Short story post – Cooper Walden Sturm

The Orphan

The young girl stood upon the shore, her feet sinking into murky sand,
and her hands covered by dangling strands of seaweed and kelp. Her name was Orbona, and she worked tirelessly in the fading afternoon light, pulling clumps of algae out from a mound laying plump upon the coast. Orbona’s hair was ratted and brown, with sticks and leaves caught in the knotted net of her scalp. Her cloak was drenched thoroughly, a sodden garment of loosely threaded vines. The girl’s skin, deeply tanned and glowing amber in the fading sunlight, was coated by thick layers of swamp muck and sand. Her ankles were covered by marks where leeches had gnawed, and her toes were calloused by years of trudging through sharp bristles and vermin-ridden flora. Orbona, however, was not particularly fussed about the state of her appearance.

The girl was untangling a mass of seaweed and ocean-rot that had run aground upon the shore. Jagged rocks littered the side of the coast, poking their sharp edges out from the protean surface of the sea. The mound of kelp, about the size of a whale or a sailboat, had been trapped between the stones, and now that low tide had allowed the waves to recede, Orbona could tell that the mass was struggling, strangled by its own bulk. It belched up laborious exhalations smelling of brine and blood, and made wretched, choking sounds with its gurgling mass. Orbona pulled away strand after strand of seaweed, loosening up the thing. It was nearly free, and Orbona could tell that her efforts had helped the mass to gain some comfort, but her time was up. The ocean had begun to creep back in, the tides pulling water back over the rocky shores, and foam coating the seaweed-laden mound with oceanic discharge and effluvia. The sun was fading in the sky. She would have to return home for the night.

The coastline gave way into the marsh, and Orbona headed back through the mire from whence she came. Roiling swamplands gurgled with the sound of bubbling peat as Orbona took assured steps through the debris-laden muck. Around her, the trees groaned, their roots bloated by an influx of seawater. Her heavy footprints carved a line heading back to the encroaching sea, where the mangroves parted against the jagged outcroppings of the shore. The girl’s hand gripped onto moistened vines and swelling bark as she pulled herself forward through the bog. Mud clung to the tan contours of her ankles and coated the sable softness of her cloak. The sodden fabric drooped downwards like the dangling wings of a newborn moth, trailing through the mire as the girl trudged back home.

The swamp undulated with the primeval rancor of a ravenous beast, its reservoir a gurgling mire of fetid foliage rising and falling atop the bloated stomachful of sulfur and sea brine. Deep within its bowels, frothing peat churned decaying plants and putrescent soil into a turbid scum, gelatinous and opaque. But the girl did not fear the bog, nor the uncertainties that lay within. The swamp, she knew, could fear death. It knew the pangs of starvation and the deprivation of hypoxia. It hungered, heaved, shivered, and procreated. Like a gestating mother, the swamp’s loamy belly grew engorged and distended as the ocean’s tides crept in. Where the tides drew back, broken detritus and flotsam-strewn wreckage bubbled up to the quagmire’s surface, birthed from its swollen womb. Intestinal mangrove roots twisted into the sodden earth, suckling deeply the saline mixture through their gnarled bark. Withered jequirity vines and jacaranda blossoms found comfort beneath the entangled mantle of muck. Amidst the ocean-felled lumber and moss-covered morass, the gaping earth trembled, cool and wet.

Scampering away from the salt marsh, Orbona dreaded her arrival at the overhanging village. Cradled between the soft contours of her palm, her basket held a paltry assortment of herbs and fruits; just enough to cover for her absence, should Grandfather inquire as to why she had been gone for so long, but also scarce enough to make him irate. Grandfather would likely refrain from issuing any punishment, but Orbona doubted that he would be happy. Still, dusk was settling in, and she would have to return home before the beasts grew too adventurous. She walked onward through the swamplands, weary when the trees finally parted and revealed the white tower stretching into the sky.

The gargantuan structure stretched far beyond the opaque clouds, enormous and blanched white. The ivory tower curved as it hung in the sky, a fixed, looming obelisk. The spire penetrated through the swamp’s belly, leaking red liquid out into the undergrowth. It pierced, punctured, and protruded through the earth and heavens. Once pristine, the tower was now stained with rivulets of cochineal dye and globules of filth. Encircling the lowest ring of the spire clung a ramshackle village, spurting out torrents of fluid as it hung loosely upon the ivory exterior. A wooden lift lay waiting at the bottom of the spire, with a rusted winch and frayed rope acting as the sole entrance into the girdled village above.

