A place to bury strangers
Dec 3, 2018 12:19:17 GMT -5
via mobile
Kyle Shane, Gerard Angelo, and 1 more like this
Post by Grimm on Dec 3, 2018 12:19:17 GMT -5
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was grimm. And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Word moved upon the waters. The grimm shone in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
The Word made the firmament, and divided the waters, and gathered together the dry land. Lights in that very firmament divided the day from the night, and served as signs, and seasons, and days, and years.
We declare what was from the beginning. What we have heard. What we have seen. What we have looked at, and touched.
And then…chaos. A pure and terrible violence. Fire and ice, sand and foam, smoking mountains upon a trembling earth. Roiling, anarchic, and, yes, potentially mad. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. Thus creation resumed under something resembling (if viewed with a wide enough lens while looking both back and forth along the arrow of time) a kind of order. The dry land – the one massive expanse of it – began to shudder. It shifted. It moved. The plates drifted apart over eons. A system of rifts became basins, and some of these basins filled to become oceans. And some of these creeping rifts came to a halt under a number of collisions. Thus, up rose mountains.
The Word took a measure of dust. It weighed the mountains on its scales, the hills on a balance. As it walked, it marked out the boundaries of the earth and drew a circle on the face of the deep from which to assign the seas their limits.
And on it went. Belts folded, thrusted; fault lines subducted and uplifted. High places eroded only to be deposited elsewhere. Ruptures and accretions, extensions and fissures. Springs and geysers burst forth when rocks split open in the wilderness. Glacial lakes overflowed their banks to carve out hills and river bottoms.
All this to say, while the mechanizations of creation clicked and whirred around the globe, the seas conspired to set apart one of the land masses. The very core of that early super continent stood its ground, and was accompanied by mountain chains and coastal plains, plateaus and basins, prairies and vast river networks. All accompanied by nigh on every manner of climate henceforth defined and categorized – temperate, tundra, tropical, et cetera, et cetera. Where grasslands shriveled to deserts, and shallow seas withdrew to allow caverns and sinkholes to hold the secrets of this, the one called North America.
The Word that was grimm saw this, and it was good.
Now, there within North America but apart from the glacial scars and granite domes, there tucked along the foothills of one of the oldest mountains on this earth, where this river had carved a path of least resistance – a path of elemental fury, if not rage – and where silver veined ley lines flow in and out of pockets of original creation energy…
…sits a town.
A town that has weathered thunder and hail and frost.
(All manner of forces of nature.)
A town whose very existence is in the whirlwind.
(And, perhaps, the storm.)
A town where seedtime and harvest shall not cease.
Hangtown.
The grimm may have shone in the darkness, but even so, darkness could still spread wet and cold, and could pave the way for winter and famine. And out of this darkness emerged a man with a book etched on his bones. It was a book (it remains a book) which told (which tells) of how even as the continents continued to form, and as they became inhabited, forces both seen and unseen shaped a future North America (among other lands, but we’re not as concerned about those right now). And whether gentle or firm, it was all done (is all done) with a Black Hand.
Let the reader understand.
This man broke the heads of the dragons in the waters. He roamed the slopes and ridges, and prowled the hollows. And once all was accomplished, he put forth roots alongside the oak, hickory, and walnut. There with the maple, poplar, and birch, he reached through the shale and sandstone and miry clay to tap into the bedrock. That very cellar of the earth.
---------
Those with ears, let them hear.
---------
As much as he prefers the realm of Hangtown, duty calls. It calls as it has for [REDACTED] years, according to the Julian calendar (no pope is going to tell a Dillinger what day it is). It has called him to cripplings, burnings, and burials. It has called to title shots and title defenses and utterly meaningless brutalities. And now it calls him to this, another in a long line of pay per views.
Against Justin Michaels.
For the North American title.
Justin Michaels and Phinehas Dillinger. Two men who have served as allies, partners, foes, and workplace proximity acquaintances. Who over the years have been game for anything from ping pong to manslaughter. Two men who pass within each other’s orbits now and again…
…but this time…
…all stories, all performances, even as important as they may be, will be put on hold. Even as opponents have waved off Grimm for years, as he does not fit their machismo predilections, he walks into this match as testimony to the wasted energy of their foolishness. Not that Justin Michaels has ever made that mistake. And yet. The two of them have been on a collision course for some time, but on this night they wade into the perfect internal disorder of the storm. And no manner of principalities or powers, nor angles or archangels, shall keep them from finishing what they have begun. One will emerge from the ruins before they return to the dust of the stars.
