The Chronicles of the Wandering Man

by Michael E Bell

Winner of the Fanstory.com Seal of Quality award

Copyright © 2010 by Michael Bell

All rights reserved. This ebook or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Produced with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)

First Published, 2012

Michael Bell

mbell_writer@yahoo.co.uk

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Ch.1 - Mother Dust

Ch.2 - The Cuckoo and the Eldritch Kiss

Ch.3 - The Treacherous Tree

Ch.4 - Black Moon Glinting

Ch.5 - Interlude: What Came Before

Ch.6 - In Flick'ring Light, Bells Toll

Ch.7 - The Wishing Well of Fate

Ch.8 - Interlude: A Prayer and a Sermon

Ch.9 - From Black Depths, Light Abounds

Ch.10 - Terra Sanctum; A Shadow on the Grey

Glossary

Technical Specification

Chapter 1

Mother Dust

I

A few breaths past forever's night

with Dawn a strangled mem'ry,

I choke upon the afterlife

of xenophobic fury.

The dust cakes lungs and soils my air

with evil's dark excreta,

my life become thick boles of dung

Hate riddled with his cancer.

I look across an Earth bleached grey

by atoms' tortured pleas;

a paranoid metropolis,

an empty legacy.

With horror's black yet verdant hope

I quest 'cross landscapes raped.

A tiny ant with solace dreams -

from this world to escape.

II

A hundred years or so ago,

the blight had struck this land

with fetid breath and acid bile

and dealings underhand.

No dog of war was our demise,

nor politics our loss.

It was the deals, grotesque and grim,

the winning against cost.

As lust became our currency

and testing was a virtue,

poor Mother Nature bled upon

altars of profit's nurture.

Eventually the land was dry,

no creature found a mate.

The world, in all its innocence,

fell victim to our hate.

III

Now radiation suckles me

upon a nuclear teat,

the fallout fuels my apathy

and no day is discreet.

Although I breathe, I live in death,

a zombie all alone,

as though the devil drinks my breath

and soaks my very bones.

What animal have I become,

existing just to stroll,

inhabiting this purgat'ry

with no hope of parole?

I only know that I must seek

a purpose where I can.

Through desolation's aftermath,

I am the Wand'ring Man.

Chapter 2

The Cuckoo and the Eldritch Kiss

IV

A Cuckoo called my name tonight

and broke my pointless sleep.

It dragged me from my nightmare's hold

and suicide's cold creep.

I shook the shadows from my head

and gathered up my world;

a rucksack, packed with who I am,

my dull brown flag unfurled.

That bird-call was a prophecy,

a warning to beware

that Death was out there, stalking me,

and fixed me with his stare.

I shouldered hope and scored the land

as, heading dark to dark,

I sought the source of nature's caw,

my guardian angel lark.

V

I came upon a place of home;

a building that still stood,

with droopy door and sleepy windows'

memories of wood.

The Cuckoo's call had led me here

in deference to my quest,

but night yet tried to hide from me

the jewel it could divest.

Eventually I found my boon,

my sustenance of food

in tins sealed tight against the smog

of fallout's rancid brood.

As fibre filled my womb with hope,

determination's fuel

was spice upon this rarest meal.

Starvation's madness cooled.

VI

The bedroom spawned a precious tear,

a fresh line on my cheek.

Two skeletons hugged on a bed

decayed, macabre and meek.

Their eldritch mouths touched in a kiss,

a love defying death.

I wept in honour of their lives,

remembering lovesick breaths.

I covered up their modesty

with moth-worn blanket's cloud

and searched their sanctuary for aid;

I never felt less proud.

I came upon a gun and shells,

still oiled and well preserved;

security and danger mixed,

a cold comfort absurd.

VII

I hit my path with vim renewed

and strode into the void

of shadows clutching at the earth,

no longer paranoid.

I knew that I must find a place

of haven in this land,

and so I wandered, determined,

across the hostile sand.

