The Uncanny Wilds

In the year of our Lord 1333 Cerberen Hade heard a hideous voice and butchered his family as they dreamt.

He chopped them with vigour and utmost violence until there was nothing but red mince and dice glistening in their crimson cots, the family cat licking the scarlet slicks.

Gusset, the sheriff and Boy, his aid, found him raving in the lane, the grim and murderous cutlass still in his hand, his kindred's gore gathering at its tip and pooling at his feet.

"It was the devil Sir, the devil who spoke to me. He told me to send them all to him."

Wasting no time and seeking to allay any whiff of sorcery, he arrested the slayer and sending for the priest, Coster, marched him quickly to the uncanny wilds of the forest. 

Finding a suitable oak, the lawman threw his rope around a bough and stood the killer with the noose around his neck upon a stump, curiously horned, and spoke.

"Cerberen Hade, you have committed the most heinous murder upon your very own blood and for that we condemn you to your own immediate Hell herewith"

With the stump kicked away the figure of Hade dangled like a hare in the market, squirming and writhing until his neck clicked and broke with an audible snap and all went still in the wildwood.

It was then his eyes shot open, red as fire and his sagging mouth began to talk.

"Remember this, Law and Holy, I curse the stump on which I stood and from its bole will death descend upon all your kith when they reach their peak and rule the land. The devil will come and your lines will die in agonising mounds of guts and blood. Mark my curse!"

Cutting the rope and heeding these foul phrases the two men and the aid set fire to the body and the stump and walked away to let the raging flames rid the world of Cerberen Hade and his blighted words, the red blood boiling like poison in his charring heart, his melting eyes dribbling onto the burning rootstock below.

A thousand years passed like liquid mercury down a vein.

In 2333, the world had altered. 

An urban metropolis spanned the ancient ground like a gleaming purring motor. 

Trees had been replaced by AI masts and chatbots lived among the citizens of the new digitized utopia, whistling jazz tunes from the twentieth as they worked in the fields of pigs and cows.

It was a white-hot biome of bulging livestocked robo-farms and humanoid serfs walking their masters' nostalgic dogs along steel boulevards, the river brimming with mirrored fish and cloned twitching crays. Only the ancient mosquitoes could tell human life from metal. They looked the same. Their bloodlust the ultimate test in a world of artifice and science, a city where docile androids stared into space with tinplate fags whilst chopping meat at the abattoir and mopping their alloyed brows with flies and flesh.

Humans stayed at home in perfected bliss, synthed lithium sprayed in fine mists to make them even happier as artificial dreamscapes of childhood rolled from projectors around the rooms. They didn't need to lift a finger anymore in the gilded euphoria of the twenty fourth century, where Mayor Gusset ruled from his titanium dome programming everything that was to come, his personal droid-boy fetching him, his wife and brood blood-rare steaks and gravy from their massive pans. In between the cooking and the cleaning and the toileting, the boy, like all the other droids, went walkies by the city river with the family pooch, neatly burning off any upsets with it's cathode eyes.

Today the doggy got off it's lead.

"Come back pooch!" Cried the boy droid as the pet galloped into Gallows Park and even further.

The robot bound after the dog and found itself standing in a rampant wood of scrub and trees, the uncanny wilds left to revert beyond the ornate parkland.

The pet was frantically digging something up from the deep humus and after succeeding to free it, dragged the object out into the open.

It was a tree stump. An ancient looking, mossy, gnarled and charred rootstock belonging to another darker time.

It also had horns.

"What have you done doggy!" Asked the droid.

"You're filthy! The master will be cross with both of us! I'll be switched off darn it!"

The pet stared up at the boy droid, looked again at the stump and began to growl louder and louder.

Suddenly it yelped and recoiled behind the robot, it's little body shuddering.

"What's the matter doggy!" Enquired the machine, it's hands on its hips.

The robot bent down and examined the lump of old wood. It was clearly from a different century, from a time when there weren't any droids. A time when there wasn't anything except analogue constructs like superstition, witch fires and magic. The boy droid had read about such sinister centuries in its data banks and gave a programmed shiver.

Touching the charred timber, the droid became aware of a new sensation. It's fingers became hot and it was suddenly aware of two burning red eyes that had appeared on the stump. 

The boy droid was transfixed by the scarlet eyes and no amount of de-bugging could free it from the non-catalogued force compelling it to lift the stump in both arms.

"I am Cerberen Hade boy, the devil within the stump and my curse commands you to carry me to those swine named Gussett and Coster, for they must die an agonising death, as decreed in this place a thousand years since!"

