The Things We Bury - Part 1: In Anticipation of the End of the World [Completed]

Chapter 6: Digging in the Dirt (Part 3 of 5)

The umbrella created only a weak dome of protection.  Rain blew across the lawn dampening clothes and bringing a chill to exposed skin.  Horus Benning's hand-tooled, Italian leather loafers sloshed in the waterlogged grass.

The six hundred dollar shoes were ruined.  Nothing would salvage them now.  He wondered if anyone would notice if he expensed new ones.  Would anyone care?  Was six hundred dollars enough for some besieged accountant going through the massive cost and expenditures of the household to notice?

The strange wrought iron structure drew close enough to make out details through the sheets of rain.  Horus peered between the twisted beams and the confusion of interlacing rods, but he was unable to see Kyle inside.

Set at the end of the long east lawn, the monstrosity was some sort of bandstand, seemingly designed for a public park in one of Hell's deeper circles.  It was entirely made from ugly, misshapen black iron, and it looked like the skeletal remains of some great, hideous beast.  Scrap metal gargoyles perched from each of the many points jutting off the roof, which itself was covered in some unnatural plastic crafted to look like black leather. 

Kyle would occasionally use it for jam sessions.  If he were in a good enough mood and the weather was warm and dry, he would go out there with a few other musicians picked from the sparse collection of people he tolerated as friends or the even more meager selection of artists he had respect for.  And day or night, the sound of tortured guitars and subjugated drums would blare across the estate.

But when the weather was as stormy as his frame of mind, Kyle Silver would go out to that nightmarish cage and sulk.

The bizarre pergola was featured on the album cover for The Princes of Darkness's One Last Nightmare.  A collection released shortly after the band's breakup, containing songs that weren't good enough to make the cut when they were together.  To Horus's knowledge, none of the recordings had been made on the bandstand.  The photo had been chosen because there was no way to get all five members together to sit for a new picture and because the late afternoon lighting gave the stage the ghoulish look that people had come to expect in their cover art.  It was the icing on the great cynical cake that was an album whose sole function was to milk a little more cash from fans and help extend the opulent lifestyles of The Princes for another year or two.

Horus climbed the stairs.  Each one creaked along their welds under his weight.  The vinyl roof flapped in the fierce storm like massive batwings and cast a wavering shadow making the gloom deeper.  When his eyes grew accustomed to the murk, his first thought was that Kyle had cut himself.  Something red splattered across the polished teak floorboards.

It took only a second to realize that there was far too much of it to be blood.  It was an elaborate design.  Kyle was stooped down in the middle of it with a large plastic jar of paint.

He worked on his hands and knees.  Stringy from the rain, his long hair drooped down and touched the floor in front of him.  The paint mixed with the water giving it a mercurial quality.  It hovered above the wood's weatherproofing, floating and changing at the whims of the wind.

"Kyle."  The name was lost under the sound of the tempest.  Horus closed the umbrella and held it down like a cane, before clearing his throat and saying with a forced volume, "Kyle, I see you took my suggestion for art therapy."

The princeling looked up at him.  His eyes were ragged from lack of sleep and filled with hate, but there was also a cloud of confusion.

He probably can't figure out if I'm joking or not, Horus thought.

Kyle turned his head and his scowl back to his work, apparently having decided that his doctor wasn't capable of humor.

"Fuck therapy."