By Timaeus Bloom
“He is testing well, sayeth the Twine. In this time and others. But before and also after.” Mr. Paddington crossed his arms, shivering as the chills took him. Why did they keep it so cold in here? He was remarkably thin, with an Adam’s apple that bobbed up and down, not unlike a buoy at high tide. He would have been much happier if this little show could have been done at the old outlet mall across from the interstate—right next to the fountain with the yellow-green water and slowly bursting bubbles of slime. He’d seen a dog drink from it once. A Doberman maybe? He doubted he’d see it again. But then, “again,” was a perplexing and mind-shattering concept.
“It.” Ms. Mickey corrected him. She was short, pale, and triangular. A liver-spotted hand gripped the e-cigarette that she seemed to never be without. It was a purple little box that was crowned with a clear cylinder holding a teal liquid. She thumbed the trigger and took an uncomfortably long drag. She’d been warned a few times that smoking was not allowed in Vinecreek Shopping Mall. “There are kids here,” they’d said. After a bit more prodding from sanctimonious parents and one particularly pocked and insistent mall security guard riding on some sort of electric podium, she’d continued to do so, but at moderately successful distance from the younglings.
“What?” Questioned Mr. Clifford. A large ham hock of an arm swatted away the slithering clouds of Ms. Mickey’s e-cigarette. Complimenting the meatiness of his arm, his fingers were reminiscent of Vienna sausages: stubby, greasy, and boiled pink. Within his tucked cowboy shirt, he appeared to be smuggling an assortment of pillows. He turned his attention back to the large portable stage, slapped together and plopped in the middle of the shopping mall’s food court. To the left was a little booth selling cookie cakes and slushies, to the very far left, a big placard confirmed that they were HERE in big blue letters.
He mumbled under his breath at that: “…unfortunately.”
“It. It’s an It,” Ms. Mickey snapped once more. While she was correcting Mr. Paddington, she wanted to make sure it was not lost on Mr. Clifford that he, too, needed to be reprimanded. He wasn’t paying attention. Her voice was like a whistle struggling against the wind, shrills that had high peaks and low valleys. “It is genderless. It is not a ‘he,’ nor is it a ‘she.’
Mr. Clifford snorted. Maybe more of a gruff oink.
Mr. Paddington pushed his frameless coke bottle glasses back up the length of his narrow nose. He let out a large gulp, swallowing nothing but his own impatience. “Affirmative. Bastion foretold it has been, whispered and sung, cried and shouted that the sproutlings prefer their—their…”
“Friend-Parent.” Mr. Clifford added. He had been awake for that meeting.
“Yes, Speaker! Precisely. I witness them today, yesterday, always.” Mr. Paddington flipped through his laminated notebook. It showed charts of all different shapes and all different colors. There were also numbers, highlighted words, and the odd picture or two. Notes Ms. Mickey had created for them, a compendium of their research.
All of their work, plotting, mumbled chants and imbibed putrid substances had culminated in this very scene before them, this ferocious beast of enormous size. Its large shell was a deep, purple mauve that was covered in black circles of various circumferences, blisters of the foretold apocalypse. This terrifying hue spread down to a long, threatening tail with the strength to crush and flatten. The eyes were pure white, clouded and pupilless, blinded by the haunting images of what was yet to be and what it had undone. Its chest was a dazzling blue, enchanting and serene, for there was a beauty to its omnipotence, its lust for the untainted. And those claws, those onyx daggers of war.
Loudly it sang, ancient hymns of disarray and rapture:
“Love is bouncy. Kindness is bubbly. Come and dance with your old friend Roll-E…”
It bewitched the children. Those little saplings who would be used to usher in an age of screams and hedonism, dismemberment, and decay. The three oddly paired cultists smiled all-knowing smirks that conveyed controlled lunacies. Next to the booth that sold iced cookies, and vendors that hocked burnt pizza or coagulated macaroni and cheese, they rejoiced. The time was nigh.
When the Avatar dove off the stage and rolled around in a large ball, giggling and asking the children to push it around, the three cried jubilantly. When the kids formed a circle around the creature and pranced in unison, they steepled their hands in prayer. When the Doombringer playfully smacked into the stage and unfurled himself, beckoning the crowd of rambunctious youth to bounce on his blue belly, they squinted a little. When the Corrupted One pulled out an assortment of polka dotted goodie bags from a hidden pouch, they stared at each other.
