A grain for a grain, an eye for an eye.

"Kiss me, I'm dying," and her life is running away through my hands.

Her head is heavy in my lap and I hold her for a last time, a last eternal kiss and with my tongue I taste the blood in her mouth and I feel her love, her undying love for me in this kiss, its crimson fluid overflowing into my throat and then she stops. There is no last convulsive shiver and no moan of grief, as it is always shown on TeeVee. Not even her grip tightens around my waist; she simply ceases to be, her lips lose all strength and her tongue that has been caressing my own becomes a piece of meat.

There is no pain, no emotion, nothing, now that she has gone. The rain that is falling through the walkways doesn't matter; the stinking trash around us - me - doesn't matter; whoever or whatever might find me now doesn't matter and I do not care if I will die slowly or explicitly gruesome then; nothing really matters.

I let her gently to the ground and look into her empty eyes --------------------- and want to close them when I see a movement in her eyes; something in her iris. I grab her, embrace her and hold her, stammer her name, Oh Slayer! Baby, he gave you back to me, he gave you back to me!, but her head rests lifelessly on my shoulder, her body is slumped dead and cold against mine and her muscles tighten and there is no beating of her heart and there is no heaving of her chest; and I realize that it must have been a reflection in the falling rain that I saw in her eyes.

I cannot bear to see again into her eyes and I close them with my right hand while her body still leans aginst mine and I wish I would never have to let her go, but I let her gently to the ground and look at her angelic face, resting peacefully in my lap, so beautiful, so dead.

I try to get up, but with all strength gone I give up soon, and somewhere above me, at the centre of the town there is a building of marble stone and obsidian glass and it rises like a shark's fin above the ocean of roofs, cruising there and in the pinnacle of this building, behind a gargantuan panoramic window, I know that Slayer watches down with cruel eyes, looking at us, bathing in our pain.  

Lights hover and bounce around each other, lost in the darkness at the end of the alley, aproaching through the night, and there are laughing, angelic voices of children, ushering the lights towards me; a promise of redemption. I watch the lights approaching through the steaming rain that hides my tears and grimmaced white faces with painted lips dance in the flicker of the lights, shadows crawling from nose to eye and away to conceal the forehead; a game of light without reason or pattern, as exposed to karma as the idle, unprotected flame of life.

Then they are all around me, carved-out pumpkins flaring, their evil teeth glittering in a frozen grin of terror underneath the impulsive glare of hate inside their eyes; candles twinkling in the hollow eyes of ebony skulls, and all around me the dire laughter and sad joy of little children dancing; and I am lost in their hopping circle of a melancholy dance.

I cry, rocking Cathy back and forth in my arms to the rhythmic hop of the children's dance and reflected in the black pool of Cathy's blood I can see my face, a distorted, twisted, pale mass of flesh, blood-shot eyes glaring intensely, the mouth widened, as if cut open with a knife to an idot grin of maddening terror and I can hear my cry turning to laughter, joining with the fading laughter of the children, and as fast as they came, they are gone; the bouncing lights of their jack'o'lanterns disappearing in the rain; the muscles around my mouth becoming sore and I feel the weight in my lap, my grin collapsing like a slit baloon, but still there is an echo, reverberating in the alley, almost a whisper, calling me, calling me down to the tunnels.  

Bonfire, bonfire, buring bright, treachery flaring in your light.  

A low thick fog hovers over the ground of the tunnels. At least you cannot see the rats this way, but their shrieks travel down through the tunnels, arias and songs from the discordant opera of the underground. Her body weighs heavy in my arms and I am glad that most of the lights are out; this way I am spared to see her. Every now and then, when she begins to weigh too heavy, I pause, scrape off moss and slime from the concrete before I rest her against the walls of the tunnel and sit down next to her. It is cold down here and we sit in the darkness and only our upper bodies rise above the fog. I take her hand and stroke it like I used to stroke it so often before, when we walked down the neon streets, oblivious to the dangers that lurk behind every corner of every street. I distinctly recall that the old people in my neighbourhood had a saying, Luck protects little children, fools and lovers, but fools and little children tend not to live too long in DownTown.

