Organized Chaos

The lights blinked in time, pulsating in an almost frantic rhythm. Did that mean we were getting close? It seemed too good to be true—after all of this time of searching and watching my family waste and wither.

Nails clicked against the frail buttons with each key stroke, multiple fingers from multiple hands moving quickly enough that my mind barely kept up.

Please, this time let us drink the light.

The screen flickered—so long since we’d fed the ship, that even it was starving—and for a moment, I was afraid the power would fail us. I touched the location icon with a tentative finger and to my relief the quarry not only showed up, but was not a long travel from our location. We’d be there within a decade, of which most we could hibernate.

Gods, her lands are dark. My relief was short lived as I realized what it truly meant. Sure, there was twinkle—massive stars sung into existence and painted with the gentle hand and breathed life—but there was so much darkness between her creations. So much untouched space. This was a young land—tender, but hardly a feast.

She would not last us long. This edge of the universe was small, puny, in comparisons of the others that had provided sustenance for my people for our long generations. She must have just left the melody of her gods—her paint brush must have recently dipped its first paint.

“If I could, Nimbus, I would leave this one. Give this one time—just a few centuries, even.” My companion frowned, large eyes drinking in the darkness past our shields. “This one has only begun to paint. My younglings won’t have even molted by the time we’ve drank the last of her light.”

I acknowledged my sister’s words with the barest nod of my head. I could not tell her the truth I’d realized. I would spare her the realization as long as I could. “I fear your younglings will not live past the edge of this universe we travel, and who knows if the next one has not already had its Artist consumed?”

She sighed and glanced behind her to the hibernating forms. Even in their state of suspension, you could see the crippling effects of the hunger. Ribs showed, cracking the slick exoskeleton that protected the curled spines and legs. Their arms drooped—I feared the youngest would lose at least three—and the mouth opened and clamped, their teeth tearing pinpricks into malnourished skin as they consumed in their dreams.

“I do not want to lose them.”

I’d already lost mine to the starvation, so I understood the frustration in her voice. “We will be sparing,” I said, hating the desperation. I remembered times when universes blinked into existence and faded away faster again, so fast we could not eat them all before they died—but this bounty had made us greedy, soft and gluttonous. We had no one to blame but ourselves.

“Nimbus…” her words failed her and she hung one of her heads in shame. “Why should we even try?” She placed a hand on mine. “Perhaps we should die and end this endless search and suffering.”

“They still paint the stars and fill the space, Zenith, and while they paint, we must devour their works.”

She sighed and looked away, taking her hand from mine. “Bring us there then. I will capture her and collect the ribbons.”

I clenched my fingers, feeling long tendons stretch and threaten to collapse. The hunger gnawed at me, and I was weak, but I was older—one of the oldest of our species. My sister was young in my eyes, and untried. The Artists could blind with their lights, strangle with the ribbons in their sparkling hair. Even though this one was young, it would still be dangerous.

“No. I will bring this one to us.” A moment’s hesitation where I glanced in Zenith’s eyes. I attempted to smile—and one mouth managed it.  My sister did not return the poor attempt at solace as she sighed and looked away.

I didn’t bother acknowledging the sadness in her expression as I set the coordinates into the ship and stood on weak legs. A quick prayer—to what, long dead gods that set us out to devour it all?—that the ship would have enough energy for the travel and I followed my sister to where the others slept to conserve energy.

***

“A maiden paints fair,
         A maiden in the shadow.
         A maiden with the rainbow hair,
         A maiden holds the barrow.
         A maiden whispers,
         A maiden sings,
         A maiden seeking only a Sister
          A maiden to which life clings.
         A maiden paints and sings the stars into Existence.”

My eyes blinked in the dazzling lights each of her brush stroke brings to the now breathing star. Our ship had approached from the back, so the Artist remained intent on her work, not knowing the enemy behind her.

She still sang her words, the paint flowing from her mouth in achingly beautiful notes to fill the paint brush her hand held in delicate power. The empty space around her filled with colors and elements and time, creating something from the oblivion. Ribbons trailed from the bun of her rainbow hair, floating in the nothingness that surrounded her.

The heat from her artwork bathed me and it wasn’t until then that I truly realized the depth of my hunger. So long had I lived in the nothingness that our feasts left behind, that I’d forgotten the life the Artists provided.

I approached, arms stretched out to seize the ribbons when the words faltered and she looked over her shoulder.

