THE FEAST IN THE MIDDEN

The colossal landfill bubbled in the mid-day sun like a giant bowel.

Dran's bulldozer muscled its way across the huge mound, barreling bags of household crud further up the slopes all the way to the steaming summit, where he stopped. He got out of his sweltering cab and stood on the footplate mopping his sweating face with his T-shirt. From here he could see the stricken city below, spread out like a terrible buffet beside the midden. Misery ruled its streets since the great crash.

Dran saw it all clearly from the landfill. He stared at the city he loved and despaired. The future was bleak and no comfort formed on the horizon, no shining knight in armour was coming. His own job was ending. Still in his twenties and made redundant. His final week. The rubbish would have to rot at the foot of the hill, where the trucks let loose. Nothing he or his mates could do. All on the junkpile he thought standing there on the garbage. The irony wasn't lost on him and he shook his head. I'm already there he thought. He took one last look at his city, where men wandered aimlessly in the streets, stalked by the indignity of sloth. He wondered how his Mother and little brother Lamb were coping with the hard fists of his violent Father.

Suddenly, there was a ear-splitting roar from deep within the earth and the ground shook violently. Dran was thrown headlong from his dozer straight onto the garbage. It shifted like a million bodies beneath him and shuddered back and forth as the noise got louder and louder.

"Oh Shit! an earthquake!" cried Dran, desperately trying to get back into his vehicle, which, unbeknown to him, was now teetering dangerously on the edge of a wide rift opening up at the peak. Dran managed to clamber back into the cab and seeing the split widening he gunned the tracks in a wild bid to escape, but it was too late. A vast hole appeared at the summit and Dran's bulldozer fell in, engulfed by the yawning dark inhaling like a hideous mouth. The vehicle and its driver Dran plummeted down and down into the bottomless guts of the landfill, a massive thing fed by a thousand years of the city's burgeoning filth. They smashed onto the bottom-most layer, the ancient foundation of its mass and the canopic heart of a world forgotten.

The bedrock split.

Something stirred.

It arose, awoken from an arcane slumber in which its songs had fed its dreams for thousands of years. Now its hunger was millennia-old and it yearned for the music of flesh.

The crippled Dran saw the thing unfold from the cleft and screamed. 

"Mum. Dad. help meeeeeeeeee!"

He was fed upon as he watched.

The creature licked its red lips and unfurled its gigantic wings. She began to wail.

A darkness then crept over the city. No, a doleful lament, like the cries of a buried child, which slipped out of the wasteland, her melodic notes fingering the doors of the depressed.

It found easy access in the houses of the hopeless.

A miasma of desolation had befallen the once industrious state. Its denizens were broken. The slump had bit deep and the jobless numbers rose like a funeral pyre. Crestfallen men were desperate, their souls aching for work. Women were bereft, their larders empty. The pall of desolation hung in the air like smog. It could be seen by those who lived there. Felt by everyone else.

The creature's song entered Gristo's house first. It contained a hint of deep distress among the slurry of notes.

"You've seen what its like so get off my back. There are no bastard jobs out there!" bellowed Gristo at his wife as she dried the dishes. She had scrimped her money and cooked gyros for him this week but it hadn't helped. It had made things worse somehow, aggravating his already bruised ego and deepening his growing emasculation.

"I only asked if you were going out tomorrow Love. I need some honey for baklava. Not much mind."

"Honey! You want fuckin honey! When we can't even afford glasses for our Lamb! Are you fuckin serious!" He roared and threw the last of the beef stew against the wall.

"That was Lamb's tea you damned oaf!"

"A bastard oaf am I now?"

He was up on his feet in a flash and grabbed his wife by the throat, pinning her against the cupboard with brutish force.

"Well make some fucking more you stupid bitch!" he roared and smacked her hard across the face. She fell down and lay sobbing uncontrollably on the kitchen lino cowering.

He stood above her with clenched fists shaking with misplaced fury. As guilt began to flood his heart he turned, grabbed his coat and stormed out of the house.

Lamb had seen it all from the staircase and when his Dad had left he went to comfort his Mum.

"He doesn't mean it. Your Father. He's a good man really. He just gets things mixed up in his mind. He misses Dran and he still loves us little Lamb."