The girl stepped aboard the lift, taking the time to safely strip away any leeches that had attached themselves to the contours of her feet. The lift creaked into motion as it hauled the girl upward in slow, intermittent heaves. Torrents of runoff pelted the elevator from above, coating the roof in thick slurry and dripping cochineal tar onto the canopy below. The girl sat upon the water-logged planks, waiting as she was lifted into the makeshift settlement. Cradled high above the canopy, it clung religiously to the exterior of the tower, supported only by timber shafts bored in desperation through the ivory. Abodes were small and cramped, cluttered amongst one another and hanging lecherously over the swamp. Open-faced pipes intertwined between the platforms, carrying crimson product from the tower’s center to its extremities. The entire town gurgled with the sound of viscous loads traveling down the pipes. Horrid people milled about, their eyes betraying their inner nature. Some blank and lifeless, others with an avaricious gleam. A shantytown of equal outcasts and opportunists.

If nothing else, the vista was sublime. Down below, the salt marsh melted away into verdant greens and algal cyans, before disappearing entirely into the frothy, chaotic sea. At the precipice between the two, the coast undulated in and out with the tide, junk and effluvia littering the moistened surface of the sand. The mound of seaweed could be seen trapped among the rocks slightly offshore. Orbona watched sadly as it lay there, pelted by the crashing waves. Foam cascaded over the mass’s bulk, coating it in a suffocating mantle of brine as high tide claimed the shoreline. Orbona headed further up into the village. She clambered up the pipeways and pulled herself up ladders of frayed rope. Stepping up rickety stairways and upon platforms that swayed precariously in the wind, Orbona circled her way around to the north-facing side of the shantytown. Wooden floors creaked ominously beneath her soles, clinging desperately to the spire’s walls. Once she had reached the peak of the village, the air growing thin as she reached the highest point, the peninsula revealed a vista to Orbona once more—equally miraculous and repugnant.

Looking northward, innumerable towers of ivory erected themselves in parallel lines, stretching into the horizon. Each enormous spire rose from the earth and curved inwards, as though to trap the peninsula within an ivory gaol. Jungles, orchards, quarries, and villages festered in the between-space—the prison beneath the spires, provisional homesteads clustered under ivory towers, but none reaching any further up than the base. Orbona gazed out beyond the dual, barbed rows of ivory to where the Desiccant Basin lay, still and foreboding in its desolate whiteness. As sunlight faded beyond the horizon, the basin’s white canvas was painted red, then violet, then black. The citadel—a small speck of civilized society, barely visible—hung tyrannically over the desert. Carved into the cliff face of the basin, the citadel looked out over the peninsula, its alabaster walls darkened by shade. The wasteland’s ingress lurked in the inky shadow of dusk, creatures howling as they awoke to the nocturnal urges of twilight.

Orbona stepped into the building nestled at the top of the village. It acted as both a storehouse and a village hall, but in reality, the structure was little more than a hovel. The floorboards were swelled with the excess moisture rising from the marshes below. The abode was occupied solely by Grandfather—not her grandfather, mind, but rather a sort of communal patriarch. Sprawled out by the far wall, he lay weakly, a decrepit and crotchety man upon a makeshift, lopsided bed. Grandfather’s face was blemished by an anemic whiteness, save for the few spots where sallow jaundice crept in. Silver tufts of hair graced what vestiges remained of the man’s beard, but none stood atop his head, oval and wrinkled like a serpent’s egg.

“Orbona…” the old man called out to the girl with a slobber-mouthed drawl. The girl could see bits of marrow stuck in the old man’s teeth as he invoked her name. It sounded foreign and unwelcome when uttered between his lips. “Yer feet are dirty. How long were ya down in the swamps? The vermin’ll gnaw on yer bones if yer not working.” The familiar words stuck to each other like a viscous slurry of excrement.

Orbona placed her basket before Grandfather without a word, and the old man’s saggy jowls opened once more. “Ackh. Quit playin’ around and get straight t’harvestin’ next time.” He raised a hand aloft as though to strike the girl, but thought better of it, lowering his aged hand back to his side. “The men need sustenance to continue their extraction. Get lazy, and you’ll ruin the product,” he said, his cracked lips contorting into a sneer. Cochineal-dyed saliva dribbled down his chin.

Orbona exited the house and sat herself down in a familiar corner of the village, resting against the ivory spire with the sky hanging overhead. The men were stopping their work for the day, heading to their own hovels and stuffing their faces full of fruitful and herbaceous gruel. Slurry continued draining down the pipes, but in a trickle rather than a torrent. Settling into a comfortable position, Orbona watched the stars and listened to the howling of the swamp beasts below. The full moon shone readily amidst the myriad, nebulous sparks, each mote of light shimmering in a brilliant violet array. Her stomach rumbled, but Orbona had no appetite. She wished only to wait for dawn to break, and to somehow escape from this wretched festering place. She felt strangled, stuck, asphyxiating. The mellowness of sleep took her as she rested against the rotting boards.

