The Hangman
Her mother’s blood bubbling out of the uneven holes in her chest as the soon to be cadaver’s lungs desperately flung her chest outward and inward vainly attempting to oxygenate the same blood which was by the very same process all too quickly being pumped out of her system, was the fifth from last thing on Amy’s list of things that are never good things. Now of course I know your question is why would a little girl keep such a list and how could it possibly be that comprehensive. Well I suppose you could assume she’s a dedicated writer, or maybe she lives hiding in the rubble of what used to be an apartment complex with her mother and two much older men. The point is maybe you have a lot of paper you need to fill up.
Regardless of all that the important thing is I want you to ignore the woman dying on the ground and please in your imagination create the mental image of this list. Now remember the girl’s imaginary list is incredibly comprehensive, and if you’re imagining it correctly it should be incredibly big like so big that you think the only thing that could manage it well would be a dedicated team of elf scholars, but you can’t imagine any elf scholars because you’re mind, if you’re doing this right, is almost certainly spending all of it’s capacity imagining infinite rolls of paper filled with horrible things that could potentially happen which is in fact infinite.
It’s infinite for one because there’s a lot of really bad things that could happen and for two because you’re very thorough so you have to list every part of your mother that could be violently penetrated by the dark brown blood covered tongue that now slowly curls back up behind a set of horrifying twisted teeth that look so warped that you can only assume that the means of them getting into that mouth required either a screwdriver, or a wrench, but you’re not making a list of tooth insertion instruments are you.
No, you are reading an imaginary list of things, which are never good, and you are almost done. The next thing of course is hearing the echo of your own breath. Something which is not good for several reasons. The first is that it means nobody is talking which is awkward, the second is that it means that you have been running for some time now. Possibly in ripped clothes possibly clutching the torn off right hand that once belonged to your sort of strange adopted father for reasons you can’t possibly understand, and third because it means you can be heard, and it means you can’t hear that thing that’s chased you slowly lumbering on the one leg that Charles didn’t manage to shove a rusted nail through before he died horribly. Not hearing it’s terrifying panting breathes as you run as fast as you can down the streets of what used to be Boston would be a good thing except that you have the strangest inkling it hasn’t given up, and an even stranger one that the fact that you can’t hear him means that you don’t know where he is anymore…
Being hung from a chandelier in a ballroom by an extension cord. Wrapped and bound in your own chains, and then stabbed repeatedly until your blood leaves a permanent black circle on the floor is also never a good thing. The silent room being interrupted only by the sounds of the clinking of chains as the breeze wafting through the holes in the walls of the ballroom swings your corpse slowly from side to side. Your hands forever clenched around the metal with such force that it has ripped into your decaying flesh.
If you’re imagining all of that happening to a little girl then you are a sick and monstrous person. What type of world do you think we live in. No that did not happen to the little girl, rather she merely rounded the corner limping because the disgusting monster had finally caught up to her and had ran it’s slimy gray tongue through the ligaments of her foot. The monstrous eyes watching her lustily as she tried in vain to drag herself away. The horrid thing toying with her letting her think she was making some escape. Before she suddenly rounded the corner into the ballroom and saw the horrifying scene before her.
A man floated in the center of the room beneath the chandelier. His body was made of metal and rather than eyes he merely had black shadows that fell from his face. On his head was a golden crown stained with the same blackness that seemed to flow together towards his chest to create a large black cross which spanned his exposed chest.
The girl screamed in agony as the tongue from the beast that had pursued her wrapped around her remaining good leg and pulled it out from beneath her. For the first time she turned to view her assailant. What had once been a man was now stretched and deformed. The eyes bulged from their sockets as though they wanted to touch the prey they hungered for so badly. The eyelids had all but sunken backwards into the flesh of the face, which was being pulled grotesquely as the mouth stretched horizontally and the entire face opened up to reveal endless rows of needle-like teeth. The man’s brown hair was quickly falling out around him. But the most grotesque part of the appearance was the tongue, which now wrapped around the girl’s ankle threatening to pull her into the maw of the beast. It was like some kind of wet snake with the head of a worm. It was jagged at the end but retained the tongue’s natural aversion to stillness as it squirmed around and flexed and relaxed along the length of her leg. As she drew close it dragged her up by her hair and then pressed the gun it held clutched in it’s right hand against her crotch, and it whispered.
“Your mother was a hoar, she tasted like filth and semen, I’m looking forward to feasting on your more well preserved chastity.”
Oh god this is horrible. I don’t want this to happen. Do you want this to happen? If you want this to happen then you’re a horrible person and I don’t care about you. Oh god please wish real hard for this to not happen. Maybe if you wish really hard some fairy or angel will get involved. Oh dear lord come on can we please have some kind of dios ex machina or something! GOD NO! I CAN’T WATCH ANYMORE. Ummm think of something else say something else, ummm, bunny rabbit with angelwings, umm, cookies, umm lady gaga, three plus twelve, Simon says you’re name is fake, auhhhh you’ve tasted heaven angel’s cake, remember the taste, and uhhhhhhh now lay waste, ten slices. AUGHHH ENOUGH STUPID RHYMES IT’S NOT WORKING DO SOMETHING GOD DAMNIT! I DON’T CARE SOMEBODY, ANYBODY JUST DO SOMETHING!
Slowly he drew his nose along her neck and breathed in deeply. Her scent was intoxicating. It smelled like burning flesh. The thing blinked for a moment. She shouldn’t smell like that.
Anybody? Really? Anybody?
He looked down at the girl, and then realized that his ears were also applying input to his mind. He slowly turned away from the girl towards the sound of sizzling flesh.