Gristo still fumed as he trudged up the street, past the allotments and into the broad stony ground between the city and the country beyond. The wide realms stretched out like new beginnings and he yearned to step into them, to leave this living death behind and regain his rightful place.

He thought of his boys. On good days his youngest was the apple of his eye before he became weary of life. He'd been so small and cute they nicknamed him Lamb. 

From without his reverie he now heard a sweet trill whispering from above. 

It was so faint that he doubted he'd heard it at first. A mere breeze across his ears, a hint of song. A skylark? Yet it appeared to grow louder and his curiosity got the better of him. He looked to see where it might be from.

His gaze took him to the landfill site. Gristo was entranced.

The musical note carried him to its dark edge and he began to climb. On he went to the black summit, where the song bid him enter the cavern. He was compelled to do so, the allure of the singing so strong that he forgot who he was or what he was doing. It spoke of a life of unbridled passion, of vast wealth and public success, a life far beyond the cursed one he had.

He descended into the crevasse. The pitch dark swallowed him but the music guided his steps ever onward. In time he came to a gigantic cluttered jumble of ancient statuary, a decrepit shambles of stone figures and clay coffins and it was here the voice was loudest. As Gristo stared at the archaic ruins his heart pounded and his neck keened to see what could be making those alluringly sweet sounds.

"Come here my love!" Came a whisper from the coffin nearest to him. He thought it sounded like his wife.

"Come and join me!"

Gristo was sure it was his useless wife's voice now and somehow she had lured him down here to humiliate him. Well she was in for it now. He'd beat her so hard she'll never look in the mirror again! He clenched his fists as rage surged through him.

"Come out witch! Come out or I'll drag you out!" Gristo roared.

"As you wish my love," came the soft response.

A pale hand with enormously sharp fingernails clutched the side of the coffin.

Gristo momentarily teetered.

The hand was joined by a long arm and lithe shoulder and then a face.

It wasn't Gristo's battered wife.

It was the face of a beautiful girl, pallid but alive. Her lips were scarlet and full, her eyes deep and enticing. She was quite gorgeous and a glorious main of reddish tresses framed her voluptuous features perfectly. She rose completely and Gristo was now transfixed by her naked body. Her breasts were firm and tantalising and a dark v-shaped shadow between her thighs spoke of untold pleasures for the fortunate man.

Gristo was that man. He was sure of it and as with all the women in his life he would make sure of it and use his fists of he didn't get what he wanted. This young sow was no different and he stepped forward with tightening knuckles as she stepped out of the coffin.

Gristo grabbed the woman by the neck and forcibly kissed her face, lips and breasts, whilst throwing in a punch to her kidney. She winced but smiled. A smile that Gristo had never seen on a woman he was about to force to the floor and he stopped. The smile grew and he saw for the first time a mouth filled with razor sharp teeth. The smile widened and the teeth turned to fangs as the woman brushed off his arms. She seemed to get taller and Gristo swore he saw wings unfold and rise high into the abyss. He was frightened for the first time in his life.

The winged female leaned towards his quivering face and she laughed loudly. As she did so she rose into the air with a single flap of her colossal wings and cackled and sang in a caterwaul of terrible sounds.

"Puny human! You think you could have me! No human has ever! I am the defiler of hearts and the jailor of souls. I devour all that you have. I eat your future for I am damnation. I am Terpsichore and I am a Siren!" 

Gristo stared in horror at the creature.

"I am the lurer of sinews, the temptress of flesh and the end of courage. Heed my song and you shall perish."

At this the Siren screamed a discordant mewing, which filled the cavern and entered the world. Her neck craned and her mouth opened wide.

Gristo could now hear a new sound. A stampede clambering along the hollow streets making its way gradually to the tip and then up the side of the landfill's slope. The cacophony echoed around the chamber and then he saw.

Hundreds of men where flinging themselves into the mouth of the hole and falling with a hideous thud on the hard ground at the feet of Terpsichore. The bodies piled up around her, a bloody necropolis of the worshipful dead.

The stench of iron consumed Gristo as he gagged at the sight of the broken men, their blood swilling round his feet. As he wretched he saw to his horror the mangled face of his eldest son Dran poking out of the midden, where the beast had feasted.

Terpsichore smiled as she felt the father's agony and licked the dead youngster's cheek with her immensely thick tongue.

