Vincent lay outstretched on his bed, his hands behind his head, buried by his shock of hair, his boots still laced up and resting on the deep ruddy duvet sheet. The thoughts running through his mind, triggered by the squat fiend, had caught his imagination, and his darkest fears. He let out a weary sigh and stared at the ceiling.
Unlike his study, his sanctum, the rest of the house was a sty, lacking any sort of attention. Wall paper pealed from the damp, plaster was dented and crumbling, mildew lined the bathroom tiles, a stale air filled the kitchen. His bedroom merely did its job, providing a means for sleep. A worn and lumpy spring mattress lay on top of the bed frame with scruffy worn sheets covering it. The pillows were old and lacked body, and the room had a single chair, the type made of a plastic bucket seat sat on a painted coated metal frame, the gloss plastic bubbling up due to rust just below the veneer.
The ceiling above with its chip flecked wall paper faded to a digital fuzz and the tender embrace of sleep robbed him of consciousness. The support of the well-used mattress gave way to the agoraophobic nothingness of incubus, and Vincent, or more correctly Mercury, drifted along the threads of sleep.
Clad in a cloak of polythene gossamer, a deep grey iridescent with circuitry, Mercury, Vincent, both one and the same, his inner and outer guises, stood before the vast open roof top, a surface of tar and gravel covered in shallow pools, the ever present thunderstorm pulled back by the tide of cognizance. A crisp, abrasive salty air filled the breathing reality, the gravel rubbing their asperous surfaces together like a choir of stoney crickets, a digital substance of silica.
Mercury strode down the beach and listened to the roar of the untamed storm in the distance, the clamour of nightmares and desires and lust of all the other humans of the world, of Sleeper and Awakened alike. He wandered to the edge of the roof top and clambered up onto the ledge and stood to observe the land below. All around a roiling ocean of ashen waters clashed against the pitted concrete of the tower, the wind whipping up his cloak, a snakes tongue of synthetic flesh.
Come on. I know your out there. Your watching, listening, looking for that name, that power. Why not be more blunt? Take the name, its yours. Or has it been so long you have forgotten what it is?
"You as much as anyone should know that no road is that straight."
The ocean below smashed into the silica rock of the tower, sending up a chlorine spray. The tempest clouds illuminated with a sliver of electron light. Mercury turned on his heel and eyed the new arrival.
"So we have a face then, demon." Mercury hopped off the ledge and stepped forward, approaching the raven being, a wry smile crossed his face. Before him was a man, some 8 feet tall, draped in a fuligin shroud, topped by a equine spartan helmet, the plume a mass of bloody hairs and feathers matted together. The booming sound of the storm slapped the tower.
"Just one I plucked from the chimera of thoughts out there in the mortal gestalt." The onyx being approached Mercury, his steps met with the faint chalkboard scratching of raptor claws upon the chipped stone. "But we know that faces only serve to act as a body to the thoughts we wish to show. Why look at you my argentate warlock, dressed in the trappings of your wisdom and ego."
"I guess this little meeting explains why that Decabrian sucked up so much hard disk. Your a Trojan, a message, a warning" Mercury growled "An annoyance! But I like the play on words."
"I knew you'd appreciate it." Mercury watched as the ebon form stalked to the ledge, looming over the edge. "So many voices, all wanting, all lusting. Dreams are so painful are they not? I have sampled for eons their misguided hopes, no matter how vile or honourable. They still taste bland." The hollow helm turned to regard Mercury, his hair now a silver static made the two seemed perfectly opposed in the realm incubus. One of dark, one of light. One of the modern age, one of ages now forgotten.
"Dreams give us hope. Hope to fight on. Hope to allows us to survive pain and anguish. Its gives man strength in the face of being cleansed of of our weakness, our foibles. Surely I thought you'd know about that? I mean Pandemonia is what ties us?"
"Ahh. But then that is where your ego, the faith in your skill, is your weakness. You really think I have anything to do with the realms beyond?"
Mercury stepped back taking in the full weight of the words, their very syllable. The colour washed from his eyes and his coat bled away its polychrome.
"Oh. Yes. You have a phone call."
"W-w-What?" Mercury stood open mouthed. His mind was lost in confusion and in the maze of illusion and mystery.
A phone call? Shit! The phone!
Vincent awoke with a start on his bed. His phone wailed away in synthetic tones.
"FUCK!"
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