The echo of a metallic noise, metal scraping over concrete, travels down the tunnels in the distance and at once the music of the rats stops. Disinterested I bow my head and casually listen. Perhaps Slayer has granted my wish and I will die soon, perhaps this is one of the monsters from TeeVee that is looking for dinner. What kind of dinner I might be? Emotionless, fearlessly bland and unable to get terrorized. Dead meat, that's all that's left.

Cathy wants to leave and I pick her up, because she is too tired to walk. She leans heavily against me and suddenly I am glad that she is here and I whisper to her that I love her. Silently she whispers back that she will never leave me and she grips me tighter while we move down the tunnels. Lights flicker in the distance down the tunnel and the fog becomes denser; thick fumes rise from the body of fog that clings to the ground, swirling and dissolving in the cool air. I have never before been this deep in the tunnels, but Cathy whispers that I must follow them to the depths beyond DownTown. She weighs so heavy in my arms, so tired.

The scraping sound again travels through the air, this time closer, searching for us. Down the tunnels to a great hall with a domed ceiling, moist moss glowing down on us and slime crawling down the walls, the ground hidden beneath the impenetrable cover of fog. Fresh scars in the wall to my right.

Cathy whispers, but I cannot understand her. She seems so far away, her voice muffeled by the damp air and the fog narrows my vision. Everything is bathed in a greenish-glowing white haze of fog, but there is something moving ahead, in the hall. Cathy urges me to retreat, to back up into the tunnel, but I have to see, I have to know. She throws herself against me, but she cannot move me, nothing can move me.

I can see a hulked shape in the fog, tilting its head, listening, hearing something, me. It begins to rise and this time the scraping sound is deafening, screeching, ringing, writhing in my ear. I want to cover my ears to block out the sound, but I cannot let Cathy fall to the ground, she is so soft, so delicate. I bow my head, try to shake off the sound and when I look up again, I see the shape lunging at me and I see nine-inch-long sharpened steel claws rac  

Darkness. Stench. Whiteness, flashing on and off. Twisting swirls of greenish moist in the flashs of whiteness. Sounds, dripp - - dripp - - - dripp. Some fluid covering the ground, covering me. Decay, something rotting. A wall at my back, something leaking from the wall upon me, Cathy in my lap, resting in my arms. She will not get ill, I hope, from the water we're in.

"Youse awake. Ge'd!", a startling voice from behind the swirls of greenish moist. A hulked shape, moving closer towards us. The swirls part and a voluminous tattered cloak emerges. Above this cloak, a misshapen face, scarred, gnarled and twisted, one eye charred beyond repair, the other one peering at us intensely. The whiteness turns to orangeness spent by a flickering lantern - still blinking off and on but not back to blackness -suspended in front of a ragged sleeve, held by a rustily bandaged dirty hand. Fresh smudges of crimson stain the rust-coloured cloth covering the wrinkeled and scarred hand. A sack appears from behind the greenish swirls, held by a matchingly dirty and bandaged hand, putting it in front of us. The hulking shape squatting before us.

"Herb 'twas me. Carrn's call m' Ol'herb. Can'st call m' Ol'herb too. Who youse?"; the voice shivering between high-pitched wail and sepulcharl snarl, twisted like his hand, with the tone of grinding earth. Teeth like broken crags of brown and ashen stone.

Cathy begins to shiver. She shivers so hard in my embrace that my body begins to shiver, too. "Rust. She's Cathy."

"She's looks no good, yourse Cathy."

A hand sticks out of the sack, a finger torn off. The wound reminds me of something I have dreamt of. "Cathy's sick. We're looking for help."

"Will'st fynde only death down 'ere. B't 'n de Sectors; p'rhaps the Walker's helps youse. 'fta all 'ts Sam'aine."

Sweat glitters on his teeth. The stench of decay becomes overpowering and the urge to throw up chills my arms while cold sweat forms on my heated forehead. He's reeking, his sack is reeking and his grinding teeth are reeking too.

"The Walker?"

