Finish the Story Contest. The prompt, or start of the story, was written by and is highlighted below in quotation to differentiate between their work and mine. The idea of the exercise is that I finish the story, and try to do it in 500 words. I've come close on the word count guide this week as I edited it down from 1200 words to around 750 words. I tried to edit further but it was starting to lose the essence of its plot.Horror Vacui
The moonlight descended on the east side of the Wagner Tower like an ancestral bone dust. The ectoplasm of a vague awareness crossed a tenant’s mind seeking for oblivion: finally, the dull blows coming from God knows what remote corner of the old building had decided to quit and he would have slept. However, between the seventy-fifth and seventy-fourth floor, a particularly fine ear could have still seized an intermittent, stifled counterpoint of voices.
"I feel that this unusual condition is helping us bring out some interesting perspectives, Mendo." In breaking the silence, the psychotherapist's voice had soon lost its initial momentum.
"..."
"I want you to know that this time won’t be billed, go ahead if you feel like it." She tried to assume a playful expression. Hidden underneath her short suit jacket, Dr. Wallace's fingers were nervously playing with a fluorescent orange rubber bracelet.
"No-one is ever suspended, not even now with seventy-four floors of nothing underfoot..."
"Well, this is certainly a positive observation..."
"Shut up, you don’t not know a shit." An almost calm remark, pronounced with a firmness that hit Dr. Wallace like a bucket of frozen water.
"Have you ever thought, doctor," Mendo continued, sharply spelling out his last word, "that the fear of emptiness, the horror vacui as they defined it in the Middle Ages, is nothing but the unconscious and desperate attempt to look away from the ultimate truth?"
Since the elevator had blocked its descent, the patient had confined himself to a corner on the opposite side of the entrance. His left leg was now dancing grotesquely, animated like it had a life of its own and in contrast with the cadaveric stiffness of his other body parts.
"I never thought of that." Dr. Wallace wisely responded in brief, observing for the umpteenth time the assistance number carved on the elevator control panel.
"Mmmm...” A growing moan on the other side of the narrow cabin.
The doctor instinctively thought of her daughter that night, when the wind had hit the fixtures of the old house in the mountains so intensely that it produced an endless banshee howl. The little girl had made a sound of compressed horror, just like that.
If only she had known, she would have never asked Mr. Anatoliy “Mendoza” Volkov, an extraordinarily subtle personality, to follow her downstairs after that emergency therapy session in her office. On the other hand, he was one of her first and most challenging patients. Furthermore, he used to pay awesomely.
"Because the void swarms." Now his eyes were on the doctor, sunken out and bugging out at the same time.
"Soon they'll free us, do you think you'll keep writing that song you were talking about?" Dr. Wallace ventured. She realized that the silk shirt was soaking with her acrid sweat.
"It's the Yellow King's dominion, he comes from the void, it's him who made me do those things. I did not want to." His whine ripped open in a sinister vocal of terror.
"Mendo .." She did not know what to add. Now the doctor's hand, behind her sweating back, was pressing the assistance button convulsively.
His wide open eyes. They had stopped staring at her and now they were pointing up, right behind her shoulders.
"Mendo, what's up?"
"The Yellow King. He's here."
Resonant Vocatus
Anatoliy’s hands flashed over the piano keys, fingers hammering in mad counterpoint to the metronome. The maniacal click of that infernal machine permeated his focus like whey through a cheese cloth. He quickly dismissed the awareness before it could trip him up. It seemed to thrum at two hundred and fifty beats per second as he convulsed in the fervour of the music. The metronome stopped as he shuddered and the final note rang out.
Sweat poured from his brow, lining his shirt with incandescent streaks in the soft candle light. He listened to the voice whispering and let out a long juddering breath.
He looked at her, his victim, almost tenderly.
“What do you intend to get out of these sessions doctor?” He licked his lips as he pictured the Yellow King going to work.
“I feel like we’ve covered this before Mendo.” She looked at him reproachfully. “I’m just here as a sounding board. When we explore your inner world, I am simply the witness, here to listen without any judgement. My questions are guidance to where we need to go to bring about lasting change.”
“A politic answer if ever I’ve heard one.” He laughed and nodded his approval. “There is one problem with this dynamic you describe.”
She leaned forward in her chair, ebony hair falling to brush her cheek.
“What do you feel that is?”
He leaned forward, mimicking her affectation. “You labour under the delusion that the things I describe are all all delusions.” He raised an eyebrow quizzically as she smiled softly at him. “Whereas I am here only for one reason which will become clear with time.”
“The more you deny the realities of your actions the longer it will take to understand their source.” She leaned back in her chair heavily. “You have hinted at some grand plan before Mendo. Is it something to do with your music?”
Silence settled like dust over a corpse, slow and deliberate.
Finally he had achieved the perfect rhythm. The intense cadence was unlike anything he had ever heard and more importantly, the Yellow King had spoken, just like those times before. The painting, the dance, the written verse, all conduits for the ecstatic build of violent release, paving the path.
The room was lit with a circle of candles, each set at the cardinal points of the pentagram chalked in red on the floor. He stared at his trophies with pride, one for each of the six sections. Echoes of past energies, memories of blood and fear. He shivered in pleasure. Each had their own story. A flap of desiccated skin crowned the point at the top facing the window. In the middle two flecked fingernails, lurid with mould. In the east and west point lay two ears, one still bedecked with the golden earring of its owner. A tiny diamond glimmered in the candle light, sparking memories of soft flesh beaten into submission, sobs and pleas ringing music in his mind. At each foot of the pentagram bones for substance. Marrow intact; fat bearing gourds for the soul.
His fingers started their dance and he lost himself, twisting avenues of clattering keys laced harmonies with dissonance. Fury shook his form as the bile rose up to bite at his stomach and he clamped his jaw shut to prevent himself vomiting. The music reached a crescendo, he stared at his trophies as they pulsed with life and light. Crimson illuminated the wall, pulsing as unholy light shone through flesh. He closed his eyes, gasping in orgasm as the music reached its conclusion. In final release he screamed as ecstatic pain wracked his frame.
He opened his eyes as the room thrummed in a perverted aura. There he stood. Yellow skin stretched tight over bestial skull, like age old parchment in a forgotten tomb. The jaw had no lips, icicle teeth rent his visage, violating his face. Eyes like a snake, slits echoing infinity in their depths. He lurched forward, taught muscle seeming to wrench at flesh, trying to break forth. Arms stretched out, impossibly long as four large fingers beckoned to Anatoliy.
His other arm waved, almost casually, and a window sprang into being in the air. Light flared trails from its edges but the image was crystal clear. Anatoliy sat staring hungrily at a woman in the tight confines of an elevator. The Yellow Man spoke, his voice like the thunder of a thousand waves throughout the ages.
“COME, I HAVE BENT TIME. WE SHALL GO…. TO RAPE, REND AND FEAST.
The end.
. Thanks for reading.
Join us
Animation By
