IGKTW Round 2 (Exhibition) - The Black Crow King (685 hits)
Category: NoneLabels: one-part_stories red_right_hand
Rating: 1.85 on 18 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Stagger Lee (View user info) at 2006-05-05 00:14:57 EDT
She runs through the field, and the tall grass whips her face with a thousand tiny, biting cuts. Her feet are sore, and the mud sucks at them, hindering her motion and slowing her pace. It seems like any second her legs will give way, and then she'll be overwhelmed and torn down.
The moon hangs in the sky, and she could swear that a filthy, grinning face is stamped upon it. In the callous visage of the moon she sees all the rotten, broken steps that led her to this conclusion, all the mistakes and lapses of judgement, every emotional, stupid decision.
Every footfall seems to be a fresh nail in her coffin.
She can hear them, of course. Their shouts carry to her on the wind, giving the illusion that they are close to hand. She can't allow herself the luxury of believing that they are distant, however. She knows that all too well. And above all the calls from the hunters, she can hear his voice, rising and clamouring like the battle horn of a charging army. Calling across the fields with an authority that none may question or deny. Orchestrating to perfection their every move, carrying out his desires with merciless and undeniably effective ambition.
It was only half an hour ago when she stormed into his Revival Tent and pointed a stern finger at him, where he stood on the stage.
"You!" she had shrieked, one hand cupping her swollen stomach. "You done got me with child!" Her voice had sounded cracked and demented, even to her.
He cocked an eyebrow, ever the fucking confident bastard. Ever in control.
"Pardon?" he said, and where her voice was breaking and insane, his was smooth, calm and persuasive. "Do I know you, child?"
"Know me?" she cawed. "That's a laugh! Really! You fucked me, preacher!"
He eyed her quizzically, tilting his head to one side. "I did not," he said. "This would not be an act I would perform, nor condone. It appears that you seek to tarnish and discredit me, but I am the voice and the staff of God." He raised his arms and bellowed, "And you are but a harlot seeking some unjust retribution upon the mouth of God? Shame! Shame on you and all your issue!" He gestured to his congregation, all the people of the town, who were hanging on his every word with eyes and mouths agape. "Take her!" he cried, and his eyes were wide and his fingers clenched.
Before the crowd could react, she read their intent and fled. To slow to catch her initially, they rose belatedly from their seats and gave chase. Clutching at her unborn child, she bolted into the fields surrounding the tent.
Now she runs, her lungs and muscles burning. She's afraid that she's twisted her right ankle, because it seems to be burning with a much higher intensity, but she can't take the time to stop and check. She has to try and work through the pain, and the fear, and the confusion that chatters and scrapes away at the inside of her skull. She knew that they followed him, but she didn't know how blind and extensive their devotion was. Until now.
Then it happens. Her foot snags on something. Maybe it's a root; doesn't really matter now. She pitches forward and lands face down in the mud, and a terrified thought skitters across her overworked mind: the baby, the child in her womb...she's landed on it, and apart from anything else that's about to happen to her, this sends a cold jolt of fear through her.
It seems like they're on her in an instant; they're all grabbing hands and grinning, crazed faces. She recognises the three people. There's Bill Markell, he who runs the butcher. There's Sam Watson, he owns the bakery and the attached liquor store. Jerry Dufresne, antique merchant.
It's Watson that lands a savage blow across her face, for she is struggling and thrashing in Dufresne's and Markell's grip. Her head snaps back and she spits blood and teeth into the hungry soil.
"You don't have to do this!" she cries, and Markell momentarily recoils, honest doubt propelled across his face in a fleeting storm. But then Watson steps up smartly and smacks her across the mouth. She thinks she loses another tooth, but that just doesn't fucking matter anymore.
They haul her, her struggles ever weakening, through the grass and into the open. She sees a wide trail slashed through the grass, in almost a direct line from the Revival Tent, and coming along this trail is a party of perhaps ten men, dragging the giant cross from the tent.
One of the men is her brother.
They pull the cross into the centre of the clearing, and slam it into an upright position. She sobs, and tears run through the grime and blood on her face, cutting little trails of misery down her countenance. They set about lashing ropes to the cross and attaching the ropes to pegs in the ground.
