Grueberfest 06: R4 - Amanda's Ascent to the Abominate (486 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.52 on 23 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Jack McCallum (View user info) at 2006-10-22 20:04:27 EDT
I followed a trail of discarded clothing and drops of blood down into the winding depths of the madman Kern's damnable Inverse Tower, accompanied by two constables bearing firearms, men who would kill my love, given the opportunity.
A shriek carried up from the depths and chilled me to my core.
We found her in the lowest part of the complex, a great bowl of polished marble empty save for a bronze brazier containing a great fire.
She stood before that writhing nest of flame wearing not a stitch, and being a gentleman, despite our personal circumstances, I felt the urge to avert my eyes before my sensibilities informed me she had not been completely naked.
I looked closely and saw that my love was clothed in a mantle of blood and grue.
Professor Kern was lying at her feet, his remains shredded and scattered as if he had been savaged by wild dogs.
The constables were agog, the heavy, florid one drinking in the fulsome beauty of my love even as his jaw was loosened by stupefied awe, the tall one quickly crossing himself as his nose wrinkled with disgust, a fastidious Puritan.
An odor filled the air and my head swam with blood and musk and a high, sweet perfume.
She was bent forward at the waist, her posterior jutting out, her breasts swaying, her arms raised and her teeth bared, and she seemed an animal caught between primitive incentives, fight and fornication.
One of the officers struggled to raise his revolver as if it were a great weight.
I stepped close to her and saw her eyes glimmer behind tangled and matted blonde locks as she focused on me and released a guttural laugh. She swiped at me, long nails tearing my cheek, and to my shame I was immediately engorged, my mind crazed by her scent.
A sound filled the circular chamber, a loud bang with a curious, hollow quality. I felt a push and a tearing pain. I opened my waistcoat and looked down, seeing a crimson bloom on my shirt.
My love turned her attention to the constables, and I saw rage in her contorted features.
I swooned and fell to my knees. If she harmed these men even I could not save her.
"Amanda, my love." My breath was weak. "Don't..."
I fell flat on the cold marble floor.
Behind me I heard the constables voice a warning. I heard Amanda laugh again, winced at a flurry of pistol shots, and closed my eyes when the men began to scream and the chamber was filled with the most horrid wet tearing sounds...
*
I met Amanda in the winter of 1896. We had been introduced by Amanda's aunt Beatrice Attlewood, a childless gentlewoman of some means who saw it as her duty to manage her deceased banker husband's small fortune, and find suitable spouses for a bevy of lovely unattached nieces under her watchful eye.
Beatrice spent a great deal of time passing from one medical practice to another throughout greater London, presenting intentionally vague complaints and inspecting young doctors with a critical eye as they tried to determine the source of her 'unseemly cough' or 'restless calves' or 'transient headache.'
When she came to my practice at May's Court in the autumn of that year, announcing that she was suffering from a 'a socially ostracizing bitter wind' and raising her voice over the sound of tolling bells drifting through the window from nearby St. Martin in the Fields, I made a few discreet inquiries regarding her general health and diet, and Beatrice scrutinized me so closely I half expected her to reach out and squeeze me to test for ripeness or rot as if I were a tomato in a vegetable cart.
I had been a player in many performances of this little drama. I assume I must have some physical appeal to the fairer sex as I frequently caught of eye of many ladies, and the fact that I was a young unwed doctor with a successful practice meant that Doctor John Parley was a particularly attractive morsel of bait dangled before many a pretty fish.
Beatrice was not a stupid woman. Both her canny nature and her intellect appealed greatly to me, so I recommended that she stop having beans on toast with her afternoon tea and agreed to meet her niece.
After protesting that she would never sup on such pedestrian fare, Beatrice departed, informing me that her man would call and let me know when Amanda might be available.
If I were to describe Amanda in one word, I would have to borrow a term from our American cousins, and that word is feisty.
She was brilliant and beautiful, having long surpassed the limited education she received as a child by voraciously reading every book she could lay her hands upon. I often amused myself by imagining Amanda at my club when the older gentlemen started another rousing argument on any incendiary topic of the day, be it rising crime and the apparent helplessness of both the Metropolitan Police and the police of the City of London, the gradual chipping away of the Empire upon which it seemed inevitable the sun would one day set, or the growing nuisance that was the women's suffrage movement.
Amanda could have been a doctor if she had been able to afford to attend medical school.
Unfortunately her well-to-do aunt Beatrice would only loosen the purse strings long enough to buy pretty frocks and pots of paint for those lush lips.
