The Gooey Jester

George and Ernest were up to no good. Being Halloween, they were out filling cars exhaust pipes with sour cream. They were laughing in glee, enjoying themselves, when all of a sudden they saw a bright light come streaking towards the ground. George yelled at Ernest, "Look man! It's a meteor!" George ran off towards where the streak of light hit the ground as Ernest just sat and watched.

As the meteor crashed to the ground a mile away, Ernest watched in terror as another entity crept out of the sewers. Eyes glowing, the evil jester looked at Ernest and stated, "There's balloons, cotton candy, and all the fun you can imagine Ernest. Come, join me. Join your friends." Ernest ran, towards the meteor where George had gone. As Ernest joined George at the crash site, he trembled as he realized that George was covered in some goo that had oozed from the smashed meteor. George began screaming as the goo that was slowly consuming him crept further up his legs. "Oh lord Ernest! It hurts so bad! Please help me!" Ernest desperately wanted to help his friend, but was trembling so bad he didn't know what to do. Then he heard a creaky voice from the sewer say, "Fool! These kids belonged to me! Just what do you think you are doing?" Ernest let out a yelp and grabbed George's arm as the goo slowed its ascent up George's leg as though it had heard the voice emitting from the sewer.

"That's right you slob! Let go of that child! He belongs to me!" the gravely voice screeched at the goo. The goo descended George's leg enough so that Ernest and George could break free of their terror and run. The meteor goo slowly oozed towards the sewer and to the jester that was watching with glee. Glancing back over his shoulder, Ernest watched awestruck as the goo entered through the sewer grate towards the evil jester with the harsh gravely voice.

In the sewer, the jester glanced around in amusement as the goo squished through the grate above. He laughed to himself at the arrogance of the goo by entering his domain. "That fool doesn't stand a chance down here," the evil jester whispered.

The goo which had by now successfully invaded the sewer glanced around with its own version of sight. It was looking for the evil jester that had so rudely interrupted its meal of young boy. Not finding him, the goo started oozing around, consuming rats and bugs in its wake. With each consumption, the goo grew. It stopped moving, feeling for vibration from movement of the evil jester.

"Oh my! Look at you, you slob! You're growing. Just think, that will only make you slower," the harsh voice of the jester rang through the sewer. As the ooze began moving towards him, the evil jester began feeling just a bit of trepidation. He knew there was going to be a war; he just didn't know which of them would win. With the rate that the goo was growing, the jester was starting to question his own strength and cunningness.

The goo, now with a good focus on the evil jester's location, oozed itself towards him. Jiggling with glee, the goo appeared to be shaking in fear. The goo knew though that it would be able to win any war waged upon it. It moved towards the jester faster, watching as he changed his stance.

"You don't have it in you," the evil jester said, the slightest tremble in his voice. He moved back a few steps as the goo began to slide onto his foot. "Utoh," he thought, "I'm in for it now." Reaching down with his sharp nails, the evil jester slashed at the goo. The goo shied away from the slashing nails, then rebounded and slid over the jester's hands.

"Oh! Well this is not comfortable," the evil jester thought. "In fact, it really kind of hurts!" watching in abject horror, he began shaking his hands and kicking his feet trying to rid them of the encroaching goo. As the goo reached the jester's chest, it could feel the rapid breathing of the jester. The goo jiggled with glee as the evil jester began screaming. "It's not true! It's not true! We don't all float down here!" those were the last words heard from the jester's gravely voice as the goo consumed the face of the evil jester.

The harvest moon hung low in the sky, a soft spotlight illuminating the naked trees. The crooked boughs cast sharp shadows that stretched across the forest floor at odd angles, a jagged maze of darkness littered with patches of blue-lit clarity. There was a chill in the air but not cold enough to stop the choir of crickets from performing their symphony. The air smelled sweet.

Jarl kept to the trails of darkness, stepping softly and avoiding the light. A distant howl raised the hairs on his neck. He swallowed the urge to return the call. An aroma lingered on the nascent breeze, the smell of tilled earth and prey; cold sweat on soft skin. Human. Jarl tried not to disturb the carpet of leaves, letting the patches of moss cushion his paws as his nose followed the scent to its source. Soon he heard the sound of spade against dirt; smelled the subtle musk of unearthed roots. The prey drew hard breaths as Jarl approached downwind, halting once the prey was in sight.

