Cruor et Caedis chapter IV

Earlier chapters:
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III

- - -

Chapter IV

Jack was thinking about his father. He had to, since his father was looking down to him from the big, yellow and green sky that had small purple spirals here and there. His father smiled. He smiled in that one certain way Jack knew all too well. Jack tried to hide, but he knew it would be futile. He called for great billows of fog to appear in front of him, to screen him.

There were scary, shadowy creatures moving around him. Sometimes he thought he knew them. That one looked like his strongman, but something was wrong with him. He was talking to Jack, tried to warn him of something, but Jack could not make any sense out of the echoing blabber he heard.

"QUIET!" he shouted. "Quiet quiet quiet quiet quiet QUIET!"

Leering, unfamiliar faces appeared in the fog and they were repeating "quiet" mockingly. Strongman and a dog were fighting them, it looked like. But Ís was not quiet. This was perhaps sixth day with no sleep.

He wanted to sit down, so he sat. All of this was not so different from his youth, the days in the glass tub. His father had deemed Jack old enough to perform in the main show. He was supposed to become a mermaid. Jack was being kept in the glass tub for many days. There were some fishes for him to eat if he only could catch them. Eventually he could. In the end he was even able to catch fish with his bare hands in pitch black darkness, and could feel which creatures he touched were fish and which were... something else. Something more sinister, that were inhabiting the physical vessel of a fish.

Finally there were nothing else left than the possessed fish. There was nothing else to eat. So he ate the possessed fish. And became a mermaid. And suddenly he could see...

... he could see the great fists of his father raining down from the sky. His wrathful bellow almost drowned the monotonous shriek of Ís. Celestial father was apparently trying to hit Adon and Ís, he was not after Jack! ... yet. That part would come next. And indeed, he could already see fingers of his father, single digits only, flying towards him from the ruins. They were sharp and cruel, like arrows from a bow.

Jack was alone. All alone.

So he left. Jumped off a cliff, and he fell, he fell for a long time. He smiled. There at the bottom was a coffin. He knew he would hit the coffin, and get some sleep at last. He hit the coffin, and Ís was silent.

-

When Jack opened his eyes, he was dizzy and couldn't see anything. He was tightly confined somewhere... it was some sort of a metal box. Box, and not a crawlspace. But the box was in motion, so Jack assumed he had not been buried alive. He knocked on what he thought was the lid. Motion stopped and the lid was being lifted.

Grim face of the strongman and the mask of Ennu were looking at him.

"Jack! You're awake! How do you feel?" Ennu asked.

"Silly you. I feel fine. Can somebody explain why I am this... what this box is, anyway?" Jack said as he arose from his confinement. But just as he was stepping out of the box, the shriek of Ís pierced his skull, and Jack fell back to the box.

"I... uh, I think I'll be here for a while. Now, explain."

"Well, mister... you haven't been alright for a while. You were quite out of you mind. Sleep had escaped beyond your reach. For a week or so. We tried to follow your orders as best as we could, but, forgive me for saying this, but they were rather insensible. We were going to escape the city when we encountered some resistance. We could not fight them, for your condition was our primary concern. In the middle of the fight we found this curious artefact and thought it best to keep it with us. You were following it with great interest, and once we were sure we were not being pursued, we began to inspect it. When we opened the lid, you climbed there before we could even remove the desiccated corpse. I'm afraid your cloak might be a little filthy, for we could not move you."

"Oh. Oh. I'll get to that later. I just don't feel like getting up just yet."

"You've been sleeping for over two full days, sire. You could not give us orders, so we left Frostgrave."

"Good, good. Find an inn or something. We need some supplies anyway. Wake me when we're there."

Next chapter.