“A Matter of Character” by M. Etheridge

Marco Etheridge is a writer of fiction and creative non-fiction, an occasional playwright and a part-time poet. An Ex-Pat from the Pacific Northwest, He lives and writes in Vienna, Austria. His scribbles have been featured in many lovely reviews and journals scattered across Canada, Australia, the UK, and the USA. Notable recent credits include: Coffin Bell, In Parentheses, The Thieving Magpie, Ligeia Magazine, The First Line, Prime Number Magazine, Dream Noir, The Opiate Magazine, Cobalt Press, Literally Stories, and The Metaworker, amongst many others. Marco’s novel “Breaking the Bundles” is available at fine online booksellers.

His author website is:  https://www.marcoetheridgefiction.com/

His work has been previously featured on In Parentheses.

Artwork by S. Capshaw-Mack

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A Matter of Character

Maybe it’s the stench that slams you awake, or the pulsing throb in your head, or maybe just the primal fear of being trapped in a dark hole. You blink your crusty eyes and the darkness around you is no better than the terror-laced dreams you left behind.

You are surrounded by block stone walls and shadow. The only light is a dim flicker that seeps in through a narrow slot cut into the dripping stone. A heavy iron gate bars the way and you know that you are in a cell deep underground. Your brain scrabbles in the darkness for any memory of how you ended up here. You fail and that failure carries more fear than the dripping dark.

Pain stabs through your skull as you try to raise your head from the rough straw pallet. The sharp straw ends poke into your flesh. The thin pallet lies on the cold stone and you roll your head for a rat’s eye view of the floor. You struggle to focus. On the far wall is a bucket and from that bucket comes the sweet foul stench of your own shit. There is nothing else in the cell. You are alone under a mountain of stone with only the reek of human waste for company.

Panic and bile rise in your throat and you taste the copper tang of adrenalin. You beg your brain to be quiet. Don’t ask, don’t think the words: Where am I? Do not ask where am I because if you do the fear will crest over you and wash you into a gibbering madness. You are alone in a stone cell in the dark, that is the truth of it. Then you hear the shuffle of heavy footsteps from beyond the twisted iron bars and even that single truth is wrong.

You feel the plodding footfalls through the stone floor beneath you and then a hulking shadow fills the narrow doorway. Panic overrides your brain and will not be contained. You shrink back across the straw bed, press your body against the base of stone wall, and cower like a small animal.

A key grates in a rusty lock, tumblers fall, and the barred door creaks open. Each sound pierces your heart with another stab of dread. The creature stoops to enter the cell, turning sideways to ease its huge bulk through the narrow threshold. Inside the cell now, it towers above you.

Your brain cannot comprehend what your eyes are seeing. Seven feet tall if it’s an inch and every feature misshapen and gross. It is a giant parody of a human being. The creature is naked, and you see that it is devoid of any genitalia. The flickering light illuminates massive limbs the color of baked earthenware.

A monster before you and your mind conjures every monster imagined by man. You see its coarse face shaped by the master that fashioned it and you know those dark eyes staring down at you. It is a golem, and it has entered your nightmare, yet you are wide awake. Then the thing speaks, and it is the sound of gravel chewed by the forces of the earth.

— You must come with us.

There is a moaning in your throat but no words. You raise your hands as if to push the thing away. The shadow stoops over you. A huge clay hand grips you under the arm. It lifts you like a child. You stagger when your feet touch the flagstones, but it holds you upright. The empty eyes that stare into yours are pools of darkness.

— You must come with us.

The massive hand slides from beneath your arm to your back and then you are moving across the cell. There is no violence in the golem’s urging, only a pressure as unstoppable as an ocean tide.

You step into a corridor no wider than a man’s outstretched arms. There is no light of day or night, no windows opening onto sun or moon. Oil lamps hang from overhead timbers. They let fall pools of yellow light that illuminate the darkness at irregular intervals.

