Pluto's Procession

The shambling ghoul moves with erratic jerks; his body rotting and decomposed. Narco’s eyes watch in horror as the corpse of his father hobbles toward him.

“Dad?” He says with a lump in his throat.

The ghoul growls, struggling to form words with his damaged throat and decayed lips. He growls again, attempting to form words. He eventually manages to move his mouth just right. “Why… son?” The words are barely comprehensible. They hide beneath his ghoulish noises, stretched vowels, and long pauses. He speaks again. “Why son?” His words steadily gain clarity. “Why son?”

As his father repeats that haunting mantra, Narco feels his heart start to sink. “You’re not real.” His bottom lip quivers. “You’re not real!”

“Why son?” The ghoulish voice deforms, deepening to a threateningly sinister volume. “Why son?” There is no intent behind his eyes, no emotion, but Narco’s mind imagines the worst.

Narco slowly steps back in fear, his words a meek whimper of what they were. “Go away.” His voice shatters symmetrically to his confidence.

It does nothing to the ghoul. He persists, unwavering in his calm rage. The erratic jerks in his muscles carry an intimidating, robotic resolve. In his voice, in his movements, in the small tremors throughout his body, he strains to keep himself from disassembling in what can only be described as pain.

The phrase never finds rest. He just repeats it over and over, like a hammer driving a nail deeper into Narco’s soul. “Why son? Why son? Why son?”

Narco grabs at his chest, feeling the racing pulse of his heart. He is hoping to feel nothing, to prove this reality false, but the sensation of the blood coursing through his body does nothing to alleviate his fear. He turns away. He begins to walk, then runs.

But he can’t. He can’t escape. The world around him stretches like a nightmare, and no matter how fast he runs, he remains idle. Then in an instant, he stops. His father’s voice sounds more than intelligible. His words are almost like a memory. With a single sentence, Narco freezes in place. “Is that your answer to everything?”

“I…” Narco’s eyes widen in horror at the thought of having this conversation. The question of whether or not this is real no longer matters. The circumstances no longer matter. The world outside of this one seems so far away. The fear of having this ‘talk’ throws everything else to the back of his mind. “I didn’t mean to…”

As Narco turns his head, the voice devolves back into ghoulish grunts, and the appearance of his father has become barely discernible. The way his father’s face is warped, skewed, and blended into the hulking flesh of an abomination… Narco almost vomits at the sight.

The ghoul is no longer. Instead, it’s a writhing pile of undead bodies woven together to create a monstrosity.

“Look at us!” Several voices from within the conglomerate shout. Faces begin to emerge in the flesh.

Narco’s mind is spiraling, unable to recognize them all. Subconsciously, he does. The way their voices cascade into each other like a cacophony creates a sharp pain in his mind. Like a sore muscle he just wants to squeeze and massage the knot out of, he grabs at his head while his headache worsens. His fingers can’t go beyond his skull and reach the afflicted area. He falls to his knees, pressing his fingers into the stone which disintegrates like cold, wet sand.

With a blink, the dark room changes to a moonlit night at the beach. He no longer sees the conglomerated entity. All the abandoned towels and chairs are reminiscent of the world he left behind. His breath is visible, and there is a chill in the air. The breeze from the water is freezing.

“I really tried.” His father’s voice comes through clearly again.

Narco looks up and sees the monster standing behind him. He dodges, swiveling away. His hand feels something in the sand. He pulls out Vision’s Echo, climbs to his feet and readies himself. In a fury, Narco swings at the abomination, but the sword shatters into sand against its flesh.

Four hands protrude from the beast to pin him in the air. A giant mouth cracks open across its waste. With a smile, the mouth mimics the ghoulish voice from earlier. “Why son?” The voice grows louder, more human, and becomes a malicious, mocking cackle. “Why son? Why son!” While Narco squirms in its grasp, it continues with its hyena impression.

“I don’t get it. I don’t understand. Vision’s Echo is supposed to cut through spells and magic! Even if it wasn’t real here, it was real out there! How is she doing this? How are you doing this?” His voice becomes more frantic as he is slowly pulled closer to the cackling mouth. “Let go of me!”

“Not until you get why this is happening.” A familiar feminine voice comes from a mouth that spawns on the creature’s hand. Those sickly blue lips indicate to Narco that it’s Liviana.

“Then why is this happening?”

The mouth frowns, or smiles. Narco can’t tell the top from the bottom. The sound of a finger snap is followed by the conglomerate falling apart. Chunks of pale goop fall off and reform as faceless creatures with missing body parts.

Each grows the familiar mouth, and speaks in unison. “I can see a lot of things. I can see the strange colors. I can see the debts that are forever tied to you. I can see you. I was hoping by weaving these fragments together that I might get a better picture of what makes you the way that you are.” The creatures claw toward Narco, moving with whatever limited motion they have. Some claw and crawl, some kick off the ground, some are forced to use their chin. “I see now that you aren’t special. Just a typical soul with exorbitant debts to be paid.”

The persona of Narco shatters. He begins running frantically like a scared child, toward the beach’s horizon. At this moment, he is truly himself. Fear strips away any delusion that he is a hero. He is a human, and he has no idea where he is going, nor if there is any real escape.

With two claps, she announces her attack. “Pluto’s Procession!” The soft flesh of the pale creatures rumble. Their skin ripples as if liquifying. They levitate, then are forced to compress into each other. Finally the single white droplet crashes onto the ground and forms a wave.

The liquid pursues Narco, while fresh constructs arise and fall back into the current’s impact zone. It is a rolling liquid, an endless wave that chases and never rests; it is deathless.

Narco tries everything. He runs, throws sand, and even trips down a small sand hill. The procession never falters. It tries to speak, but all it can do is scream. Its shrill voice is that of screeching metal being grinded against itself.

It catches up to Narco and slowly wraps around him. The globs of flesh smack against his clothing, burying it like a body at sea. No matter how he struggles, he can’t fight against the formless arms splattering on top of him. It’s picturesque. In a sea of white hands, he is pulled down, furiously fighting to keep his head above the liquifying creatures.

The world around them slowly crumbles, dematerializing into the black horizon. Liviana’s lips appear over the pale spot covering Narco’s mouth. She lets out a small huff. “Too bad the fragments around you were so deprecated. I’ll just have to find out his secret from your friends. Now could you hurry up and die? You’re no longer of use to me alive.”

Just as Narco falls under, a faint roar can be heard from within the dark void. He can’t react to it since he has been submerged, but it does get Liviana’s attention. “What? How are you doing that? What the-”

Narco feels a rush flow through his body. The familiar blue lights, the loud crack followed by the continuous roar of Gambit, and the sudden feeling of air rushing back into his lungs; he takes it all in at once, trying to maintain his consciousness in spite of the fact that he was just strangled.

That’s when he sees Gambit, standing over Liviana, with the waste bucket in hand.