Kev's Stories n' Art

The big burly wolf trounced through the underbrush of the forest, twigs and leaves catching and rustling as he walked through. The operation objective ran through his head. To capture the three federal criminals given the death sentence, it was ranked a high priority. The three dirty pigs had been convicted of drug dealing and cannibalism, both incredibly high offenses.

Something shook nearby, and the gray wolf’s ears turned to triangulate where the sound came from. The first little pig had been located, faithfully building a house out of straw. He was caught unawares as the big wolf lunged at him, tumbling on and on in the grassy field. The kill was clean and efficient. The lupine turned around and took out a medium sized body bag and neatly wrapped up the corpse. 

“Well. That’s one. I can’t say I particularly like this part of the job.” He grimaced and looked away, wiping off the blood onto the grass. “Now, where are his brothers?”

Pointing his snout to the air, he sniffed. Coming from the East in a draft was a distinct similar smell, practically spelling out where the other cartel members were. First though, he dug a hole and hid the body bag in the hole, haphazardly hiding it. He doubted anyone would be around this area of the country, though. Continuing on to follow the scent, it led him to another house. It was constructed out of mud, sturdy and wet. However this time, the older brother had heard the oinks of his youngest brother and hid inside his house. So the wolf took a big breath and he huffed and he puffed, and the house flew away. Splats of mud hit the trees and surroundings. The chubby little pig was already on his hooves with an attempt to run before the wolf threw himself again. Tousling in the grass and struggling to keep the criminal from running away, he eventually subdued him. He repeated the same drill again, taking the body bag out and burying the corpse. 

Wiping his brow, the wolf exclaimed, “Now for the third one, I heard he’s the baddest!”

The three pigs had been wrapped up in all sorts of crimes, and while the younger brothers carried them all out, the oldest was the king pin of it all. 

So when the agent found the third piggy up on a hill nearby, he made his way over. Taking a deep breath again, he huffed and puffed but the brick house did not budge. It stood firmly in defiance to the law. Again, and again, he huffed and puffed. But to no avail. 

“What’s all this racket?” The third piggy came out of the house and peeked around the door, seeing the wolf. “If I turn myself in, will I get a lighter sentence?” 

“Yessir, yessir, you will.” The wolf said. Instead of just a straight death sentence, maybe he’d be able to choose the method. His superiors had told him to use any methods to bring in or eliminate the dangerous threats. 

The eldest pig thought for a second, then called out again. “Come up onto the chimney, my door is jammed shut!” 

So complying, the wolf walked to the side and scrambled up the brick house. He peeked down the chimney and saw nothing dangerous, so he slid down and down into the shaft. Quickly though, a burning pain enveloped him and he yelped and howled. 

A fine mist settled over the Cathedral Ward, the dead empty streets a mere figment of how bustling the region used to be. It had been built around the Healing Church, a faction with such a central position of power in Yharnam. The eternal night that fell across the sky had been coalescing into a singular point, bleeding into a blood moon that left the clouds tinged a deep purple with its reflection. The Hunter clad in leather garments and the distinctive face mask began down the steps of Oeden Chapel, the cobbled streets devoid of proper maintenance. The wrought iron fences stretched up into unwelcoming points along with the tall gothic spires lined with finials.

The Hunter suddenly froze as he rounded the corner, a long lanky arm curled around the side of the chapel. His eyes traced along the limb to the main body, which only led to more thin arms. Its head was filled with eyes, entirely eyes caged in by flesh. Every single one watched the Hunter’s movements as he began to panic. That… Thing hadn’t been there before. There was no evidence that it hadn’t been there before, the structure of the building it rested on was completely untouched.

As if it had no physical weight on the building at all despite the fact that the creature was massive. Maybe as big as the building itself. The Hunter backtracked slowly step by step into the safety of the chapel, hiding around the corner of a pillar and sliding to the ground. 

“What is this accursed city?” He whispers to himself, clutching his weapon tightly. “Are these the Great Ones Brygenwerth keeps mentioning?” After his previous encounter with Rom the Vacuous Spider at the academy, everything had been flipped upside down. Beasts were more aggressive, the Church Servants using attacks of the arcane, it was clear the truth of the world was being revealed.

Torch in hand, the Hunter descended down the stairs of Brygenwerth’s basement. It had initially been locked above, but a couple well placed hits shattered the lock. Grime and dirt caked between the heavy stone bricks laid, clearly untouched for years. The Hunter glanced back. Darkness seemed unending, sprawling out in front of him and devouring whatever light he left behind. At the end of the corridor lit a wooden door that opened with a creak, the sound grated against his ears and the Hunter tensed up instinctively. Inside, papers lined the floors along with scattered equipment like vials and rather gruesome looking tools even a hunter would flinch at.

