Infernal Dialogue

Written by: Saint Nick

*
I wish to speak with the dead.

I long to hold conversations with rotting loved ones. Long to be face to face with their corpses, listening carefully while they speak the indecipherable words of a cadaverous language, a language which is carefully composed of corpse logic. I close my eyes and picture a room filled with a vast, endless nothingness, the heavy weight of the black void, images flashing across the blank space within dead eyes…

I order another drink at the bar. Get up shakily. The bathroom door swings open, heavy, covered in stickers and crude sharpie drawings. Messy oil painting of myself in the mirror. Fix my hair and stare at my reflection- jean jacket and a white t-shirt with an image of a blurry face on it. Take a selfie in the mirror. Then post it to Instagram with an ominous caption; I wish to speak with the dead.

Tiny tiles on the wall, alternating blue and white, faded, woven in an uneven pattern. The bathroom door opens, someone enters, bringing the sound of the bar in with them, and I fumble my phone, nearly dropping it as I put it back into my pocket.

Another drink. Back to the bathroom. My blurry face floating in the dirty glass of the bathroom mirror. Bumps in the stall. The coke is shiny, silver-white, clean. A small bag filled with light and sound. Another selfie, the bathroom door opens, then closes. Sea of people, noise, another drink… leaving the bar.

The car starts. Heavy, violent electronic music. Light a cigarette. Probably too drunk to drive. City at night. A world of glass. Buildings pulsing and screaming towards the sky. Flashing lights and the sound of sirens. Dying homeless people, shuffling along the sidewalk, laying in the gutter, or vomiting on the steps of abandoned buildings. Crushing sound of music filling the car. Nauseating blur…. After a moment it passes.

Soon, I’m home, texting every girl, and guy, in my phone, browsing different apps, sending messages and pictures, but nothing seems to be working tonight; things are not coming together. Everything is a chore, and I’m honestly just very bored with it all, and the energy that it will take to summon these beings, these empty vessels from the void in order to- to what? Re-enact some humiliating and vile images that I’ve imagined in my head? Or searched and obsessed about on my phone? For what?

Too drunk. Bored. Time is standing still. Emptiness, as far as the eye can see, eternal, and unfolding before me…

Hours later, still drunk, sitting in the dark living room of the house, I open the onion router. Type in the websites name; Infernum Solis. Mystery boxes. Something unspeakable, something unknowable- discreetly delivered to your doorstep. Obtainable only with some obscure crypto coin that I’ve never even heard of. Ten grand for one mystery box. I buy fifteen thousand dollars worth of the coin and an hour later I’m placing an order for a mystery box.

Afterwards, I lay in the darkness of my bedroom as the sun comes up, imagining the box, recalling sickening unboxing videos that I’ve seen- videos of people sifting through boxes they purchased from Infernum Solis, boxes filled with disgusting things; fragments of blood stained clothing from murders and suicides; hideous photographs of people being tortured and raped; grave dirt; animal skulls; deformed malignant fetus’ floating in jars; jars filled with gross yellow green liquids and suspended tumorous organs, or unidentifiable pieces of human remains- what will be it be, what will it be?

*

The room is dim, sterile, and empty.

Blue LED strip on the wall painting the room in ghost light. Silence. A hand squirming around in my brain. My skull is too tight, and I can feel my brain pushing outwards against its walls. Blood rushing, pulsating, thumbs being pushed into my eyes. I don’t want to throw up.

Nausea, swirling red and black behind my eyelids. It’s six pm, almost sunset. The light coming through the blinds is already orange. My skull is a trash compactor, crushing my brain in upon itself, chewing on it endlessly, an ugly wad of faded pink-grey bubblegum stained with blood.

Bathroom light flickering on. Tiny white Tylenol. Bathroom mirror. Pale, naked ghost, eyes drained, grey, empty. Rain of the shower falling upon me. Darkness. Getting dressed. Responding to messages, cleaning up the mess I created last night…

Remembering the box. Anxiety and excitement, swirling together. A reason to live… Outside, starting the car. Sunglasses, sun setting, bright, over saturated orange sky bleeding through mountains of rocky purple clouds. Line at the drive through. Coffee, mind dancing, shimmering, coming to life. I imagine the box, imagine my hands opening it slowly- inside there is darkness, a set of stairs leading down, and down forever.

*

A knock at the door, then nothing.

Bright day, birds chirping. Everything very still. Open the front door. The porch is empty, the yard is empty, no one on the street. Everything is very still. I look down at the concrete steps. In front of my feet there is a large cardboard box. It stands about knee high. The mystery box. My stomach tightens- anxiety and excitement wrestling through my abdomen, strangling one another violently. I push the box inside with my foot and close the door.

