Lester Walks

At The Wall

It was vast. It reached far into the sky. A kilometer? A mile?

He was relieved that it wasn’t smooth, like Hoover Dam. Rather, it was constructed of huge stones, cemented together. This meant there were lots of handholds and footholds. He could climb it.

He rested for a time, had a long drink of cable-drip, and then began his ascent. It went fast. The Wall was easy to climb. It took him no more than (he guessed) a day or so. Before he knew it, he reached the summit, and heaved himself over the edge.

The top of the Wall was broad and flat. He guessed it was over a hundred meters from the edge he’d just crossed to the far side. He glanced right and left. On the Wall, every few kilometers, there were huge, black metal towers. It was from these, of course, that the cables came that stretched out over the field of the dead, and from which the claws hung. He watched as one claw-scoop came up from the field to a tower, then, following the black cable, moved away from view.

He walked to the other edge of the Wall. When he arrived, he forced himself to look over the edge . . . then reeled back, fighting vertigo and nausea. On the other side was a vast, vast, space. The Wall must be a hundred kilometers from top to bottom.

Slowly, he regained control of himself and crawled on his stomach to the edge. He could see cables from the towers carrying scoops with their grisly cargos toward the depths below. As his eyes adjusted, he realized that, down there, on the plains, was an intricate network of canals or waterways. These stretched out like a maze for almost as far as he could see. Sometimes parallel, sometimes converging, the waterways all ran toward a single point, far in the distance.

He thought, if he strained, he could just make out some sort of huge structure there, black and ominous, where the waters became one.

Prof JaGee Ascends To Wisdom

http://montag77.deviantart.com/#/d4risqu

He never know how long it took him...

He never knew how long it took him to walk the distance. There seemed to be no sun here, no night, no way of keeping. He knew he was tormented the whole way. He could breathe now, but he could not drink. Thirst, which he hadn’t noticed while he was in the pit, now became an endless torture. Sometimes he found himself eyeing the dead and wondering if their blood could be consumed. But, he couldn’t force himself that far. He was dead, but he wasn’t that dead.

Fortunately, he found there was a source of water in his horrible new world. It seemed that moisture would condense on the cables above his head, then drip down in fat, dirty droplets. He was able to catch these in his hands and drink.

Strangely, he never felt hunger. Perhaps, he thought, his intestines were simply too damaged for it.

He did urinate, though. It took him by surprise, but about halfway the field of the dead, he felt his bladder fill. He had to experiment. His penis had damaged along with the rest of him. But, with a little effort, he found he could relieve himself effectively.

He sprayed the yellow droplets on a handy skull. He pretended it was the face of his enemies . . . of those who had put him here.

Slowly, the Wall grew larger. At first, it was simply a line on the horizon. Then, it became a hazy barrier against the sky. Then, it was hard and tall, like a mountain range.

Finally... he was there.

demon

Shai’ol

Lester stood, unthinking, gasping in the air…

He could breathe! He could breathe!

He did not wonder how it was that he’d been able to survive under a mountain of rotting bodies. He did not wonder how long he had been there. He did not wonder what malevolent force had cast him into this hell.

He simply stood and let the air fill his lungs. To breathe!

Gradually, he began to become aware of his surroundings. He stood, he discovered, in a middle of a vast field of the dead. Bodies stretched off in all directions as far as he could see.

Bodies . . . twisted, mutilated, some partly burned. Here was an eyeless head, the scalp half removed so the skull gleamed in the red light. There was a torso, legless, armless, its genitalia ripped away by some savage force.

They were nude. None seemed to have clothing.

Which reminded him. He glanced down at himself. Oh, fucking hell. He was nude as well, but the problem was his body itself. A vast, gapping, hideous wound stretched from his throat to his groin. Heart, lungs, guts. . . all were on display.

He did not bleed. The wound was dry. No blood flowed. He checked his pulse.

There wasn’t any.

