Tilted Hemlocks (convergence)

The fires burned the little town of Calfrey like hot coals. The abandoned houses untreated old crumbling foundations went up in flames like a napalm strike. Scarring the land and leaving destruction in its wake.

The asphalt seared and sizzled. The forest beyond Calfrey ignited and the red glow creeped up the mountain through the tree tops.

A lone cabin where a family of three once resided stood engulfed in the dying trees. Lenny and Robert held the door shut as damnation tried to smash its way through.

"What the fuck did YOU do?!"

Robert screamed over the roars and struggled to find breathe in the Smokey haze.

"What the fuck did the two of you do to my town?!"

Lenny put his back against the door and spit in Robert's face. Making the black sut run down it like a tear.

"What ever happens is on you and your crazy fucking town bub!"

A wail broke the fight and a blast knocked them flying into the wall behind them.

The night flashed before Lenny's eyes.

__

If Tom's gun hadn't been caked with mud. If Tom wouldn't have been young and dumb with only one thing on his mind. If Tilt's didn't have that fucking pen.

That pen.. When he clicked that pen Lenny's life went black. Dropping into the blackness of unconsciousness like a rock into water.

He floated in there for awhile. Drifting in between blurred images of the past. His and maybe others. Falling deeper and deeper until the darkness gave way to a fog. The same fog that enveloped Calfrey. He fell for an eternity in that fog. Deeper and deeper until his endless fall ended. And his descent was broken by an oily black abyss. An ocean of slick and shimmery shadow that went on for eons.

He drowned in the turning waves. Dying a thousand painful deaths with nothing but the wooshing white noises of wave crests crushing and smothering his already exhausted body. Until he washed ashore a small island.

He laid there on the grey sands for awhile and pondered on whether he was truly lost. Somewhere in the nether. If somehow because of who he was; he was entitled to this eternal damnation.

After an age, he rolled over and expelled the black water from his drowned lungs. And this too seemed like an endless process..

When he could finally wheeze steadily Lenny leaned back upon his heels and looked toward the inland. There was nothing. It was nothing but a small pile of dirt surrounded by endless agony. The only thing on the plain landscape was a busted row boat that laid in shambles a few feet from where he'd washed ashore.

He was alone.

It stayed that way for awhile.

Until the low growl began to emerge. The same low growl that tailed him through the fray in the town square.

It built and kept building upon itself; until the entire world was nothing but a deafening roar in Lenny's lonely ears.

And then it gave way. And a booming voice roared into existence.

"Why did you run from me child?"

Lenny stared out into the horizon and tried to see beyond where the black met the gray.

"I was afraid to die."

The voice was absent for awhile. As if choosing his words carefully.

"Look where you are though, fate has brought you to my shores anyway."

"So I was fated to die regardless of my decisions.. But I didn't want to die so soon..i guess Tilts finished the job.."

The world began to shake in a rage. And then a low laugh reverberated for miles.

"That cockroach hasn't finished anything. Your mortality has lied to you my child. I am not here to harm you. Not yet at least. I'm here to offer you a deal."

Lenny cocked an eyebrow.

"What? What kind of deal.."

The black waters began to thrash and a storm bolted white lightning in the distance.

"Your world is ending, there's no way around that and I'm sorry for that young one.. But ask yourself.. Would you rather something vile like Tilts and his associates Devour it into nothingness.. Or would you rather a benevolent God such as myself end it quick in fire.. And save most of the world eternal suffering."

Lenny's mind swam like a buzzing school of locust at the question.

The storm grew larger and raced around the endless horizon. Crackling thunder. The oceans gurgled and thudded against the shore. Rain began to set in.

"So its my choice? And if you do it....nobody will suffer?"

The voice grew solemn.

"You all will suffer.. It is the way my child. But I will not devour souls. And because of that. Your world will live on.. The wickers and that rat who leads them will take the inner workings of man and break it. Feed off of it like leeches."

The storm slammed the isle. Lenny was thrown across the shore and tumbled to a stop against the broken boat; sheilding his face he made the hasty decision before the storm pulled him back into the depths.

"Then it has to be you!"

As the blackness consumed him once more the Godly presence, now a whisper, managed out his final instruction.

"Use his pen."

__

Lenny's own screams woke him, slamming him hard like a fever pitch against Barry Bonds.

The straps that held his arms to the table were wearing tight around his wrists. A wicker masked man smashed his ring finger off with a claw hammer and tossed it into the fire.

"Gah!!"

He wailed for hours over that and when he started to finally settle into the shaky numbness of the mangled wound. The man smashed off a toe.

He glanced down at his shaky hand and saw that his pinky had already been removed before he had regained himself.

He spit at the man.

"F-fuck you! You piece of shit!"

The Wicker stared emotionless through the rabbit mask, no eyes visible in the black husks.

__

Time passed slowly. The dark room creaked and smelt of fresh blood and old concrete. Lenny laid in the darkness between the torture sessions and noticed little things hidden underneath the fouls in the air. Somewhere outside was a scent of pine. And maybe even further. Just on the tip of that was a dirt clay smell.

For hours he had twisted and fiddled his wrists until with an excruciating pop; The digit challenged hand slipped through.

Lenny took a victorious deep breath and let the old pines cut through the scents again.

"I'm still in the Hemlocks, There's a chance."

A wheezy chuckle started from further into the dark room before a wet cough interrupted it.

"A chance, huh? You fixin' to bust us outta here kid?"

Lenny turned his head toward the voice and strained in the darkness to see the outline of a figure pinned to the wall in the form of a crucifixion.

