Gruberfest Round 1 - Brick by Brick (1020 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.95 on 25 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Snark << snarkk.at.gmail.com (View user info) at 2008-09-28 23:46:13 EDT
Desert dust and New Mexico sky and she stands on the edge of town with empty eyes and full hands.
Her hair is long and red. It brushes haphazardly across her weather etched face as if in defiance of a comb.
Her figure is slim. It's covered in a blood stained yellow dress and looks somehow at ease with the thick brown leather boots laced tightly to her feet.
The shotgun in her hand is old and the crosses newly carved in either side of the butt almost perfectly match the ones carved into either side of her face.
It's Sunday, the lords day, and the lords children are at play in the town square. Townsfolk sell farm goods, crafts and a host of other hometown sundries from carts and stands and the back of pickup trucks. Those not selling wander lazily from neighbour to neighbour. They exchange pleasantries in the gentle warmth of the late summer sun.
None of them see her walk stiffly towards them, bood dripping lazily from her narrow chin. None of them notice her at all until the first shot is fired.
Minister Tolemson is hit first. The bottom half of his face disintegrates a split second before his tongue would have touched the best lemonade of his natural life. The force of the impact sends him
pirouetting to the other side of the road before slumping to the ground. He'll bleed out where he falls. Never again will he lay on hands or speak in tongues.
For a moment the pleasant din of the day is silenced and then a woman begins to scream as she realizes the moist red splatter on her t-shirt didn't come the cherry pie in her hands.
People stop and stare and then another shot rings out and the woman with the pies husband is suddenly sitting on the ground beside her. His face is white and what's left of his spleen is mangled and hanging from the ragged hole in the side of his striped shirt.
The woman screams again and her voice is followed by others in a rising wave of panic. Neighbour pushes aside neighbour in a frantic quest to get somewhere, anywhere but there.
Those that notice the woman with the shotgun held stiffly at her side run the other way but most don't, at least not yet.
Some stand and cry. Some duck behind carts. Others throw themselves to the ground and cover their heads. Most of them will die.
The woman wades into them. Pumps the action and fires again. A woman in tight black coveralls goes down face first. The pulped contents of her head splashes across the baked road.
A man in a short sleeved dress shirt and plain black tie cries "Oh my God! Help us!" and then his left knee is shot out and he goes down with a screech on top of the Minister. For a moment his eyes fix on the solid gold gore spattered cross dangling from the Ministers neck ,and he marvels at the pure evil that this kind of thing should happen to innocent folk, and he wishes he had gone to church that day, but before the severed artery in his leg pumps the last limp squirt of
life from his body he will look up to see the face of his killer and he'll remember that he isn't innocent. None of them are. Those that didn't perform the ritual knew of those that did. They may not have been in Miller's Glade the night before to brutalize the woman killing them all.
They may not have joined hands with them and spoke words deemed too dark for the world an age before, and drank of the blood squeezed from the heart of their murderers daughter but they knew.
Deep down they all understood the dark things their silence allowed.
The woman in the blood stained dress walks among the fallen and the panicked. Her thin hands work the action of the shotgun over and over again and when it runs dry they reach into the folds of her dress for more shells, and the beast is fed once more only to voice its leaden sermon again.
Seven more lives are pushed out of the world and twice that number are left wrecked and bleeding before the square is clear of the untouched and the woman is left standing alone in it's center. Her face drops as she slowly turns. She's looking for one face in particular. She's looking for the man who held the knife that cut her daughters heart from her pale thin chest but he's not there.
Behind her a truck door slams shut. A man in an orange baseball cap and dirty mechanic coveralls raises a hunting rifle with shaking hands and takes aim over the hood. He's one of only two men who will dare to stand against the woman this day.
The sound of the rifle bolt being worked makes it to her ears but she makes no move to turn towards him or to find cover. She shuffles from body to body, her shoulders shaking with frustration even as the bullet punches through her back, sending a fine red spray out from directly between her breasts.
The force of the impact pushes her to the ground, arms and legs flailing limply like a rag doll. She's still for second but then grunts and begins to push herself up. The second bullet hits her in her side and she goes limp. More red stains bloom on her dress.
The man with the rifle walks towards her slowly. He keeps its sights on her even though the shotgun lies on the road well out of her reach. He stops a couple of feet away. He stands above her and marvels at what he's done and then at the crosses cut into her cheeks. The hewn flesh is red and wet. It glows like the coal in the furnace where he works.
After a time, when he's satisfied that there is no telltale sign of breath being drawn into her body he leans down and their eyes lock. For a moment, he feels he might fall into the emptiness there and then her mouth is opening impossibly wide and her scream fills every last inch of his being.
His eyes burst from his head and he slumps to the ground. Pinkish grey ooze leaks from his ears.
Across the street, in the red brick courthouse a man in a judges smock stares out of the top window at the carnage below. He is the man she is looking for. The sound of her daughter's dying scream still rings sweetly in his ears. The taste of her heart still sits coppery on his tongue.
Bits of her flesh are still stuck beneath his yellow fingernails.
He stares unbelievingly at the scene below, unable to process what has happened even as the woman forces herself up onto shaking legs and turns in his direction.
Despite everything he's seen in his twisted life he can't bring himself to believe it is possible.
He'd killed her. The whole coven had killed her. All nine of them had pushed their blades into her naked body when the ritual was done. He'd taken her daughter, and her life, and then cut the symbols of the God she'd cried to for help into her cheeks as a final insult.