Something rattled as he took his first step into the room. It skid across the floor and bounced slightly. The Hunter lifted his burning torch forward, studying the strange shape of the skull. It was deformed – Human, but with great altercation clearly applied to it. Dried shrivelled eyes lined the inside of the cranium, displaying the insight that the individual had possessed. As he continued on, the expanse of Brygenwerth’s experimentation was great. His fingers dragged through the dust on a desk, attempting to assess how long it had been since someone set foot on these grounds. Some cages held decayed corpses lie against the walls, the bones far too small to be of an adult’s. Some cages were empty but showed struggle. The Institute of Brygenwerth had been widely respected by all of Yharnam, but for some reasons unknown to the public it had been suddenly considered forbidden ground by the Healing Church. With good reason, it appeared.

However, that did not excuse the Healing Church’s far worse ministrations, using the people of Yharnam as their test subjects for the blood of the Great Ones. A skittering sound snaked across the room, and the Hunter swung around with his torch in front and weapon drawn. Oversized large spiders swarmed around his legs, just like the ones Rom had summoned during the hunt. They aggressively fought back against the Hunter and he was left swatting at them like annoying flies. Their blood ran not red, but a milky white against the walls.

“Paleblood,” The Hunter commented, “Seek Paleblood to transcend the Hunt.” He recounted, a note he had found scrawled in his handwriting when he first awoke. The spiders had fought and struggled like chained prisoners rather than overgrown arthropods, and the Hunter glanced between the empty cages and the ascended spiders with Kin blood. In a particularly large cage that seemed evident to hold Rom’s ascended form, a stack of reports sat in a scattered mess. With his footsteps echoing ominously down the lengthy halls, his gloves were a much needed protective barrier against the defiled papers. They offered a layer of separation. 

The papers held detailed accounts of Brygenwerth’s experiments. Details about every single process, every single attempt. Their goal was clear now, Provost Willem was always so curious about the Great Ones.

The Hunter slammed the stack of papers down again, sending them flying across the floor. “Perhaps too curious. A forced ascension is insane, the Great Ones are not to be trifled with.” 

Reading? Sblt. Smith thought, I betcha I’ve already read every book on this forsaken ship twice. “Yessir.” The tone was resigned, but far too nervous to speak up against a superior.

He shuffled himself off the deck, making his way down the cold metal halls where the coughing of other soldiers bounced and echoed. It’s been awhile since I’ve wrote to Ma, I wonder how she is. Sure better than I am. The man complained to himself in his head, but he was the one who decided to join the navy. After passing a couple quarantined quiet quarters, he reached his own. Three other soldiers sat on their beds all doing something different to occupy themselves, none of them bothered to greet their quartermate. Not with the grim atmosphere. Sblt. Smith hauled himself up onto a bunker embedded in the wall and pulled a worn and well used book with leather bindings out.

Dear Ma,

I hope you’re doing well back in London, for sure better than any of us are doing. Everyone’s been in quarantine since someone came back with legionnaires. I can’t even describe how it feels to walk by a silent bunk, it’s almost better if I can hear them coughing. At least they’re alive. 

I really miss a good home cooked meal, some potatoes and biscuits would be great. All we’ve got to eat is a bunch of tasteless flat breads that’ll break your teeth if you try too hard, the best we can do is steep them in some tea. Even the tea is miserable. We’ve been out on the channel for so long, there’s hardly any action happening right now. I suppose I can’t really complain too much about that, we’re safe here. I can bet you Germany has no intention of trying to attack our navy! I’ll cut the letter short– sorry, but I’m almost out of paper and it’s hard to get any here now.

Love, 

Charles

Machines screamed for me when I couldn’t. 

Metal sheared apart like paper, tearing easily off the frame. You could have thought it was aluminum foil by how flimsy it was. The impact came as a brute force all at once; a full solid wall slamming into what would become little more than a packaged sausage. That’s all they were, right? Packaged bundles of meat. Just like me and my riding gear. The sudden combustion of gas created a flash of light that soon faded behind my forehead, a pulsating pain that subsided with the adrenaline shooting through every nerve. The world spun out of control in a whirl of lights and colours above, melding into a dizzying kaleidoscope. A hard impact rakes through my whole body, the abrasive sound of the windshield shattering grating against my ears rang. Fragments of shapes distorted with red and blue flashes in the corners of my vision, only serving to add to the overwhelming sensory overload. Blurry figures of people rushed all around the scene, cars rushed by, trying not to involve themselves in the incarceration of chaos. The paramedics leaned over my battered body, feeling and looking me over for anything broken. There wasn’t anything broken that I could feel, until they lifted my limp form onto the stretcher. The soft scrunch of bone splinters gritting against each other, like sharp little needles everywhere. Everywhere. 

Out of a somewhat morbid curiosity, I turn my head. Slowly, very slowly, as if in  some sort of limbo state. I feel the dull ache of pain. Maybe if I weren’t so dazed and detached from the world, the sight would have horrified me. But it brought nothing but apathy, an indifference, like my brain couldn’t even begin to comprehend what had happened. My bike was completely totaled. That was the first thought that took form seeing the scene. But soon I followed the line of metal wreckage to the orange: the gray car was erupting in a conflagration of warm and beige tones. The driver inside was unconscious, and the front of the dashboard reflected shards of sharp white light straight into my eyes: the windshield. I fought consciousness for a little longer, the lull of rest slowly encroaching on the corners of my mind, pulling me deep in—a quiet, peaceful rest. 

