Weird little thing I wrote using cheesy childrens' writing prompts from some website. It's pretty damn pretentious. K+ for the gore, I guess. It's not really that disturbing.

I condensed it into a song called "He Ventured Further into the Dusk," which can be found at

soundclick . com /util/downloadSong . cfm?ID (equal sign) 5683191

He Ventured Further into the Dusk
copyright Audita Sum 2008

One

A boy with antlers waited quietly, a spirit made from earth and blood and hair. Soon he heard his mother calling home, "Boyclay, Boyclay." But he had slipped away. "Boyclay the fawn." But he was early gone. She slapped down the red, wet clay onto the wheel with a large, rough hand. She sighed and said, "They always leave so soon."

Boyclay's path fell out in front of him, flecked silver like mercury. He took a breath of dusk. It was all he needed to be at the Dusk, which wasn't just a time here, but a place. It was what became when many worlds merged together in the halflight, and came out incongruent and dangerous.

The Dusk stretched out in a waking, feline fashion. He took a step into the Inbetween.

There was a rotting stench here, and Boyclay looked down to see a fox with grinning, deadened eyes, and a pelt smeared with blood. "You don't know everything you see and hear," it said, and laughed a wretched, wheezing laugh. But someone brought a blade down on the carcass. A clean cut. The thing's life was severed. Another laugh sounded now, but it was not as disturbing. It was the gleeful laugh of the Chirren. Boyclay could not see them, but was unalarmed. The Chirren didn't usually harm good things, or at least not people.

Boyclay ventured fully into the Dusk.

He was no longer in the woods. Instead, he saw in front of him a pasture. Radiant white cows flicked their tails here. They were the fat, beautiful kind, and rivaled the moon in brightness.

"Mooncalves," he murmured, letting down his guard for a moment. They were stupid creatures, and could not harm him.

One cow approached him. There was something on her back, but the glare obstructed it at first. Then he saw that it was a tray, with translucent mugs balanced precariously atop it. "Care for some root beer?" the cow brayed.

"I grew from roots," Boyclay said patiently. "To drink them would be swilling down my kin."

She rolled her dewy, opaque eyes, so like his own. "It's not made from real roots. It's mostly sugar, I think."

"Shouldn't you be eating hay somewhere?" he muttered.

"Hey is for horses," she said, unfittingly. He nodded in agreement.

A cloud covered the moon, and the mooncalves ceased beaming. White showed at the corner of the cow's eyes, bled over with red. Her soft face tilted upward. Boyclay could've sworn he heard a dog barking.

"Poor lonely dog, to be lost in the Dusk."

"It's not alone," she said. "There'll be lots of 'em."

Before he could reply, an animal fell from the sky. It struggled in the air, hissing and spitting.

"Don't worry, deary," said the cow. "Cats always land on their feet." It hit the ground with a sickening crunch. "Sometimes," she continued, "they break their feet. Here. Take a mint."She lurched her heavy body around, sending the tray toward him and nearly spilling some her root beer. Boyclay saw that, along with the mugs, there were candies, too.

"Thanks." He took one, unwrapped it, and threw the plastic wrapper to the wind.

"Don't do that!" she lowed, her front hooves jumping. The wrapper remained aloft another moment, and she managed to catch it in her teeth.

"Sorry," he said, confused.

"That's quite alright. Just don't do it again."

"Why not?"

"I can't have strangers taking my mints. Spit that out, too. Who do you think you are? L. Ron Hubbard?"

"I am a tree boy, deer boy, and the herd," he said and cast an uneasy glance toward the sky. "Where I come from we do not choose to part from people we met only seconds prior."

"Oh," she said. Then, when a dog hit the ground with bloody impact near them, "Don't worry, son. It's best to let sleeping dogs lie."

"A thing will grow in that," he warned her now. "Clean up the blood, lest evil takes the guise."

"The rain'll clean it right up," said the cow.

Boyclay nodded. "I have to go," he said, but instead of moving horizontally, he went vertically. It was just the same, and much easier for him, in his state. He melted into the ground halfway, until his legs were firmly planted in the soil. His torso elongated slowly, stiltedly, and his arms grew into more arms grew into many splayed fingers. Suns sprouted from his fingertips, and pierced through the gloom above him. He heard laughter.

"Take care," said the cow.

The shifting grey-black clouds were the only floor up here. They wouldn't support Boyclay, but they could support the Chirren, who were ghosts. "So this is where they went," he thought to himself. For there they were, throwing cats and dogs down, where the animals were absorbed into the misty air. "What makes you do that?" he asked.

A Chile eyed him fiendishly. "We like to see what shapes they make, when they splatter."

"But what adult would tell you to do that? Do you regard your parents' words at all?" he asked, but then the Chile only smiled.

"We do whatever we want," he said. His thick eyelashes flew up suddenly. "What's that you got there?" Boyclay craned his head backward to see a gray squirrel, shivering on his shoulder.

"Can I have it?" the Chile asked.

"You won't hurt him, will you?"

"'Course not. I just want to look at him." He grabbed the squirrel, and took a long stick out of his back pocket. "From the inside," he added with a malicious smile, and poked its eye out.

Voices vibrated around him, in the great dome of the sky, "O cessate di piagarmi. O laschiate mi morir."

"In just a moment," Boyclay said in turn, "I am more than a splinter in your skin."

"They're talking about us," said the Chile, giggling feverishly. The squirrel is Dusk. All of it here is Dusk. And we're killing it."

"You cannot kill the Dusk," the clay boy said, affronted. "It is your lifebreath. You'll die."

The Chile's face fell silent, and Boyclay felt for the voices with his fingers, strummed them. They were tight. They tried to pull away, but Boyclay held on with all his strength. When he let go, he was over a wide expanse of ocean.

--

Two

Ellen stood at the dock, looking into translucent, shifting blue. Fires in the sky. Solid fires.

Eventually, she began to notice other things. Coarse wood under her hands, black and spindly. Muted at the edges. The waves, shining light blue in the semi-darkness. The warm lights, glimmering on the shore, and the grass, perforating the sand like so many claws.

A man was near her, and he had a fishing pole in his pale, liquid hands. She could see his bones through them, faded and scratched.

He tensed and reeled in his line with some effort. A large, ghostly fish struggled at the end, under a glowing bobber. Its lips were closed around small, fingernail-sized flame.

As Ellen watched, the man slapped the fish down on a table and skinned it with a bright, twisting knife. The fish's translucent muscles flapped feebly.

"Where are we?" Ellen asked.

The man looked up, though not at her. He was squinting at the small fuzzy blue clouds near the horizon, at the yellow-pink remains of a sunset. "Dusk," was all he said.

There was laughing, far away on the beach.

"The Chirren are out," said the man abruptly, gauging her with cold dark eyes. "You'll want to get off the dock, unless you'd like them to push you off." He put the fish in a small cooler, gathered his tackle-box and fishing pole, and gestured for Ellen to follow.