Catchism: On a Wall Be Perched

Catchism: On a Wall Be Perched

Postby catch » Fri Jun 28, 2013 9:56 am

in Myrkentown there was a Toyshop.
a toyshop with rattled windows, a toyshop with cobweb eyes,
where dolls dreamt, waiting, of gentle arms
and leaden soldiers marched eternal
against happy dragons, bulging bellies
sagging over stuffed-soft claws
and wooden swords thirsted
for button-eyed beasts of every size.

and a man named Treadwell
owned this shop, o'er which he did preside
like Myrken's Taxes, only for children's pockets
and when his jolly face passed
over this part of his shop
he would see
a door.


inside his toy-shop, there is that door -
plain, wooden, set straight in the wall
Without embellishment; not at all like
the toy-maker, tax-maker,
who is himself extraordinary.


it is a door he had not seen before.
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Re: Catchism: On a Wall Be Perched

Postby Treadwell » Fri Jun 28, 2013 12:59 pm

Treadwell, toymaker, sleepy and round, toddles through his toy shop, straightening stuffed critters and aligning knick-knacks on their tables. His big, broad, leather belt of toymaking tools hangs around his middle, all a-jingle and a-jangle, for he is at work. He is dressed more casually than usual--tonight finding him only otherwise wearing brown coveralls and boots over his usual yellow, long-sleeved, one-piece pajamas.

And there is a door.

He reaches to retrieve his glasses from a table nearby, pushing them onto his rotund shnozz and squinting blearily at the door.

"There shouldn't be a door there. I never ordered one put in, mmph mmph, especially not in the back wall of the store, straight through to my bathroom and tub!"

A thump of his cane to the floor sets his tools at his belly tinkling, but the curious old man cannot help himself. With a sleepy yawwwwwn from his lips, up goes a sweaty right hand to take the handle up, and to twist it, and to pull to open the door.
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
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Re: Catchism: On a Wall Be Perched

Postby breeevil » Fri Jun 28, 2013 1:12 pm

He had been lounging. He has been reading, leaning back in a comfy chair with his feet propped up on something he probably shouldn't have had his feet propped up on.
Treadwell's entering have his eyes moving away from the words on the papers, focusing for a moment on the belt before a finger jabs at the air, motioning to said door. He would have asked, but there is the answer.

Clayton smirks, standing.. walking to stand next to the Glutton.

It's only after the bigger man starts moving for that mystery door that Clayton does speak, "Is that a--" Good idea?
Well.. hopefully it is...
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Re: Catchism: On a Wall Be Perched

Postby catch » Fri Jun 28, 2013 1:47 pm


and so they came together
two mortal sins in a toy-shop
and one
plain
door

opn'd wide the door, and a heat came through
a hell-heat, the heat of fevered flesh
and wet, begging lungs. The toymaker
would know the smell;
the smell of a spilt belly.

in the toy-shop, there was a butcher-shop
the meat held high on great, gleaming hooks
the trunks and flanks of
children
hoisted high, kept moving,
in and out of the great blackness above
where a fan slowly spun
and to a great sound of
clanking gears.

delivered, for a Glutton's belly.

along the line there are more of them
children
but wrong, pig-children, with stubby hands
snouts for noses, and feet split for hooves.
their screams were not human
not pig
a mixing of both.

and Above the children was a great figure
a man
his head small on the great slabs of his shoulders
nothing to distinguish him but great, white rolls
pillow-fat arms
a beard made of maggots.

he looks up from his work, this butcher
this Fat Man who is Treadwell
twisted
his glass knife held above the belly
of a pig-child; it whimpers and moans.


'What is this,' the Fat Man asks,
the maggots of his beard trembling, dripping
like foam from his lips
the pig-child under him squealed as they fell on
his flesh.


'At last come you,' he said again,
and put down his knife
and wiped his fat, toy-maker's hands
on the white of his apron


'It is not your Fat Man,' another voice says
an insect on the Fat Man's arm
crouched upon skinny legs
his manhood an obscene
thing, there
between his thighs.


'Hello, gorgeous,' Cloud-hair says
for indeed, his hair is soft as
violet-sun clouds
his face fae-pointed, beautiful
and he greets the Pride-creature
with a lewd blinking of his insect-eyes
the grotesque, gigantic third
ruining his pretty looks
b'neath a crown of gold.


there these night-mare visions wait,
expectant. tall.
the Fat Man and Cloud hair
characters
in a puppet-play.


'There is plenty here for all.'
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Re: Catchism: On a Wall Be Perched

Postby Treadwell » Fri Jun 28, 2013 2:09 pm

A trip through the door, a trip through a funny sort of looking glass, a mirror view twisted.

The reek of blood spilled, the cries of children plumped and fattened and fed and dismembered into meaty chunks, the squeals of other pig-children being treated the same.

Stifling and smothering heat that takes the breath and leaves one dizzy, especially one bearing six hundred and more pounds of flesh on his body, a cloudy beard on his face, and heavy garments and tools all over.

