Clouds of Blood |3|
A serialised dystopian horror story. Flash chapters.
Death gave life. The hungry earth was fed, and it began to heal. Green grass grew over its wounded surface, flowers opened up craving to be touched by the sunlight.
New skin grew over the wounded one, the clone was always shielded from the sun, and the bloody rain drops. The giant covered his new-found son with cloth, and carried him around tied to his back.
Many days of bloody rain came and went, and the tribe of men always followed the clouds of blood.
Shamani never left the clone alone. He carried the limp human with him while hunting for critters, and gathering edible plants. The desert turned green overnight. The blood rains came down onto the sleeping earth, and it woke, showered by the death of the ones who killed it a millennia ago.
Every night when the darkness crawled up the land, Shamani would move the clone’s arms and legs, until the muscles grew strong. He fed him blood and juices squeezed from plants, until the clone learned to chew.
The men gathered by the fire, observing Shamani breathing life and strength into Cry, as the giant called him. Cry, my son birthed by the Beyond, Shamani always said.
“He is no son of yours. He’s nobody’s son,” Buck would murmur back.
The men cooked their humble meal on the open flame; rats, snakes, palm-sized cockroaches. They boiled water, to purify it. Shamani taught them. Shamani was old like the sun, and the desert. A giant from the olden days.
***
Buck looked at Cry lying on his belly near the fire. Barely moving, Cry observed the tawny faces of men ripped from the darkness by the red fire light. Shamani took a long thorn from a prickly plant used for medicine. Shamani knew plants.
“We could use some fresh meat. Nothing but blood, and water coming from the clouds,” Buck muttered.
Shamani kept his silence. He held the tip of the thorn in the fire until it caught flame, then slowly pushed the burning tip into the clone’s spine. The latter yawped, and shook. Shamani did not stop until the whole spine was pricked by the giant thorns.
“Cry will walk, Cry will talk, Cry will rise,” Shamani kept chanting quietly.
“You’re wasting your time, Shamani,” Buck was joined by another man moving nearer. “None of our youngsters lived. Good, healthy youngsters. Why would a foul-born live?”
“The Beyond whispers he’ll live, Colt,” Shamani replied pulling the thorns out Cry’s flesh. The clone had settled, the thorns contained medicine; both numbing the pain, and strengthening the spine.
“Cry will walk, Cry will talk, Cry will rise,” Shamani hummed looking into the clone’s blue eyes. Cry frowned a little, then smiled for the first time. Shamani laughed his low laughter. “Cry will rise.”
Shamani’s black eyes with light from the Beyond hidden in them, his thunderous laughter would become Cry’s first memories. That and the crude faces of men around the fire.
Two of them talked quietly, walking around the ragtag camp. The wild dogs attacked when least expected, the men took turns standing on guard.
“Shamani thinks he’s sent form Beyond…” Colt thought out loud.
“There’s no Beyond!” Buck snapped. “Nothing is beyond this,” he motioned at the land coming to life at night, grass rustling while penetrating the land, blossoms popping open, flowers giving new seeds, tiny trees making their way upward through the weeds. “This, and us. There is no Beyond.”
“Shush! Shamani might hear you!” Colt shook his black beard.
“I don’t care. Shamani is old. Soon he’ll lay for the long night. Then I’ll take his place.” Buck straightened his back. Taller than Colt, yet not as tall as Shamani.
Colt gave a short laugh.
“First you’ll prove your worth.”
“I am the strongest.”
It was true. Buck was in his prime, a man of pure muscle, a man of strength, not wit. The next Shamani was always decided in a fight of both strength and wisdom.
“Shamani said his son Cry would take his place,” Colt’s voice reeked of ridicule.
“He’s nobody’s son. He’s a piece of meat,” said Buck, and spat on the grass.
Read the next chapter here: Chapter |4|