Tales from the Painted City

Images of Bloody Wings

        It was quiet. It was never quiet here. Normally there was the bustle of people on their way to work or home. The clubs would all be open, but for some reason, everything had stopped.

        Even the atmosphere was different. The sky was not its usual bright pallet of coral, blue and purple as the sun descended behind the mountain range that surrounded the city. There weren’t even any clouds in the sky, it was all an amorphous grey color.

        She started towards one of the closed doors, only to find that it was painted on the wall. This confused her. She tried another door, and another. Every door she tried was only a painting, not meant to be opened.

        Why were the doors gone only to be replaced with paintings? It was almost like a mockery to her sanity, which she already knew was slipping more and more with each day. She finally realized that maybe the logical answer was to move the mirror against the wall, surely it was a doorway.

        She felt a mixture of elation and fear when she found that behind the mirror was a dark corridor. It was candlelit. She could see the wallpaper peeling away. Underneath, she saw images of the most horrid kind.

        There were paintings of all sorts of distorted figures and demons. They were slaughtering people on streets that were flowing with the blood of the citizens of the painted city. The most horrific and yet beautiful sight she had ever seen, and somehow deep inside it brought a sense of sadistic joy to her.

        As she stared deeper into the pictures, she heard something come up behind her. She turned around and saw a hulking demon. She heard a voice, it came from the demon, but not from its mouth. The voice echoed inside her head, filling her thoughts with more of the same images as were on the wall.

        It was almost as if she were there. She was not a human; in this image she was the demon, and she was ripping a man to pieces, his warm blood coating her clawed fingertips. She was disgusted and amazed. This demon was projecting its own memories into her head, the memories of the slaughter of souls from long ago.

        “Did you paint these?” she asked the demon. The monster seemed to nod. She thought it was good that he could understand her when she spoke. It seemed to enjoy the sound of her voice. Another sound could be heard, and the demon fled, seemingly out of fear.

        She spun around to look behind her, but there was nothing but a light now flooding the end of the corridor. The demon must have been dreading the light. She didn’t know whether to run from it, or to pursue the light and figure out where it was coming from. 

        She decided to chase the light, as the way she had entered had closed up. It led her through a twisting labyrinth of hallways, finally stopping in front of a bloodied door. It was then she heard the screams of anguish that had increased in volume as she approached. She mustn’t have heard it in her adrenaline-filled chase of the light.

        She reached for the door handle as a blood-curdling scream ripped through the air and straight through her as well. The cry filled her with fear and with a giddy sense of excitement all at once. She then realized she had to open the door, and see what gory scene lay on the other side. She reached again for the door. 

        She opened the door, and saw the figure from which the wails came from. Blood spurted from the stumps where his legs had been, and pooled in his eye sockets. On closer inspection, she realized that his eyes and tongue had been ripped out. There was a cavity where his ribcage should have been, leaving an open view of his lungs and still-beating heart.

        Somehow this being was still alive, and his fully exposed lungs contracted as he let out another wail of sorrow and pain. Who, or whatever inflicted the pain was nowhere to be seen, but there were black feathers scattered and blood-stains all over the floor. It took a moment, but she realized that the feathers came from the shredded wings that hung by simple threads of flesh from the suspended beings back. He was strung up against the wall by bloodied ropes and meat hooks like one found in butcher shops.

        ‘The poor angel,’ she thought, ‘who could have done this to you?’ As if it could hear her thoughts, he turned his head to her. She could tell that the poor creature would cry if it still possessed the ability. It tried to say something, but with his tongue ripped, she could only just make out the words.

        “The…priest…ran…demon…fallen…torture…help…Michael…death…ethereal…” they were the only remotely understandable words. The figure shuddered in pain and terror, and its face started turning dark like stone. The angel was dying, or fossilizing? 

        As the angel died, it started crumbling. She would have felt sorry for him, if she hadn’t wanted his death. His crumbling body spelled out a much clearer message. It was a message that filled her with horror. So much so, that tears started streaming down her face.

        Not even angels were safe in this place. Although she didn’t exactly know if that put her in imminent danger or not. She wished she knew what this meant for her personally, but at the same time, she was also happy to keep this sense of oblivious ignorance. She wasn’t sure what was more comforting or more dangerous.

        ‘Sooner or later,’ she thought, ‘I’ll have to wake up. This is only a dream, right?’ She couldn’t have known that something had entered the room, as stealthily as fox. It would be as cruel as Vlad the Impaler in its dispatch of her.

        In less than the moment it took to blink, the unknown intruder was upon her. Something tore at her hair, and grappled her shoulders, throwing her to the floor. Her ribs connected with the cobblestone floor, and a resounding CRACK echoed in the room as her ribs caved in on themselves, throwing her into a fit of agony. 

        In her last moments, she saw her assailant. A tall man with a very gaunt face. He had moved unnaturally fast and silent for a man of his stature. After a while, her life faded. She was left there in the room, her body turning to stone, and then crumbling to dust.

         It was quiet… And that was the slaughter of the last angel. Hell on Earth had begun.

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This is probably going to be a one-off, but maybe me and my friends will spin more tales of the Painted City. I enjoyed doing this, and maybe I'll get even more of my friends in on it. Each time with a different character.