The image of an immensely fat, almost-Tubbius, his image similar yet different, obscenely corpulent and overflowing, but with a beard of maggots.

A vague familiarity passes through the woozy Treadwell's head--but why? Is there something he should know--or perhaps recall?--about this fellow?

Yet where most would be utterly repulsed, the mortal embodiment of gluttony cannot help but salivate at the promise of plenty, drool dripping-oozing at the edges of his lips, his eyes misting over in hazy delirium, his belly beginning to rumble in anticipation as he stumbles forward.
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
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Re: Catchism: On a Wall Be Perched

Postby breeevil » Fri Jun 28, 2013 2:36 pm

A doorway to hell.
A metaphor. Something even he had said before. A doorway to a hell he has all but refused to acknowledge in all of his years but there.. there it is.

"What was in that brandy?" He wonders it aloud. Was this the Guardian playing potion tricks on him? Had he eaten some kind of strange mushroom?
A nightmare? Though he had not been plagued with anything like that in many.. many decades. Longer, even.

Fingertips cover his lips, eyebrows knit together and Clayton turns to the side like he might be on the way to walk down a dirt hill. Or pick up a sword. His other arm curls around his chest. The heat has the proud man taking a step back. The heat. Not the smell of blood or the sight of maggots. Not the screams of pig children waiting to be slain or the mutilated bodies of the ones it was too late for.

He could rip the skin off of a man without blinking an eye.

Children. He hates them.. oh how he hates the petulance, the insatiable need for attention and love. But over that hate is the need to protect, the need to keep them from harm unlike he had been able to for his own.

The fae. Sometimes his fae, sometimes not. He had been called many things by the man with the Cloud Hair. Gorgeous was not on that list. "What is.." This. What is this.
So many years since he has been so.. what is he? Shocked? Confused?

There is a rumble from the Glutton, from his belly. What makes him what he is. Acid sweat beads on Pride's skin, maybe from heat or maybe as defense.. either way his shirt melts away, hitting the ground in sizzling chunks. "Aloisius. No.. think of Marta."
Clayton thought of Marta. Of the mother. Of what would happen to her at the sight of the bodies of these twisted children.

It is the petulance that Pride hates so much that has him trying to slip in front of his friend, to make it into this odd and hellish room before the Glutton can make it inside.
To stop the other man from feasting on horror.
To save those things that were children.
To save his fae.. even if it wasn't the right one.
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Re: Catchism: On a Wall Be Perched

Postby catch » Fri Jun 28, 2013 3:15 pm

'That was I, so long ago,'
said the Fat Man, once-Glutton,
his throat a sonorous sadness
his hand cutting free the belly
of the thing before him.

a steam of entrails,
and they are set in
the upturned scull
of some equine-thing.
a soup of blood and shit.


'So long ago, and twice-three times,
for Gluttony is much like Pride;
and one may hunger for many things,
knowledge, power, portents, signs
and, blind, missed I when the creature lied.'


In consolation, the Cloud-haired thing
skittered to the shuddering child
and painted nails dragged
from that husk
a morsel,
offered to the Fat Man with a coo of

'Father'.

The Fat Man opened his mouth, maggots-writhe
and - pop - inside the flesh does go,
and the Fat Man chews as the Cloud-hair

giggles
and strokes, from eyes, bone-white hair.

'Plenty for all, yet why have you come?
it is not-yet time
for Myrken Woode
to come inside the creature's head - unless -'


And, interrupting, Cloud-hair swung
from pillowed arm, clutching skin and fat,
and jigging there, third-eye blinked,
and turned the color of stars.

'Did you not hear, my maggot-filled father?'
the fae did laugh,
all eyes on Clayton,
his pretty face a child's joy.

'The horn, the horn's been found,
and now, at last, be free.'


Free. Free. The word screamed out,
and pig-children, living and dead
screamed the word,
the Fat Man's skin,
bloated
white
quivered
as his fat legs rolled, towards opn'd door,
refuse slopping from his bowl.


'A small door,' Cloud-hair said,
taking flight with gossamer wings,
knowing well the avaricious eye
of his master
his Father
and these two, whom the horn-vision
unknowingly
had sought.


'It all comes out of my head. It all comes out of my head.'
and Cloud-hair laughed as
doom
strode to them
maggots falling in wet rain
in plops
upon the butcher-floor.
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Re: Catchism: On a Wall Be Perched

Postby Treadwell » Fri Jun 28, 2013 4:21 pm

Warnings of Marta and children give the toymaker pause; the words of the Fat Man before them root Aloisius's feet to the floor.

"That was I, so long ago."

The words rumble, they bellow, they roll, much as Treadwell's bloated belly does under his coveralls and belt.

There is admiration from Treadwell to Fat Man.

There is a licking of slobbery lips behind floofy white beard, a nod of the head, and hunger again sets the Treadwellian belly a-burble. . . but most importantly?

