Heart of Darkness

He moved slowly to the center of the cavernous room. The delicate swishing of the long terry cloth robe was the only sound he made. His posture was rigid, robotic, yet eerily graceful. His glittering eyes shone with a wetness that was a mix of love. Hate. He stopped by the largest piece of furniture in the room. It was an antique four-poster bed, draped with gossamer netting that had an intricate needlework pattern throughout the filmy fabric. It reminded him of an immense, veined spider web. A stainless steel cart held an assortment of sleek medical devices that beeped and hummed. A techno melody played tunelessly to the cadaver in the bed. He smiled as he approached the wizened thing that lay motionless. He ran his slender fingers over the wires that ran from the machines into the black, latex-like mask that covered the 'patient's' face. Nasal oxygen tubes were affixed to breathe life into the shriveled being. A small slit revealed dry, blue-tinged lips. The smile fades. It is time to speak to the dead.

"Good evening, Father." Byron Joseph whispered. He places his hand gently on bony fingers.

The thing in the bed twitches.

Joseph smiles, reveling curiously lupine like teeth.

"Father, you insult me. Does my touch repulse you so?"

He gently caresses the black mask. The med diagnostic machine protested noisily. A shrill beeping shatters the dark silence of the room.

"Even the damn machines are disgusted by me, Eh Father?" Well, no matter. I have come to speak with you. Perhaps for the last time. I feel I must communicate with you, dear Father, even though our conversations have been a bit one sided." Joseph then walks around the poster bed, much like a crow circling decayed flesh.

"Hear me, Creator. Let me tell you what I have done." Joseph smiles, but it is devoid of any warmth or mirth.

"Done in your name!" A flash of heat lighting lacerates the black-gray night. Joseph looks to the great window, the view is spectacular. Grandiose. Joseph laughs.

"How wonderfully cinematic! Do you agree, Father? Oh, cat got your tongue?"

Joseph sheds his robe. He is naked. His body glistens with a thin film of sweat. His eyes burn with an empty brilliance. Fixed upon the twitching husk of the man in the bed, his mouth opens slightly and his swollen tongue slowly licks his thin lips. Looking like a man parched from an afternoon spent in the desert sun, he pads to the bed. A thin line of drool descends from his open mouth. He leaps, pouncing on the shockingly thin man. Bones crack. A cacophony of shrill beeps emit from the machines. Monitors blink. Schizophrenic flashes of light pierce the dark. Joseph leans close to the man's black clad face. Fetid breath assaults his nostrils. The stench of fear is almost overpowering to Joseph, yet wildly intoxicating at the same time. Joseph speaks, his voice like that of a crypt's lid gradually being opened.

"Father. Judgment time. The first Prodigal son returned, clad in a shiny black rain coat, shiny black visions of death must have danced in his cold eyes as he crushed your skull. Oh, how it must have hurt you, Father. I felt powerless to help you. You see, I was there in the shadows, as always, when your life was being squeezed out of you. I wanted to help you, but you did create me in your image, our thoughts were one as we connected and at that moment I became you." Joseph licked the man's dead lips.

"I WAS ELDON TYRELL!" Joseph could feel the gaunt body convulsing under him.

"Father, are you trying to arouse me, gyrating like that?" Joseph leaned in closer, whispering softly into a deformed ear. " 'Cause it ain't gonna help you now!" Smiling, he stroked thinning, matted black hair. "Father, I have done so much. I emerged from the shadows, the shadows that you meant for me to stay hidden in, cloaked in their black embrace. I have taken Tyrell Corp to the precipice of a New Age of replicant technology. Some may disagree, saying I have taken it to the brink of the Abyss, but isn't that what you did oh-so-long ago?" Tyrell continued to convulse, but his movements were becoming weaker under Joseph's weight.

"I know it must be frustrating that you cannot speak, Father, but the mask helps with your facial bone structure. It strengthens your bone density, so that one day YOU can speak. But, alas, that day may never come." Joseph, for a moment, looks pained, emotions of grief and pity war upon his face. "So you shall just listen. I have become you, Father, Eldon Tyrell, Creator of Man/Machine. I was your Sensory Organic Replicant, but now, as our motto so declares, I became more human than human…more Eldon Tyrell than Eldon Tyrell!" Rage slowly builds inside of Joseph. 'The Red Dragon now stirs within me.' He thinks to himself. "I was your obedient servant, your lover, your son, but you denied me the essence of you or so you thought, Father. But each time we connected, I sucked your essence from you. I have your fucking DNA intertwined with my synthetic strand. For all intents and purposes, I am human, you brilliant bastard! The S.O.R. project is a triumph. All of the SOR's are becoming more human than their so-called masters! Michael Lee realized that and leapt off the Goddamned building!" The Red Dragon was now Byron Joseph. Joseph arched his back and extended his arms from his side, as if spreading serpent wings; then clutched Tyrell's head between his hands as if they were talons and violently ripped off the mask. The pale, grotesquely damaged face of Eldon Tyrell, lay bare and exposed to Byron Joseph's Dragon. Joseph laid his hands on Tyrell's sunken chest; the old man's heart beat rapidly under emaciated ribs.

"Your heart of darkness doth beat so, dear wretched Father. Let me ask you a rather Machiavellian question, Father. Is it better to be loved or feared? At one point, I would have chosen love, dear Father. However, you preferred fear. I now see the wisdom in that choice. Fear lasts longer. But, not so, in your current predicament." Joseph grinned. It was canine like. A lycanthropic sneer. Joseph opened his mouth wide. Inhumanly wide. His engorged, glistening tongue emerged from his mouth and he savagely inserted it into Tyrell's quivering mouth.

Eldon Tyrell's heart of darkness exploded inside his chest.

Date: 2002-10-22 15:25