When I voiced that thought one evening Amanda let out a laugh that thrilled me more than any symphony.
"A doctor?" she replied with a smile that made my heart race. "But John, you are all such a stuffy old lot, why would I want to molder away among your decrepit ranks?"
She sipped at her sherry and held her smile, but I was sure I saw something in her eyes, a mixture of longing and anger that many women of her abilities must feel when that potential was bound by the mores of society.
Amanda and I were wed in January of the following year, and it was in that bitter winter of 1897 that I lost my love to an unimaginable darkness.
*
It was billed in the Times as 'The Winter Wonder.'
After skating at St. James Park early one evening, we went to see the curious structure that was drawing sightseers from across the city.
"Isn't it wondrous?" Amanda asked, as we stood under a light fall of snow before the stone and crystal tower recently erected on park grounds near the Mall.
"It is curious," I agreed.
"Look, John, it is happening just as the papers described! What a delight!"
Amanda was giddy with childlike glee, clutching my left arm and unconsciously pressing it against her bosom.
As a doctor I had seen more than a fair share of women in their natural state, and as a healthy modern male I had frequented prostitutes which I judged to be both clean and reasonably civilized. And Amanda and I had lain together as man and wife and I had experienced a bliss I had never expected in this life, yet sensing Amanda's breast through many layers of binding and bunting was still thrilling to me.
As much as I wanted to join in her celebration I found something distinctly off-putting about what I witnessed.
Above the thirty-foot tall spire of sparkling crystal and damp, dark stone, the falling snow was swept into a swirling funnel, much like a tornado I once witnessed on the Canadian prairie while by traveling by rail to visit a cousin in Vancouver who had a thriving practice in the aftermath of the gold rush.
Snow seemed drawn out of the night to commence a twisting dance above a horn of crystal.
A small crowd had gathered to observe the phenomenon, and all were entranced.
"I wonder," I said aloud, "How the architect ever finagled permission to build here? This, after all, the Queen's land."
"Pardon my intrusion," said a gentleman to my right. "I work for a solicitor, and as I understand it that matter is in contention, and already in the courts. The builder will be tearing this curiosity down before long. No one can bear up against her Majesty's council. It was built as a temporary artistic exhibit, and even that is in dispute."
The man tipped his hat to me and walked away, and as I gazed upon the crowd I notice another, older man watching Amanda through his spectacles with a raptness reserved for birds of prey.
As the man stepped forward and approached us I stood a littler straighter and taller, and gave the man a disapproving glare, letting him known in no uncertain terms that us attentions were not wanted.
With stunning audacity the man ignored me completely, and addressed Amanda directly, as if I did not exist.
"What that gentleman said is true, miss," he said, with a trace of the continent in his wisp of a voice. An Austrian, or a German. They may have been cousins to the Queen, but that did not give them license to act with such an outrageous lack of manners.
"This beautiful artifact will indeed be torn asunder, and soon, so enjoy it while you are able."
"What a shame," Amanda said. "It is lovely."
"What you see is only the crown," the man said. "If it would please you, I could show you the structure below, which if anything is even more remarkable."
I cleared my throat, releasing a guttural sound that was almost the roar of a lion overseeing his pride.
Amanda looked up at me and gave me a look that was almost chiding, followed by a smile so sweet my anger dissipated.
"Please, John, let us see it, darling, before it is gone."
If I had simply followed my instincts then and refused and taken Amanda home, our lives would have been much the better today.
However, I could not stand against that smile, those eyes.
"And how would you have access to this... thing," I asked coldly.
"Why, I am the individual who built this... thing," the man replied.
*
We departed the crowd and went around the structure, where a gate blocked access to sightseers. The man produced a ring of keys, opened the gate, led us through, and then released a series of locks in a heavy iron door.
Inside, the air smelled damp and musty. It was silent, save for the rare drip of moisture striking the flagstone floor after seeping through the mortar in the stones above us.
The man introduced himself as Professor Kern, and said his combined interests in history and architecture had led to the discovery of a manuscript that included the plans for what he called his 'Inverse Tower.'
"It is a focal point for universal energies," he said, leading us to the center of the structure.
As I silently bemoaned the fact that the Professor seemed to be an occultist, and therefore the furthest thing from a true man of science, we stopped before a wrought iron railing and Amanda let out a gasp.
Above us, the interior of the spire was a hollow cone ascending to a shimmering peak of crystal. Below, there was a hollow descending into the earth more that twice the distance of the spire above.
