Grueberfest 06 - R5 - Here Come The Flesh Controllers (614 hits)
Category: NoneLabels: one-part_stories
Rating: 1.67 on 21 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Stagger Lee (View user info) at 2006-10-31 12:16:13 EST
You've always gotta be on your guard. It can get heavy in an instant when you're running errands in their territory. Put a foot wrong and you'll wind up hanging from a hook, one more tradeable commodity in an oversaturated meat market, spilling your guts to the wind and stars. They like to hunt at night, and they like to keep things exclusive. Mess in with their business and they'll make sure you don't mess again.
But in this case, I have to, thanks to a promise I made. She made me promise to watch over her brother; which apparently included rescuing him from the flesh controllers. Stupid little prick should never have been out here, under this unforgiving sky and these indifferent stars.
The plains stretch out all around me, vast and seemingly endless. I have no luxury of remaining out here, in the relative security of the plains, able to see all around me. No, I'm heading to the valley, into the fucking lion's den; into the teeth of the gale. If I get lucky, they'll never know I was there. If I'm not lucky, I'm as good as dead.
The chances of getting lucky are slim.
My horse stops; he isn't getting any close than this to the valley, and who can blame him? I wouldn't, if I didn't have to. If I didn't have the inexorable force of her disapproving stare pushng me onwards, I'd have run away screaming by now.
It's not that you can see anything from here, you understand, but you can feel it. You know when the flesh controllers are around, man, you can fucking taste it. They're foul, like rotting eggs, like bad news, like death. They're without mercy or empathy; they'll slash you six times before you hit the ground and harvest most of your major organs before you die.
Her brother's dead, she has to know it, and she's killing me by sending me out here. The flesh controllers don't take prisoners, or hostages, they don't bargain and we have nothing they want anyway; except our flesh, of course. And they can just take it, so they have no need of reason. Bastards.
I edge my way down the slopes of the plain toward the entrance of the valley. The grass still grows here, but it crunches underfoot in a sickly and disturbing manner. It is at this point that I draw my blade, and I hold it before me as if it holds some sort of protection, though I know it to be fruitless. The night air seems colder the closer I get to the valley; but this is surely my mind playing tricks out of fear.
When I broach the border of the valley, I hear a fierce buzzing sound from somewhere in the scrub and rocks below. The vegetation grows ever thicker and ever more loathsome within the flesh controllers' lair, and it seems to lean inward. The light of the moon grows fainter, and the sounds become more apparent; I can hear myself breathing as though it were thunder. The trees seem oppressively close.
A shadow pulls away from the scrub ahead of me, darting across the gloom. I freeze, unable to move my feet or react. My breath catches in my throat, restrained by my terror.
I hear a twig break behind me, as sharp and cutting as breaking glass, and then I move. I abandon any effort at subtlety or concealment and just go for it. I hurtle down the valley, my feet finding awkward purchase on the slope, the buzzing in the bushes rising around me, now underscored by a rising number of clicking, impatient sounds.
I reach the bottom of the slope, pausing only briefly to marvel that I haven't skewered myself with my own blade, before heading onwards. Here the light is nearly gone, but ah, around that twist in the valley floor there comes a shining, flickering light. Firelight. My spirits rise for a moment, against the crushing, oppressive atmosphere that these fuckers bring to bear on even the most innocent interloper; which I am surely not.
I rounded the corner, and the brief hope that I had was torn to shreds beneath the stark reality before me. I saw the flesh controllers; saw them as they scuttled around their campsite, in their tattered black robes. The firelight flickered on the walls, revealing their work. Men, women, children, all hanging from hooks around the fire, in various states of life. I've never seen so much fucking red. The ground was slick and the blood had formed a twisted sort of mud from the soil. I saw a woman hanging from a hook that had been slammed into her back, upside down, her stomach open and her guts falling indifferently to the ground. I saw a child, and he or she was mostly tatters of skin and scraps of bones, yet somehow still living; wild eyes rolled in the child's head, seeing me and pleading for release.
And the flesh controllers knew I was there, naturally. They'd seen me coming for days. They turned from their work, hands red and wet, to begin new work. Work on me. They flank me; they cut off the avenues of retreat.
I can't see the sky anymore.
Then they come for me, clicking and whirring, their voices raised in terrible susurration. One of them weaves in close and I slash wildly at it with my blade, hitting nothing but cold night air. It flicks out a long, strange limb and I feel a flare of pain shoot up my leg, before a strange numbness takes its place. My leg gives out, without protest, and I collapse to the bloody soil. The motherfuckers don't give me a single moment of peace. They flock to me now, and I flail blindly, catching one of them. It lets out a terrible howl and bolts away. Once again I am granted momentary false hope.