I chanced upon a rocky crag

and narrow valley's mouth.

My instincts set ablaze my mind

with dark warnings uncouth.

I grabbed my pistol from my waist

and primed a ready shot,

but then a cold click rang behind:

This might just be my lot.

Chapter 3

The Treacherous Tree

VIII

The coffin's click assailed my ears,

my heartbeat drummed out notes.

Thoughts flooded with a treacle sea,

but Fear - the bastard - floats.

A woman, leather-bound and dark,

her eyes gun barrel ends,

had pinned my careless self against

a rock with rifle's lens.

I saw her tendons tighten 'gainst

the trigger's hairline clasp

and threw myself into a roll

to her frustrated gasp.

"I seek not death!" I yelled aloud,

and threw my gun aside.

This filthy, deadly, rarest girl

could not in hate reside.

IX

Her gun on me, she told me of

communities survived,

of how they eked a hellish life,

existence never thrived.

With panic in her desperate gaze,

she bade me move along

before the others saw me as

a brick to make them strong.

"You cannot understand," she said,

"this isn't what you need,"

but I would sacrifice all time

for ten minutes of creed.

Reluctantly, she took me down

into the valley's maw.

Despite her pessimistic tone,

this was my dream restored.

X

Within an hour, the night played host

to kidnap's treachery,

as ambushers cloaked in the dark

had strapped me to a tree.

She'd looked at me with silent eyes,

a mute testimony

to how a lonely heart is tricked

by thoughts of company.

The rock-dead wood pressed at my back

like nature's cold revenge.

My captors jigged and chanted like

demons in their demesne.

Their gazes fed upon my form

with fever's fervoured lust.

Three men insane. One frightened girl.

Me and my foolish trust.

Chapter 4

Black Moon Glinting

XI

The dull illumination's pall

sent shadow 'cross the scene.

The sun, these days behind the smog;

Black Moon, dead light obscene.

My captors chanted, sang and jerked,

and brandished shivs and sticks

as though the Radiation's stage

cast them as lunatics.

I knew the fate that robbed their minds

and kept my body young

while every human molecule

was by its hangman strung.

Despite their vicious, sick intent,

I didn't own the blame

to hate these creatures, pitiful.

All victims. All the same.

XII

They kicked up nature's detritus

and moved in for the kill

while at the back my captor girl

stood wide-eyed, frozen still.

Medusa; Gorgon, my demise,

now petrified by fear.

Her snakes my desperation,

my crime a single tear.

As cunning violence rent the air

and blades strove for my blood,

she came to life and hefted arms,

a serpent in the mud.

My plundered gun her shining sword,

she set their demons free.

Their thoughts became but crimson clouds;

their dreams rained over me.

XIII

She loosed my bonds and begged me to

forgive her cruel deceit;

with food so rare in this black glare,

I was a source of meat.

My liberated captors draped

across the sticky ground;

my first taste of community

in decades never found.

I told her I could understand

the fear that drove her wrong;

dead people in a dying land

have nowt to keep them strong.

She took my hand and sparks aroused

determination's cue.

We'd join our strengths, resume the hunt

for life regained anew.

XIV

We watched eternal starless night

as if to seek a way,

and then that moon winked down at us,

black glinting light at play.

The birth of possibilities

then burgeoned in my mind.

If sun could flash, the world could heal;

regenesis defined.

Our mem'ries didn't hold our names

or stale identity,

but in this barren, hopeless world,

I now had hope for me.

Night Adam in a lifeless waste,

Night Eve to plant a tree.

The future would be ours to mould;

perhaps my destiny?

Chapter 5

Interlude: What Came Before

(i)

Mutations soaked the air, that night,

and drowned the world in dark;

a wave of chemical demise

that left the blackest mark.

The reaper was a scientist,

apocalypse foretold

by meddling with such fragile cloth;

the fabric of the world.

