It Came To Pass... Part I

Part I

The nauseous odor of sulfur was the glassy fleshed pimp’s one abiding memory of ‘Firebrat’s Hollow’; the literal ‘underworld’ where Gallowglasswegian reprobates rubbed tentacles and it always made his transparent nostrils crinkle, like cellophane, whenever he thought of going ‘down below’ because that was the smell of fear to him; the same fear that he’d felt, as a grub, being summoned to his father’s bright room; the same fear that he’d felt, in reform school, whenever one of the older kids approached him.

But, go ‘down below’, he had to. The summons had been delivered by the Pyraklops and the Pyraklops was an enforcer for the ‘Black Brothers' and it was only a very brave or very suicidal creature that rejected an invitation from them.

At least, he thought, it was dark in the sewers; like the melanin deficient pimp’s own heavilly clouded world but it was also hot from the geo-thermal fissures which bubbled constantly beneath the Gallowglasswegian crust and it would be hard for him to maintain his usual composure with torrents of sweat running down his see-thru
physiognomy.

‘I hear that thee Black Brothers weesh to seee mee’, the clear complexioned man enquired nervously; openly quaking infront of the ‘Black Brothers’ ugly, little gate keeper who was drunk on duty, as usual.

The gate keeper; a squat, fat, multiple winged creature; rather like an oversized mosquito, pricked open a little tin of high-octane fuel with its long, razor edged proboscus and,sucking up a gullet-full , flatulated a long loud jet of blue flame from its scaly rectum.

‘Oh yesh! Yesh!’, it slurred, its needle thin snout drunkenly flipping through the pages of a large, human-skin bound appointment book. ‘They ish very anxious to shee you’.

‘Anxious?’, asked the pigmentally challenged man, grinning at the idea that an organization of the ‘Black Brothers’ magnitude could be made anxious by him.

‘Oh yesh! yesh!’, said the gate keeper, groping for a small lever that opened the vast, obsidian gates behind him, ‘They’ve been sho upshet that they haven’t tortured anyone in over a week’.

The transluscent skinned pimp’s cheshire-cat smile
faded as the vast,dark gates of the ‘Black
Brothers’ secret inner sanctum ground open
slowly,grating and groaning like a dry throated giant in enormous pain.

On the surface; in the daylight, the Black Brothers were what you would call ‘captains of industry’. Some of them were tax exiles from
mother Earth; others, the movers and the shakers who kept the Gallowglasswegian economy on its feet. Below the surface, however; in this dark, abysmal place, they sacrificed the human detritus of Gallowglass; the homeless, the illegal immigrants; the prostitutes and petty crooks, to Mammon,their God of profit, and Mammon was always hungry.

‘The goods you provided us with were very good, very tasty; Mammon was well pleased and my capital gains have gone through the roof’, a cowelled figure enthused as he approached from out of the flickering shadows.

Now the other hooded acolytes of Mammon moved into view and, behind them, the colourless man saw the glistening, taloned-feet and phallus of their ephigy; moulded from pure platinum and stained in various hues of blood and, next to the feet of the statue, was a long, white altar which resembled, uncannily, the type of table one might expect to see in a company board room, except that it was fashioned from the polished ivory of some alien creature and engraved with bizarre hieroglyphs of no language, dead or living, that the pellucid-skinned pimp recognized.

The Chairman of the board; the high priest of Mammon, now lifted his cowel and the pigmentless pimp saw a platinum crown upon his greying head and the face of an old man, grimly scowling, beneath it.

‘Up until now, my colourless friend’, said the high priest; fixing the limpid alien pimp with a chilling stare, ‘The Fraternity of Mammon
has been satisfied with the commodities you have supplied and Lord Mammon has provided favourable returns’.

Bouyed by this news, the crystal-hued man began to strut; his demeanour suddenly changing, from one of nervousness, to pride. ‘Ahhh’, he crowed, ‘Eet was notheeng! Next time, I’ll get your Mammon a beeg, fat, juicy one.No extra cost!’.

‘But’, interjected the high priest; his voice lowering to a reverberating growl and his left hand slamming down upon the altar with a clang that betrayed a prosthetic metal limb,
‘Your methods of obtainment were sloppy, to say the least. Now the law dogs are starting to sniff. News broadcasts are saying that a serial killer is responsible for the abduction of your prostitutes. A full police inquisition would be very damaging to our fraternity and to all our friends in the intergalactic business community’.

Droplets of sweat were beginning to form, like condensation, upon the transluscent pimps brow; his frontal lobes were visibly throbbing beneath the brim of his fedora and his adams apple could be seen, by all the hooded acolytes, to
bob up and down in his throat, like a grisly yo-yo, as he gulped loudly, ‘Oh’, he
said, ‘Weell?!’.

‘Well’, continued the high priest , his voice rising into a roar which he had often used when firing one of the employees of his own corporation, ‘You have a mess to clean up! The police and the public demand a serial
killer and you will supply them with one!’.

The hyaline skinned hustler flinched; startled by the sudden laying of a broad, heavy hand upon his shoulder.

Gazing timidly, through closed lids, at the owner of the large hand; he saw, beside him, the hulking, tuxedo clad torso and broad, pyramidial, polythemic skull of the Pyraklops; its long, low, baritone breaths rumbling like earth tremors.

‘Mr 1-I shall accompany you.’, concluded the high priest, ‘We’ve found him to be a very reliable negotiator’.