The Call of Crimson

This story contains: substance abuse, mental abuse, language, violence, and self harm.

“I vow to avenge myself from the conscience of my own being.”

John Mark was a man in his early thirties, although swore that he was in his fifties from his appearance. John has swept back dirty blonde hair, with a wrinkled face that has seen many bad things. John has extremely worked hands and clear signs of fights on his knuckles, likely from him being extremely drunk, mixed with anger and depression. John was a tall man at about 6 feet and is quite sinewy, especially for his aging body. He lives in a small apartment with an atrociously bad job and an alcohol addiction. He works at a garbage disposal rig near his area. John was a quiet man, for he did not talk to many people, not that he had anybody to talk to. John has lived in Sun Valley all his life and has nobody to go to when shit gets bad. John, like his mother, has a crippling alcohol addiction and drug addiction, in contrast, he is also poor and considered a bastard, despite not talking to anyone. John is an independent lonely man who just wants to live a quiet normal life. It’s 5:00 so John gets off work ready to go home after a pissy day. He walks out muttering his fuck you’s to everyone on his way out. John slowly walks down the street to get his daily bottle of liquor with the little money he has to drown in his sorrows. He lives in a small town in a mountainous area which is, candidly, in the middle of nowhere. Sun Valley, Idaho was a quiet town with not many people, and an above average amount of tourism. He has been trying to quit drinking alcohol recently but just can’t due to his shitty job and shitty life. Realizing what he is doing, John reflects on his life and realizes that he is worthless and has wasted his life away through drugs and alcohol. John still wonders why he’s here in this cruel world and why he should still stay so he thinks “There is no reason to stay so why don’t I end it already.” “I have promised to keep,” he blurted, not realizing he was speaking out loud. This makes him think of a poem he recited “Stopping In the Woods on A Snowy Evening,” by Robert Frost, which is about a man who is thinking about sucicide stops and remembers that he has promises to go before he dies this is symbolized by the woods being dark and deep or the easy way out. He starts reciting it “Whose woods these are I think I know his house is in the village thou…”.John made it to the liquor store and for just a moment he stops himself and stare at the words “CHEAP LIQUOR” and almost leaves but he can’t stop himself. He walks in and tells the cashier “The usual,” and walks out with a bottle of liquor that he will surely finish in one or two days. After buying the liquor he is relieved about his decision and continues on his was home, suddenly John comes to a stop and starts to sob knowing he has nothing left, no friends, family, money, and not even a reliable home, and yet he continues to go down a downward spiral to insanity using drugs and alcohol to relieve this temporarily and push down his true feelings.He walks to his apartment, yearning for the taste of liquor inside of his mouth and the calm feeling that weed blesses him with, wanting the desperaity to go away, he wants it to end, he wants a better life but knows he doesn’t have to power to make that happen. John sits down for a moment to collect himself before heading off to his apartment. When he makes it to his diminutive apartment he throws himself on the couch. He masturbates to realize his stress from a hard days work and goes and gets his weed (joints) from his stash and pours his first of many glasses of liquor,He flips on the tv so he can occupy his mind temporarily before going to sleep and partly wishing that he never wakes up again.. John wakes up groggy and with a harsh smell of liquor on his breath and although this was normal for an alcoholic, it was worse than usual. Half awake, he looked over at his clock and realized it was nine o’clock. While putting on his old pair of boots he remembers that he must prepare his response to his boss's lecture so it doesn’t get out of hand and ends with him getting fired. Will Smithson, who was not by any means a pleasurable person,but a true bastard, to be with was John's boss, he thinks himself to be a corpo, he has all traits of one, being an asshole, etc., and he was the richest person in Sun Valley, and probably Idaho itself, so he was not a man to temper with. John got up and ran to work as fast as he could but along the way, something caught his eye so he stopped and looked curiously, it was the mountains, the mountains in all their glory and natural beauty. The mountains looked especially inviting with the sun glittering perfectly on the mountain, almost as if there was something pulling him towards it, attracting him. It was inviting but also threatening. The mountains always gave John a sense of size how the mountains are like a grain of sand in the galaxy and how we are in contrast a grain of sand to a mountain. Such mass and incomprehensible size was frightening to him. He thought… Then a semi came rolling down almost turning him into a red stain on the side of the road, breaking his attention from the mountain. He snapped out of it continuing his onward trek to work, going down Caphill street so he could pass the waterfall as well and nearly getting run over time by drivers that couldn’t drive to save their life, but that was normal now in Sun Valley so he ignored it. By the time he made it to work the time was 10:15 and he heard his boss from afar booming towards him as if the ground was shaking from a whale walking on land. Will Smithson was a large man, extremely large, he was around 360 pounds and about six foot ten inches, so he was intimidating to the eye, but everyone knew deep down that he was just like a big ass pussy.