Kristin Read online

  ‘And who has told you this?’ the shrivelled human probed, sarcastically. ‘This all-powerful, all-seeing female embodiment of the devil?’

  Yes, I told it, she thought, proudly.

  ‘I only listen to my inner voice, Professor.’

  I am thine inner voice!

  ‘If we do as you suggest it would be the same as signing our own death warrants. Please, Mr President, don’t listen to the General’s insane ideas any longer. You are a great threat to the future of Korea, General Choi, your kind should be consigned to the rubbish bin, you are not a forward thinking man!’

  She observed, enraptured, and emulated the non-obese being as it pulled the fleshy surrounds of its oral cavity into a tight, elongated shape. A drop of salt-fluid ran down its face from beneath its authoritarian head covering.

  ‘Neither are you, Professor. For instance ... you didn’t see this coming, did you?’

  In a period of time she equated to three pumps of its organ of circulation, the non-obese being produced a flashing steel barb from nowhere and hammered into the side of the shrivelled human’s head.

  She writhed with pleasure as the shrivelled human’s lifeblood spurted and gushed in all directions, splattering the faces of the others. He is dying, dying! Now the others ... kill the others too! Bring them death! End their lives ... and then release the great weapons of destruction!

  But the non-obese being did not listen to her commands. Calmly, it poked a digited limb-end into an opening in its bottom covering, withdrew a piece of white material and wiped the steel edge clean of lifeblood. Then it replaced the blade and leaned forwards, limb-end digits intertwined, ready to resume its dialogue with the others.

  Thou wilt hear me, she seethed. To deny me is to ignore thine own conscience.

  The face of the obese leader had dried, gained an unnat-ural hue. It looked as she had felt when she’d attempted to sate her thirst with the lifeblood of the owner of her coverings: It really was an extraordinarily grotesque individual. Seemingly, her father had not created each human equally. She was quite beautiful, whereas the obese leader looked as if it had been conceived and produced with spite. For a flickering moment she felt sorry for it.

  The obese leader locked its slit, puffy organs of vision on the shrivelled human until its bloody gurgling stopped. Death! Death! Death! she writhed. It’s life has ended! In front of my mortal organs of vision ... how glorious! I must have more ... I will see this homicide spread across the whole of the Earth!

  The obese leader shifted its gaze to the shrivelled human’s lifeblood-splattered killer, gazing at it as if it were deranged. Without further vocalization it fumbled for something under the edge of the piece of organic material. Seconds later, a barrier entrance burst open and a group of stunted humans rushed in, weapons ready, and took up position either side of their gross ruler, who struggled to communicate further.

  ‘ ... Place ... the General under arrest,’ it instructed, eventually.

  Stop! What are you doing? Let it discharge its duty to take life, this is what it desires, what I demand of it, of all of thee!

  ‘You will die if you do not kill!’ cautioned the non-obese being, as it was dragged from the space. ‘YOU WILL LEARN ... YOU WILL DO AS SHE SAYS, ALL OF US WILL!’

  She moaned, ecstatic.

  When the non-obese being’s falsetto protests had faded into the distance the obese leader turned to face the slain intellectual. It paused, then swung a side-limb through the air slowly. Two of the stunted humans, acting upon its signal, got hold of the body and transported it from the space, leaving a trail of lifeblood, and closed the barrier entrance behind them.

  ‘Please leave me alone,’ the obese leader requested, hanging its head.

  The remaining humans left the space.

  The bony protrusions inside her oral cavity ground against each other: What was happening? It was impossible that only one of the humans in this space had fallen under her control, her will was too strong for that. Why was human integrity degrading so slowly here? Why wasn’t there more malice aforethought, cruelty, killing? Why did so many here waste time thinking of the consequences of their actions, why didn’t they simply pick up a weapon and kill, as the non-obese being had done?

