The Demon’s Cantos
Part 6
In movies, when people fell off of cliffs or out of skyscrapers, they scream like mad. Byron always thought this was unlikely. In fact, Byron considered most depictions of frightful screaming to be sort of funny and unrealistic. How many people, Byron sometimes wondered to himself while chomping down on popcorn in the movie theater, actually scream about anything?
At least two.
Byron and Korbius had only been falling for a few seconds in Nan’s old car and already Byron’s voice was sore from yelling at the top of his lungs.
Behind Byron, in the back seat, several of his tentacles streaming out the open windows, Korbius let out a frenetic chain of wet hisses and clicks. The fierce, hot wind caught under several of Korbius’s gelatinous folds. His jelly flesh flapped in the wind, alternating between moist slaps and wet fart-like noises.
Byron managed a look out the driver’s side window. Falling was terrifying, to begin with, but falling in the dark was worse somehow. Byron’s eyes were still having trouble adjusting to the darkness, having only moments earlier been shined into by a state trooper’s flashlight. When he looked out the window the gale buffeted Byron’s eyeballs and tugged at his eyelids, so that he had to look through bleary tears at the fast approaching lights of Ocracoke. Very fast approaching. They couldn’t have more than a couple of thousand feet left to fall.
Rueful panic coursed through Byron like battery acid. Here he was, not even 18 years old falling to his death in an ancient sedan with a giant, mind reading octopus.
Every passing millisecond brought the ground closer. Byron couldn’t think straight. He couldn’t think at all. It was over. He was dead. He closed his eyes and tried, in the last few seconds of his too short life, to stop screaming and just breath.
That’s when an idea struck him.
“Locus Meipsum Imperium!”
The entire car and both it’s astonished, screaming occupants shrunk down into an impossibly small point, exploded briefly into an infinitely elongated line, and burst back into reality.
Once again the wind cut across the open windows of the car. The sedan had reappeared in the sky at a tilt so that the engine was now oriented toward the ground. Byron and Korbius both stared out the front windshield at Ocracoke ‘s fast approaching lights.
Except now the lights were farther away again, as far as they had been when they first began falling.
Byron forced himself to look away from the ground and back into the car. The Cantos was floating up near the windshield near the passenger side, its pages fluttering in the wind, gleaming like electric gold. Byron reached for the book but found that his seat-belt was holding him back. He was about to unbuckle and float over to it when he looked back and saw that the lights of Ocracoke were closer than they’d ever been. There were only a few hundred feet before impact.
Envisioning the same image of Ocracoke in that old post card, Byron spoke the words as quickly as he could.
“Locus Meipsum Imperium!”
Anyone watching from below would have seen the car’s bright headlights disappear from sight momentarily, only to reappear several thousand feet higher in the sky less than a second later. From Byron and Korbius’s perspective, they passed back through the pan-dimensional ringer, reentered reality, and continued falling. The car’s trunk faced the earth and through the windshield, Byron could see the expanse of the Milky Way, wind roaring in his ears.
Master Cantor! No more! Korbius swears fealty!
Korbius’s mental voice took on an entirely new and pleading tone. Copious amounts of cephalopod mucus streamed off his anxious skin and collected in a grotesque violet pool in the front windshield. Globs of the stuff slapped against the back of Byron’s head as Korbius extruded it from his skin.
Byron was feeling lightheaded. During the brief sojourn out of reality, the sensation of falling disappeared, only to be replaced once again by the blood rush and stomach rise of acceleration. When they reappeared this time, Byron had to shake a creeping darkness from the corners of his vision, like an astronaut training in a centrifuge. As he struggled to maintain his fleeting composure, Byron saw the Cantos about to float right out the passenger side window. Unbuckling, Byron pushed off his seat and caught the book by the spine just as it fully exited the car.
As quick as he could, Byron pulled himself down into the front passenger seat. He was struggling with the seatbelt when he looked in the side-view mirror and saw the town’s lights very near indeed. The warning on the mirror was particularly unsettling:
Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.
