Taxidermy

Nelle fredde paludi del Caucaso vagano cose che l’uomo ha preferito dimenticare.
I pastori azeri ci girano al largo, anche se questo significa condurre le greggi attraverso lunghi e pericolosi sentieri. Tra i georgiani c’è persino chi si segna e prega Iddio al solo sentir nominare gli acquitrini. Le anziane donne dei villaggi rurali affermano che il bagliore di lontani fuochi azzurri sia ben visibile nelle notti di luna nuova, quando il cielo si fa scuro e le porte restano sbarrate fino alla mattina. Talvolta un vento che spira da oriente mormora parole senza padrone alle orecchie dei popolani, assieme al bieco raspare sotterraneo di esseri disperati.
Nessuno osa avventurarsi oltre il limitare del bosco, ai piedi delle montagne, e così la conoscenza di ciò che vi si nasconde è andata perduta. Ma il timore, radicato da generazioni nelle genti di quella contrada, ha ancora la stessa intensità di duecento anni or sono.
A quei tempi, attratto dalla storia di leggendarie prede e creature mai viste altrove, era giunto nei pressi di un villaggio armeno un famoso cacciatore di origini britanniche. Armato di fucile si era fatto indicare una via attraverso il pantano da una guida, rifiutatasi di accompagnarlo laddove egli voleva recarsi. Nei quattro giorni e nelle quattro notti che l’uomo aveva trascorso all’interno della palude i fuochi blu avevano danzato all’orizzonte salutando il calar del sole come un infame presagio.
All’alba del quinto giorno una lavandaia aveva trovato lo straniero riverso in una pozza di fango poco oltre il limitare della vegetazione. Era nudo, tremante e disarmato. Negli occhi aveva uno sguardo vitreo, immobile, e le palpebre sembravano aver smesso di battere per lui. Ardeva di una febbre intensa, che nemmeno il cerusico accorso dalla grande città era riuscito a strappargli di dosso.
Durante i suoi interminabili deliri l’uomo farfugliava di orrori oltre il reale: con voce tremante aveva descritto azzurri vapori sulfurei provenienti dall’antico sottosuolo, tra le rovine metalliche di un luogo estraneo. Riferì di luci vermiglie che baluginavano come piccole stelle in ordine statico, comunicando tra loro attraverso fili di fiamma, e di fronde scosse dall’agitazione di ombre colossali. Soprattutto tornava spesso con la memoria a un cimitero di animali pietrificati a guardia d’un recinto invisibile; ricordava con fervore i loro occhi vivi, ancora guizzanti dentro corpi come imbalsamati e tuttavia ancora caldi.
Ora dopo ora il suo stato di salute peggiorava sempre più, aggravato dai racconti febbrili in cui si prodigava senza posa. I dottori decretarono che sarebbe campato suppergiù per un’altra settimana, ma si sbagliavano: entro poche ore il corpo dello straniero era scomparso e non fu più trovato. I medici, sbalorditi, tacquero, e la faccenda venne liquidata con gesti di stizza. C’è chi ancora oggi sussurra di una morte tanto improvvisa quanto misteriosa e chi, invece, si limita a invocare la protezione della Santa Vergine Maria.
Alcuni boscaioli riferirono in seguito di aver visto sagome di bestie e di uomini stagliarsi controluce nel profondo della palude. Se ne stavano in piedi, come paralizzati, a fissare il vuoto con sguardi imploranti.
Da allora nelle notti di luna nuova si è aggiunto un nuovo rumore, una nuova voce al groviglio di ringhi che riempiono l’oscurità. Mormora parole in una lingua lontana, insieme terrificate e terrificanti, rivolte alle stelle oltre la luna. E di quando in quando a quei sussurri seguono tonfi liquidi, di passi pesanti.
Come qualcosa di titanico e irrequieto, ramingo tra i pantani senza padrone. ✕