“Uh oh…”
* * *
One Day Before the Gala of Resurrection
They sat in a minivan outside of an arcade, Big Sal’s Zap and Tase. It was connected to the mall, the determined location for the Last Coming. It was easily recognizable, jutting out from the side of the glass fortress that was the city shopping center. The big entryway was painted a vibrant green, with lightning bolts and robots and flying saucers dotting the garish landscape. A steady stream of excited young ones marched through automatic sliding doors, dragging their parents behind them.
“So what is it they do in there again?” Mr. Clifford had asked, scratching his bald head.
“They shoot each other with firearms that emit a piercing light.” Mr. Paddington offered.
“What about the pudgy ones? The weaker ones? They take part in the training as well?”
“Correct, Speaker. Any of them can participate, so I have seen, and yet too, have unseen.”
“That doesn’t seem exactly…logical? Surely, they could offer very little.”
“It is how it is, has been.”
“Progressive…” The word trickled out of Mr. Clifford’s lips like a stream of carbonated soda, zesty and interesting. Different.
“Progressive.” Mr. Paddington echoed, though his voice came in a moan, slow and pondering.
“I don’t like it.” Ms. Mickey spoke up, cutting through dangling thoughts.
“Me neither,” Mr. Paddington and Mr. Clifford confirmed in unison.
Their steed was not top of the line, nor was it a lemon. It was something in-between: suitable for divorced fathers, church mission trips, or delivering something niche like chrysanthemums or carrying a staff of caterers to and from wedding receptions. The three of them passed for humans rather poorly. They had all the proper parts—at least as far as anyone could tell—but they still donned their Robes of Ascendance: big sleeved, flowing maroon sheets. Each of them kept their hoods tight around their skulls.
They, too, each wore cheap, darkly tinted sunglasses. Except for Mr. Paddington, due to his lack of perfect vision. It had almost cost him his spot on the Tribunal once upon a time. But he had the gift, the ability of Twine-Living. His essence rested in the past and the future all at once. He saw the passage of time forwards, but also backwards. This meant he was never in one place at the same time, nor, so the scriptures said, was he ever anywhere at all. To truly understand what could not be and what already was, one could not grasp reality, but at the same time one was an unequivocal expert of its nuts and bolts.
Have you ever conversed with someone who you found utterly off their rocker? But at the same time found them to be a curious purveyor of knowledge and reason? The Seer, as his robed compatriots called him, was much like that, but also somehow needier. In the end, One That Should Never Be Cleansed had relented. Mr. Paddington, though incessantly annoying, was correct in his predictions just often enough to not be a complete liability. He was also a decent talking point at parties.
From behind the wheel, hands clenched, Ms. Mickey turned to Mr. Clifford who sat lazily in the back seat, perspiring as always. His moist imprint clung to the vehicle’s upholstery like a depressing, slick snow angel. “Alright, you’re up, Speaker.” Ms. Mickey was the Bastion. The closest to The Irredeemable, and the head of the Tribunal. She had proven herself once upon a time in battle, wielding the Trident of Coveted Screams. She was a fine leader, for even men of an extraterrestrial persuasion were rather lacking in their ability to execute plans and guarantee acceptable results. Once, their cohort had included eleven Doomchanters. But that had been then, and this was now (unless you were the Seer, of course, he never knew which was which). After the defeat of their god, the Tribunal had all agreed to cloister themselves in the Chambers of Antithesis, to awaken when the time was right to bring forth The Unrelenting One again.
Eight of them had been eviscerated due to faulty equipment.
The Seer had forgotten and then remembered that it was ordained that he would have to use the bathroom before the long sleep. The Speaker had simply been hungry at the time, up for a Voidtime snack. The Bastion had followed them, accosting the two for being out of stasis. By the Nightmaw’s own luck, this fumbling had left them as the remaining three alive. After this, the Seer’s visions were questioned less. But only just a little less.
“Fine, fine.” Mr. Clifford said. His gut bobbed and swayed under his robes. He rolled down the window, cranking the lever a bit more forcefully than he should have. The plastic cracked, splintering a tad at the nugget that connected it to the door.
