A MATTER OF BELIEF: By Graeme Reynolds
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010The old god shifted in its glass prison and glared through the barrier at the humans gathered on the other side. A gasp of astonishment and revulsion rose from the crowd – the tiniest glimmering of belief washed over him, before it was torn away amid the laughter and jeers of the humans.
The morsel of faith was enough to maintain its existence but no more than that. Where once the old thing would have feasted on the adulation, the souls and the flesh of thousands, it lived now on the sparsest crumbs.
The magician stepped in front of the crowd, ridiculous and sinister in his top hat and black funeral suit.
“Behold, a monster from the depths of history. The once mighty forest god, tamed for your entertainment.”
The crowd laughed. Popcorn bounced off the glass wall.
The old god hated the mage, but despite its fury, was impotent, unable to summon so much as a thunderbolt to strike the arrogant human down. The mage had called it forth from the darkness, bound it in flesh and kept it weak – a freakish attraction in the mage’s dark carnival. While the mage harvested the souls of the fools that attended the carnival, there was no tribute for the once mighty being, trapped in glass and protective wards in a draughty canvass tent.
The crowd moved on to the next attraction, leaving the god in darkness and silence. Already the glow of momentary belief was fading. The god sighed and waited for its next fleeting meal.
Movement attracted its attention, rousing it from its torpor. The flap of the tent opened and two young humans, a male and a female entered.
“Come on Mark, we’ll get into trouble if they catch us,” said the female, a look of concern etched on her face.
“This will only take a second. I want to know what they made the model from – it doesn’t look like rubber. Where’s your sense of adventure?”
The humans made their way around the back of the god’s prison, to a small glass door in the cage. The mage always kept this locked. The god took its last glimmering shard of belief and applied it. The simple mechanism of the lock clicked open and the two humans entered the enclosure.
“Oh god, it stinks in here, Mark, let’s go.”
“Just a second Clare, I just want to touch it and then we can go.”
The god waited in silence, willing the humans forward. The male reached out his hand and placed it against the god’s corpulent folds.
“It’s warm! It’s…hang on, my hand’s stuck” said the male.
The man pulled away, but to no avail. His hand had vanished into the god’s flesh up to the wrist. A flicker of doubt and fear flashed across the male’s mind. He reached out with his left hand, trying to part the folds, but only managed to entrap himself further.
“Clare, I’m stuck, help me get out,” he said to the female, an edge of panic creeping into his voice.
Panic and something else. The man was starting to believe. Power washed over the god – more than it had experienced in millennia. It flexed its mind and locked the glass door, then drew the male into itself. The man thrashed and screamed, but was absorbed by the entity in moments, the only evidence of his existence the outline of a screaming face in the god’s flesh.
The female shrieked in terror and pulled at the glass door. The god savoured this for a moment and then grabbed the woman with a tentacle of corrupted flesh. The belief shone from her. Absolute, undiluted. The god shuddered in pleasure, and then lifted the woman to its mouth. She was still screaming as she slid down its throat, into its waiting belly.
The god settled down, relishing the pain and terror of its captives as their bodies were absorbed into his own mass. Rather than consuming the souls however, it stored them deep inside itself, drawing on their torment and absolute belief, feeling its power return.
The mage would return that evening, with a new crowd of laughing humans.
The old god smiled. It would make believers of them all.
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©2010 Graeme Reynolds
Graeme Reynolds has been called many things over the years, most of which are unprintable. By day, he breaks computer programs for a living, but when the sun goes down he hunches over a laptop and thinks of new and interesting ways to offend people with delicate sensibilities.
He lives somewhere in England with two cats, three delinquent chickens and a girlfriend that is beginning to suspect that there is something deeply wrong with him.
Visit Graeme’s website : http://graemereynolds.wordpress.com/
