Coffin Island (26 page)

Don’t let your guard down in this world
especially in victory. And no matter your size. No matter how
diminutive you may be. You can always tear down your mightiest
enemy. Just pretend to be amusing him. I was taking great comfort
in these truths. How to put them to practice though?

There wasn’t even a puff of smoke to
mourn. How do you process the erasure of a flaming ape that has
just saved your life? An ape that was desperate to kill you? It
seemed best to just forget about him. Pretend that he didn’t exist.
That flaming ape in the tailpipe of the glass Cadillac didn’t just
save my life. A flaming ape did not do me a solid. I don’t know
what you’re talking about. Perhaps you need medical attention. You
sound dangerous to me too. What sort of disturbed person begins to
have thoughts like these? And you have the audacity to voice them
to me? What a maniac!

Denial was the only fitting memorial
for that flaming ape. You are born into fire, my brother. You die
into fire. Not even smoke will mourn you. Chin up, flaming ape. You
never existed.

There was also a delectable symmetry to
the horrible crash into the new world to keep the overworked mind
occupied. There were more violent matters to untangle. The
symbolism and violence was so in your face that you had to admire
it. Or at the very least peer at with a begrudging respect and
benign hostility. The horror commanded as much.

You were also afraid of what the horror
might do to you next if you didn’t give it the proper respect for
the latest horror that it had unleashed on you. There was also that
too. Fear was a large component as it should be in horrific
situations.

Why travel to the end of the magical
river if there isn’t something cognoscente that speaks
uncomfortable truth? You want what’s out there to make you shudder.
You wouldn’t embark on the journey to the heart of darkness if
there were light at the end of the tunnel, now would you? You would
leave that unhappy task to some riverboat fool. You want a
connoisseur of horror at the end of the tunnel with a horn full of
blood. Let’s greet the dark beast. Shall we?

The glass Cadillac was roaring through
an autobahn of hell. Flaming creatures were trying to board it with
the expressed intention of murdering the occupants through
incineration. Miraculously it escaped in no small part due to the
heroic efforts of a despised flaming ape. The glass Cadillac
entered a hideous red atmosphere. Then it smashed into a moonscape
populated with dead bodies. The glass Cadillac shattered into a
million pieces like a massive chandelier assassinating all the
masked revelers at a decadent ball. The rebels had infiltrated the
city limits and the decadent aristocrats had to be brutally
murdered. Even the chandelier sensed this. The broken glass swam
into our faces like so many minnows. Blood was pouring out of my
eyes as I blinked in the horror at the end of the line. Everybody
get the hell out. This journey doesn’t include a
turnabout.

Crypt Island was populated with dead
bodies. It was the spaceship that had the live occupants. This
somehow seemed appropriate. Why not wreck into your next world
broken and bleeding? Blood pouring out of your eyeballs? Don’t let
the fact that it’s a dead planet trouble you.

The last one was such a disaster of
epic proportions. Surely the next one will be much worse. Those
bleeding eyeballs hint at it. Try to look around with all that
broken glass in your eyes, will you now? Dry up those bloody tears
because you’re here. You made it to hell, congratulations. Not
exactly the destination that you had in mind? Tell it to hell. See
if it cares.

What about a finger for your spine for
first aid in this new world? There is no Red Cross here. As you sit
there in terrible car crash shock, all your bones broken. Why not
chill that finger down a bit? How about a dead finger for that
broken spine? We’ll run it up and down a bit now that it’s cool.
Let’s just zip it up and down your broken spine one more time for
good measure. It’s beginning to knit back together. That broken
spine doesn’t hurt too much, now does it? You’re beginning to feel
much better now. The screaming belies it.

Why are you screaming in such agony? I
already told you that your broken bones are knitting themselves
back together. Stop that bellyaching. You’re going to live. Stop
crying. Witchcraft is putting you all back together. Shush, now
baby.

