The Second Sermon: She Sells Fish, Does She Not?
The Second Sermon: She Sells Fish, Does She Not?
The sun clambered across the azure and slate sky. Its rays were disturbed only by solitary birds and the occasional zeppelin. At the heights of the atmosphere, eddies of air built and combined to form gales that threw aircraft and air-fairing creatures alike off-course, where they were left to find new pathways to reach their varied destinations.
Blurry silhouettes of the unknown danced in the haze of cloud and smog. They hunted on wandering energy, apparatuses of membrane and tendons bore them across many miles of filth-infected air. They slipped through holes in reality, sleuthing spry wisps of aether. This activity engrossed them entirely, pulling them into a frenzy of rifts and spiral pathways between veins of colliding dimensions. Quickly, their meager chases became and organized hunt. They backtracked and brought their targets into cul-de-sacs, where they wound their tongues through the writhing masses of a nymph, a miniscule elemental, a discharge of some futile attempt at magic. Then it became an orgy. They squealed with delight and pleasure, hounding the unlucky, lustful and jerking. Remorselessly they bulleted through reality and dream.
Halfway through an attack, they halted in synchronization. Their heads twitched towards the city below them, and they descended from the firmament. Each one took its own path, but all of them traversed the barren heavens at astonishing speeds. They broke the sound barrier, tearing through the sky. Incandescent trails of effluent traced through the skies in their wake, reflecting light at weird angels, like a haze of gas. The sky thronged with the calls of these nightmarish creatures, screeches and wails of excitement, hunger, thirst, love. Time seemed to slow as they encroached upon the helpless city, host to million s of potential victims; to these beasts, the city was a mere pastime. The speed that they travelled at did not falter, nor did their perseverance. They raged through the streets, sometimes together, sometimes spread wide across dimensions unimaginable.
The first victim was Thomas Crown, the owner of a stall on Alabaster Street. Not that it mattered, though; a hunter gobbled and crushed him in a moment of anguish. The second was Lady Urchin, a fish monger further down the same road; a call-girl on the corner of Alabaster Street and Jali Avenue, afore the Veretchin Library (where the onlookers gasped in surprise as they were soaked with blood and the droppings of a speedy demon).
In the previous flurries high above the city, their number was indiscernible. Now it was apparent that five of them stalked the skies. However, that meant that two of the assassins had not fed on physical matter yet. One broke into the House of Parliament and devoured the Major Minister of Veretchin. The other was in pursuit of a greater meal, for it was far more massive than any of the others put together.
It sailed through the massive gardens at the university, where it consumed forty two students and the Headmaster. It perched on the top spire of the grand building, claws scraping across the whitewash surface. It howled and screamed: it was not yet satisfied.
The Dreamtime Corpses flew again.
***
Thomas Crown’s younger and more successful brother, Joseph Crown, was there when the House of Parliament was attacked by the demon-thing.
He was writing a letter to his beloved mother, scratching a pen across the paper in a messy script. He told her of the sights he had seen at the coast, thousands of miles away from the city he made his living in. He talked about the people he had met at the university, and how he had promptly been promoted from the seat of student to a teacher of ergonomics, then the head of all ergonomic teachings at the school, and then to a businessman in the parliamentarian world we now sat in. Finishing the letter with yours sincerely, Joseph, he folded it into a neat little bundle and placed it in a yellow envelope.
He grabbed his old ledgers and torn files and tucked them under his free arm. Managing to push the leather chair out and back in by placing the letter in his teeth, he walked across the library section of the building. This brought him to an old, oak desk that separated Joseph from an even more ancient man.
“Evening, Charle,” said Joseph. He looked at the old man; a scrawny and had white-haired fellow. He wore a bowler hat, a brown-red suit and a pair of large, dirty glasses. His most interesting feature was a telescopic lens attached to one of the eyepieces of those massive bifocals of his, perhaps for fixing machines (Charle was the mail inspector and a part-time engineer for broken computers).
“Joseph.” Charle nodded.
“I would like to post this.” The young man passed the letter across the gap between them, barely keeping his papers from slipping from his grip. “It is addressed to my mother. You know where she lives, yes?”
The grumble that Charle created formed the word “Indeed.” He scratched his nose and suppressed a faint chuckle. “Sells fish, does she not?”
“Do not mock me, old man. Just make sure she receives the damn thing.” Jayme cursed as he walked away.
He was looking at the face of an angel in the stained glass window at the western face of the large room, then. Inspecting the shine the came off the chrome at the edges of the artwork, he scratched his head and ran his hand through the straight, silky auburn hair.
All of reality seemed to shake as the window was rent open, and the Dreamtime Corpse flew in. Books were sent flying in the onslaught of wind.
Joseph dropped his effects and ran like the clappers.
Last edited by P.; 03-28-2008 at 05:02 PM..