“No…” She turned around, the folds of dress whipping spatters of paint against my skin and burning. “Leave my lands, Stalker.”

“Pretty words, for someone so young.” Even in my hunger I could admit the beauty of my pray. She was a frail thing, dainty and small. The dress blended into her artwork, wavering and almost nonexistent. Large eyes, dark and innocent met my own pale irises.

“This land is new, barely able to realize itself. You are not ready for this one yet. Devour another’s universe and leave mine be.”

“Yours is the last, for a very long time and a very long distance.”

She placed a hand over her heart, the paint leaving a glowing hand print. “Your kind have been greedy. My people have painted stars for the gods since they sang themselves into existence.”

“And mine have cleaned their canvases since they have died.”

“Then the times have met?" The words were whispered, pained. "This is the end?”

I glanced behind me for the barest of moments, making sure my sister and her younglings would not hear. “Yes, Artist. We are all the last. The beginning and the end have met.”

“I refuse…”

“I have not told my kin, but I am among the first of the devourers, and I can taste the finality of this meal. We will make it last, and your creatures and creations and works will survive eons yet, but in the end we will all die with you. Is that not some compensation?”

“Compensation…” the word brought tears sparkling down her skin. I could see the resolve crumbling in the corners of her expression. Her eyes gazed past me and to the massive, dying ship waiting. “I do not want to wither in that dank cavern only to watch your broken bodies consume my small canvas.”

I didn’t answer, didn’t need to. I knew perhaps even before she did what her intentions were. She turned her back to me and I did nothing except watch.

“A maiden paints shadow,

A maiden taints the light and fair.

A maiden breaks the barrow,

A maiden unties the ribbons, looses her rainbow hair,

A maiden screams.

A maiden speaks,

A maiden, of a Sister, dreams

A maiden to whom life seeks,

A dead maiden paints and sings her work to Nothing.

It was ungodly beautiful, each stroke of her paintbrush, each flick of her wrist, as she painted her last star—a yellow and orange thing so much smaller than her other works. Spatters of paint fell along the star, coalescing into gasses and soil that would circle her last work of art until I consumed it too.

When she finished, she dropped the brush and I watched it disappear into the space of nothingness she would never get to paint and realize. She did not speak or turn around as she untied the long ribbons in her hair. The rainbow locks fell with each knot undone.

“Does it hurt, to be devoured?”

My teeth click together from each of the mouths my heads had. I was the many-headed beast, the devourer the gods had created to keep their Artists company and in check. “Sister, you will feel each thing we take from you.”

She nodded and let go of the ribbons, allowing them to trail away.

The world slept. Restless and itching, a tremulous and terrible creature that clawed at Taylor. He shuffled along the empty alley, almost afraid that if he stepped too wide—too loudly—the world would wake and swallow him up, feet first.

Step on a crack, break yer mama’s back, he thought, and he scratched at the scabs that covered his arms. Cracks littered the concrete beneath him, spiderwebbing old and tired stories he’d prefer not to know, and prefer more not to be living.

Taylor wasn’t sure where he was going, where he could hide. They knew all the corners of this damned city, and he was so far from home. Snow melted and mixed into the slime of the garbage cans that lined the alley he’d stopped to rest, melding a special odor that he should be by now accustomed to.

Rotting human refuse. Taylor shuddered and closed his eyes. He took his small, timid steps to keep from waking the beast of the world up. His heart beat a quick and angry thud, something his body now craved, and the buildings curved around him and whispered things—horrid things, not-true things, and half-true things—told him in the end it would all not be all right.

“I know, I know, I know that,” he whispered to the buildings. He didn’t dare speak too loudly, didn’t dare wake the world up with his ravings. He hugged his body deeper into the threadbare denim coat he wore, wishing he would melt into the fabric.

“They’re gonna find me,” he said to the buildings, and they laughed in response. Taylor sat down, trying to dodge as many cracks in the pavement as he could. He wasn’t sure his mama was still alive or not, she was ill when he came to the city so long ago (what was it, two years, two months?), but she only had one back. How could he live with himself if he caused her to break it?

He leaned his back against an old crumbling brick building, shoved his hands into pockets full of napkins, spoons, lighters and needles.

Time gone and past, hell, he wasn’t sure for how long as he let the buildings whisper their ugly nothings to him. He repeated them back to himself in hushed whispers, to help solidify them in his mind. He was an insignificant thing, poor and nothing.