Dr. DEM Is Amazed At His Own Powers of True Scholarship

Things Worse Than Anguish

Really angry now, Morris snapped. “I’m not, and it wouldn’t be any business if . . . “

“Take, for example, that book you’re writing,” Lester plowed ahead, as if Morris had said nothing. He tapped a finger on the papers he’d brought, the automatic writing. “You’ll never finish it.”

“I…what?”

“Two reasons for that. First, because you’ve basically realized that you have no talent for that sort of thing. I mean, your first book was all right, but that was really your doctoral dissertation, and you had your major professor to edit it line by line, page by page, until it made sense. Your second book, well, that was a mess. I’ve tried to read it. Sentences go whirling into infinity. Logical connections get tossed out the window.”

Morris felt the fury take him. He meant to say something cutting . . . to yell …even to stand and threaten physical violence.

But he couldn’t move!

Lester continued without seeming to notice his paralysis. “Second, because you don’t give a damn any more. Years ago, you woke up and realized you were just going through the motions. Everyday, every passing day, it’s a gets a little more tedious for you. The papers sent off to ‘Prestigious Journals.’ The snide comments you put on student’s work. The office politics. The way you sit on grant committees and deny funding to all and sundry . . . regardless of the value of the projects . . . simply because you can. And because that’s the way it’s done.”

Why couldn’t he move? Why couldn’t he speak? He tried to move his arms, his head, his body . . . he couldn’t. He felt as though were buried in something. A hot, viscous liquid … like molten glass.

Lester spoke on. He tilted his head, like a dog. “And you’ve begun to hate it all. You hate it the way a man on death row starts to hate the walls of his cell, the calendar, the other prisoners, his guards. Begins to hate even his own lawyers, and the endless appeals that keep him alive. He begins to long for the chair, the chamber, the lethal injection that drips cold death into your veins. It would be a relief.”

He couldn’t breathe! He couldn’t cry out. He felt he was strangling. He had a visions of human bodies piled in great heaps…

“I think it is all rather horrible really. I mean, your life.” Lester spoke from some distant place. “Day in and day out. Sort of Sartre, don’t you think. But I can help you. I’m your gateway, you see. I’m the door out.”

He could move again! He gasped and choked. Dear God. What had happened to him? Dear Christ. He glanced up, found Lester’s red and yellow eyes looking down at him.

He found the breath to curse him. “Why didn’t you help me, damn you?”

“Because you didn’t ask.” The eyes continued their pitiless regard of him. “But, I repeat my offer. If you ever do want to escape . . really escape . . . just call. I’ll do what I can.”

“Go to hell.”

The man in dark leather smiled again. “Now there’s an interesting concept. All that nonsense about eternal suffering. As if.” He laughed. “As if there aren't things much, much worse than mere anguish."

Then, with a last “good night,” he turned on his heel and was gone.

The last few shreds of poor little Lester

At that moment, some part of Morris softened. He looked at the man before him and felt real pity. Here was an individual who had aspired to some kind of accomplishment, only to discover that it was as beyond his reach as the stars themselves. “Are you really leaving the program?”

He got a laugh by way of reply, and then, “Have a choice? After the performance I gave today?”

Morris tried to save him. “I could intervene. If you apologized to them, maybe I could talk to Professor Putridrine and …”

Lester raised his hands, revealing more gristly fake stitches at the wrists. “Please don’t bother. I’m leaving.”

“I’m …” Morris considered his words, then plunged ahead. “I’m very sorry.”

“Yes,” for once Lester wasn’t smiling. “Yes, I believe you really are. Unfortunate, really. There is a part of you that is, I think, genuinely decent. Problematic for me. It would make my life so much easier if you were rotten to the core.”

Morris said nothing that. He wasn’t sure what he could have said.

So, Lester continued. “You all are, actually. You, the others. A touch of humanity in all of you. You are complex creatures, you know.”

“Thank you. I think.”

