The TFP Plotto Machine Output #6

Farces of Darkness. Part six: Babylon!



“Crap”

Isabel looked at Jezebel “Looks like you’ve buggered it”

“Ehhhhh - yes and no. Actually, no. He’s buggered it. He’d have me walking around like I was very powerful … fancy costumes, concealed thunder-flashes - all the SFX trimmings, signifying nothing. I was deprived of any purpose outside of ornamental. Can you imagine life as a burlesque dancer on stage all day long? Without music? Without real appreciation? Can you imagine that that was my life? Can you?”

By now, the pair were striding, slowly and determined, along the corridor outside Satan’s main chamber; his barks of “Go on .. Don’t say I didn’t warn you”, were receding into the background noise of tortured souls and some demon hollering, “Have you seen where I put my Tactical Black-Blade converted Fairbairn-Sykes pitch fork?” It’s not true what they say about demons. They don’t shriek and wail. Shrieking and wailing are done by the Damned but confusion is easy because the demons, close enough to prod them can, from a distance be mistaken for the source. Demons are too busy making process-related comments or talking shop. The glossy magazine “What Pitch fork” has a readership of more than ten billion, and it is a rare demon that does not know the review stats of any implement of torture presented him; and it is an even rarer demon that doesn’t complain that these days it’s mostly filled with adverts.

Isabel noticed Jezebel’s five thousand yard stare, but said nothing. They continued along the corridor.

At last, Isabel spoke. “But in all the time you were with him, didn’t you get chances to get practically involved? Didn’t you help him out with stuff?”

Jezebel’s eyes defocused, her eyes flickering, riffling through the days of her life as Consort, from bright and colourful recent times to dim and sepia ones of her earliest acquaintance with the Lord of Darkness. “Oh yes. I’d notice something that my Lord needed to be done, or something that was missing, and I’d get it sorted.” She paused. Her eyes grew still and blank. She shook her head and continued. “But did Prince of Lies notice? Huh … and even if he did, would I get any credit? Would I feck. Would I bloody feck.”

Jezebel’s stare had now diminished to a glum one thousand yarder, and Isabel did not want to cut into the mournful silence that ensued, but neither did she want Jezebel to stand alone with her feelings. She decided to share. “My Stan will give credit when I do stuff, but he sure went weird. I mean, that was pretty much a deal-breaker.” Isabel, glanced at Jezebel and saw that she had her attention. “I don’t know that I want to wake him up yet. I just don’t know. We’ve not split up, but there’s no way I ever would go along with what he was proposing. And when he fully realises that, would he want to remain with me? I cannot know. I cannot for sure know anything except that I will not be moved on this issue.

“You and me both, our world will never be the same.” said Jezebel, her brows steady and her tone bleak yet firm, resonant from a place within her where, not fully realised until now, she had resolved to cut the crap wherever it raised its ugly head. “This is bigger than either of them. They might be the de jure masters of their respective demesnes, and, de facto, they might be competent in fulfilling their basic duties, but they don’t see it. There is something in plain sight. I can’t see it. I can’t grasp it, but I know it’s there and it is never going to be what my … what that Satan wanted.”


“Nor my Stan. Heck I just don’t know. We’ve both seen the same thing, haven’t we? It was so snecking ugly. I mean, Good is Good and Evil is Evil, but when something is Plain Wrong … then …” Isabel paused.

“Cat’s got your tongue too, eh?” said Jezabel “I reckon we’ve got a big problem, and we need to think it through. It’s like we’re facing an iceberg - the huge mass that is submerged, but with without a view even of the peak of the tip to start from.”

“Plus one to that, Jezebel. Plus bloody one, look, we’re going to have to put our heads together. Ah -” Isabel slapped her forehead with the heel of her hand and mouthed a silent ‘Duh!’ at the universe, “and you’re going to need somewhere to stay … you’re welcome to camp out with us. Stan will just have to sleep on the couch.”

Jezebel smiled, an almost imperceptible shadow crossed her face and her eyes glistened and flickered slightly in the deep, golden glow of the well-stoked Hell fires. “Thank you. Thank you so much, but, Isabel, I reckon you need some time-out too. Why don’t you come over to my place?”