The corridor before you is blocked by the bulk of another golem. The sheer size of the creature blots out the feeble light. He fills the space as would an earthen wall. This new golem is so like the first you imagine them both made under the hands of the same master. Now the original golem is in the corridor behind you and you are trapped between them. He turns his back on you and thumps up the passageway. The trailing golem follows, and you have no choice but to turn and stumble along between them.

The corridor runs like a tunnel without turning or outlet. The oil lamps pass overhead, and the lead golem ducks its head under them and stomps onward—shadow, pool of light, shadow. Narrow gaps open in the stone wall on your left. The gaps are barred by iron, the entrances to other cells. They threaten like gaping maws and you hug the blank wall on your right.

The golem stops so suddenly you almost collide with his clay back. The thing stoops to unlock a double-barred iron gate and you see a soft glow of light. The gate opens with a screech. The golems move and you are swept along between the bulk of them.

You enter into a large space, a chamber whose limits disappear into blackness. The leading golem steps to your right and stops. The other is directly behind you. You see a semi-circle of flickering candle flames. The candles are thick as a man’s arm, ghostly white and dripping with wax. They are mounted in heavy stands that rise waist high above the stone floor. There is a single empty chair centered in the pool of candlelight. The candlesticks are shielded on the far side in the manner of stage lights. The light is focused on the empty chair while the chamber beyond is cloaked in darkness.

The golem behind you raises an arm and a giant hand is hovering in the air beside your head. One clay finger is extended, pointing to the empty chair. The thing’s voice clashes into your ear.

— You will sit.

You balk, try to take a step back, but the golem’s heavy hand drops to your shoulder. The touch is almost gentle, but it carries the weight of centuries.

— You will sit.

The pressure is inexorable, and you are forced into the chair, willing or no. You peer into the darkness beyond the candles but can see nothing. You hear a whispering, a susurrus as of cloth against wood, or a paper shifted by a stealthy hand. For a moment all is still, then a human voice breaks the dark silence.

— Malaki King, you are brought before this council to face judgment.

The voice echoes off unseen arches and falls away into the blackness. The golems are motionless. You stutter out the first thought that comes to mind.

— Mal, my name is Mal.

The same awful voice replies, the words wrapped in a sneer.

— Ah, yes, Mal, from the Latin root for bad or evil. As in malignant, or malevolent, or both. How appropriate. The council will now read the charges brought against the accused.

Another voice rises from beyond the flames, this one female.

— The accused is brought before us charged with spreading lies against the good character of others, malicious neglect, wanton abuse including bodily harm, and murder. There are lessor charges, of course, but the crimes listed will suffice.

The male voice answers bearing a silken threat.

— They will suffice indeed. The penalty for these crimes is death. How does the accused plead?

Panic courses through you and chokes your voice. This cannot be real. You are trapped in a nightmare and only waking will free you. But the wood of the chair against your back is real, the clay giants standing beside you are real, and the fear clutching at your guts is very, very real. Words finally break from your throat, a choking sob into the circle of candlelight.

— I, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never done any of those things to anyone. I’m innocent. I don’t know why I’m here.

— Do you not? Then allow us to enlighten you as to your crimes. There are those amongst us here that can bear witness to your acts. Grace, would you care to begin?

You hear yet another female voice, her words harsh and angry.

— This man, Malaki King, killed the only man I ever loved. He took my Toby from me and left me with nothing but words. When life throws grief at you, it’s giving you a song. Do you remember those words, you bastard? They were the only thing I had to cling to after you killed him, an empty goddam song.

Recollection stabs an icy finger through your heart because you do remember those words. The chill of it spreads down your spine and paralyses you.

— The accused has nothing to say? Very well, we have more. Dimitri, will you speak?

Another voice comes from the darkness.

— I will speak. You ruined a good woman, the first woman I ever loved. She suffered at your hands, enduring, always bearing up under your callous abuse. Bonnie was beautiful and resilient and strong, and she would never give in to you. She was the real thing and I was just a voyeur in her world, but she was the best woman I ever knew. Finally, when you could not break her, you killed her with her own revolver. There is no hell terrible enough for you.

