Sunday, April 08, 2012

A Spectre is Haunting MantraRay

penumbra . 19

Those residents of this city so sparsely populated since the departure of so many of their number; soon to be repopulated with refugees from the wilds and escapees from Golgotha Sestri – those MantRanians who yet have the mental capacity, know without doubt that the city is haunted by a monster.
Thanks to that which manifests itself in rumour and hearsay, the shadowy imagined figure of the Zealot has become a real source of fear; and not without good reason since bloody and indeed living proof of his existence can be found in the appearance of those he has redeemed; those who have survived his redemption; those now physically unable to testify.
As with all monsters, real or imagined, the Zealot has developed into a creature without human traits or, some may say, a creature who exhibits the most base of human traits: unpredictable violence; violence without reason.
It is rumoured however that the Zealot was once a most respected member of the Faithful Few, and while the majority of those FF, when presented with the choice, chose the Leviathan, the Zealot, it seems, remained in the belief he is part of god’s plan for the end of everything.
His presence in this city is a dark spider in the corner of everybody’s eye; MantraRay’s deserted streets sometimes hold (in parenthesis) the just-died echo of a scream.

Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.
Decree 13:16

The midday sun carves Colonel Lombard Park into black skeletal tree shadows on yellow packed earth; grey wooden benches dry, decay in the heat. Long gone the varieties of green offered up by those so carefully arranged trees; long gone the manicured lawns upon which one was once forbidden to walk; long gone the charade of life that once paraded here for the benefit of MantraRay’s culture and the appreciation of life-as-art.
Posed un-relaxed on a bench at the centre of the park, his form is a charred stick sketch against the light, he watches through black goggles as a Leviptron performs a low altitude streak across the sky; another in the unceasing stream of floral cargo being delivered to the plant in The Great Station Hall.
An exercise in futility
It is not for men to contradict the will of the universe.
God’s verdict has been declared and the sentence is about to be handed down.
This is not a jury decision.
This is capital punishment.
An exercise in finality
The accompanying engine noise shatters the desert silence of Colonel Lombard Park – midday, Monday, the end of the world.

He is the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his sword to approach unto him.
Decree 40:19

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3 comments:

Harlequin said...

dark and eerily real.
"fiction & fantasy" as the vehicles of truths too close to home.... maybe too close to bear.
well done.

Confessions of a Temporal Lobe said...

Creepy and captivating! So many wonderful lines.

Garth said...

That's it - I have just finsihed the final Episode of this story and I'm hoping that at least one of you will hang around for the next 12 weeks or so to finish reading it :)

Thanks for sticking with it thus far.

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