Francis of the Filth Read online

  He hadn’t gone far when this fantasy was completely razed. In a paddock in front of him stood what on earth would have been a farmer. He stood there gently teetering in the breeze as though remaining upright were a major achievement. Frank called to him but there was no response. He waved but there was nothing in return. Suddenly the air chilled and the sounds of the crickets and frogs were stilled. Frank drew nearer with a feeling of deep-seated alarm. The farmer wore a tattered white shirt under a pair of beige overalls. An old straw hat sat awkwardly on his head, tilted back toward his neck revealing a stony expression and grotesque empty eye sockets. The sun shining into his face revealed every dry sinew and vein lining the back of the cavities, and every wrinkle and abrasion on his face. His mouth was wide open yet moved awkwardly as though trying to speak. “Tay…Tay…Tay…,” he seemed to be saying, but he was incapable of completing his utterance. As Frank watched the farmer try to speak, he saw his whole jaw detach and fall from his face, only to be left hanging by its parched skin. Slowly he raised an outstretched arm and pointed to Frank as if to announce a warning. A rasping, painful exhale came from his throat and then his arm dropped by his side and he turned away.

  Frank hurried around him and continued on his way, but was shortly met by another soulless mortal. A woman dressed in rags, carrying a baby in her arms, staggered toward him. She and her child had the same vacant eyes and pale gray hue as the farmer, and the mother, her head covered with a tattered veil and a hand raised out toward Frank, began to scream out a breathless warning like a kettle on the boil and it scared Frank to death. The baby in her arms mimicked the cry and started uttering the same pained expression that the farmer had. “Tayt…Tayt,” but then burst into a wail again. Frank covered his ears and ran by them yelling “Stop! Please just stop!”

  The journey through the rice fields continued in the same manner throughout the day. On every stepped hilltop and descent he would encounter more of the soulless bodies, usually on their own but sometimes in groups of two of three. All had the same stolen appearance and presented the same dire gestures and warnings. Most strained so badly to utter their words that their necks broke or they simply froze as though stricken with paralysis. A few were able to complete more of their words (though their efforts produced the same horrific disfigurements) and Frank was able to piece together their warning. A certain type of chimpilla called tatums were about, yet that was all that was divulged. Their appearance, size and number remained a complete mystery. This ignorance only served to stoke the fear in Frank all the more and he continued through the fields, crouching and crawling, trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible.

  He recalled Pink Guy’s campfire talks on how all the rice field realms were on the very edges of the omniverses and how anyone who found themselves there would know they were in the most desolate of places. He also remembered Pink Guy’s words warning of the unknown dangers lurking throughout the rice fields. He never mentioned the tatums by name but he did speak of the awful entities that inhabited these regions. Did he know that Frank would end up here? Could he see it before it happened? Was there more to Pink Guy than he knew? Could Pink Guy be a chimpilla himself or possibly even a peace lord? Frank ponded these possibilities as he ventured closer toward the mountains, skirting the soulless folk who continued to come out to him.

  By evening Frank had reached the base of the mountain, and stumbled out from the edge of the rice fields onto firmer ground. Though the mountain was not a high one, its incline was steep and rocky from the rice fields and Frank set up a small camp by their periphery. The sun dropped quickly over the horizon and Frank made a small fire before the darkness was complete. The land grew eerily silent. Other than the soft crackle of the fire, there was no sound at all. Had he not just spent a long day encountering soulless beings issuing dire warnings, this might have actually been a beautiful and refreshing moment. But he had traveled too far and seen too much since leaving Okinawa to find any rest in any region. He wondered if he would ever know peace again.

  As he journeyed, he had collected some small crickets and grasshoppers from the rice fields to eat in the event that nothing more appetising came his way. None did. So he prepared to barbecue them in the fire before munching on them. Yet a rustle suddenly came from the rice fields a stone’s throw from where he was sitting and he put the creatures back in his pocket. Another rustle followed shortly after from his right, and then another from his left, and then another again from immediately in front. Each rustling was followed by a piercing but brief shriek. “Yeff!” Frank’s fear level went through the roof. “Yeff!” a shriek echoed from another location. Within moments, the rice fields were filled with aggressive rustling sounds and the screams of “yeff!”

  Frank was on his feet and en garde. He began to sweat profusely and grabbed a small pointed branch he had gathered for firewood in one hand and a second from the fire that burned fiercely in the other. He struggled for breath. These were surely the tatums that he had been warned about. Beyond the fire there was a darkness as black as the abyss itself. Frank could see nothing. The scampering amongst the rice plants and the shrieks of “yeff!” continued to heighten in frequency and intensity until suddenly a small but vicious looking creature darted out of the fields and stood scowling and sneering and gnashing at Frank in the glow of the campfire light. It had the body of a marsupial and the face of a raccoon with rabies. Its head was crested with a bright yellow comb. Solid black eyes, glazed and wild, sat in ringed sockets and its teeth looked like it had bitten into a bag of nails and they had all just hung there.

