Author's Note: Many thank yous to all of you who've supported me, sorry it's taken so long to get around
to writing more. You know how these things work sometimes...anyhow. No, the surprise guest isn't Zillah (though he's obviously involved) and it isn't Ghost either. (he comes later) Think more obscure....or just, read on. In this one we step back in time, so hang on to your hats as at least some of the mystery is revealed. As usual, none of the characters involved are mine; not in this one anyway. Property of Poppy Z. Brite and all that. Right. On with the show.
Zillah came to with a single word on his lips. Traitor. The sound of his own voice was alien to him, it sounded like rusty barbed wire dragged across a Formica tabletop. Vision came to him by degrees, the world coming into focus above him one color at a time. Squinting a little in the grayish gloom of an unlit room, Zillah's soft pink lips were drawn up in jagged angles of disgust; his mouth tasted like blood. It wasn't something he usually considered unpleasant, but this was old blood. Settled blood. Rotting blood. His own blood.
With effort, he made himself sit up, tangled caramel caked with ...something...falling around him in tattered curtains. Muscles sang a strident cry of protest, winding tight on rusted spring coils as though they hadn't been used in years. His vision blurred again, what few colors there were melting together for a dizzy sea sick moment before the world righted itself again behind his eyes. Shutting them tight for a moment, his mind was filled with images of pretty faces, leering, peering, giggling gleefully. But they weren't sharp and focused, like reality. They were blurred and fuzzy, like something out of a dream. Something out of several dreams, all folded together into one crazy jigsaw. Puzzling out this curious imagery, his intensity of focus was so pronounced that he didn't even hear the voices. Not until his mind registered something more deeply disturbing. A high-pitched, girlish giggle. "Look, brother, he's awake."
His first reaction, pure muscle memory. Before he even realized what he'd done he was on his feet, back against a corner of the room. This elicited peals of singsong laughter from his specter hosts, and eyes like phosphorescent limes spun wildly in search of its source, knowing somewhere deep inside that he should already have recognized it by now. As his wild-eyed gaze scattered, it fell over objects that should have meant something to him. Hot pink sneakers, their laces scrawled in brightly colored obscenities. A battered raincoat that had definitely seen better years. A shattered bottle of chartreuse lay on its side. A razorblade, smudged dark brown with blood long dried. A battered raincoat. Should have meant something. Did mean something. All at once it all came back to him, crashing in on his curiously silent mind in a furious avalanche of Technicolor proportions. But it didn't make sense. How was this possible? He remembered the knife, that brain-numbing rage....and then there was silence. A last thought, pure and vehement, before everything went black. Traitor. But how could this be?
Distantly he noticed the scent of strawberry incense. The even subtler fragrance of ancient death. Both of them stale, clinging to the walls in dismal clouds like cigarette smoke. Zillah's senses were coming back to him in a steady stream now, and along with them all of his memories. He connected the one with the other and his gaze slid immediately to the closet. He swallowed against the bitter taste that had sunk its velvet claws into the back of his tongue. When he uttered his singular command, his voice came out clearer than it had before. It gave him hope. "Show yourself."
After a moment of presence-filled silence, they obliged him. Taking shape from a handful of moth-eaten clothes, they stepped out of the closet together wound tightly in one another's arms. Joined at the hip, it seemed, their milk pale bodies meshed as one single entity with twice the appropriate number of limbs. One had hair the color of flax or straw, as brilliantly yellow as the sun in a child's crayon portrait; the other's was equally as red. They had like-minded grins as terrible as Cheshire cats', lips painted a gaudy, whorish red and dripping, and it was all too apparent that they were pleased with themselves. "What are you doing here?"
"We fixed you," one of them, the blonde one, said.
"Yessssssss," the red twin all but hissed.
"You were too pretty to be all broken," again, the blonde.
"...So we made it better..."
"Yesss...aaaaaallll better...."
Their voices were like sand paper on silk, dry and rasping despite their glamour. Zillah looked from the one of them to the other, back and forth like a tennis match, sorting out the details of his apparent reconstruction. All of their kind knew about the twins, their awful brand of particular power. What they weren't especially known for was their generosity? ...A will to create instead of destroy? According to their husky chanting, voices like death rattles, they had restored him from....the accident...because he was pretty. Accident? Traitor. Anger clouded those beautiful features, so painstakingly rebuilt, and drained again only to be replaced by something else.
"Yesss........." crooned the red twin, singing to himself as he held his brother and swayed.