Isabel paused in her stride. “Your place? You don’t have a place any more. I mean, you kicked yourself out”, And,remembering the moment of departure, her knees trembled and she began to breath like a donkey in its final countdown before letting loose a fit of braying. “Your chain mail thong and metal breast-cups!” She spluttered “Over your shoulder goes oe care, over your shoulder goes two - he he - and you didn’t even look round … SPLAT. I mean thongs awaaay! And ends up round his neck like a well-thrown bola brings down the antelope.” Jezebel looked on, fighting a smirk, as Isabel regained control. Eventually. Isabel continued “But, seriously, you are now homeless.”

Jezebel knew it was a stressful time for them both. “Wrong”, she said. “If I remember correctly, we are approaching a section of the corridor wall where we’ll find a hidden corner and - there it is!” She pointed to a section of its ornate surface.

“But there’s nothing there!”

“Which bit of ‘hidden corner …?’ Duh. Let me guide you.”

Jezebel, her arms sinewed for power, beneath her satin skin, grasped Isabel around her slim waist, noting that the straw-coloured Aran-knit Jersey hid a well-defined set of abdominals, and urged her straight toward a detail in the section of the wall. Isabel pushed back but Jezebel insisted, her body straining like elephants never did when they lifted huge tree trunks because they do that easily. Isabel relented to let herself be squashed against the wall, or so she thought. A moment of dizziness and they were in blinding sunlight, enveloped, submerged in a heat so close and dense that a layer of perspiration leapt from the women’s skin like battalion of defending soldiers reacting to the Sun’s ambush. Isabel’s eyes rolled upwards in their sockets and she sank to her knees, swayed and collapsed on the sand. Sand so white that to gaze at it for more than a few seconds were as foolish as to gaze directly at the Sun.

Jezebel squinted into the spread of a limitless desert. “Not far now, Isabel”, she pulled her to her feet, helping her walk one hundred yards toward a structure incongruous in this vast emptiness. Striking, against the canopy of a too-blue sky, was a forty foot high gate of golden filigree-work, details recorded in it’s swirling patterns hinting of ancient stories. Either side of the gate, there were no massive walls, no soldiers to challenge or guard. It was just a huge arch and gate, a defiant somewhere in the middle of nowhere. They could have simply walked round it, however, with thirty feet to go, they saw the filigree shimmer and become liquid, and as they approached, undulating reflections of themselves. They met them, merged, and disappeared.


#


Cacophony. The heat less unbearable but ears and eyes were filled with every tone and shape imaginable - hardly room for Jezebel to think and heaven knows how Isabel was taking it. In the less destructive temperature, she’d nearly revived but, overwhelmed by sheer volume, brightness and variety of stimuli battering her from all sides, began to sag at the knees until caught under her sleek and shaven armpits by Jezebel. “Not far to go, close your eyes and let me guide you.” Isabel closed her eyes and Jezebel steered her though a market so vibrant, so infinitely rich in hue and cry that surely all markets past and future were contained within it.

A street vendor hailed them.“Hallall-a-habib, effendi! Hallall-ahabit ach eldeh hachaam! .. Ach eldech hachaam!”

Jezebel smiled a smile of one whose grim tenacity and stubbornness does not numb her to even the minutest drops of oil that lubricate the machineries of the Universe, shouted over her shoulder “I’m good … I’ve still got some left.”

“Ech-il ach havaaan?”

“I said I’ve still got some left from last time”

“Ah! Salad a Salami.” His hand on his heart, he bowed deeply.

“Salami a Salad.” Jezebel gave the traditional response and continued on her way, shoving Isabel before her through the chopping, surging tide of sights, sounds, smells and people who generated them, until they’d covered the region of trading-stalls and entered on to a huge plaza of pink granite. “You can open your eyes now.”


Isabel had been doing a lot of falling over today, and Jezebel was taking no chances. Jezebel was used to the Palace of Babylon. Her eyes caressed with easy familiarity the marble columns with golden pre-Doric plinths and capitals. She knew the vast, swelling domes and proud minarets as well as she knew her own curves in the mirror. But her grip remained firm on Isabel who was drinking all this in for the first time, and who flapped like a gust-ruffled scarecrow in Jezabel’s arms.