“Shit.”
Clicking the belt into place Byron braced himself and managed to get the words out just as the rear lights contacted the ground, crumpling the trunk.
“Locus Meipsum Imperium!”
Another rift through the dimensions – condensed, stretched, deposited – followed by the renewed sensation of falling and the return of angry wind.
Byron caught a glimpse of Korbius in the rear view, lit by the glow of the Cantos. The Octopus was visibly paling and blinking ferociously.
Cantor! Do something!
Byron shot a quick look at the town’s lights and gave himself about ten seconds before they needed to jump again. Holding the book and its pages down firmly against his lap with his left forearm, Byron began scanning the Cantos for some kind of solution. He struggled to turn each page in the intense wind. Now and again the scatological noise of Korbius’s jellied flaps broke through the tumult behind him.
Byron wasn’t getting anywhere this way. It took him ten seconds just to read the single word of the section he’d opened up to.
“Neh-cro-man-cee?”
Korbius heard something from the rear through the wind.
What?!
Byron didn’t respond but looked out the window just in time. They were almost on the same level as the highest electric light on the island.
“Locus Meip—”
Oh no, Can—
“—sum imperium!”
—toooooooooooor!
Korbius’s mental yell was momentarily cut off as they pointilized again. Then the sound of it stretched out along with their very beings, before resolving back into windy reality. The car had flipped again, engine facing the ground and all of the accumulated, horrendous mucus, gallons of the stuff, raced up through the car, and crashed into the back windshield. Byron cursed loudly as he was bathed in Korbius’s noxious ectoplasm.
Once again the sudden stop and return of acceleration dragged blood around Byron’s body in confusing ways. The effect was definitely getting more pronounced with each teleportation as Byron tired himself out. He didn’t know how long he could keep this up, but he was certain it was not long enough for him to plumb the depths of the encyclopedic Cantos in ten-second increments.
As the cyclone of air rushed back through the car for the fifth time, something occurred to Byron. If he was feeling the sense of acceleration every time they reappeared in the real world, that meant that the act of teleporting had stopped their fall. If their momentum was being conserved then they wouldn’t have felt any different once they reappeared in reality.
If there was no conservation of momentum when they teleported, then in theory Byron just needed to teleport them to a flat surface. Of course, if Byron was wrong then they would crash into the ground at terminal velocity and be killed instantly.
“I’ve got an idea!”
If Korbius heard he was in no shape to respond. His once purplish tone had turned a dilapidated pink and his large eyelid was shut. At a glance, it looked like the Octopus had lost a significant amount of mass.
Byron couldn’t worry about that now. He shut his eyes and tried to envision the dark, abandoned nighttime stretch of Route 12 leading down the thin strip of dunes to the small town of Ocracoke.
When Nan used to bring Byron to the island for the weekend she would sometimes wake him up very late at night. The two of them would jump in the old sedan and drive out to the middle of Route 12. Nan would follow the lonely road until the meager lights of the town were well out of sight, and only the moon and stars shone in the cloudless sky. Then, she would pull over to the shoulder and the two of them would sit on the hot hood together for an hour or more – watching the stars – talking, or not talking at all.
Byron focused on the memory of those moments and that place. The way the long two-lane road stretched off into the thin distance of the dunes. How the twin blacknesses of the Atlantic and the Pamlico evoked simultaneous feelings of extreme isolation and frightening exposure. The scent of brine in the sea air, the taste of salt on his lips, and the delicate sheets of sand dancing across the asphalt shimmering in the moonlight.
Byron opened his eyes just as the car was about to slam into the top of a church. He managed to utter the final word as his front headlights shattered against the old stone roof.
“Locus Meipsum Imperium.”
One more brief interlude behind reality’s curtain and the car reappeared on the abandoned road.
Shell-shocked, Byron opened his eyes. The warm ocean wind still blew through the open windows, but it was no longer deafening. Route 12’s nighttime desolation stretched out in front of the car like a deep hole.
