Post by Grimm on Jun 25, 2012 14:50:43 GMT -5
The wayfarers trudged a road so desolate even the carrion birds didn’t trouble themselves with it. They followed the fence running along the crooked lane until it ended at yet another blasted crossroads. Instead of finding a man in a black suit waiting for them again, this intersection was littered with scaffolds and crow’s cages, all decorated with the requisite forms. It was far from an ideal spot to rest, but they could go no further. Dry, dusty, assaulted by drought, they’d been drained by the elements and on the verge of total collapse. And so they dropped where they stood and helped themselves to what remained of their moldy cheese and petrified bread, all washed down with water collected from a muddy ditch some days before. As desperate as they were, they’d come to an unspoken agreement to avoid the horse meat. They’d slaughtered that wretched nag last week and were afraid it had started to turn.
As they choked down what was most likely one of their final meals they watched a cloud of dust rise on the horizon and make its way towards them. It drew closer but they’d become so despondent and listless they quite honestly could not care less what may or may not be about to befall them. As it were, the cloud moved along the very road they had been traveling and stopped in the middle of the crossroads, and so arrived the Grimm Tidings Medicine Show upon their pitiful rest.
It was nigh on as the stories described. A wagon cobbled together from the remains of forgotten gallows and the coffins of suicides, pulled by a dapple grey behemoth of a horse that looked over the crowd with dark eyes. A threadbare curtain fluttered overhead but had been bleached beyond all hope of legibility. And serving as the head of the spectacle was a tall, pale man with a head of undomesticated red hair and an equally untamed beard. He stood in a suit of sackcloth and ashes and raised his arms.
“Friends…”
The man stopped and cleared his throat. Time under the sun had left him parched and unable to project. He turned and rummaged through a trunk. As he did, the crowd looked over the display and their raw eyes settled on a wooden crate full of green glass bottles stoppered with corks. The crate was stamped with the phrase ‘Grimm’s Thaumaturgical Extract’, and at this point they all silently wished he’d hand out the elixir. Even if it turned out to be poison their thirst would be slaked, and a few moments of sweet relief just before it wracked their bodies with toxins and left them twitching in the dust might very well have been worth it.
The crate remained untouched as the man found what he’d been digging for and turned around. He now sported a contraption resembling a rubber gas mask, and the amplification filter attached at the mouth allowed them to hear his voice, no matter how mechanical and distorted it may have become. His hair and beard stuck out everywhere at all angles as if trying to escape.
“Friends, I was once like you. Always on the move. Traveling to the ends of the earth looking for answers. Looking for The Solution. I crossed oceans, seas, and mountains. I crossed the borders, and I crossed the line. I’ve seen canyons and I’ve seen cities. I’ve paralyzed my own brother and disfigured more men than I care to admit. I’ve been called an abomination and a demon because of the things I’ve done, and to the extremes to which I have done them.”
“But then…just when I had given up and resolved to spending the rest of my days tossing cards into an old man’s hat, I found myself under an unadorned tree. And I was staff-struck by a finger in the sand.”
No one had thought to ask what this carnival barker was doing out here in the middle of the wilderness. They had no idea what he was babbling about, but in turn they could not look away. Something about this eccentric figure with his mystical bent had them transfixed.
Or maybe it was the heat shimmering off every surface and driving them mad. Whatever the reason, they remained sitting, squinting up at him as he raved on.
“And I saw them as they were. My opponents. Those men of strife, grasping in the dark like soothsayers with their thoughts altogether vain. Valiant warriors? Not even close. I saw through the glorious impossible Machine to the insecure oaf behind the mask. They exalt themselves on camera and in the ring only to find themselves abased. These men of iniquity swarm from all sides but their colony collapses at the end of the night. “
“So now…now there is nothing beyond my reach. There is no escape from history. Abomination? Demon? No, Lord of Misrule! Behold!”
The man pulled a cord and the tattered curtain dropped behind him to reveal a sequence of gears and levers intertwined with ropes and pulleys. An automaton sat at a calliope and played a sickly rendition of ‘The Entertainer’. Pilot lights flickered within its empty eyes and mouth.
The crowd sat silent. After a few seconds the man pulled off the mask and issued curses and maledictions upon them. He denounced their lineage and every creed they possibly could have held. The wayfarers ignored him and gathered their meager possessions. It was the same old song in the same old way and they for one had experienced enough woe and want in their time without having more heaped on them by some ignorant monkey grinder. One old man waved him off as they continued their journey.