“I wish you were more like me. I’m pretty much the same right through. Cut me open and you’d find I was sort of like a plant. A pine. All the same right through, except for a few tree rings.” Another laugh. “And, of course, the rind. That’s different, too. The last few shreds of poor little Lester.”

Morris regarded him warily from behind his mustache. This was the talk of madness. Lester was clearly disturbed. Was he also dangerous?

“Don’t worry,” Lester gave his former professor a grin. “I speak … metaphorically. If it makes you more comfortable, pretend I said ‘the former Lester,’ or the ‘previous me.’ It isn’t true, but it makes conversation easier.”

In spite or because of Lester’s assurances, Morris found himself becoming tense. “Well, it’s been nice talking to you, but . . .”

“But you think I ought to be getting along, yes.” Lester seemed almost tender. “But, before I go, I do want to repeat my offer of help.” He stood.

Irritated, Morris “I don’t need your aid.”

“Ah, but you do. You see, you are desperately unhappy.”

So Much Promise...

“I thought I’d find you here.”

He jumped, then, embarrassed, turned to find Lester standing beside him. The fool was still dressed in his Halloween get up. All black leather and queer eyes.

Why hadn’t he noticed him come in? Ah well, didn’t matter. “Good evening,” he said icily, watching the little idiot standing beside him, a cheery smile on his stupid face.

“Yes, lovely evening.” And, without for an invitation, he slid into the seat opposite Morris. “Enjoying the show?” He waved airily at the street beyond the plate glass window.

“I would hardly refer to this as a show,” Morris said, though that’s exactly what he’d been thinking. “This a tragic event. A human being has lost his …or her . . . life out there.”

“Well, that’s way it looks.” Lester seemed unfazed by the rebuke. He gazed dreamily out the window. “But, I’d bet you a donut that they’ll discover the murder took place somewhere else. Then the body was dropped here. For some reason.”

Morris felt a little chill.

Lester seemed to remember where he was. “Anyway, I wanted to track you down before I left the campus. I have something for you.”

“What . . . do you have?”

“This.” He produced a bundle of papers. “This is the material you were paying me to collect from the archive. I thought I’d pass it on.”

Morris took the documents gingerly. “What are they?”

“Copies of originals and my transcriptions.”

“Original what?” Morris was feeling more than little mystified.

“Decuir . . . your mass murderer, remember him? . . . well, it turns out he did automatic writing. Ever hear of automatic writing?”

“Of course.”

“Well, Decuir turned out scads of it. He’s got pages and pages of the stuff in his files. I copied a bunch and, well, sort of translated it for you. The originals aren’t easy to read.”

Morris put the papers down on the table in front of him and started to read. “What is all this?”

“Mostly quotes from famous literary works. It seems your good Doctor Decuir had a taste for the gothic. There’s stuff from Marlow’s Faustus, Poe stories, The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner . . . you know, the part where the dead sailors get up and walk.

Morris made some vague disgusted sound and put the papers aside. “Anything else? I mean, of genuine value?”

“Nope. Not a bit. Your Decuir was one boring boy, I’m afraid to say. Not a single blood stained scalpel or pickled eyeball to be found in any of the boxes. Sad, really.”

“Sad?”

“Tragic. So much promise. So few slaughtered.”

The Professor Feasts

At the Greek's

He glanced up and down the street. To the right, cars stretched off as far as he could see. To the left . . . police vehicles! Cop cars with the lights flashing, an ambulance, rescue vans, even a fire engine.

Hell! The traffic blocked the entrance to the parking lot. No one would be able to get out for hours. Hell. Hell. Hell.

Still, it could be worse. If he had to be late, tonight wasn’t a bad time for it. His wife would be teaching her six-to-ten class at State. His son, well, his son would be doing whatever it was his son did these days. His daughter . . . he knew what she was doing. He just preferred not to think about it. So long as she didn’t get pregnant.

