Revision [7162]
This is an old revision of ProfessorGoodwinsLastMoments made by KellyToyama on 2009-06-22 18:59:49.
Location: Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA
Professor Goodwin sighed at the sleeping city of Boston and turned back to his telescope. He fiddled with the dials and knobs trying to get a good angle but the light pollution from the city below would prevent him from getting a good view of the eclipse.
He shrugged it off though, at least the night air was clear and clean. The event would be visible with his naked eye and that was enough. He grabbed his beer from where he had set it down and pushed back the rusty lawn chair that mostly filled his tiny balcony. He pushed his tired body into it and sat to wait. Sipping his beer and hoping that he would not fall asleep before the eclipse.
He would never get that chance.
The sense of dread came before the shadow fell across the balcony, a dark crawling sensation of wrongness that started in the old man’s spine, working its way up his tired bones and settling in his hand. His blood ran cold as he looked up and a dark and ghastly shadow fell across the rusted fire escape, rising above the railing like an apparition, conveyed by the black chains that stretched across its form.
The beer fell from his hand as he stood in naked horror before the thing; it fell on the rusty grate shattering into a thousand pieces and spilling its frothy liquid across the fire escape.
The professor didn’t hear it, his vision locked on the thing before him. Its body was a cold mockery of life. The few bits of visible flesh that the creature had were gray and rotting like a corpse.
The whole of its body was stretched with black iron chains, each link covered with crewel barbs, and each chain digging into its flesh and covering it like a mummy. The creature’s head was the only thing exposed, and it too looked like a corpse, the flesh rotting off the side of the head exposing the bone of the cheek and the jaw.
The beings cold dark eye sockets, long devoid of eyes turned on the professor, the chains moved of their own accord, lifting the body up and snaking over the balcony from every direction, twisting and multiplying as they moved, like all too much like snakes save for the horrible grating sound they made as they scraped along. They snaked around the professor and lifted him off his feet.
The chains twisted though his clothes, tearing at his flesh as the professor started to cry but was cut short as the chains found his neck, pulling into a makeshift noose, cutting his cry to a startled gurgle.
“Wwwhhhhere is the boy.” The thing hissed, long dead vocal cords being pushed back into service.
The professor shook his head, refusing, even in the face of this horror to give up the young boy that had been given to his charge. Goreshade simply shook his dead head, his eyes never leaving the professor, as the chains moved, the barbs on them like claws, and tore the professors clothes open.
“The boy.” Goreshade demanded again, and again the professor refused.
The chains tore the professors flesh, ripping huge strips of skin off his naked chest.
“The boy.” Goreshade demanded again, and again, the professor shook his head, barely holding back tears as his blood ran freely down the fire-escape.
“You will beg for my master’s embrace.” The beast said and continued to slowly strip the skin from the professors prostrate form, the chains pulling each of his limbs wide, suspending him so he could not defend himself.
Again and again the demon asked, and each time he the professor refuse. But he felt something bending and breaking inside of his will, his resolve. He saw with shocked eyes that the creature was not wrecking random destruction on his flesh, this thing was carving a symbol into his body, using his flesh as a canvas.
With each line of the symbol the creature asked his question again, and with each line he could feel something inside him bend and twist, slowly being changed to this creature’s goals.
After what seemed like hours he felt his mouth moving of its own accord. Like watching a movie or a dream he saw his mouth form the words. “College.”
Still not fully comprehending how he had answered without telling his body to, he felt the chains around his neck tighten, and the intellectual puzzle of the rune on his chest vanished for the much more present reality of his life slipping away.
The professors last view on earth would be the world slowly growing black, and that dark creature smiling, the rotten flesh pulled back to expose it bone white teeth.
