Read Online Gateways to Abomination by Matthew Bartlett - Free Book Online
Authors: Matthew Bartlett
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Father), stretching it wide, a hole you could pop a child’s head into (if you were of a mind), and the smell was low tide and sprawling arrays of fungus sprouting in the folds of a field of mildewed clothing, of dank basements and bile-strangled wells, carrion and the faeces of the squatting dead. I AM Cancer, he’d say again, AND I CANNOT BE BEAT. THE WORLD’LL BLACKEN AND SHRIVEL and be GONE.
That, Jeb said, would be the Kingdom of Heaven. Everything eaten by cancer, and the cancer eats itself, and then there’s nothing and no one no more. Paradise, he’d whisper, his eyes squeezed shut.
When Jeb was in his cups, which thankfully was not often, he’d grab his overalls in a fist and yank them asunder. Then from his unders he’d pull out his I-can‘t-say-it, a confused grey mass of you-know-what, held together with a wet and reeking shoelace. THIS, he’d bellow, IS THE SOURCE OF ALL THE PROBLEMS IN THE WORLD. I USEDTA THINK IT WAS WOMAN BUT ITS THIS. He’d yank from his deep pocket a meat tenderizing mallet, heavy and dirty, and demand that we hammer his mess. I’d give a meaty whack or two, looking away in horror, to placate the lunatic. Earl, though, took to it. He’d wheeze his asthmatic wheeze and swing that hammer like a he-man at a carnival. Trying to ring the bell. BAMM, he’d yell. BAMM BAMM.
And Jeb would wince and groan and even cry, shuddering with every sick impact, but the whole time he’d be laughing, holding on with one wizened hand to a the rung of the chair behind him, the other hand digging ruts into the porch with its thick nails. Ah, he’d sing to the sky, ah, these’r good boys, and they’ll take this town and make it their Kingdom. Then, sometimes, he’d vomit black tar that would roll down his chest like a waterfall and pool in his lap, and he’d pass out, and Earl and I would go down to the brook and kneel and say our prayers.
And the brook would be blood, and veined tumors would bob heavily in its roiling eddies.
uncle red reads to-day’s news
Damnable days and dank dusks darken old Leeds in this foul Year of Our Lord Nineteen and Eleven. The cool nights provide little in the way of relief, what with muttering voices on the wind and ashy, two-heeled footprints on the hearth. My tea is an unnatural red color and my milk turns before it's a day cold out of the cow. It's enough to beat the Dutch.
Truth be told, I'm still a touch corned. And underslept. But I've been charged with telling you what's what and by devil, that's what I now shall do.
At the end of a thick trail of blood was found a Greenwich man with low-hanging dungarees and threadbare beard pushing a blood-sodden pram the contents of which cannot in good conscience be described. The man claimed the contents as his own son, somehow birthed without the womb of a mother. And bedamned if his torn and tattered shirt didn't reveal a belly dirked beyond exfluntication--hollow of organ or gland. His eyes, my friends and townsfolk, had no whites. And his tongue was a furrowed and chapped thing more dead than alive.
Old Margaret Melinda complained agin of a stranger on her porch, proffering a bouquet of rusted distasteful trinkets. Narrow of chest and wide of belly, the man, she claimed, was clad in dank overalls and, worse, head-to-toe lousy with split and fruiting toadstool mushrooms. From behind his ears and under his arms they extruded, reported poor Margaret, and bulged from belly to groin to wide-set toes. Some were grained like wood and splitting; some bubbled with pinkish spittle and emitted malodorous and unspeakably foul spores that sickened the good woman and parched and wilted the flowers that hung from the eaves and filled the garden. The man was polite and well-spoken, and claimed to inhabit the cellars of the town.
A tortoise-shell cat in the Holyoke flats did kill Mr. Henry Floret, who before he expired exclaimed that the beast bore the eyes of man and spoke to him in prophecies of
That, Jeb said, would be the Kingdom of Heaven. Everything eaten by cancer, and the cancer eats itself, and then there’s nothing and no one no more. Paradise, he’d whisper, his eyes squeezed shut.
When Jeb was in his cups, which thankfully was not often, he’d grab his overalls in a fist and yank them asunder. Then from his unders he’d pull out his I-can‘t-say-it, a confused grey mass of you-know-what, held together with a wet and reeking shoelace. THIS, he’d bellow, IS THE SOURCE OF ALL THE PROBLEMS IN THE WORLD. I USEDTA THINK IT WAS WOMAN BUT ITS THIS. He’d yank from his deep pocket a meat tenderizing mallet, heavy and dirty, and demand that we hammer his mess. I’d give a meaty whack or two, looking away in horror, to placate the lunatic. Earl, though, took to it. He’d wheeze his asthmatic wheeze and swing that hammer like a he-man at a carnival. Trying to ring the bell. BAMM, he’d yell. BAMM BAMM.
And Jeb would wince and groan and even cry, shuddering with every sick impact, but the whole time he’d be laughing, holding on with one wizened hand to a the rung of the chair behind him, the other hand digging ruts into the porch with its thick nails. Ah, he’d sing to the sky, ah, these’r good boys, and they’ll take this town and make it their Kingdom. Then, sometimes, he’d vomit black tar that would roll down his chest like a waterfall and pool in his lap, and he’d pass out, and Earl and I would go down to the brook and kneel and say our prayers.
And the brook would be blood, and veined tumors would bob heavily in its roiling eddies.
uncle red reads to-day’s news
Damnable days and dank dusks darken old Leeds in this foul Year of Our Lord Nineteen and Eleven. The cool nights provide little in the way of relief, what with muttering voices on the wind and ashy, two-heeled footprints on the hearth. My tea is an unnatural red color and my milk turns before it's a day cold out of the cow. It's enough to beat the Dutch.
Truth be told, I'm still a touch corned. And underslept. But I've been charged with telling you what's what and by devil, that's what I now shall do.
At the end of a thick trail of blood was found a Greenwich man with low-hanging dungarees and threadbare beard pushing a blood-sodden pram the contents of which cannot in good conscience be described. The man claimed the contents as his own son, somehow birthed without the womb of a mother. And bedamned if his torn and tattered shirt didn't reveal a belly dirked beyond exfluntication--hollow of organ or gland. His eyes, my friends and townsfolk, had no whites. And his tongue was a furrowed and chapped thing more dead than alive.
Old Margaret Melinda complained agin of a stranger on her porch, proffering a bouquet of rusted distasteful trinkets. Narrow of chest and wide of belly, the man, she claimed, was clad in dank overalls and, worse, head-to-toe lousy with split and fruiting toadstool mushrooms. From behind his ears and under his arms they extruded, reported poor Margaret, and bulged from belly to groin to wide-set toes. Some were grained like wood and splitting; some bubbled with pinkish spittle and emitted malodorous and unspeakably foul spores that sickened the good woman and parched and wilted the flowers that hung from the eaves and filled the garden. The man was polite and well-spoken, and claimed to inhabit the cellars of the town.
A tortoise-shell cat in the Holyoke flats did kill Mr. Henry Floret, who before he expired exclaimed that the beast bore the eyes of man and spoke to him in prophecies of
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