Stand in my kitchen staring at a box of gloves for a long time. I put the gloves on and pick the box up, place it on the dining room table. It radiates violent energy. Red and sharp. The air grows thick in the room. Daylight through the kitchen windows dying on the floor. I shut the blinds. Box cutter from the drawer next to the sink. Opening the box slowly. Inside there is another box and on top of the box there is a piece of black paper. Pick up the paper, turn it over.

Red letters:
1. Open the smaller box.
2. Place its contents on the golden platter.
3. Listen.
Infernum Solis

I stare at the instructions. My face is warm. Blood rushing through me, flood water cascading through rocky canyons. I lift the small box out of the larger box. Underneath it I can see the golden platter. Caught in its bright glare, my eyes filled with it, forgetting where I am for a moment. Then I set the smaller box down on the dining room table.

Sharp box cutter. The box opens. My hands reaching inside. Something soft, squishy, organic. I pull away. Force myself to reach back in. I watch as my hands lift a human head from the box. I drop it and it falls with a thud back into the smaller box. I step aside, and nearly touch the tainted gloves to my face, as the smell of decay fills the room.

Then I’m throwing up in the trash barrel. Gather myself together. Hands shaking, lifting the head out of the box. The head of a fat man, with low, jowly cheeks, sunken eyes, and a bald head. The skin is putrefied, a greenish color, mold, pea soup, vomit.

I set the head down on the golden platter and immediately the eyes start opening and closing rapidly. Lips moving around, making ugly wet sounds, drooling, sobbing, moaning. I stare at the head in shock. My own head starts to hurt, something distant, a deep pain in the back of my skull, sharp, distinct- like the creeping death from a carbon monoxide leak slipping over me… I stare at the head. It’s trying to speak, mouth moving- a dead tongue attempting to regain control of itself. Another sudden knock at the door. Panic- spikey, violent, rolling through my guts.

I stare at the head. The moaning continues. Blank grey eyes looking around the room. Migraine, splitting its way through my skull like thin ice cracking, growing and spreading in an ugly red web.

The knock again. I pick the platter up with the head and put it into the big box and close the top of it. The moaning is quiet enough now that I can’t hear it through the box. Migraine dimming slightly. Take the gloves off and throw them in the trash. I walk to the front door. I can see my Aunt Kathy through the glass. I stop, unsure of whether or not to let her in. She knocks again. She can see me. I open the door.

Hey.
Hey, she says.
What’s up?
She sighs.
What? I ask.
It’s been a while since you last checked in.
So?
So, are you doing ok?

An image comes to me suddenly of Aunt Kathy calling the ambulance frantically, me completely out of it, a mix of Xanax and Morphine and Ketamine from the night before. Me, only sixteen, a month after my parents died, covered in my own vomit, pale, nearly dead. Another series of images push their way to the front of my mind; photos from the accident, the police report, different angles of both of my parents inside of the crushed car, their skin bursting open, shiny with fresh blood and exposed bone and muscle tissue, their bodies smashed and crushed within the crimson world of that ruined car.

I’m fine, I sigh.
A long pause while she stares at me, smiling.
Can I come in for a few?
I sigh again, No.
Why not?
Craning her neck to look around me.
I’m just not in the mood today, ok? For company, or whatever…
She doesn’t respond at first, so I eventually just say, Okay?

After a moment she nods her head, accepting it for what it is.

Aunt Kathy leaves and walks back down the driveway. I shut the door and walk back to the kitchen. Step through the doorway, realize suddenly that the head is speaking now, and my mind starts to latch onto what it’s saying, but before I can understand the meaning, or a word, or a syllable even- everything disappears-

*

Open my eyes.

Blood on the carpet in the living room. An ugly blackred Rorschach painting of a face, the shape a dead animal, shape of a bouquet of flowers. It seems like buckets, it seems like far too much blood. Black red like oil. I stand up and look down at myself. My shirt and pants are soaked with it, and I look at my arms and I see that the blood is coming from me, that my arms are covered in long looping cuts that twist and wrap in all directions. At my feet there is a deboning knife, sharp and thin and made for mutilation.

I look over at the head. Its mouth is moving around wordlessly. Thick fat lips shifting, its jowls churning, spitting, drooling. Then the words-

*

Breathing heavily.

Looking out at the street. I’m trying to yell, trying to get someone’s attention. There is a child, maybe eight years old, riding his bike in the street. My neighbor’s kid. I feel myself throwing up on the floor suddenly. I lift my hand to the window, moving the curtains. Smacking the glass with my hand, a flat sound, hopeless. The kid hears it and looks over. The head starts laughing grotesquely. I am weeping, dragging myself to the door. The voice-

*

Basement floor covered in blood.

