The Ancient Chronicles: Short Stories

Mediator of Justice: Short Stories

Mediator of Justice

      October 13th, 2010

      Dreary smoke curled toward a dimming bulb. Its brilliance transmitted poorly all through the cavity. Shadows crawled ubiquitously and in the darkness crunched the unseen. They skittered across chipped tiles, scaled battered brick walls and gathered in corners. At the center sat a memory. His eyes rolled into the back of his skull. They might have been ashen at some point, but now thick and bleak tar swirled in their place. In his pupils millenniums of secrecy burnt as their hues shaded crimson and then orange before dying out.

     A bronzed tongue raced between his inflamed black-and-blue lips. The heaving entities scattered. They squeezed into fissures and under broken segments of rock strewn about. As the thing rose onto bony feet it turned.

     A portion of its face folded back to reveal bone. Gray matter oozed from a splinter behind its ear. It smiled a toothless grin. There was no more time to waste. This form served enough entertainment for now. Smoke engulfed and twisted around him, hissed and crackled. It webbed a cocoon of conflagration and electricity. As it retracted back into its host the bulb swinging above shed whatever light it could on the mysterious shape now moving within its reach.

     It stretched emerald arms; their palms pressed firmly on opposite sides of wall, and pushed. Brick thrust outward as though propelled by a vast power greater than itself, crumbled into dust and once it settled sunshine poured through.

     She now peered up at the sky with her new eyes, watched air molecules travel far and beyond, and then shifted her attention to the fields of grass and foliage. The world was a chamber to rot in, but only if one makes it that way. No longer would she rot in despair when a new calling beckoned her.

     The world spun on an axle of corruption. Judgment day closed in to punish those who have made a living inducing pain and suffering.

     Through the glare she stared at the racing steel as it sliced through smoking flesh. The body before her was charred, blackened and beyond recognition. Its face stretched in an eternal pose of anguish. Holier-than-thou exhortations severed principles a long while ago; when the seas coursed crimson. From them the ink for the book was manifested.

     Hypocritical way of thinking disgraced reality and will continue until the passages are closed. This may only come from an experienced reader of the text. Unfortunately the man's decoding skills had been far from practiced. Now the pages turn and the blazing red letters make an everlasting imprint in her mind.