Velvet Starr

 Velvet Starr

The bar was dimly lit and half empty. The time was nearing three in the morning, and  I thought to myself, damn this damp dumb dump, and this sick sad stupor– I must be off. I left the barmaid a tip worth toppling over, and turned back to face the burgundy velvet attired man I was conversing with. He was wearing a burgundy velvet pantsuit, whose finery was beyond anything else within the scope of this bar. He seemed to be seriously certain he’d heard the same tale I told of the dead man in the Drowned Rat from the Crow perched just outside the bar. I stumbled out of the bar as if my life depended on it, curious about this copy cat storyteller, the Crow, but my life didn't quite depend upon my urgency, or so I’d believed. I was simply and surely certain that I had been initiated by the gentleman at the bar, with a disease worth surviving, and subsequently, I had to see a Crow about a man.

I ceased my stumbles out of the Drowned Rat when I saw a holy crow perched above me. He was  looking at me sideways from afar, his gaze filled with inquisition, and beak held slightly ajar. His bodily details illuminated by the street lamp above him. I approached him, my steps clean and concise, as to not startle him, but he looked quite welcoming. The bird cast no shadow, despite the light around him begging to do so. Where lighting dictated his shadow be cast down upon me, dead lamp light stood instead, slowly flickering between lit and barely lit.  Turning his head upright, he let out a  creeping croon; a belt sounding something akin to "hower hugh", 

to which I replied,

 "I am fine, and how are you?"

"Fine" croaked the Crow. His gaze still filled with inquisition.

The bird twisted its head from side to side, winking one eye at a time at me. He appeared to know something I didn't, and refused to tell me. Whimsically the bird bellowed out with a sickening song of holy accusations–he sang, 

“Hideous woe begats foe, each untimely doe sent to sheol with no ring below, three steps towards someday, the eve falls flat, imminently towards monday. Much like Solomon Grundy, you will be reborn again, and on that day that follows Sunday heavenly shadow.”

I stood baffled and awe-struckend by the multitude of illuminations the bird had shed light upon, not fully aware of the unconscious connection that simmered between the bird and I. His words were bright enough that they cast a shadow amidst the cold night air when spoken. A shadow that only a witness could ever truly bear, because without them, it did not exist. It was indeed Monday, which did indeed follow Sunday, and I most certainly spent the most holy of holy days stuped in a wanton haze. The town clock rang out three times four, which prompted me to observe waiting for three more, as I knew it to be 3am, but I'd forgotten the clock doesn't chime beyond a ring twelve times at midnight. He rings according to his twelve hour shifts, Now retiring to single digit rings for the next twelve hours, the clock stood silent. Absent a further score, my mind returned to rest upon the curiosities placed forth by the bird's choir. Long winded and bewildering in its statement, the Crows' words stood solemnly in its place. The bird with the  no sign of movement spread beyond his feathered case– spoke a word, an utterance, a phrase, one indeed that was quite misbehaved,

“Following your first demerit, a Ravens crow he will inherit”

A pungent odor arose from the sewer drain panel beneath my feet–It smelled strongly of mushroom drips and burnt candle wicks. I peered down upon my toes, and what appeared to be wax was dripping off of my knees and onto my shoes, hardening as it met the cold damp cloth of my shoes atop the cobblestone street. The wax bore no clear origin, but it almost appeared as if it were dripping off of my person.

“You're burning the candle at both ends” said the Crow, and then without a single further utterance, the bird took flight, leaving me behind, my eyes wide, my feet waxed down, and my mind racing. 

The sewer drain began to fill and ooze hot wax out of its crevices, pushing up through the drain covers holes, meeting the wax that was dripping off my pants, all in collaboration to begin surrounding and engulfing my feet. A raven's unmistakeable caw echoed out solemnly and judgmentally, but I couldn’t quite place the words that helped me discern Crow from Raven. Surely I had not attained a demerit so soon? Had I even completed an action since my conversation with the Crow? The wax began to build atop itself, surpassing just my feet and covering my ankles as it was working above and below myself. I stood motionless, almost awestruck entirely by the events unfolding beneath my feet, and colored with a deep curiosity of the significance of my new found wax friend.

