The Chronicles of Domewyrd : 11

X

Madness Born From Grief.

Love is an inevitable thing, infatuation and affection plague young men regardless of the time or the age. To find love is one thing, a beautiful thing. To fall for the wrong individual is a completely different tale. One of the likes that Manis would come to quickly and regrettably know. We often fall hard and fast early in life, and with these young and dumb mistakes we inevitably learn. Much like Manis irrefutably learned with Jaykob’s gruesome murder. It’s not how we fall, it’s how we pick ourselves up. Where we go from falling off a mountain in unsure lands, in ghastly and dark times. It’s not the tale of how we fell into the darkness, but how we found the light after striding for an eon through that seemingly impenetrable darkness. Then again, saying and doing are entirely different things. It’s easier said than done when you find yourself down that path, when you find yourself hot and sweating in the moment, only in the dawn after will your realize it’s too late. And that path you have found yourself set upon, you’ll find it’s harder to leave than to stay, no matter how maddening that is, but then again some individuals emotions are weaker than others and some mistakes made by some are far deeper craters than others. We all must learn from our forefathers mistakes, for the hopes of that someday somewhere there will be a brighter tomorrow.

 Suns rose giving the days color, suns set giving the young world character. Moons rose revealing all the horrors that used to be hidden under the starless and moonless sky, and moons set and in those few moments of absolute darkness, the cycle began anew. Days became nights, nights became weeks, and the weeks in the hot summer became the next sweating months. What started as an innocent call of fate, or so Manis thought had quickly become his biggest regret. He had become reclused to the depths of his throne room for hours and days on end. She idolized Manis’s power of the darkness he had awakened, but at the same time she was unmistakably jealous. They were inseparable for the first few weeks. For hours they made love, cackling in the dark lying on his bed, sipping wine and toasting together in each other’s grasp. All seemed well, but as time rode on, she wouldn’t let him leave his sight. As soon as those days and nights became the first month, his beloved seemed to always wake on the wrong side of their bed. She picked fights, and she always started them, she created them out of seemingly nothing. The halls of the throne room that  were once filled with delightful moans and laughter had become screams, shrieks, bouts of rage and cries. At certain points during the night even, crashes against the wall, the breaking of vases and the slamming of doors with only obscenities that followed the slamming. There fights seemed to have no end in sight unless the both of them were blacked out from ale or their own volatile rage. A volcano should never meet a hurricane, but still he willfully loved her no matter how many nights he did not sleep a wink. No matter how many nights he driven to insanity only left with a door slam and his own cackles filling the halls of his throne room as he aimlessly wandered it’s echoing halls. Talking to himself, babbling and mumbling about how what love and care does, about how it only leads and ends in madness. When he wasn’t being driven mad with hysterical madness or being driven down the halls cackling by his betrothed Manis had found himself disappearing into the production of his play, which finally his subjects had almost completed the building  of his stage. The only thing keeping him together, although barely he was away from her. Even though that didn’t stop her from watching above the throne rooms archway. Never breaking eye contact and constantly shouting asinine criticism from above, casually tapping her delicate feet. He had now isolated himself, or so he thought, but man can never escape a watchful woman’s eye or intuition. Manis’s prolonged time working with his subjects on the play, and the screenplay itself only made arguments with his beloved, deeply worsen. The longer they loved each other, maliciously, the more Manis’s mind seemed to break, he didn’t know how much longer he could keep his broken mind together, but he could care less as long as his play was completed. Nothing dissipates by being ignored, it only pulses and grows in the subconscious Although his relationship with his queen was faltering and breaking, the script for his play was thriving. 

Late one night months later, Manis had finally finished his script, the only early night off he had. He screamed from his study. “Oh yes! Finally, months upon months of work! Comes to a golden close. This, this is my life’s work.” He maniacally kisses the manuscript, spinning in circles dancing with himself. “ he begins laughing, only, the laughing doesn’t cease it grows louder and louder, filling the halls. He runs to his room and slams open the door, his love laying nude and cocking her eyebrows as she strokes her hair behind her ears. His smile is wryly, eerie, his whole face is shaking while his eyes are trying to jump out of their sockets. “It’s done, finally, months upon months, and it’s finely DONE. PURE GOLD I HAVE CRAFTED.” He holds his belly cackling and spinning around the room. His beloved says nothing, she stands up on bounces, kissing his dirty neck. Her hands pawing his chest as his hand clasps her neck close and Manis bites tenderly. Moans fill the room as he licks the side of her face Manis kicks his foot outward slamming shut the door. The first happy slam that door has seen. And better days the door had seen, all weathered from its abuse. As the door creaked shut his love spoke. “Oh, my dear Manis.” She said as she chuckled. strangely enough, this was the only night his beloved didn’t bicker, instigate, or criticize him. Even on his “performance” They conceived that night and the walls moaned in their pleasure. The bed shook the walls as dust feel from the wooden beams hoisted over their bedframe. She clinged to Manis and for once, he felt completely connected to not only her but another human being. Although if Manis had been looking into her eyes his face not pressed against her breasts, he would have seen it was far too late, for him, for the kingdom, and all the unsuspecting mortals that inevitable followed Manis to his own damnation.

