The surgical horror stands stoically on the tall bridge, staring down upon an unsuspecting world. 
Tinnitus voices whisper to his dyslexic mind. The secrets of the cosmos open before him like a sliding panel of opaque glass. 

    His only name given is Jack Corpse. In a long forgotten time, he had walked amongst the dead. 

    His skin grafted ears are deafened as the night sky screams pointlessly to the Acropolis below. Its sheltered paths wind endlessly through its vast internal labyrinth. The most surprising feature of the ancient city, however, is not its architecture, but its residents. The hieroglyphs on its unbroken facade are beautiful, hand-painted with mesmerizing, delicate beauty. They communicate a beautiful, sad, and wondrous tale: a future in which a tribe of goddesses live amongst the homeless, survivors of a great war.  

    Then it happened. The skies turned crimson with burning. The great cities of a distant continent were wrenched from their roots and swallowed by the sea. Entire villages dissolved in the beams of a heavenly light. Cities plunged below into the underworld, the survivors falling to the sea. 

    The earth grew quiet, but Jack Corpse could hear the screams of the dead all around him. He could not find solace, and wandered the forgotten cities that day. 

    A worn tune filled the night as Jack Corpse stumbled upon a strange village. His ears were filled with sound.

    Necrotic emanations of pain and despair reverberated on the wind.

    He saw the bones of a tribe move, so long dead they were phantasmal. He saw them take to the world becoming translucent specters to walk the streets of cities he had never foreseen.

    Strange incantations rolled across the ground. Jack Corpse had never heard anything like it.
As his patchwork flesh became numb, and his perplexed mind ceased to function, Jack Corpse was approached by a gaunt old man. 

    “Son,” said the gaunt old man, “It’s time. You must finish what you’ve started.” 

    Jack Corpse thought it was impossible. But the words were the only thing that still made sense. The agony of his body, the struggle with his mind and the voices in the darkness had come to this. 

    He knew what was coming for him. 

  

    Somehow, he made his way into the Acropolis. A piercing headache overcame him, and he found that he could not hold his head up. He fell forward, and his neck snapped. He left a mass of meat, blood, tissue and muscle.

    It’s time. He thought.

Ron L Good with editorial help by Mike Pewter, Dec 13, 2022