  The shrivelled human was dead, it wasn’t a problem anymore, but the obese leader had insufficient hatred within its soul, it was using the high end of its organ of thought too much for her liking. She would put this right. She probed the obese leader’s mind for anything she could exploit, and inadvertently stumbled upon the phenomenon of human sexuality and procreation: Her father had designed the race in two parts, male and female! One was strongly attracted to the other and when they reached a certain level of maturity they would join. The male would inseminate the female and she would eventually produce young. Her father had incorporated a fail-safe mechanism — intense physical pleasure — into the species to ensure that the process was ongoing. But the fail-safe could also be used purely for pleasure; this was the sensation she’d felt while astride the great weapon of death in the Middle Eastern lands, even though no male had been present. It was a stroke of genius! She now yearned for a male to give her pleasure, to inseminate her. She wished to produce offspring; she would raise them well.

  She drifted towards the vacant, lifeblood-soaked resting place and as she settled, a single word leapt from the obese leader’s mind into hers — love. Love; the antithesis of hate. The obese leader loved his young. A base idea evolved inside her and she made it become reality.

  For an instant of immeasurably short duration, she imagined that she herself had once loved passionately, and that this love had been returned. But if it had actually happened it had been long ago, far from this place. She could no longer recall, nor cared, what her loved one had looked like, what his title had been. She once believed her father loved her, but she’d been mistaken. Now all she wanted to do was to defile and destroy his precious creation. She sought this more than anything else in existence. Love? There was no room for such a pointless, weak emotion in her soul. It was already full — full of hatred.

  The obese leader raised his head abruptly, sensing movement. A feint displacement of extraordinarily cold air made him shiver and he locked his eyes on the empty resting place, knowing intuitively that it was now occupied by something unintelligibly bad.

  Out of the vacuum in dimensional space in which she moved a thread of khaki fibre appeared in mid-air, long strands of shining, black hair. He shrieked, pushing his resting place away and heard the wheezing intake of air, slow exhalation, smelt a rancid odour.

  ‘I breath thy fear,’ she whispered into his auditory organ. ‘It is entire.’

  He turned white, his organs of vision wide with terror.

  ‘ ... What ... what are you?’ he stammered.

  Her materialization gathered momentum. Through pieces of fast growing outer membrane and forming bone he could see an organ of circulation pumping lifeblood around translucent veins. ‘ ... Leave me be, bitch ... return to the realm of nightmare!’

  ‘Regrettably, we must open a physical dialogue, pitiable sack of fat!’ she hissed.

  She watched him prod desperately beneath the piece of organic material. ‘Thy device is disabled, thine attendants dead. Every mortal within this edifice is dead, apart from the non-obese being. He will soon return and thou wilt concur with his plans.’

  ‘Get out of my head ... you are not real!’

  Organs of vision, glistening with evil, solidified like two perfect onyx beads and she settled by his side, her reformation complete. ‘Then touch me, if thou believest thy vision deceives thee.’

  Fearfully, he reached out a side-limb and brushed the side of her face with the tips of his digits, felt the reality of her presence, the frigid temperature of her outer membrane, the nada of her soul, its unadulterated enmity.

  ‘ ... What ... in the name of God ... are you?’ he choked, withdrawing the limb with a gasp.

  ‘In the name of God? In
the name of God, I am his child.’

  ‘But in Christianity the son of God was ... ’

  ‘Not that fucking imposter! I am outcast, despised, but his child nevertheless. I am thy past, thy present and thy future.’

  ‘But you appear ... as a woman.’

  ‘My physical gender is immaterial.’

  ‘ ... You are she of whom we are told?’

  ‘I am the true essence of humankind. For now I am Kwang.’

  ‘Kwang? Why are you here?’

  ‘I have always been here.’

  ‘ ... But why ... why have you come to Korea?’

  ‘I seek assurance.’

  ‘Assurance?’

  ‘The certainty that thou shalt use the destructive means at thy disposal. Thus far, I have only found such a guarantee within the soul of the non-obese being.’

  ‘The non-obese being?’

  ‘He killed here, in this space.’

  ‘ ... General Choi?’

  ‘ Yes, generalchoi. Why did you have him taken from here?’