“ You are late for the third time this month John. I have given you many goddamn chances that you just waste and waste like my second chances are just a piece of garbage. Am I garbage to you John, is that what you think,” lectured Will. “No sir It will not happen again.” “No sir what,” Will blabbered annoyingly”No sir I will not be late again for a fourth time.” (They both knew he would be late again.) He went on his way to check in, and on his way to his station he tried not to get in any conversation or contact with any of his colleagues and, still hung over and paying no attention to the people around him and in his train of constant thought about the shitty days work he suddenly caught himself thinking about the mountains again and how they stole his glance on the way to work. John feels the need to go up there and see their beauty and feel their peacefulness. He trekked on to his station groggily, he was still hungover and got to work trying not to think about how he hasn't showered in a week and how his rent was three months past due, and how he was trying extraordinarily hard not to just shoot his fuckin head off but he had work to do and promises to keep. “Promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep and miles to go before I sleep,” thought John reciting the poem again. He continued working and surprisingly was undisturbed until his lunch break when he saw his douchebag colleague walking up to him. This colleague was an asshole who nobody likes John knew he wanted trouble.”You need a shower fucking retard. How bout I hose ya’ down,” Jack cajoled; a colleague that could never leave anyone alone.¨You need to watch yourself Jack before you catch a beating and a foot down your fuckin throat,¨ John demanded, not in the mood to argue with and imbecile today.”That's what your mother said to me last night when I came inside of her on accident. Looks like your gonna have a brother with no dad just like you. Fucking inbred sack of shit.” John was sick a tired of Jack's shit and the disrespect that he had to put up with every day and suddenly without precaution, he snapped. John swiftly grabbed the lead pipe beside him before Jack could react…,¨ that wasn't there before,¨ John thought quickly. John swung widely like a Viking with an ax striking down The Franks. and hit Jack in the chin, rending a part of the skin off of his chin. Jack let out a frenzied scream as blood gussed from the broke skin of his jaw,” I’ll fucking kill you retard motherfucker and then fuck your dead mom, “ Jack shouted, dazed, he charged him and threw him to the floor like a ragdoll, hitting him multiple times. John thrashed him again with the pipe and Jack wrestled him back to the ground knocking him into the jagged corner of the wall with almost inhuman strength and rage. Jack's eyes almost looked like a feral animals would. John felt a blow of pain and the warmth of blood. run down his face and into his mouth, giving a sharp taste of mercury as Jack threw his face into the wall. John threw many punches, which almost all missed and one landed in the stomach. Jack grabbed John's hair and got him into a headlock. Struggling John fought his way out with his elbows. They stop and begin staring at each other with deadly intensity. They lunged at each other again, and eventually, Will Smithison came running down to break up the fight and, after struggling for many minutes he tore them apart. John got up dazed, more dazed after drinking a quarter of a bottle of liquor, just as he had done the night before.John stood dazed and looked around.Something caught his eye that was glittering in the rays of the sun, blood, a pool of blood. He stood staring into the small pool of blood that remained after the fight. The crimson glory showed his bent reflection back to him; it was mesmerizing, a man could get lost in there for eternity just gazing into the crimson that seems to go on forever. In the bedlam, he couldn't help but to think back to the mountains he saw just hours previously, their beauty and size, and somehow he began to think about the draw, the unatural draw towards the mountains something or someone, maybe there is some evil lurking there not found, perhaps something that shouldn't be found, something wicked, unholy, a sinful, hateful creature, the bane of existence itself pulling its prey in through beauty and awe. John began seeing things in the blood like it’s a call, a pull, drawing him closer to the edge of what was real and what wasn’t, he was begging to lose his mind. He somehow enjoyed how small the mountains made him feel so small even though it is just a fraction of the world and the world is just a fraction of the universe and in the grand scale of everything he is insignificant with no real purpose in time because when he dies he will be forgotten. In a daze he begins to mummer another poem under his breath by Sarah Levine Called “The Forgotten Things” “In the stainless depths where dreams are lost, and secrets hide, a mournful cry, the void it rings, a lament for gods, and forgotten things… Heavens above we seek the ancient lore, a cold cosmos, our souls feel ever more, the empty vastness, as we try to soar, reveals the void within, we can’t ingnore.”

