stitch itself into my flesh. How unfathomable, the way the night tide air tasted as it filtered through the place that ensconced my mouth. The stars looked especially bright, and this confused me because I had not realized that night had fallen—surely there had been muted daylight moments before, when I had first discovered the bottle while wading through the waves. What a curiosity the mortal world can be.
I walked toward and into the city, into a portion of it that I had never known. How ancient and acrid the air seemed as it brushed my faux mouth, against which I pressed my hot tongue as I babbled incomprehensibly to darkness. An elderly light fell from tilted street lamps to the dusty street as infants with mature faces seeped from a decrepit building’s doorway and encircled me, returning my gibberish. They danced around me and called me by some strange name, and then these imps scattered as a tall black woman encased inside a tight yellow gown stalked to me beneath the myriad stars. Rising tempest played with her length of burgundy-colored hair.
Genuflecting before me, the woman took my hand and licked it. “We were not expecting you so soon,” she murmured. “Indeed, we had sensed that you had been mislaid between dimensions and unable to come and herald the end of mortal time.” She raised her face and gazed at him with alchemical eyes. “Of all your many masks, this is the most grotesque.”
I slipped my hand out of her own. “I’m sorry, miss, but you have me confused with another.”
At this she scowled and writhed with rising. “An imposture? How very vile. We do not take kindly to such trickery, for we are weary with waiting, waiting. How you’ve come to impersonate His aura I cannot comprehend, for this mask is authentic in its way. Let me scald it with my wrath.”
She raised a hand and made some kind of sign unto the stars, and then she sliced one talon through her lip. I beheld the blood that bubbled from the wound as the creature leaned toward me and pressed her mouth against mine own. I drank her unholy elixir as she spoke an alien and unfathomable language that leaked into my mouth as swallowed bile. I watched her back away from me, not understanding the shadow that encased her, that hard unyielding surface of gloom. Starlight extinguished and the air stifled all about me. I walked toward the surface of rigid shadow and collided with a barrier of smooth glass. I leaned against that incomprehensible wall as the floor on which I trembled began to tip and threaten sane balance. Aware of sudden presence, I looked upward through the lean neck of the container in which I insanely found myself. A dark feminine face peered at me from above, and then its mammoth mouth moved with evocation as it weaved a wicked language into my rancid atmosphere. I watched, helplessly, as that siren orifice wrapped over my container’s opening and sucked.
IV
I glanced at the cinders in your burnished eyes and sensed the acidic wretchedness that burned the brain of a forgotten goddess. Those embers in your eyes were gold and orange, yet dull of hue like the mauve and ruddy porphyry with which your sarcophagus had been constructed. Had it always existed, your dwelling of anticipated death? Or did you have it built when, in vision, you beheld the end of your apprehensive adoration? It cannot be an edifice erected for One of Eternal Glory, for it is a place that reeks of extinction and expired dreams. There had been violation here, I sensed, for in your bowl that once held precious gems there was naught but dust and filigree of web. Your mouth was dry, no longer nourished by rich liquid sacrifice.
Your whispered legend had been discovered in one rare and ancient tome that I had located in a hushed shop in Innsmouth. That seaport reminded me of your legend, a thing of past magnificence and potency that was now mostly dormant yet contained a promise of resuscitated splendor. The air of Innsmouth reeked almost as
I walked toward and into the city, into a portion of it that I had never known. How ancient and acrid the air seemed as it brushed my faux mouth, against which I pressed my hot tongue as I babbled incomprehensibly to darkness. An elderly light fell from tilted street lamps to the dusty street as infants with mature faces seeped from a decrepit building’s doorway and encircled me, returning my gibberish. They danced around me and called me by some strange name, and then these imps scattered as a tall black woman encased inside a tight yellow gown stalked to me beneath the myriad stars. Rising tempest played with her length of burgundy-colored hair.
Genuflecting before me, the woman took my hand and licked it. “We were not expecting you so soon,” she murmured. “Indeed, we had sensed that you had been mislaid between dimensions and unable to come and herald the end of mortal time.” She raised her face and gazed at him with alchemical eyes. “Of all your many masks, this is the most grotesque.”
I slipped my hand out of her own. “I’m sorry, miss, but you have me confused with another.”
At this she scowled and writhed with rising. “An imposture? How very vile. We do not take kindly to such trickery, for we are weary with waiting, waiting. How you’ve come to impersonate His aura I cannot comprehend, for this mask is authentic in its way. Let me scald it with my wrath.”
She raised a hand and made some kind of sign unto the stars, and then she sliced one talon through her lip. I beheld the blood that bubbled from the wound as the creature leaned toward me and pressed her mouth against mine own. I drank her unholy elixir as she spoke an alien and unfathomable language that leaked into my mouth as swallowed bile. I watched her back away from me, not understanding the shadow that encased her, that hard unyielding surface of gloom. Starlight extinguished and the air stifled all about me. I walked toward the surface of rigid shadow and collided with a barrier of smooth glass. I leaned against that incomprehensible wall as the floor on which I trembled began to tip and threaten sane balance. Aware of sudden presence, I looked upward through the lean neck of the container in which I insanely found myself. A dark feminine face peered at me from above, and then its mammoth mouth moved with evocation as it weaved a wicked language into my rancid atmosphere. I watched, helplessly, as that siren orifice wrapped over my container’s opening and sucked.
IV
I glanced at the cinders in your burnished eyes and sensed the acidic wretchedness that burned the brain of a forgotten goddess. Those embers in your eyes were gold and orange, yet dull of hue like the mauve and ruddy porphyry with which your sarcophagus had been constructed. Had it always existed, your dwelling of anticipated death? Or did you have it built when, in vision, you beheld the end of your apprehensive adoration? It cannot be an edifice erected for One of Eternal Glory, for it is a place that reeks of extinction and expired dreams. There had been violation here, I sensed, for in your bowl that once held precious gems there was naught but dust and filigree of web. Your mouth was dry, no longer nourished by rich liquid sacrifice.
Your whispered legend had been discovered in one rare and ancient tome that I had located in a hushed shop in Innsmouth. That seaport reminded me of your legend, a thing of past magnificence and potency that was now mostly dormant yet contained a promise of resuscitated splendor. The air of Innsmouth reeked almost as
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