Winged, Watchful and Skinless

My brother died a couple of weeks ago. To be entirely honest, I find it hard to say that I am a grieving man. I haven’t been close to him for nearly twenty years now. He was a raging alcoholic. I kept my distance. To be franked, I stopped caring at all once he let my nephew slide into the same rabid hole that took his wife years prior.

When I heard about his death, it didn’t surprise me. I wasn’t upset either. It was only a matter of time before he ended up killing himself with his addiction. He’d known all along this was how it would end, yet he never stopped. Mom found him in his apartment, slumped on the floor by his computer.

I fucking hate him for making mom go through this. Not only did you die on her, but you also died like a slaughtered pig and made her see you in this state. That wasn’t even the worst of it, selfish prick.

His gargantuan form was blue and bloated. His face blackened and cracked open in the middle. A result of him slamming his head onto the edge of the table. It took three adults to haul his fat ass out of there. I assume he was nearing the five-hundred-pound mark. We never performed an autopsy to find out what did him in. Most likely his body gave out under his immense weight or alcohol, or the blow he sustained as he fell.

Well, that’s the consensus, at least. I suspect there might be something else… He was a huge fan of cinematography and the entire process of filmmaking. He had made all these films ever since we were kids. Most of them were comedic or action based. Nothing too crazy, just a bunch of short films you might’ve found online during the early days of YouTube. He did a few darker films too; I wouldn’t call it terrifying or anything, more in the vein of scare-themed dark comedy. Most of them turned out pretty funny, especially if you have a dark sense of humor. I’m willing to give him this much; he was a talented filmmaker for an amateur.

In any case, I mention this because we’re going to sell his apartment and relatives started coming by to pick up stuff. They might find some use to. I ended up taking his welding gear and film collection because I actually liked them. I also took the computer. Not that I needed the hardware. I was more interested in seeing what he had on that thing. I was always curious about how he made his films, never got to ask though, and now the keys to the secret kingdom were in my hands.

As I was looking through his files, I found out he had a disc on the CD drive. Looking into it, I found it had one file on it, a video file. It was called Semyaza. Curiosity piqued due to my enjoyment of his work; my gut had demanded I watch the video.

The Windows media player fired up and a black screen stared at me for a few seconds. I looked at it, waiting patiently for something to happen. The camera seemed to move forward as a faint hint of music had played in the background, getting louder and louder with each passing moment as the camera seemed to pan into a blur in the distance. Maybe thirty seconds in, I saw the recording of what appeared to be a tall and skinny man, sunken in an ornate throne, asleep. His black hair was long and shaggy, covering his pale face, and his clothes worn and ragged.

Beautiful orchestral music played in the background. The camera darted around the sleeping man hectically. It took close-up shots of the man’s anatomy and the throne. The combination of the music and the imagery felt uncanny at first. Then the camera came to a halt faced with the sleeping man. Then the music stopped for about a second and then resumed louder than before and the man started violently convulsing. The camera moved back and forth, accentuating the tetanus-borne spasming of the man’s body. The music seemed to follow the spasming, the more violent the spasms, the more dramatic the soundtrack. It started feeling too surreal and too professional for an amateur film. Too surreal and bordering on the disgusting, and yet I could not turn my eyes away. I was hooked on the madness that stared at me from the screen.

The spasming died down and the man fell still in an awkward position with his back arched onto the chair while his head fell forward with his legs on the floor. I blinked and then there was fire engulfing the man, coming out of his mouth, blistering the skin, and scalding his clothes.

I could almost feel the heat smoldering my skin.

The music became more serene and calm, yet loud as ever. The phantom sensation of heat on my skin turned into a full-blown feeling of pins and needles traveling along my body. Picking and prodding, I was too immersed in the video to pay attention to the strange sensation my mind had registered. I knew it was there, but I was sure it came with the bizarre and grotesque atmosphere of the video.

Controlled danger, adrenaline response to the horrid visuals that were horrifying by design. It was nothing like I had seen my brother produce beforehand, but it was stunningly terrifying.

I was so focused on the video, I nearly jumped out of my seat when the camera panned onto the man’s face as the flames faded into his mouth. The shot of his neck shrinking and expanding as the fires cascaded inside him was strangely fascinating to watch. His eyelids suddenly opened exposing his painfully yellow eyes weren’t so much. The eye movement was rapid and erratic. As if the man was trying to find something in the darkness. When his eyes locked with mine, I felt a hand grasping my throat lightly.

Fear raging like a storm inside me.

The man rose from his chair and began moving about as if conducting a symphony. His hands and body twisted and turned awkwardly as boisterous music blasted through my speakers. The sensation of pins and needles became of one of hands tracing their way along my skin. I tried swallowing, but my throat was stiffening.

The menagerie on display on my screen kept my eyes locked on where the man’s body moved about manically before coming to a sudden halt. With his arms outstretched, his body took the form of a cross. Things started pushing from beneath his skin, tentacles, limbs, faces, wings…

I sat in awe as the man’s face turned to that of orgasmic pleasure while something was trying to erupt from inside his superhumanly elastic skin. The music stopped again, and the sensation of hands across my body turned into pain. Glass and knives ran across my legs and arms, along my spine. Flames caressing my insides. Sand in my eyes, stinging and pricking, as the man in front of me floated still. His body and limbs took the shape of a cross drifting in space.

Skeletal hands burst forth from his mouth. Too many for me to count. A lump in my throat grew and grew like a cancerous tumor, making it harder to breathe, to think. I sat there, rubbing my throat, wincing in pain as the hands tore chunks of skin and clothes.

An almost identical reflection of the man’s pain traveled through my body, making it hard to watch the video any longer. By the time he was nothing but a bloody mess with an arachnid body entirely made up of blood-stained arms, I could barely see anything.

It was difficult to stay awake because of the lack of oxygen in my lungs. The music was getting muffled even though it was as loud as before. The song and the video were seemingly reaching their climax as the skinless mass in front of me was inflating and deflating itself, sprouting forth torrents of blood and gore.

I felt cold and battered watching the body of hell unfold in front of me. The worst part was the pressure inside my chest and throat. I was struggling to breathe while a loud moan echoed through my speakers.

At that moment, Elina, the love of my life, called my name… My wife, asking what I had wanted for dinner, broke whatever spell I was under. Feeling the mass of an entire mountain depart from my body, I could breathe freely again. The pain was gone, and everything was back to normal.

I threw my head back, taking in a lungful of oxygen as I looked one last time at the screen before turning off the goddamn video.

The camera stared directly at an intricately venous skinless thing, covered in many constantly moving eyes. Eight fleshy, equally skinless wings protruded from the back of the thing. The wings had eyes too. They were staring right at me, a burning hatred clear in their gaze.

I forced the CD drive open, watching as the grotesque abomination and the rest of the video crumbled in front of me into oblivion. Where they belong, along with the rest of the stuff that sick fucking drunk mind of his might’ve birthed.