“What was that?” Ms. Mickey questioned, the tone piercing and alert.
“-er, nothing. Bodily emission.”
Mr. Paddington whispered: “Our time draws to a close, approximately, figuratively the sands sho—”
“Shut it!” Mr. Clifford roared; he wished the Seer could “see” just how obnoxious he was.
Mr. Clifford had practiced this. Every protocol. Well, one protocol. He knew exactly the appropriate and satisfactory way to acquire answers. It was bulletproof, practiced. Much like being “ridden by a bike,” as the mortals of this time said.
“Pssst.”
A small man walking past the van continued his stroll. In his hand was some sort of pastry covered in coagulated dairy.
“Ahem.” Mr. Clifford tried once more. “Pssst. Pssst.”
The perfectly normal human male, brown-skinned and freckled, turned around awkwardly. He looked into the window at the strange man and his strange fellows. Vape smoke trailed out the driver window excessively. What he could see of the two up front were blank, emotionless expressions. Was an emotionless expression, in fact, an expression? That he didn’t know. What he did know, however, was that he very much cared more about his Danish than these three.
The fat one spoke to him. Or did he think to him? Dark shades peered into his soul as a booming voice echoed about the halls of his brain.
As Speaker, Mr. Clifford had the ability to peer into the minds of others. What he lacked in physicality, he made up for psionically. While the Bastion led for the Corpse Maker, and the Seer saw for it, it was the Speaker that made the entity’s antiquated grunts and garbled tongues comprehensible, at least to a point. The Seer was also a decent Cerebral Torturer.
“Good day.” The voice said.
“Hi…” The man responded.
“How do we get to the young ones? We are to believe that they frequent this building. How do we gain entry past the convulsing doors?”
“I don’t understand. How are you talking–”
“The younglings. Gather them. They will aid in bringing forth bile and jubilation.”
The man outside of the van frowned. What had been in those brownies? He turned to walk away.
“Stop!” The voice shouted.
He did so. His legs continued to shuffle as if doing their best to follow the commands of his very human brain. But he stayed in place, doing a weird, unorthodox shimmy.
“Once again, we need the children. If you will not give them up, then I will be forced to extract their whereabouts from you unwillingly.”
“Listen, man, I don’t know what you’re on about–
“I am no ‘man,’ you punk. I have bedded kings, grasped the Orb of Shel-Gorrath, and seen the Ember Wings flap thrice!”
They argued back and forth. The man, continuing to assume he was having a very spirited high, and the bulbous lunatic screeching nonsense against his synapses.
Then, Mr. Clifford overdid it.
He placed both of his index fingers, bloated and wrinkled like they’d absorbed too much saltwater, to his wet noggin. He pushed and pushed, prodding into the mind of his frozen prisoner. The human’s confusion materialized into thick, heavy pounding veins like tree roots that spidered across his forehead. Ruby drippings of blood trickled out of his nose, slithered out of his ears, and sprayed out of his eyes. His brain began to drain into itself, deflating like a discarded balloon animal, knotted and misshapen. The man’s cries became higher and higher pitched as his brain dissolved into goop, leaking out with the now-gushing blood into a steaming gumbo that pooled at his feet.
“SPEAKER! SPEAKER!” The shouts ricocheted in Mr. Clifford’s head before he realized the words were not brain whispers, but the vocal intonations of his other two carpoolers. There was the sound of disgust and crying, revulsion and curiosity as passersby began to take in the vile scene.
“I…did not predict that from the Twine,” Mr. Paddington offered needlessly.
Slamming her taloned feet on the gas pedal, the tires screeched, rolling into frantic life and the van charged away from the sidewalk, over speedbumps, past blinking green, then yellow, then red lights and tearing away from the mall like some space flapping bat out of a galactic hell.
As they drove past the opposite side of the Vinecreek Shopping Center, something caught Mr. Clifford’s eye.
“Halt!” He shouted; his cheeks were red, his mind flummoxed.
“Absolutely not, Speaker! Have you any–”
“Look, there!” His unstoppable insistence somehow penetrating the immovable wall that was Ms. Mickey.
