In Morte Veritas

Trigger Warning: Mental health, suicide/self harm, physical violence and gore.

Sam’s ribs screamed furiously with each hurried pounding of his feet against the soil, the impact drumming through his soul, rattling his ribs like the bars of a cell. He knew he couldn’t keep running for much longer. Frenzied breath increasingly tightened his chest to that of a pressure vessel. A current of pain flung him through the air. The collision had let out such a sudden bang that he thought his lungs had finally popped, a dagger to a ballon, fragments of rubbery flesh showering the cursed soil.

His torso catapulted backwards, his skull ricocheted off a tree root, palms scraped against dirt as his legs flung upwards, heels toppled over his head.

“Will you watch where you’re going” hissed a voice on the ground next to him. The stranger rose up from the floor shaking like a damp dog, bark showered from his leather jacket. Once Sam had managed to rock his contorted body back onto his side the stranger threw out a hand and heaved Sam to his feet.

“Anubis” the stranger growled.

“Sam” he whistled back through the gap in his teeth, titling his chin downwards to spit out an incisor that had become dislodged on impact.

“What are you running from?” Anubis questioned, swivelling on his heels and setting off with heavy strides that Sam had to jog to catch up with.

“I er” the words only reached halfway up his throat before they were hastily gulped back down again “I can’t quite remember now”.

Sam slowed down as they reached a wall of blackberry bushes. Anubis didn’t, but brought his hands up to cover his face and pushed through it until he had been swallowed up completely.

“Come and give me a hand will you?” Anubis commanded from the other side of the blue and black dotted veil.

Sam held his breath and screwed his eyes shut as he pushed through the resisting thorns, warding him off with stinging spite. Once they gave in to his trespass, he cracked his eyes back open slightly.

Sunlight inundated his retinas. Dew freckled the face of the orchard. A dozen apple trees tired and crooked shook silently in the breeze. Wildflowers filled their lungs with pollenated song, serenading passers-by with yellow stains on their crisp clothing. Petrichor bounced through the air excitedly. Everything glistened with bucolic extravagance.

Beneath the second apple tree in from the right Anubis was doubled over, flinging earth skyward from in between his legs, digging like a hound searching for a long-buried bone. Unquestioningly Sam joined in until his lungs ached, and he panted out breath heavy and wet.

He leant backwards to crack the tension held in his back, straightening up he sprung as high as he could grasping the lowest hanging apple from above him. His weight as he plummeted back down tore at the stem, the resistance of the branch made it swing back into place with a bounce. Its leaves shook irritably, disrupted from their slumber. Some of the browner ones floated lightly to the ground, dancing through the shimmering sunny rays as they descended.

Sam thudded to the floor, legs crossed, and inspected the fruit turning it around in his palm with his thumb. The shinning red skin blistered into brown decaying flesh. Ants busily nibbled at the edged of the sweet putrid skin, plucking and peeling it with their busy mouths. Maggots squirmed in and out of holes that infested the core, coming to the surface faces opening and closing, gasping.

Anubis shuffled down next to him and through the silence picked at the skin near his fingernails until beads of crimson bubbled to the surface.

Sam brought the apple to his lips, breathing in the citrus notes, and sunk his teeth into it. It crunched and fizzled on his pallet, insects whipped their severed bodies back and forth on the surface of his tongue. Their foul insides writhing unconsolably. Turns out they were real this time.

Four years ago, on the hottest day in history, he was crawling home for summer on the motorway. For hours the red lights of the car in font dashing on an off to the beat of its horn, its engine coughed out clouds of frustrated smog. Scars still peppered Sam’s knuckles where he’d punched the dash of his old black MK3 Cortina so incessantly, certain the next thump would bully the air con into working again.

He had lowered his head momentarily to fiddle with the radio static when the car suddenly lurched forward cracking the bridge of Sam’s nose against the melting plastic of the steering wheel. One hand pinching the rush of blood shut, the other rustling in the back seat for an old rugby shirt to help with the clean up, the car did it a second time. He remembers stars prickling his vision, and the tarmac groaning. When the car lurched for the third time a fissure snaked along the ground under the chassis of the vehicle in front hissing out clouds of dust upwards like fireworks. Within the next fraction of a second the surface had torn open completely and the car in front was gone. Sam kicked at the metal of his door, the iron tang of blood filling his cupid’s bow. With knocking knees, the only way to stop himself from fleeing was to flattening his body against the ground. Fearful bile pricking his tonsils threatening any remanence of manliness. Crawling to the edge of the chasm he could still see the vehicle’s silver body pirouetting through the darkness on its decent with red break lights signalling SOS.

Slowly he sat up dangling on the edge of the void, watching his golden laughter bounding back and forth from the rocky walls, sinking lower as each manic melody tumbled from his lips. Crumbs of tarmac gave way under his weight and plummeted. Curiously Sam had sat there, sure that the devil himself was going to crawl up the ugly sides of hell and seduce him. Sam couldn’t remember much after that other than the petroleum judder of the metallic vultures hovering over him. From his crunchy white hospital bed, rocking soothingly, he watched the newsroom replay the aerial shots they had captured of him; Sat legs strewn out, in the middle of the motorway, intact road stretched out for miles. That time it had not been real.

A current buzzed through the breeze, carrying the threat of a storm the air prickled at Sam’s skin bringing him back to the orchard. Anubis took hold, with forefinger and thumb, of Sam’s chin; His sinking muddy brown eyes dirtying Sam’s glistening blue.

“Did you ever think of jumping in after the car?” he hissed, his slimy two-pronged tongue rolled out from his lips tasting the air for Sam’s fear.

Sam’s mouth opened and closed with silent dread. Pressing his eyes tightly shut in prayer, mentally reciting ‘it’s not real this time’ like an echo.

The rough sour tongue of the creature licked the salty, sticky, sweat from Sam’s brow and across his eye lids, reckless intrigue tempting them open again.

“Ever thought of shutting off the static in your brain, turning the inner radio off? Come, we’ve been waiting for you Samael.” He pulled at Sam’s fingers, gaze locked tight, leading him to the freshly dug hole. Flames licked ravenously at its edges, tired of waiting. A murder of crows took off with a rapturous thunder of wings. His heartbeat hammered at his chest, begging feverously to be freed.

Whispers drifted from the earth’s core, “in morte veritas”. Anubis lead Sam further into the damned hole. It crumbled and tumbled further down to form a staircase to hell. Anubis sunk deeper, cracking legs over torso, humming akin to the pied piper.  Sam followed obediently.

Is anything real anymore?