"I shall gorge myself on all men but I will not be sated by this fat larder. To live again I require a sacrifice, a tender offering of immaculate flesh. I need a child. I need your child, who kneels sobbing in the arms of his crying mother, their tears cleansing his innocent being. I want to feast on this child. Now bring me Lamb. Do this for me and I will spare you."

Gristo stood aghast, his shoulders slumped. He know he was no good. A wife-beater, a psychopath and deserved to be punished. he knew that. He was emotionally inept, a castle ogre lost in the dark but but really in his shredded heart he loved Lamb above all else in this world. His eyes filled with hot tears of remorse.

"I'll be damned to Hell before I let you near our Lamb as well!" he yelled at the Siren.

"So be it."

Terpsichore pursed her lips and blew an awful melody round Gristo's head. She slinked and slithered over the corpse-heap wrapping her victim in song. He winced as the vile notes squeezed his face and made his ears bleed. He tried to cover them but the music enveloped him like a shroud and he knew that all his stature, his rage and his violence meant nothing here in the face of this supreme creature from pre-history.

In a final gathering of strength Gristo faced upwards and bellowed his own final words of regret.

"I'm sorry Dran. I'm sorry Lamb. I always loved you!"

Terpsichore ate Gristo there and then and he was gone, but his dreadful note carried out of the pit and across the town to the his old home.

Lamb, still weeping into his Mother's breast, suddenly stiffened and heard his Father's dying cry. Lamb stands and, as if hit by a lightning strike, arches his back and yells in agony. Bright light filled the kitchen and Lamb appears to grow, his body becoming that of an adult, his muscles expanding and his chest bared. He stood six feet tall in a pool of luminescence and in his hand was a long spear.

His kneeling mother gawped in wonder and touched the side of her son. He stroked her head and whispered gently.

"I love you Mother. It is your strength and Father's remorse that carries me now. For I am aggrieved, this boy. I am the lamb. I am wrath."

The sun-lit figure unfolded vast wings and flew into the darkening sky heavy with men screaming as they hurtled toward the landfill and their death. Lamb shot past them like a falcon, his heart breaking and his spear quivering with fury.

He descended the chasm and landed with a blinding flash, his massive wings outstretched to their full size.

"Lamb! How nice of you to visit again. Its been too long!" rasped the Siren.

"Terpsichore, you wanton harpie, it is always a pleasure to dispatch you once more"

"Tut tut, young titan, I have sacrificed you as many times. Who knows. Maybe this day too!"

"I think not Siren. In this life I have a spear cleansed in agony and forged in penance. Even your fell symphony will not withstand it!"

"Ah, the spear. Last time it was a sword. A sword hewn in truth I recall. Truth, Agony, Penance, you are running out of virtues my illustrious foe. Your God grows bored with this pointless fray. Put down your spear and I shall fill your life with charm and melody."

"Waste not your broken squawking on me Minstrel, for I am renewed and the Lamb will prevail once more!"

At this the statuesque figure ran at the creature, his spear outstretched. Terpsichore spiralled upwards sending corpses spinning in a whirlwind. She flung her hands this way and that hurtling bodies at the running boy.

Bathed in the blood of the innocent, Lamb parried the unrequited dead, ran with all his might and finally stood in front of the Siren, his spear tip pressed against her throat.

"So, my sacrificial Lamb, you appear to have the upper hand. Let me sing one last song before I am vanquished."

"There is no time for singing left Terpsichore. We must restore the balance and let the world renew itself once more. It is the way. It is your time."

"I am sorry".

As the titan heaved his spear deep into the throat of the Siren he regretted this part he had to play. He always had, even more than his own death each thousand years. Feeling an overwhelming sense of loss, like that of his father, Lamb paused his pushing.

He paused too long and realised the fatal error of his reverie but it was too late. Terpsichore was able to emit one final trill, a dreadful note of wholesale destruction, which carried like a devil's seed on the rising air and out into the world, where it sounded like a titanic child crying before descending to fertile soil.

The boy covered his ears shrieking.

"Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"

Lamb slumped onto his shaft dying as the spearhead cleft the Siren's neck. Her face fell against his and she hissed as her wings wilted around his drooping head.

"Both of us!"