Page 309 - TheRedSon_PrintInterior_430pp_5.5x8.5_9-22-2019_v1

Granted, the moment was entirely scripted—the fall, the
jagged bones of the dead lining the pit of my descent—a
wonderful bit of flourish, that—and my being partially
flayed by them as I tumbled.
There exist some wonders that even I never want to see
again, assuming one can ever truly see the same thing twice.
What I saw, after my fall was cushioned by a surprisingly
soft mattress, was the complete and utter cancelation of
stolid sanity. I was upon what appeared to be an endless
bed stained with the blood, urine, and vomit that prolonged
madness oft evokes from its hosts. I was not alone—
punctuating the infinite length and breadth of this bed were
lunatics of all stripes, one no less insane than another for
their differences.
Some were strapped down, others held by chains, still
others the prisoners of torture devices—these were only a
fraction of the means by which they were held fast. Each
of the crazed were inhumanly contorted. Their muscles,
through ceaseless attempts to express the inexpressible, had
completely reshaped the landscape of their physiques and
faces, creating madness in body as well as mind. Unique
to each was the sound they emitted, representing their
specific species of infirmity—laughing, crying, screaming,
squealing, begging. It was an ungodly din—I’d never heard
anything remotely like it.
Rising from the center of the bed, should it have had one,
lunacy sprang eternal and incarnate—the Angel of Madness
itself, Deleriael. It was a cyclone of pure consolidated
contradiction, a prowling paradox that uttered insanity
through each pore of its fluctuating body. It physically
resolved each statistic of known psychology into an eruption
of volcanic nonsense, a form beyond my mind’s immediate
ability to understand or accept, let alone appreciate.
The angelic master of the bed was also strapped to the
mattress. However, many of its manacles had already
been broken, and a great number of leather straps seemed
312 | Mark Anzalone