There is recognition. A faint similarity of features in the face--the nose, especially. The height, a few inches too tall, the girth, slightly bloated out of proportion, the dining habits more repulsive than they ought to be, but where the Fat Man's voice is a thunder, a singular phrase blubbers and bursts squeakily from the toymaker's lips.

"Such a grand catch, hmm hmm, a grand catch!"

Insights.

A hunt for a legendary creature immortal and foolish--young, preferred, to be a prize, if even for a fleeting moment.

A virgin sought, pure of heart.

The only one around, of course, had been the wife: barely little more than a maiden, barely wed, and manipulated through a husband's callous cruelty unknown due to her innocence.

She was the unwitting trap, the lure, of a mythical one-horned creature.

A blur of recollection--no true cognizance, yet, or images, but one: standing atop a young man, barely more than a child, but a child who hid more to him than most would even suspect. Gleeful malice wrapped over the fleshy lips, one hand playing with the tight curls of a floofy, graying beard--a beard that, at a distance or through tear-misted eyes, might be mistaken for containing maggots instead of its curls and knots.

"A grand catch!" blubbered again. And then?

"Clayton! Out! Out! For the door! Go!"

Thus does the heavy-bodied, heavy-limbed Treadwell turn to flee from the oncoming mass of lard and flesh, hurling himself as a jangling mass of tools and fat for the doorway they just entered, a doorway that, once Clayton is through, will desperately need slamming shut to try to keep the monstrosity in.

But not before Clayton is through.
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
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Re: Catchism: On a Wall Be Perched

Postby breeevil » Fri Jun 28, 2013 4:47 pm

Pride. The word leaves him shuddering.. spoken by something so not right.
His eyes are back on the two -things-.. not his fae. Not his kin.
What horn? What is free?

"Aloisius.."
There is no recognition. No remembering. He knows not of a unicorn.. nothing of Catch. Nothing of a grand catch.

A hand moves to his ear, not to cover it but to hover near his head, his mouth twisted in disgust at the sight. The cutting. The eating. The screaming.

Pride moves.. his eyes sliding over the fat thing coming at them.

"What are you saying!?" He shouts to Treadwell. Such a grand catch. "What does that mean?"
Disgust.

And with that thing rolling after them, Clayton is moving.
It's instinct.. it's nature.. it's Pride that has him pushing Treadwell out the door first.
It's Pride that tells him not to care if he gets stuck inside so long as the other person he is with is away from this sickness.
It's Pride that has him glancing behind him and screaming a foreign phrase into the heat, to the children as he lands a foot back inside the toy shop.
"I'm sorry!"
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Re: Catchism: On a Wall Be Perched

Postby catch » Fri Jun 28, 2013 5:47 pm

'Save me,' comes
a little voice, the fae
that had been laughing.
his face
beautiful
but for that Eye.


and now he wept, his
lover
running, running away
crocodile tears
false-tears
greasy and golden, a fae's
treasure.


'Save Me!'

The Fat Man asks for nothing. His sins
gluttony, pride
have brought him to this
captured
where once he caught

A Grand Catch
and A Grand Catch captured him.

But I could be a Glutton again;
I could be a Glutton again.


Help me! the pig-children scream,
at Treadwell and Clayton both, but
their voices were not of pig-children
but the same, a single voice from
a thousand throats
a young man
a boy
caught.


A Grand Catch.

the Fat Man howls, his hand reaching for closing door,
and comes he just short.
It is a door, a plain, wooden door,
Amid the lead soldiers, who quaked
the dragon, who quailed,
the dolls and the beasts who
wept.
bloody.
button.
tears.


But A Grand Catch is Whole.

And nothing bad could come out of his head
ever
again.
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Re: Catchism: On a Wall Be Perched

Postby Treadwell » Fri Jun 28, 2013 6:00 pm

Aloisius Horatio Treadwell lies on his floor, nearly prone, resting on his knees with an arm thrown over the nearer of the two rocking chairs by his fireplace. His belt of tools hangs heavily at his belly; tears well up in those beady eyes of his.

And there comes Clayton behind him.

And there is the shutting of the door, a door now fading away magically to reveal the same, bland, basic, stone wall as before.

And there is bleeding! "My toys! They're bleeding!"

To his feet Treadwell scrambles, out of breath but frantic to scurry to a shelf of overstuffed piglets with red-oozing eyes. There he trembles, quivering furiously, eyes darting back to the wall where the door was, and then, a barked, hoarse command.

"Hang it all! I am the Toymaker, and none will ruin my creations!"

Prepared or not for a mystical outburst centered on Treadwell, Clayton--and, admittedly, anyone else out in the street at this late night, early morning hour--will see a brilliant white flash for just a moment, a flash that leaves every toy of every sort in the shop spotless and bright and polished--and Aloisius exhausted in his fumbling rage. Back across the floor he shakily and sweatily wobbles, dropping heavily into his usual rocker by the fireplace, there to tremble in a mix of fear, hunger, revulsion. . . and growing, gut-twisting awareness.

There he wheezes and puffs, allowing himself to squint at Clayton, fully expecting to have to answer a few questions.
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
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