"He'yll help ya. Or kill ya. But thenst help'd ya, too." His roaring laughter echos down the tunnels and crashes back upon me from all directions. I must get away from this sweaty-toothed madman. He wants to put Cathy's hand in his sack, too, or perhaps even something more valuable, something far more delicate to him. I couldn't stand Cathy harmed, like in my dream.

"I must go."

"Leave willst so soon? Not hungry?" He pats his sack.

I almost jump to my feet and drag Cathy with me. Must find help soon. Stumbling we dart through the greenish swirls, leaving the madman behind us, but his voice follows us through the tunnels, soon turning into raving, deafening laughter.

"Owl wid de dogs! Aye! But need'st a woman. Only she's canst give life. Univ'se 'ts a she!"  

Get up, my charming friend. An injustice is your's to mend. 

Ruins everywhere, from horizon to infinity and to the walled city behind us. The rain is clearer here, outside the city; not the brown and stinking fluid that is leaking from the walkways above onto our heads in DownTown; but it still bites when it falls directly into your eyes. Cathy is so weak; she seldom moves and only a thin whisper remains of her voice, urging me to go on.

Some folks from the alley who had travelled here, to the CanSecs, always told that they had sometimes seen a ball of fire lurking behind the clouds, an evil eye that hurt their eyes when they looked directly at it. We are spared its evil gaze; the clouds hide it mercifully behind their tormented cover while they spit out the rain. Wave once told me, when asked, that they had seen the sun. He is something of a prophet, down in our alleys. The sky darkens and the twilight gets also darker around us; in DownTown the sky - if you can see it - darkens and brightens, too, but the twilight ever stays the same.

We move, through deserted streets of tumbeled and crumbling buildings. Rubble everywhere, glittering in the rain. The stare of broken windows, a grinning teethless skull, something roaring in the darkness. With the last dim aura of light we seek shelter in a ruined building, but it is as wet inside as it is outside. A crumbeled circular stairway, as broken and twisted as sweat-covered teeth, but a shelter from the rain underneath its spiral. There is only enough room for Cathy and I bed her on the concrete floor while I stand guard next to her in the streaming rain leaking down the stairs. The water is rotten; the stench overpowering, the stench of the sectors. It is everywhere and even the concrete stairs reek of it.  

I am in twilight. Wet. Soaked. A concrete spiral in my back. Water streaming down the stairs. Cathy under it, motionless. She is so cold. Her arms try to touch me, but she is so weak. She is not heavy in my arms. Behind the cracked opening of the door is a liquid wall of strings of water crashing down from the sky in a steep angle. At least Cathy didn't catch a cold from the chill air and her wet clothes. The street is lost in the rain, coming down in thick drops. Crashing on my skull, a crescendo of tapping noises on my skin; someone gently rapping, rapping.

"You are lost", a gentle, soft voice from behind. Spinning world.

A tall figure, in a ragged coat, drenched by the undying rain from the angry clouds. The head slightly bowed towards the earth, eyes and mouth covered by a cloth of shadow, crimson fluid leaking out of the eyes, a thin line reaching from cheek to chin; tears, dropping patiently in a steady flow, lost in the rain.

A sobbing, crying voice from nowhere, "She - ne-eds h-elp ... Please". The first word explosive, shot into being with unquenchable terror.

Another figure, behind the tall one. This one shapeless, motionless, voiceless; lost in the rain.

"Chain yourself to me", a whisper coming from the ragged figure.

A tactile sensation; nerves send impulses, muscles contradict and expand. A burden falls. Pain, burning away the haze. Coming from below, the creeping numbness of vertigo, claiming everything, erasing the rain, erasing the pain, a senseless maelstrom of spinning perception.   

Drifting in the wind, suspended above the ground, the rain strikes through me and onto my body standing below me. It faces a tall figure in a ragged coat and he holds my outstretched hand. Cathy lies at my feet, pale, her face so angelic, so beautiful, so dead, and another figure stands in the background of the rain-drenched street. My body's legs give away and it sinks to its knees. The tall figure also knees down, always holding my hands while the silent figure in the background faces infinity.

The figure in the ragged coat frees one of my hands, letting it fall to the wet ground, while it produces something organic from the folds of its coat. The thing sofly pulses in the rain and purple veins contradict beneath its skin as the figure presses it at my neck and I feel the pull of gravity and the world is drawn aw-  

Give yourself to me, you hold the key.  