At dawn, Orbona silently tiptoed back down to the village lift, procuring a handful of desiccated fruits from the back of the storehouse before she went and placing them delicately into her basket. Grandfather had always been a heavy sleeper, but he was especially so now in his old, wizened age. The shriveled gifts lay in a cluster between her arms. The village was dark and silent, muted amidst the ever-roiling organism of life that lay below. Orbona clambered down the rickety village, making herself small in case anyone was still awake. The creaking of wooden platforms mixed into the groaning cacophony of mangroves swaying in the breeze. Just faintly, Orbona could hear the gentle gasping of something from the direction of the shoreline. She lowered herself down by the lift, slowly, painstakingly so as not to make a sound, until the swamp swallowed her from view.

The morass had grown swollen. All around Orbona, the roots of mangrove trees unfurled in labyrinthian, tessellated networks. She slid her way past trailing vines, each slick and dripping with guttation. The water had receded throughout the swamps, allowing the girl to leap through the sinuous marsh, squelching through the decomposed remains of flower buds and insect shells. The treeline parted as Orbona neared the shore, her feet stepping out into a treasure trove of flotsam. The tide pulled back further into the ocean revealing indistinct aggregations of wreckage, the waters wrested by the full moon. Trapped between the rocks, the mass was waiting, entangled in seaweed and bellowing for air.

Orbona got back to work, prying strands of algae away from the hulking mound. Clumps of plant matter came away between her fingers, staining the skin a deep, bilious green. With each handful of plant matter, a sulfurous exhalation gurgled out from the unburdened mass. Orbona grabbed hold of something, a tight coil of adhesive tissue wrapped taut around the mass. The twisting rope was thoroughly entwined around the groaning creature, but Orbona dug her heels into the sand, and leaned the full weight of her body into pulling the coil back towards the swamp. With a final, exerted tug it came loose, something snapping with a visceral squelch. A sloppy mess oozed out beneath her feet; the creature was freed, and it groaned in satisfaction. The sea went wild as it pulled back in low tide, expelling a mass of bubbling slough onto the beach.

A frothy spume spewed forth a foetid form from the untangled seaweed. The creature mewled out a familiar groan. Calcified tissue, seemingly composed from rotting detritus and aquatic growths alike, heaved itself onto the beach, the size and shape of a whale, but formed of roiling flesh and sickly blooming foliage. Coral outgrowths jutted out betwixt corpulent folds of piscine tissue as the heap sobbed out softly, its voice strained as it lurched ashore. Barnacles conformed to the unsightly contours of the creature’s body, entangled within the entrailing strands of kelp that clung to its viscous secretions. The umbilical cord, which had been wrapped around the creature’s neck, now pulsated softly in Orbona’s hands. A placenta hung limp upon the coil, plantlike and vestigial. The amalgamation’s open maw stretched forth, bellowing out the shrill cry. Each heaving motion brought the contorted beast further inland, while exposed ribs poked through the being’s porous skin, puncturing holes in the pliant beach.

The assemblage of roiling ooze cried out, its mewling growing in volume and pitch. They were the same; trapped orphans, run aground in a place that has no place for children. Slowly suffocating, each orphan was waiting for someone to free them. Stepping up to the great, gelatinous creature, Orbona placed her hand upon its oily flesh. The child relented to her touch. Gently, the girl gripped the wrinkled exterior of a fruit and placed it within the child’s orifice. The creature trembled with emotion, something unlike water welling within something unlike eyes, and swallowed back the preserved fruit. Once more, Orbona reached into her basket for an offering to the misshapen newborn, and each time her gift was accepted graciously. One by one, the fruits disappeared down the child’s cavernous gullet. Satisfied, it floundered forward and headed along the interior of the beach, finally stopping at the foot of the mangrove trees. The child babbled out to the savage marshes, whose waters ran crimson red. Then, the orphans began to cry.