I lay with my back against a bed. Gradually, my vision began to focus in on my surroundings: white and gray hues mixed with the occasional splash of colour began to differentiate themselves into individual objects. A heavy blanket draped around each corner of the bed, covering my body fully. Throughout every surface of my body, the feeling of a thousand little needles stabbed me everywhere. I winced at the pain and glanced down. Thick layers of fibreglass enveloped everything, keeping everything from simply falling apart. It felt like I was bound down from the sheer weight of it all; or was that just how flimsy my muscles were? 

Someone I assumed to be a doctor walked in, a classic stethoscope around his neck and that white coat. 

 “Hello.” He brought up a clipboard in his hands and clicked a pen. “How are you feeling?”

“Miserable,” I mumbled, relaxing my head back into the pillow and closing my eyes. Not that anything was different, now I just lay in a hospital bed instead of at home. “How’s the other driver? In the car.”

The man set down the clipboard on a nearby table and pulled up a chair to the side of a bed with a screech. He sat down and folded his hands in front of him. “He bled out in the ambulance.”

Instantly, I felt gutted.

“You, and fragments of your bike hit the windshield, so it shattered instantly. The shards created lacerations all over his body along with internal bleeding.” 

I never meant for this to happen. It was a backcountry road; no one went out at that hour. At best, I was never, ever, supposed to take someone with me. That was something I had always believed. It was better that way. I hadn’t even noticed the soft click of the door, the whisper of air moving before it was still again. 

I was an idiot, and now someone was dead. I was going to be charged with manslaughter, and now my life was over. All because of my stupid actions. 

No, it wasn’t my life that was over. It was the driver I had  whose life was over. I lay catatonic, reflecting on my actions. That  split moment when my entire life rushed before my eyes in front of that car, did he also feel that? Was it only the highbeams that blinded him before countless tiny shards embedded themselves like nails to his skin? Thoughts ran rampant in my head. The kind of thoughts you had to wade through like deep water, but pulled you deeper under anyways. Suffocating tar,  filling your lungs with a thick feeling when you can’t breathe.

I wanted to apologize.

But how? In what way, could you possibly apologize to heartbroken parents that their son was taken because of some kid’s reckless speeding? You really couldn’t. 

Even so, it was the least I could do. If this was how I felt about what happened, I couldn’t possibly imagine how devastated they must be. 

In the days leading up to the confrontation, I spent my time looking out the window. The frantic wheeling down the hall, and constant noise had become nothing but a droning constant in the back of my head. There might as well be a whole flowchart I constructed on how exactly this scenario could go after the hours I had spent thinking about it. 

I braced for yelling and anger, or an outburst of some kind. Something fiery and filled with raw emotion. But they walked in, maybe mid forties and clearly upset, but determined not to take it out on a child. 

“Are you okay?” The lady asked with a soft tone, reassuring me it was okay. 

The sheets twisted around my fingers in an unconscious anxiety. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so, sorry.” It didn’t relate to anything she had just said, but I automatically defaulted to what I had planned to say. “I never meant for anything to happen, it just did, and the next thing I knew I was speeding up faster and faster. And then I hit him and–” 

“Breathe.” She turned to her husband and a reminiscent sad smile crossed her face. “David had always wanted one of those death traps too, didn’t he?” I finally noticed the man, David’s father. He was burly, in a winter coat and leaning forward on the wobbly plastic chairs. Intimidating.

 The man spoke surprisingly softly for my initial impressions. “We’d never let him have one. I used to ride, stopped when we had him.” My chest felt tight again. It was all wrong, where was the anger? I didn’t know how to deal with such…

Acceptance.

The woman's words broke me out of my quiet stupor again. “We’re happy you’re alive, though. Really. It’s better than neither of you being here.”

My gaze dropped, I had no idea what to say. My head was an empty void. “I… You’re not here to press charges?” 

The couple looked at each other, a silent conversation passing just between their eyes. The man reached out to hold his wife’s hand, sighing and taking the reins of the topic. “You seem like a good kid, just a bit, misguided.” He eyed up my body cast, and the bandaged burns covering up and down my arms.

“Look, we thought about it. But we think you have enough to deal with alone, right now.” The table beside me was bare, no flowers. Not even a letter of condolences from a concerned relative. He smiled warmly at me. “How about you and I go for a ride sometime, together. We can just talk; or not, if you don’t want to.”

I hesitated, looking at myself. Would I even be able to properly walk after this? My legs were destroyed, it felt like. I was about to kindly reject his offer, but he cut in again.

“Thoughts get loud sometimes. They always do, and even the most well put together people struggle.” His body language shifted, he uncrossed his arms and opened up his stance. To reassure me, I suppose. For once it felt like I wasn’t alone. I hardly knew this man, but it felt safe. He spoke with such understanding, something my own father had never given me. All I could manage was a nod, and my fingers relaxed. The blankets fell out of my hand.

He got up and slid the coat off his shoulders, hanging it on the back of his chair. “It gives me some peace of mind, y’know. I was there once, too.”