Manis awoke to an empty bed, confused but relaxed and the room still smelt of sweat, so at least he knew that wasn’t a dream. Even so he wondered for a woman that wouldn’t let him out of her sight, where the devil has she gone? He chuckled to himself, the irony of the situation baffled him as sluggishly began dressing himself, yawning into the confusing awakened state he had found himself in. It’s always calmest before the storm, and only after a few moments of peace Manis now fully dressed he suddenly heard a shrieking wind pass his ear. He shuttered and instantly began pouring sweat, his chest drenched and his hair damp. “LIES LIES, THERE’S ONLY ONE TRUTH, THEY’RE ALL GOING TO LEAVE, THEY’RE ALL GOING TO DIE, GO OUT WITH A BOOM— OR YOU’LL ONLY BUILD A MADDENING TOMB.” As the voice passed it hysterically cackled with a certain familiar reverberation.

Manis was now screaming spit flying from his mouth, snot shooting from his nostrils. “Whom… WHOM THE DEVIL’S THERE?!” “I DEMAND IT SO, MAKE YOUR PRESENCE KNOWN, OR THEIR SHALL BE BLOOD.” He stated clenching his fists, moving his hands to the hilt of his blade. Then the thought dawned on Manis, Grimace… Where has she been? “Grimace…” he slowly said with a quiver in his lip, his posture taller and his gaze electric and jolting around the room like lightning.

Manis leaned up putting his hands on his face, muttering to himself. “What’s even the difference anymore? Was my beloved merely a dream?” He was now utterly sure that last night and all the nights he shared with his betrothed was nothing more than a delusion. Then again he couldn’t tell the difference anymore so he began maniacally cackling to his self, tears gracing his sockets as he found himself stuck in the own reverberation of his undeniable laughter that made the veins in his throat stretch and bulge.

He jumped out of bed in a panic, still laughing. Storming out of his quarters, searching the throne room. With no luck he frantically bolted out of the throne-room door, it was hardly even dawn— the sun had just barely risen. The sunlight peered over the horizon illuminating the hills beyond the swamp and the rays of light pierced through the forest just beyond that. The day seemed strange, with a dense unsure air. With his queen seemingly nowhere in sight, the only sound that he heard was the endless clank of hammers finishing his stage with the morning light. He slammed the throne-room door shut, bolting the lock with a slam, breathing heavily and pacing back to his throne scratching and pulling his hair somehow laughing, screaming, and crying all at the same time. Muttering to himself again “Oh, yes, love, the most delusional of all feelings, and like all feelings, so, so, so, SO pointless.” Manic caught himself saying the same things his queen said to him the first day he had met her. Was she really a delusion Manis began to think, or was he so lost in his own madness that his mind was now betraying him?

