Page 15 - TheRedSon_PrintInterior_430pp_5.5x8.5_9-22-2019_v1

The first room was meticulously arranged with all
manner of bones and stolen funerary fetishes, ranging
from gravestones to whittled bones. A black carpet stitched
from funeral attire lay unfurled across the floor, flowing
patchwork and dust-covered beyond an archway fashioned
from sculpted human jawbones. Throughout was scattered
and heaped the dried remains of lilies.
This was clearly an echo of the Great Darkness of 1999.
It was pleasing to imagine the madness that once filled the
space I now occupied. Of course, imagination was all anyone
could use to envision that lost year. Even I, a man who was
no stranger to the bizarre, was left with no memory, nothing
but the aftermath. I assume that fact also owes to the reach
of the Deadworld, plucking out the precious memories of
the only true freedom mankind has ever enjoyed—in this
life, at least. But the wonderful aftermath, when the world
woke from nightmare . . . Towers made from teeth, lakes of
glowing bile, underground theatres of strange intent, houses
built to the scale of monsters, and on and on. By the gods,
what a fallout!
The shack, like the rest of the world, had been visited
by the secret dream of the human condition—expressed for
exactly one year and then wiped clean from memory, if not
matter. For all I knew, the room could have been the product
of my very own Darkness-fueled hijinks. Though, to be
honest, while the theme and its respective execution were
fine enough, it was hardly the caliber of my own works—
those created outside of the Darkness.
The chamber beyond the archway was an improvement,
however. It sported a throne made from tumbledown
tombstones, and it was crowded with dozens of modeled
skeletons. Every one of them stood frozen in various
postures, but all pleaded with a visibly aloof Funeral
King—a skeleton attired in purple robes made from dyed
rags, crowned with a bone circlet joined by gold and silver-
flecked teeth, seated upon a throne of cemetery stones.
18 | Mark Anzalone