  ‘Why? Because he murdered my minister for science, he is insane.’

  ‘How does one measure insanity? It was thee who authorized the design, the construction of the great weapons of death, now it seems thou hast not the conviction to use them.’

  ‘They were built as a deterrent, the ultimate bargaining chip. Everybody, on all sides, knows that if a nuclear war were to actually start the world would take a hundred years to recover.’

  ‘Generalchoi knows better, he appreciates that this would not be an end, but a beginning.’

  She eyed him angrily. ‘How hast thou resisted me?’

  ‘I have a conscience.’

  ‘Thy conscience belongs to me, it has ever been so.’

  ‘ ... And yet ... and yet you find you cannot force me to execute your will. You say you’ve killed everyone in this building, apart from Choi, and the horrors you’ve wrought upon the world are undeniable, but you still wish me to give the order to fire the missiles ... why? Why don’t you just do it ... ’

  ‘Thou shalt take each other’s lives!’ She tasted a bitter, black fluid between the fleshy surrounds of her oral cavity.

  ‘I would rather die than give the order.’

  ‘I will gladly take life from thee — ugly, swollen, slit-eyed, yellowfleshed cunt!’

  ‘ ... But if you kill me then you will have failed to prove your will is stronger then mine, it will be no victory.’

  ‘FUCK YOU!’ She dug the hard tips of her digits into the surface and drew them towards her. ‘Generalchoi will return and thou wilt issue the command.’

  ‘ ... I will not. I refuse to bring destruction upon my country, condemn its people to death for your fulfilment, your entertainment.’

  ‘And this is thy final word?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Maybe thou canst be persuaded to change thy mind? Thou hast produced offspring.’

  ‘ ... Offspring?’

  ‘Young.’

  ‘ ... Children? Yes, a boy and a girl.’

  ‘They had not lived long on this Earth.’

  ‘ ... They are ten and twelve, respectively ... why do you speak of them?’

  Her shoulders shook with mirth when she learnt their precise ages. ‘Generalchoi talked of thine enemy, americans, south of the border. I moved two of the troops, had them pay thy young a visit in their place of learning. Thy female young has been raped and butchered.

  The obese leader jumped up.

  ‘And what a fucking and butchering the troops dealt her … limb after limb. They reduced her body to a raw stump. She experienced overwhelming pain, lost too much lifeblood to have survived for very long. She soon passed from this life.’

  ‘ ... MY DAUGHTER ... !’

  ‘Raped her! Chopped her up! Chopped her up!’

  ‘NO!’ he screamed, rattling his vocal membrane in ang-uish, amusing her once more. He lifted her onto the piece of organic material, closed his digited limb-ends around her head-stem and squeezed until his digit joints turned white.

  ‘Ah, yes!’ she spluttered. ‘That’s it ... hate me now ... grotesque, inflated motherfucker! Hate me ... avenge thy young!’

  ‘I WILL KILL YOU, YOU BASTARD ... I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU!’ he bawled, hanging his face close to hers.

  ‘BUT WAIT!’ she spluttered, stifling her laughter. ‘I have not ... yet told thee of ... thy male young.’

  He relinquished his grip.

  ‘After he’d watched his sibling abused, dismembered, scaled down to carrion, the troops kicked him to the ground and beat him many, many times about his small, soft head with a makeshift weapon of oxidized iron, until he too expired.’

  The obese leader drew his head back and smashed it into her face, splitting her olfactory organ wide open. She found a broken bony protrusion inside her oral cavity and spat it out. ‘PAIN ... FUCKER! FOR THAT THOU SHALT PAY DEARLY!’

  But quite suddenly the obese leader seemed to lose the desire to inflict further retribution upon her. His face contorted, turning crimson, and he began to shake, his organs of vision shedding fluid that appeared to be associated with his psychological state. She looked up at him and cocked her head to one side, wondering: Could it really be that he was even uglier, now that he’d learned the fate of his adored offspring?

  ‘MY CHILDREN!’ he cried, rolling onto his back.

  ‘Thy children,’ she echoed.