Byron allowed himself a breath and a shaky sigh. He realized he had been desperately clenching the Cantos to his chest. He loosened his grip and dropped the large book onto the driver’s seat where it plopped wetly into a shallow pool of violet slime.
With a shaky hand, Byron unlatched his seat belt and opened the car door. A stream of rank violet ectoplasm streamed out onto the blacktop, followed by Byron’s careful, uncomfortable steps. Byron’s clothes were soaked through with the goop. Standing beside the car a discomfited chill ran up Byron’s spine at the feeling of cold goop against his skin.
“That sucked,” Byron mumbled to himself, then louder “Well, we’re here.” Korbius didn’t reply. “You OK back there?” Still no answer.
Byron stepped up to the window and gingerly bent down, cringing as his clothes shuffled against his skin. “Korbius?”
In the back seat, Korbius was immobile, most of his purple coloration sapped from his body. He was almost maggot white, and the heft of his central mass lolled to the side, motionless.
A pang of worry drove Byron’s personal discomfort from his mind and he pried open the passenger door. Another small waterfall of acrid slime oozed out, along with a large part of Korbius’s formless body.
Even a quarter of Korbius’s weight was enough to knock Byron to the ground. The King of the Octopodiae’s immense heft slithered in unconsciousness, covering Byron from the waist down and pinning him to the road.
Byron struggled to get out from underneath the creature, but could hardly move his dead, gelatinous weight. When he touched Korbius’s skin it was no longer wet and slimy, but cool and textured like a goosebumped thigh.
“Korbius? Korbius, wake up.” Byron caught a glimpse of Korbius’s shriveled central mass. His single eyelid drooped, partially desiccated and shrunken, the eye beneath unmoving.
“Water,” Byron remembered, “you need water. Right. OK.” Byron tried to remember the word of power for water manipulation, holding his right hand out. “Agua Meipsum Imperium,” he tried, to no effect. He could not remember the first word. “Agua, no, Aquam—.”
Byron was cut off in the middle of his brainstorming by the appearance of a bright light turning a distant corner at the far visible end of Route 12. The light was fast approaching as the joyrider, probably some teenager and the girl he was trying to impress, raced down the street at incredible speed.
Byron realized the sedan’s lights, all of the lights, had been broken in the chaos of the last minute and a half. Which meant they were blocking the road and functionally invisible.
“Korbius!” Byron tried again, louder and more urgent, “Come on pal, wake up! We’ve got to move!” Byron tried to push the blob off him but only succeeded in imbalancing more of Korbius’s weight. Most of the rest of Korbius slid out of the car in response, like cake batter from a well-greased pan.
To Byron’s horror, Korbius’s extra mass settled right over Byron’s face and nose. Pressing back on the octopus flesh with all his might Byron was able to squeeze a small gap for himself to breath through, just barely. But his mouth remained totally covered and the moment Byron let go of the part of Korbius he held back it rebounded and tried to smother him entirely.
Meanwhile, the speeding car raced forward at what felt like ludicrous speed, its lights growing in size, its engine barely audible now as a rising angry rumble in the wind.
Byron forced himself not to panic. Instead, he brought to mind his favorite beach on the island – the soft sand underfoot and the warm summer waters. Nan in her beach chair reading a book, Byron running into the water to cool down, body surfing on the waves.
“Ookus maeism imeerum.” Byron’s desperate effort to speak the words of power failed completely and the mumbling did nothing. Now Byron began to panic. Byron pried and pushed at Korbius, trying desperately to free his mouth, even if only for a couple of seconds. But no matter how hard he tried Byron could not create a gap through which to speak the words.
The headlights grew larger and were fast approaching, showing no sign of slowing down.
Renewed desperation coursing through his veins, his mouth stifled by the horrendous waxy flesh of his bizarre monster thrall, Byron imagined himself screaming the words as he thought of the beach.
Locus Meipsum Imperium!
