"Barbed Wire Crown"
Story by Nickolaus A. Pacione
I am the descendant of the first murderer so my family had wandered many years, but I finally settled down in the new world. Somewhere in Racine and Chicago, but I kept my family name a secret for a long time. My ancestor is the first murderer known as Cain, in fact I call myself after the betrayer where I have the last name of Iscariot.
I am telling this story from a bar, a road house somewhere in the Midwest because I am on the lamb because the blood of the first murderer's brother is also on my hands as well because like Cain I drove a man into the cross in the modern times. Some time in 1995, I crucified a man to a cross in middle of Chicago just because he looked at me funny. I took and crucified his hands on a a stick then drove him thru a sharpened pole after I nailed the back of the thing to it - that was the that killed him because I did something akin to Vlad Dracul at that point. I was drinking his blood after I left him there to die. He watched me drink his blood as well.
Another person looked on in horror so I put the man on the cross out of his misery.
"So what can I get you," the barkeep told me.
"Commie Piss," I bellowed back. I've been on the lamb for quite some time because of this as well being I was haunted by the man I put upon a makeshift cross with a barbed wire crown. I wanted something to drown the horror away by coming to this bar being I am in hiding because the fucking pigs been after me since day one.
"Iscariot, what the fuck are you doing in here," another said as they were looking at me.
"Nothing but having a drink you fucking asshole," I bellowed back.
"Besides I have a story to tell and someone is on video camera asking me to tell it," I continued.
"Shit you're telling your story," one of them looked on.
"Didn't your ancestor kill his brother?" another asked.
"The one who had committed the first murder and forced to wander the earth for centuries, with the blood of his brother screaming from the land?" one looked on.
"I am cursed with that same fucking curse too pal, my whole fucking family is condemned to it. I crucified a man just fur fun and now I am on the lamb, I shot the son of a bitch and put him out of his motherfucking misery," I added.
A few looked on in horror as they see my mark - it was the mark given to me by another ancestor who met a person named Enoch. It was the symbol of Enoch, some had seen a variation of this being it was an Elder Sign from the Sumerian world where they seen a God born from the sea - a God that rises up to devour the world, but that I don't know has any truth behind it or not.
"Don't piss me off man," I also suggested as I took a drink of my commie piss. I took a drag of my cigarette and blew some of it in the asshole's face.
"Want to see the ink to prove this?"
"It was the head of Dagon - an ancient version of the Fish God," I said showing him.
What he didn't understand was I saw more than one of those things walking around as I drove that man up to the cross singlehandedly and gave him the bard wire crown.
The man was looking at the tattoo, he was looking at me like I was full of shit there.
"What the fuck is that?"
"It's the ink work of a Fish God named Dagon," I added.
A woman was in the room looking at me horrified because she knew what I was talking about.
"I've seen those things wandering around Winthrop Harbor a few years back, I was working at the hotel this one man rented a room from. He kept waking up to nightmares, horrible nightmares - and someone without a hand exposing bone was standing at his door!" she said to me.
"Really?"
"Yes this person was a writer who seen this, he ended up writing a story about it called Shadow of the Gathering with a nameless narrator akin to The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe," she suggested.
"What's your name lady?" I asked with some intrigue.
"They call me Deliah Magalene, well that is what they know me as in the magazine I got published with because I also wrote of something like that too," she said introducing herself, "I've recognized the tattoo on your hand and am a little frightened by it. I got some serious nightmares from that incident - said to see some of those things wandering around here as well."
I felt a little more at ease that a woman was in the bar at this time. I placed my blade and my gun on the top of the bar and relaxed a little bit.
"Mind if I buy you a drink Deliah?"
She looked at me with a strange look in her eyes, seeing that tattoo on my right wrist she acted like she seen a ghost. But she had a tattoo of her own. Her's was a lamb with seven eyes and a slit throat - it was a symbolic and a dark symbolic for the Messiah as he was slain and able to read the words from the scroll of the seventh seal.
"What is the symbolism of your ink lady? Since you saw mine, I figured I would ask about yours as it was showing up on your upper part of your breasts-" I suggested to her.
"Well mine is a symbol of my faith but I didn't want anything that would be too typical for Christian ink, I was a member of a church of a pastor who actually fought off the legions of ghosts as he chanted in a dead language - he spoke in the language of Christ, that being Aramaic," she suggested showing her tattoo above her leather miniskirt. and fishnet top over a black sports bra.
