The June Special Guest Writer is MF Korn

You can visit Mike at: http://mfkorn.com/

SHADES AND VESPERS
by MF Korn

A hooded figure in black slowly walked with me to the wooden skiff at the bank, where a strange box lay.  He dragged the box built with ancient, forged nails into the skiff, until it fit.

There weren't any stars in the blackest sky. It seemed there wasn't even a sky. We pushed off the bank in a fluid, ethereal motion. He glided the skiff with a long pole across the water, rowing us out of the blackness. I dared not speak to him. I heard the Dies Irae of Faure's Requiem; celestial revenants of choirs, seraphim of illusions. The latin libretto stung my ears.

  When I dug this last grave, I came across a buried and sealed bottle of mescal. El Rojo Con Guzamo. What it was doing in that plot of land was imponderable.

I seemed to have always liked drinking and digging graves. I think I was once a real being but I'm not sure. I don't remember when I became a gravedigger. I certainly didn't aspire to it. All I know is that it pays for my liquor. I don't care for anything else but the choirs of nattering angels, so just don't take away my spiritus fermenti. Let me continue to hear the wailing of spirits throughout the aether.

I don't know where I have been all this time; from the looks of it, I am in some sort of literarily-defined Hell. Not the hell of Dante, perhaps a bit before that. Before Dante borrowed from the Greeks. 

A simpler Hell, as described by the poet Homer. A hell of neither Heaven nor Hell; a sort of shadowy nether-region that is detached from all reality. Here I see "Shades" of shiny images, of people. Not necessarily ghosts. I've been here since I can remember; not a syllable of my past but I try to remember what I can.
The Shades seem to run the works around here.

There is some sort of shiny machine—l'infernal —that with a twist of the turbine causes me anguish to no end. Its works are incomprehensible and intricate. It is quite complicated to me. Sometimes the turbine traps spiritual, angelic voices and turns them into banshee shrieks. The machine doesn't have an end to it.  It sprawls into a horizon that continues to disappear into a vanishing point no matter how far I crawl to see where the
machine ends.

I have a rudimentary shovel that seems to be cast with some sort of imponderable metal. All I know is, I shovel dirt for shadowy Shades and at the end of the day, I row across a stagnant body of water and purchase a bottle of Mescal. At least that is what it tastes like. Now I've found an extra bottle in the parcel of land in which I'm digging a grave, for whom I do not know. 

I've learned since my first cognizance, to stay away from the Machine L'Infernal. With every twist of the turbine, I scream due to the severe insult to the brain, the noise of furies nattering in my ear. Now, instead of the usual shrieks, choirs of cherubim and seraphim seem to envelop me in the unfurling of celestial banners of pungent chords from some vaguely familiar Mass for the Dead. Again, libretto in Latin.
           
Today I found that the wide river that seem to end and had no shoreline to speak off. The skiff was there once again, waiting for me to board. A black-robed figure with a vague outline stood next to the oblong box quite resembling a pauper's coffin.

I climbed in and sat down and we shoved off. We fought a silent, deep current. Far off in the distance, there finally seemed to be a shoreline. I put my hand in the murky water and it was chillingly cold. We seemed to row forever through the twelve-toned aleatoric fog. There was a lapping of gentle ripples against the shore. The land seemed wrapped in a mysterious swath of magical otherness, a land not trod upon for centuries.
           
I got out of the boat and the shadow-cast face of the hooded figure turned away. The figure pushed off and headed back.

I looked around this dark, dreary place. There was a small path beckoning me to try, through a patch of woods blurred in the midst of hideous blackness. I paced the stretch of muddy sand, the sand foamy and wet from contact with the water at its edge.

It was slow going at first with the vines and grown. The path seemed not to be travelled in a long time. I walked up and down stilted mounds and topographical blemishes in the blasted heath, along a shoreline of shadows and unnamable sounds. I lay down for an eternity. Wait, I have been here before.

When I awoke again, somehow I found the half-dug grave. I dug for a bit, and then I stopped digging, and no furies came to scream into my ear.  What uncomplicated celestial joy came to me: No screaming. Just a surcease of pain, quelling as the angelic choirs whispered their vespers to me.

Without knowing why, I opened the bottle of Mescal, which I am not sure is Mescal, and drank from the bloody liquid within.  It tasted like Mescal. And Mescal is for the damned. That is me. 

I don't know why I am allowed to sit quietly and think without the anguish of the furies.
Maybe things are changing. Then I began to hear the Sanctus of Mozart's Requiem.  Again, libretto in Latin.  Serephim of angelic demons nattering in my ears.

The grave was finally finished, completely dug out, and I rested. The marker lay on the ground while the Shades continued to whisper orisons and nymphs of unpronounceable origin appeared. 

I looked down at the marker. It said "Anno Domini, 1926, Gravedigger." I would assume that is me.

I found another bottle at the bottom of the hole I just dug. It was red too. Red Mescal. 

Mescal is surely for the damned. 

Now I am hearing Rachmaninoff's Vespers. I welcome it in my tragic overtones of
immortality.

At the end of the day when the starless sky meets the skittering horizon of shade, I lay down and sleep the sleep of Hypnos and Morpheus. I think when I wake up, I am quite possibly already dead in this aether-state of non-being.

There is no light here, just the spectral absence of it. The Infernal Machine twists its screaming turbines like it has for an eternity. And I stay away from it. 

I found another bottle today. Red Mescal. Surely Mescal is for the damned. The skiff awaits me at the shore again. I begin crawling towards it.

From Louisiana, Michael Frederick Korn (MF Korn)writes sort-of-surreal dark fantasy, mostly 'quiet' horror and strange science fiction. He has written twelve novels, two screenplays and two hundred and forty five short stories.

Three of Michael Korn's books, CONFESSIONS OF A GHOUL AND OTHER STORIES, ALIENS, MINIBIKES AND OTHER STAPLES OF SUBURBIA, and SKIMMING THE GUMBO NUCLEAR were mentioned in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror: Fifteenth Annual Edition.

CONFESSIONS OF A GHOUL AND OTHER STORIES and RACHMANINOFF'S GHOST were mentioned in The Mammoth Book of New Horror.

A story "The Strange Case of the Lovecraft Cafe" cowritten with D.F. Lewis and Jeff VanderMeer was mentioned in the Year's Best Fantasy & Horror: Twenty First Annual Edition.