"Yesss........." mimicked the yellow one. ".....We know where he is...."
to writing more. You know how these things work sometimes...anyhow. No, the surprise guest isn't Zillah (though he's obviously involved) and it isn't Ghost either. (he comes later) Think more obscure....or just, read on. In this one we step back in time, so hang on to your hats as at least some of the mystery is revealed. As usual, none of the characters involved are mine; not in this one anyway. Property of Poppy Z. Brite and all that. Right. On with the show.
Zillah came to with a single word on his lips. Traitor. The sound of his own voice was alien to him, it sounded like rusty barbed wire dragged across a Formica tabletop. Vision came to him by degrees, the world coming into focus above him one color at a time. Squinting a little in the grayish gloom of an unlit room, Zillah's soft pink lips were drawn up in jagged angles of disgust; his mouth tasted like blood. It wasn't something he usually considered unpleasant, but this was old blood. Settled blood. Rotting blood. His own blood.
With effort, he made himself sit up, tangled caramel caked with ...something...falling around him in tattered curtains. Muscles sang a strident cry of protest, winding tight on rusted spring coils as though they hadn't been used in years. His vision blurred again, what few colors there were melting together for a dizzy sea sick moment before the world righted itself again behind his eyes. Shutting them tight for a moment, his mind was filled with images of pretty faces, leering, peering, giggling gleefully. But they weren't sharp and focused, like reality. They were blurred and fuzzy, like something out of a dream. Something out of several dreams, all folded together into one crazy jigsaw. Puzzling out this curious imagery, his intensity of focus was so pronounced that he didn't even hear the voices. Not until his mind registered something more deeply disturbing. A high-pitched, girlish giggle. "Look, brother, he's awake."
His first reaction, pure muscle memory. Before he even realized what he'd done he was on his feet, back against a corner of the room. This elicited peals of singsong laughter from his specter hosts, and eyes like phosphorescent limes spun wildly in search of its source, knowing somewhere deep inside that he should already have recognized it by now. As his wild-eyed gaze scattered, it fell over objects that should have meant something to him. Hot pink sneakers, their laces scrawled in brightly colored obscenities. A battered raincoat that had definitely seen better years. A shattered bottle of chartreuse lay on its side. A razorblade, smudged dark brown with blood long dried. A battered raincoat. Should have meant something. Did mean something. All at once it all came back to him, crashing in on his curiously silent mind in a furious avalanche of Technicolor proportions. But it didn't make sense. How was this possible? He remembered the knife, that brain-numbing rage....and then there was silence. A last thought, pure and vehement, before everything went black. Traitor. But how could this be?
Distantly he noticed the scent of strawberry incense. The even subtler fragrance of ancient death. Both of them stale, clinging to the walls in dismal clouds like cigarette smoke. Zillah's senses were coming back to him in a steady stream now, and along with them all of his memories. He connected the one with the other and his gaze slid immediately to the closet. He swallowed against the bitter taste that had sunk its velvet claws into the back of his tongue. When he uttered his singular command, his voice came out clearer than it had before. It gave him hope. "Show yourself."
After a moment of presence-filled silence, they obliged him. Taking shape from a handful of moth-eaten clothes, they stepped out of the closet together wound tightly in one another's arms. Joined at the hip, it seemed, their milk pale bodies meshed as one single entity with twice the appropriate number of limbs. One had hair the color of flax or straw, as brilliantly yellow as the sun in a child's crayon portrait; the other's was equally as red. They had like-minded grins as terrible as Cheshire cats', lips painted a gaudy, whorish red and dripping, and it was all too apparent that they were pleased with themselves. "What are you doing here?"
"We fixed you," one of them, the blonde one, said.
"Yessssssss," the red twin all but hissed.
"You were too pretty to be all broken," again, the blonde.
"...So we made it better..."
"Yesss...aaaaaallll better...."
Their voices were like sand paper on silk, dry and rasping despite their glamour. Zillah looked from the one of them to the other, back and forth like a tennis match, sorting out the details of his apparent reconstruction. All of their kind knew about the twins, their awful brand of particular power. What they weren't especially known for was their generosity? ...A will to create instead of destroy? According to their husky chanting, voices like death rattles, they had restored him from....the accident...because he was pretty. Accident? Traitor. Anger clouded those beautiful features, so painstakingly rebuilt, and drained again only to be replaced by something else.
"Yesss........." crooned the red twin, singing to himself as he held his brother and swayed.
"Yesss........." mimicked the yellow one. ".....We know where he is...."