  Immediately others appeared, at first just a few, but quickly others surfaced till there were dozens surrounding him. They all shared similar fiendish features but their combs were all of a different color. And each of them held rice sheaths in their paws, wielding them with heckles and murderous intent. One jumped toward Frank from the side and slashed a sheath across his calf and in a flash bounded back to the safety of the rice fields with a gleeful chuckle. Frank looked at the small welt that was building on his flesh. “Hey, that hurt!” he said. While dabbing at it with his finger, two more attacked from the opposite side leaving harsh red marks down the side of his other leg. “Right, that’s it!” he declared, as another leapt at him in attack from directly in front. Frank shoved the sharp branch he was holding right through the creature’s palate. It dangled there lifelessly as though a warning to any other who might venture toward him. The tatums hopped about insanely when they saw their kind impaled like that and began ‘yeffing’ in a frenzied cacophony.

  A few more attempted to assail him but Frank quickly found his valour. They were easily and proficiently dealt with. The first was struck hard with the burning branch which knocked the top off its head and left it lying lifeless with an expression that would have been comical had its brain not been oozing out. Never before had Frank felt so potent. There was almost a joy to the power he was feeling. The second was met with a perfectly timed kick to the groin which sent it flying out into the night sky, screaming “yeff!” until the cry trailed off rather beautifully into the distance. This initial retaliation proved too much for the other tatums. There were a series of ‘yeffs’ called in a different tone and suddenly all them, except for one, bounded back off into the rice fields. That remaining one stayed firmly held under Frank’s size ten foot, screaming and yeffing for all it was worth until Frank placed the sharp end of the stick in front of its ear and finished it with one thrust of his shoulder.

  He picked it up, collected the other carcass which had been impaled on the same weapon and carried them both over to the fire. He roasted them, pleased in the knowledge that he would be enjoying a much more satisfying meal than the crickets and grasshoppers which he released from his pocket back into the paddies. And when the tatums were ready, he feasted on them to the faint but rather delightful sound of yeffs withdrawing off into the distance.

  As he ate, Frank grew curious as to the nature of his own powers and abilities and
the transformation that was continuing within him. He had never felt so powerful and had never struck at enemies so forcefully or effectively. The tatums were chimpillas yet he squashed them aside as though they were bugs. Perhaps Frank himself was no longer a rankenfile. Had he jumped another tier? Was he now a chimpilla himself? How he wished Pink Guy were with him to help him understand this.

  Despite his exhaustion and his full belly, he was unable to sleep. He remained on a high, both in his victory over the tatums and in his wariness of the unknown that still lay ahead of him. He no longer considered any realm safe or peaceful. Every dimension required vigilance and care. Though the tatums were no longer a threat, something or someone else surely would be. He was wise in his appraisal.

  In the early hours of the next morning, just as the glow of the sun was beginning to awaken the sky and that of the campfire embers was dying, he heard movement from the rice fields. This was not the light scampering of the tatums. This was heavy, sizeable, even cumbersome. As he peered toward the sound, he could make out depressions in the fields as it moved. The sound grew louder as it snaked toward him eventually stopping just short of the edge of the field, still partially hidden in the greenery. It lay there observing Frank. Frank slowly reached over and picked up the sharp stick with which he had inflicted his toll on the tatums. At that point the creature slithered out of the reeds and into the open.

  A massive centipede-like organism, it had a bulbous head and a face that approached human likeness except for its fearful ugliness. Its individual features probably qualified as human - in terms of function at least - but they were so weirdly arranged and disproportionate in size that Frank assumed its disfigurement had to be mutational. “Man, you are one ugly sucker.” Frank had no idea he had actually spoken the words until the creature replied.

  “Is that any way to speak to a guest?” It spoke in a deep, polished voice, one that would normally be associated with intellectual excellence. “I’ve come quite some distance to accommodate you, Frank, and to expedite your passage.”

  “Who sent you?” Frank was on high alert and he held the branch firmly in his grip.

  “I sent myself.” It scratched the corner of its mouth as it spoke. “And you can put the weapon down. I loathe that sort of hostility. I come in a spirit of goodwill and assuagement.”

  Frank was not easily comforted. “How do you know me? How did you know I was here?”

  “The omniverses sing, Frank, and there is much talk of you echoing across the ether. Indeed, it seems you have created something of a stir. Yet I suspect there is also some misinformation and misunderstandings about your present state and I have come to offer you my counsel.”

  It would have been easier to accept this creature’s words had it not been so hideously ugly. Frank held onto his stick defiantly. “I don’t want or need your help. Leave me alone.”

  “Frank, you have no idea what lies ahead of you. I do. You have already been warned by your pink friend of the hostilities of the rice field regions. I’m afraid even he doesn’t know the half of it. I will tell you. Frank, beyond here are pains and atrocities so awful they make the realm of the Wretched look like a vacation. Believe me, you do not want to go on. Beyond this mountain are sufferings far worse than you can imagine and your growing strength is not what you think it is. You have been deceived, Frank.”

  “I just knocked out a whole score of chimpillas,” Frank retorted. “How do you explain that?”

