"No Life 'Til Leather"

"The Four Horsemen" Pt. 1

To stray from the light was to live. To cast away fear and shame, loyalty and the treacherous vines of attachment. What good has ever come from a bond formed between two rot-walkers? The puppet masters sighed in irritated amusement each time a doll’s arms reached for another’s, each time their linen fingers brushed the fabric’s raggedy surface. Metaphysical desires born from the loudly proclaimed doctrines of ghostly fools who thrived in their romanticisms and baroques; each word lost to time, each thesis undermined by the fabricated golems that stemmed and grew from their decaying carcasses. To stray from the radiance of another’s gaze was to accept the logical truth. The reality they, the sock puppets, forgotten by any gods left alive, found themselves in, scraping the thousand year old rust beneath their feet. What good came of clutching to one’s hand? What good came of prying the last bite away from one’s mouth in favor of keeping a chattering meat-bucket alive? A meat bucket eager to take more than enough, give nothing in return and thrive like a tumor on one’s soul. None. No good. Nothing.

Null.

Only in the dark, where no God dared to gaze, have the puppet masters’ strings grown loose. Where no light dared to intrude and break the blackened veils, where the curtains of emptiness covered their dwellers tight. It was the only embrace they’d ever need - the warm, longing touch of death’s colorless robe - the rags that took all: young, old, rich, poor. Not one was safe from the scythe, but the shadows hiding beneath the light’s border. To slither between the bone-pale limestones and flourish, away from the eyes that judged, meant to thrive. To spread the wings long carved off by time and dignity, to pour poison into the well of uncertain morality and kill the angels dictating one’s life course. There, one could hide and watch. One could gouge out the eyes that followed their move and take their very place.

Watch from the dark, say nothing.

Kill the puppeteers, take their place.

Be nothing but a dull void to the temples of lawful rules that dictated what to consider “good” and “bad”, an ungovernable force of reckoning.

Surrounded by black, enveloped in a thick cape of smoke, the swindler’s tongue twisted and churned, plaguing the ears of those eager to follow, spreading its venom. The shadow took a moment.

A dim, but graceful light flickered in the overarching darkness, courtesy of a few metallic clicks. Bone against metal, metal against bone. Robes came to sight, gray and tattered, splattered with bleak red - wine of war, produce of misery. Hoederer narrowed his weary gaze and cleared the grand windpipes with a cough, ridding of bloody droplets that dared invade their fleshy confinements.

“...” A lit cigarette lingered amidst the void, with its smoldering tip dirtying the perfectly blank image. No words had the rotten smoker left to say, but a simple chuckle. Lungs, deeply permeated with blackened roots of untreated diseases and millennia of gathered nicotine granted the living carcass a favor, voicing his silent amusement. Empty eye holes looked down upon the fire-headed man. “... Not a fan. Not a smoker, are ya?”

“Not a fan.” He replied in a moment’s notice, taking the time to watch his interlocutor’s inadequately efficient attempt at sliding the nicotine stick between their rotten lips. “Not a smoker, either.”

“Of course yer not. Can tell from a mile away.” The bodiless voice spit, pausing only to take a deep inhale of smoke. Hoederer stared in silent awe, judgingly grazing his eyes along the shrinking cigarette. Bit by bit, the white plains turned dim, then orange, then black, then disappeared completely, ashes falling into nothing. “... Ah, to be frank, mule-y… Not much of a fan, either.” He continued, letting the burning tip set his pale chin ablaze with its dim flicker of light. Hedley’s nostrils enjoyed the sweet smell of nicotine, as the overwhelmingly mind-entangling stench of decay unwrapped itself from his mind, even if for just a moment.