Watson and Dufresne take her and push her up against the cross. Markell and another man whom she does not know secure her arms to the crucifix, and her brother ties her feet into place. He doesn't look at her face, not once.
And then, only then, when she is completely imprisoned, on display for the entire town that used to be her home, the man who has orchestrated this whole thing stands before her.
She stares at him, the tears still pouring down her face, and notices for the first time that she can't see his eyes. She should be able to, but shadows are pooling unnaturally in his face, obscuring his eyes, but not his savage, triumphant grin.
"As our Lord was sacrificed, thus we sacrifice this whore!" he cries, and a cheer goes up from the assembled townspeople, thirsty for her blood. "It's the Lord's work we do here, make no mistake!" Another cheer.
He steps in close to her, looking up into her face. His eyes are invisible, whirlpools of black. "Worry not about our child," he says, in a special, low voice, just for them. "We'll take real good care of it."
He snaps his fingers and steps back. It's Watson who comes to him and slaps a worn, wickedly sharp knife into his palm. Watson backs away quickly. He draws the knife along his own arm, loosing a short, warm rain of blood into the trampled mud of the clearing.
Then, with the knife's edge still wet with his own fresh cut, he steps back in close and the last thing she sees before mercifully fainting is the beginning of the cut down her stomach.
User Reviews
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2007-05-06 14:31:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Another excellent story.
Submitted by darko (user info) at 2006-06-21 02:10:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I don't like you
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-05-17 10:20:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Method (user info) at 2006-05-17 06:57:15 (#)
Ranking: -2
You're a fucking whiny faggot who's got some sort of superiority complex
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Am I? I must have missed that.
Submitted by Method (user info) at 2006-05-17 06:57:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
You're a fucking whiny faggot who's got some sort of superiority complex
Submitted by redskieslookfake (user info) at 2006-05-08 04:05:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Apologies for the late review.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2006-05-07 00:54:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This was solid, says Mr. Late to Rate. But if actually entered in the contest I might have given a hair less than +2 simply because it's more horror/suspense than blues.
Still a good read though.
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-05-06 03:05:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Caesar, I kinda left yer ass flappin' in the wind, huh?
I love leaving comments that could be taken either way.
Yes, I meant that your comments said something useful and
didn't twist a story into something it's not.
Now, about that cookie. . .
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-05-06 01:58:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
No, you were right, Caes. There is no backstory apart from what the reader assumes, as it is supposed to stand on its own. If that's how you interpreted it, that's fine.
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2006-05-05 22:25:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-05-05 11:58:38 (#)
Ranking: 2
Caesar, you should get a new job. At Cliffs Notes. Their interpretations
are meaningless drivel.
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Bubba, if you mean that I'd fit in because my interpretations are also meaningless drivel, then I have three words for you: Suck it, Trebek.
If you mean that my interpretations are better and I could clean Cliff's Notes up, then thank you, you are a sweet man and I will buy you a cookie one day.
It seems there was some backstory to this tale that I wasn't aware of. I assumed I was reading a one-parter because it's part of a competition, yes? My bad, there.
As for your response to my last comment, Stagger, I didn't mean to say that you're obsessed with that stuff...just that the story would have been fuller and more enjoyable to me if you focused more on that. The gore and shocking stuff really stands out when there's not a lot of story or plot to back it up, you know?
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-05-05 11:58:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Caesar, you should get a new job. At Cliffs Notes. Their interpretations
are meaningless drivel.
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-05-05 11:16:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
And thanks to Thorns and DrogoRoch.
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-05-05 11:15:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2006-05-05 09:22:27 (#)
Ranking: 1
I hate answering reviews like this, cos it makes me seem like a whiny bitch, but here goes:
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Ah...I hate to ruin a +2 streak, but this story fundamentally bothered me in a lot of ways.
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Streaks aren't important, rate how you feel.
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1. She must have been really pregnant if they were expecting to do a C-section on her. Like, 8 or 9 months. Why didn't she confront the preacher before? It sounded at first like she just found out she was pregnant.
