Twice Tender (481 hits)
Category: GeneralLabels: Fiction
Rating: 1.4 on 13 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Kaos-King (antius777) (View user info) at 2009-05-14 01:59:31 EDT
Poposani hurried down the street, past the filthy and abandoned storefronts that stared back at him. The broken windows sat jagged, menacing and waiting for a drunk vagrant to misstep on to them. There was even a small spittle of blood trailing down on particularly nasty shard. The dried brown ichor caught Poposani's eye and he slowed his step for a moment. Old, the blood was old.
He felt the small item in his deep overcoat pocket, felt it give under the subtle pressure of his fingers. He had wrapped it quickly in the brown butchers' paper. Hopefully it wasn't leaking. Continuing on down the unlit street, the wind picked up behind him as if to push him along on his journey. Penza was about five hundred kilometers south of Moscow, but still the frigid cold of the approaching winter blasted the city. Soon the city would be blanketed in snow and Poposani would find his distractions much more difficult.
Distractions. It is a funny thing that you call them that!
Poposani mumbled something that the wind stole and marched on. He did not so much worry about being found out. No, he worried about the future right now, about the temperature and how all the pretty young things would be hidden indoors. How he loved his girls, his aeboykn. Yes, so delicate and beautiful, so full of laughter and life.
Ah, and is that what we are telling ourselves now? The taste of terror is not to our liking, but the taste of joy? You lie to yourself, Poposani!
"Quiet!" barked Poposani into the night.
HAHA! You like their fear, Poposani. Do you not remember licking those tears off the face of that frail one in the blue coat? How she wept, how she begged. It made you so hard...
"Not now, you!" Poposani rumbled as he hurried faster down the ruined street.
He could see the flickering light up ahead, the dull yellow entrance to his housing building. Outside, two elderly men argued over a bottle of cheap wine as a disease-ridden old whore cackled and egged them on. Her hair was an unnatural shade of yellow, much like the overhead lights that streamed down upon the steps into the building, makeup caked on thick to cover the years and the abuse. Her wide mouth, lips stained red, opened in shrill, stuttering laugh. Her mouth, it looked a gashed wound.
Yes, and you like those wounds, do you not? Eh, eh, Poposani? You like them young and oh so very tight. And sometimes you carve NEW holes for your loving, NEW wounds to cram yourself into.
"Quiet!" snapped Poposani, a little too loudly.
"What!" screeched the old whore. "What you say to me?"
"Nothing, nothing... leave me be."
She grunted as Poposani passed at took the steps and moved through the creaking green iron doors. The lights hanging from the ceiling flickered, illuminating the broken tile and the walls crusted with years worth of grime. He huffed down the hallway quickly, the sound of the pipes groaning and hissing louder as he neared the stairwell. After his stint in the Soviet Army, Poposani had retired here to Penza. His sister had lived here with her husband and she had help him find a job with this housing complex. He had been employed with them as a janitor for the last ten years, only recently moving to this particular building after his previous residence had been torn down. Poposani had discovered that this building was in far worse shape that the other one that had been torn down. No matter how hard he worked at cleaning the floors and keeping up the maintenance, the building itself seemed to be on a self-destructive path.
It was also shortly after Poposani had moved in, that the voice had begun. Just a whisper at first, usually repeating things in his head that he had just said, soon it had started saying new thing... different things. It talked to him about desires and urges, about things out of nightmares and how beautiful they could actually be. Poposani found himself talking more and more to this voice, this other person in his head. That's even what he called him; the pyron, the other.
Poposani burst through his door and the end of the hallway, down by the staircase. Few came down to this end, and even less bothered him these days. He knew that the tenets were scared of him, that they whispered that he was ghoulish. Carefully taking off his overcoat after removing the package, Poposani walked over to the dirty mirror above the sink in his small bathroom. Looking in the mirror, he understood the fears. Always a thin man, he had grown ever more gaunt the last few months. His hair, already thin and balding, he kept cut short or almost shaven.
And then there is what you have brought into your home with you. Think about THAT and now you know the truth; you ARE a ghoul, Poposani!
"You, you shut up!" growled Poposani. "You are the one who tells me to do theses things."
Eh, eh, Poposani! What do I tell you to do? We have out little talks, you and I, that is all. There is nothing I COULD make you do.
Poposani went to yell back at the voice but his eyes fell upon the package that he had taken from his coat and sat on his crooked table. Although he had wrapped it up in the brown butchers' paper twice over, a bit of blood was starting to seep through. He saw the deep crimson wetness soak into the paper from the bathroom and before he could move, the scent came to him.
Ah, you have caught it, the smell! And where is that meat, Poposani? It is on your tongue and in your belly, behind your eyes and wrapped around your prick. She was good, was she not? Ah, so so thin, that little Olga! But her rump...
"Her name was Olga?" asked Poposani in a whisper as he began to undress.
Does that surprise you? Yes, and before we had Illena and before that was Pascha. Do you like to know their names, Poposani?
Stripped down naked, Poposani stumbled over to the package. He began to unwrap in carefully, taking time to savor the scent and lick the drippings from his fingers. Staring down he saw the chunk of flesh he had carved off the young woman, the piece of her bottom the size of his fist. He ran his fingers over it as he began to drool.
"Names," mumbled Poposani. "How... how do..."
