The New Death and others by James Hutchings

sorcerer
    from those that he had killed.
     
    The poison in Thuloneah's veins
    at last had claimed her life.
    "What portion?" asked the sorcerer
    and drew his shining knife.
     
    ---
     
    "Her hands," the king replied, "were
deft.
    They knew each carnal art.
    Preserve them both, up to the wrist
    but not one other part."
     
    The wizard bowed and cleanly cut
    her soft and supple hands.
    He chanted in the tongue of djinns
    proclaiming strange commands.
     
    He summoned spirits of the earth
    that all not damned would shun.
    He pressed his trophies to the vines
    and plant and hands were one.
     
    Though orphaned from their guiding mind
    they beckoned nonetheless
    towards the king as if they sought
    to give a last caress.
     
    Their fingers rippled languidly
    like seaweed in the tide.
    Remembering debaucheries
    now past, Adompha sighed.
     
    ---
     
    The wizard took the golden corpse
    into his arms and stood
    impassively as if he carried
    naught but rocks or wood.
     
    Such beauty borne by ugliness
    as if he had become
    the scarab that the priests declared
    the bearer of the sun.
     
    The king had long since lost his soul
    for that is kingship's cost
    but now he felt the faintest ghost
    of that which he had lost.
     
    He felt a thing he could not name
    that others know as guilt.
    When such as he feels self-disgust
    then others' blood is spilled.
     
    The wizard turned his back to bear
    his burden to the pit.
    Adompha lifted up a rock
    and struck a blow with it.
     
    The wizard's skull caved in as if
    no thicker than a shell.
    His soul went howling to the void
    its wretched dwelling fell.
     
    ---
     
    For many months Adompha let
    the ghoulish blossoms wave
    in darkness and in silence over
    fair Thuloneah's grave.
     
    He looked for other ways to fill
    the endless, listless days.
    No cruel, malignant lechery
    stayed hidden from his gaze.
     
    Like one who travels many paths
    to reach the same abyss
    the jaded king found tedium
    in each purported bliss.
     
    One night Adompha lay asleep
    and had a dream wherein
    he stood before the garden and
    it opened up for him.
     
    Each plant seemed poised to offer up
    itself to him alone
    as eager as a virgin yet
    as worldly as a crone.
     
    He woke consumed with ardor for
    those thaumaturgic blooms
    that bore the parts of women whom
    a royal whim had doomed.
     
    ---
     
    The city lay cocooned in dreams
    of evil and deceit.
    He hurried to the garden through
    the silent midnight streets.
     
    The king unlocked the hidden door
    now known to only one.
    A hellish heat assaulted him
    as of an alien sun.
     
    Half-maddened with his dreaming lust
    Adompha scarcely paused
    but entered in like one who walks
    into a demon's jaws.
     
    Each plant had grown to twice its
height.
    The air hung thick with scent
    that mesmerized the king into
    a fearless wonderment.
     
    He saw Thuloneah's shapely hands
    that lived though she lay dead.
    Her nails were painted bright as birds
    in shades from green to red.
     
    He stumbled forward and held her hands.
    The nails shone sharp as spurs.
    They seemed to yearn for his embrace.
    Adompha longed for hers.
     
    ---
     
    Thuloneah's fingers grew like trees
    like moss upon a tomb.
    They held his hands as firmly as
    a baby in a womb.
     
    Her fingers grew around his hands
    until he stood enmeshed.
    They gave no gentle, subtle stroke
    but dug into his flesh.
     
    Then hateful faces crowded round
    and hands reached from the mud
    and snarling mouths spilled vine-like
tongues
    to gorge upon his blood.
     
    The hungry mouths and grasping hands
    of lady, lord and thrall
    and others that the king had killed
    for reasons weak and small.
     
    For reasons weak and reasons small
    and reasons now forgotten.
    Adompha smelled the scent of death
    heavy, hot, and rotten.
     
    ---
     
    Thuloneah rose up from the ground
    and watched Adompha die.
    She wrapped him in her handless arms
    and took him down to lie
    forever in her lightless house
    among the angry dead
    to find no joy, just dark and