Night of the Brick

-A true story-

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He remembered how it started.

The disease that infested the mind, slathered and crawled, twisting forth from a gorgon of hell. Regurgitated upwards from the pits of despair, hardened lips tasting the fervent cerebrum of thought.

Taken was he, so quickly. A sickness, undeniable, impalpable, horrific to behold. Thrusting its way into every vestige of reason, every figment of reality, until all one sought was the cool, studded harrows of the craft. It was sickening to observe.

Soon to follow was the madness. From all the horror of twine and tick, through a tumultuous mix of the most venerable, most salacious, most horrifically painful tortures known to man. His good brother had fallen to the darkness.

Was it his fault? No, it couldn’t be. He had only hinted at a vain alternative to boredom. A sickness upheaving sickness. A replacement, harrowing the tribune and untimely curse of existence.

Perhaps he had encouraged it along the way. Perhaps a fleeting agreement here, a concord later on, consensuses wrought of understanding, yet these stood as audacious opulences of applause through which none of this horror should have ripped.

Long he attempted to deny it, attempting to push down the thought unhinging his very core. Yet, the more he ran from his folly, the faster the blackened creature of doubt and pestilence wormed its way back into his reason.

Was he… at fault? Was the man who lit the toppled candle, setting fire to the church, the one at fault? He knew underneath it was his doing, his error, a quick ticket towards salvation which had succeeded so terrifyingly wrong, and there was no avoiding reality any longer.

Now here he stood. Returned to his home, the hulking facade pressing in on him from every side. The salacious door whispering of a twisted reality within. Twin rivets creaking round, the wooden frame dancing to and fro, a mesmerizing performance of the midnight air. And beyond, a black abyss, save two steps stabbing through the imposing gloom.

With a hesitance of the highest degree he stepped within the hulking mass of brood. A home no longer. For the disease was everywhere. Through the halls, atop the mezzanine, and branching into every neglected corner of the place, it was here, and he closed the door behind him in one fluid motion, sealing himself into the darkened tomb.

kish…

He then heard it. The sickened cackle of flesh and muscle, the grinding material of the disease, beckoning him deeper into the womb. Sounding out faintly from some far off cradle of hell.

Stair by stair he descended, making sure to avoid the small remnants of parasitic droppings littering the descent. Alone they were harmless, yet, interconnected, they quickly corroded the mind, wracking sanity from those who toyed in their embrace. It was a risk he did not want to take, yet ultimately was near unavoidable in this gloom. 

Kish

The sound rang out again, closer now. Occasionally he would bump a shred of chitin, a free-torn lump of lecherous medium, sending it clinking down into the maw of the unknown.

Soon the sole of his foot met smooth, unriveted cement, heralding a swift close to his descent. From here on he left himself in the hands of fate, saundering across the pitch basalt expanse.

KISH

The sound was much louder now, drawing ever nearer by the second. Past a corner ahead stood what appeared to be the cracked apex of a door, the meager light from within proved the only source of illumination gracing the darkened tar of this vast abyssal conclave.

Creeping ever towards the weak haft of luminance, chitin material and bricks of matter displaced and clicking back along his path, he tempted reason.

He couldn’t deny it. The temptation was there. It always was. It would be so easy now, to simply reach down and grab a few of the things, clicking them together in place. The way they were meant to be. Perhaps it would even be… fun.

K I S H

The sound ripped him from his thoughts, now a deafening crash. He had finally made it to the doorway, left ajar.

Resting his hand along the smooth wooden frame he steadily teetered his compass of vision round the impasse. What came steadily into view was a sickening, ungodly, horrendous sight; one he deigned he would ever be able to scrape from a frail human mind such as his.

What had once been his brother’s room. A shanty and cozy affair, packed with all the amenities of late night relaxation, was unrecognizable.

The disease was everywhere.

Crates were ripped open, strings and blocks of their innards strewn about the floor. A couch lining one side of the room had been absolutely gouged to near irreconcilability, perspiration and flakes of matter littered its surface. The disease had spread up the walls, rivulets of reflective material scraping at the dead gods above.

And centered within this horrific mess, was what remained of his brother. He was barely discernible now. A hunchback of plague, covered from head to toe in leathery and shorn robes. The material peppered about his fallen waist, and even more of which strewn in heaps along the floor from his stead on the upturned floor.

The only part of him visible to the eye was a pair of arms. The appendages a sickly shade of mucus white, buried to their elbows within a crate of matter and brick, a capsule of time cleaved apart before him.

KISH

His arms periodically spasmed about, drawing waves of brick in each direction. After each span of motion he would typically repeat the act, or on rare occasions pick a squirming parcel from the storage. Lifting the spore upwards into the illumination of the single fixture above, his hooded face betraying peerage onto anything his no-doubt twisted features would betray.

The cringe inducing and terrifying crashes continued for what felt like an eternity. Waves of sound washed over his senses and the remains of his brother as he viewed the sickening state of affairs.

He could maybe save him, maybe if he was able to sneak in and turn the television on he could at least rip him from his fervor of emancipation for but a moment. Perhaps drive a bit of reason into that hollowed out skull.

Taking a slow step forward he realized all too soon, he had made a grievously fatal mistake. Being too occupied on his brothers ravings to look down at where he was headed, his sole came crashing down on a cube of the material.

Fire shot up his leg, the stubs on top digging deep into his flesh as pain clouded his vision. He yelped, drawing his food back before the piece could take hold of his mind. He quickly swam back to the darkness of the expanse, shifting his weak and susceptible form between the opened door of the room and the expanse of frail drywall erected next to it in desperation.

Yet, it was too late. His fate had already been sealed, and a croaking, beastly call rang out in the night.

“Zane… is that you? Do you wanna help me with the Legos?”

O god no, he thought, collapsing his heaving chest deeper into the wall behind him, hand clamped over his whimpering mouth. Trapped in a cage like a rat, he could do nothing as the creature in his brother’s skin crawled forwards. Sickening cracks ripping through the air as joints grinded together, bricks pushed aside in a tumult of horror as the creature loomed towards him from within its nest.

Squeezing his eyes as tight as they would go he prayed for this ungodly nightmare, ripped from the depths of hell, to end.

But he knew it would not, and so he accepted his fate, giving in to the craft. The lecherous satisfaction of the practice. It was such a genius interlocking brick system.

“The greatest of them all,” he silently whispered.

Zane was never seen again, 

for at least a week.