Eat Poposani, EAT! Eat your humble feast, for you are so so hungry!
Poposani lifted the tender flesh to his mouth and allowed his teeth to come down slowly, biting off a morsel. She had died so recently, not even an hour ago. The wind hadn't cooled the meat too much. He tasted it, tasted love and laughter and life. He tasted Olga. Chewing into the flesh, he felt himself shudder, felt his erection hit off the table. Beautiful. Olga tasted beautiful.
He lowered the meat and said out loud to the empty room, "How do I know her name?"
HAHA! So, you think YOU are so grand, Poposani? I just told you her name. She told me after you had plunged the blade up inside her rib cage. Olga died so so quick.
"What, what? I don't understand this?"
Oh, my silly Poposani. You think you have been talking to yourself? I am not you, I am pyron. I am the OTHER. As you make your kill as do I kill. As you make your meal as do I make mine. But yours is in your world and mine, well...
"You, you are a demon! A specter!" shouted Poposani hoarsely.
Ah, both more and less. I am a ghost, Poposani. The spirit of one who has passed on over a century ago. And while I can not kill in your world any longer, I CAN still kill in mine!
"What, what?"
Little Olga, after you conveniently murdered her in the world of the living, I am murdering her spirit in this world that I inhabit. Ah, but let us say that my methods are more... refined.
While Poposani had always killed with stealth so that his victims wouldn't scream, he now heard a shriek of unimaginable pain and terror rip through his head. Olga. Even dead, her torment was not at an end. HE had dragged her along and was killing her in his room, in his head.
"No, no... this is too much!" cried out Poposani.
We are partners, silly Poposani. You do not want to break up this partnership, do you?
"By god... yes, YES! What have I done?"
Olga continued to scream in his head along with a loud sigh that Poposani took to be HIM. The screams of the dead girl abruptly trailed off into a hollow nothingness and Poposani was left with silence. He fell to his knees and wept. He had been duped, manipulated. The agent of a mad ghost, using him to procure victims for slaughter in the afterlife. Madness, itself!
"Begone!" Poposani declared to the room with tears. "Begone, I renounce you!"
Do not do this, Poposani... you will regret it.
"Begone! I cast you out!" the man bellowed.
Eh, eh, Poposani...
Poposani felt his body lurch. What felt like a belch began to rise in his gullet and he pounded on his chest. His body lurching again, he fell back on his haunches and vomited out smoke. Now he felt something like heartburn climb up through him, his stomach churning with acid. Poposani's trembling hands dropped useless to his sides as he vomited smoke a second time, the bile in his belly rushing out and propelled up his esophagus. It never made it to his mouth. Poposani's chest exploded open in smoke and tendrils of mud. He seizured for a moment as the possession fled from his shattered body, spewing all about the small room. Finally, he fell back dead.
Ah, Poposani... so nice to see you in the FLESH! HAHA!!
There was no one in the room alive to hear Poposani scream.
User Reviews
Submitted by rob_berg (user info) at 2009-05-14 17:19:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Didn't read it... but that picture was really fuckin' cool.
Submitted by sage104 (user info) at 2009-05-14 16:31:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
It was a bit difficult to read...the language was a little sluggish or choppy or something.
I did like the overall storyline very much.
Submitted by scourge (user info) at 2009-05-14 14:48:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
i agree with bell.
this was just hard to read. your descriptive language is clumsy, the dialogue with the thing in his head was stilted and forced... add your perennially sloppy edit job to the mix, and i didn't care for this at all.
zero for effort i guess
Submitted by RoadSong (user info) at 2009-05-14 11:43:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Flesh eater = Auto +2!
The illustration is perfect, it fits like a ....oh nevermind.
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2009-05-14 11:15:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Thanks TuTs!
The RED Army part is dead on. I totally need to change that. I suppose once Poposani has been forced to accept the fact that there's a supernatural creature in his head, god wouldn't be a far reach. I WAS worried about that. From what I understand, as supposedly atheist as the Russian are/where they are also quite superstitious, too.
Submitted by F.J.Bell (user info) at 2009-05-14 06:43:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 for writing, but this might as well have been in Romanian for all the sense I made of it. Same with the last story. I can barely read the first paragraph.
It's not you, it's me.
Submitted by mystiamoon (user info) at 2009-05-14 04:42:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by EmissionImpossible (user info) at 2009-05-14 04:34:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Wildman (user info) at 2009-05-14 03:09:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2009-05-14 02:02:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
So, um... WHY don't individual posts have hit ratings anymore?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
idiot
Submitted by TuTs (user info) at 2009-05-14 02:36:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I liked this, just one thing, why would Popasani (sp?), care that the demon was torturing his victims in another world? Depending on what year this is set the Russians were fiercely athiest and believed there was no God, so Popasani wouldn't have been consoling himself that his victims were going to another place after he had killed them and pre 1945 the Soviet Army was called the Red army.
The hit counters being gone, maybe it is because we have all been saying err the ratings don't matter, so we are being made to appreciate the ratings by our hits being taken away?
Submitted by orphelia (user info) at 2009-05-14 02:13:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
So he can rig the MVA of course
Submitted by orphelia (user info) at 2009-05-14 02:11:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2009-05-14 02:02:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
So, um... WHY don't individual posts have hit ratings anymore?
Seems like an odd thing for Bart to change.