Tag: 2022

…The ship arches forward as it’s sails are filled with a fierce gust of wind, propelling her forward at speeds once thought impossible. Davy looks over to Shaun with a broad smile across his sun-dried lips, “I TOLD YOU! I KNEW! HOPE IS OURS! THE WIND HAS FINALLY COME TO SAVE US AS SHE PROMISED!” he roars with words drenched in a joy not heard from in many days. “Life may still be ours to steal back!”

Shaun smiles halfheartedly, before looking over his shoulder and into the darkness that slowly swallows the world behind them. “Where can we run to that it cannot swallow? This ship will run out of sea eventually, and then what?”

“WE RUN!” Davy bellows with jovial laughter.

“We can’t run forever, can we?”

The red runs dry from Davy’s cheeks, and he looks out across the open sea before them while he gently chews on the strips of flesh that hang from his lips, before he looks over the Shaun with a grim scowl painted across his deep brow. “For sixty-three years I lived a life scared of the day death came for me instead of living the life I SHOULD’VE lived, and now that death has cast its stone in my bucket, all I want is what it stole! So my answer is yes, YES WE FUCKING CAN!” he sneers while giving Shaun a playful wink….

…“Pale in comparison, that is what I said,” Snake hisses through clench jaw.

“Really?” Clive scoffs. “You think you are something I should fear?”

“I think you should count all the bodies that stand against you for what they are, red flags, revolutions, and penance. We are the many, and we are the ONE!” he spits.

“YOU ARE NOTHING!” Clive bellows as he swings the blade of his sword through the air, removing Snake’s head from his body, then with bared teeth turns to the others that kneel before him, their hands hogtied behind them.

“Who wants to be the next to feel my WRATH!” he seethes with fiery spit flying from his lips. “Who, who kneels before me, wishes to challenge my RULE!”

“All, and none,” Snake wheezes behind him, as his decapitated corpse uneasily gets to his feet, while his head slowly regrows from the severed stump.

“W-W-W-What m-manner of s-sorcery is t-this?” he stammers, as he takes a staggered step backwards.

“This is not s-sorcery, t-this is your penance paid in spades!”…

…The light blinks five or six times before glowing as bright as a newborn star, revelling a sea of shadow figures surrounding Damon, with Christoph at the forefront.

“Hello little brother, miss me?” he asks with a swagger Damon had not seen before in his brother.

“I-I-I, I didn’t even realise you w-were gone.”

The smile drops from Christoph’s face, and he stares at his brother with a stony resolve, before he smiles broadly once again. “The old Christoph would’ve let a crude remark like that cut to his very bone, but not I, not the Christoph that stands before you. I laugh,” he says with a well-placed overly loud and deeply sarcastic laugh. “I laugh while you suffer in the SHIT you FUCKING built for yourself.”

“YOU BUILT THIS SHIT, I JUST TOOK IT FROM YOUR DEAD HANDS AND MADE IT INTO SOMETHING BETTER! SOMETHING WORTH FUCKING DYING FOR!” he bellows as he thrusts himself to his feet, sizing himself up to his smiling brother.

“Well then little brother,” Christoph sneers, as the light goes out. “Prepare to die.”…

…Leo smiles broadly and nods his head in rhythmic fashion while pointing a finger towards David. “You almost had me,” he says with jovial jest.

David smiles nervously. “W-W-What gave me away?”

“That FUCKING smile,” he spits as he thrusts his hand into the air. “That FUCKING smarmy arsed smile ain’t the smile of some psycho serial killer, it’s the smile of a prankster looking for some new fool to take advantage of. Well give yourself a round of applause because you almost had me.” Leo says as he pulls a revolver from a holster beneath his jacket, winks playfully at David, before he squeezes the trigger back and removes half his head.

Time slows as David’s head explodes from the impact, sending pieces of skull, flesh and brain flying in all directions while a volcan of red erupts into the sky.

“CAN YOU PLEASE STOP KILLING THEM!” David bellows as he charges into the room and snatches the gun from Leo’s hands. “DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG IT TAKE, TO GET THEM TO THIS STAGE?”

Leo squeezes his lips together and grips his jaw between his thumb and forefinger while closing one eye and staring off into the distance with the other. “About three weeks?” he says with a cocky smile and a wink.

“YOU ARE IMPOSSIBLE!” he screams.

“And your dead!” Leo says as he produces a second pistol from another holster in his jacket, raises it quickly to David’s head and pulls the trigger….

…“Rose coloured glasses don’t always overlook the desperate and unforgivable, they just dress them up in bright coloured flares and some long hair,” Janice sings with a wry smile across her lips, as she dances whimsically around the vacant lot, weaving and dodging, until she finally comes to a stop in front of the kneeling Stuart.

“What say you knight of the light? Do you think the world is ready to see herself for what she truly is?” she purrs, as she caresses his cheek with her blood-soaked hand.

“She is not what you think she is. She is not broken like you.”

She laughs softly. “Like ME? Are you saying I am broken?” she says as she presses a hand against her chest and looks playfully shocked.

“Lady,” he snarls with twisted lips. “You are one FUCKED up piece of work that I can’t even start to put into a category.”

Her smile waivers, then broadens. “Well then my sweet little child, let me help you with that!” she says as she grips him by the side of the head, and tears one of his ears off….

…Gerry clenches his teeth and drives the blade deep into Luke’s stomach, staring deep into his eyes as the life leaks from his stomach.

“Y-Y-You b-b-ba…” But his words are cut short as Gerry pulls the knife free, and drives it back in several more times, then once his thirst is quenched, he lets the lifeless husk drop to the blood-soaked earth below.