I began to lift my feet, to escape my soon to be waxen cocoon, and was met to a situation that held no avail. Wax seeped seemingly more quickly when I moved, versus when I stood stoically in place. The wax was hardening and building rapidly, soon my calves were waxed down to the drain cover, and my knees no longer dripping, but now instead, my waist was. The wax would ooze and build itself up out of the pores of my jacket, down onto itself. I was lost in a downward gaze at this process, when suddenly  A velvet dressed man was watching me from the doorway of the bar. 

“You look like could use a hand” said the man

A slight smirk crossed his face, refusing to look both ways before crossing the street, he strolled towards me, his smile fully intact. The bar's lantern light flickered, and I noticed once again, a figure absent entirely of a shadow. You could say there was not a shadow of a doubt in my mind, that this finely dressed man was someone close to the prophetic crow, the holy crow, whom I had just been in discussion with. He held no resemblance to the man I spoke with in the bar, but his clothing dictated he was. I could not mistake that velvet burgundy outside he adorned. 

Wax was surrounding the area around me, no longer strictly adhering to  building up to my knees, hardening, then allowing the proceeding wax to flow down the slope of my legs, covering the ground beneath me beyond just the drain cover. Now, instead, wax appeared to pool itself in liquid heaps around me, and then harden to a crisp candled white. This ebb and flow gave me the sensation that I was a piston in the heart of an engine, building up, then back, then up once again.

“You look like you could use a hand, friend” whispered the man, now standing behind my left ear. I turned to face him, curious as to which demerit this raven's caw believed I was to inherit. 

“You're no friend to I, guy, you’ve sent me out of my bar and into this accursed situation I am now engrossed in.” I said.

“Accursed situation? My friend, don’t you know a blessing when you see one? That bird you’ve deemed prophetic, was indeed prophetic, he was in fact, holy in his being, but of which heavenly bodies prophecy I dare not speak of.”

 The man pushed me, his palm open and forced directly into my solar plexus, and I fell flat, breaking the wax beneath my knees, landing square on my face. I arose in anger, shaking off the wax that clung for dear life to my pants, and looking up, now too filled with a glare of deep inquisition. Where my splayed body should have been covered in this stranger's shadow, I was met with dim lantern light, and an ominous air, something I felt in the atmosphere when the Crow spoke. I turned to look him in the eyes, my body still resting on the ground, they were met with an ominous glare, punctuated with beet colored red radiant twinkle in his eye. “I dare say you could use a hand now more than before,” spoke the man. 

“I dare say you are correct” I replied, exasperation filling my tone.

A Crows caw echoed out, but it did not do so externally, but instead the caw came from within deep recesses of my racing mind. The well velvet man reached out towards me with an arm covered in a fuzzy red sleeve, his wrist extending beyond the velvet curtain, reaching out towards me. I felt myself retreat into infancy. I grabbed the man's hand, pulling him into myself, down into the hardened wax, and peering directly into what I now saw to be, violet red eyes.

“I told the raven that this demerit you would inherit, but he was tepid in his response, to which I now find foolhardy in its essence” said the man

“What?” I replied

 A Sound rang out “Caw, Caw, Caw” rang out from above, a bird's call from a bird better yet unseen placed itself upon my ears.

Picking himself up from my mess, the finely dressed man, brushing the wax off, now primarily stained to the velvet, he said “My name is “Mephi, and I am ever so indebted to you and your services, and I will not be dismayed so easily from my task at hand, and as I was saying, it looks like you could use one”.

The town clock rang out with four chimes, abandoning the chimes before. Immediately the sensation of being awake amidst a dream fell over me like a cleansing mist. The velvet dressed man pulled out a knife, and placed it directly into the thick wax that remained clung to my pants. I peered down upon it, and a strong sensation of a malevolent red had stricken my senses, and then cherry red I sought for this moment. I chose to carpe the diem, and go beyond into the pale. I grabbed the knife, and thrust it through the man's velvet colored breast plate, my shadow dancing ominously around the absence of his. The man simply smiled as I thrust the blade into him,  not giving second ponderance to my actions, I twisted the sharp metal back and forth as it dove into his breastplate and beyond, piercing his heart. He let out a cackle as blood squirted out of his chest and into my eyes. Red, I was seeing red.

“Caw, Caw, Caw”, rangout the raven. 

“Caw, Caw, Caw” retorted the stabbed man.