Once again, it doesn't last. I feel one of them slam a hand into my back, through my fucking skin, and I feel it twist something in there and then I drop my blade and I'm screaming and I wish I'd done it differently now oh god how I wish I'd done something different and I wish I'd stopped her brother coming here, with his head full of crazy notions of adventure before the world slapped him down and tore his fucking guts out. Who knows which of those pitiful remnants on the walls he is? Not I.
I attempt to gain my feet, and it's almost laughable. I raise to one knee before I drop back onto my face, and I just have time to regret my stupid, needless panic earlier, when I hurtled down the slope like a madman. The atmosphere they have created has been my undoing.
They don't seem in a hurry to kill me.
User Reviews
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2006-12-18 13:08:59 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-12-14 01:38:56 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I disagree.
I think this is crap, but I've done worse. That 'assassin' thing I did was pretty bad.
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2006-12-14 01:02:26 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
your worst work so far
Submitted by rob_berg (user info) at 2006-11-03 02:23:05 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Wow... you are really talented.
I figured I would check you out after yer glib little comment on my silly post.
Don't quite understand why you felt the need to be such a random cunt.
ah well. I'd probably read more of your shit but I kinda think yer an asshole.
Have a nice evening.
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-11-01 23:46:18 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Orgasmatron (user info) at 2006-11-01 23:37:40 (#)
Ranking: 2
Once again I'm impressed with how quickly I can just fall into one of your stories. Given the title, I'd say you did a good job spinning something to match it.
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Well, everything but this. It'd be pompous of me to agree with this part.
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-11-01 23:39:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Orgasmatron (user info) at 2006-11-01 23:38:13 (#)
Ranking: 1
Which only proves that giving someone a Nick Cave title will be your downfall.
For there is simply too much Awesome contained within those titles.
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Submitted by Orgasmatron (user info) at 2006-11-01 23:37:40 (#)
Ranking: 2
Once again I'm impressed with how quickly I can just fall into one of your stories. Given the title, I'd say you did a good job spinning something to match it.
However, when compared to your opponent's tale I have to say that this falls a step behind.
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*Nods in complete agreement with everything said above*
Submitted by Orgasmatron (user info) at 2006-11-01 23:38:13 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Which only proves that giving someone a Nick Cave title will be your downfall.
For there is simply too much Awesome contained within those titles.
Submitted by Orgasmatron (user info) at 2006-11-01 23:37:40 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Once again I'm impressed with how quickly I can just fall into one of your stories. Given the title, I'd say you did a good job spinning something to match it.
However, when compared to your opponent's tale I have to say that this falls a step behind.
Submitted by HotWillie (user info) at 2006-11-01 22:00:54 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Tie.
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-11-01 19:54:59 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
This was very phoned in. The sloppy sentence structure and lack of convincing backstory is because I had been up all night drinking, realised I had to write something and dashed this off in about 20 minutes. I spent most of the next morning (had a day off) struggling to start my UM entry and failing miserably.
Sadly, I think I peaked in about round 2 or 3 of this contest.
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2006-11-01 12:10:51 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
This left me wanting more.
Your description, as usual, is great. You seemed to have a lot of long sentences that I'm not so used to reading from you. It's not a bad thing, just a lot of commas and a little bit less concise than your usual style, I think. It was written really well. It was a bit too mysterious for me- so I had a little bit of a hard time finding sympathy for the character or understanding the situation. You're really good at this type of piece, where the story is vague in places and there seems to be a certain expectation of the reader (is there terminology for that? I'm not a writer). I liked it.
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2006-11-01 11:12:04 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Mmmm... this was wonderfully gruesome!
Sir, congrats on winning the contest. Things came up and I missed the deadline. It was my own fault and I have no excuse.
Submitted by JoeyG (user info) at 2006-11-01 03:21:32 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Good job, Stag.
Submitted by r0fl (user info) at 2006-11-01 01:26:41 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Wish I could be around more man but the whole application process and school is kinda overwhelming - working on an idea for a contest, you down?
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-11-01 01:21:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Apologies are in order, I wrote this in about 20 mins after being up all night last night. It's not very good. I wish Kaos would post something so he'd win, otherwise he's gonna forfeit.
On another note, I'm just a goddamn review magnet lately, aren't I? You know it.
Submitted by beeltea (user info) at 2006-10-31 21:36:06 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I'm in a hurry to kill you.
Submitted by rillins (user info) at 2006-10-31 17:19:41 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Good - Title made me think of a puppet master...
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2006-10-31 17:09:55 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I like it but it leaves me feeling somewhat empty. I may adjust this score after I see your opponents but still entertaining.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-10-31 16:32:45 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
NEEDS a little more detail.
Submitted by St_Jimmy (user info) at 2006-10-31 12:34:41 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Well done
Submitted by hour_man (user info) at 2006-10-31 12:20:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment