Francis of the Filth Read online

  He rapped Pink Guy on the foot. On waking, he immediately sat bolt upright and stared at the phenomena, deeply troubled by it. His movement caused the others to wake and soon they were looking in bewilderment at this sea of enormous suds surrounding them. All were disturbed by it except for Negi Generation 4. He promptly strutted over to one and picked it up. “A sty and with the jolly be!” With that, he opened his mouth wide and threw it in. He swallowed, his eyes sparkled, and then he let out a hearty burp.

  “What did he say Salamander Man?” Frank asked.

  Salamander Man, not sure if he had heard correctly, stuttered out his answer. “He said, ‘breakfast is served’.”

  “Ha ha ha!” cackled the brown one before picking up one of the larger bubbles and sucking it slowly out of shape and into his mouth. “Ah!” he cried. “Far the frisk!”

  “He said…” began Salamander Man.

  “…Yeah, we get it,” said Frank, cutting him off. He ventured over and lifted one of the opaque spheres from a leaf, sniffed it, and then popped it into his mouth. “Hey,” he said after some savouring, “that’s pretty good. Sort of like a sticky strawberry gel but with a touch of honey.” His licked his teeth and gums. “Not bad at all.”

  The others all promptly tucked into the servings on offer and enjoyed every moment of it. It was only Pink Guy, apparently, who had a moment of angst with the meal, having the misfortune to suck in a bubble that he said tasted rather like dog faeces. He added very quickly that he had never actually tried dog faeces but that if he had, that is the taste sensation that he would very much have expected. His other circular jellies (as he called them) were very much to his liking, especially the largest one he consumed which he said reminded him of caramel ice cream. They feasted on these treats until they could feast no more, which was rather timely because as the dome above them heated to a burnt gold color, the bubbles melted into the ground, sustaining the plant life, until none remained at all.

  The days passed like this, yet it was unclear to any of them how long the days were and how many days or months or years they had been there. They simply existed, as though in their own ageless sphere. Frank asked Pink Guy why this was so. “Time is relative in the omniverses, differing from realm to realm and from dimension to dimension, affected also by the total number of chromosomes present in any region,” he said. “When the peace lords gathered, for instance, there was such a massive abundance of chromosomes that time in that realm dominated the time in any other realm. It’s not that time moved more quickly or slowly, but simply that it was dominant over the time specs of other realms and dimensions. By contrast, in realms where chromosomes were in scant supply, time was inferior to that of just about any other realm about it.” In this environment, Frank had no idea how much his own chromosomes had been multiplying. “So you can grow chromosomes faster,” Pink Guy continued, “in regions where time is dominant but you do so at your own risk because there are a greater number of higher tier entities there. The strong get stronger,” he said by way of conclusion.

  It was an uncharacteristically warm morning, possibly a Thursday in other realms, when Negi Generation 4 strolled over to Frank, slapped him on the back and with an enormous guffaw said, “Tonsils go by the stave to fry and why not!” Absolutely clueless as to what he had just said, Frank returned the slap on the back and laughed along hard with him. “So the donkey and kindly the nuts!” he said trying to speak the Negi’s language. At that very moment, the balderdash suddenly fell to the ground as rigid as a pole on an icy day. Frank wondered what on earth it was that he had said to make him stiffen like that. “All I said was…” but he could no longer remember what it was that he had said.

  “Go up the mountain!” Negi said.

  Shocked, Frank, Pink Guy and Salamander Man gathered around him. “I understood him,” Frank said, perplexed. “He said, ‘Go up the mountain’.”

  “Go up the mountain,” the Negi repeated in the same mechanical voice.

  “Negi!” shouted Pink Guy slapping Negi in the face as hard as he could. “Snap out of it! Snap out of it!”

  “What’s wrong?!” Frank asked him. He grabbed him by the shoulders and began to shake him violently. “C’mon, Negi. Snap out of it, son!”

  Negi Generation 4 lay completely seized up on the ground. “Go up the mountain,” he said again. The three other entities stared at each other. Suddenly an entirely different vibe possessed them. Laughter, peace and levity were replaced with somberness, fear and gravity.

  “Go up the mountain,” came the same cold command. Negi began to convulse. It was just a quiver at first, but it grew quickly into fully fledged convulsions till he looked like a fish flopping about on dry land. With the spasms came a torrent of the same directives. “Go up the mountain! Go up the mountain! Go up the mountain!…” He was screeching like a possessed man. And then he stopped. At first the others felt quite sure he was dead. There was no movement, no breathing, no life. They slowly squatted around him and prepared to give him a solemn farewell.

  Frank was about to poke him in the cheek to see if it could elicit any response, but before he could, Negi Generation 4 sat up on his elbows, flashed his smile and declared, “Moons to blue and milky when the stirrups!” He broke into his familiar cackle and jumped up on his feet. He looked curiously at his three companions. “Pacing neither with oil or not?”

  “He wants to know why you’re all staring at him,” Salamander Man translated. It was clear to the others that Negi had no idea what had just transpired.