He might as well grab supper. There was a sub shop down the way. He frequently went there for lunch. Why not dinner as well?

Feeling almost jaunty, he headed down the street. The sub shop was actually in the direction of the emergency vehicles, so he soon found himself approaching the scence of whatever it was that had happened. There were police everywhere. Their attentions seemed to be focused on an aged hatchback parked across the street. Yellow tape sealed off the area, and, strangely, the EMTs had draped a tarp over the parked car.

He came to his sub shop and entered. It was empty of customers, which was a good thing. He hated to eat where his students might see him. Not befitting the dignity of the office, and all that.

The Greek behind the counter took his order for a meatball sub without comment. Morris realized the man was staring over his shoulder and out the front windows of the shop. He turned. The ambulance had driven up beside the parked car. Police were removing something from the car, wrapped in some kind of bag. They put it on a wheeled stretcher. The loaded it on the ambulance, which, in turn, drove away in a fury of red lights.

“Say,” he asked the man behind the counter. “What happened out there?”

The Greek shrugged uneasily. “Donno. They found a body.”

“A body?”

“Dead man, yeah. They found him. Kid tried to steal the car and he found the body.”

Morris couldn’t help smiling. It was terrible, of course, but there was something funny about it. The thief making a clean getaway, only to find something rotting in the back. “Did they say what the body . . um . . died of?”

Again the man shrugged. “No one told me. Here’s your sandwich.”

He took it and a can of soda to a window table. Not bad, he thought, watching the police and crime scene investigators do their thing outside. Not bad at all. A good sandwich, and a free floor show. What more could you ask?

The sandwich went down easily. Then, he sipped his soda while he watched men in uniform removing things in transparent bags from the parked car. All very interesting.

“I thought I’d find you here.”
d

Professor Morris Within

Professor Morris

Professor Morris exited the Hall and made his way down the stairs. It wasn’t easy for him. He had been overweight since childhood, and, despite the best efforts of nutritionists, a private trainer, his wife, and, even, now and then, himself . . . he remained heavy.

But he wasn’t morbidly obese. He needed to lose a lot of weight, yes, but he wasn’t any 500-pound side show attraction either. He was only, well, sixty or seventy pounds over the limit.

The strange thing was that women didn’t find him unattractive. He had never quite figured that out. It seemed perfectly logical that they should avoid him. Yet, for reasons that he didn’t pretend to understand, many women seemed to find him “cute.” He had rather frequently found himself in the arms of willowy blondes—other professors, a neighbor, graduate students.

Not his own graduate students, of course. He was no cliché. And, besides, in this day and age of sexual harassment suits, it wasn’t safe. But, other people’s graduate students, well, they were another matter entirely. He preferred sociologists.

But, truth be told, it wasn’t exactly sex he was after these days. In fact, he was reasonably faithful to his wife. No. What he wanted most from them was support. Young women, graduate students, these could be molded, positioned, trained. He could coach them ahead of conferences and then point them at his rivals, and say, “kill.” They’d do the work for him.

In fact, he had two such women prepared for today—Rosellen, who was leaving next year for study in Ireland, and Paula, the girl from the Gold Coast of Connecticut. He had primed them to attack Lester Smith Graham. Not that Lester was a particularly important target. On some level he was indifferent to the little man’s failure. But, it was always good to practice.

Which was why he was a little disappointed that Lester had behaved so strangely. Walking out like that . . .? Well, it made no sense at all, and besides, it spoiled the little drama he’d been planning. Rosellen coming in from the left flank, Ivy closing for the kill from behind.

Well, no use crying over spilt milk. He was certain that his girls would have a crack at someone else in the near future.

He came to the doors and eased out into the dying light. And so to home . . .

That was when he saw the traffic. Out in front of the Hall, on the main street that bordered the campus and the faculty-staff parking lot, was a long, slowly, crawling mass of cars . . . bumper to bumper.

What the hell?

her hunger