  The creature laughed and as it did, convulsions rippled up and down its rubbery body from its head to its tail and back. “The tatums?!” It laughed again, only more heartily this time. “You may as well have been fighting potato men! They’re not chimpillas! They’re just vege-beasts and very poor ones at that.” It laughed again in a very deep, condescending way. “That’s why you were able to defeat them so easily. Your powers are not growing, Frank. If anything, out here in these nether realms, you are actually weakening. You are susceptible to almost anything that attacks and increasingly so. You cannot go on and I regret to say that it may be too late to turn back. The true powers, the dark forces are moving in this very realm as we speak. You are being surrounded, Frank. They want you gone. There is no way out for you.”

  “So, what are you telling me? I’m just cactus and that’s it?”

  “Kill yourself, Frank.”

  “What?”

  “Kill yourself. The only way to save yourself from the terrors beyond this place is to take your own life. Take it before they do. Believe me, they will abuse you in ways you never thought possible. Take your life, Frank. Take it quickly.”

  Frank had been through so much already. He had seen such misery and suffering, experienced so much horror and evil that taking his life no longer seemed scary or wrong. Yet something irked him about this creature. There was something distasteful and distrusting about it. And deep inside he knew that there was something more for him, a meaning and purpose that he had to find. He didn’t have the fortitude to call it hope, but it kept him from despair.

  He grasped the stick in his hand and turned to head up the mountain.

  “No,” he said. “I’m going on.”

  The creature recoiled for a moment as Frank turned and walked from it. It then charged at him in a blind rage and with its front appendages knocked Frank flying against the rocks at the base of the mountain. “You dare defy me?” Its voice was now a guttural scowl. “Do you have any idea who I am?” It stood over Frank in a rage, saliva and mucus dripping from its mouth and other openings. “I am Tatorium! I am the lord of this land! I am the power you were warned about! You shall not pass! You shall not trespass my rice fields! And you shall never turn your back on me!”

  Frank stood up, his face inches away from the monster’s odorous face. He looked deep into its eyes. Though afraid, he didn’t fear this creature and it recoiled again at Frank’s stance. “Back away!” Frank called, as though commanding it , and the creature instinctively did so at first, before rallying and attacking Frank with a roar that rang out over the fields and hills. Critters great and small, near and far, scampered away at the sound of it. As the chimpilla descended on him in a wild fury, Frank thrust the point of his spear through its bottom jaw. It reeled back in pain and Frank went with it as he held fast to the branch, flying through the air, and landed on the creature’s upturned belly. “Welcome to the rice fields, motherfucker!” he yelled and with one almighty thrust of his weapon, he pierced its brain with a satisfying crunch. After writhing for a few desperate moments, it lay lifeless, a twisted, coiled pile of ugliness.

  Frank removed his spear - it was serving him well - and jumped with it from the belly of the beast. He surveyed the remains, stepping backwards to view it in its entirety. Though trembling with adrenaline, Frank was in awe of his own prowess. Whatever the tatums were, he had overcome them with ease. And now, he had overpowered Tatorium, surely the true chimpilla of which the soulless bodies had been warning him? Despite the chromosomes needed to repel and overpower the chimpilla, Frank still felt strong. He felt a power welling within him that he had never known before. And with it, he felt an innate desire to press on beyond this mountain. He knew there was something beyond it that the dark powers didn’t want him to know or find. Emboldened by this inherent knowledge and his victories in battle, he ascended the mountain in no time.

  From the summit he had an uninhibited view of the whole land, and most notably, an island which sat in the middle of a sea beyond the shores rimming the foot of the mountain. Frank made his way down under golden sunshine, through lush, grassy fields and felt a cool breeze blow off the water and through his hair. The freshness invigorated him and he hummed a tune as he strutted toward the sparkling waters.

  The sand on the beach was fine and white and Frank removed his shoes and felt the grains tickle his toes. He lay back and enjoyed the warmth of the sun, high in a cloudless sky, massaging his face. Such respite was rare and he savored the moment. With half-closed eyes, he listened to the gent
le breezes gust across the water and play with the leaves of the trees which dotted the shoreline.

  Sitting up, he looked across the expanse to the island. It lay shrouded in a light fog that moved backwards and forwards across the landscape, revealing and concealing its features. The wind continued to move across the water from the island, picking up and carrying a soft sigh as it blew. As he listened, he began to make out words in the wind. At first he denied it but the more he listened the clearer it became. It stunned him and left him standing perplexed. It was calling his name. In a faint but deep whisper, his name rolled over the surface of the deep. ‘Frank! Frank!’

  There were no signs of life on the beach. Yet at a far end, a wooden raft bobbed in the shallows, tied to a post protruding from a rocky ledge. With the sun beginning its descent toward the horizon, Frank, lost no time jumping onto the raft and using the oar upon it to paddle his way toward the island.

  Chapter 9

  The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. That lay behind him; the future had now arrived. It was an innate knowledge that rose up within him and he never doubted it. It sustained him on his brief crossing and brought him a disposition which he suspected might have been cheer. He sensed that by passing over this body of water he was simultaneously passing over not just time, but history; not just space, but tiers. His identity was reforming, his purpose consolidating. He could feel it in a fashion and with a certainty that he had never previously known and it exhilarated him and scared him.