He rode a steed of good intent

upon a path of hope,

but paved inferno's flaming road;

the final misanthrope.

His name consigned to dust's lament,

his legacy is death;

existence now reformed in dirt

and Lonesome's shallow breath.

(ii)

I clawed my way from underground,

a rubble cradle's clutch.

I heaved a gulp of Poison's air

with lungs coated in smutch.

The burrows of the deepest trains

had kept me in their clasp,

as though the day had 'come a sword,

the night my hasp to grasp.

I knew I was a man, those days,

a person on the Earth,

my name forgotten out of need,

my past a blank since birth.

I wandered from life's wreckage with

a will to walk away

from history and mem'ries past;

society's dismay.

(iii)

I walked for weeks before the pang

of hunger halted me,

the air alive with nourishment;

extended destiny.

I knew my natural life had gone,

replaced with acid's fee,

but even then I didn't know

I'd walk through centuries.

Eventually, I understood;

the world was down to me,

and Atlas handed me his weight's

responsibility.

I set out to discover him;

the man who signed our writ.

The world needed a target's face

to drag it from the pit.

Chapter 6

In Flick'ring Light, Bells Toll

XV

We strode into the dawn's soft dark

with light held twixt our palms,

intentions mapping Destiny

but Fate penning our psalms.

The lonely land was welcoming

to our intruders' gait.

Each footstep both a scorpion's kiss

and petty balm too late.

Yet willing wind whipped up a wake,

our progress tracked in dust.

The world, despite our race's hate,

was welcoming of us.

We walked, a couple meek and small,

and sought our final goal,

no longer aimless or alone.

I willed my world to stroll.

XVI

The acres passed beneath our feet

and acorns turned to trees.

The years drove sun to shyly peep

through black sky's storm-swept seas.

We ate of our companionship;

a feast served up by love,

two bottom-feeding shadow crabs

become a soaring dove.

As we evolved to suckle hope

and learn again to breathe

without the poison's nurturing,

the daytime sought reprieve.

We came to know a happiness,

a freedom of a sort,

in us a perfect symmetry

not to our past distort.

XVII

But beauty cannot have her way

while evil draws a breath,

and dirty Fate came out to play

just as we cheated death.

Despite the decade spent as two,

we knew work still remained.

We still sought to the world renew;

repentance for the stains.

As prophecy dogged at our heels

uneasy and afraid,

we felt the toll of doleful bells

through air now tasting staid.

Somewhere ahead, humanity

had dug itself a hole,

and t'ward the peals of travesty

we wandered with our souls.

Chapter 7

The Wishing Well of Fate

XVIII

We found the town that fateful day,

that hateful, fatal place

replete with greetings' violent smile;

a gun trained on my face.

The eyes behind were wild with hyp

that bred with unhinged zeal,

their gaze a hungry, feral greed,

our sanity their meal.

The town was decked in Devil's garb

and beauty come to harm.

Black bells rang out at every hour;

a call to prayer and arms.

The air was choked with grease and fear

while malice walked the streets.

All peace had left this loveless place

to fester in deceit.

XIX

They herded us by gun and boot

into a rotting shed,

ostensibly for quarantine

against infection's spread.

We knew we had to find a way

to help the light return,

and from this fetid, dirty place

the madness must all burn.

Eventually they kicked us, bound

and gagged, to face a judge.

They sat us by the village well

to sate a spiteful grudge.

Our freedom was a symbol of

the life they had denied,

and justice had no guiding hand

in what they might decide.

XX

An oil pump hammered up and down

to give this town its life,

and from its shadow crawled the judge

to underline our strife.

Decayed, decrepit, rotting eyes

with madness housed within

alighted on our hog-trussed forms

with vile and proud chagrin.

"You are accursed, you evil fiends!"

the judge yelled to the sky.

"Only the Lord can save your souls,

you cannot him deny."

With that he ordered guns to bear

upon our helpless forms.