The car broke to a dreadful, teeth-clamping stop. Paddington and Mickey turned towards the direction of Clifford’s darting eyes.
What they saw was a massive banner, windswept, ruffling against the side of the gray and brick shopping plaza. Upon it was the image of a smiling and brightly colored armadillo—huge, surely the height of one and a half men. Its clawed hands sat at its waist; its mouth was opened, regaling a crowd of enthused children as if sharing the universe’s most absorbing tale.
“He comes, my friends! I have seen and unseen: a sign, a treatise. The Twine curls no longer. Decay and ash answer our calls!”
Ms. Mickey looked down to the medallion she wore around her neck, the same medallion they all wore. The etched image of The Scarred Flesh, The Poisoned Tears, their mother, their father, their long-defeated god. Here. Reborn. Its resemblance to the figure on the banner was unmistakable.
THIS SATURDAY. ROLL-E THE ARMADILLO. 3PM. GET YOUR TICKETS NOW, BEFORE THEY ROLLLLL AWAY.
* * *
Three Hours Before the Gala of Resurrection
Was it stereotypical that three remaining Deacons of the Tribunal needed to sacrifice children in order to summon their god, to bring forth those dormant and scattered astral specks of lifeless nothing to wreak vengeance upon this untapped orb? Yes, it very much was. But it made sense, they thought. Where better would they find such extremes of unbridled joy and inescapable sadness? Children, kids as they were called here, were small little flesh sacks of pure energy, with emotions that ran the gamut of sentiments. Much like a solid gold oldie, the tune their parents—or very likely grandparents—played to revisualize saccharine moments or to initiate sensual activities of varying degrees of pleasure, the old ways just seemed to work. If it wasn’t broke, they saw no need to fix it.
They had done a fair amount of snooping. Ms. Mickey had procured a laptop. Her due diligence had also found her a member of the Geek Squad. She still had no idea how to use the laptop, but her sacrificial dagger, green of blade and forged with a seemingly insatiable appetite for ichor, had garnered results. And the Geek Squad was now one Geek less in number. This “Roll-E” as the humans had come to know their deity was an anthropomorphic creature that captivated the young. Why It That Screeches had chosen to present himself in this day an age, in this world, was easy enough for the three of them to comprehend: it was a sign, just for them. A test. There appeared, after all, to be a small glimmering essence of its being still in existence, and it had materialized here and now, in the Vinecreek Shopping Mall (THIS SATURDAY AT 3:00 PM) as something of a ceremonial event of cosmic proportions. It knew. It was ready. It needed to be summoned. And summon it they would.
“These should do nicely,” Ms. Mickey said, dropping three piles of clothes on the black faux wood desk the three of them crowded around.
They were in a small, quaint little office. There were a few potted fake plants, a hung image of a canyon in some such place, another of galloping horses. Mr. Paddington had informed them that he had foreseen that the room was designed in the “Mid-century Modern” aesthetic. Surprisingly, he’d been correct. The fading words on the frosted glass door read “Management.” And they’d managed to commandeer it. It made sense to them. It was theirs by conquest now.
An emaciated woman in a gray pantsuit slithered along the floor, pink liquid dripping out of her eye sockets. Her hair had fallen in clumps, trailing behind her like a line of fuzzy caterpillars. She reached a nailless hand towards Ms. Mickey, clutching at the hem of her robe. They had promised this woman, the previous “manager,” intercession, that they would pray to The Fallen on her behalf. But that hadn’t been exactly the truth, and the woman hadn’t really understood them anyway. She’d yelled that they had no reason to be in her office, that this was a business, that she was important. The three cultists took this to mean that this woman was the leader of the glassed fortress, the sovereign of the Vinewood Shopping Center. She would be a problem, they thought. So they feasted upon her.
They’d not gotten used to taking out their trash, though. Their displeased sighs said it all: We used to have thralls for such things.
“Good god, Bastion,” Mr. Clifford had asked, wiping droplets of greasy, pungent sweat from his rectangular forehead with a red handkerchief. “What are we supposed to do with these?”
Mr. Paddington drummed spindly fingers along the cold, cluttered desk. The pitter pattering of his digits tapping out some old rhyme he’d remembered from when the void was yet new, but still eternally old. They all remembered it, in fact.