All the other occupants of the
spaceship are crying horribly too. How can we scream in this much
agony? Is the voice box the last organ to die? Everybody shut up
including me. This hideous screaming is unbecoming and it’s
annoying me. I don’t want to scream in pain anymore. I want to make
whoever did this to me, scream in hideous agony. How do I arrange
that inversion with witchcraft?

At least the broken glass is ejecting
itself from your eyeballs with pleasant efficiency. The glass
Cadillac needs it back because it’s reassembling itself right there
over yonder. It is putting itself back together behind a stack of
corpses. The glass Cadillac is a vehicle with a certain
reserve.

Or it didn’t want you to see the
proprietary secrets of the occult that were lurking under the hood
like so many ghouls. There it was again. You had to admire the
ingenuity of magical Detroit. It was back. And it was black. It was
into that real dark magic. However it was hard to admire it for
long because blood was reentering my eyes along with all the other
holes in my body. Why not? I want that blood back. I’m going to put
it to excellent use shedding the blood of others very shortly. You
can’t kill if you’re dead yourself, you see? I have to be reborn
out of this gruesome death to extract my revenge. Hurry up now,
force of the occult, I want to kill you.

That was about the size of it. I was
dying yet wanting to kill. A dead man played Mozart on my spine as
I shook that car crash away. Then the grave robber did Beethoven
while the wounds closed. The blood poured back in like razor
blades. My nerves needed plaster casting. So this is what it felt
like to experience violent death?

Chapter

A massive red ghoul seemed to be rising
out over the horizon in this world. And he was laughing at me. That
doesn’t do much for the old self-confidence, now does it? I’m in my
death rattle and a massive red ghoul is laughing at me? I shook my
head to clear the final cobwebs away.

My brain had been jolted off its stems.
However it was reattaching itself nicely. I could feel it stapling
itself back down to my skull with rude efficiency. It was
comforting to feel the center of the human nervous system tacking
itself to my broken cranium.

It felt like my brain was climbing back
out of the autopsy jar into the demonstration skeleton in the
science class. Why not run that film backwards?

My frontal lobes were beginning to
spark again. They were flickering a bit but they fired up with a
furious flight like a flock of geese being accosted by a shotgun
blast. A whole gaggle of geese were honking in my ears. Why not
fire that twelve gauge shotgun right into my face? You seem to have
missed a spot.

My hearing was shot because my ears
were sitting in my hands. Actually I had a whole bunch of body
parts in my lap. I wasn’t sure why I was holding onto my ears
seeing as major organs had evacuated the vehicle but that’s what
the mind does in moments of panic. It clutches to small
insignificant things like ears instead of the heart. I had kicked
that aside out of disgust when it exited my body. It was too
gruesome to pick up.

The heart, liver and lungs seemed to
have suffered the least. They jumped in my corpse without any fuss.
It wasn’t too crude of a reverse autopsy. I wiped away the tears,
blood and cranial flood. Who wants to fight in this world because
now I’m ready?

I’ve had enough of this abuse. You
can’t slaughter a man and expect him not to wage furious war
against you. The mistake is all yours because you don’t put him
back together after you given him an autopsy. You just created
Frankenstein, you stupid fool.

The red ghoul was brought into more
hideous focus. He wasn’t a comedian. He wasn’t a cosmic
entertainer. He wasn’t making the cruelest of jokes that he could
possible muster at the expense of my dignity. That red ghoul was
just the sun of this world.

The red ghoul was just plasma
interwoven with magnetic fields. There is absolutely nothing to
worry about in this new world. Put your mind at ease. The red sun
of hell is shining on your face, rejoice.

I suppose there are worse things than
red dawn in hell. Although sunset in heaven must be lovely when all
the angels are being slaughtered. That’s it for heaven, angels.
It’s shutting down for good. Hand in your wings. You can cut them
off yourself. Or we’ll just chop them off for you. We can do this
anyway you like. Heaven is going under. It’s God’s honest truth.
The keeper of heaven wouldn’t lie to you.