“Wh .. B …b … I .. Wh …” choked Isabel.

“You might well say that”, quipped Jezebel, “Let’s go in and get you cleaned up, you’re a worse stinky mess than I am.”


The Baths of the Palace of Babylon are big. Olympic big. Don’t lose the soap. They are supernally impressive and well worth a visit, if you can time-travel back to seventeen sixty BC

Reclining, encloaked in voluminous Egyptian cotton towels, Jezebel and Isabel were attended by an entourage of variously clad and proportioned servants who jostled and vied to gave them sweetmeats, fingernail polishing, Sheep’s eyes (politely refused), neck-massages, hair braiding, eye-kholing and, of course wine of literally biblically proportioned vintages.

“Seventeen Sixty?!” exclaimed Isabel “Beeeee Ceeeee!”

“Yes,” Said Jezebel, her hair shining again, like the well-preened feathers of a raven in the golden light of the dying Sun’s rays. She lazily regarded her thumbnail which glinted and shone by the light of a beam described by the dust motes between her and the skylight eighty feet above, and, judging the symmetry of her cuticle to be of adequate quality, nodded to the server who scuttled away in paroxysms of Del Monte ecstasy to celebrate his continued employment, with his family. “When Satan took me to be his Consort, he brought me from the time-bound to the timeless. I have travelled from the dawn of creation to the end of the cosmos when entropy arranges particles in nice even distribution until nothing is left with the kinetic inequality needed to to act more or less on anything else, and all that remains is undifferentiated Death-in-stability. As I became adept at surviving travels with him, I learnt to do it for myself. I only have to start from an eternal place, and I can go anywhere. Hence this ‘back door’ to my own original time. This is my Palace. Welcome to my home. Now we shall do what we do best. We get to work and make things right.”

 

Zen, you tale is absolutely cinematic. You need to start on the script for the big screen!

 

grumpyolddude

Hi, G.O.D. ...... Thank you so much for your comment! It inspired me to go through it again, and to add that quality. It was as if with each line, your words rang in my mind and I saw opportunities I never knew existed. Truly, thank you, Grumpy

 

A Big Hole

Jeanine is making us coffee. All things considered, it's not the strangest of activities, but it's 1:00 in the morning and neither of us drink coffee. We just keep it on hand for guests.

We both sit at the kitchen table and sip in silence, each of us grimly holding on to our respective denial, if only for a moment longer.

Jeanine lets go first.

“I guess we should call the police.” she says, from somewhere inside a long tunnel, her eyes fixed on a smear of gravy, missed when she cleaned the table after dinner. I watch her trembling hands lift the mug to her blanched lips. A splash of hot coffee slips over the side. She appears not to notice.

“I'll call them in a few minutes.” I reply, thinking we're not ready for a police interrogation yet. I take my coffee out to the living room for another look at the dead intruder who's now been lying face down on our new Turkish rug for twenty minutes. I'm reminded of a young King Arthur as I contemplate pulling the carving knife out of the middle of his back.

Don't disturb the crime scene the cop shows say. I go back in the kitchen, dump the coffee and grab a beer.

Jeanine looks up at me from the gravy smear.“You should call now, Harry.” .

“They'll want to know every little detail.” I remind her. “Are we ready to go through that right now?”

“It'll be fine.” she says calmly, having apparently gained back some control. So why was I still mucking around in confusion?

“I'm not convinced.” I reply.

“It's simple. A strange man broke into our house while we were sleeping. You found him and confronted him in the living room. He had a gun on you. I'd woken up, knew something was wrong, tiptoed into the kitchen, got a knife from the stand, snuck up behind him, and stabbed him in the back.” Jeanine was actually smiling now.

“I know that's how it happened but it sounds implausible.” I tell her. “They won't believe a woman would have done that.”

“Why not?”

“Because cops are always suspicious. A man with a knife in his back, stabbed by a 5 foot 3, 110 pound woman? Yeah right. They'll assume I did it. Assume I knew him and killed him during an argument.”

“Yeah, but you didn't know him. Nothing connects you to him. My fingerprints are on the knife if they want to get anal about it.” She rummages in her purse and digs out her cellphone. “I'll call them.” she says.

