Strange stories

The cockroach king

Soar past the gleaming wall of apolytos in the middle of the sea of salt, guided by a line around the  brown valley of despair and curious ruins you will behold deep in the dusty and dry mountains that all men scorn. - The great book.

A prosperous city of bricks and clay bustled nestled into the peaks. The earthy smell of the ground they had carved their living into was inescapable as well as the rushing of the constant wind. The pleasurable warmth from the sun mingled with the breezes to create an almost tropical climate. Many tanned beings traversed the sinuous hallways carved into the mountains high up. The wind blowing their dresses and black hair into graceful messes as they smiled. Oft clouds would embrace all and as tradition dictated would groups huddle in solid stone hovels and feast on plump and tender rump of giant birds that had ruled the peaks. The "restfull feast" they called it. A place where the people grew old, and then older, and then ancient before slipping away. A city of fat upperclass who sought out genuine improvement for their metropolis and skillfull, quick witted peasants, grateful for what they receive. Colourful tapestries hung by the dozens, carried this way and that by the strong mountain wind currents blowing all night and day. Dusty streets high on mountains populated now only by skeletons of those who stayed for too long. In the scorned city, criminals were jailed by strict measures. Murder was an unheard of an unthinkable act, pillaging near settlements was never a thought in the minds of even the first settlers. Mercenaries never appear in the streets or whorehouses or taverns or shops and not a mouse thought to police the few who where for they kept to their best. Children played where they pleased. Everyone who resided in these almost heavenly circumstances were well aware of the blessing, and counted numerous others each day. A dry, gentle and raucous place with rulers and kings only used to measure the time.

All was well and good and the future seemed an ever welcome gift.

Until the day they had tried to jail the very demon mammon.

He was a lanky old man, with a wiry frame and a dirty long grey beard. Slanted and crossed eyes and a slack, open hanging jaw. He resembled a famine riddled cow with a disability and stank like one too. He wore only a dirty and brown wrap, once white a millennium ago. Most curiously though was that no one could identify him. No one had seen or heard of him before the incident. No one even remotely like him. It also certainly did not help that he could not speak, but only vacantly stare with his mouth agape and walk where he was told. He was charged with theft and promptly thrown into a clammy cell with no food or water. And the people thought their problems over. Yet almost the day after his imprisonment, this wiry old man was once again caught red handed at a crime far worse. He had escaped the renowned cells of the dungeon and was found laying across the corpse of a young woman. A witness on the scene claimed that while walking around late at night he had scene the young girl outlined by torchlight carrying a pale of water on her head. As the man followed her with his eyes, a stumbling and skinny figure materialized unnaturally from the shadow she had passed as if it had grown a tumor and split off an unnatural and filthy child. The shadow fell upon the young woman soundlessly and within an instant she had collapsed to the floor without so much as a breath. The pale had fallen off of her head and onto the stones where, the witness claims, the shadow had stooped over into the torchlight where he could make out the mans face and had lapped at the spilled water like a cat. The witness claims he then immediately ran for the jailers to assist, unable to comprehend what he had scene and muttering. He had complained of a loud scratching noise coming from the old man. Like many hundreds and thousands of bugs crawling and clawing at something. And he reported a stench, a stench so foul and unmistakable that the witness had completely lost his sense of smell.  The old man was thrown ,as soon as the dungeons could open a door, into a more secure and darker cell with no food, water, or even natural light. A small stone chamber with a ventilation shaft for the torch that provided light. The jailer that had ushered him into his new arrangements had smelt a very unsavory smell and had requested that the old man have water dumped into the ventilation shaft to wash himself with. A detail that the jailer only later spoke of however, was the fact that when he had held onto the old mans shoulder, he could swear that it felt like something was crawling under the old man's skin. Like many tiny insects were rubbing up against his hand.