The Fable Online Issue 19

The black paint on the wall had become flesh, a desiccated lung-like membrane through which I expected to be able to push myself.

“What does it feel like?” I asked. “Heaven, Hell…can you tell me what this is?”

“No.” A sweaty drop fell from the creature onto my hand. The skin there turned puffy and white.

Curt came back. I asked, “Curt, is everything normal, still?”

“Sure,” he said. “Lot we know ‘bout what ‘normal’ is. Some cunt turned the engine on without a proper test run.”

Seized by a sudden idea, I whispered to the hanging demon, “Reverend Sampson.”

The creature allowed a hole to open in its body. Some gluey clear stuff spilled out onto my clothes. The creature’s inside was lined with reddish growths like deep-sea worms.

Each one terminated in a mouth. Together they palpated the damp air in search of some nourishment. A feeling returned to me, as if Sampson were alive again, and I suspected that she was one of those pulsating villae.

The creature had come so close that I couldn’t move in my seat.

After a while, Curt’s voice came to me.

“Your son’s here,” he said.

Keeping my eyes fixed on the hanging terror above me, I said, “Let him in.”

My son Glenn is in insurance. He visits me on work days sometimes, under odd pretenses, in order to get away from his office. I’d lent him and his wife a set of champagne flutes that my mother had given to me as a wedding gift, for a marriage long since terminated. He’d come to return them. Though my gaze was directed into the heart of the demon, I could see the cardboard box in the corner of my eye as Glenn carried it in. He looked like a moving mountain of dead fingers tied up with hair, and I couldn’t stand to look directly at him.

“Hey Dad, brought the wine flutes back.” His voice was clear to me, and I thanked what God there was for that.

“Thank you, Glenn.”

“Curt, Sian. Good to see you.”

“You too Glenn,” said Curt. I think Sian smiled.