Chamber of Horrors
Black rain. That was what it looked liked to Grimes as he stood,
shoulders slightly hunched inside the cramped vid-phone booth. He
just finished his conversation with an unusually distracted Byron
Joseph when he glanced up at the plastiglass ceiling of the booth.
The rain fell at a leisurely pace, impacting softly on the clear,
domed roof. Thuk-thuk-thuk. Grimes blinked. Something was
different about the rain. Something in the way it streaked down
the scarred plastiglass. 'Not streaking…bouncing.' He
thought absently to himself.
Not black rain at all.
Black nails.
'Coffin nails. That's what those little pieces of rusted metal
are.'
The voice was distant, yet immediate. Clear, but somewhat garbled,
like a thousand whispering susurrations of an eerily sotto voce
choir.
Grimes slowly turned to his right. His eyes widened. He could feel
his pupils constricting, shrinking away from the thing that stood
outside of the booth.
Milky-white orbs stared back at him from a face of decayed, mottled
gray flesh. Its mouth was split open into a grotesque grin, displaying
rows of broken and jagged yellow teeth. It was naked. Long black,
matted and twisted hair covered one rotting breast and a brutal,
blue black hole glared at him, accusingly, where the other breast
should have been. It scratched at the booth with a horribly diseased,
filth encrusted fingernail.
'Remember, me Albert? I've come back. Come back to collect my
pound of flesh, the flesh that hangs between your legs.'
Grimes backed away from the corpse, his large frame shrinking against
the plastiglass walls, as if the vid-phone booth was growing.
'We've come to collect as well, Albert.'
Grimes looked to his left, his mind reeling from the images before
him. Men clad in tattered, blood soaked uniforms. Their savaged
bodies dotted with ugly bullet holes. Gray-black entrails worm their
way out of dead flesh. Women, their feminine attributes lost in
a mosaic of hideous bruises and lacerations.
Children.
A small cluster of children, their flesh burned and flayed, hold
their skeletal hands out before them.
Grimes could feel the synapses in his brain begin to sputter and
misfire.
'So this is what it must feel like to go mad.' Grimes thought
to himself.
'Time to collect. Time to collect. Time to collect'
Thuk…Thuk…Thuk.
Albert Grimes screamed. A high-pitched shriek that would have been
laughable under any other circumstance.
The corpses move forward, hands outstretched, fingers ripping apart
the walls of the booth. Wanting in.
'DEAR GOD...DELIVER ME…I'M SOO SORRY…OH GOD, DEAR
GOD, DELIVER ME FROM MY SINS!'
The dead woman smiles.
'Payback is such a bitch, eh Albert?'
Kneeling. Grimes squints. The room is dark. The dancing, hypnotic
flickering of candlelight creates living shadows on the walls. It
is warm here. Safe. Grimes looks forward. An altar. For a moment
he thinks he has been delivered from his gruesome fate. Not an altar,
but a bed. A rather grand, beautifully crafted four-poster bed.
Grimes leans closer. His eyes fix upon the shriveled man in the
bed. His body is twisted, broken. Limbs bent at painfully horrific
angles. The dead man's head is cocked at an inhuman angle. Deep,
black holes stare at Grimes. The stench of urine, excrement fills
his nostrils. Cold fingers caress his neck.
Grimes looks up.
Byron Joseph smiles, his eyes an unnaturally brilliant blue.
"What ..I.. What the hell is going on?" Grimes stammers.
Shaking.
'I don't know, pal, you tell me. Seems like you had some kind of
cerebral incident. You off your meds again?" Joseph replies,
his voice flat. Indifferent.
"I…I Remember talking to you on the pay-vid-phone..then..then
those horrible visions." Grimes hold his head with both hands.
He begins to sob softly.
'Now, Now, Albert, no need for a crying jag. It's just your past
coming back to haunt you. Ghosts of your mind, old man. Can't hurt
you."
Joseph kneels next to Grimes. Grimes' face inches from his.