The Exile

Scarlet rivulets ran down the exile’s back as he staggered, weary and scarred, behind the procession of gossamer-clad figures. His flagellated flesh was laid bare to the torment of salt-laden winds as he surveyed the pallid figures of Hierarchs driving the carriage along. Behind him stood the imposing walls of the Hegemony’s highest citadel, overlooking the Desiccant Basin with scorn. Each granule of salt carried upon the harsh, scouring wind stung against the exile’s gaping wounds, a potent reminder of his crimes—petty thievery, a singular sin for which the exile had been excised from the Hegemony, his scars the flesh- bound proof of misdeed and dissidence. He could still feel the cold, raking caress of surgical implements upon his skin, exposing a scarlet network of raw musculature beneath. He recalled how those pallid, white fingers scraped away the cartilage in his knuckles and joints, stripping the ligaments and jabbing unbidden utensils between the bones. His skin had been forcibly abscissed, yet in time, salt and torment would make for natural substitutes. The exile’s thoughts hemorrhaged into one another, each forced step forward infected by agony. His soles left acrid pools of blood behind in his footsteps.

Dawn settled over the Desiccant Basin. Beams of sunlight ruptured through swirling clouds as the sunrise’s warmth lit the basin aflame with a vermillion hue. Scarlet blood sizzled under the oppressive heat of the Desiccant Basin, the red-hot sun scorching the valley’s saline bed. The salt beds began to sputter as the sun warmed the basin’s surface. Geysers of steaming brine erupted in gaseous discharges, gurgling up from fissures in the basin, hissing out steam and salt. There were no oases to be found in this desert, only scalding jets of effluvia. Occasionally, the exile could glimpse the skittering, mercurial movements of something black and inky below the basin’s surface, yet the captors did not stop to investigate. They were uninterested in the creatures that made their home in this place, assuredly moving the carriage along to some pending destination. The Hierarchs poked and prodded along the path forwards, testing the ground for cracks and weaknesses. With each snap of a whip, the procession sharply turned, the carriage’s vermin-beasts guiding the procession along.

The exile’s body strained against the taut chains which bound him to the carriage ahead. Rusted shackles chafed against his wrists, each abrasion of skin splattering blood onto the stark-white soil. Each wound inflicted upon his body caused a sorrowful cry to escape the exile’s parched throat, yet he expected no sympathy from the uncaring procession of Hierarchs which bound him. His presence, in fact, barely even seemed to register to them, staring coldly ahead through the slits of their ivory masks, charting a vigilant trail through the Desiccant Basin. Their eyes were focused solely ahead upon the ivory peak peering over the basin’s edge.

The Hierarchs worked judiciously, galvanizing the carriage along as the sun gazed scornfully from behind, leering over the alabaster walls of the Hegemony’s citadel. Staving off the pain with curiosity, the exile turned his attention towards the coruscating implements of his captors. Wriggling and chittering at the front of the procession, two fomorian silverfish pulled the carriage along, their insectoid limbs scuttling forward at a remarkable pace, slightly slower than a horse’s trot, yet rapierlike with incisive turns. They poked and prodded with long, spindly limbs, testing the unstable, saline earth for fissures. Sturdy, metallic harnesses secured the monstrous vermin within the procession’s clutches, not unlike the exile’s own shackles. The Hierarchs were accustomed to the beasts’ unsettling movements, expertly conducting each skittering turn as the vermin lurched onward, their gargantuan, silver-plated carapaces gleaming blindingly in the daylight. The Hierarchs, too, gleamed brightly underneath the vermillion glare. Their pristine, gossamer-white raiments scintillated gloriously amidst the glittering salt flats, each garb consisting of a hooded robe bearing intricately woven tapestries. Amidst the myriad tapestries interlaced upon the raiments, silver threads coalesced into exotic creatures, reverent figures, and towers curving impossibly into the sky.

Most resplendent, however, were the elaborate masks that each Hierarch reverently wore. Carved from ivory, the masks seemed to act as both a veil and an instrument. A mechanical tube extended from the bottom of each mask in the mimicked shape of a proboscis, such that each word uttered by the Hierarchs trilled out into melodic tunes. Ivory tubes probed outward into the open air, whistling against the savage winds. Each terse command incited by the procession conducted itself in melodic fashion, various voices harmonizing and echoing out over the barren landscape. The Hierarchs stood tall as conductors of the basin, the holiness of their procession emanating in a melodious chorus. The group was almost saintly, looking as elegant as can be in the inexorable, relentless heat of the desert. Yet trailing behind the brilliant procession, a trail of heretical, sizzling scarlet dribbled to the parched earth.

The caravan lurched against the sun-bleached basin, sending a sharp rattle through the chains. Suddenly, the silverfish skittered to a halt, and one Hierarch began to speak in an unfamiliar tongue, their mask distorting the sound into a guttural warble. The exotic language of his captors was only barely parseable, quavering out into abstruse homily. “Near… chrysalis… heretic… feed…” the words scattered throughout the procession, repeated by each Hierarch in turn. Heeding the command, a hideous mixture of smoked offal, dried guaraná fruit, and tallow was offered before the exile. The clump of sustenance wriggling in the oppressive heat. Within the pemmican, wrinkled fruits peered out at him like the reddened husks of shriveled eyes, their ebony cores engulfed in a swollen mass of putrescent sclera.