“No, Jeanine, wait!” I stop her. Maybe it's the look on my face that tells her I've held something back.

“What aren't you telling me, Harry? Are you saying you knew this guy?”

“No, but I think he might have known you.”

“What makes you think that?” Jeanine asks. Her dark eyes dart away from mine for just a second.

“He asked for you. By name.”

I know Jeanine has secrets. I also know she'll tell me everything in time. One day she'll tell me where she came from, how she ended up here in Dover, and why she has no pictures of her family or of her younger self, to sit beside mine on the mantle. I've pried a little, but not too much. I'm convinced that what she has chosen to tell me isn't entirely the truth. The only thing I've never given a second thought to is the money she inherited from her grandmother.

“Did he say anything else?” she asks, her face now as pale as the white formica table. Suddenly she looks like a small child caught stealing a candy bar from the grocery store.

“Yeah, he did. He told me you owed him something and he was prepared to kill us both to get it. Said I had 5 minutes to think it over. Then all of a sudden, you were there stabbing him.”

Jeanine sits still and quiet. It's hard to tell if she's breathing. I get the feeling that, if I was inside her head, it would be noisy with the sound of a large secret rattling around.

“His name is..was..Phil Reagan.” she finally says. “He was my boss at an accounting firm in Boise.”

“What was he doing here?” I ask.

“Looking for me.”

“Why?”

“If I tell you you're going to leave me.” she says as a lone tear escapes and runs down her cheek.

“I might leave if you don't tell me, too.” I don't really mean it. I love her. Whatever she did or whoever she was before moving to Dover was someone she'd left behind.

She continues. “That money I have? Well, it's not an inheritance. It's money Phil embezzled 5 years ago. All I had to do was make the withdrawal for him. 250 thousand in cash. I'd get 25 thousand of it. We'd never get caught, he said. He was right about that.”

“He was looking for you because you took it all, didn't you?” I ask, unable to understand why I'm not angry or even surprised.

“Yes. I went right from the bank to a train that same day and never looked back.”

“Weren't you worried he'd blame it all on you. Turn you in?

“I was just a clerk. Phil was the one they'd find if they ever went looking for the money. I don't know how he did it but he told me they would never even know it was gone. I swear Harry, I never thought he find me and now I've killed him. What am I going to do?

“Do you love me?”

“You're the only man I've ever loved, Harry.”

“What do say we dig a big hole in the back yard then?”

 

Hi Joniemack ... you sure turned the screw with this story. Feck. I could feel the wires snapping.

Been a while since I've got the three of us drunk. Hows about you two round my place this Saturday or the next?

 

It's really late and I'm really tired as I finish this one. I hope it's worth a damn.

Clean

Rise with the sun. One hour of scripture. Drink one pint of holy water. Eat a humble breakfast. 38 lashes before the private altar in his cell. Two hours of prayer and meditation. Two hours of cantation with the choir. Conscious walk through the garden. Another pint of holy water. Lunch. Tend the garden. Three hours of prayer and meditation. Two pints of holy water. Supper. Confession and private counsel with Father Arliss. Contemplate the stars before sleep comes. Rise with the sun. Repeat for five days. Fast on the sixth and seventh days.

Corwin spent his life keeping the Beast at bay. The Beast knew no reason. The Beast knew no logic. The Beast knew only hunger. It was a hunger to destroy, to cleanse the world of all the unrighteous. If the Beast were ever to rise, there would be no stopping it. The world would burn. He never knew why it was he that should be indwelt of this devil, but he dared not resent or feel any bitterness about it. For Corwin’s spirit was the only barrier between the Beast and the world, as the center of the compass keeps north from south, east from west, and he had to bend his whole will toward maintaining that barrier. Should he allow any impurity in his body or his heart, the poles would shift, the wall would crack, and the Beast would rise. If he ever had any love for humanity, he must keep his routine, without fail or deviation, to stay clean.

Few denizens of the monastery knew Corwin’s truth. Father Arliss knew, of course. Corwin thought it necessary to fully disclose his story to the man who would shelter him. A couple of the elders were Father Arliss’s closest advisors and confidants. A handful of acolytes knew something was going on, though they didn’t know exactly what.