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It's a tale without any real backstory, so I left a lot to be assumed. Perhaps she only just got the courage to confront him. Perhaps she was getting along fine with him and then he abandoned her, prompting the confrontation. As for the term of pregnancy, I should have made it clearer that the preacher (or Black Crow King) isn't human, which can be realised if you read the other stories, but wasn't really clear in this one on its own. My bad.
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2. Those hillbillies were really, really devoted. She seemed surprised. I don't know how she could have lived in that community (which i must assume she does, given that she has sex there and her brother lives there) and not suspect how deep the preacher's hooks run. I mean, her own brother was willing to crucify her. Mindless devotion and acceptance of cruelty doesn't just come out of nowhere.
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Again, there's a lot that can be assumed, so maybe it's my fault for leaving it out. Originally this story was gonna be about 3 times longer but I pared it back a lot to increase the impact. And the idea was basically that the preacher was very subtle in his control, moving into the community and spreading his influence slowly and almost undectably.
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3. "Calling across the fields with an authority that none may question or deny. Orchestrating to perfection their every move, carrying out his desires with merciless and undeniably effective ambition." I though that line was too flowery, considering it was describing what appear to be a bunch of hicks on a swamp-hunt. Got lost in the language.
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I get flowery when I'm drunk, and I was drunk when I wrote the bulk of this.
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4. "She can hear them, of course. Their shouts carry to her on the wind, giving the illusion that they are close to hand." Why "of course?" That should have just been, "she can hear them." And apparently they are very, very close at hand, because the first time she trips, they're all over her.
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The idea here was that she couldn't tell whether they were close or not because she was scared witless. Who's to say they didn't catch up with her sometime in the intervening paragraphs?
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Overall, it seemed like you were too interested in the shock and gore value, and not enough on the story itself.
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This is the one part of your critique that I was actually slightly offended by, because I'm not about shock value at all (at least, I try not to be).
Thanks a lot for taking the time to read it and criticise it, means a lot to me.
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2006-05-05 09:22:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Ah...I hate to ruin a +2 streak, but this story fundamentally bothered me in a lot of ways.
1. She must have been really pregnant if they were expecting to do a C-section on her. Like, 8 or 9 months. Why didn't she confront the preacher before? It sounded at first like she just found out she was pregnant.
2. Those hillbillies were really, really devoted. She seemed surprised. I don't know how she could have lived in that community (which i must assume she does, given that she has sex there and her brother lives there) and not suspect how deep the preacher's hooks run. I mean, her own brother was willing to crucify her. Mindless devotion and acceptance of cruelty doesn't just come out of nowhere.
3. "Calling across the fields with an authority that none may question or deny. Orchestrating to perfection their every move, carrying out his desires with merciless and undeniably effective ambition." I though that line was too flowery, considering it was describing what appear to be a bunch of hicks on a swamp-hunt. Got lost in the language.
4. "She can hear them, of course. Their shouts carry to her on the wind, giving the illusion that they are close to hand." Why "of course?" That should have just been, "she can hear them." And apparently they are very, very close at hand, because the first time she trips, they're all over her.
Overall, it seemed like you were too interested in the shock and gore value, and not enough on the story itself.
Submitted by CaptainThorns (user info) at 2006-05-05 09:18:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2006-05-05 01:28:02 (#)
Ranking: 2
Jesus fucking Christ, Stag...this was terrifying.
And I hated the way it ended. Because I was supposed to.
Submitted by DrogoRoch (user info) at 2006-05-05 08:07:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Superb stuff.
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-05-05 01:35:59 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Cheers Bubba and Saccy.
I guess my female characters do sort of tend to get fucked over, don't they? It's probably cos I can't write women properly so they end up just being targets.
On another note, this is the link for other stories that are sort of related to this one, but aren't really in the same series.
http://www.ubersite.com/u/stagger_lee/l/red_right_hand
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2006-05-05 01:28:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Jesus fucking Christ, Stag...this was terrifying.
And I hated the way it ended. Because I was supposed to.
damn.
After this blues thing, would you consider bringing me a female character who actually gets justice?
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-05-05 01:20:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Yea Haw!!! Lookin' good. Good stuff !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!