A Carnival of Tears

A CARNIVAL OF TEARS I:

In one of the innumerable white spires of Absyth, a ghost sat before the reflective eye of a dead computer.

His torso was bathed in shadow. His hair, the color of moonlight shimmered as it hung heavy across his back There were black markings that painted the facade of elation across his face. The clown's face was marred by a single smear that ran from right brow, across his nose and ended below the left side of his jaw. In the moonlight it was crimson and futile. The clown drew a handkerchief down the imperfection.

What this small smear revealed of his identity was nothing at all.

Where his skin should have peered through the paint there was only a vague blur. He began to hum an old Kosharish tune to himself.

Outside of the large window to his left, a thunderstorm was just beginning. First with a spattering of rain against the window. And then the gale took hold and began to lash the thick duraglass, this provided a wicked backbone to his tune. A timid flash of lightning teased his naked form, the bands of midnight that ringed his body in bumblebee fashion drank the virgin light.

Behind the clown laid a shadowed mass of twitching limbs that had once been the Hemlock Kahln. Mother, father, and their only son all dying slowly in a pile. Their lives had been paid for by a dead drop flown to the window of his coffin by a small drone just last night. The drone bore markings that read: "Corporate business, interfere at your own risk!". It was armed with a small piercer and it was filled with stacks of trum that glittered even in the poor light of his coffin. He took the credit and dropped it to the street below, smiling to himself as he heard the rabble below fighting tooth and nail for the cash.

The medical technology industry of Absyth was not unlike the hierarchy of Gutter, the clown thought to himself. The Pitlords were still such on the surface, they just went by different names. They still consumed their lessers and poisoned their betters. Whether it be by blade or by drink, the competition faded all the same and was eagerly replaced. It made him feel much at home with this strange new world.

There were the Pharmaceutical Cure sectors, Bioorganic Software, and Prosthetics, even Bioprosthetic and at least a dozen other disciplines he had not yet become versed on. No doubt it had been a rival Kahln that had paid for the Hemlock's lives, or perhaps a forgotten bastard fathered on the mother of a lesser Kahln. It was all the same to him.

The clown was still learning the ins and outs of Absyth; this was his first venture into Hightown. The luxury these people enfolded themselves within was staggering. He wondered if they knew that within the same city junkie-mothers suffocated their children rather than let them fall into the exhaustive factory system that used, branded and discarded workers into the webwork of corpse-canals that fed down into rancid waters. His interest was suddenly piqued. That's it, he would ask the head of Hemlock.

The clown turned in his seat and rose to his feet.

He pulled the father from the pile and laid him facing the great window. The man had begun to weep. "No. No more, please. Why us? Who sent you?"

"Does a fool need a reason to entertain?" The clown's face was bathed in shadow with his back to the window. Stormlight flickered across his back. At first glance the stripes that ringed the clown whole seemed opaque, even dull but beneath the play of the light at his back the surface of his skin came alight in iridescent swirls.

"Who are you?" Hemlock demanded. "Who are you? Who..." 

Incredibly, Hemlock became fixated on these swirls. They reminded him of the terrible dust storms he had seen rip across the desert outside the walls of Absyth. Spirals within spirals within spirals. Each vortex howled for his attention.