And then, no matter the outcome, Grimm will continue his inexorable march forward ‘til Hangtown calls its native son home.
The Word made the firmament, and divided the waters, and gathered together the dry land. Lights in that very firmament divided the day from the night, and served as signs, and seasons, and days, and years.
We declare what was from the beginning. What we have heard. What we have seen. What we have looked at, and touched.
And then…chaos. A pure and terrible violence. Fire and ice, sand and foam, smoking mountains upon a trembling earth. Roiling, anarchic, and, yes, potentially mad. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. Thus creation resumed under something resembling (if viewed with a wide enough lens while looking both back and forth along the arrow of time) a kind of order. The dry land – the one massive expanse of it – began to shudder. It shifted. It moved. The plates drifted apart over eons. A system of rifts became basins, and some of these basins filled to become oceans. And some of these creeping rifts came to a halt under a number of collisions. Thus, up rose mountains.
The Word took a measure of dust. It weighed the mountains on its scales, the hills on a balance. As it walked, it marked out the boundaries of the earth and drew a circle on the face of the deep from which to assign the seas their limits.
And on it went. Belts folded, thrusted; fault lines subducted and uplifted. High places eroded only to be deposited elsewhere. Ruptures and accretions, extensions and fissures. Springs and geysers burst forth when rocks split open in the wilderness. Glacial lakes overflowed their banks to carve out hills and river bottoms.
All this to say, while the mechanizations of creation clicked and whirred around the globe, the seas conspired to set apart one of the land masses. The very core of that early super continent stood its ground, and was accompanied by mountain chains and coastal plains, plateaus and basins, prairies and vast river networks. All accompanied by nigh on every manner of climate henceforth defined and categorized – temperate, tundra, tropical, et cetera, et cetera. Where grasslands shriveled to deserts, and shallow seas withdrew to allow caverns and sinkholes to hold the secrets of this, the one called North America.
The Word that was grimm saw this, and it was good.
Now, there within North America but apart from the glacial scars and granite domes, there tucked along the foothills of one of the oldest mountains on this earth, where this river had carved a path of least resistance – a path of elemental fury, if not rage – and where silver veined ley lines flow in and out of pockets of original creation energy…
…sits a town.
A town that has weathered thunder and hail and frost.
(All manner of forces of nature.)
A town whose very existence is in the whirlwind.
(And, perhaps, the storm.)
A town where seedtime and harvest shall not cease.
Hangtown.
The grimm may have shone in the darkness, but even so, darkness could still spread wet and cold, and could pave the way for winter and famine. And out of this darkness emerged a man with a book etched on his bones. It was a book (it remains a book) which told (which tells) of how even as the continents continued to form, and as they became inhabited, forces both seen and unseen shaped a future North America (among other lands, but we’re not as concerned about those right now). And whether gentle or firm, it was all done (is all done) with a Black Hand.
Let the reader understand.
This man broke the heads of the dragons in the waters. He roamed the slopes and ridges, and prowled the hollows. And once all was accomplished, he put forth roots alongside the oak, hickory, and walnut. There with the maple, poplar, and birch, he reached through the shale and sandstone and miry clay to tap into the bedrock. That very cellar of the earth.
---------
Those with ears, let them hear.
---------
As much as he prefers the realm of Hangtown, duty calls. It calls as it has for [REDACTED] years, according to the Julian calendar (no pope is going to tell a Dillinger what day it is). It has called him to cripplings, burnings, and burials. It has called to title shots and title defenses and utterly meaningless brutalities. And now it calls him to this, another in a long line of pay per views.
Against Justin Michaels.
For the North American title.
Justin Michaels and Phinehas Dillinger. Two men who have served as allies, partners, foes, and workplace proximity acquaintances. Who over the years have been game for anything from ping pong to manslaughter. Two men who pass within each other’s orbits now and again…
…but this time…
…all stories, all performances, even as important as they may be, will be put on hold. Even as opponents have waved off Grimm for years, as he does not fit their machismo predilections, he walks into this match as testimony to the wasted energy of their foolishness. Not that Justin Michaels has ever made that mistake. And yet. The two of them have been on a collision course for some time, but on this night they wade into the perfect internal disorder of the storm. And no manner of principalities or powers, nor angles or archangels, shall keep them from finishing what they have begun. One will emerge from the ruins before they return to the dust of the stars.
And then, no matter the outcome, Grimm will continue his inexorable march forward ‘til Hangtown calls its native son home.