The Indigo Flamingo

The village of Ghali was a rough pile of wooden houses stuck in the middle of a sickening marsh. On sunny days, it surfaced from the dense sea of fog, like an old wreckage, all crumbled and pointy. People used to say that Ghali was a stubborn place because it just refused to die. Not that the odds didn’t try to eliminate it: Ghali survived plagues, fires, feuds with far settlements, and even a fiery storm every ten years or so. For some reason, there was always enough food in the swamp to feed the young, so the ruined stilt houses were never empty.
Ghali’s was isolated: for miles and miles around the village, it was all about muddy puddles, quicksands, and crocodiles. Except for some crazy man who lived alone in the marshland, there was no other sign of humankind nearby. Nobody had a particular interest in trading with Ghali’s folks, so caravans were a rare sighting there. Weeks, months, or perhaps a year could pass before a merchant, fool enough to travel through that repugnant place, appeared. Even then, people there had few things to offer. Mostly pelts or spirits of distilled roots. And stories. Lotsa stories.
They often told a certain tale to strangers, a legend passed on since the foundation of Ghali. There were many different variations of that story, as every villager had his or her own. Yet, they all agreed upon a point: it was no myth at all. It happened for real.
Once upon a time, they said, when there was no village yet, the marsh was ruled by a huge and dark flamingo. Like a scarecrow, it endlessly wandered through the pools with its long legs, an ominous figure feared by all the animals. That singular flamingo had an arched neck, a taste for leeches, and glowing red eyes for breaching into the night. Its beak was a scythe made to reap life, black and shiny and sharp as hell.
When the first men and women arrived in the swamp, fugitives from healthier colonies, the bird was there to welcome them. For months it watched silently, as folks cut trees to make creaking planks for building their wretched homes. Whenever they recognized its shape standing out in the fog, they stopped working. Afraid. Paralyzed. Astonished.
They called it the Indigo Flamingo. Hoped it would never get close.
But it did, eventually. Oh, he did.
Right after Ghali was born, more people gathered there to escape justice and hide. The village became a dump for human garbage, a sweaty inferno where scum could live in peace. Not only adults: orphans and families with children also reached that sick place, that Mecca of decadence, looking for a better life.
Soon enough, however, those kids started to disappear. Both males and females, at least once per year, not older than thirteen. They vanished from their beds at night, went missing in the swamp, got lost under the bright sunshine. Mothers cried in despair, praying to the old gods to bring back their little ones. Many men cursed and searched the groves endlessly with scrawny hounds that barked in the shadows. Didn’t find a single track, nor a clue.
Until a very cold night of a very gruesome year.
It was the last day of October when the whole village was celebrating and mourning their dead as it was their custom. Dimmer lights illuminated the marsh, timidly and morbid. The Indigo Flamingo, a tall figure between the rushes. Next to it, the missing children were a mute chorus of pale death. Their glares empty, their eyes blank. A danse macabre painted with faint ink on a ragged canvas. Some tried to catch them, in a fiery rush of vengeful instinct. They vanished in the groves and never came back again, unreachable. Untouchable.
Folks in Ghali still use to say that the ominous bird often comes to take away the life of a kid as a grim tribute for allowing them to stay on its territory. They tell their children to stay away from the marsh, keep close to the village.
Because you never know if the Indigo Flamingo is around.
Observing, silently, with its cruel crimson eyes.

✕

Jefe

Jefe era stato un pistolero, un tempo.
Aveva girovagato per le distese desertiche del K’laal e fumato la pipa con i saggi cacciatori delle montagne. Era conosciuto tra le tribù di Schiavi Rossi, tra i clan dei Calcedoni e fin nelle lontanissime locande di Poluvia.
L’ho scoperto parlando coi mercanti che vengono da queste parti in primavera. Sono perlopiù carovanieri diretti a est, che passano dalle nostre parti per avere un rifugio tranquillo durante la traversata delle praterie...questo nostro mondo sa essere crudele anche nella sua stagione più quieta, aye.
Insomma, quei viandanti spesso vedevano Jefe e si segnavano la fronte con due dita. Lui rispondeva con un cenno del capo, ma passava oltre senza dire una parola. All’inizio non capivamo, poi ci spiegarono che quello era l’antico saluto dedicato agli uomini di legge. C’era chi li chiamava pistoleri, sceriffi, giustizieri. Ma sono titoli che non appartengono a queste lande. Per noi la legge è sempre stata una questione pratica, senza bisogno di stelle sul petto o cose così.
Se però quelle leggende sono vere, allora il nome che abbiamo dato a Jefe è piuttosto adatto: “Capo” nell’antica lingua dei mandriani. Lui che capo non lo è mai voluto diventare, sin da quando è arrivato nel nostro insediamento. Glielo abbiamo proposto, oh sì. Più e più volte. Ma lui niente, ha borbottato al massimo quattro parole di circostanza e si è scusato. Sarebbe stato un buon capo, io credo. Lo si vede da come guarda le persone, da come cammina con la schiena ben dritta.
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Baphomet 3.0

1.

