Kayak, Catacombs, and Comatose: Catacombs Sample
by slaveofone
Black breath curled in swirling spires from the maw of the telluric elder. Shadows fell short across fields where several harvesting scythes had fallen, left to be eaten by the relentless tides washing over the land in their cycles—transfixed to the surface of a cosmic game board where every repeated role of dice traced its familiar passage in the sky and filled the pockets of those whose gamble bet not on randomness. A worm that lost its way from the cave of its abandonment, slowly met the thin, serrated mouth in its curvilinear smile. This fattened pupa would be the last to find such an artifact between planetary alignments, but the agricultural apparatus would, no doubt, rejoin the world when all membrane of this time was faded.
The fields were not the only places where inhabitants fled in terrified haste from the mount of rock and earth that stood to touch the clouds with its navel and the gods with its crown. The Summit was silent since birds first crawled, but then spoke mightily, teaching them of flight and sent many children to rest with whispers of enigmatic prophecy. One such proverb now hung loose from the tips of each pinna and stung the sky with certainty in the trail of its bearers.
The immovable hysteria was more than mere suggestion. Though its offspring was at first that glaze of honey that settles about the globes of awareness, its second daughter was a whore named Clamor. She swept her legs across the earth and in the passage birthed a thousand sons of wailing.
She took to every dwelling.
She trod upon the paths.
She broke into gardens kept enclosed by stolid countenances.
She searched for any vestige of one whom had not lain with her and all too quick seduced them to her grotto. Her lovers spread, infested, and met in secret places to glorify her name.
But her trespass was annulled. As anticipated, the curtain folded and luminaries hid their face. The final bellow was enough to wake men at rest on their sofas. And so it was that Jackson became aware.