And I was not alone. I put down my lantern at the mouth of the tunnel, since there was already light in the cave. Dozens of lanterns were set in niches cut into the rock of the cave walls. Several of the old workers were dancing and whisper-chanting, while others collected the Milk of Time from the cave floor with wooden spoons. They ignored me as they went about their duties. The Milk itself was dripping down– – down from an enormous cocoon, which was lashed to the roof of the cave by hundreds of thick ropes of silk. The cocoon was about the size of two bulldozers parked end to end. The surface of the huge pod was rough and filthy, with several oozing holes along the sides. I thought about how far I had walked, and the direction the path had taken... The cave was directly under the huge room which housed that fleshy volcano. That meant that the volcano was growing out of the top of cocoon, extending through a hole between the cave and that warehouse room. The cocoon seemed to be constantly oozing fluid – plenty for the workers to collect. As one of the dancing workers moved past me, she whispered, “Ghattambah.” I noticed a structure along a wall of the cave near the cocoon. Steps built onto wooden scaffolding led up to a platform at a level less than five feet away from the pod. As I watched, an old man with a long wooden pole, sharpened at one end, walked up to the platform and began to prod at the cocoon, ripping a couple more holes into it. These began to ooze the Milk of Time almost immediately. Milk? A quaint euphemism for blood, or ichor, or whatever that vile slime was. I decided to get a closer look. I walked up the wooden steps to the platform. I passed the old man on the way and he simply gave me a small nod. I stood high above the cave floor, watching the cocoon. The liquid oozed from the holes with a slow, gently pulsing regularity. I was in awe of this creature. What sort of being could constantly lose vital fluids without dying? It couldn’t be a creature from Earth.... -- An excerpt from Der Fleischbrunnen, one of 25 Lovecraftian horror stories in the fiction collection, BEST LITTLE WITCH-HOUSE IN ARKHAM. Available for Kindle or as a trade paperback: amazon/Best-Little-Witch-House-Arkham-McLaughlin/dp/143444208X/ .
Posted on: Fri, 01 Nov 2013 17:22:04 +0000
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