The swinging monument at the center of the room had begun to sizzle. The wherever the chain touched flesh there was a new blackness as if someone were attempting to brand the dead corpse which hung up there.
The girl and the monster had not agreed on many things today. They had disagreed about whether her mother’s body should be ravaged until it died from loss of blood. They disagreed about whether or not the man who had served as her father should remain with his hands attached to him. In fact they’d disagreed about basically everything except that now they both in this moment agreed that that body should not be doing that.
There was a long deep pause. For several eternities the two parties merely stared at the hangman, which was, like them, wrong on so very many levels. Then slowly and horribly the hangman, the dead one, began to laugh. His laugh was inhumanely low as if it was reverberating deep within his intestines rather than, well wherever that’s supposed to go.
Again the little girl and the monster agreed on something. This time however the girl made a point to disagree on several other things at the same time because she was beginning to feel as though her and the monster had too many similarities, and she wasn’t particularly fond of that. So while the monster and the girl both felt that him laughing was an inappropriate response the girl chose to find it terrifying while the monster chose instead to find it infuriating.
This went on for approximately five minutes and fifty five seconds, which I only remember because five is my favorite number, before the monstrous thing decided that it had lost it’s appetite and instead decided to silence the hangman, and thereby restore the natural order to life because as the monster knew if one dead person starts laughing then they might all get the idea and he did not want to be laughed at by the girl’s corpse after she was dead.
The thing walked over until it stood beneath the swinging hangman and swung its tongue like a flail to get it up around the neck of the hangman, then the horrifying muscles of the tongue went to work slowly wrapping itself around the hangman’s neck squeezing it tightly. The monster grinned orgasmically as the laughter slowly turned to muffled choking.
If you insist…
Suddenly the eyes of the hangman opened and a horrible grin spread across his face. The monster shuddered and his eyes bulged in fear. The hangman still grinning proceeded to crack his neck to the side with such force that it snapped the wire suspending him there in the air. The hangman then fell to the ground onto the monsters tongue the chains that still wrapped the hangman’s body burned into it until the part around the hangman’s neck flopped to the ground no longer attached to the monster as a whole.
The thing screamed in agony as blood spilled onto the floor. It’s eyes unable to shut rolled back into it’s head out of sheer pain. It looked back down just in time to see the hangman slowly devouring the piece of tongue that had been wrapped around it’s neck. The monster slowly backed away horrified. It held up the gun the barrel pointed at the hangman’s blood drenched mouth.
The hangman looked up and stared at the gun, at least it looked like he was staring at the gun it was impossible to tell when his eyes were merely white pupils. Again it grinned and then stood up in the most horrifying way possible which is to say that it didn’t really stand up but rather it’s bones seemed to rearrange underneath it’s skin cracking and sliding until they reached what semblanced together to be a standing position…
“Why dost thou find me so strange? Tis not the difference of a year or two betwixt you and I that makes me more terrifying, or you more hideous, apart from that small span of time well, we could be brothers.”
The monster shivered at his words and as he spoke them the hangman walked ever closer until finally the Monster stood with his back to a wall his great eyes bulging from his head. His mind was too horrified it lost all idea about the gun. His body twisted and writhed trying to conform to the fear, but resulting only in widening his already bulbous eyes and flattening the flesh of his back so that it seeped a bit into the wall behind him.
“I… WHat Youa you’re there’as something wrong with you!!!! You monster!”
The monster screamed and tried to pull it’s gun but the hangman was on him in an instant his body pressed against the monsters the chains started to burn into the monsters stretched flesh, and the hangman whispered in his ear.
“Don’t worry brother, I’m just here to bring you home, I’m just the boatman just helping you cross the river brother.”
And before the monster could question the hangman, or boatman or whatever thing this was, it had already widened it’s grin and laughing as it did proceed to rip into the throat of the monster and continue until it had devoured the whole thing.
The little girl sat there too horrified to move or look away. She watched as this thing in chains swallowed whole the thing that had been her attacker. It then carefully finished adjusted it’s shape to one more normal, and then slowly and gracefully stood up to it’s full height. He slowly walked over to the girl blood still dripping from his now very human mouth. He stood in front of her for a moment and then sympathetically kneeled down in front of her.
“I’m really sorry you had to see that, but you should know I only did that because I was told I had to. I was told I couldn’t let him touch you, that I must not let him hurt you at all. Oh dear you look terrified. Are you scared of me still?”
He asked in cooing tones in an attempt to reassure the girl that though his behavior moments earlier had been barbaric he was quite civilized with women.
“Yes sir.”
“And why is that young lady. Is it because I ate him I’m terribly sorry but you must understand…”
The little girl shook her head.
“No? Well then why are you so scared of me?”
“My daddy told me that the pretty ones with pretty faces are the worst kind even though they look pretty.”
“Oh did he now… and what was your daddy’s name?”
“Titus… Mr. Titus”
“Well I’ll make sure to bury you’re daddy then because he was a smart man. He taught you well.”
“And mommy, bury mommy too…”
“Yes I’ll make sure to bury her too...”
“Ok…”
“Goodnight little girl.”
And as he spoke his mouth again curled into that inhuman grin. The horrifying grin.
“Goodnight Mr…”
And then in a flash he had…
Oh god I can’t. I can’t do this anymore I can’t watch. Oh God…
Cross was woken up by a beautiful voice somewhere on the edge of the city. He’d be covered in his own blood. The beautiful voice would be feverishly trying to pin a cloth down over the open wound in his neck. She would be trying to give him water, but feverishly he would refuse informing the beautiful voice that he’d had far too much to eat already.
“The little girl was way too much. No, no, water I’m so full!”
huh.
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