The problem with heaven, you see?
Nobody qualifies to get in here anymore. We’re opening up a new
division of hell in the Third World where it’s cheaper. Stop your
grousing, we’ll call you heaven’s devils, will that placate you?
Laugh all you want, angels, because you’re the first occupants of
the devil’s newest coal pit whether you like it or not. Shovels and
lamps are over there. Grab a bucket and look lively.

The Casket Island School for Witches,
welcome. Please allow me to introduce myself. I am a winged beast
of wealth and taste. Shall I spread my wings to make you feel more
comfortable? Did I mention that there will be no shelter here?
There is no love under these wings. You feel me?

The Casket Island School for Witches,
gasp. The corpses are littered everywhere. So this is where
witchcraft made its grim home? What the fresh hell is this? Someone
shoot whoever is responsible for this. I don’t care if you’re the
devil. It’s not a suitable excuse. We have distinct limits for what
we will tolerate here. You’ve just gone too far this time
witchcraft.

Casket Island looked like a hell that
was painted by a Flemish madman with a frontal lobe disorder. It
was a killing field of peasants and toppled hay carts. And what
were the giant dead birds and rotten fruit doing everywhere? That
wasn’t nice. Why did they have to add that particular flourish? I
suppose just to frighten the new arrivals. And it was working
marvelously. I was quite terrified. I was also extremely angry
about the situation. It’s curious how the mind keeps reeling
towards violence when there is no possibility of escape. Why not go
down fighting?

Casket Island was a nightmare painted
by a Gothic lunatic. Who gave this mental case a paintbrush?
Whoever commissioned this abject alienation should be shot along
with the artist. Just line them both up in a tidy line and put one
bullet through the two. They didn’t even deserve the dignity of
individual execution.

Casket Island was an alienating
affront. It was over-the-top wickedness. It depicted with chilling
authority the absurdity and foolishness of mankind. It was high
art. Why not go for it if you’re going to do hell? I had to
begrudgingly admire this depiction of hell even though I was a
principle in it. It was first class horror.

Couldn’t the artist just tone it down a
little bit? Perhaps take a little bit of the hard edge off of hell?
Why crucify us all to hell? It wasn’t right. We were already in
hell weren’t we? We showed up. And this is what we got for it? Get
me the hell out of here!

We need to medicate this nightmare a
bit if we’re stuck with it. Dial it down a few clicks. What sort of
evil creature could possibly live here? I wasn’t calling this lurid
body farm my home. Let someone else curate this horror of dead
humans, giant birds and rotting fruit. I’m bailing out of here at
the nearest convenience.

I was looking back fondly at the
purgatory of Crypt Island before I had marched boldly forward into
this corpse. I was smacking my lips at the boredom that I had lost
on Crypt Island. How could purgatory be such a powerful something?
Only in relation, I suppose.

But as always it was high time to deal
with the fresh horror that witchcraft has just dished up. Get that
pony of the apocalypse over here. I aim to break that old nag. Pony
up, I shouted.

It was time to throw a leg over that
old nag. Let’s see if this pony of the Apocalypse will trot. The
nag will probably bite me. What to make of an ornery pony in
hell?

The one thing that was decidedly
certain was that I was going to ride him. I wasn’t taking any gruff
from a horse in hell. I didn’t care if he was a horse of the
apocalypse. Conquest, war, famine and death, you know what? So
what?

What do I have to lose? Let the pony of
the apocalypse throw me all he wants. I’m still going to climb back
on his itchy back. We’ve got all eternity to do this. You want to
play rough, nag? I’m going to play polo with you

No horse of the apocalypse showed up. I
knew as much. You bunch of paper ponies. I had you from giddy
up.

I was shouting into the void. However
there was nothing out there. I had threatened, cajoled and cursed.
There was nothing out there. I took a moment to carefully consider
my circumstances. Perhaps a little quiet reflection in hell was in
order. Perhaps this is just the church of the damned. You must sit
in silence and ponder God. Why not?