Fiction

June

Unkajhin

Bill Gates

'No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were as well as if a manor of thy friends’ or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.'

-John Donne



Re’munere recalled the chilling stories that his grand-father would save for the coldest and darkest nights of the long winter. Tales of how Unkajhin would creep into sleeping villages, never leaving an eyewitness to tell of the hidden horrors that were reported to come from his evil mind. There were rumors of mass murders and graves and stories of how Unkajhin and his mad followers carried the strongest of the men away to slavery and the fairest of the women to what unknown terrors. It was rumored that Unkajhin practiced black magic which produced insanity in all that he touched and some said that he was the devil himself. Some of the story-tellers would describe Unkajhin as the high priest of a murderous cult who offered human sacrifices to their pagan gods at mass orgies. Some even told tales of Unkajhin’s tribe being cannibals who lived off the flesh of humans, tearing and biting off their flesh as they still lived, suffering a long and agonizing death. There were indeed hundreds of legends of this sort made all the more obscure by the veil of secrecy behind which Unkajhin carried out his evil tasks.

Life, for the most part, was colorful and happy, though sometimes hard and strenuous, in P’shiod which used to be called Ontario before the Great Pestilence of the twenty-first century almost put an end to the human race. Now nestled in self-contained. Quiet villages, the survivors of that Dark Age enjoyed their simple and uncomplicated lives.

However, this evening things were quite different in Re’munere’s usually calm village. The townspeople were running every which way through the streets crying “Unkajhin! Unkajhin!” The youthful Re’munere noticed how everyone was running into their homes and bolting the doors, so he thought he should do likewise and ran home. He quickly ran to his father’s house and his father, Li’muvant, bolted the door behind him. The shutters on the windows had already been closed and bolted blocking out the fading light from the setting sun. Huddled around the table were his mother Una and his sister Lana. Re’munere noticed a look of fear on his father’s face that he had never seen before.

Outside the heavy wood door and windows, the screaming and scuffling died away to the silence of the P’shiodian evening. Li’mucant gathered his family around the hearth and led the tiny group in prayer for their deliverance from the evil that had come into their village.

After some time Li’muvant ventured toward the window and peered out the tiny crack between two oak planks, but all he could see was an empty street. Li’muvant’s chaotic thoughts were interrupted by his son’s question, “Why has Unkajhin come to our peaceful village and who has he come for?”

“Hush up, boy!” Li’muvant shrieked back, “Such questions need not concern us. Help me bolster up the door and windows to keep the evil one out.”

Li’muvant and his son shifted the heavy wood furniture around against the door and windows. Li’muvant was standing back surveying his fortications when, at a distance, he heard the rumbling of a heavy-loaded wagon being drawn down the street, on which his house was the first encountered when entering the village. Li’muvant moved quietly to the crack in the door and his eyes opened wide to what he saw coming down his street into his town and he fell back from the window as if he had seen a ghost.

Re’munere ran to the other window facing the street in his excitement to see what had caused such a look in his father’s face. A ghost it was—a specter right out of the past as he had seen in the forbidden visits him and some of the other boys of the village had made to the empty and gutted old city not far from their village.

What he saw being dragged down the street was similar to a machine he had seen in the ruins or the museum in the old city. It was a tall machine with two thin pillars supporting a cross-bar from which hung a gleaming blade of steel and at the bottom, between the two up-right shafts was a pillory such as the one used by the villagers to punish wrong-doers, which was seldom used, except this one had only one hole in it, a hole for one’s neck. The village pillory had three holes, one for the neck and two for the wrists. Such a machine was called a guillotine as he had learned from Ho’vulant, the son of the village’s leader who was taught to read so he could record what needed to be remembered of the village’s history, like how many bushes of corn were grown in a certain year.

But this guillotine was vastly different from the one he saw in the old ruins. This one was constructed, not of wood, but of gold metal which flashed and gleamed in the full moonlight which flooded the village. There were fancy designs sculpted into the bright yellow gold metal. Ornaments of all kinds covered the pillars and cross beam. They were of beings with hideous faces and grotesque features. The steel blade was so highly polished that it reflected the gleam from the full moon like a silver mirror. One could not look directly at it. This beautiful yet terrifying machine was being pulled on a wooden cart which was also richly carved with the same sort of figures that were on the metal machine. The whole thing was drawn by a team of four jet black horses, their muscles bulging with their graceful movement. Around this strange carriage and riding similar horses were ornately dressed men with neatly trimmed beards, not the unkempt kinds worn by the men of the village. They were wearing long flowing robes of green with yellow collars and the fabric was trimmed in gold braid in an elaborate pattern of circles.

Re’numere’s father, having somewhat recovered from his initial shock, grabbed his son and returned to his silent wife and daughter, resuming his prayers to their god “Dual’ulume” more earnestly than even before, as the rumbling passed the house and moved toward the heart of Li’muvant’s village; the noise slowly diminishing.

The rest of the night passed silently and Li’muvant wanted to believe that his prayers had been answered and that Unkajhin had passed through his village, his business, whatever it might be, finished. Re’munere was not as terrified as his father but rather more excited by the strange, different and exotic things he had witnessed. He wondered what, or who, this Unkajhin was, who was now in his village.

The darkness and quiet of that night broke into the faint light and soft sounds of the morning and Li’muvant, not as visibly shaken as the night before, stood looking out through the crack in the window down the street and toward the town square which was hidden from his sight. He was even more hopeful that his prayers had been answered and that Unkajhin had finally passed through his town.

But his hopes were soon broken as he heard, once again, the rumble of the night before. As he stood peering through the crack, he again saw the grisly horror come around the corner followed by the men in green and also by a man who, like the machine, was dressed in gold, his gilded robe flowing freely in the breeze of the morning air.

The eerily beautiful caravan stopped at the first of the five houses on Li’muvant’s street where his neighbor Ci’lament lived with his wife and two teenage daughters. The figure in gold, who Li’muvant guessed to be Unkajhin himself, knocked on Ci’laments door but the poor man, like Li’muvant, stayed behind the bolted wooden door, terrified at the thought of leaving the safety of his home. Unkajhin motioned to the figures in green and they picked up a battering ram from the carriage and pounded Ci’lamant’s door down. They emerged from within the house carrying Ci’lamant and his family screaming to the glistening guillotine which stood gleaming in the morning brightness. Li’muvant shut his eyes in disbelief as he witnessed Ci’lamant and his wife’s decapitation. The two pretty daughters disappearing with some of the men in green to their even more unknown but terrible fates.

Trembling, Li’muvant grabbed his son as Re’munere tried to say something to him and huddled his family to a far corner of the room. The dreadful noise of the carriage came ever closer, accentuated by the screams and cries of his neighbors as the entourage halted at each house on his street, dragging his fellow villagers to their uncertain fates and terrible deaths. Li’muvant, keeping his eyes tightly closed and hoping that he would soon awaken from this nightmare, tensely held onto his family who was now praying more earnestly than ever to “Dual’ulume” as the fantastic party halted in front of his house.

First came the light tapping on the wooden door but Li’muvant remained silent. A period of quiet followed, uninterrupted save for the sound of sweet dropping from Li’muvant’s stone cold face. Re’munere sat bewildered at his mother’s side.

Suddenly the silence was shattered by the splintering of the wooden door, falling away from the onslaught of the tree trunk used as the battering ram. The figures in green pulled the four screaming into the open sun-lit street, not noticing in their helpless convulsions, the figure in gold slowly pointing his delicate finger toward the golden machine glistening in the morning sun accented by the rich red river of blood running like a river over the lower cross beam and dripping from the sparkling blade.