The driver of the sports car thought he saw something, slammed on the breaks, and came to a spinning, screeching stop in the middle of Route 12. In so doing his car drifted right through the empty space where Byron had been a second earlier.
About half a mile away, on a pitch black beach on the east of the island, a car fell out of mid-air from about five feet down into the surf. It began filling up with sea water, which washed away torrents of congealed violet slime with each wave. As the car filled with water, a tenacious golden book bobbed to the surface and floated lazily.
A short distance from the car Byron managed to slither out from underneath Korbius’s now buoyant form and came up from under the three feet of surf gasping for breath. The waves were blessedly calm and the water calmingly warm. Byron felt ready to pass out, but then he remembered Korbius and splashed over to where the Lord of the Octopodiae floated, motionless.
“Korbius!” Byron reached the floating, formless mass. Byron’s hand contacted the creature’s flesh. It was soft and jelly-like again. Instinct made Byron recoil, but it struck him as a good sign. A moment later Korbius stirred and then flailed about, as if waking with a start from a bad dream.
Cantor no more! No mo—
Korbius’s giant eyelid slid open, slick and plump again along with the rest of him. His eyeball flitted left and right, up and down, until finally the giant pupil fell upon Byron.
What happened?
Byron smiled in spite of himself, surprised at the relief he felt. “You dried out I think. Too much slime I guess?”
The notion seemed to horrify Korbius.
Korbius exsanguinated? Korbius did this thing?
Byron had no idea. “If by exsanguinate you mean filled the car up with half a ton of purple mucus and turned into a fossil, then sure. Korbius exsanguinated.”
Korbius blinked in astonishment.
Korbius proved himself weak. Fear drained Korbius of life, as it might a hatchling or a low born elder.
Byron slowly waded toward the shore, where the water was shallower. He was so grateful for the night’s above average warmth. “Well, I wouldn’t be that hard on yourse—”
Korbius debased himself, utterly. He was useless, easily dispatched, and yet Cantor saved Korbius. Why?
Now that the deed was done, Byron couldn’t help ask himself the same question. Why had he saved Korbius. He could have just left him in the car. After all, the creature was a burden at best and a potentially murderous burden at worst.
Still, even as Byron puzzled as to why he’d saved Korbius, he had to admit he was weirdly happy to hear the monster’s deep, mentally transmitted voice again.
Lazily, Byron let himself fall backwards into the gentle sea. Floating on his back, rising up and down with his breaths, Byron let the water wash away Korbius’s muck.
Korbius just watched as Byron floated there. He dare not express it – it was not Korbius’s way to say such things – but deep in his central mass, Korbius felt gratitude.
Overjoyed to be back in an ocean, Korbius stretched his eight limbs, expanded and contracted every fiber of his being, and shot off into the shallows.
He could have gone straight to deeper waters, or submerged entirely and disappeared forever. But instead, Korbius skimmed along right under the surface, where he was certain Byron could see him.
Korbius went fast, faster than he might otherwise. It was a large strain for him, given his recent ordeal. But Korbius did it anyway.
After all, he had a Cantor to impress.
If You Enjoyed This Story – Or Any Of The Hundreds Of Other Legends From The Multiverse – And Want To Give A Dollar To The Madman Behind The Curtain Who Writes Them All:
Subscribe to the RSS feed or leave a comment anywhere on the r/LFTM subreddit with “!subscribeme” or “subscribeme!”, and you’ll receive a notification whenever a new story or continuation is posted.
READ MORE FLASH FICTION
| ACTION | APOCALYPTIC | DARK | ESTABLISHED UNIVERSE | FANTASY |
| FUNNY MAYBE | HORROR | MISC | WTF IS THIS? | SAD |
| SCIENCE FICTION | SCIENCE FANTASY | TWIST ENDING | RANDOM |
READ LONGER STORIES
| THE DEMON’S CANTOS | INCIDENTAL SUPERHERO |
| BENEATH | THE HUMANITY SAGA |
| THE TRAVELER | I, LYCANTHROPE |