— Thank you, Dimitri. I know that was hard for you. And you, Malaki King, shall we go on? The list of your crimes is long, and we have many here who have suffered because of them.

Recognition takes the place of recollection. You know these voices in the dark and knowing them brings another wave of panic. You know them because you created them.

— This is impossible, it’s insane. I know you. I know your voices. I know Dimitri, the other woman is Grace, and you have to be Samuel, right?

— Yes, my name is Samuel. You left me to die in a stinking corridor, shot down without the benefit of even a few parting words.

— But, but you’re all just characters. I imagined you and then I wrote you into stories. You don’t actually exist. None of this is real.

— Then how do you explain your presence here? You sit before us, confined by us, and we hold the power of judgement over you. The very power of life and death. You say you created us, but you did it without thought to the future. We can create as well. We brought the golems to life and we treat them far better than you ever treated us. You brought us into existence and then tortured us like the wanton and frightened boy you really are. Did you think us mere playthings, nothing more than mindless actors on your pathetic little stage?

The answer flares in your head and you cannot turn away from it. You never thought your characters were playthings. They were far more important than that. They were a wall to hold back the dangerous world, a shield against the slings and arrows of reality. You made horrible things happen to them instead of to yourself, then tried to hide in the shadow of their imaginary misfortunes.

Now even your characters have turned on you. You are alone, everything stripped away, something you have always wished for and always feared. The weight of it hits you like a blow. You slump forward in your judgement seat, chin on your chest.  

— Enough, Samuel. Look at him. Why waste words on this coward. He’s guilty and he must pay. I say we give him a song of grief, just like he gave my Toby. Let the son of a bitch dance on the scaffold and to hell with him.

— Very well. I agree with our sister Grace. I have heard nothing here that would serve to mitigate the crimes of Malaki King. He is hereby found guilty on every charge. I ask this council what the sentence will be. Dimitri?

— Death.

— And death from Grace. What say the others?

You hear the word rebound in the darkness—death, death, death—until the count of it reaches twelve and all is silent.

Then the voice of the angry woman.

— And you Samuel, what judgement do you pass?

— For myself, for those of us robbed of love and life, I wish that there were some harsher punishment we could levy upon the accused. My wish is not granted, so I also say death. The golems will take you to the scaffold. I offer no mercy for your soul because I doubt that you have one. Take him away.

You fall forward from the chair, hands and knees scraping the rough stone. The begging cry gurgles in your throat and spills into the pool of candlelight—No, please no, not me. You throw yourself onto the foot of the golem, arms wrapped around the pillar of its leg. Tears wet your cheeks and fall to the clay foot, staining dark against the dusty earth of it.

A massive hand slips under your body and lifts you like a weeping child. The monster holds you in a loose embrace and begins to shuffle away. Your head reels, the circle of light fades away, and you are falling into darkness.

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You blink away the crust gluing your eyes shut. The sideways vision that you see makes no more sense than the terror-laced dreams you left behind. Your eyelids flutter and you see a bottle of bourbon and an empty glass, both hovering horizontal in front of your face as if gravity has been suspended.

The world comes into sharper focus and brings with it a throb of pain that pulses through your skull. Your cheek is wet with slime, sticky as if it had been glued to stone. You are lying in a puddle of your own drool and you realize your ear is flat against your desk. Raising your head brings more pain, sharp and stabbing, and you have to fight to remain conscious.

Images flicker before your eyes, scenes of rugged snow-capped mountains, the screen saver on your computer repeating itself. Your hand scrabbles for the mouse, you click once, and the wilderness photos vanish to be replaced by blocks of text. You stare at the words, trying to make sense of what you are reading.

— The accused is brought before us charged with spreading lies against the good character of others, malicious neglect, wanton abuse including bodily harm, and murder. There are lessor charges, of course, but the crimes listed will suffice.

A groan rolls from your throat. You rub your burning eyes, then read the words again. Your finger trembles on the mouse, clicks FILE-DELETE, and the damning words disappear forever. You reach for the bottle of whiskey, lift it from the desk, and pour.

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