I leaned against my bride of night

and waited for the storm.

XXI

No saviour, I, to help this place,

messiah to the world.

Instead my quest was just my pride

around my dead heart curled.

The love I found was all for naught,

I saw as powder bloomed.

The future world would bow to this;

the evil that men do.

And then Dark Eve became a cloak

thrown bloody over me,

her body flung to save my life

and possibilities.

To yells of hate and anguished tears,

I hurled myself away

into the wishing well of Fate,

and as I fell, I prayed.

Chapter 8

Interlude: A Prayer and a Sermon

The Wandering Man's Prayer

i

I never understood the faith

that drove the flock to you,

nor could condone the hapless fate

you left them in to stew.

I see apostles up above,

all victims of your crime,

adrift upon insanity

you built in your design.

They think they do your work, oh God,

by culling freedom's peace.

They think their hate won't count when comes

your final armistace.

Instead of helping heal the world,

you leave these monsters free,

and now I know you won't save them.

You leave that up to me.

ii

I see in you a callous god,

a petty deity,

and now I have faith, finally,

that you will fail to see

the ramollescence this world needs

to rise from horror's seethe;

the freedom I must gift to it,

the air it craves to breathe.

My partner was my link to hope

but now I wear her life.

I have a stomach full of grief

where once I had a wife.

And so I pray to you, my Lord,

who dwells in ethers fey.

I pray you'll see the only course,

and stay out of my way.

The Judge's Sermon

i

The day the holy mushroom cloud

delivered us from sin,

He gave to us, the strong and proud,

the tools we need to win.

Beneath the purity of night,

for decades we have lived

to bring us to our time of might,

to live and thrive herewith.

This frontier town has been our ark

to shield us from The End.

Now we'll maintain this perfect dark

until his will amend.

I am the prophet, sent by God

to spread his holy voice,

the shepherd sent to steer you from

freedom's anarchic vice.

ii

So follow me, ye ragged few,

into the future's care,

and understand we live our lives

beneath his blessed stare.

No traitor's words will stay our hand,

no lies will hold us down.

No shadow fiend can understand

our burgeoning reknown.

We are the world, these coming times!

We are the sacred might!

We are the chosen children of

the Lord's eternal night!

We are the children: SHOUT FOR ME!

We are theandric dark!

And in our midnight, cast from earth,

the world will bear our mark!

Chapter 9

From Black Depths, Light Abounds

XXII

The Earth's intestines clutched my form

with muck and grimy mire,

a depth of horror past forlorn

to stoke my anger's fire.

I'd landed in the blackest slime,

soaked in the town's dark blood;

a buried abattoir of filth,

a lake of oil and mud.

The pump was groaning up above,

the ground growled of its loss.

The air was shuddering with fear

as man stole Earth's black gloss.

I knew, then, Mother wanted help

and I could be her knight.

This lake - the folly of their greed -

could undo numbers' might.

XXIII

I rummaged through my carry-sack

with need fuelling my stare

until I found combustion's birth

adorned within a flare.

With grim design and grimmer face,

I clambered through the dark

and climbed foundations of the pump

without a sound to hark.

In desperate times we find a way

to dig up what is right

from ages-buried treasure troves

we choked with our insight.

Into dry dusk I made my way,

a creature of the deep,

clad thick in murk and cold lament

for crops I must now reap.

XXIV

I trudged unto the village well

and sank to weary knees.

I bellowed out a primal yell

for all the flock to heed.

They came to me with angered awe

across collective face -

they saw my mercy like a rock;

the fate they must embrace.

The Judge approached to spell my death

with but a violent point,

but then my flare lit up the night.

"The darkness I anoint!"

I watched their faces bow to fear

as light slipped down the well,

these misled fools I'd not allow

to sound the Earth's death knell.

XXV

The fire burned out the world that day

and gorged on holy air.

It supped on lives brought up on lies

and stripped the dead land bare.

