Final Spoke of the Catherine Wheel
No Year's Eve
In endless waves they came, those rampaging beasts, teeth gnashed, frothing, maddened, and unrelenting. They stormed across the land, their hooves churning the viscous peat and crushing the tall grass; crushing everything in their path. They climbed elaborate scaffolds of salt, crystalline slivers cutting through the air with ruthless glee. They crowded through each alleyway, each byway, each road, cobblestones reduced to rubble from the sheer ferocity of their onslaught. They burned like a thousand frozen suns, poisoned the rivers, lakes, and seas, leaving nothing behind but misery and death.
The townsfolk crowed and cawed, lying prostrate, enmeshed in the filth, all hope dashed like an orphaned child on Christmas morn. Their soiled linens torn, frayed, soaked clean through in piss, shit, and the coagulating alluvial flow of their flagellated ichor. The roiling, diseased clutch of fly spawn—milky white, flecked, and ravenous—poured forth from every crevice in the flaccid masonry that cloyed the town in a visage of structure.
The stampeding beasts exploded over the entire settlement, macerated the townsfolk’s flesh, muscle, and bone until all that remained was a quivering mass of gore seeping into the endless piles of rubble. The maggots devoured.
The ancient King watched the proceedings from his frigid, celestial promontory. His withered, muslin-like skin stretched over his pathetic frame like a topography of decay. He regarded the degenerate plains with apprehension and something resembling grief, his earthly kingdom reduced to an unending, oceanic grave.
At that same moment, the afterbirth of the new year crept forth from the womb of the horizon, cautiously advancing, its gossamer-thin fingers tentatively hanging over the span of hills and valleys. Instead of moving forward, however, it withdrew from its task, denied the world, cascaded its rejection over everything which lie-before it. And by doing so, enacted the stoppage of time, unraveled the course of history, and erased everything in its path.
The King enthroned alone, an eternal regent in a universe of infinite oblivion.