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Post By The Hooded Hood slips in a secret epilogue while no-one's looking Mon Dec 19, 2005 at 09:03:24 pm EST |
Subject Heart of Darkness Epilogue #4: Bad News About the Doom Hamster Originally That kind of trick is best saved for when people ask for bonuses. |
In Reply To Visionary Mon Dec 19, 2005 at 06:11:52 pm EST |
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| Heart of Darkness Epilogue #4: Bad News About the Doom Hamster It was stitched together with hate, bitter threads woven from the tresses of a woman who slaughtered her own children to avenge herself on her betraying husband and who stabbed out his eyes with scissors before taking her own life. Its internal organs were stuffed so tightly that they had to be folded through additional dimensions. Its heart beat on the ninety-fifth abyss of hell. When it moved to dragged misery and pain behind it like a shroud. It had waited quite a while, licking its wounds, nursing its malice. The elder servitor had been quite powerful in its crude, lumbering way, and the tiny organic things were sharper and harder to kill than most of their ilk. But it knew better days were coming. And so the Doom Hamster waited and bided its time. It had felt the shift. The ancient pinnacle had been twisted through the folds of time and space and now it was once again live, a great stone tuning fork resonating to the hum of the multiverse. The power was immense, the more so because the lighthouse that contained it now seemed to have fused with a greater structure nearby, where the knots of science and magic were more complex than anything the Hamster had ever imagined. And the oppressor had gone. The man who clothed himself in death, who called himself the Necromancer General, had fled his stronghold. With his passing the bindings that held the Doom Hamster to obedience were gone too. Now it was free to grow, to frame its own horrific destiny. The Doom Hamster moved in the crawlspaces of the lighthouse and observed the mortals and bided its time. There were some here – the dimension-displayed juvenile with the gift for forming commands from electrons and for forming greasy buboes on his face, for example – whose minds might make a comfortable nesting place, once they were hollowed out. Then the Hamster could spawn, replicating itself into more and more of the convenient human vehicles. Some even had gifts of significance. The hamster avoided the green-hued woman who was gestating because that child was already claimed by another power, but the adolescent female who tugged at the probabilities of endothermic reactions would be a tasty feast, and her gifts would digest well. Eventually the temptation became too much. Just one, the Hamster of Doom promised itself, One gory death to indulge myself, and then on with the serious stuff. Given that restriction, the Doom Hamster had to select his target carefully. He dismissed at once the adult male with the fraying plumage. There was a cosmic uncertainty about the man that made him unpalatable. He felt full of artificial additives. Likewise the entity of electrons would require too much effort to devour to make a quick snack. Perhaps the conceptual being with the yin-yang aura? Or the human woman who mantled herself in the office of Keeper of the Booke of the Law? But really the Doom Hamster had already set his hell-fast heart on the probability twister. So much insecurity and self-loathing and desperate hope there would make her a rich feast. First her flesh, then her soul. She was in the lighthouse now, her physical form in its regenerative cycle while her spirit travelled the far dimensions of dream. She was completely helpless. The Doom Hamster folded in his form until it again occupied only the frame of the small rodent he had been stitched into. The shape was small enough to squeeze through the crack where the floorboards had rotted and the wall plaster had cracked. From there it was only a short leap onto the bed, and that tempting exposed jugular vein. The swat came completely unexpectedly and buffeted the Doom Hamster across the room to bounce off the exterior stone wall. The being of hate and fury turned round, its eyes penetrating the veil of dimensions to identify its attacker. Hello the creature thought at it. Do you know who I am? What I am? demanded the Doom Hamster, unfolding into a larger and fiercer shape. Claws, tentacles, unfathomable maws opened up around its basic furry bulk. The scruffy, smelly tomcat that had been hiding in the shadows considered the question. Dinner it replied. I am the Doom Hamster! Worlds tremble before my paws! Naught can quell my mighty rage!” I bet you squeak really well considered the cat. It licked one paw and cocked his head at the monster. I’ll give you a count of three to run if you like. The Doom Hamster seethed in fury. Run? I am the terror of hate! I am night and shame and venom! Cower before me, little rag of DNA and instinct! Look upon my glory and despair The cat gave him a look. This isn’t your territory he pointed out. It’s mine. So I get to play with you and then I get to eat you. Lisa’s cat had a personal territorial concept that was measured in light years. That was enough for the Doom Hamster. It unfolded across the dimensions and leaped at the arrogant stupid feline. The cat swiped the creature hard across the nose. Flesh that could withstand the fury of a god shredded under razor-sharp feline claws. And then the Doom Hamster found itself rolled on its back and pinned. How…? Cat, answered the cat. It didn’t mention that it had been suffused with the power of the Celestian Space Robots by the Hooded Hood at the time it had been presented to Lisa as a pet, or that it counted now as one of the greater artefacts. It could draw upon whatever power was necessary from an infinite resource to maintain its indestructibility. The Doom Hamster went a little bit insane then. It replicated itself a thousandfold and every screaming avatar squirmed out to burrow into the living flesh of the arrogant challenging tomcat. The cat moved even faster, claws and teeth everywhere, its own mad little brain going into a personal ecstasy of killing. Time and space stopped having any meaning. The Doom Hamster dredged into the necromantic deposits beneath the lighthouse, magnifying its power a hundredfold and turning to smear the cat across dimensions. The cat ignored that and ripped out the Doom Hamster’s throat, shaking it in his jaws until there was a satisfying crunch and the head came right off. Then the cat ate the head. It was the best part. Kerry turned over in her sleep, mumbled something, then went back to her light snoring. The cat considered the evening well spent. He looked down at the sad bloody little bundle that had been the being of terror and hatred. He batted it hopefully but it wasn’t rising from the dead to fight again. He tossed it in the air and caught it a few times, just for practise, and then decided it wasn’t that interesting any more. In the end he simply sprayed it to prove who’d killed it then hid the remains of the body in one of Visionary’s slippers. Then he went off to look for something more interesting to do. Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2005 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2005 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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