Unholy Trinity: Old Monsters by Brian Maycock
Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.
Unstitched
It was coming apart at the seams.
Felt the cold wind sneak in where stitches that had been straining on the leash for years finally gave.
Felt things shifting and sliding inside as a patchwork of jaded pieces strained to be released.
It tried to speak. It watched helpless as its tongue tumbled to the floor. It tried to roar. Its throat split and its words were lost in a wheezing howl.
It tried to get drunk to calm its disjointed mind, only the ale leaked out of its belly onto its hobnail boots, dribbled away down cobbled, empty streets.
Towering
After initial panic, the construction work continued. Schedules, designs, layouts were quickly changed.
This was worth billions, a vast corporation’s crowning dream, and nothing could get in its way.
The new mega city rose around the curve of the bay.
On the frame of what was to become 101 Central Plaza, the workers paused for lunch. Their main gripe was that the great creature’s form blocked out the sun.
For days now it had moved inland, one immense footstep after another, the creak of its ancient limbs screaming like failing steel, as they built around its unstoppable, slow, tired rampage.
Tear
He remembers a kiss. A dark-haired vision.
How lips brushing his neck at first inflamed, then drained.
He remembers racing through a feverish dream. The lust. The first taste of blood.
He recalls as he crouches over his prey.
His heart sinks as he sees the broken off teeth left in his victim’s flesh.
Brittle, decayed, less remain every time he feeds.
The compulsion rages always unsated and soon, he knows, when he can bite no more he will be an addict without a drug, tearing at skin with his bare hands, a knife; a scavenger of scraps, lost, alone.
Brian Maycock
Brian Maycock’s short stories have most recently appeared in BFS Horizons and Lighthouse Horror. He has work due in Flash Fiction Magazine and Black Hare Press’s Dark Drabbles 666. He lives in Scotland.
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
Stephanie Ellis writes dark speculative prose and poetry and has been published in a variety of magazines and anthologies. Her longer work includes the folk horror novels, The Five Turns of the Wheel, Reborn, and The Woodcutter, and the novellas, Bottled and Paused (all via Brigids Gate Press). Her dark poetry has been published in her collections Lilith Rising (co-authored with Shane Douglas Keene), Foundlings (co-authored with Cindy O’Quinn) and Metallurgy, as well as the HWA Poetry Showcase Volumes VI, VII, VIII, and IX and Black Spot Books Under Her Skin. She can be found supporting indie authors at HorrorTree.com via the weekly Indie Bookshelf Releases. She can be found at https://stephanieellis.org and on Blue Sky as stephellis.bsky.social.