The vapor of our exhalations seemed to glow on the most subtle beam of pearlescent light, a beam that seemed to fall from the crystal spire and down into the darkness below.
Amanda leaned over the railing and peered into the depths. "What is down there," Professor?
The amorphous glow in the center of the spire filled his spectacles with a hazy light.
"I would show it, if you would see it," he said.
I felt a growing sense of unease. Taking Amanda's arm, I tried to lead her away.
"We've seen the inside of this place and it is a marvel," I said, "But I think we should bid the Professor good evening. I do have my practice in the morning."
"Please, John, just a little more?"
I hesitated. I took my watch from my waistcoat and made a show of checking the hour.
Amanda took hold of my collar and drew my face down to hers. She gave my ear a quick bite and whispered her pleas again.
Her breath was hot and sweet.
"A very quick look," I said. "Professor, if you please?"
The Professor grinned, and led us to a metal staircase that wound down into the dark along the damp walls of stone.
And after that point in time, seeing the Professor's teeth glow as his spectacles had, my memories are hazy, until Amanda and I arrived at home and she began pulling at my clothes with wanton longing and a harlot's strength.
I remember the Professor lighting a lantern, and as we descended the stairs all I could hear was dripping moisture and the squeak of the lantern swinging from its handle and the hollow echo of our shoes on each metal step.
And I remember the Professor whispering the same words, over and over again, and as much as my dread grew I was unable to stop following the downward stair.
"She ascends as she descends," the Professor said, over and over and over again.
Just as the walls began to narrow around us we stepped down a final row of stairs and found ourselves in a great bowl of stone, marble polished until it gleamed in the light of the professor's lantern.
There was a great brazier there, a thing of twisted dark bronze. The Professor threw his lantern into the brazier, and flames leaped high above us.
Neither Amanda nor I flinched, not with the crash of the lantern not with the eruption of flame.
The Professor placed a gentle hand on my chest and eased me back against one wall. I watched helplessly as Amanda approached the flames, her wide blue eyes transfixed.
I felt dizzy and Amanda shifted before my eyes, and then I started with shock when I realized that she was naked, and the Professor was lifting her into his arms.
He approached the roaring fire with my love in his arms, all the while muttering that same refrain.
"She ascends as she descends."
When he was too close to the fire I saw tongues of flame dance along the sleeve of his coat, and just as Amanda's hair rose above her head in a shimmering halo of flames the Professor dropped her into that conflagration.
I remember crying out, unable to move, sliding down the wall and weeping like a child. And then I saw movement, and my Amanda was climbing out of the flames and delicately stepping off the edge of the brazier and onto the cold stone floor, her rosy skin unblemished, untouched by the fire.
The Professor had vanished.
I remember Amanda now fully clothed and leading me up the stairs and into a hansom cab. I must have dozed on the ride through the streets of London. When awareness returned Amanda was walking me through the front door of our home and shooing away our housekeeper with a laugh.
Releasing a curiously fragrant and musky scent, Amanda took me upstairs to our bedroom and literally ripped off my clothing, scattering it across the room and taking my manhood between her lips and sucking upon me until I was painfully erect and gushing into her mouth even as a distant part of me burned with shame and I thought that this was a thing no gentleman would do in good conscience.
As I began to subside Amanda worked at me with her fingers, grinning like some abominable thing, and she straddled me and rode upon me and clawed at my chest and stomach, drawing blood and sucking her fingers clean and writhing atop me.
As I ejaculated a second time Amanda closed her hands around my throat and looked into my eyes as she began to choke the life out of me, but something made her stop, and she drew her hands back and tumbled to my side, and we both fell into a deep sleep.
After that, Amanda was my Amanda no more.
*
In the weeks that followed, Amanda would leave our bedroom at night.
On the surface our life seemed the same. Amanda may have seemed a tad preoccupied as we entertained guests, but she was still the dutiful wife and I went to my practice each day.
At night, it was as if she cast a spell over me with her scent and her sex.
I would fall into a troublesome sleep and she would slip out of bed and dress and go, and I would watch all of this as if dreaming. In the morning she would be fast asleep at my side.
But I made disquieting discoveries. Torn clothes in the rubbish bin. Flecks of red in the washbasin, so like the spatters of blood left behind by a doctor scrubbing himself clean after surgery.
And sometimes I awoke to find my genitals sore and abraded, as if I had engaged in violent coitus I could not recall.