A young woman, alone, knelt in a pool of moonlight. Spade in hand, she pried the mandrake from the ground and set it in her handbasket. She pushed loose dirt back into the hole. It seemed the prey was trying to be quiet, but Jarl thought she was clumsy and careless. The sounds she made disturbed the night, her toil made her sweat even in the cold, and the moon made her shadow stretch at least double her height. The prey focused only on her chore, ignorant of the dangers that dwelled in the dark.

Jarl's lip curled with hunger and disgust. Humans did not know how prey should behave. He could have killed her before she even knew he was there. Jarl tensed as the prey wrapped her scarf over her shoulder and stood up. He felt like running tonight. A wolf eager to hunt, not slaughter sheep. He rose on his hind paws, letting his arms hang at his side, claws catching the moonlight like a razor's edge. He gave a single, ragged growl.

The prey tensed and turned his way, basket in one hand and spade in the other. Her eyes, now wide, searched the dark frantically. Jarl stepped into the light, fur bristling and teeth bared. His eyes met hers. He snarled, and she ran.

Jarl leapt from the shadows, diving to all fours he gave chase. The prey broke into a sprint, faster than he had anticipated. His heartbeat hastened, his blood ran hot, and an unbidden bark escaped his muzzle. It was not hard to keep pace with the prey; as his pulse pounded he ran faster, while his meal slowed from her initial burst of speed. Leaves crackled and twigs snapped underfoot, trees rushed by like dark hands reaching to blot out the moon. The prey wove between the trees as her pace slowed, as though that would shake his pursuit. Jarl felt more alive than ever.

The prey zigged and zagged, and though Jarl lost sight of her once or twice, he closed the gap. He never noticed the crickets had stopped chirping. He caught glimpses of the prey between the trees but never lost her scent. Though he grew closer and she got slower, the prey was still a step and a half ahead. Jarl nipped at her heels, catching a scrap of dress but never a taste of flesh. He felt his own pace slowing, heard his own heart pounding in his head.

Rounding another tree, Jarl caught a flash of motion in two opposite directions. Instinctively he followed his nose, just in time to see the girl dart behind another tree. He kept pace, bounding past her discarded basket, unaware the moon had dimmed. The trees were much thicker here, their gnarled boughs crackling overhead as the wind rose and fell.

Jarl saw a sliver of moonlight illuminate a figure among the trees, but heard the prey yelp from a different direction. Still in the fervor of the hunt, he gave pursuit. Past her discarded spade, and then a missing shoe, he chased the sound of a sharp crash and rounded a tree in time to lay eyes upon the prey.

She was limping now. Panting, the prey fell to her knees. Jarl stalked closer, a low growl rose in his throat. His eyes met hers again, this time wide with fright and teary from exertion. But her eyes weren't looking at him. The fur rose on Jarl's neck. He looked away without thought, but a terse scream brought his mind back to the hunt. She was gone. Jarl sniffed the air, but her scent slowly stagnated. He listened but heard nothing. No wind, no crickets, no movement in the woods. It was darker than he remembered. His eyes snapped to a hint of movement on the peripheral, but only caught a glimpse as it slipped behind a tree. He padded closer, ignoring his own instinct to flee and sate his appetite elsewhere.

Jarl thought he saw the figure, but it was never quite there when he looked its way. Fleeting, like a fragment of a dream. Behind him the figure lurked. Tall and lanky, with skin as pale as the moon, a face devoid of features, and limbs that faded into nothing beyond the knees and elbows. It never moved, but was always right where he wasn't looking. The last thing Jarl saw was a flash of that pale face, its smooth surface a glimpse of otherworldly infinities, its blank features a vision of oblivion. It grabbed hold and dragged him away, into the cracks between all realities, and began to feast.

Baptized in Blood

I was born again in darkness and baptized in blood. Against my will, the blood became my daily bread. They made me a slave to the thirst and a soldier in their army of the night.