Gnawing hunger seized upon the exile’s bowels, yet he could not bring himself to gorge upon the desiccated scraps. Each attempt to shovel food into his gaping, scarred mouth was followed by an upheaval, his body discharging acrid waves of revulsion to purge the offending mixture. One Hierarch gave him a sharp kick, urging him to ingest the dry, gritty rations, but the strike only further agonized the process, mixing metallic ichor with the nauseous tang of bile. The exile heaved out a sickly trail of spittle, though there was no food in his belly to vomit up. Meanwhile his captors dined decadently, drinking deeply of marrow broth and slurping the juice from beady-eyed guaraná fruits through their ivory proboscises. The earth groaned, parched, yearning with every droplet of juice that spilled from the Hierarchs’ ivory tubes. A sweetly tempting fragrance wafted out from the procession, pervading the basin’s otherwise searing air, the honeyed aroma of marrow and fruit heralding the group’s arrival like aromatic incense. Tirelessly, the Hierarchs dragged the exile onward over treacherous salt flats, wrenching molten air from his wrought lungs. Their destination emerged over the edge of the basin. The ivory peak loomed into visibility.

Dominating the distant landscape, a tower of ivory extended upwards from the horizon. It loomed into view, rising over the mountainous edges of the basin and straining upwards against the vermillion sky. Like alabaster, it shone in an effulgent display of material wealth and purity, yet the structure remained bizarrely natural in structure. Cracks and creases rippled down the side of the tower, giving it more the appearance of bone than something man-made. The spire curved bizarrely, as though the earth itself had formed a spiteful talon to scrape the underbelly of the heavens. Awestruck by the ivory obelisk, the procession around the exile came to a standstill. Fluting crescendos of fervor whistled in the wind as the Hierarchs bowed deeply to the effulgent monument. Zealous figures composed an ode under the looming shadow of the distant tower, their voices humming in harmonized reverence.

Then, something cracked, shattering like glass. A cry broke out among the chorus of worship. A melodious voice had been transmuted into the gurgling sound of blood traveling down the trachea, spurting crimson liquid out from the proboscis. A geyser of salt and steam erupted from the earth, alongside the sound of something skittering from below. The figure in raiments groaned piteously as his throat was throttled by a serrated limb, black and inky. It crawled up from the fissure in the earth, standing tall. Centipedal, it stretched upwards, looming overhead. The Hierarchs ceased their chorus of homily, yet the creature did not halt its advance, drawn in by the scent of decadence. Its antennae probed over each Hierarch in turn, relishing the taste of guaraná juice, rich marrow, and sweet, sweet blood. As it passed over each figure in turn, the Hierarchs began to cry out, before their dissonant, anguished cries were cut short by serrated chitin. It caressed the mangled, retching remains, multitudinous limbs crawling over flayed gossamer and sloughed flesh.

Then, the creature reached out towards the exile, black limbs crawling over the gleaming basin. Its carapace rippled like the surface of an inkwell, red eyes gleaming and peering directly at the exile. It drew closer, curling, serpentine. A forcipule reached out to caress the exile’s soft, salty flesh. The exile shivered in pain as the creature’s antennae flitted around him, stroking the exile’s body wherever his wounds festered most. Coated in chitin, the limb felt pleasantly cool. A rumble of satisfaction bellowed out from the centipedal creature, yet it did not strike. Slowly, sensually, it circled around the exile, sensing his hunger and abstinence. It positioned its head closer, the main body writhing as the centipede brought its maw to bear. Mandibles, slick with spittle, hovered close to the exile’s bound hands. In a single, visceral instant, the creature snapped forward, shattering the exile’s chains between its jaws. With deliberation in its lithe limbs, the centipede circled away from the exile, wriggling back into the salt-laden fissure from which it came, and writhing into the dark, clammy bowels of the earth.

The exile stood alone amidst a sizzling sea of nebulous meat. All around him, the ground was littered with the savaged remnants of formerly pristine raiments, each now defiled by an oozing deluge of viscera. The mangled remnants of the Hierarchs bulged and groaned from the excess air trapped within their corpses, whistling out a phlegmy death rattle through their ivory masks which lay unceremoniously crammed into each amorphous pile of bone, muscle, and sinew. Piping hot entrails bellowed with agony. As the corpses released their pent-up cries, strings of fleshy pulp gurgled up the tubes, hissing a tune around the chained, tortured exile. The carrion composed him a ghastly ode beneath the vermillion sky.