"You having that ink that means you're not going to put out tonight right?" I suggested.
"Fuck you man, well the ink came about after seeing that too. The horror of a series of ghosts that were stealing souls of the living in middle of the street, I was living in an apartment complex right behind The Midnight Diner at the time-" she said as she took a drink of her MGD.
"I was the man who crucified someone in plain view," I said as I took a sip of my Commie Piss.
"As I heard, how can you get away with doing something like that? Only one man died upon the cross and it was Him that looks over me all these years," Deliah suggested.
As she listened on I must have felt like the asshole at the end of The Tell-tale Heart she spoke about because he was the one who admitted everything to the Police and my car was parked outside - a 1985 black Buick Grand National with a CD player placed where I could blast Slayer's South of Heaven from Racine to Chicago each night to go see Cradle of Filth a few days out of the year. The only time I can go out without any person trying to find out who I am is on Halloween.
There was a sense of horror in the eyes of some of the people in that bar after all it was a seedy place where a lot of the people who would kill would go to hang out. This person I spoke to wasn't the typical that came here, having that tattoo of Him on her back just above her ass was a little disturbing to me because I felt like someone was staring at me at seven sides. Almost if someone looked at me like I had seven heads or something. But back in my head when I see that tattoo - I keep thinking of that fucking barbed wire crown I gave the asshole I killed in Chicago.
"So why did you pick the tattoo you picked for yourself Deliah, that thing looks so fucking creepy to me," I said as I looked on.
This area people are always seedy, and Wisconsin there was always someone who brought a gun in because it was hunting season and what not. But either way it was like sitting in a bar with a hand of cards and someone was holding the Dead Man's Hand again. It just seams that they're either shooting at squirrels with pellet gun, though the types that might find offense to this will get mad - well that's sort of entertainment around here, they get buzzed and they start shooting. There is a bet how many they can shoot dead in the ass without killing them.
Seems like home to me for those who are on the lamb here, but I am the only one who seems to get away with murder - but if my ancestor did what he did in the times of the modern, killing his brother. There might be some serious charges such as the ones that wait for me, and that's to ride the lightning.
"So Deliah, if that's your name right. What does bring you into a place like this?" I asked.
"I am a journalist but I got the ink because I was too haunted by all the things that happened in Hanover Park, Illinois, seen a neighbor of mine die over there too - it was too fucked up for me so I had moved up to Kenosha then drink in Racine," Deliah answered. She was not to fast to answer that question, but she took a drag of her cigarette and put her tape recorder on the table.
There are just some things that haunted her, and when she overheard me crucifying a man with a barbed wire crown upon his head - she had a lot of flash backs from something she saw on a movie screen. I am guessing she was watching Passion of the Christ before she went to bed at night. I came to know some of the regulars in that bar knowing it was owned by an ancestor to Judas Iscariot, little was known about the disciple who betrayed Christ or the bloodlines that came from him after he hung himself those centuries ago. I wasn't related to the fucker by any means but heard stories that his bloodline found his way to Europe, and the new world but there was little knowledge of his past or anything of that nature. Everything is up for speculation but what they say when they sit in front of that bar were the things of apparitions and other entities wandering around among them.
I knew there was something to her - almost if I could see into the soul of someone who killed his own brother and forced to wander the world for the rest of his days as well as his family. It was if he almost placed the barbed wire crown on top of his head, as I could see the torment of her eyes being that she could even see the end coming.
"What you drink?" I asked her.
"Snakebite," she responded.
I called over to the barkeep and ordered up a Snakebite for her and for myself another domestic. She's got something here that captured my interest. There was something to her tattoo that disturbed me, the symbol of the lamb with seven eyes holding a scroll. It was unsettling to me because it was something that was of a nightmarish origin. The dark brooding ink on her back is something that left me with an unnerved feeling but then again there were plenty of strange happenings around that bar this night, and some of them being the hybrid children with gills on their chests. Praying to a God that was from an ancient Arabic world. A God that was half man and half fish, the English translation to this half-man half-fish is Dagon. The kind of things one would say stranger things had happened, and my family had seen some things from generations to generations - the darkness that is brought about in the horror would be the generational curse of being the witness to Judas hanging himself and hearing his neck snap in two like a twig when the rope was tied around his neck.
There was another man who ran frantically into the bar, half out of breath.
