Snippet #2702642

One trapped some days ago in a memory of years gone by

The throng of people pulsed warmly against the warm walls of the theater as they filed through ushers to their seats. Portraits of upcoming shows from gangly artists littered the walls. A season's sun aged them yellow like seared brands. Patrons hadn't fared much better as the olive-skinned Apan watched all the wrinkled meat pass by him pushed in by door workers. The dim memories of his dreams echoed in his mind an indistinct itch he couldn't scratch off. Nor clean the description of a play read by a director that he either couldn't remember or tried to forget. Patrons filing in through red cordons between each door leading into the house were eager learners. This play was a thing of excitement for them perhaps they'd find new excitement in theater for their pallid lives. There was a name for the play filming his tongue as the last effort of a sane soul twitches to warn instinct to run away. "It's far too late for jitters," he thought as sparks of wisdom were quelled, "the show must go on."

Heavy doors pounded shut with the hollow finality of metal bolts on tree flesh. Apan's voice rang out in excited chase, "Ladies and gentlemen, The King In Yellow is about to start. Please take your seats."

A woman tried to sneak past him through heavy doors but his quick glance corralled the woman with nothing but a warm smile. Her large dishplate eyes looked up at Apan's hand softly cradling her head. Apan thought she was pretty but a niggling impulse remained that she looks tasty. A gleeful voice said with a cold undertone Apan wasn’t sure was his, “It’ll be all over soon. Get back to your seat. It won’t even hurt.”

There was the bigger deal of all this where rehearsals met snags or problems throughout but Apan noted how well it all had went, if not too well, that this day was not delayed at all. As if in spite of how well the production went their Director chose to have practices in a way where no one but he knew the full play. This was unusual and very disturbing. Apan voiced his concerns as worries mounted but the Director waved away concerns as pointless. This show would be remembered for years to come he assured. Paroxysm of repressed joy with each look from his Director’s eyes during rehearsals, could they have been called deranged? Apan knew the Director, once considered a friend, this script discovered him to pull his mind into seclusion. As if writing on walls to no-one speaking how this would be his greatest show none could never repress his memory. A curious choice of words but dismissed by the rest of his eccentricities. Apan even once considered tearing the manuscript up as wild eyes mounted, but his friend the Director a creative mentor, threatened with lethal inflection to never speak of this again.

So rehearsal went on without issue the content of this strange play yet beyond bewildering. Its bearing carried as utterly without rhyme nor reason. Set in a place called Carcosa its songs foreign in tongue, at least they assumed so, that it seemed incomprehensible to humans. Yet somehow the tongue found theirs as songs were sung by souls with doubts they they should. How so they wept inwardly they had felt compelled.

Was someone controlling the proceedings?

One somber night after Apan was up late after inflictions of bewildering rehearsal but was about to leave when he happened to see the Director’s office light on. Tired if quiet leaden steps slowly approached ready to turn it off only to hear a half hushed conversation at the fringe of partly hidden light, “My King, the show will be on soon and people will hear your million names with million ways to say them before hearing your last true name.” In fear Apan hurried away burning the lead out with hot adrenaline from his exhausted soul along with the will to ever speak of it. That striking person to which the Director spoke garbed in a horrible ragged yellow robes… a yellow so sickly even witnessing forced bile upwards through Apan’s throat from the depths of his fearful soul.

Apan rubbed his temples. It was a day of celebration he should focus less on this and instead on their collective labor to birth art. Soon they began and no doubt after the show things would be better? Right?

Finally lights did dim as applause showed the Director to the stage his thin arms high. Even in flattering still light signs, alarming ones, raised in the recesses of his memory of the Director. His creative mentor was gaunt, eyes sunken, near to being more skeletal than human.