The sky lit up with flaming light -

a visit from the sun -

the long-black air lit up as bright

as powder from a gun.

The town was taken by the clouds,

become but motes of dust.

The Judge, his hate, his every heir

I gave to higher trust.

I cannot know if 'Arbiter'

was my job to assume.

I only know this crater's depth

will be my sad heirloom.

Chapter 10

Terra Sanctum;

A Shadow on the Grey

XXVI

Now picture this: a requiem,

the black upon the grey.

A world insane from lack of light

and decades' dark dismay.

The sun long hid, in fervour lost

to violent children's play.

The shadowless and bone-chill cold,

the black chagrin display.

In fear, we played ambition's game

and gave our trust away

to humbly set our knees to earth

and join with midnight's fray.

With craven lust for power's trust,

quintessence of our hate,

we killed our Terra Sanctum home.

Redemption comes too late.

XXVII

Ash; acrid black, a bitter taste

to wake the screaming pain,

each breath a hacking agony

to wheeze of my refrain.

Each blistered sore a flaming eye

to strip away my thoughts

and gaze upon the guilty depths

to which I dared resort.

My shattered form was animate

and muscles clung to bone,

but skin was now a blackened crisp

and burnt flesh my cologne.

The town was gone by fire and air;

a kiss blown to the sky,

black liquid burst into a bloom

to teach the dead to fly.

XXVIII

A few blinks past revenge's flames,

once more I walked alone,

my body healed by mutant genes,

my bandages cursed bones.

Grey sky now pulsed in daily time

and soon I'd see the light.

No longer were all days denied

defining noon and night.

The world, at peace without the noise

of torrid human life,

was finding health despite the hand

with which we fed it strife.

The cycle turned by bird and tree

would bear the future's get,

without bipedal interference,

each day dusk would set.

XXIX

My shadow cooled a salad shoot

thrust bravely at the clouds;

triumphant photosynthesis

had birthed despite the shroud.

I hadn't seen the shadow man

for decades; ten or more,

and in his dark I saw the light

tired Mother had in store.

The world was perfect without us.

The beauty of her form

had led me to man's final breath

to quell all chance of storm.

As dawn burst through the ashen wall

to light the first new day,

I chose a gravestone for mankind,

an outline 'gainst the grey.

XXX

Strange fruit upon a rancid tree;

a gallows grown from guilt.

A silhouette in life's expanse,

bereft of what we built.

Strange fruit upon a rancid tree

to feed the future's gain,

a rotting, flapping epitaph,

one final eldritch stain.

Strange fruit upon a rancid tree,

the end of all we made

by pillage, rape, and plunder's boot

and pride's poor serenade.

Strange fruit upon a rancid tree

so God will understand:

In desolation's aftermath,

I am the hanging man.

THE END

Glossary

Definitions for the more obscure words used:

Demesne - pronounced ‘Dee-Men’, meaning ‘a man’s domain, land, or holdings’

Smutch - to blacken with or blackened by soot

Hyp - a morbid depression

Ramollescence - a softening or mollifying

Theandric - created / inspired by God or the divine

Technical Specification

For those who are interested ...

Your format was quatrains, grouped by fours into thirty seven parts

Your rhyme scheme was ABCB, with some partial rhyme thrown into the mix

Your meter was alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and trimeter, with occasional additional feminine end syllables

Your word count was 3,354

Table of Contents

Ch.1 - Mother Dust

Ch.2 - The Cuckoo and the Eldritch Kiss

Ch.3 - The Treacherous Tree

Ch.4 - Black Moon Glinting

Ch.5 - Interlude: What Came Before

Ch.6 - In Flick'ring Light, Bells Toll

Ch.7 - The Wishing Well of Fate

Ch.8 - Interlude: A Prayer and a Sermon

Ch.9 - From Black Depths, Light Abounds

Ch.10 - Terra Sanctum; A Shadow on the Grey

Glossary

Technical Specification