The devil's gaze drilled into the boy droid's electric brain and its terror programming kicked in. Quivering with digital fright it transported the tarnished root out of the wilds, past gawping families playing with androids in the park and eventually returning home.

Mayor Gussett was entertaining Abbot Coster in the Civic garden, his mecha-maid tending to a feast of dripping chops and thick steaks with her forked hand on the huge halogen BBQ. 

The porcine Coster came sniffing round the grill as the maid was searing the flesh with a chef's laser, the meat's aroma causing him to zealously rub his cassocked crotch before patting the mecha on her simulated shapely rump.

"Ooh!" She shrieked as per the application and spun round to chastise the Abbot with mock-disgust but somehow moved too quickly, her laser bisecting his belt and opening up his robe, the cleric's huge belly revealed and shining like a forehead in the enhanced sunlight.

"You clumsy harlot!" Bellowed the Abbot, desperately trying to re-tie his belt before he was fully exposed.

"No need to panic Coster old chap. Take the damn thing off completely and give the maid a piece of your mind, if you get my meaning. She's fully programmed for pleasuring in every which way!"

The grinning Abbot wasted no time in removing his cassock and his cock, erect as the church spire, made his move on the mecha-maid.

Suddenly the dog's crazed barking was an early warning that it and the droid were back from its walkies despite it taking much longer than usual.

"Where the hell have you been boy? And what in AI God's name is that revolting thing you're carrying?"

The stump in the droid's arms began to vibrate violently, it's infernal crimson eyes staring madly at the Abbot lurching towards the naked maid. 

"Coster! You gluttonous pig! Death awaits you!" Wailed the root.

The Abbot stood perfectly still, his erect member throbbing as his brain tried to make sense of the screaming, red-eyed stump.

"I have returned, I, Cerberen Hade, to avenge my heinous end at your merciless hands, you! Coster and Gussett and as per my curse, you shall die in dreadful agony this very day!"

The Hade-stump fixed its gaze on the maid's laser, and intensifying the ray to it's fullest, forced her to flick it across the cleric's bulging sceptre.

It was a dextrous swipe and the white-hot light sliced off the bewildered Abbot's genitals, which fell into the gravy pot on the lower grill with a plop.

The cleric wailed in pain as blood gushed from the terrible wound between his legs.

"Lift him!" Commanded the stump.

The boy droid placed the devil root on the lawn and easily hefted the enormous Abbot, who was flailing his arms, blood spurting from his crotch in every direction like a sprinkler. 

Receiving further instructions from those beaming scarlet eyes, the boy droid then lowered the cleric onto the massive barbecue face down. His massive pale body began to sizzle and pop instantly, as his skin roasted away revealing the wet musculature beneath, itself cooking even more noisily as fat fluids drizzled onto the hot coals, at first a trickle and then a torrent, the whole garden beginning to fill with smoke and the stink of roasting flesh. 

As the Abbot's screams gradually lowered to a whimper, his blood turned black and his body reduced to render, the cursed stump of Cerberen Hade turned it's heathen gaze upon the Mayor, who was stood quivering and babbling in an almost catatonic state beneath the steel palm tree.

"Gussett, for you there can be but one demise, you rowdy swine!"

Her programming subjugated, the mecha-maid, now drenched in body fluids, stood and paced towards the shivering Mayor.

"No, Hade, I beg you, No!"

With another nimble swish of her chef's laser, Gussett opened up like a bag, his purple guts spilling onto the plastic lawn in a steamy squelching heap at his feet.

He stared down at them in disbelief.

The innards were far too much of a temptation for the pet dog, which heartily grabbed onto it's master's intestines and ran off, the gleaming links trailing behind it and the Mayor shrieking in pain as his entire insides fell out.

With further commands the maid took the long trailing colon and snipped it off, threw one end over the palm tree's branch and tied it off on a chair leg.

The droid lifted the much-smaller and gelatinous remains of the Abbot from the grill and forcibly stuffed them into Gusset's gaping chest cavity, the Abbot's momentarily awake but melted face peering out. 

With another red gaze, the mecha-maid and the boy droid pulled the colon together and raised the Mayor off the ground, filled with Coster.

The wailing man dangled on the end of his own intestine, slowly spinning around like a fan. 

"Nooooooooooooooo!" He railed as the two robots and the stump cursed by Cerberen Hade looked on.

"But it was just the devil Sir. We couldn't help it!" Whispered the bots.

They stayed like that until the evening when the wailing had stopped.

The silent bodies of Gussett and Coster were set alight and the two machines took the stump inside, lowered the blinds and purring like familiars,  listened to it's every dreadful word before walking with it to the uncanny wilds beyond the park never to be seen again, the three pairs of heathen eyes burning red in the devilled night.