Yet he spoke with supple voice with majesty beyond measure, “My friends, my fellow creative types, I Nigel Rasanen, welcome you to a show like no other you’ve had shake the depths of your soul. We gathered the best talents for this creation like nothing you have seen nor shall comprehend. Never such a grandiose spectacle seen again than what I shall inflict on you tonight. I promise never living to witness greatness such as this. Bear your soul for me against this play to live many times to know pillars and spires supporting great intellectual dimensions we can scarcely imagine!”

The very suggestions by his mentor troubled him, Apan tried to tell himself he was imagining as his eyes swore that behind his friend was the yellow robe. A sickly yellow tether holding him upright as if a puppet. Blinking, it vanished from him, but he could not remove this doubt not in the least. Somewhere in his mind a hidden understanding of terror wanted him to scream but found itself smothered under waters so very cold. His throat closed with doubts quelled.

Nonetheless the curtains opened after he left the stage so lights could quell to let the show begin.

Witnessing the strangeness of honed story was both mesmerizing and horrifying as even though he had seen this scene it thrums across his mind more alive, more real. It felt like it was history made not fiction. Such a strange feeling, such a strange emotion… Yet the actors were performing impeccably speaking lines with such practiced abandon. Resonating powerful voices from which erupted one strange story being told…

Then it happened, the lights flickered off.

On

Off

On, to Apan’s previsioned eyes that saw grotesque display whole of the Theatre now become a living breathing creature. Digested acid at his feet backed by the horrible aberration of muscles moving in and out, everything there so very alive, it was almost like the Theatre was a huge unnamable monster with many eyes staring while the juices rose around them.

Off

On, then it was gone, the Theatre was once more majestic leaving Apan with deep questions of if had imagined it?

Off

Before as safety flickered away actors stopped in silent dark but to continue in the light all actors handling the resumption with gusto, not once hesitating, despite worried annoyance from the crowd.

Next came a turbid coldness that Apan was so shocked pressing on his legs he turned around expecting a door to be opened. All he saw were doors tightly secured with that unerring sense he was being watched. The cold itself unnatural, horribly icy, biting, a chill like something of a grave slithering up one’s pant leg from the floor… Strange horrors spoke from seclusion there into his mind. The cold, Apan looked to the actors to reassure himself, yet the show continued… It was here he wondered if he should leave. Never before had such unholy or eldritch terror so shook his very soul.

Just as he was well considering abandoning this place came the actress by name of Erin Welsh-carroll; a major up and comer in the creative circles. Gifted soprano of distinction with an almost heavenly appearance sought after by many that desired so much less of her worth. Her dress itself a Cerulean blue with a pearlescent shift that hinted at some impossible depth like a pure night sky. The upper translucent layers light like drifting clouds roiled around her as she began to sing, and it started out well enough.

Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink beneath the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.

Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.


Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.


Song of my soul, my voice is dead;
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.

Part way through her voice issues unforgiving echoes to reverberate Apan’s skull. That moment he truly feared his conscious would completely shatter. Even more horrifying were others holding their ears concreting his fears raised higher with her pitch to unnatural heights from words in that incomprehensible tongue. Each piece swung the pick harder at his mind the more the song was sang. Horrifyingly enough Apan’s pain struck understanding of it all yet though he had never once heard this language. He knew of Carcosa, he knew of what she sang. So very much she sang. Her face paled as much as her eyes grow red before at once dripping blood down from them. Mascara mixing with crimson to show an utterly terrifying visage ready to tear through.

Still she sang, her skin growing even more pale, her voice speaking in a tongue that seemed not possible our bodies to even speak.

Pinned by horror Apan clung to his ears to shut the noise out but could shut away the purely dreadful sight of white alabaster skin melting in rivers of pain down her face to congeal like wax on her shoulder. Yet the voice rang out unsullied while the very crowd stare in horror clutching at their ears to not be deafened but finding themselves caught in between.

White of her face continued melted away revealing a marred crimson muscled face, unrecognizable from the beauty she once wore, that instead now built up on her shoulders. Clumps that melt off reveal her twitching red muscled visage all the while she continuing to sing.

