King's Horses, Men Need Not Apply

Grace Potter & The Nocturnals - The Lion The Beast The Beat

     Everything throbs, vibrations resound. A light flickers, flesh burns, the floor shudders and walls bend, bleed, and moan. Hye-Joon's body seems at once afloat, amiss, and ajar. Her legs feel as if they're asleep and she's unable to manipulate her arms so as to get off the floor. Vision is blurred and reality slurs. A high-pitched whine fills the air as if she has become a dog unable to tune out a horrific preponderance of whistles. She feels soggy, though her throat is parched. Most of all, Hye-Joon wants to move because amidst the ocular haze there is motion; a shifting of almost vaporous proportions, black and brown with diaphanous strands of fluorescent orange carved into the diminutive frame of a human being rubbing its ears in response to what transpired just moments ago. What she ascertains of this shadowy adjustment, most definitely, is the fluctuating whiteness of uneven teeth as they articulate something lost, something hideous within this foaming morass of reverberation; something that makes Hye-Joon scream while the scraggy silhouette, superficially oblivious to the unfolding calamity, hops, skips, and glides along its chosen path.

     Desperately, Hye-Joon cries out for husband and child unseen, her voice drowning in a murky pool of distant pops, structural creaks, dismal screams, and orchestrated disarray. Of her husband, Jeff, she gleans nothing but the whimpers of Gavin, her son, pierce the veil of opacity, grinding through layer upon layer of cacophonous uncertainty and for a moment Hye-Joon dares, however feverishly, to believe that this is merely a horrific nightmare, one from which she has yet to awaken. Craning her neck as best she's able, Hye-Joon's delusion cracks and splatters as the splintered, feminine contour ventures back into sight, its colors reddened by annexed flesh and smoldering embers. Behind this ghastly, reassembled gloom tattooed with undulating streaks of cinnabar, being dragged by a leg, nearly upside down, is her three-year-old son, a wailing mess not unlike his mother.

     All you people, the revenant begins, her voice effortlessly navigating through the labyrinth of babel toward Hye-Joon in particular, can you feel it waiting? Innocence and love, wrapped in the arms of the burning neon. I feel it, she continues, teeth glistening with that which is presumed to be the blood of Hye-Joon's recently dismantled husband, I feel it, but you'll be so disappointed to learn that this moment of magic really isn't meant for you; and the magic before your very eyes lies not in the folly of you having killed for the purpose of sustaining life, nor does it relate to you having wronged in a futile effort to negate my indelible rights. In the end, it's not even about all this, the loquacious shade opines, waving her free hand to and fro as outlying shouts of increasing desperation creep further into Hye-Joon's throbbing ears, because this is merely the result of proper planning, really, though you were nothing if not the catalyst for the spectacle itself, and yet, to be candid, that explosion was both bigger and louder than anticipated. I mean, I hadn't expected the blast to shred dear old Dad so, so, the adumbration stammers, momentarily distracted as the building's sprinkler system sputters to life, so completely, you know?

     Even as the cascading water douses her lips, Hye-Joon continues, somewhere between howling and spitting, her protest; to which the waterlogged shadow shrugs, though not indifferently, and resumes dragging her quarry toward the balcony, its door agape and inviting. Debilitating pain hinders Hye-Joon's attempt to rise, yet still she tries, and when she fails, she crawls, she watches, and she assails her ghoulish opponent with profanity unfettered. In return, the sylphlike blight prances amid the mechanically induced rain, yanking the toddler along as she frolics despite his continued shrieks. Though her vision has stabilized, Hye-Joon is unable, showers notwithstanding, to determine where her stepdaughter's features end and the wounds begin, nor does she particularly care. What concerns Hye-Joon is something cold, black, and wet with four rounds left unspent. This is why she crawls.

     Anyways! the carrion crawler trumpets while lazily fingering one of the many holes in a T-shirt through which an equal number of bullets have recently passed, seemingly amused by Hye-Joon's aspirations. Anyway, she repeats, this time with a sigh, like I said before, magic, yeah. Disregarding the fact that your propensity for violence is what got you people into this mess in the first place, and don't get me wrong, maternal rage is a sight to behold! and shit but even so, the magic is this: what goes down may come up, the operative word being may because as stated previously, this magic really isn't meant for you, with the you being plural, of course. Stop me if you know where this is headed, she taunts, gripping both of Gavin's ankles tightly, and to that Hye-Joon simply wails, for words, no matter how stirring, sway not madness.

     But still she crawls.