Well! Let's not mess around. How about a sample from the first Rudolf Chernobyl chapter? Turning off my mind, letting the bizarre roam freely, that's how I created this monster draped in the skin of a man. Another origin--see previous blog post--this one for a character. Really, though, it's just the opening of a door. Once you get to his follow-up chapters, that's when the real fun starts. But I had to start somewhere. I mean, HE had to start somewhere, so here's a little history.
Enjoy!
Oh, one more thing: the book is out on the 29th of this month which, as I type this, is about a week away. The paperback and Kindle versions are ready for pre-order. Just click on the highlighted words in the previous sentence and you can set yourself up for this wild ride.
Anyway. Rudolf awaits...
***
The only
light in the room came from the man’s glowing, mismatched eyes. The left pupil
was a black ink stain abyss, a swirling wasteland devoid even of the promise of
starlight. The right pupil was gray as ash, the remnants of hope long dashed.
Riding the rim of each pupil, flares worthy of the Sun writhed with furious
intensity. The veined white of each eye illuminated the room in a blinding
brilliance that ebbed into a sickly, jaundiced hue, depending on his focus,
until the man closed the lids and the room went dark.
The eyes
may be the windows to the soul. These windows were pitted with cracks, as if
pebbles had been tossed for attentions never attained. Furthermore, what
resonated within the man in no way resembled what paltry beings usually defined as “soul.”
His allegiance was to a higher force bereft of humanity. At least in its purest
distillation.
He rubbed
his thumb, pointer and middle fingers together, an instinctive practice he used
when conjuring the past. Sparks crackled at the tips of his callused fingers.
As he
concentrated, he pried the memories from the clutches of time, refurbished as
if recent. The initial stage of the ritual delved into the few minutes prior to his conception and included details about the
participants as if he were jacked into their thoughts
and memories. The room smelled of burned plastic and animal musk, of damp, aged
ruins and electrical currents that tweaked the mind as well as the nostrils.
The
fragmented mind-field was a flurry of clipped imagery: gagged and bound, a thin
woman, flesh stretched taut over a blade-like pelvis, the hollow between her
tiny breasts. A man carved out of the same tainted material, though a wiry strength
accentuated the muscles of his back, his buttocks. Hours of physical exertion
defined by semen, sweat, excrement, misery, torture. The genetic material each
contributed the product of generations mired in futility and rife with mental deficiencies.
The man in particular spawned from a long, corrupted
squiggle of a line of nefarious design, his father and the fathers before him:
cruel, sadistic, evil. Though they were all infused with deep intelligence,
they were all psychologically broken—a Ming vase shattered into thousands of
tiny pieces,
chips and shards and miniscule slivers, with no desire or means to mend what’s
bred in the bone.
The seated
man tilted his head back, remembering the annihilation of the ovum, the vile,
dissonant echo that accompanied his conception. A reverberant pulse filled his
resting body as water fills a balloon. His core stiffened. His penis stiffened.
Passions wrought in immorality were at the root of his being.
It was
4:27 a.m., 26 April, 1986.
He
salivated as he pictured the man starring in the mad play in his head stuffing
a urine saturated rag into the woman’s mouth. He didn’t delight in the thought
of the foul taste, but he thrilled at the depth of sadism he assimilated from
the man.
The woman
was simply a means to an end, a born victim, human refuge, a whore, a junky.
The man was a junky as well, but he was a functioning addict. He could fit into
society without notice. Nobody ever thought much about him as he worked the
swing shift janitorial job at the plant. Though he understood much more about
how things worked within the plant, he chose to immerse himself in his
insidious lusts rather than the higher aspirations his intellectual gifts would have
allowed him to pursue.
He didn’t
aspire to be human. He fixated on the black malignancy that corroded his every
ideal.
As the
seated man with the sparking fingertips continued along the diseased path of
his origin, his memories splintered, as they always did.
Loudspeakers
filtered into the womb, voices tonally different than the harsh tones of the
man, or the muffled grunts of disapproval from the woman. Those voices he felt as much as heard. The other sounds were surging
floodwaters and fluttering jackhammers and a flailing salmon pawed by a grizzly
bear—the body in revolt—and then silence. Days of silence.
During
this time, he sensed something within the speck of fleshy self, the idea of his
being: radiation.
Some
moments roam outside the realm of possibility, outside the laws of nature—what
a comical assumption, nature adhering to any arbitrary laws—and miracles that
join those moments as they roam.
A smile
illuminated the darkness.
What
meager aspirations and understanding humans had when it came to the
immeasurable potential that was life. Humans believed they understood it, but
they constructed their theories within a limited mindscape. Their egotistical certainty
disgusted him. They were rather pathetic.
This much
the seated man knew. He was evidence of what a concoction of radiation, region—hence,
nature—human potential and unyielding desire could be. He was a hybrid of flesh
and foible: radiation infused with radical intent; with whim and
impossibility.
He was a
miracle.
Behind his
sealed lids, the luminosity from his smile creamed the black to orange, a
distant fire. He tamped it all back, pulling on the reins. After years of
training, it was easy to control that which resided inside him. Easy, yet
necessary, for his
existence relied on restraining the chaos within, only tapping
into it when required.
Radiation
with a sentient foundation. Radiation with a nuclear heritage. Radiation
acclimating to its birth with a whisper of phantom
consciousness and a dream of life as melded with the fertilized egg.
Converging
on a moment, crystalline and clear as the immaculate merging of sea and sky
into a lush, electric blue horizon.
Not a
radiation to destroy, but one to create, to carry on with his and, hence, its creation.
In the now
dead womb of the woman, radiation blanketed him with soothing, tingling warmth,
and a desire for improbable survival.
For life.
The
radiation accelerated his formation. Neurons and electrons bristled impatiently
while axons and dendrites jolted into corporeal conspiracies, into a
jitterbugging frenzy. Hotwired channels within the sticky web of fresh tissue
that was his being prompted a profound topographical transformation fused by
revolutionary synaptic hardware, enhanced muscularity and heightened gray
matter development.
Yet,
within, his roots—demons cackling for attention, strapped with subversive,
generational binds—would always play tag with his potential.
Bony,
talon-like fingers scratched at the viscera as he took it into his toothless
maw and absorbed all he needed from it, and then continued on, until he tore a
hole out of the womb, out of the stiffening carcass.
He didn’t
cry as the stale, infected air entered his lungs for the first time. He only
yearned for more.
It was
dark but his vision glowed much as it does now, in the vast art gallery that
covered the walls around him, only with less control.
All of the
fundamental elements of the third and most prominent participant in his
creation had taken hold. The man and woman of flesh were only a means.
Radiation from the exploded fourth reactor at the power plant nearby served as the
most vital ingredient. The itchy trigger finger squeezed hard, prompting
mischief of an inconceivable audacity.
He
survived by sheer will, living on the remains of the mother, then gumming
insects and rats, suckling them as surrogate breasts in his eager mouth; and
sucking on torn wires and cables, draining them of whatever was left to fuel his being.
***
Okay, enough of that. Can't post the whole chapter. But there he is, Rudolf Chernobyl, conceived and born the day of the Chernobyl disaster...and within range of the nuclear plant. See what a warped imagination let loose can...birth.
A monster.
But there's more to Riding the Centipede than Rudolf Chernobyl.
You'll see...