“Stolen away, time and places,” he hisses.

“Yet the loop is never complete,” Luke sings with sarcastic flair from behind.

“There is no loop, there is only betrayal.”

“Yours or mine?”

“Both, or neither.”

Luke laughs softly. “There cannot be one or neither, there can only be one or the other.”

“In the real world maybe, but when you stepped over that landing, you stepped into my world, where only my rules apply.”

 “Then why am I still standing?”

“Because I see fit to keep you that way, and when I grow tired,” he says with a wide grin across his lips. “And believe me, one day I will, you won’t be standing then.”…

…The light burns through the doorway, and cuts Fabian’s flesh as if it were a knife. He lets out a muffled cry, as he clenches his teeth tightly and casts a fevered glance towards Marcus.

“A-Are you HAPPY!” he spits.

“Happy is a human emotion long since lost to our kind, can’t you JUST let go, and embrace who you truly are?”

“A-And w-what is that? T-THE DEVIL!”

Marcus laughs softly, “There is only room enough in hell for one devil, and I have that role,” he sings with a playful curtsey. “You are the fool who must keep the king entertained.”

“W-What a s-surprise, y-y-you always k…” But his words a torn from his flesh, as the sun’s rays cut through the open doorway and burn his flesh like a hot iron.

“I ALWAYS WHAT?” Marcus bellows venomously, as he grabs Fabian by the back of the skull and forces his face into the sun for several seconds, before pulling it back away. “ALYWAS WHAT YOU PATHETIC PIECE OF SHIT!”

Fabian lets out a groan lost in the depths of pain, while a wry smile slithers its way across his lips. “M-M-Made you look,” he spits as he grips Marcus and thrusts him into the doorway…

…The light from the television falls away leaving Stuart staring blankly at the empty screen. Seconds pass quickly as they are suddenly minutes, while Stuart’s gaze stays firmly planted on the screen. The silence is soon washed away as gently buzz beings to emit itself from the well inside the screen. A buzz that grows louder and louder with each passing moment. Then as it reaches its crescendo an arm reaches out towards him, and while Stuart’s eyes scream out, his body remains stationary. Some countless moments later a second arm reaches out, and with unseen focus, the hands grip either side of the screen, and a figure pulls himself out and he falls to the floor before Stuart.

His lips tremble and a sea of sweat streams down his face as his eyes terrified, looks down upon the huddles figure. “W-W-W-Wha…” But his words find themselves captured in his throat as the figure stands quickly up, and stands proudly before him. “B-B-Brad?” he stammers in surprise.

“That’s right Stewie, it’s me Brad Pitt, your old mate!” Brad says with a playful wink, and a broad grin.

“B-B-B-But how?” Stuart mumbles as he looks bewilderingly over to the television.

“Let’s not get caught up in the how, and keep ourselves in the now,” Brad says as he moves in the way of Stuart’s gaze, dragging it back to him. “IT’S ME, BRAD PITT! Don’t want to waste THAT worrying about how it is, RIGHT?”…

…“It is such a shame,” Louie sighs as he casts a wayward glance across the barren lands that lay beyond the citadel’s walls, before looking back down to Jacque. “I had hoped we could’ve ruled over these lands as one.”

“BULLSHIT!” he spits through broken bloody teeth. “There was only ever ONE WAY you wanted this to END, and it’s the ending you’ve GOTTEN!”

Louie smiles and throws his head back into the air while laughing loudly. “Bravo my love! Bravo!” he applauds with jovial excitement as he claps his hands together while he looks around the courtyard in a overdramatise fashion. “Where are they? Are they hidden in cow dung, or are they mounted on the backs of the flies that buzz around us?”

Jacques face screws up in confusion and a fresh sea of sweat begins to flow from his bruised and beaten brow. “W-W-What the F-F-FUCK are you t-talking about? What’s m-mounted the b-back of f-f-flies?”

The smile on Louise’s face broadens while his eyes sparkle in the fading light. “The cameras my dear boy! The cameras!”

“W-W-What c-cameras?”

“The ones recording your performance of course! For a performance as good as the one you are putting on would be wasted without a camera to capture it.”…

…As the cage drops over Damon, he swallows a frantic mouthful of dead air. Gripping the barbed metal, he grimaces as the talons cut into his flesh. With panicked desperation he struggles to lift the monstrosity, before a laboured clapping erupts from beyond the hallowed darkness that surrounds the cold foothills was once his family’s proud land.

“A king to his people, is what he asked for,” a haggard voice sings as the decaying form of Barnaby steps into the light around him. “A KING!”

“W-W-W-WHY! WHY DO YOU HAUNT ME SO!” he bellows.

“I am no GHOST! I am a promise given form! I am a piece of paper, signed and sealed. I am a reminder of a memory desperately hidden in the back of oneself, ensuring the deal is fulfilled!”

“BUT IT’S NOT MY DEAL! IT’S NOT MY PROMISE! WHY COME CLAIM THE DIVIDENS FROM ME, WHEN HIS WAS THE BLOOD THAT SEALED YOUR WAGER!” he spits with stomach churning desperation.

Barnaby smiles a mouthful of rotten teeth. “He wagered not just his eternal soul, but that of his linage, and as each generation moves behind the next, I collet what is owed!”

Damon laughs nervously, as his lips quiver. “T-T-T-Then y-y-you’re not h-h-here for me, a-a-as I have n-n-no kin, a-a-and this is j-j-just s-s-some demented warning? T-T-To scare me i-i-in succumbing to y-your will!”

“NO! You have sown your seed, a father you are about to become.”

“W-W-WHAT?” he stammers as a sea of sweat cascades down his brow….