In terror one soul mustered a weapon to uncover their ears just briefly. The shot rang out in combat to the noise but seconds after a horrible spurt of retaliation Apan saw the man’s head completely gone. Now stood a macabre display of blood and gore as if the noise struck back with similar rage. Just a moment longer than it ought to stand before the ruined body collapsed in a shower of more screaming now not just pain but abject fear.

The shot meanwhile did nothing, she still sang, despite the bullet that pierced her heart through and through. Yet continued the soft voice even as eyes streamed blood then tumbled out with sickening sputter of life. Even still stood the singer with holes of eyes that still bleed and still sang.

At this point terror desperately tried to engage the subconscious mind to enable frozen prey to try move while still covering their ears. Some failed leading to a sardonic display of pitiless fireworks alongside those who rushed towards the door trying to bang with their elbows. They could not use their hands to escape but to suffer the song. Battering, aggressively beating with legs, elbows, and bodies, it was so chaotic. Some poor souls fell underfoot and were crushed by the drowning. Fear so blinds everyone that very few noticed blood on their boots alongsinde brain matter and gore nor how their clothes were bloodied.

Further to add to this, while she sang, it began to rain.

A red mist, erupting from the sprinklers, raining down aggressively.

Apan knew to keep mouth shut as not to swallow, the knowledge was too at the fringe of his understanding to put together, but he knew what he must do.

Those who did not found themselves uncovering their ears instead to cover them in rage at once attacking their fellow man, their eyes just as red as the singer’s sockets, bleeding the same blood. Hands ripped into people tearing flesh away from their straining eyes..

Chaos since nigh with some people attacking the others while trying to maim them on worse. An unfortunate display the raging now that saw prey dragged the hearing fearful kicking and screaming away from those people too afraid to uncover their ears. Screams of the forsaken drag the Theatre crossroad thrown on a pile of collected charnel then it began, the thing that finally broke Apan and made him sing.

They flew at smothered captives like beasts starting a frenzy greedily tear flesh and innards away in a gluttonous feath feast. Apan knew both some of the victims and some of the monsters he could not believe what he was seeing. All acted without remorse. Sinew split with snaps of jaws ripping and slobbering all over the fleshy crimson pile of bodies. Limbs and bodies torn asunder the smell of iron lies thick in the cold cloying air as the blood pooled into the bodies drowning those buried deep enough to be spared the indignity of being rent apart by the monsters once people. The pile choked, sobbed, cracked, even as the strongest still screamed.

Finally, the song did end.

She bowed with the falling shards of Apan’s broken mind a witness to the show that ever went on, like nothing had happened, just going onwards… His psyche breaking down into million razor pieces completely irreplaceable and impossible to repair.

The song became melodic, it became beautiful. Yet no one was singing, yet he could still hear it and he declared uncovering his ears, “HAIL CARCOSA, OH GREAT CARCOSA OF LENG!”

He watched in glee as the fires erupted, and he watched as the Acolytes who tore the bodies asunder writhed naked between grotesque and ecstasy. He watched as they ripped out their own eyes to further see the majesty he now knew. Still he watched as they rushed like bloodthirsty hounds at each other as wallpaper peeled down revealing the fleshy prison they fought to be free of. It was breathtaking. Oh how he watched as people were brutally murdered in the truly most revolting ways nothing taboo and twisted denied them.

The song, still sang, and Apan, heard what he must do, he casually went backstage to do the final act for one must survive and the million names he knew begged him to finish with this.

He went into the office to pick up a knife he had never known was his to stab with, slash, and gore with hateful duty through the pretenders flesh. The man he once respected wallowed in weak bloody filth he chuckled. He laughed, he guffawed without hint of amusement more like derangement to finally turn away having served his new Master. Blood dripped upward the blade tracing foul language on scoured pitted metal. Apan looked at it once giggling at the fell words and patterns the rivulets traced on his skin as the Director’s lifeblood sweetly caressed his flesh.