On Amanda's final night, I followed her outside.
As we retired for the evening I took a dose of cocaine powder in the hope that it would keep me alert.
As my heart hammered and I feigned sleep, the clock ticked away on the mantle until Amanda shifted in the dark beside me.
She sucked upon me in the dark and in the most hidden pit of my heart I confess the sensation was as delightful as it was somehow wrong. She climbed atop me and rode me until I was depleted of seed, and then when I rolled to one side and let my breathing deepen, feigning sleep, I heard her slip out of bed and dress.
The moment she slipped out the door I pulled on my own clothes, still buttoning and tucking even as I stepped out the front door of our home onto the street and saw her turning a far corner.
I followed her to a depressed neighborhood.
The night was dark and very damp, and fog swirled in the fouled alleys and lanes Amanda led me through.
Eventually she stopped by the rear of a dilapidated row house. I heard the lightest tinkle of breaking glass and saw her scuttle into a dark alley.
I walked softly and drew close. She was hunched over a bundle, and when I heard a moist gurgle I knew that bundle was an infant.
"Amanda!"
She looked over one shoulder, her wide blue eyes framed by soft blonde locks, and I saw blood on her lips.
"Oh, my love, what have you done."
Her face was a tragic mask of shame and fear and loathing.
She held the bundle out to me and said, "See, John? It lives still. I must have a taste, but I do not kill. I restrain myself."
"Amanda," I said, my voice breaking. "Please let me help you. I don't know what madness had taken over your mind but I swear I can help you stop—"
"Stop?" Her whisper was harsh. "What makes you think I want to stop?"
"Amanda, please."
"No, John."
She stood, leaving the child on the ground. I saw a small fist waving feebly in the air and I was relieved that the child was still alive.
"YOU THERE!"
Both Amanda and I looked behind us.
Two constables stood there, one tall, one short and round.
"We have the fiends who have been attacking the children," one of them said.
Amanda began to run
"Stop," the other constable called. "We are armed!"
Just our luck, I remember thinking as I ran after Amanda. After all the recent cries for constables to be armed and all the debates and all the resistance to the idea, here were two carrying revolvers, perhaps in response to Amanda's actions.
The constables pursuing us blew their whistles in a call to arms, but during the chase only those two remained behind us.
We three chased Amanda through silent streets until I slipped and nearly fell on damp grass and realized we were in St. James Park. I saw Amanda pushing through a loose board in a fence built around a crystal and stone structure that was about to be demolished.
Amanda led us down into the Inverse Tower to that bowl of polished marble, stripped off her clothing as she ran down to a place we had been before, beside the brazier holding tall flames, and there she waited for us to approach.
That is where the story ends.
And where it begins.
*
I was grievously wounded, and it took all my efforts to turn away from Professor Kern's scattered form. I would never know what he had been doing down here at this late hour, and he had paid the price for visiting at this time.
Amanda had literally torn him to pieces.
I turned in time to see the flashes as the constables fired shot after shot into her, the bullets tearing into her beautiful breasts and sleek stomach and dredging great holes as they passed out of her back and over my head.
With two swipes of her hands Amanda had broken the necks of the constables and flung them aside.
Then she turned to me and bent to lift me into her arms, her blood pattering on the stone floor just as melted snow had the first night we had ever been in this place.
She carried me toward the brazier without the slightest effort, and when I began to protest, she kissed my brow.
"I believe one can only be renewed by these fires once, my love," she said. "You must live, and I would not live without you."
Amanda stepped up onto the edge of the brazier and I felt the hair on my head begin to burn.
"The pain will be brief, my love."
She kissed me again, and then slowly stepped down into the flames and set me on a bed of red-hot coals.
Her final words were these. "He ascends as he descends."
Amanda could have simply tossed me into the flames, as I believe Professor Kern had done with her, knowing that the flames would be deadly to him a second time as he had been like she was now.
She wanted to be sure that I survived. I believe that with all my heart. As I felt the wound within me searing and sealing and I was filled with a supernatural strength, I watched my one and only love burn before my eyes until she was nothingness.
After a time I climbed out of the brazier. I was naked, confused, aching with an ungodly hunger, and my heart was broken forevermore.
I dressed myself in the uniform of the tall constable, and made my way home before dawn.
*
By day I am a proper Gentleman.
John Parley is a respected Doctor, a welcome member of his club, and an eligible widower who tragically lost his beloved wife on a ferry ride across the English Channel. I tend my practice and care for those in need and take afternoon tea with the daughters and nieces of patients who feel a man such as myself should seek a wife, one of the most proper breeding, of course.