"The Phoenix burns in Slayer's rage, but your howl will make it rise from the ashes. Your howl of fury will let the Phoenix burst into flames again, to burn away the lies, for a new day to dawn!"

Everything is clear, here in the Walker's domain. I am sitting in a circle of rag-clad shapes and the Walker's black charm is pulsing under my skin. He stands in the middle of the circle, his tall shape illuminated by a huge Halloween bonfire, his ragged coat caught by a sudden storm wind, blistering up, towering behind him. Sparks are blown away from the fire, but they dim in the cool air; a constellation of dying stars above outshines them in beauty and below them the night clouds race by over the cloth of a twilight-black sky.

Another tall shape steps into the light next to the Walker. He points at the stranger and the storm-wind ceases. Like time, there is no rain here, in the Walker's domain. "This is Halloween Jack. He is my new champion and you will howl with him. Challenge him and you will lose. Follow his instructions, for my rage burns in him."

Halloween Jack stands motionless in the center of our ring and eyes us coldly while he stares into the distance, facing eternity. A pumpkin mask covers his head and its carved grin of death reminds me of something not long ago. Memories surface and dim here, in Walker's domain, and while the stars race across the twilight-black sky and send their rays of light moving and searching across this vast desert-patches of broken earth we celebrate the death of the last year and the birth of a new one in the flames of Samhaine. And just before the twilight sky begins to turn to grayish-blue and we extinguish our fire, while the stars fade and we prepare to retreat to Slayer's domain, I glimpse a chaotic image rise above the horizon, gently transmuting in its process of ascent, and then the rain crashes down with unmatched fury and washes away the image and all memories and the howl of the Dogs wails through the sectors; a howl for blood.  

Blood is our salvation, death our religion. And there is salvation in your howl. I take a big slug right into my heart, but the Walker's black charm pumps life through my body and Pack howls, "You cannot die! Accept it", while he impales me with his large blade, and I get up and tear the Slop's head off, who tried to plug me, while he watches me in terror. I bathe in salvation and then we celebrate Samhaine under a fast moving sky while the stars send their immortal rays of light searching for something across the vast desert and I can glimpse a tender face calling me behind a veil of time. We howl again in the city and Slayer's watchdogs are only a practice for us and when the cloaked tall figures appear and swing their scythes, we howl in fury and we laugh, covered in salvation and afterwards we celebrate Samhaine under a fast moving sky that hides the crazy shining stars and I can glimpse a familiar face below the pumpkin mask before we howl again. My rags are blessed with salvation and I give it freely away, to mothers, to children, to whores, to false prophets to the believers, while Halloween Jack watches with cold gaze, an icon of salvation. We travel on the river of enlightenment and salvation is our current. We make landfall in the Walker's domain and celebrate Samhaine while I scrape off skin and flesh from my latest trophy, a baby's head, freed from its mother's womb with my own hands and when I am finished and the stars shine upon the unblemished ivory skull, I carve patterns into it and when the fire in the middle of our ring burns down and only the embers glow in the fury of the racing wind, I feel a silken kiss on the skin of my neck but then rain strikes down and the fire dies and the sensation of the kiss fades and we howl again. The current of salvation widens to a gigantic stream and bodies float everywhere and I throw hearts, lungs, brains and intestines into the river and clean my hands on my rags and eat the flesh from the corpses and everything fades and we celebrate Samhaine in the Walker's domain and I challenge Pack under the fast moving sky and take his place at Halloween Jack's side while ample, infinite eyes watch me from behind the horizon but then the fire dies and the world dims and we howl again and we stay clear of Sector One because it belongs to a real prophet and we accept his calling; we respect him as he respects us and when we must pass through his realm, we free thirteen young girls from a warehouse and send everyone else drifting upon the stream of salvation, and we honour the prophet Digger with the thirteen young naked girls when we trespass on his realm, and then we celebrate Samhaine under a fast moving sky and I carve patterns into a baby's skull and when I am finished, I string it to the other skulls that are my only decoration and then the rain strikes down again and we howl again. And I die, but I cannot die and my rage comes back to all those who tried to kill me and while the charm pulses under my skin and life flows back to me I can glimpse the fast moving sky behind the clouds that race overhead and I can see the stars' immortal rays of light reflected in the falling rain and I almost glimpse a transmuting shape in a great ring of mountains whispering to me "Unchain yourself", and then I stand amidst the slabs of broken earth under the fast moving sky and we sit down in a circle and celebrate Samhaine and I can feel a fluid silken kiss upon the skin of my neck, touching me where the charm pulses, and I can hear a voice in the motion of this kiss, telling me to give myself to her and then the fire dims and we howl again, but the voice remains inside, beckoning with its silken siren kiss, and everywhere I can glimpse the vast desert and the transmuting shape outside, and not even salvation makes this go away; only the pain of death makes it all go away and as we celebrate Samhaine again under a fast moving sky, the voice calls me with a thunderous impact and I am glad that the others cannot hear it, and I am glad that the Walker has left us before the voice began calling me, for he would know the treachery and he would punish me and take away his black charm and I would wake. I howl but the howling isn't the only thing any longer; there are memories, memories of the fast moving sky and the silken kiss and memories from before, and I howl stronger, but nothing can take away the terror of time, and I howl for the next six years while the memory of the transmuting shape and her floating raven hair and the voice of her hair and its silken kiss silences my howl ever more and more and then there is a quake and the face of the sun shines in Slayer's domain and in the aftermath I stand amidst the Dogs and Halloween Jack in the ruins of Slayer's domain and the clockwork killers face in the shadow of a skeletal building that cruises through the ruins like a gnawed shark's fin, while the gargoyles cry and weep tears of blood.