A novice brought his breakfast and holy water each morning. He greeted each one warmly, and was genuinely grateful every morning. None of the novices knew anything about him. Most thought he was just some weary nomad who had made a home at the monastery for a while. Not a one knew that should his routine slip in any way, none of them would see the next sunrise. They only knew that he was a friend of Father Arliss, and they had strict instructions to deliver his breakfast one hour after sunrise without fail.

This morning, young Stephen delivered his tray. Corwin was fond of Stephen. Such innocence, such a love for life and desire to learn. The lad had great potential within him. Corwin smiled warmly and thanked Stephen. He prayed over his meager meal, then took his first sip of holy water.

And stopped.

No.

Something was wrong.

He did not feel the usual, reassuring warmth and light suffusing his body. Instead, he felt something cold and greasy begin to twist in his center. Trying to stave off an encroaching panic, he ran to the corridor and called Stephen back.

“Did anything happen to my breakfast? Did anything go wrong, however small? Leave out no detail, my friend. It’s more important than you can know.”

“I….I’m sorry, friend Corwin. I stumbled on the way to your cell, and I spilled your water. I was as quick as I could be to wash and refill your cup. I didn’t think I was late.”

The Beast had awakened, and was beating at the crack in the wall.

“My dear boy, you weren’t late. But, oh, you don’t know what you’ve done.” The room was beginning to dim. His routine had failed. The Beast was rising. As he began to slide into darkness, he took comfort for a moment in the thought that at least he would not be alive to witness what the Beast would do. But only for a moment. Then, to his unrelenting horror, Corwin realized that he and the Beast had always been part of each other, and there was no way he could have kept it at bay forever. Now that it was free, they would complete each other, and Corwin would bear witness to the devastation.

The Beast rose. It would cleanse the world of every filthy, unrighteous human being.

Stephen would be the first.

 

Ooh. What a fabulous little teaser, Altermoose. Good job!

 

Thanxz, dear! I was trying to finish it at 1:00 this morning, and I wasn't even sure if I was making any sense at all. I just knew that I couldn't shut the computer until it was done.

 

Any person, challenging, in a quest of love, the relentless truth that "East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet," emerges from a trying ordeal with sorely garnered wisdom.

As darkness fills the sky in the pouring rain, Lidia rushes into the church, making it to the circle just in time.

She is greeted by Nyx from across the room.

There is a chill within Nyx tonight. Lidia recalled her from one year ago; she looked much younger and beautiful then. Her black hair had become thin and gray; her eyes filled with red tiny veins with blackened circles, and sunken face. She looked very ill.

A wave of fear came over Lidia “what has happened to Nyx since the last circle of keepers met?”

Lidia has grown strong in spirit and self, finally becoming the person she had always been, but hadn’t known herself, that this was who she had to be.

Lidia pushed the fear of Nyx’s appearance away, keeping only positive thoughts, and moved closer into the circle.

Lidia could not take her eyes off Nyx.

When the keepers joined hands, Lidia felt and saw a brief window into each of their lives.

She wanted to pull away, frightened.

Nyx was powerful, pulling Lidia into a trance; she could feel Nyx’s warmth next to her from across the room.

Lidia had not realized that Nyx IS the highest beholder of infinite intelligence. She is the one that communicates with the spirit world, and never has had a normal life for she was born to expel the spirits that take hold of human souls. It was Nyx that removed the evil spirit from Lidia; she had not known that last year, but Nyx reveals it to her now.

Still in the trance, she witnessed that Nyx had continued to help many others, travelling around the world, joining many keepers’ circles. She saw the faces of all that have passed through the circle of keepers.

Nyx is the holder of the evil spirits; they are contained within her soul and have not yet been expelled.
She will travel to a higher sphere after tonight and destroy what she carries in her soul. She passed this knowledge onto Lidia while holding her in the trance.
Her beauty will reappear, and she will travel again to release and capture the evil ones.

Lidia will go back to her life, knowing she will be back next year to greet Nyx so very differently.

It is time now to open up to love…Lidia can feel that it is so close...is he here tonight.