Pappus

A flash horror story in which a new god is born

Photo by Hasan Almasi on Unsplash

shitch shitch shitch shitch shitch

Ida sat back and looked at her work, setting her felting needle down on the table. She stretched her back.

“It looks pretty good. Don’t you think?”

Melon blinked and purred.

“Yeah, I think you’re right. We’re done here.”

The project had started with vacuuming and there being enough hair between Ida and Melon to create the effigy of a new god. Melon’s fur was soft and black, Ida’s hair was long and white. Their new god was grey. Washed and hand carded. Soft and fluffy, like a baby’s toy, it stood eight inches tall and had a lumpy round belly that dragged on the ground between its fourth and fifth pairs of legs. Its first through third pairs of legs were designed for snatching, perforating, and grinding, respectively. It sang beautifully from a doll’s mouth and had eyes that wobbled as it crawled, half supine, half upright. One could never know just where it was looking. Its tail of course was for balance and strangling. Its tongue leapt out of its mouth in a silent, barbed invective. There will most likely be venom, Melon thought, idly stretching out to her full length on the carpet.

“Okay, Kittymelon,” Ida lifted the effigy from her work table and kissed it gently on the snout, “time for a snack.” In the kitchen Melon jumped up onto the polished formica and sat. Ida set the effigy between them, then went and disappeared into the ice box. Melon hoped for a certain limb, but knew she oughtn’t be too avaricious. Ida would pick the right meal for this god. She watched Ida straighten, her hands, holding their prize, were still hidden by the ice box door. Melon licked her nose. Ida kicked the door closed.

“I listened to everything in there and this one screamed the loudest,” Ida set a platter on the table. Melon rrrrrowed, it was just the thing she’d hoped for, the plump arm of a Josia’s Witness who had darkened their porch the day before last. The taste of her fatty blood had been haunting Melon since the kill. She watched Ida work, cutting raw meat from the bone. Setting the glistening, jelly-like slabs of meat on three plates, one for Melon, one for Ida, and one for the effigy.

“It’s really perfect, isn’t it, Melon? The emissary of a hostile god appears just

in time for this new god to be created.”

Fortuitous, Melon thought. Ida put her knife down and took her seat.

“But, I suppose that neighbor with the red door we hate would also have been suitable.”

Melon’s stomach rumbled. Ida pointed two fingers on her right hand to the sky and two fingers on her left hand to the Earth and closed her eyes.

“Earth and Sky, Meat and Memory, Time the Eternal Eater. We offer sacrifice to this new God, who will be our deliverance from the Linear. Nema.”

Ida opened her eyes and smiled at Melon, “Well dig in.”

Melon did, diving into the jiggly raw meat with her whole head. Ida had better table manners, genteelly cutting her meat into bite-sized cubes, chewing at least twenty times before swallowing. After a few minutes Melon’s left ear twitched at a fluffy plop on that side. She turned to look, the effigy’s face was planted in its meat. Sentience took some getting used to.

“Oh, silly thing,” Ida tucked a finger under its chin and lifted it out of the slick flesh. She held it until the creature had gained better control. “There you go, you’ll be bathing in the spoils of war in no time.”

The trio ate the rest of their meal in silence. The effigy quickly gaining mastery of its limbs and assorted appendages. By the time it had finished its meat, flesh of its own had replaced the soft cat/Ida hair felt of its body and it had doubled in size. Almost as big as Melon. She moawed. Ida dabbed her mouth with her napkin.

“You are absolutely right. Time to get this new god outside.” She stood and picked it up, carrying it like a puppy and scratching between its bird-like ears as she called it a good good new god, what glorious new destroyer he is. In the bright openness, under the warded lintel, she set the new god on the porch. It pranced for a second on the cold cement before sitting its lumpy rump down and waving its first, second, and third pairs of legs at Ida. It opened its red doll’s mouth and sang. No words, just a beautifully melancholy melody that hinted of wrath and destruction. Ida smiled and stroked its muzzle.

“You are a precious, precious argosy. An empty vessel, ready to be filled with entrails and livers and all that is squirmy and red. Go forth, my ravenous one, and fill thy belly with the whole of the Earth. And when that is done, I shall give you a name.”

With a high and transcendent note, the new god was gone, Melon could hear its clawed feet clipping down the street. Screams came not long after.

Ida turned to Melon, “I’m a little tired after all that, how about a movie?”

Rrrrow

“Ooo milkshakes, wonderful idea, Melon.”

Melon’s tummy rumbled again, a chilly bloody vanilla bean shake sounded divine. She listened to screams echo down the street and jumped up onto a windowsill. She was just in time to see the new god’s barbed tongue shoot out of its mouth and pierce the chest of a man on the sidewalk. The barb dug in deep. Melon expected the man to crumple in heap of pain or bubble into goo, but instead he stayed upright, quivering as though electrocuted. As Melon watched his head began to swell, his skull cracking open and ripping his scalp, a hairy bit of it flopped to the pavement. Fine white fuzz seemed to grow out of the exploded head, blooming from the gore.

“Oh, Melon! Isn’t it beautiful? It’s like a dandelion!” Ida had stopped to watch as well. Each white filament umbrella took to the wind, blowing in all directions. A few floated close to the window, Melon spotted little legs thrashing in the air under each buoyant bit of fluff. Not venom, then, Melon thought, but an ovipositor.

Even better.