  ‘MY ... SWEET ... CHILDREN!’

  ‘Thy sweet children. The troops ended their lives brutally, as I willed them to do. They will not grow. They will never know the exquisite pleasure of mature copulation. They will never again experience the primitive, but comforting warmth of a human embrace, the fondness of a kiss. Their final comprehension of life in this world will be riddled with confusion and pain. They will never know love. Just like me.’

  Bruised and bleeding, she hovered over the grieving human, revelling in his misery. ‘So tell me, now that thy progeny are cold and defunct, how dost thou feel about those who have committed this act — americans?’ she asked, as her coal-black saliva swung down into his face in a string. ‘How dost thou think troops should pay for what they have done?’

  The obese leader sprang up and struck her hard, twice, around her head and she smirked, licking away the lifeblood. ‘Thine anger is misdirected, yellowflesh, thou knowest what thee must do.’

  ‘This monstrous deed was not the soldiers’, it was yours! You used them as your tool, made them swallow the poison in your soul! Now you have taken five lives — those of my dear children, the soldiers’, and my own. It is you I will kill!’

  ‘Exasperating mound of shit! What must I do, pull off thy limbs one by one?’

  She laid a digited limb-end either side of his face, closed her oral cavity over his, and poked her organ of speech and taste inside, elongating it like a worm down his respiratory tube. He started to choke, tried to bite the invading organ off, but couldn’t close his jaws, and her unspoken words entered its mind. ‘I will find another way, time for thee to join thy young.’

  ‘THOU SHALT NOT MURDER!’ The voice sliced through her head, its decree irrevocable, and something tore her away from her victim with fury and hurled her across the surface. Her head impacted the barrier with a crack and her limbs of mobility buckled beneath her, broken. The digited limb-ends of the obese leader’s young, those of all she’d murdered, directly or indirectly, reached out in unison and began to throttle her.

  Once more, she’d broken the sixth commandment laid down by her father to the Hebrew lawgiver, Moses, on Mount Sinai. She was bereft of power: Something had taken it from her and wouldn’t give it back. It was her father, he refused to let her exercise her will. But she was stronger than him, she knew it. When he created her, at the same time as he created her brother, the Christ, he’d made a wholly evil entity of limitless capability.

  She had wasted her precious time on the virtuous, fat human, far too much time. Her masterplan for humanity
was faltering. She’d lost her focus: She must find her quarry. She must find the Christ. She must kill the Christ.

  Immobilized, crippled from the neck-stem down, she glanced at the obese leader through a red veil of lifeblood. ‘So, thou hast looked deep into Hades and survived?’ she groaned.

  ‘Survived?’ he wept. ‘Do you call this survival?’

  She picked up the scent of the Christ and dematerialized, sensing that when she reassembled the fibres of her physical body, it would be as new.

  ‘Thom ... where are you?’ breathed a desperate, insignificant voice, as the obese leader witnessed her complete disappearance from his shattered life.

  Seventeen

  ‘The sixth thousand and twenty-third session of the council is called to order,’ said United Nations Security Council President, James Bathurst, lifting his gavel and bringing it down briskly. ‘Mr Wise?’

  Council member Robert Wise sifted through the paperwork before him. He tidied the sheets, pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose and addressed the meeting he’d requested twelve hours earlier.

  ‘Mr President, Mr Secretary General, distinguished colleagues. It is with grave concern that I have requested this meeting. You will no doubt be aware that the psychosis that originated in the United Kingdom and then spread across mainland Europe is now affecting North America and shows signs of becoming a global affliction.

  ‘I believe that those of us in a position of power, here within this council, have a responsibility to act now to prevent the worsening of this unaccountable situation whilst we still retain our sanity. I can reveal that information supplied by the Secretariat indicates that the Islamic terrorist group in northern Afghanistan would seem to have successfully engineered the prevailing situation with mind-bending, psychological warfare.’

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Wise,’ interrupted the British president, ‘to what ends?’

  ‘I will let the Secretary General explain, Mr President.’