And they were coming.

They knew all the corners of this damned city, and he knew that. Taylor grimaced. A beating would not be enough to placate them, not this time. He owed too much.

“It was only a little,” he muttered. “I only took a little extra. I’m good for it, I swear!”

He pounded his fist against the ground, across the spider webs of cracks and filth in the pavement, and the buildings hushed their whispers.

His heart stuttered in its quick and sickened beat for a moment as the world stirred in its sleep. He could feel the beast waking, memories that better left in the hills of suns of better times.

“No. No…” he whispered. He buried his head in lap. 

“Taylor Graham, you’re a piss poor sight.”

The voice was especially painful, especially harsh, because of its softness. He looked up, eyes already blurring with tears.

“Geri, dammit, I told you not to come ’round no more. You ain’t supposed to be here.”

The girl crossed her arms, frowned. Barefoot in the alleyway, her feet were dirty from the creek they’d just got done playing in. She was younger than he was, though they’d been born the same day.

“Come on home, Taylor. Mama needs to see you. She ain’t long for the world, but she’s hanging on in hopes that you come home one more time.”

He raised his arms, gestured to a body that once had more muscle and wore better clothes. “I’m not at my best at the moment, if you haven’t noticed.”

“Mama wouldn’t care if you came home legless and one armed.” She smiled that familiar old smile, quirked her eyebrow. Her eyes were his eyes, though so much brighter. “Keep this up and you just might.”

“I promised you. I promised you both that I was going to get a job.”

“For the love of God, what is this, the fifties? Dammit, Taylor, you shoulda come to college with me. That’s where you belonged, not in this God-awful city so far from home.”

Taylor looked away, half hoping that when he looked back, Geri would be gone. “This was here before I left.”

His twin sounded sad for the first time in a long time. “I know…well, ’least now I do. But, you never admitted it to yourself when you were at home, and you sure as hell never reached out to us. You just kept this a dirty secret, locked away in your little world to sleep until it woke as the beast that you’ve made me.”

The words were not things his Geri would have said, and the tone had been so much colder than before. He looked up. “What did you say?”

Geri didn’t [S1] look…right…something about her was sideways. She seemed older, slanted, broken. She looked at him through eyes that saw nothing, leaned closer to him. The buildings started whispering again.

“The bitch came looking for you,” she said. It was not his sister’s voice. It was something different. Someone familiar and terrifying, but all he could see was this horrible doppleganger of his sister. Somewhere, where the drugs had not touched his mind, he knew they had found him in his little hideaway alley. “That Geri  you keep whining for.” She laughed, a deep male’s baritone. Others—the buildings?—joined him.

“Wha…” Taylor was having a hard time breathing. The world was leaning up to swallow him. His sister reached out a hand, punched him in the face. He was beyond feeling, and he watched the skin and the sky melt around her.

“What, did you really think I was going to let dumb fuck from Kentucky go to the police just to protect a druggie who don’t even pay me?” Something silver and black flashed in the world around him.

“I…wanna…” he coughed, blood or something wet strangling his words. Geri looked at him in pity, and for a moment she was his sister again before his heartbeat shook and quickened and hurt. I wanna go home.

The was a sharp noise in the silence of the world, where everything became calm. Geri knelt beside him. “You ain’t gonna feel nothin’, TayTay,” she whispered. She stroked his hair. He looked at her, saw old worried lines.

“It’s really you, ain’t it?” With his words, the realization of what had happened to her hit, and he despaired as his heart finally stopped pushing bad drugs through his body.

She saw the sadness in his eyes, kissed his forehead. “All I ever wanted was to find you. They took us both far from home, it’s time we go on back?”

She stood, pulled him up and helped him limp out of the alleyway. He avoided the cracks in the sidewalks.

The world slept a quiet and calm dream.

Wind blew along the edges of his ears, tickling the fur and making it stand on end. This was…not right. Small signs of something corrupted assured him he was on the correct path. Trees ripped from the ground but still growing, rivers that flowed the opposite to the tributaries that connected them…animals that flew and moved backward. He knew he was close to something.

I will bring you back, he thought, his eyes darting around the tree lines. Limbs rustled and animals cackled. So unnatural, so mocking. Lark paused as he watched the shadow that wavered along the path. In that moment, he’d realized he’d reached the boundary.