  Frank paused before answering. “We’re just looking at a very handsome fellow,” he said.

  “Book off for under the grouse!” he replied bouncing on his toes again. “Oh, the yet!”

  “Absolutely, my friend! Just what I was going to say!” Frank encouraged him.

  Yet the command that had been incessantly repeated during Negi’s missing minutes was not lost on Frank, Pink Guy or Salamander Man. Their discussion on the matter was a mere formality. They knew they had to ascend the mountain. They just had no idea why. Negi couldn’t understand why the three were so determined to make the climb, but as long as they were all together, he was happy enough.

  The day was still young when they started off. None of them had gone up the mountain before so they were complete novices when it came to its terrain. Yet the mountain was, for the most part, even and without treacherousness. As such, they made good progress. The morning events continued to weigh on their minds so there was little discussion between them as they climbed. Negi Generation 4 picked up on this and he, too, remained uncharacteristically quiet. Walking in single file and with their eyes fixed toward the summit, none of them noticed the swarm of creatures coming out of the swamplands and mudflats and woodlands following them up the slopes.

  It was Pink Guy who first sensed their presence. “We’re being followed,” he said, without turning around to see them. They all paused and sat on a ledge to rest and looked back down the mountain. There, while still at a considerable distance, was a multitude of creatures, great and small. Predominantly brute beasts but also some other rankenfiles and possibly some from the higher tiers, their numbers couldn’t be counted; they covered the foothills like pebbles on a beach. They stopped when the four rankenfiles stopped, and continued when they continued. They retreated when the rankenfiles turned toward them, and advanced irresistibly when they turned away.

  Sitting on a gentle rocky ledge surveying the distant mangroves below, Pink Guy explained this happening to the others.

  “It’s you, Frank.” All three looked at the Okinawan. “They sense it,” he continued. “They sense, Frank, that your chromosomes are multiplying at unprecedented rates. They can feel it. It’s rare that entities not of this realm pass through here, but they have never sensed from anyone what they are sensing from you.”

  This seemed so ridiculous to Frank that he was ready to dismiss it outright. But he had no other explanation for what was happening, so kept his thoughts to himself
for the time being. More creatures began emerging from the trees and grasslands. “The more I see what’s happening in and around you, Frank, the more I worry,” Pink Guy said. “And the more we need to take care,” he added with caution. “You are what this world might consider royalty.”

  “Too minty and the under of out,” Negi said, in a much more sullen voice than they were used to hearing.

  “If we stay together, we’ll all be fine,” Pink Guy assured them. He was lying. He looked out over the landscape. “The tiers are changing,” he recalled in a still voice. “We should move on.”

  On turning back to face the mountain, they were startled to see a hideous creature just a stone’s throw from them. A reptilian humanoid, he was a fearful sight. His head was singed, a rusty distortion of what it had once been and its torso and upper limbs were burned beyond usefulness. Scorched flesh hung and dripped from its body in large chunks. But its most terrible trauma was to the lower half of its body, a charred mess of staggering legs, exposed organs and twisted tail. He stumbled toward them. “Come with me,” he moaned. None of them moved. “Come with me,” he said again, gesturing with what was perhaps his only functioning limb. The wind picked up as he spoke and blew his stench toward them.

  It was Negi who took the first step. “No!” called Pink Guy, and Negi stepped back in line with the others. “He’s condemned. He’s soon to be one of the Wretched and he wants us to save him. But we can’t. If we go with him we risk being condemned ourselves. Have nothing to do with him.” Pink Guy turned and headed up the mountain at a brisk pace, with the others all following in like manner, leaving the condemned creature to his morbid fate.

  At this point they were more than half way up the mountain and the summit came into view. Yet as it did, the gusts of wind grew stronger, the sky began to gray (a phenomena they had never seen in that place before) and clouds began to form (also something they had never previously seen there). They pressed on. The higher they climbed, the fiercer the winds became, the thicker the clouds were and the blacker the sky grew. Each of them were aware, if not terrified, of the ominous implications of this atmosphere yet they each knew, without doubt, they had to scale the summit. Frank hoped that somehow in reaching the top, they would have satisfied some cosmic requirement and everything would return to normal. Pink Guy suspected something entirely more nefarious. Salamander Man and Negi Generation simply had the feeling that they were way out of their depth.

  By the time they reached the summit it was completely shrouded in dark clouds. The wind blew in flurries, peels of thunder began to echo about them and a smell of burning filled the air. Atmospheric conditions aside, there was a creepiness which none of them could source yet which they all sensed vividly, a sulphuric stench which sickened them. It caused them to pull apart and observe each other with a hint of suspicion. Time stood still there on the mountain top; an eerie emptiness in the midst of a storm.

  But that was it. The four entities looked at one another, unsure what to make of it all. They had satisfied the mystic command through Negi Generation 4 to go up the mountain, and they had experienced some highly unusual phenomena on the mountain top, but there seemed to be little more to it than that.

  “What do we do now?” Salamander Man eventually asked.

  “Do we just go back down?” It was more of a suggestion than a question from Frank. No-one responded. They continued to wait, looking about them and wandering on the spot like kids lost in a canyon.