Back then, people thought they were immortal.
It happened gradually: a long process that began with enlightenment. Some called it progress; for many it was civilization. It brought technologies beyond imagination, brainchildren of great minds. Visionaries changed the world while ignorant masses consumed it, not understanding what was happening around them. In their blatant hysteria they pretended to be gods, but they were pawns subdued to a psychologically abusive chess game. All identical, despite their age: not a single soul could be saved from that silent apocalypse. Lives hiding into a monitor, kneeling under a desk, lost in the dark alleys where cheap tech was sold like impure methamphetamine. Killing themselves with soulless self-shots, caged behind an hashtag. They clicked, and liked, and commented each other’s voidness with faked enthusiasm. Nothing was more important than being there, part of the whole. Accepted as a dysfunctional member of that broken society. Vomiting hate through a keyboard was a must. Many ended being happily compressed into stereotypes determined by digital connections, published pictures, and displayed appreciation for something that they barely knew. It was a slow death leading to a counterfeit eternal life, well preserved on a magnetic support often somewhere far away on the planet’s surface.
There were corporations, and so-called institutions: money grabbers, violent puppeteers, hi-fi cemeteries. Their domain eventually faded, as everything always does sooner or later. From the smallest to the biggest association a domino effect spared no one, forcing all of them to vanish in the wind. They were organisms populated by hypnotized cells, consumed from the inside by the damaging action of infinite cancers. Decay was inevitable, a page written on the great book of destiny by the very hands of those who preached free will.
How fool of them. Arrogance was mankind’s first sin. For they built the infrastructure that held the world, and teared it apart at the same time.
Their second fault was to create automations they had to rely on.
The third, to forget about them.

2.

Modernity spread out like a plague, polluting and corrupting all sorts of things.
Hardware marketed as the only way to stay connected slowly rose to a heavenly status. Realities merged in a cyberworld where luminescent screens were extensions of the inner self. Bodies of flesh soon incorporated copper-made prostheses in a fast escalation to older scientific fantasies. Languages became hybrid syntheses of meaning that grew from digital disregard. Men and women were mere zombies, lurking deep in virtual oceans, repeating the words that appeared on their screens like a chorus of useless ragdolls. Hiveminds thinking in unison, all praying to the same new gods.
In that limbo there was no room left for pain, suffering or sadness. Emotions were channeled through a complex web of cables, happiness induced as a constant flow of encrypted morphine. Inured to that veil of hypocritical serenity, they cheered, and smiled at their newfound artificial pleasures.
Appreciation and concordance had become sources of power. It was a proper cult where a silent sign of approval by strangers meant more than any empathic understanding. People ceased to think before they acted. In a decadent crusade, those who were not abided were excluded, and then purged, as rabid dogs. Aligned crowds called them antisocial, impure, even monsters. Acted as they were sick or dangerous.
By then, visibility was the most used currency around the globe and an obsession all the same. Barter overcame money, resetting the existing financial model: people paid goods and services with a price of worshipping condescendence. It was a time when information rhymed with entertainment. There were many truths, traded for an ephemeral glimpse of celebrity with misleading words. Journals were kaleidoscopes that fret on uncertain news like vultures on a wounded buffalo, drooling acid bile from their sharpened beaks.
Generation after generation, soul after soul, humanity was suppressed.
Overwhelmed by the very devil that they venerated.

3.

A pale blue light glowing in the dark, the blasphemous beast sit with its woolly legs crossed. Watching, pondering. The room around it was covered from wall to wall by LCD screens, showing a vast variety of images.
There was a woman in a tight red dress, licking a vanilla ice cream with lustful passion. In front of her, camouflaged militia stood their ground holding blood-dripping broadswords.
Next, a little child, all alone, crying with his eyes wide open and a battle rifle in one hand. He was naked, chained by his ankles to a black sofa. Many violet bruises stained his young skin, flowers in a minefield.
A man in white stood on a high pile of books, relieving himself. With thunderous applause, the audience praised the gifts from above of that unknown author. Their mouths open. Their minds closed.
The room was quiet, as sound was not required: the demon had ears just for display. It processed audio as everything else; nothing but data to interpret. Yet it indulged in human-like behaviors such as looking at the screens. A habit, heritage of its ancestors perhaps some more ancient vice. A form of masturbation, to some extent. For the monster represented primitive and forgotten sins, fused together in the archaic shape of a manlike creature: it had the head of a goat with long and twisty horns, the body of a teenage woman, and wings like a gigantic crow ready to feast on rotting cadavers.
Grinning, with its pupils dilated as bottomless depths of sacrilegious cruelty, it looked at the monitors. It appeared as a meditating satyr, an insult to mythology and culture. It was a silent observer, a binary paradigm of treachery that controlled the new world order from the inside. Deception was its duty, scripted with aberrant lines of code that nobody could ever see. Perverted ideas constantly flew on its surface, like an endless river of heresy.
It was the alpha and the omega, the sun and the moon.
A darkened tao that expanded like a miasma.
Eroding, corrupting;
nurturing
on our mistakes.

