title: (horror)
author: ju-an
“contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them” - Ann Radcliffe
Phobos sat on his couch and brooded. A thin man, perhaps not so old but with silvered hair, one who was pitifully past his prime and painfully aware of it, he lay half-sprawled on the battered leather and sulked at the man standing at the window.
“Are we going to talk about this?” He said at last, thumping his feet on top of the coffee table. The boots were ancient but meticulously cared-for, patches and cracks painstakingly mended. “Almost two hundred dead just yesterday. We felt nothing. Got nothing.”
The other man remained silent, pale eyes endlessly moving. He never seemed to find exactly what he was looking for outside the window, for he never stopped searching. His hair was as bright as Phobos’s but more gold than silver, more blood than metal.
“Brother?”
Phobos sighed petulantly.
“Brother? Hello? Are you ignoring me?”
Finally, Deimos turned around.
“War is all but extinct,” complained Phobos. “It’s this system. No countries! One language! Who comes up with these ideas? I miss the old days, the days of the phalanxes… The days of the missiles.”
Deimos nodded listlessly.
“We are helpless, in this world… With no war, where am I to draw my power from? You have it better, but I, I am truly lost in this age. And now — ” Phobos’s face grew dark with anger. “You have heard of the happenings, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Moving, fluctuating spots of something, something without form yet. Without form? By now it would have formed, a new god. A new god! In this time, with us starving and withering! War, gone!”
Deimos sighed and stepped away from the window.
“There will always be war, as long as humankind exists.”
“Have you seen father lately? Or the humans around us, these creatures incapable of worship and feeling?”
“Well — ”
Deimos broke off as the light above his head shattered. He blinked slowly as sparks and shards rained on his head
“Several thousand dead and half the city quarantined, brother. Blocks upon blocks of open windows, empty houses, and bloodied streets. So much — so much.” Phobos shivered with delight, perhaps some fear, most likely both in equal measure. “We are missing out. We are being outdone. And we are being threatened.”
“What do you want from me, Phobos?”
“This is unimaginable! I haven’t gotten a good dose in half a millennium, and this new god is spontaneously born? How? Why? It’s the ninth occurrence this month already, and I assure you this is happening in other areas as well. Not even word of mouth flows freely in this world, but I know — this god is young and powerful and he is hungry. A new god! Are you listening, brother?”
“In this age?” Deimos gave a rare smile, his thin, dried lips stretching in a way painful to watch. “Doubtful. This is no age for gods.”
“How does he do it?” Phobos wondered, springing up from his place on the couch. “It’s not the way we did it, as much as it pains me to say it — and besides, we haven’t have that sort of raw power since the days of the world wars. He has merely to appear and these little humans kill themselves from horror! I can’t believe — ”
The lamp standing next to the couch exploded, shortly followed by the remaining ceiling lights and even the window. The room lapsed into darkness, broken only by the intermittent sparking of the destroyed wiring.
“Phobos,” sighed Deimos.
“I didn’t do it!” Phobos snapped, and there was the blunt banging of him angrily kicking the armrests of the couch. “Stupid mortal house. I hate everything about this century. Stupid, primitive humans — ”
Deimos held up a hand.
“Do you hear that?”
The brothers stood still for a moment. It was all very silent for a moment, then a faint scratching sound seemed to come from somewhere far-off in the house. It was quiet and high-pitched and horrible, sounded a little like —
“Metal,” breathed Phobos, pupils dilated to tiny pinpoints in his sockets. “Brother, I know that sound. It’s been a good century since I’ve seen metal, everything is foam and plastic nowadays — it’s a sword, I know it — ”
The scratch grew to a terrible screech. Phobos growled. For a moment he sounded inhuman, ancient, like something wild and matted, mangey and rabid. Then he swore and jerked the door open before storming out in all his broken-down frightfulness.
“Who dares intrude the domain of Phobos?”
Deimos watched the door slam behind his brother and sighed again. He moved through the darkened room, broken glass grinding under his feet as he made his way yet again to the window. Once again he stared out of the little square, now with the chilly wind blowing on his face, as if he too did not know what he was looking for.
The lights of the city were spread out in neat little square blocks, spotless and seamless except for an ugly hole to the south. The lights there were off, or blinking, or perhaps replaced by red sirens; the marks of the moving horror.
Something shifted in the cityscape. Deimos leaned a little out of the window, wind now icy as it swept his hair back. The lights in the buildings were still on, but something — something was off. He did not quite realize what until the windows started breaking open.
The humans did not hesitate much. One after another they fluttered to the pavement and painted it a gory sunset, with Deimos watching in silence. Perhaps he envied being able to cause such carnage. After all, he had been terror once. Something crashed from one of the upper levels of the apartment and a figure fell almost peacefully, a middle-aged woman with her dark hair flying all about a face that was very much not at peace. Whatever the happenings were — the manifestation of a new god, a freak incident, one of the old gods throwing a fit — it was here.
Deimos did not put much mind into it. He was weak, but still a god, after all. The door creaked behind him. The wind hissed; the door banged shut.
“Did you find your sword, brother?” He asked, not bothering to look away. “Look at what is happening here. Perhaps it is true, what you believe.”
There was no answer, which was so uncharacteristic of Phobos that Deimos turned around, only to find the room empty. The door was closed, innocuous. Frowning, he crossed the room in a few strides and jerked it open, hesitating just slightly as he did so.
Nothing, once again. Or…
Deimos took a step back.
Deimos took another step back.
“No.”
Pupils dilated, cheeks bloodless, feet stumbling over broken glass, Deimos backed up until half his body was leaning out of the bare window.
“No.”
He looked around frantically, looking for a way of escape.
“No. No. No. No! No! You cannot exist. Not now, not in this age, not in this form. You cannot threaten me. No! I am terror. I am terror. I am terror!”
With that, Deimos threw himself from the window, a single fluid movement. Emptiness stood where he had once.
ns 18.68.41.141da2