Halloween Jack stands above the corpse of his evil twin and he takes off his pumpkin mask, crying and shouting, "Now everything is finished! Now let me die! Walker! Let me see the mercy you have withheld from me for so long!", and I almost remember this face, a prophet's face, that has been hidden for so long under the cruel grin of a pumpkin mask.

And there is the Walker, emerging from the shadows, slowly climbing up the gentle slope to the hill we're standing on, this hill of skulls, and in the distance are the silhouettes of the crosses that the Bloodhounds of Kavella nail heretics to, humanoid shapes hanging from these crosses, twitching in pain, and on the ground before them, amid the corpses of the ones who have died here before, are the wailing, kneeling figures of relatives and friends.

The Walker and Halloween Jack stare at each other; the Walker's face a distorted masque while Halloween Jack stares at the Walker and now, with the rage of combat gone, tears stream down his face. "I told you before, don't cry! I have cried enough, for all of you", the Walker shouts, embracing all of us with a waving motion of his hand, and I remember tears of anguish, a long time ago.

"I don't want tears, Walker, I want mercy. You promised me. Then, 22 years ago. I have setteled your score, as you ordered me. Now, please."

"Who do you think you are? You are my creation! How dare you judge when my score has been setteled? No more mercy for you or anything I have created!", the Walker shouts and his voice shatters concrete stone and bones. A stream of blood now leaks from the gargoyle's eyes that watch us indifferently.

Halloween Jack falls to his knees in front of the Walker and tears of blood fall onto his bowed head. He shivers, grips the Walkers dirty boots and begs for mercy. "No!", the Walker's final word unsettles the world and the ground shakes, "You will wear your mask and then you all will howl, like I told you to!"

All I can do is stare. I watch the Walker turning his back to Halloween Jack, leaving us, descending the hill while Halloween Jack gets up, looking at his pumpkin mask before throwing it on the ground, raising his chainaxe, staring at the back of the Walker's ragged, limp coat. There is no wind, and Halloween Jack switches on his chainaxe, but its high-pitched whine is silenced by his sepulchral snarl, a deep thunder welling up from a dark abyss, "Mercy!", as he charges after the Walker.