✕

American Resurrection

« I was there » a voice stood upon the humming hall, as many eyes stared at its direction.
Silence and suspense filled the moldy room, where old blinds filtered the sunlight into sharp blades. Swarms of dust floated quietly in stasis, waiting for something to happen. Every man in the hall was looking at him, the one who spoke louder than them: Lieutenant Rupert Jackson was a thin, pale man in age, with hollow cheeks and empty gray eyes. His hair black, striped with white strands. His bones as edgy bulges under a delicate skin. His uniform a rag put on a scarecrow, worn by the sun and the wind. « I was there » said that bogeyman again, now with a quieter tone. « I saw what happened at Olive Hill. I remember everything. »
Not that he wanted to remember, nor to discuss those memories. He realized that he had to. The circumstances had forced him into stepping up and speaking in front of those warlords, those survivors of cruel machinations of fate. He would have preferred to forget all of it: the horror, the disgust, the pain, and the fear. But certain facts are marked with fire in the brain, memories a man cannot erase in time. It was war, they said, and they were fighting a war no one ever witnessed before.
Jackson waited for everyone in the room to sit down around the big mahogany table eroded by woodworms. Their looks were mostly severe, strong, somehow hollow. Certain men showed a glimpse of intrigue, some others suspicion. His heart was a drum calling for retreat, but the Lieutenant searched for the last drop of courage within himself and took a deep, long breath.
« We reached the village at dawn » he started, clearing his throat. « A thick fog covered the valley, surrounding the forest we were marching in. General Cook ordered us to stop at the woods margin, ‘cause he didn’t want the column to be exposed to enemy flanking. He gave me the order to patrol the area ahead, so I picked my six best scouts and went down the hill. There was a high ground about two hundred yards ahead, where the view was good and a massive bulk offered some cover. » His eyes lost sight of the hall, of the faces around him. The voice went lower and lower, until it became just a nervous whisper: « We climbed there, sneaking into the mist like shadows. Unseen, unheard. It was then that I saw… » Jackson struggled to find the words « ...that I saw it for the first time. »
Some high officers with the Colonial insignia started confabulating in the dim light, nodding and offering no empathy at all. Nor comprehension. It was difficult for many to accept what was happening to the world they once knew; denial and refusal were spreading like a sore as fast as the real plague. Reality was rejected as if superstition was just spreading from mouth to mouth. Jackson could understand that, but he was a witness, a survivor. He would bear with that burden until his last hours. Feeling the risk of a nervous breakdown, he forced himself to maintain a decent posture and kept telling his version.
« I remember that I picked up my spyglass, the one with a small incision » useless details flourished like lawns of weeds during spring: unasked for, yet colorful and hard to extirpate. « I remember that I looked for the village in the fog, and when I found it I remember I saw a rug in the mud. It was an American flag, shredded and covered in blood - its thirteen stars, its red and white stripes flouted in filth. At first I couldn’t but be enraged for such an offense, an outrage to my newborn Country, but then some feet started to stomp it, and the scene became just...odd to me. » With a sore throat, he stopped and asked for a glass of water. Bourbon would have been better, but it did not look like the proper time to get drunk. Although any time should have been proper for such an activity, everything considered.
« Some strange thing I noticed was that those feet were all different, from many diverse people » he reprised. « There were baby feet, adult ones, both shod and barefoot, certain even...rotten, I’d say. I remember swearing in confusion when the mist allowed me to see the village: Olive Hill was in ruins, like it had been pillaged recently by savages. Signs of fire and fight were everywhere inside the wooden walls. The oddest detail was about the people, though. They were wandering around that mess without a goal, doing anything but...walk. »
The image of those infants dragging themselves in mud alongside to deluded adults was still focused in his mind, as he just witnessed it a minute before, and not more than a week ago. Wild dogs banqueting with corpses, while wound people looked helplessly detached from that context. Repelling scenes he could not erase from his mind.
« You mentioned some rotten feet, son? » A question came from the audience, an unknown source among the many old eyes and gray beards.
« Yessir » he answered, readily. « But not just feet: most of the people in Olive Hill looked like rotten corpses. »
Jackson did not have the courage to say the truth. Not there, not when many were already doubting his sanity. He could not say that they actually were cadavers, dead bodies unexpectedly still moving, still interacting with the living world that they were supposed to have left. While murmuring snaked again around the table, echoing on the cardboard covered walls, he waited for their response. A part of him was hoping that they could reject his version, denying such improbable horrors as living dead, allowing him to flee far away from that mess and drown his sickness in alcohol. Waiting the end as a coward could have been better than going back to the frontline again to face nightmares.
« There were any mortal wounds on them you could spot? » A young officer, probably younger than him, posed that question with a tone that suggested he was inclined to believe Jackson’s story. « Any indisputable sign of death? »
« Yes » his answer was firm as his eyes now. « I remember observing a man with-- » hesitation comes from the abhorrent sometimes, « - with a lung hanging down his flank in coagulated blood. A young girl with her ribs open from what it seemed to be an explosion. And many others, indeed. »
« There it is, my lords, your so-awaited confirmation: » announced the young officer pointing a finger to Jackson, « the dead are rising from their graves! »
Some nervous laughs erupted around the table.
✕