By night... I am not longer respectable John Parley.
I am different now. Amanda made me that way. That was her final gift.
By night I roam the streets of London, and when the craving is too great, I take flesh for food. I try to be circumspect. I try to prey on those unlikely to contribute anything greater to this existence than the furtherance of my own existence.
I do not tear bodies apart as Amanda did. I use my surgical instruments to cut them and reach those particular organs for which my sustenance creates an unbearable craving, but on occasion I lose my restraint and the results of my ripping are as unappealing as the work Amanda did.
I do not have her restraint.
I stalk, and I cut, and I eat.
I have ascended to the abominate.
I am content.
Call me Jack.
User Reviews
Submitted by Anansie (user info) at 2006-10-26 23:11:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Orgasmatron (user info) at 2006-10-26 22:40:07 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This is not what I was expecting, given the title and your typical approach to your stories.
This was delightfully vicious, and unlike a lot of what I've read of yours.
Well.
Done.
Sir.
Submitted by inion_de_trua (user info) at 2006-10-26 09:24:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
i am so sorry. i dragged through this. i liked the opening a lot and then i struggled to finish it. it reminded me of reading bram stoker's dracula. just too much extra. very victorian though, good job at following that style completely.
Submitted by Randy_Rottenbuckets (user info) at 2006-10-26 03:56:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: -1
trite, unoriginal
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-10-26 00:33:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I got a woman...she rules my house with an iron fist.
Submitted by Sepsis (user info) at 2006-10-25 20:24:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
jack and kaos are gay together
i didnt read this but +2 for effort
Submitted by Caulaincourt (user info) at 2006-10-25 14:03:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
i didn't read it! :-O
Submitted by Crystle (user info) at 2006-10-24 17:31:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Jack the Ripper?
Submitted by forensicgirl3 (user info) at 2006-10-24 01:29:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Damn fine stuff here, negro!
Submitted by Bigmike (user info) at 2006-10-23 19:07:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Oh, and one other thing.
The one sentence paragraph can be effective, but I feel that a whole piece done this way detracts from the power it could have.
Just one of my little peeves I guess.
Submitted by MandaPanda (user info) at 2006-10-23 16:30:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You're brilliant.
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2006-10-23 16:21:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This was awesome. I agee that I didn't quite feel it as a period piece in some parts, but it didn't take away from the story too much for me. Some of your description was gorgeous.
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2006-10-23 12:19:21 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
please don't do 'english' again.
Submitted by CaptainThorns (user info) at 2006-10-23 09:23:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Seriously, quit fucking around on here and go get a publisher. NOW.
This was one hundred shades of awesome.
Submitted by WingedFoote (user info) at 2006-10-23 02:45:04 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
oooh, I get it now...
Submitted by Bigmike (user info) at 2006-10-22 23:43:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Very enjoyable indeed.
There are mistakes in here Jack, but not the kind that ruin the flow of the piece.
Also, for a period piece, I would have liked it to feel more like the period it was set in.
This story is like a 1962 Chrysler New Yorker my uncle once owned and I used to drive, you know, the kind with the push buttons on the dash for the gears.
It started out slowly, like it couldn't get out of its own way, but by the time it got up and revving, it was going a hundred miles per hour.
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2006-10-22 21:43:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Very good.
Submitted by St_Jimmy (user info) at 2006-10-22 20:41:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Quite entertaining.
"And sometimes I awoke to find my genitals sore and abraded, as if I had engaged in violent coitus I could not recall."
If I had a nickel for everytime this happend to me...
Cocaine is a powerful drug man. Powerful.
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2006-10-22 20:38:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-10-22 20:37:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2006-10-22 20:22:52 (#)
Ranking: 2
I hate you.
I hate you so very much.
This was absolutely brilliant, you bastard.
Jack McCallum, you are teh Devil...
++++++++
Teh Devil has red hair and lives in California. Who knew?
Jack, this is one of the best things you've ever done. Holy shit, dude,
I am fucking impressed!!
Send this to someone to be published.
Submitted by Amontillado (user info) at 2006-10-22 20:25:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Will read later
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2006-10-22 20:22:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I hate you.
I hate you so very much.
This was absolutely brilliant, you bastard.
Jack McCallum, you are teh Devil...
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2006-10-22 20:05:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Thanks for the title, kaos, you bastard. I am now brain dead after writing this, so there are probably typos galore.