“These…” he paused to take a sip of something that surely may have been liquid. He drank from a slim goblet made of bronze. It was positively medieval, with dragons flying around its base and Viking ships rowing along a tempestuous sea. It had cost $10.99 a floor above them at a small shop that sold incense, candles, seashells, and tie dye shirts that depicted frogs on mushrooms playing banjos: “…are garments she intends for us to wear today at the Gala of Resurrection.”
“And this was foretold to you, Seer?”
“Indeed, Speaker, the Twin–”
“He came with me to get them,” Ms. Mickey cut in, sharply, not unlike her sacrificial dagger. “He’d forgotten to use the bathroom again. But then remembered that he should forget to go. I made him go.”
“The Bastion made me go.”
Before Mr. Clifford could begin one of his diatribes of complaints and uninformed questions, Ms. Mickey, ever vigilant, led the charge. The words were muffled; they sounded like bumblebees banging against each other in a burlap sack. Her mouth wasn’t moving, at least not that mouth.
“What?” Mr. Clifford asked.
She pulled back the rumpled hood that shrouded her blue gray curls. The middle of her head was shaved clean like a friar’s tonsure. This second mouth was impeccably normal, the teeth white and the gaps flossed, a red tongue nestled comfortably behind them—except, of course, that it lived in the middle of her cranium. She spoke again. Whenever she spoke from her true mouth, it was clear she meant business. “It is time. Don these garments, and let us prepare for the Summoning.”
* * *
One Hour Before the Gala of Resurrection
Mr. Paddington stepped over the wailing assistant manager. Her skin had begun to soften and stretch, not unlike the putty that came in those little colorful eggs. As he quickly exited the commandeered office to join Mr. Clifford and Ms. Mickey, he was jolted as his back leg remained in place, denying him any attempts at mobility. He gave his celery-like extremity a hard tug. It rose slowly, a pinkish, sticky residue gripping the sole of his white Skechers. Turning to look at the gesticulating woman, he saw a part of her chest was flattened, waffled, the imprint of his shoe clearly apparent.
Ms. Mickey turned to him from her spot in front of the opened door: “Lemon soda, vinegar, and ammonia. It’ll get it out.”
“Thank you,” Mr. Paddington said, actually quite earnest.
* * *
Thirty Minutes Before the Gala of Resurrection
The three of them crowded into the public restroom, each of them aghast and fervent. So crowded were the cultists, that they seemed to move as one, an amorphous, trembling, excitable blob. They were more like children than they could have imagined.
And why were they like this? It could very well take a millennia to explain the psychological nuances that made each of them how they were, but in this moment there was a valid reason for their collective eccentricness. In the third stall nearest to the wall, a puffy blue tail was curled outside of the door, every few moments a large audible grunt could be heard behind the latched gate. The tail jostled with these utterances, and banging could be heard from the other side.
“Your eminence!” Ms. Mickey said.
“What?” Was the harsh, struggling reply.
“Hell Weaver…we have come.” Mr. Clifford added.
“Huh? Occupado!” Then came the sounds of roaring bombasity, like contorted trumpets tooting from the bottom of a filled tub.
“Vile Deceiver,” Mr. Paddington whispered, his voice trembling, “the Twine…I saw! Knewest did we that you would return. Lo these many days, years, eons, have we waited, bowed in prayer every–”
He was cut off by a very distracting flush. Then another. And another still. A floater.
The door slammed open.
“What the hell are you three on about? Are you trying to practice some exhibitionism or something? You’re barking up the wrong tree.”
The large mauve armadillo shimmed out of the stall, having to turn sideways to make it through. Mr. Clifford devoutly bent over. He picked up the incredibly furry tale, intending to help his deity.
“I got it, I got it.” The bearded man said. The large, and hollow head of Roll-E the Armadillo nestled between his arms like a cartoonish bicycle helmet. He took the three in.
“Er…you guys fans?”
“Of a sort, Unholiness,” Ms. Mickey responded. She stared at the head.
“Well, uh…it’s not like it used to be. Back in the 90s when I did stints as Barney or Winnie, it would have been weird to see parents by themselves mingling with the kids at a show. Real To Catch a Predator Stuff.” He offered a fake, uncomfortable laugh. “Take a seat and all that.”