"There is something out there man, something grotesque and wandering in the streets. Not zombies but they are something more horrific - they've fucking took the skin off my girlfriend and offered it up to their God!" the young man shrieked as he was capturing his breath.
"What, a woman got skinned out there!" I looked on. There was a gun I kept near my muscle car at all times in case someone started asking questions about my crucifying a man and putting a barbwire crown around his head. It couldn't be the thing that was out there that could be the ink on me, but there was something in my blood knowing I could summon the Old Gods, knowing they were around during the time Christ died on Golgotha. It was if that Judas offered himself up in guilt to them when he paid Christ over with silver, blood upon his hands - a macabre display as related to my family as they were witnesses to this. But the things that are out there now the gills on their chest, and a fucking monstrosity become the things of nightmares. There were a few out there that were sacrificed ala the days of Vlad Dracula
"Jesus fucking Christ, tell me that someone didn't just put someone out there on a stake through their ass!" I screamed in repulse, they were staked as an offering to the hybrids out there waiting for rain to pour upon them. My family might have done some evil things, but these creatures are those that are inhuman - the kind of thing people would look to the one with a barbed wire crown to save them from, deliver us from hell sort of thing.
"Die you freakish mother fuckers! This is my friend I want you to introduce you to," I said as I was aiming my shot gun at their heads. I made a direct hit but they kept coming. The horrors seen within the night here make what my ancestor did seem tame, but he offered his brother up for an offering out of anger - I am not my fucking brother's keeper here, but there are things here that would disturb the most tough looking of people.
Deliah came to the street with a machete grabbing one of the creatures by their throat and buries the fucking thing into their head. The kind of thing that would make for fodder in the newspapers when it comes to the sensationalism of old.
"Fuck!" She screams as she wedged the machete into the hybrid.
"Where are these things coming from?" I looked on.
"Lake Michigan," she responds.
"What's with all the people strung up on stakes?" she asked horrified at the answer she would get.
The Bartender ran out the bar with a streak of horror, and a huge strain of disbelief.
"What the fuck is going on out here!" the bartender freaked.
"I don't know man, but I was told all these things were coming out of Lake Michigan."
"This can't be like New England near Miskitonic University, I saw some strange horrors over there and left the area because it was too fucked up."
The Bartender looked at this like he seen it all before. Almost if he left New England from the horrors that happened there when the Old Ones were left with the carnage and bodies all over the street there. A dark cosmic horror dwelling in the shadows as they were clawing from the waters to make themselves known once again. Something wandering, breathing as a blasphemous abnormality growing from the depths - and my ancestors did some horrendous things as in contributing to crucifying Christ and myself crucifying a man because he looked at me funny.
Another ran out but realized he got grabbed up by one of them then realized it was too late for him, they managed to pull out his still-beating heart. One of the things took a bite out of the heart like it was an apple. The man gurgled a bit then blood spurted from his mouth then keeled over - staring at the black abyss.
"JESUS! Did those fucking things just eat a man's heart?" the bartender asked as he looked on in horror. The blasphemous deed done by the hybrids show they want human meat, and there was plenty of it in the bar. They had claws sharp enough to impale flesh and there was another that was mortal offering them up to the hybrids to appease the Old Ones. The things they would do so they can present the barbed wire crown to the masses, and the more I walked up the street there were more people dangling from the stakes as the stakes were started by shoving them up some poor soul's ass and the stake would exit at the point of the skull.
"Christ, is this the prophecy of Dracul's return as well - offering those up to the Fish God," another looked on completely horrified. One tried to run out of the bar but the next thing he found himself was having his flesh being ripped off by an entity where it had one hand covered in flesh and the other had the flesh carved off the wrist exposing the bone.
"Dracul, the one who was from Romania right? The prophecy would be he could return but to America to appease his people here, they said he was excommunicated because of his deeds killing his own people - offering them to some kind of dark God," the bartender replied.
"There is a possibility that this is his return," I said.
There were a few freaking out at what the revelation the Bartender made when he was describing the things wandering around and the spikes on the street being that the Impaler could have prayed to Dagon for eternal life. The possibility was there because all they found in his coffin were animals bones, my ancestors were there during the time of the Impaler when he was prince of Romania. There was a darkness growing and it makes what my ancestors done seem pale compared to it. The horror grew from there and wandered within the shadows lurking and what was breathing within the hybrids was the returned Impaler giving up his offerings to the dark Gods.
*end*