  Pink Guy was about to suggest they return to the foothills when a swirl of dark clouds lowered before them on the very pinnacle of the mountain, not a tree length from them. The clouds slowed to a majestic stillness before parting to reveal a dark figure descending on a cushion of gray clouds that delivered him like a royal visitation. In the parting mountain top air, they could see without any restriction, the manifestation before them and it was one of fearful ugliness. Every aspect of his presence, from his physical appearance to his spiritual disposition, proclaimed a sickening hideousness. Before him, leashed with heavy chains, were two small but ferocious minions. They lashed out indiscriminately, clawing and leaping, snarling and drooling and hungry for blood. As the cloud settled on the ground, the central creature squirmed and then rolled forth into a crouch position. Then it moved toward them.

  The four climbers could sense nothing but outright fear. Frank felt a stabbing pain down the side of his neck. His face turned a ghostly shade of gray and though it was cool, he began to sweat uncontrollably. The creature moved in awkward tics, slowly at first, but occasionally in bursts, and in a line that would normally be associated with the stagger of a drunkard. Crablike, it approached them, and though they drew back, it was upon them, right before them and within them. Terror seized each of them and they were unable to move. Though their spirits within them tried to flee, their feet remained locked firmly to the ground. All the creatures that had been following them up the mountain had no such impositions placed upon them and scattered as soon as they saw the presence.

  It was Pink Guy who first uttered the words: “Lord Chin Chin”. The whole sky lit up as he said it in one enormous lightning bolt that seemed to forget to flash back off again. The light from it revealed his appearance in its fullness, not least of all his eyes which were stitched together, yet seemed to be looking in all directions at once. His faced twitched again as he looked up at Frank with a mixture of longing and detestation. “O Chin Chin ga dai suki da yo.” The words gave Frank a tingling paralysis in his spine. The peace lord’s face twitched again as he considered Frank. “O Chin Chin,” he repeated.

  There was a curious, perhaps mystical, connection between Frank and Lord Chin Chin that neither of them could identify and that disturbed both. But it did mean that Frank could understand Chin Chin’s language without any misconceptions. Where the other three only heard “O Chin Chin ga dai suki da yo” repeatedly, Frank heard a language, ancient and complex, powerful and innate, and he responded in kind.

  “I have come for you,” Frank heard the dark lord speak. His voice had a piercing authority and a childish whine. Initially Frank remained speechless, horrified to his core but as Chin Chin repeated his claim, Frank found his voice.

  “What do you want with me?” he asked.

  “You dare speak to me without me asking you to?” He looked incensed at this. “Have you no respect for higher powers? Have you no idea who I am and what I am capable of?”

  “What do you want with me?” Frank asked again.

  The dark lord convulsed with rage at this. There were more peels of thunder and rain pelted against Frank’s face. “You speak when I tell you to speak!” The words came out like exorcised spirits.

  His face suddenly jerked as though receiving a fresh inspiration. “You don’t fear me,” he said, sickened by the thought of it. “Oh, you’re afraid of me but you don’t fear me.” He looked up at Frank who, to the relief of the others, commanded his full attention. “Fear comes from knowledge,” he said giving Frank an education. “Knowledge of good and evil. Knowledge of one’s true place in this life. And knowledge that I… am… GOD!” The last word spewed out, and as he said it, it reverberated around the mountain. With it, he cast his arm powerfully toward Negi Generation 4, instantly decapitating him and knocking his lifeless body down the slopes of the mountain.

  Pink Guy and Salamander Man reeled back in horror at the sight of this. Never in their lives had they seen such wanton disregard for innocent life.

  Frank watched the body slide down the rock face before shrugging. I quite liked him, Frank thought. What a shame.

  “Do I have your fear now?” Chin Chin asked him. Frank remained in silent terror.

  “I came here to kill you, Frank.” He paused for effect. “I don’t like you. I despise you. I have in my very soul an intense desire to hurt you. I want you to feel all the pain of the omniverses. I want you to suffer like no-one else has ever suffered before. I want your name to become synonymous with unspeakable pain.” Frank alre
ady felt halfway there.

  “But I won’t, Frank.” If it were possible, there was a slight softening in his voice. “I have other plans for you.” Frank gave Chin Chin his full attention. (The other two had no idea what he was saying.) “You have an impressive rate of increase in your chromosomes, Frank. And the rate is increasing. This makes you useful. So I will give you the honor of allowing you to make a deal with me. I will return you back to your human world and allow you to live - and relatively free of pain - and in return you will give me your chromosomes. What sayest thou? Which do you choose, Frank? Eternal suffering of the highest order or an obscure life without excessive chromosomes?” His face ticked again as if it functioned as punctuation.

  Though eternal suffering of the highest order was clearly not the choice to make, Frank lamented the miserable option that the other choice left him. And so with sad resignation he said, “I’ll give you my chromosomes.”

  “I want to hear it again,” the dark lord said.

  “ I will give you my chromosomes,” Frank repeated.