Another wind passed by his ears, as he stepped and plopped himself into his throne, sinking, throwing his legs outwards, his eyes jolting as he placed his palm on his chin with his fingers grazing his red cheeks, hot from worry.  “What’s difference between reality and a dream?” The voice slowly annunciated, and asked him. As the voice passed, it vanishes with an echoing laughter, an even louder one than before. One that seemed in the tone of many. Multitudes of laughters and different voices all cackling about in unison. Surrounding Manis in an involuntary fright. As his eyes bulged and darted around the room. Manis watched the walls become wavy, there was an oceanic rhythm to them, he stared in awe drawn into the reality before him that seemed to be bending, or cracking at the very least. muttering to himself, biting his nails and sweating. “What in the seven hells…” He steps forward, leaping out of his throne, he watches the throne grow, crashing through the ceiling. Manis screams and reels backwards, skidding along the marble floor. In the giant hole that moments ago was the ceiling. There are now giant apparitions donning Jaykob and the bandit-leaders face. Ghostly abominations that stood skies high. They then fade transforming and mutating into another ghost. It’s Manis himself. The ghost dissipates and splits into three ghosts. The bandit, Jaykob, and Manis himself. He’s caught in an awfully mesmerizing trance as he watches the apparitions re-enact that pivotal moment of tragedy down to the specific lines spoken that day about weakness as a giant ethereal projection of that familiar dingy stage is spawned and the ghosts take their places and watches the horror play again. And when the scene ends, a whisp of smoke clouds his vision and they do it again, and again, and again. Never once does a single that change, the exact thing that has haunted him since he was a boy now was a monstrous abomination of visuals and audibles. Manis spoke no words, only bubbled and cried right then and there but quickly those tears remained but his voice went silent, abruptly and briefly. Manis suddenly lets out a quick laugh, and then another, followed by another. His chuckles quickly turning into a cackle, shouting. “It never ends, what’s the point in fighting.” Pulling his hair, the enormous ghosts dissipate and the walls begin rumbling and cracking, the entire throne room is now cataclysmically shaking. Manis plants his feet trying to hold his balance. Rocks start crumbling from the ceiling as the light shines in from the now gaping hole. Manis tumbles over, scurrying backwards in a fright. What have I done he wondered, my own tragedies are melting all that I have earned, my madness is destroying my kingdom. Manis couldn’t help but laugh with a face that showed nothing but terror, as if he didn’t know why he was laughing but he had to. He sees a giant figure smiling from above the open-ceiling. Her existence is so immense, Manis instantly begins screaming. Manis’s voice cracking and shaking, sweat drenching his sunken face. Throwing his body onto the floor, he cackles hysterically, pulling his hair and crying. Amidst his echoing laughter he realizes that the throne-room has stopped shaking. The ceiling that was broken was now fixed. The throne is it’s normal size, in the sudden terror of change Manis was shocked, he checked his surroundings frantically. His face is blank, but his eyes widened. “Grimace…” He grits the words from the gaps in his rotting teeth. Manis bolts across the throne room to the back of the room, opening the sealed dungeon door leading to a dark and damp basement. Manis Grabs a nearby torch that resides underneath the sealed door. As he slowly enters, the sound of a damp drip followed by his feet stomping down the winding, weathered steps. Approaching a bolted door he thrusts his feet with a grunt, kicking open the door so hard that splinters of wood knock against the stone and spread on the floor just past the entrance. As the old door slams open against the wall. “GRIMACE!” Manis shouts, spit flying against the embers of his torch. Waving his torch around as he cannot seem to find her. He waves it across the other-side of the room to the left, to the right, and then towards the back as he steps forward he begins sees those familiar hairy-legs, moving the torch to the back of the room, Manis reeled back in horror. Grimace was now even larger, her body so big she was scrunched against the wall. Not out of fear mind you, out of sheer immensity. It’s pincers dripping a thick and pussy bile that stained the floor in trails. Waving his torch back toward the wall he realizes his legs are even thicker, even longer. He moves his torch along it’s legs, they too are scrunched against the wall where the ends of its legs are they curl against the corners. Grimace’s tendrils that hang below its body now sluggishly occupy half of the room, leaving a slimy puddle  that bubbles all around her tentacles. A bloated abomination of terror. Manis gulped, but not before she began talking. “My, my, my, my Manis! It has been quite some time, what a fine young man you have become. A mad one, but a fine one nonetheless. Your big day is tomorrow, and rightfully so.” One of her legs slowly moves across the room rubbing her swollen belly. “Because I do detest, it has been quite some time since I’ve been fed, any longer and I am afraid I’ll have to venture out of these boarish walls. Manis begins shouting viciously. “That’s what you’re going on about? Being fed? YOU FIEND…” Manis slowly calms himself, snapping to an obedient tone, his demeanor changing into that of a mindless soul whose only thought process was to follow instruction. Grimace’s swirling eye starts to spin gruelingly fast. “I digress my darkened liege.” His scowl becoming devious and distant. “A feast ye shall have, I promise thee my great and terrible Grimace. Tomorrow will be quite the show… quite the show indeed.” Manis flashes a grin that lights up against the dimming torch. As he turns his body around and slowly begins walking toward the entrance, he realizes he forgot why he came to her lair in such a worry. Uncontrollably he cackles as he walks away, losing his mind more and more as the time passes. At least, at least his life’s work had been completed. As he begins closing the old door, Grimace interrupts him placing one of her legs before his feet as he stops politely. “Oh, and Manis, don’t think that with this play and this feast that our deal will be done. We are tied, chained, and bound to one another. There’s only one way out of madness and I believe you know what that answer might be. Alas, I also know that deep within that flesh of skin you call of chest, you enjoy it far, far, too much. The thrill, the chaos, letting your mind listen to those spiders and bounce like an ethereal spirit.” Manis smiles as he cautiously steps over her leg, walking backwards out of the room. “Right as rain you are, Grimace… but like that dreadful bandit that took Jaykob from me, don’t underestimate lest you lose yourself to the devil himself. Madness, madness is a powerfully enticing thing my horrid dark liege. He grins and cackles up the stairs as he slams and locks the door. On the other side of the bolted door Grimace muttered to her enormous self. “Right you are Manis, right you are, and the same goes to you, for when you met me as nothing more than a scared little boy, it was already far too late for your troubled little mortal soul.”