The woman below takes a weak setp towards the courthouse and almost without thinking he summons the power he'd stolen from the girl the night before. The great metal doors of the courthouse slam shut. The thick steel lock snaps into place.
She takes another step. This one somehow steadier than the first as if she's drawing strength with each one and the voice in his head is screaming at him "You didn't make sure. You should have made sure. You should have taken her head. There will be questions asked now. Strangers will come to town and poke their noses into your business. Everything will be ruined. YOU SHOULD HAVE TAKEN HER HEAD!"
She takes another step and then another until she's standing directly beneath his window. Her face turns up towards him and the complete lack of emotion in it drags him from his shock. He mumbles words long forgotten under his breath and then pushes his hand through the window. The glass shatters and falls to the street below. The shards sparkle in the sun like ice, or gems before peppering the bloody burnt corpse staring eyeless back.
He shouts the last of his incantation and points at her. He sends every bit of power he took from the little girl at the woman below. Every last delicious morsel of soul he's ever eaten is called to bare on her and his incantation becomes a yell of triumphant defiance as her dress and hair burst into flames.
She shreiks again but this time it is powerless. This time it is pain escaping her lips. The judge watches contently as she writhes on the ground. Her dress blackens and falls away while the skin beneath begins to follow suite. Her eyes burst and fat runs in thick boiling rivulets
from her lips and breasts until the shreik becomes a croak and the croak a whisper.
He doesn't remember to breath until her charred remains are finally still but his first breath catches in his throat as the thing below him stirs once again and then slowly drags itself to its feet and - Oh No!- he can see.
There is no dress to cover her wounds now. He can see where the bullets exited her body. He can see the gaping holes where the Coven's jagged blades bit into her lungs and heart and all at once he realizes that the woman never did leave the glade alive. That the thing below him is vengeance, be it that of a woman or the God he blasphemed, it is vengeance pure and true and nothing in the dark tomes hidden beneath his floorboards or the demons whispering in his head has prepared him for this.
"What can she do?" queries the voice. "She may not die but you're in a fortress of brick. The bitch can't touch you here." The voice gives him a moment of solace but then the thing below stands up, raises eyeless sockets towards him and stretches its lipless mouth into a hellborne smile.
It raises its arm high over its head, its blackened fingers curl into fists and it makes ready to bring them down on the brick wall before it.
"WHAT CAN SHE POSSIBLY DO?" screams the voice in his head.
The first blow brings the judge to his knees.
The second sets him free.
User Reviews
Submitted by DonkeyOnTheEdge (user info) at 2008-10-01 23:04:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2008-10-01 20:20:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
"La la la la La la la lie
All God's children they all gotta die.."
Submitted by peckerhead (user info) at 2008-09-30 18:59:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
for most people, quick + dirty = crap.
For you, quick & dirty adds up to spontaneous, fresh and alive. Nicely done.
Submitted by Lib (user info) at 2008-09-30 16:33:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by JoeyG (user info) at 2008-09-30 03:03:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by RestrictionsApply (user info) at 2008-09-29 17:01:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Jack_of_Spades (user info) at 2008-09-29 16:35:22 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I'm reminded of Event Horizon, great mind-fuck movie!
...probably the part about the eyes here made me thing of it.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2008-09-29 14:15:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
1. I am the last person on Uber who will bitch about typos. I am King of the Typos.
2. I wish to fuck I had written this line, "The bottom half of his face disintegrates a split second before his tongue would have touched the best lemonade of his natural life."
A good read.
Submitted by Desz (user info) at 2008-09-29 13:24:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by TigerLilly (user info) at 2008-09-29 13:03:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2008-09-29 00:51:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Dipshit below...
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I don't know who Bubba is reffering to, I just wanted to copy his comment.
Submitted by inion_de_trua (user info) at 2008-09-29 12:35:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Snark (user info) at 2008-09-29 12:26:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Did my opponent forfeit or did I simply miss the post?
Submitted by monkeyswithguns (user info) at 2008-09-29 11:34:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by zoobie2000 (user info) at 2008-09-29 08:40:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
so what happens in the end? does she kill him?
Submitted by EmissionImpossible (user info) at 2008-09-29 07:37:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
MINE EYES!
Submitted by Nellypaal (user info) at 2008-09-29 07:02:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Liked it, but can't just let all the mistakes go unchallenged.
Submitted by sexualchocolate1984 (user info) at 2008-09-29 06:50:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This was really cool, a bit more rape would make it a +3.
Submitted by Gyro_Gearloose (user info) at 2008-09-29 02:13:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Snark (user info) at 2008-09-29 01:23:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Doodles (user info) at 2008-09-29 00:23:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You know that you should use one of these little fellas ( ' ) to denote possession, right?
I enjoyed it, actually.
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Yeah I know. This story is a mess. I'm lost without spell check.
Submitted by UnknownEntity (user info) at 2008-09-29 01:17:46 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Anyone else think of Silent Hill while reading this?
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2008-09-29 00:51:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Dipshit below...
Submitted by Doodles (user info) at 2008-09-29 00:23:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You know that you should use one of these little fellas ( ' ) to denote possession, right?
I enjoyed it, actually.
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2008-09-28 23:54:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
NOTEPAD!!!
You freakin' rule...
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2008-09-28 23:49:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Looks good to me.
Submitted by Snark (user info) at 2008-09-28 23:46:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Quick and dirty. Done at the last minute on notepad.