have to remember that I had the most wonderful façade. I was a lawyer with a first class Cambridge degree. By all accounts respectable, intelligent and with all my mental faculties in place. There would have been nothing to suspect. The only reason we are here today having this conversation is because I became blasé. The last victim escaped. Most unfortunate. She would have been better surely to have died but as it is I had only partially eaten her and she will have to live the rest of her days with the marks of my canines around her thigh…but that was her choice.”

Our time together was drawing to a close. I could see in the reflection of the security pane the guard peering through the glass panel of the door behind me.

“I don’t believe you.” I blurted out as I started to get up. “It’s all too convenient isn’t it?” Suddenly I was enraged at how easily he had clearly decided to plead insanity in order to avoid getting the judicial punishment he deserved. “You’re not insane, you couldn’t possibly gain powers from eating a person or an animal, otherwise we would all be super humans simply from buying food down at the supermarket! You are nothing but a cold blooded murderer!”

Ceasing to shout, I stood facing him as he stood facing me. There was a momentary silence and then he said softly:

“Last week, dear friend, I dined on Owl.”

The guard flung open the door as I backed away horrified at the sight of his head and neck slowly, and without expression, twisting around three-hundred sixty degrees.

Shaken, I left him there to his fate.

Posted on by nelsonandemma 0