The world narrows, time ceases to exist. I see Halloween Jack's perfect motion and the Walker's gentle stride downhill; the rags of his coat gently float in an upcoming soft breeze. Halloween Jack's steps crush skulls. The Walker gracefully turns on his heels. Jack's face is distorted, angelic in his rage. A single drop of blood, suspended in mid-air, wiped from the Walker's eyes. Jack's chainaxe, its blade in frenzied motion, held above his head. The Walker's hand, his coat's ragged sleeve blown back by its motion, a withered, skeletal mockery of a hand, its nails glistening in moonlight, death dripping along their nine-inch length. Halloween Jack's head torn from his shoulders by a gentle motion of the Walker's hand, turning in the air, the prophet's angelic face turned towards me, mercy swimming in its breaking eyes.

The Walker drops to his knees when Halloween Jack's body collapses to the ground, blood leaking out of the headless torso, wave by wave swallowed by the skulls that cover the hill's ground, dripping into hollow eye-sockets and rushing through open mouths with broken teeth and bare nasal cavities. He touches the torso and retrieves a pulsing black organic mass from Halloween Jack's neck. I feel the pulsing of my own black charm under the skin of my neck and the transmuting figure's presence right behind me, her raven hair flowing around me, caressing me, and I sense her voice, the voice of her vocal chords, not the sing-sang of her hair, and she calls me, urges me to unchain me, whispering "You hold the key". And I raise the knife and push it into my neck, sever the pulsing black charm into two halves and feel salvation spurting out of the cut arteries of my neck, flowing down my body and leaking on the ground, searching for my treacherous master's blood, mating with his while the world is swallowed.  

A grain for a grain, an eye for an eye 

I am found. The soft voice whispers into my ear, her lips gently touching my earlobe. The aroma of vanilla is everywhere and I smell it it especially strong in the last bits of breath that are flowing over my face, from ear to nose. Cathy always smells of vanilla, and she especially likes the vanilla aroma of a special dope; but it can't be Cathy, I know; she died long ago. She died in my arms.

I open my eyes and there is the fast-moving sky above me; night clouds race across the twilight coloured heaven, and immortal stars pierce the twilight cloth and send their rays in searching patterns over the desert. Twilight darkness flows through broken patterns of rough earth and vanishs at the seam of the baroque clothes of the transmuting shape kneeling next to me; no longer transmuting now, an icon of stasis. Her raven hair waves into my face and it strokes me gently, the way I have been stroked before, but far softer, far more delicate and loving. Her hands touch my chest and I can see the pattern of delicate glyphs and symbols that is painted onto each finger, over her hand and around her wrist. She smiles down on me; her lips are twilight as the sky, and behind their dark veil, her ample, infinite eyes glow with the gentlest white and hanging from her neck, gently swinging with the motion of her body an elaborate amulet of frozen mercury with a huge spherical stone, engraved with a pattern of three curved pillars into its polished opal surface, set in the midst of its chaotic swirls, is drawing my gaze, transfixing me, calling me, almost trying to subjugate me. Her mouth slowly opens, whispering, "Give yourself to me", and I want to touch her, want her to hold me and to never let me go, but then there is Cathy -Cathy whom I have forgotten for so long.

I look away from the woman's siren face and Cathy is behind her, and her pale hair flutters in the angry wind and the stars bathe her in their light. Everything is in Cathy's eyes and I remember. I remember her death in the depths of DownTown, so quick, so mind-shattering. And I see myself wandering through the darkest depths of DownTown, carrying Cathy's dead and stiff body deeper and deeper in a futile search for help, madness swimming in my eyes. I see my death at the Walker's hands and my resurrection through his charm, and in between, there is this place, the eternal desert; memories buried beneath its sands, covered by the ashes of each fire of Samhaine.

Behind Cathy's spectral form the sky colors from twilight-black to grayish-blue and chaotic images begin to rise above the horizon, transmuting, changing until they reach the angry clouds and dissolve. A white tower far in the distance, too far away for Cathy and me. I get up and take her hand and I know that I am as spectral as she is and I know that the universe is ours and that we are now as immortal as the stars; but "Believe me," the woman whispers behind me.

"Nothing is immortal, not even the stars. Don't chain yourself to a futile, dying hope", and I feel her gaze, full of infinite sadness, falling upon Cathy and me, while we slowly drift away from her.