"Questions, Albert? Well, let's just say that we had a nice
conversation about our friend Mironova. You took care of him. Set
him up in his shabby little conapt. Pumped him full of drugs.. Making
it look like an overdose.. A drug deal gone bad. Ahh, well, my friend,
you look terrible, so we can discuss this another time, but most
importantly, do you have my pound of flesh?"
Joseph fishes his hand into Grimes' coat pocket and produces a
small bundle of wax paper. Joseph delicately unwraps the paper and
holds Mironova's tongue, admiring the dark red bit of flesh in his
hand.
"Oh, Albert, you are indeed a skilled surgeon with that terrible
knife of yours."
Grimes looks at Joseph. His black eyes fix on Joseph's blue bits
of colored ice.
"You know what happened to me, Byron. You fucking did something
to me. Some kind of subliminal message shit. That's why you have
me go to the damn Eldon Wellness Centers. Taking medication. It's
not to help me get over my past, but to control me."
Joseph rises slowly. He looks down at Grimes. His naked body reflects
the writhing shadows from the candles on his glistening skin. He
drops Mironova's tongue in front of Grimes.
"Yes, Albert. You are quite right. I do control you.
I gave you life. I saved you from yourself. I picked you, to be
in my inner circle, not for your looks, but for your loyalty.
I know what you are and I accept you for it. That wasted piece of
flesh on the bed created me, but did not accept me for who I
was. I need the Red Dragon inside of you and call upon it when I
must, but in return, I give you those moments in your life when
you feel at peace with yourself. Like when you come home to your
small, but impeccably neat conapt. Greeted by your animoid cat,
Wheezer, an ancient type to be sure, but curls around your feet
and laps at its milky lubricant just the same. You then settle in
your comfortable chair, an old CD disc in the retro DVD player,
a Black and White horror classic from Universal, you root for the
monster, hoping it gets away from the angry mob this time. Identifying
with the creature's doomed plight."
Grimes stares blankly ahead. Tears run shamelessly down his pocked-marked
face. Joseph leads Grimes to a corner of the room, cloaked in shadows.
An Asian woman, clad in a white lab coat and short skirt lies moaning
on the floor. Joseph whispers into Grimes' ear. Grimes straightens
up. His black eyes begin to glaze over. Sharks eyes now gaze at
the prostate woman.
"Albert, meet Dr. Kino. I had her tend to Eldon Tyrell, our
now deceased benefactor. She surprised me when I released Eldon
from this mortal coil, and well, I indulged myself, albeit forcefully,
upon her womanly charms. I now need you to finish the task, Albert.
Release yourself from the constraints of your restrictive humanity.
I accept my inhumanity, and I will accept you, for what you
are and will become." Grimes inches his way to the woman. He
stops and looks over his shoulder at Joseph.
"Albert, go on, my friend, this woman would have mocked you,
called you grotesque, been repulsed by the mere sight of you. Indulge
yourself. Indulge me."
Joseph walks back to the bed, stopping to retrieve a small metal
object from the pocket of his robe. He strikes the flint from the
ancient lighter and sets the bedding aflame. The fire licks hungrily
at the thin cloth and soon all of the bed is consumed by flames.
Joseph backs away from the conflagration and turns to Grimes, smiling
as he speaks.
"This is the end of the Tyrell Corporation as we know it.
Brandt and his unauthorized RAD inspections and our corporate adversaries
want to see the end of us, and they shall, but on my terms
and from the ashes a new Tyrell dynasty will be born."
Grimes towers over the groaning woman and reaches into his jacket,
pulling the pistol from its holster.
"NO….NO, Albert. The knife. Use your knife."
Joseph commands.
Grimes obeys and the glint of steel quickly appears in his meaty
hands.
"Oh yes, Albert, Much better." Joseph murmurs as his
hand slides past his taut stomach.
Options
Option 1 - Joseph and Grimes.
Option 2 - Something
else.
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in yellow are yet to be written. Note that the unwritten
options are just suggestions for how the story might continue
- you can add something completely different if you like.
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Date: 2002-10-29 22:20
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