Blue Flame, Book One, Part Three

Part 3: To Be Quite Frank

Five days pass. Ernest can’t sleep. When he does, his sleep is full of tormenting nightmares and unimaginable horror. He wakes in cold pools of sweat, screaming. He sees Frank, torn open, begging for help, bleeding, and being eaten alive.

Each time the dream ends the same way, Frank’s eyes turning empty as he reaches for Ernest. His hands sink deep into Ernest’s stomach and rip out his intestines. They gush to the floor as Frank devours them, laughing.

Ernest’s skin is turning pale gray, drying out and flaking off. Dark bags hang sadly under his eyes. When he eats, he vomits. If he doesn’t eat, he heaves blood. He bleeds from his ears. His fingernails are falling off, and the wounds on his neck are now dark, rotting pores. All the hair on his head has fallen out.

He must end this.

He must find Frank.

It takes three sleepless days for Ernest to track down Frank, who’s still hiding in the Kausian City. Nobody has seen him, or recognizes him. Ernest almost passes as one of the common folk, thin, pale, and nearly dead. The door wasn’t locked, so he knocks and steps directly into the smell. Flies buzz happily in the filth- saturated air. Off in a dark corner there is a body, shaking, lying naked on the floor. Its spine and ribs protrude like an inverted bridge.

“Frank?” Ernest whispers. “Frank? Is that you?”

“Go away!” gargles the organic substance. “Get out of here!” It doesn’t sound human.

“Frank? Frank? It’s me, it’s Ern.”

A head turns, confused, “Ern?” “Yeah bud, it’s me, Ern.”

Ernest walks further into the living dead crypt. A thin sheet of white light slices in through the closing front door, cutting off the outside world. Frank scampers like a limp dog up to Ernest’s feet sliding along the floor.

“Kill me,” he chokes. “Please kill me.”

One of his eyes is missing. Black drool drips form his mouth. He has no teeth and both his hands are stumps of bone and dangling flesh.

“Kill meeeeee,” he moans, trying to grab Ernest’s leg.

Ernest stares petrified. Is this really Frank? The flesh of his face sags off his skull. It barely resembles him. Ernest’s dream flashes in his mind, and he quickly stumbles back, tripping over a chair and falling to the floor.

“The Blue Flame,” groans Frank, creeping forward on his elbows. Both his feet are missing and his legs drag behind, sliding across the floor in a streak of dark fluid.

“The Blue Flame,” his one eye widens at Ernest. “Find the Flame.”

Before Ernest lets Frank get any closer, he fires two bullets into his dying friend’s head. Black liquid speckles over Ernest’s face. The sound is like a stone falling into a thick bog. Frank’s body collapses on Ernest’s legs. Burning gunpowder temporarily masks the smell of rot. Ernest sees the rolled-up piece of cloth on the bile-coated table. Frank’s head falls from his lap and thumps to the ground as he scrambles to his feet. Fluids pour from Frank’s eye socket, ears, mouth and nose. From the huge exit hole in the back of Frank’s skull, Ernest sees movement. He bends down on one knee to look as he inhales the sweet rotting odor rising from the wound. It burns his lungs and he begins to cough blood.

Something wiggles from within the bullet wound. Crawling out, slithering, hundreds, thousands, are little pink maggots. Ernest looks at his pants. The worms are all over him, clinging to his legs, trying to burrow into his skin. He tries brushing them off still coughing and falls back against the wall. He hears screaming and the maggots sting as they sink into his flesh.

His elbow knocks over the curtains and white light floods in. Frank’s body begins twitching. The wound in the back of his head has closed itself. The pink maggots heal Frank’s flesh. Mangled hook appendages grow and emerge from Frank’s severed wrists. Black thorns and spikes lift from Frank’s arching spine as the dead body breaths again.

“Thanks, dear Ern--dear, dear buddy,” a gargoyle voice says. “That felt wonderful--exactly what the doctor ordered.” His head lifts, jerking upward toward Ernest with a pale glass eye. “I feel so much better.”

Black oil vomits from Frank’s mouth as he laughs. It splatters against Ernest’s face. The gun trembles in his hand. Frank’s skin flakes off, reveling a dark gray flesh underneath. Ernest pulls the trigger again, and again, unconscious of his actions, his finger desperately clicking the trigger even after all the bullets have been fired.

“Oh, Ern. Dear friend,” chokes Frank. “I’m beyond all that now. Your bullets cannot kill me.” Frank stands erect, deformed and mangled, dripping thick with blackness. Claw toes grow where he had no feet. Scales slither and coat his skin, transforming him into some new creature, like a larva morphing into a dreadful butterfly.

The new monster approaches, Ernest sniffing him. “You stink of fear, Ern, and how delicious you smell.” The claw-hands fondle Ernest’s face and tear open the flesh over his ribs. “How I’d love to feast upon your fear.” The creature licks the blood running down Ernest’s side. “You have two days to find the Flame before you become like me,” it instructs as maggots fall from the rotting human flesh left on the creature’s face. It hands him the cloth map.
“I’ll be seeing you soon, buddy.”

Ernest continues to pull the trigger of his gun--click, click, click.

Written by Charles Denton
Story by Charles Denton and Joe Lipscomb
Illustrated by Blaine Garrett
Cover Art by Joe Lipscomb

Copright 2012 Dim Media