“Anywhere you beckon, Doom Father!” Mr. Paddington cried. The 20th century primetime television joke was lost on the Seer.
The man’s discomfort grew. “But things are different now, I guess–with Bronies and fursonas and other stuff.”
They watched him in enthralled silence.
“Alright, well–I’ll–I’ll see you guys at the show. Excuse me.”
He did his best to slide past, his padded belly bumping into them. They did move back, eventually, bowing their heads in submission.
“The fuck…” Roll-E mumbled under his breath.
Not even pretending to consider washing his hands, he stood at one of the three sinks, and practiced a roaring giggle. The Tribunal’s eyes followed his every movement.
Staring back at himself at the curiously stained mirror, doing all he could to place the three wackos out of his periphery, he put on his game face: a toothy grin and happy, yet somehow lifeless, eyes. He popped the large, padded animal head on his shoulders.
“SHOWTIME!”
He then proceeded very quickly to exit the bathroom. “Freaks.”
* * *
The Gala of Resurrection
“It is time,” Ms. Mickey said. The prolonged shock of the Avatar of their God behaving in such a playful manner with the children had finally subsided.
The scene was horrific. The younglings, crashed and docile after their sugar highs, sat around Roll-E the Rollicking Armadillo as he strummed an acoustic guitar. He sang the same exuberant theme song from before, but this time slowed and soulful, a soothing lullaby.
The three of them clutched their medallions and chanted. Mr. Paddington gave himself to the Twine, Mr. Clifford poured his being into the chambers of his mind, and Ms. Mickey removed the orange pillbox hat she’d donned to cover her second maw. Reaching a free hand into that hidden mouth, she ruffled around, the gagging sounds of that other throat garbled and wet. She freed her hand, pulling out with it an ebony dagger, hers by right as the Leader of the Accursed.
It glowed a faint green, pitch black droplets of the unknown dripping from the needlepoint tip of its blade and pattering with crackling sizzles as they hit the sunflower carpeted floor of the mall.
She held the blade before her in a fighter’s stance. She’d felled countless beasts, men, abominations all in the name of her god. This very being that sat several paces before her, his guitar continuing to emit gentle chords. Not exactly the symphony she’d expected to ring when she brought forth an endless era of devastation and indulgence. But it would do.
In a swift motion she stabbed the blade into the air. The Bastion had led them to this, the Seer had foreseen it, and the Speaker had devoured minds to fuel its coming. None of the three knew exactly how it would happen. Would the flaming sphere that warmed this once frost-covered planet come crashing down? Would the curtain of reality itself be cast aside, a never-ending darkness, gaseous and beckoning, pouring into this untapped plane like a blanket of corroding nothingness? Locusts? Rivers of blood?
However wild their amalgamations of nightmarish fantasies may have been, they were not prepared for the reality that their planned efforts brought them:
A big, fat, smattering of nothing.
Mr. Clifford and Mr. Paddington, confused and nerve-wrecked, turned to stare at Ms. Mickey.
She stabbed again.
Nothing.
* * *
Curtain Call
The Gala of Resurrection had become the Jamboree of Zilch.
Drowsy children, shaken awake (and therefore cranky) by returning parents who had done all the shopping they could manage in those few peaceful hours, exited the food court. The three Doomsayers paid them no mind. As they huddled together like a team of footballers bickering back and forth on how to turn the big game around before the clock reached zero, Roll-E the Armadillo, the mascot head once again removed and leaning against the wall of the mall’s stockroom, took a lung-filling drag of his last Marlboro Red.
Life would thrive another day.
As a new batch of little bastards cried and cheered for their stuffed hero to appear for the second show, he plopped the barely smoked cigarette into the Styrofoam cup of diet orange soda he had a split second ago determined to use as a makeshift ashtray.
“SHOWTIME.”
Timaeus Bloom is a black author of speculative fiction from Alabama. A fan of the strange and fantastical, he spends his free time laboring over just what to do with his free time. You can find his words in Howls from the Wreckage, and upcoming in Nightlight Podcast and Beyond the Bounds of Infinity. He is also the co-editor of the upcoming Howls from the Scene of the Crime: an Anthology of Crime Horror in 2024.