The boundary to the land of the Other. Heaven…hell…underworld…made little difference, really. Each culture had a different means of explaining this echoed charade of the world. It’s all the same if I can bring her back.

Everything seemed to have been touched by the corrupting hand of the supernatural. Animals of oddly bright, stark colors looked at him beyond the line, their heads cocked to the side as they watched him deliberate. The same smile, quick and understanding, decorated each of their faces.

Should he cross, allow the supernatural to change him in the same, irrevocable way?

“Mitchel,” his whispered. He stretched his paw out.

His friend stepped closer to him. Old, bright eyes swept an experienced gaze past the wavering shadow. A moment of hesitation, where Lark could see plain fear in the panther’s eyes, before he reluctantly handed him the folded document.

It tingled beneath his grasp, almost whispering that impossible power.

He unfolded the thick parchment with special care so that he would not pierce it with his claws. Now that he’d followed the last riddle, he knew it would be different once more. His eyes roamed the wrinkles and dark red blotched ink.

Abandon the love of your gods

Follow a path sacrificed by the coat of many colors

Seek a Serpent within the Rainbow.

“What does it mean, to abandon the love of my gods?” He glanced to his friend, but he could not help the painful thought, I done that two years ago when she was murdered...

“It means to abandon the world,” Mitchel said. A growl lined his voice, marring the words. He watched the trees within the Other contort in an unfelt wind beyond the barrier.

“Not hard to do.” Lark’s voice cracked and a high whine broke the words. “What’s left for me here?”

“A wife and kits. Marie was not your only child.”

“It’s not the same. It’ll never be the same, not until I bring her back, or at least have closure. The things that monster did to her…”

Mitchel hesitated. “I can’t go any further. What you’re trying to do…”

“I’m trying to do?” Lark’s fur bristled along his neck in anger as he turned his back on his goal and scowled at his friend. “You were the one that told me about this.” He waved the parchment in his face and watched him shirk back. “It was your idea to seek the supernatural to bring her back…”

“And I was wrong. I see that now. I was wrong for so many things, more than you know. I was blinded…stupid and arrogant. Surely now you can look beyond that monstrosity and see that.”

Lark turned his attention back to where he was merely steps from the Other. “It’s beautiful.”

“It’s not natural. You know that this isn’t right. You’re having the same dreams I am. The dead should stay dead.”

Dreams of screaming, weeping dead. Of burning bodies and grinning haphazard demons. Lark had watched the world spiral into suffering each night through shut eyes, but he refused to admit that to his weary friend. “I’m not stopping, not until Marie is back.” He put a paw on his shoulder. “I understand, Mitchel. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. We need to talk. I’ve not been honest with you.” He reached out to grab his paw and pull him back. “Come back with me, please…”

He didn’t answer as he stepped past the shadow before Mitchel could stop him.

For a moment, all he could feel was the needles…tearing, gnawing, searing…

He collapsed to the ground, gasping and sputtering. For a moment the sensation was all he knew until the feeling faded and left him exhausted. It was a struggle to stand, his legs shaking, as he looked behind him, expecting to see his friend past the shadowy barrier.

There was nothing, just a horrible blackness that stretched too far for him to see the end of.

“Mitchel!” His voice echoed, thrown back at him from the chasm he’d stepped in from.

“I’m alone,” he realized. One more glance at the emptiness, and he turned back around to where the Other lied. Now that he was inside the shadow, the colors were so much more muted and ugly, like looking through the grime of an old stain glass window.

Where is the coat of many colors? He thought as he brushed debris from his tail.

A screech cut to a gargling short caused him to look up. There, in the tree several feet ahead was a bird—vibrant and beautiful—hanging on a rope of entrails. It struggled, feeble wings jerking as it died.

He stumbled backward at the grotesque sight and cackling laughter met his reaction.

“Pretty fox, pretty fox, doesn’t like what he sees?” it whispered.

“Who’s there?” His eyes scanned the tree line, looking for the danger, but all he could see was swaying gray branches and swinging vines.

“Pretty fox, follow me to find her.”

Lark hesitated for a moment and glanced back to the entrance to his world.

It’s dead already, he thought as he forced himself to look at the body in the middle of the path. Bile rose in his throat as he walked up closer to it. It was beautiful with colors almost too bright to look at directly in such a drab surrounding. Blues, violets, and greens shimmered in the shadows. Blood, scarlet and sad, dripped in slow streams and blank white eyes stared at him accusingly.

