]Story[ Cross-Universal Easter
Another place completely separate from the things of our lives has its own way of celebrating the sacred holiday.
He checked his luggage and walked through the door. What was inside was like a mall, but rather than stores there were intersections of aspects of an alien universe, which various populations congregated between like stores. His buddy was quickly lost beneath elephantine legs of chattering ladies as they ascended into emerald dreams. Each glittering fantasy engaged with, like something to own. But purchased not at a cost, but with the obligation of an adventure.
A dinosaur stomped and cracked the plates of the floor, quickly repaired by servile nanomachines. He wore an adventurer’s outfit, and beneath his fedora he winked a row of three eyes. “I do say sir”, blared his breath, “have you been spending time with the humans? Mayhap a walk on the wild side will make our reacquaintance?”
No, he replied: I'm used to it. With a wave he watched the giant crane away as his primal aura billowed with him, shredding a variety of food wrappers as sand billowed between fingers bringing up bites, which missed the sand. Up above was Jesus.
The size of a skyscraper, the statue of him flung through the air in a loincloth defined the boundaries of the egg-shaped space. From his back spewed curling lengths of orange, and the plasticky molded energy mottled black towards his back inspired awe in the great beasts, the migrating skeleton cadets, and others. His arms outstretched, as if grappling something invisible, sending him reverseforth with shockwaves. The standard centerpiece of the places of the nation.
Flame bloomed from a giant skull, as he regaled the clamoring bonescouts with tales of the eternal fire. The boys and girls blinked pupils of pale blue, and from the darkness of their soul cried out: “again! again!” The monster swung his sauroid frame in a leather jacket, shuddering the mental plasms of minds like a gentle massage in the surroundings. “And then it lit more than the stars, and the light went out of them as the whole space sector became dragonflame!”
He walked past saleswomen asking for pinpricks of his soul, clattering necklaces that could navigate the deepest black. “you, human!” Screamed a frightening skullcreature with wiry black hair forming a collar. “You want this, I wager.” A copper easter egg, carved deep into the lines of the decorations, a fine lattice. He pondered the size of it, startling compared to the Earth. Fit full in the hand, it cost nothing, as it led to a creative secret.
He looked up at aliens with folded up lanky forms, smooth and shiny, migrating from an alien universe. Familiar to him from childhood video games, what he remembered posed trouble to have them as neighbors. Still another bizarre creature walked with a scrawled drawing of a skull medallion, as the universe was known in many places by skulls. “Watta nyyucurichuri lachahaicra?” pondered the deepest black eyes directly in his face whose length could give a normal human kid nightmares. Some of the new species were very feminine, and skulls cracked out of the Earth to behold them with smoldering ring embers.
He was clawed by a scammer, eager to find a weakling who could fall for him. Then a rapscallion approached, absorbed in the neutralization wave of a voidal beast, who ejected him out of his eyesocket. Not moving, temporarily dreaming, as he carved a whisper: “the fireshow begins!”
A procession came of artisanal beastskulls, surrounding dome floats tattered in decorations and illustrations of the farthest reaches of Calvary. Everything suddenly became very cheap, as even the most dire quests and costly chunks of one’s self were embraced. Living beings swarmed in great streams through the air and up the walls and over the floor, and legends were told of Whisperwind, Abyssflesh, Direbeach, and other infestors of the deep unaligned stars.
He ducked jets of flame as massive teeth sucked them up, bending and swaying towards friends of the monsters. “Yeah? Hotter than ever! Nuclear star formation!” All the monsters in smallform and some great embarked into the descending dark as the fire festivals embarked from edge to edge of the mall that began to twirl, into the nightmare space.
He chuckled to think of one of his Earth friends, who would have been long overcome in the process of this ultimate park ride. Comprehension shredded as he finally found a buddy. “Just in time motherfucker! Let the lights dawn, burn us earth-wet punk!” He hefted, and dropped his drawstring bag full of marbles. When he entered the portal, the perfectly ordinary marbles from a nearby human store became microcosms of minds. Invasive, but they would literally need to go beyond existence to complain.
Hell yes bud?!!nm? He heard in his mind. They drew into the deep dark sanctum, walking through many sheets of curtains. All he saw was the strangest, sharpest face, eating the minds of humans he knew. They became lost in an intersection of humanity, as treasure filled their souls, the weakest friend of a friend already passing out at this point. They walked into sombre embers of a life of mistakes.
They saw a woman strangling a baby, seen by a neighbor. They saw a homeless couple going hungry. They saw a warcrime. They saw one needle after another plunging into an arm. They saw haughty smiles merging together across a lifetime, and out of this point came the monster.
“Well,” he said with his many and massive teeth. “Will you ride the cost? Will you chase the dragon, and become more one of us? The more you ride, the more you will never be the same to aliens from without. As this place does not accept betrayers, of the alien friend or anyone else.”
They walked. As they did, they moved beyond the surface. They knew each needle plunge, each baby's cry, as they expanded and reverberated into their true meaning. They hollowed, and walked from their flesh. He looked back, a grin spreading across his body’s face and his real buds making it. He turned back, and drank deep from the well of desire for vengeance.
—
His way back scrambled and twisted. Now he would have to enter an alien universe to make it back to Earth. A million parchments would be required to write the dimensions and maps of the journey. With his advanced mind that could already be in multiple places at once, it was no trouble. He turned with his cosmic eyes, bent back by the pain, towards a fast forwarding and rewinding orb of Earth lives. He pitied them not to have yet found the dire drop into the tangled path of the underground hiding The Underrealm.
Outside of the tent and building within, the plastic flame filling the air suddenly burnt real. Dark of universe emerged, and cries rang out: “Underbeast!” A giant rotting monster named Lightsbane absorbed the entire mall, peoples descending into the chambers of his scales, lives spent on the aligned day of March 31st absorbed into his rib cage, perception glimpsing out in the lids of his neutron eyes, and his 18 jaws eating return pathways. Suspended upon the burning flame of Easter, he arched his winding spine, spread his leg-ribs, and screeched as the statue became Jesus, the fire became the monster’s, and an undescribable event took place within the nuclear explosion seen in a million places.
His taste of the marbles continued undisturbed.