The boys t shirt floating in it. A hammer on the stairs sticky with fragments of scalp and hair stuck between the claw end. I throw up on the cement floor. Drag myself weeping up the stairs, trying not to look at the boys dismembered and broken body scattered on the cement floor. Sound of the heads voice and his mouth moving, eyes wide and blank. At the top of the stairs, the head is humming, moaning, making filthy sounds. Spitting, grunting and moaning. I pull myself to the top of the stairs. I am face to face wit the head now. The head is whispering, but I can’t understand the words, feeling of my skull cracking open, images spilling in, overflowing, red, violent. It speaks-

*

A knock.

A pause. Then the knock again. Louder this time. I try to lift myself, try to use my voice but I feel completely empty. I raise one bloody hand and wheeze in a dead voice. I hear the front door open. My aunt Kathy calling my name. The head starts chuckling on the gold platter. Aunt Kathy seeing the blood, searching the house frantically. She finds me on the floor in the living room in a pool of my own blood. The head is whispering now inaudibly. My head splinters, the migraine returning. Aunt Kathy asks if someone else is here. I can barely stand up. My body is weak, disappearing, spectral limbs that cannot hold my weight. My skull imploding, a terrible trembling, violent shaking, glass shattering, screaming in my ears.

Can you hear me? She’s asking.

She’s shaking, weeping, terrified.

When I don’t answer her, she steps around me, walks towards the kitchen, taking out her phone. The head-

*

Her face is a crushed mess. Heaving blood from a big gaping wound in the center of it, gushing and flowing out of her ruined face and pooling around her on the linoleum floor. Fires engulfing everything, black clouds, red sky, black sun. Her face is a splintered, shattered wound, a raw, torn open bloody cavity. Everything burning, bursting and stretching. Knife wounds. Blood flooding out of her chest, abdomen and throat, her body still twitching, still moving, convulsing on the floor. I’m weeping. Someone is screaming. The knife still coming down, crushing her chest cavity, collapsing her ribcage. Voice-

*

I open my eyes.

The room is covered in her blood. The cabinet’s, the floor, the ceilings, and the walls. Her torso is on the floor detached from her limbs. An empty object made of meat and blood. Her arms and legs are scattered around the room, tossed among the blood and gore and viscera, all of the shredded skin and muscle and unrecognizable organs crushed against the cabinet doors and the walls and the stove. I am soaking wet with blood. Head to toe. I start screaming. Stop. Calm myself down. Shaking. Open the box. Lift the head and the platter out and set them down on the counter. I lift the head from the platter but it’s as if it is glued there now. The head laughing, its tongue hanging out of its mouth. I throw up on the blood soaked floor. Migraine, deep, violent metal rod pushing its way through my skull. The head is rolling its eyes around, smiling, its fat tongue hanging out of its mouth. I’m crying uncontrollably. I throw up on the blood and vomit covered floor again. The words-

*

I come to again.

My parents, both naked standing in my doorway, their eyes blank, blood pouring from their mouths. Screaming. They disappear, then reappear, crawling around on my floor, under my bed, both of them weeping, naked. Then they disappear once more. My skin is layered with awful cuts, gory lacerations, all of them sick with the beginning of infection. Everything sore and red. Smell of rot and death.

Get out, I think suddenly, very clearly, get out, get out, get out-

I stand up and run to the door but before I can get out of the room, the head-

*

His voice is high.

The voice of a child. Telling me secrets, describing the world as a loop, an inescapable trap. Hell is this room. Hell is a universe of eating and shitting animals, dying and being born again endlessly. Images of rotting people tearing one another to pieces, dead bodies violently assaulting other dead bodies, pulling off faces, skinless corpses torturing other skinless corpses, eternities of screaming, years of removing and replacing your own flesh in front of a mirror while you cry, every atom being torn apart, every cell of your body replaced by nightmares.

The head laughs, a high-pitched child’s laugh, shrill and sickening and unnatural. Fat face and sunken eyes. He spits and laughs, his jowls shaking. Speaks like a child. I beg to leave again. He tells me that there is no escape. Time is a loop, this room is a trap, this box is hell. A snake eating its tail. The feeling of my hand dragging a knife across my throat, my hands wet with blood.

My parents dragging themselves around the room, scratching their eyes out, on fire, screaming and begging for forgiveness. He unravels time, I scream, dragged from one end of the universe to the other. He keeps me completely still. Asks me questions. I answer them, weeping and begging to leave. He allows me to ask questions back. We speak, back and forth, an unholy conversation, an infernal dialogue. Back and forth. Until he forces me to remove my tongue and then I just cry as my mouth fills with blood while the head laughs at me.

Saint Nick is a writer and artist from Western Massachusetts. His work aims to capture the spiritual desperation of the modern world by exploring themes of existential dread, loss of self, and trauma. He is also the founder and EIC of Modern Alchemy Press.

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