I was conscripted by a Blood Saint. He drained me completely, an unholy stigmata. He fed it back to me, torturously, from his own veins, drop by drop. The transformation was excruciating: from the first, instinctive but redundant breath of my rebirth into undeath, to the creeping fire that vivified each dead cell. I was in agony.

And he watched every moment of it. Bathing himself and his acolytes in my living blood. My savior, my dark lord of resurrection: Saint Christopher.

Seven years I spent in his household: as bootlicker and bedwarmer, moving on to valet and then seneschal. I oversaw the conversion of fifty souls before I became a Korporal in Christopher's personal guard.

The guard taught me to fight. And they tried to convince me that I had been one of the lucky ones. Taken into Christopher's household; elevated they said, not conscripted into service in the armies of The Elders. The Footsoldiers of The Night, as they were called, waging war against the living.

I saw far too many of the converted go to war. Too many of those whose hands I had held, whose tears I had dried, the filth of whose passing I had washed away. I knew I couldn't save them, they were already damned. Twice damned, after they'd been sent to the Footsoldiers, to die another death by sword or stake or sunlight.

It wasn't their plight that turned me against my masters. I truly wish I could say that underneath my outrage you might find altruism. But that would be dishonest. Underneath my outrage you would simply find rage.

I hated Christopher from the moment I first laid eyes on him. He was looking up at me, with his black hair and his feral green eyes, and his fangs buried in my wrist. He stopped drinking long enough to give me the most chilling smile, my blood wet on his teeth and lips.

That was when I knew I had to kill him.

Before I became seneschal, I thought my humanity had been excised: humiliated and raped out of me, drowned in eddies of blood. I would never have accepted the position, right hand of a monster, if I had realized that it still lived.

Presiding over my first conversion, I discovered that my humanity was not dead, merely whipped into submission and hiding in the dark recesses of my heart. At first, Christopher and his acolytes found me amusing: the seneschal who wept, who showed compassion for those

about to be converted. But in time they came to believe that these acts were drenched in my own dark humor and sense of bloody ritual.

I encouraged these beliefs. It allowed me to salve my battered humanity and at the same time to keep the fires of my rage stoked. It was how I finally became one of them; a Blood Priest, they called me and seneschals of other houses started to ape my performances.

That was how I met Tommie, seneschal for Saint Cyprian and we found in each other a kindred spirit. We found Morgan, serving the Crone Justinia. And Jerome, walking in the shadow of Patrick the Necromancer. And Andre?a, weaving for the Dust Witch Philomena.

What had been my quest to end Christopher became our mission to burn down the edifice that the Elders had built. We built our following in silence and secrecy, a cult within a cult. But we only chose from the converted, even when we were of sufficient rank to have our own acolytes. It could never appear that we were forming power bases.

But of course we were, each in our own way. Navigating the baroque corridors of power, the webs of deceit and intrigue; nights of blood-soaked ritual, torture and murder. All the while, manoeuvring ourselves and our followers into positions of power, extending our reach within the converted to the point where we owned the Footsoldiers of the Night. Our operatives were deep within each of the four Followings.

The others, my brothers and sisters in the blood, chose the anniversary of my conversion for our moment, though I argued against it. And Christopher was our first strike. Jerome ran point and Tommie was my backup. Morgan neutralized the guard and Andre?a wove us all protections that rode our skins so tight it felt like wearing armor.

He never saw it coming. We wouldn't have the full advantage of that again. That was why it had to be the four of us. To show that it could be done. And without tipping our hand.

Part of me wanted it to be slow: an agonizing end by inches. But in that moment, with the sword in my hand, and Christopher on his knees, I simply wanted the end.

I won't say that I didn't take satisfaction in it. I did. The look on his face when I took his head, I will carry that sight with me down the dark road of however many nights I go on.

We consigned Christopher to the flames, his final end.
I was born again in darkness and baptized in blood. Against my will, the blood became my daily

bread. They made me a slave to the thirst and a soldier in their army of the night. But their army is now my sword. And the blood is my ally.

In time they will see us coming. And they will know fear. The End