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The Cenotaph

Depravity is but a pillar of creation...

By Patrick SantiagoPublished 2 years ago 7 min read
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ART BY H.R. GIGER

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

No one could hear us on earth either. Humanity's piousness towards itself led it astray many times before but never like this.

No salvation would come, no anterior messenger would rise in opposition to this unexpected nightmare. One man had decided the fate of the species - and what a young species we were.

Francise Dellavine was a man well beyond salvation, he'd indulged every vice the world had to offer and then some. Not out of curiosity, not out of predisposed addiction or conditioning, just pure boredom.

Being the second richest man in the world had a way of isolating you from what made one human. The driving force of every human action on earth consist of two parts necessity, one-part dependency, and a heavy dose of blind faith.

Mr. Dellavine had none of that. He never lacked. He never depended on anything other than his wealth. And faith?

To him, his wealth made him God.

So, what does a man with everything, and a god-complex do when the world isn't enough?

He satiates his lacking, like a hunger, conquering history before he exorcises his future.

...

Dr. Cope stood infront of the Cenotaph, that's what the reporters on the news were calling it; it caught on.

The structure stained our earth in its shadow, while it parted our sky like an entry wound that painted it in colors scientist could not quite explain. The air around the object was oppressive, filling Dr. Cope's lungs with a heat that felt like embedded needles pushing against the lining of her stomach.

It was the tallest structure she had ever seen during her anthropological studies - no map, hieroglyph, or depictions in writing ever painted an image as tall as the one before her.

Our history it seemed was but a single pore on the face of existence.

Computer monitors and frequency radios filled the airspace with electromagnetic pulses as every soldier, Linguistic Specialist, astrophysicist, aerospace engineer, and cultural specialist waited anxiously for the moment of contact.

A line of American soldiers pointed their guns forward, a ready stance any alien life form would recognize as threatening - or maybe they'd see us as the weak ones for our quick reaction to violence.

Yards ahead of peering eyes, the doctor felt alone. She was alone. Her intentions carried her forward more than her curiosity; but those intentions would stay dormant until the proper moment presented itself.

The organic structure seemed to move and weave in its stillness. It was alive, organic and crimson - like a series of thick tendrils wrapped around one another and meeting at the top, high above the clouds.

Cope looked at her watch before she began to speak, "Anumbaya nifte' sanya vasque," she spoke in a tongue that nobody knew she had known.

Nothing.

"Anumbaya nifte' sanya vasque!" this time louder, more distinct.

A light emanated from the swelled edges of the Cenotaph's cleft, its mouth seemed to grow bigger and then the shadows from within appeared.

Three humanlike shapes emerged from inside, but their features were anything but. They sported unfinished flesh, eyes too small to fill their large sockets, limbs too long for their joints to support, builds too malnourished to compliment the skeletons underneath.

"This is the best we could fathom on such crass timing." The entity on the left spoke, jaw unhinging with every word spoken.

“Fathom?” Cope thought that a poor choice of wording, but a curious one. They looked nothing like what she spent two decades pondering.

The middle entity spoke, heavier than the other two, but no less malnourished. Its endoskeleton moved inside its makeshift skin like slumbering eels, “we engineered these forms from moss, dust and water, to make this meeting more perceivable to your kind.”

Cope stood feet from the triad of strange, now being the first person on record to have an exchange of words with another life-form, “so, this is not what you really look like?”

The third entity spoke, “If we were to show you our true face, your kind would seek blindness and forgetfulness – we are from things unimagined, so unknown to your species your thoughts would yet catch up to you.”

The implications of that sentence bothered the doctor. Could something be so unimaginable, unconceivable to the eye that it would render the human consciousness paralyzed?

"Have you so little faith in us? It was you who landed on our planet - you sought us out," she thought she had something.

"Bold. Ignorant. Young. Exuberantly involved in your own extinction before you've reached your potential as a species," the three spoke as one, not quite synched, a melodically painful speech pattern,"we did not seek you out, we were summoned - Francise Dellavine sought for us. He alone found the pieces, he alone rung the seven bells. To him alone, we answer."

"Dellavine, was my step father, he's dead." The three oddities stared from their disfigured machinations, confusion was a clear expression on any species. "Seven bells? That's biblical. Did you learn that the same way you learned to speak our language."

"Your language, your bible. You speak, you write." The Three spoke in turns, one finished a word and the next seamlessly picked up the cadence. Three vocal distinctions, one mind speaking, "but your language is an oversimplification of the true dialect of man, a devolving, and your...God," the three looked around. Soldiers stood armed and ready.

"...your God, was far too young to understand the responsibilities we bestowed upon him," and just like that, eighty soldiers dropped to their knees, yelling in agony. "They can see our true form now."

Dr. Cope seemed bothered but not quite unsettled by the screams - she knew more than she led on. "Leave them and I'll complete my step-father's ritual." calculated, cold.

"You have no choice, someone has to - or consequences would be dire for you...creations. He summoned us, but you spoke our tongue. You have intent." The screaming soldiers spoke for the Three now, eighty voices rung. "His need for consumption drove him to seek pleasures not intended for men, but you seek more. You seek knowledge." The soldiers began to scream again, one minute stoic in expression as they spoke and the next exposed to their agony.

"I do not seek knowledge," She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a tattered-old polaroid, a picture of her daughter.

The monstrosity on the left stepped forward, its joints repairing and dislodging with every step.

It spoke, "You seek restoration," realization struck its fractured features.

"She's dying, something we call cancer. Something worse than even you. I've seen Francise's studies - I know you can heal her. The summoner gets one wish, he's gone. It's my wish, now. Please." For the first time during their encounter she seemed vulnerable.

The middle of the three began to cackle. Another realization struck. The abnormality before Cope looked down at her hands, dried blood stains that were not there before appeared on her palm and fingers. "You've killed for this," it grinned, uneven teeth shown through. It had seen her truth.

"He was a selfish man, who's curiosities would have only damned him." Her lips quivered as she tightened a fist around the polaroid of her daughter.

"And you aren't?" it asked.

"Selfish?"

"No, damning yourself."

The Three grinned in unison. "Our rite insist you serve us, an acolyte. Your interim existence extended to endless; your servitude for a wish." It held her gaze. Cope held it in turn, she was prepared, she knew it would come to this - all the readings pointed to it. But the nightmare wasn't her's to bare...

...it would be theirs.

"I accept." She walked past the three and stepped into the pyre of tendrils and cosmic nightmare.

The Three followed behind her, into the emanating red light of the structure's opening. The Cenotaph sealed itself shut and disappeared, neither up or down - just gone.

The sky went back to its tint of blue, no trace of anything from another world visiting left behind.

The soldiers looked around, the scientist and experts looked bewildered - how'd they get there? They did not remember.

As for Cope, she held on tight to that polaroid. She'd get her wish, and she'd kill The Three and escape her servitude - all she had to do was pierce them with the Catharsis blade sewn into the skin of her forearm. Thin, deadly.

Blessed by something even older than they, something darker. And it would soon come in search of its beloved blade. Her time was limited.

She felt hopeless as she walked through the black mist and red light of the structure, which was now making its way through the dark void of space...

...if she failed, no one would hear her shrills in the vacuum of space, no one but The Three.

...DR. COPE WILL RETURN IN CHAPTER 2...

Sci Fi
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About the Creator

Patrick Santiago

Writing because I'm too poor to make movies. Working to change that!

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