The steam expired and the calliope crawled to a stop. Silence. The man turned and packed away the wagon. The Grimm Tidings Medicine Show resumed its crossing without so much as a glance at the bodies blackened under the sun and picked clean by desperate scavengers. One of the condemned had been wrapped in chains and left with an enormous wooden stake driven through its chest cavity.
As they choked down what was most likely one of their final meals they watched a cloud of dust rise on the horizon and make its way towards them. It drew closer but they’d become so despondent and listless they quite honestly could not care less what may or may not be about to befall them. As it were, the cloud moved along the very road they had been traveling and stopped in the middle of the crossroads, and so arrived the Grimm Tidings Medicine Show upon their pitiful rest.
It was nigh on as the stories described. A wagon cobbled together from the remains of forgotten gallows and the coffins of suicides, pulled by a dapple grey behemoth of a horse that looked over the crowd with dark eyes. A threadbare curtain fluttered overhead but had been bleached beyond all hope of legibility. And serving as the head of the spectacle was a tall, pale man with a head of undomesticated red hair and an equally untamed beard. He stood in a suit of sackcloth and ashes and raised his arms.
“Friends…”
The man stopped and cleared his throat. Time under the sun had left him parched and unable to project. He turned and rummaged through a trunk. As he did, the crowd looked over the display and their raw eyes settled on a wooden crate full of green glass bottles stoppered with corks. The crate was stamped with the phrase ‘Grimm’s Thaumaturgical Extract’, and at this point they all silently wished he’d hand out the elixir. Even if it turned out to be poison their thirst would be slaked, and a few moments of sweet relief just before it wracked their bodies with toxins and left them twitching in the dust might very well have been worth it.
The crate remained untouched as the man found what he’d been digging for and turned around. He now sported a contraption resembling a rubber gas mask, and the amplification filter attached at the mouth allowed them to hear his voice, no matter how mechanical and distorted it may have become. His hair and beard stuck out everywhere at all angles as if trying to escape.
“Friends, I was once like you. Always on the move. Traveling to the ends of the earth looking for answers. Looking for The Solution. I crossed oceans, seas, and mountains. I crossed the borders, and I crossed the line. I’ve seen canyons and I’ve seen cities. I’ve paralyzed my own brother and disfigured more men than I care to admit. I’ve been called an abomination and a demon because of the things I’ve done, and to the extremes to which I have done them.”
“But then…just when I had given up and resolved to spending the rest of my days tossing cards into an old man’s hat, I found myself under an unadorned tree. And I was staff-struck by a finger in the sand.”
No one had thought to ask what this carnival barker was doing out here in the middle of the wilderness. They had no idea what he was babbling about, but in turn they could not look away. Something about this eccentric figure with his mystical bent had them transfixed.
Or maybe it was the heat shimmering off every surface and driving them mad. Whatever the reason, they remained sitting, squinting up at him as he raved on.
“And I saw them as they were. My opponents. Those men of strife, grasping in the dark like soothsayers with their thoughts altogether vain. Valiant warriors? Not even close. I saw through the glorious impossible Machine to the insecure oaf behind the mask. They exalt themselves on camera and in the ring only to find themselves abased. These men of iniquity swarm from all sides but their colony collapses at the end of the night. “
“So now…now there is nothing beyond my reach. There is no escape from history. Abomination? Demon? No, Lord of Misrule! Behold!”
The man pulled a cord and the tattered curtain dropped behind him to reveal a sequence of gears and levers intertwined with ropes and pulleys. An automaton sat at a calliope and played a sickly rendition of ‘The Entertainer’. Pilot lights flickered within its empty eyes and mouth.
The crowd sat silent. After a few seconds the man pulled off the mask and issued curses and maledictions upon them. He denounced their lineage and every creed they possibly could have held. The wayfarers ignored him and gathered their meager possessions. It was the same old song in the same old way and they for one had experienced enough woe and want in their time without having more heaped on them by some ignorant monkey grinder. One old man waved him off as they continued their journey.
The steam expired and the calliope crawled to a stop. Silence. The man turned and packed away the wagon. The Grimm Tidings Medicine Show resumed its crossing without so much as a glance at the bodies blackened under the sun and picked clean by desperate scavengers. One of the condemned had been wrapped in chains and left with an enormous wooden stake driven through its chest cavity.
