Cannibal Corpse, M/C

Anyway, I could not scream. I had no air in my lungs. All that came out was a whistling expulsion of black air. And it was then that I became aware of a funny smell, a sharp stink like ozone that cut through the stench of death all around me: not subtle but searing and overpowering. Something in the corner by the woodstove shifted, rustled. A shadow rose like a balloon filling itself with air. There was someone there, something there. It was no optical illusion, a form was taking shape, something born of shadows, born of darkness. It filled out and I saw a man. He was dressed in black and his face was pale as moonlight, the complexion craggy and drawn. The eyes were pink and bright like pockets of pus.

“How fare you, little boy?” he said. “Does thee fare well?”

I wanted to leap at him and tear him into pieces but I knew I never could because he was a ghost. He had no more true solidity than mist. But I was young and hot-blooded so I jumped to my feet and ran at him. Even the pungent stink of open graves and corpse slime that came off him did not stop me. I went at him, swinging and clawing and he was like black smoke. My fists went right through him and he laughed at me until I fell at his feet, panting and sobbing and wailing.

“The little injun that could,” he said in that voice of whispering casket silk. “What spirit, what gumption, what guile.” He laughed again, then held out his hand to me. “Take it boy. Take what is offered.” The hand was like white rubber, shiny like wet neoprene. The fingers were white and slender and almost delicate. There were no nails at the ends of the fingers but thorny yellow claws. Flies were crawling over the back of the hand. “Take it, Little Injun, whilst I have patience. Your sister took it.”

I looked up at him and I knew I was dead. I knew he’d roast my soul in hell and cook my brains on a hot dog fork over the hottest fire in the nether regions, but I did not believe what he said. I had decided that he was the Devil or perhaps Death, or perhaps the very thing that had inspired those stories. Trembling and sobbing, I just looked up at him and hated with everything I had. “YOU LIE!” I told him “YOU ARE NOTHING BUT LIES!”

And he laughed. Oh, how he laughed. But you have never heard such laughter, my friend. There was no joy or mirth in it. It was the sound of agony and cruel suffering, starvation and suicide, scraping blackness and minds imploding with raw insanity. “Little Injun! How dare you speaketh unto thou! But I do not lie, my little red heathen, my little wagon-burner, my quaint little red savage: Darlene took it. She begged for it and I took her. Before I opened her, I raped her and she died screaming, begging for more! Oh, how she twisted, how she writhed, how she foamed with blood and squealed a fine hellsong, plump squealing piggy!”

I shouted something at him and he roared with laughter again. I covered my ears because I would not listen and he grinned and it was the grin of something dead pulled from a lake. I felt things in my ears. Crawling things biting my hands, so I pulled them away and they were red with blood from the bites of hundreds of spiders that were pouring from my ears…black widows, I think. Black, round, shiny bodies, skittering needle legs.

“When I speak, you will listen. My words you will hear…do you understand, Little Injun?”

“NO!” I cried.