"Who are you..?"

The old man coughed and cleared his throat.

"Just an old man who thought he ran Calfrey."

__

"Gahhh!"

After the third pull, the iron spike gave way and Ezra fell to the floor with a loud thud.

A loud screech came from far beyond the steel door and loud footsteps began to hastily slam closer.

Lenny jumped back onto the slab he'd been tied to and played unconscious just as the bar on the other end of the door slammed open and the Wicker rabbit stepped through.

He locked on Lenny for a moment, breathing slow and heavy. Lenny knew if he moved there was a chance that the Wicker would see the straps were free.

The Rabbit reached toward the wall, without breaking eye contact with the seemingly unconscious man on the table and drug the nearby hammer from its mount. He circled the table slowly, until he made his way to Lenny's untouched hand.

The Rabbit lightly set up the forks of the claw hammer against Lenny's thumb and stared at his face; but Lenny didn't move.

Breathing heavy the rabbit took aim and raised the claw above his head and came down fast and hard.

Just before impact Ezra slammed his entire being into the Wicker. Putting him through the still open doorway and onto the floor. A struggle ensued and Ezra, wielding one of his iron spikes, slammed down into the rabbit's eye. Creating an explosion of thick blood and

a loud sqeal. The wicker thrashed violently as Ezra lunged down over and over.

Lenny jumped to his feet and grabbed the now loose hammer. Joining Ezra they flooded the cultist with all the brutality that they could muster and after minutes that stretched beyond what would have been possible for any normal man; the rabbit gurgled and went limp beneath them.

__

The forest was dark. At the edge of a twilight. The air was warm and moist; but a cold from the night was settling into the bones of the trees and the rot of the soil hidden by the warm pines began to creep forward into the gasping lungs of the wounded men as the clammered forward into the dense foliage. The air was alien.

"Ezra I don't know if I can keep this up.."

Lenny heaved the old man over another embankment and they both fell into the old pine floor of the forest. Shrieks and screams reverberated in the distance; signaling to the men that the cult had found the rabbit.

"This the part where I give you some advice to fix this shit and I have you leave me behind to be a hero and buy you some time?"

Lenny's face twisted up in discomfort.

"No way! Im not leaving you behind!"

Ezra grinned, "Fuckin' right you're not! Those freaks would skull fuck me or somethin'!"

Lenny shook his head and started dragging Ezra by his arms further into the woods. The old man to weak to stand now.

"So since we're going to die, you wanna tell me who the fuck you even are?"

Lenny frowned, "Just some kid who's psycho dad made a deal with a demon and destroyed existence."

The screams grew louder in the distance.

"Damn kid.. Your old man really screwed the family pooch on this one huh?"

Lenny heaved Ezra over the next hilltop and lost his footing, sending the two of them plummeting down the sheer face of the other side and into a dry creek bed. Flipping end over end sending a broken popler clean through Ezra's thigh. Lenny crashed down hard onto a flat stone. Cracking his temple wide open.

And with that the world once more began to flutter. Ezra screamed and yelled nearby, fighting with the splintered mess of his leg. And before Lenny faded away, The outlines of hundreds of people started to emerge from the top of the hill from whence they came..

__

The cold brought Lenny back. A glacial explosion took the silence and replaced it with the thumping of his own heart beat in his head, muffled angry yelling and blurred flickering outlines..

Like the lense on the telescope that him and his adoptive father used to star at the stars with; his eyes focused as if someone clicked a dial.

his vision flooded with a dirty, torn gray suit..

"You jUsst conTINue to FFFfuck with my agenda don't you?!"

The monstrosity that was surely Tilts' true form paced back and forth in front of him.

Lenny took inventory of the immediate area. The landscape was gone. Lost in a sea of wickers. Ezra's torso laid bare and mangled on the ground just feet away.

Lenny's rage bubbled and it took everything in him to not cry in a fit of manic outpour.

He steadied himself.

He needed to buy time.

Tilts cracked his neck to the side and whipped his crooked wings in irritation.

"I was going to let you live. At least long enough to watch the kingdom rise."

His face twisted up in an arrogant morbidity.

"But like a moth to a flame, you just can't seem to FffFucking stay away from the coals!"

Lenny spit at Tilt's shoes which were abnormally shined in the dirt of the forest.

"Fuck your coals."

Tilts clacked his teeth and crouched down next to Lenny's face and took a deep breathe in with a grin.

"You know, the path has been so SEVERELY deviated because of you."

He stood back up and cracked his knuckles.

"That I think I'm just going to feed you to my fucking dogs!"

Tilts held his arms out insinuation that what he actually meant was letting the wickers rip lenny apart.

Tilts grinned and reached into his blazer pocket. But the grin turned into panic and he began furiously cramming his hands into his pants pockets. Checking, double checking; until he was on his hands and knees covered in dirt and pines; kicking and clawing at the forest floor. Even going as far as flipping Ezra's corpse over a few times.

"Where is IT!? Where the FFFuck is it?!"

The reality finally hit him and everything slammed to a stand still when he glanced at the teenager on the ground. Holding a bright red pen.

Lenny had a sickly victorious grin.

Tilt's eyes widened.

"Oh you've found it.. Maybe you are useful. Hand it here and maybe I'll make it painless."

Lenny grinned now with a wide toothy smile and gave a small chuckle.

"Get fucked."

Lenny clicked the red pen open.

Tilts let out a terrified wail and fell into the fetal position as the ground began to shake.