He reached out to touch it…

Another shriek, identical to one he’d just heard, sounded ahead.

“Pretty fox…must follow…This death is only for you…” Lark’s gaze jerked up in time to watch the bird come crashing down with its innards looped around its neck. It fluttered once in time with his heartbeat before dying. Before he could react, he heard the horrible, grating sound again too far ahead to see.

 A path sacrificed. The thought repulsed him, but he had no other choice but to follow the dying, screaming animals. Soon the path was covered in struggling colors, beating wings, and dripping blood. The laughter was always heard ahead—harsh, like steel against stone.

He tried not to think about whatever was mocking him and hanging them as a guide.

Each step made the path smaller, more sparse, and altogether overgrown. Soon he was fighting with his machete, hacking at vines that reached to hang him.

All at once, everything stopped and Lark stepped into an opening where the trees dipped their roots into the edge of a large pool of water. He could see the snake’s head first—a massive thing more vibrantly colored than the corpses he’d followed. It coiled, half in the water and half out, waiting and staring.

“I know why you’ve come, fox, and your arrogance is becoming. You seek the treasure of life.”

The snake raised its head, stretched its sinuous body out, and dipped its tail into the water. “I have a price.”

“I’ll pay anything—give my soul—it doesn’t matter.”

“Your soul?” The serpent laughed. “Fox, there are those who would offer me their soul in homage. I do not desire something so petty and worthless.”

“What do you want then?” Lark stepped forward, eager and desperate. “I’ve come too far to be turned down now.”

“I desire nothing more than your most precious possession.”

He cleared his voice, hoping that it would come out strong and would not show the fear that had rooted him to the spot. “Anything to get her back. What do you need?”

“Something so little and trite as permission. The betrayal of a creature that lives beyond the Other is all I need to touch the earth once more.”

That is not so much, Lark couldn’t help but think. He gripped his paws together tight enough he could feel the points of his claws through the fur. He knew this creature was not kind, was not good, but his victory laid so close to him. If it is not me that releases him, it will be someone else—and if this is all I need to have my daughter, I will do that and more.

“I will accept your conditions if you bring her back…and punish her murderer!”

The snake laughed at that. “You have called him friend for many a year. He brought you to me as I asked.”

Mitchel…“I don’t understand…” He didn’t finish his sentence, didn’t have to.

“The panther betrayed you because I offered him riches and acclaim that he could never achieve beneath your shadow. It is a pity that moments before his greatest triumph he grew frightened.”

“Why…” tears inched through the grime on his face and buried into his fur.

“To bring you here, to speak with me within a realm that gods cannot touch.”

“No…” Lark collapsed to his knees. “She was innocent.”

“It was her innocence and your devotion that made this possible.”

He bowed his head, barely able to look at the creature gloating in front of him.

“Take comfort in your pain, Lark. It is not in vain. Through your suffering I will build an empire and kill the entities who believed themselves gods.”

“It wasn’t vengeance against them I sought…” he whispered the words.

“You cannot take back your permission, but you will be avenged. The one that betrayed you will suffer. I will take care of his cowardice in due time, when I rise out of this land.”

Power washed through the area, pressing against him, as the Serpent inched his way out of the water. Lark could now see the shackles that squeezed its middle. It hissed once, straining, and the world around him moaned as the ancient metal shattered.

Gods, what have I done? He watched the serpent change before him, taking a lithe form of arms, legs…a long neck and merciless fangs. Feathers—stark, bright, and beautiful—lined his body.

“But...” Lark cleared his voice, barely able to speak as he stared at the serpent of colors that uncoiled from the water in triumph and stretched new found arms. “What about Marie?”

The Coat of Many Colors smiled. A slight upturn of his massive maw that glimpsed fangs. “I keep my promises.”

He lifted his tail out of the water, bringing a writhing body out of it. He threw it forward with a flick of muscle and scales. Lark caught the small bundle, the weight bringing him to the ground. He unwrapped the white shroud that covered the body of his young daughter.

Marie groaned…whimpered…opened her eyes and began to scream. Lark watched the rotting body fill with the light of life and in that moment he realized the betrayal.

The snake laughed within his mind, a broken sigh of a laugh that echoed in the wind as it walked around him and left him alone at the edge of the pool.

Lark clutched the screaming body that housed his daughter’s soul and knew there was nothing he could do but watch her rot away.