The rage 

After Jack decided not to press charges; John was relieved. He was released from work for a week to prevent any further alterations between the two. John spent his last twenty dollars to get more cheap liquor and a six-pack to help ease the thoughts of what occurred prior.He went to the park to sit and ruminate about what happened, about the fight, and… A flash of light made everything come to a complete halt he woke up on the same street that faced the mountain. He stared in horror as the sky was like death and the rivers flowed with blood. He looked up and saw his mother headless corpse floating in front of him. John’s mother was rotting and her body was naked and motionless. The rotting corpse dashed forward toward him and stopped abruptly, turned, and flew to the mountains as if it was a home for evil. a song played from the sky, not the ground, the depths of hell, or whatever was there it was evil in its purest form it was a song of death the bane of existence. Everything around was dead, not a single sign of life but himself, as if the apocalypse had begun; or had already happened. Everything had stopped, no sound, nothing. He saw a thing come up from the atmosphere, the embodiment of evil, a mass of something. John knew he couldn't, but he tried to explain what he saw. He tried processing it with all his might but failed. It was a mass of something with a thousand faces and a thousand shapes. It seemed infinite in size, something unexplainable, something the size of worlds, no face but a thousand of them. It was an abomination, a creature of wickedness and woe. An unexplainable creature that is somewhat incomprehensible to him. It was almost like it read him, like an omnipresence, from a mass of things. John was horrified but this sight his brain thought a thousand things unthought of, for he had never seen something so profoundly disturbing. It was the opposite of beauty, it was the bane of light the consumer of worlds. It was something so wicked that it was impossible to comprehend, almost like the concept of infinity. The embodiment of evil and sin clashing together for this abomination of a thing that was the color of blood, crimson. Its body spans miles in the sky almost flowing like a river of blood. The fact is, the creature was unidentifiable These sudden flashes of thought caused John’s mind to overload resulting in him passing out. John woke up stuporous, with a blistering headache, and slightly lightheaded. As John began to recall the events of what just happened, and denounced most of them as alcohol hallucinosis when he realized the liquor bottle he previously had was now empty. John stood to get something to eat and slipped on something, he glanced down and realized, horrifically, what it was he slipped on. Blood. Blood was everywhere John started panicking quickly he rushed to the phone thinking he had hurt someone. He grabbed the phone and glanced at his wrists. The blood from the floor had come from his wrists and he had broken the one promise his dying mother had wished for. John, frenzied with anger and sadness, barbarically destroyed the kitchen. He ripped out the microwave and threw it with inhuman force across the room putting a gaping hole through the wall; he picked up the table and smashed it; threw his fridge down from the wall. The apartment was in ruins as if a stampede of rage had passed through. John immediately felt remorse for his actions and slowly began to clean up and calm himself. It was not his fault, for he was unconscious, right? He battled his own mind constantly and was starting to crack slowly revealing the deepest parts of John the built anger and despair was starting to show. John could no longer tell reality from his imagination. What he saw was real, he was sure of it, the thing was real, the mountains were real, the smell of the air was real. John began ruminating about the thing that had not defined shape or size, the thing with a thousand faces, one thing or many things, how it flowed for miles, how it was crimson red like blood. How it seemed to float and move within itself like a being beyond human understanding, something that cast no shadow and pulled him like the wilderness pulls a dog to its ancient ways.. Maybe the realm in which he saw in his dreams was, in fact, real because he felt, he felt the things and saw the things that he saw. He was driven mad he wanted it all to end despite his promises to his mothers last wish, he wanted this to end with him. John went to his safe pulled his revolver out, and shot himself in the head, killing him instantly. John could not bear the weight of knowing something so vile existed, the thing had a power over people. It’s power was incomprehensible to a simple man like John almost holy, perhaps the embodiment of god himself, unable to perceive the creature of the darkest nightmares, he had killed himself, lifting the burdens he had held on his shoulder, the pain, horror, and despair were finished, and in some way this was a good thing. John was now at peace.