Join My Cult - Original Falcon Press

escaped, only to snap back twice as hard a moment later, digging the
wicked barbs home deeper than before. “The art is letting him think he’s
going to be able to get away…and then givin’ it to him twice as hard.”
After a few minutes of this, he pulled a fat, wriggling black fish from the
dun eddies at his feet. He held it up for Orpheus to see.
“Mmm-mmm,” he said, staring the fish in one of its globe-like eyes,
“you’re going to make good eating tonight. You’re not so pretty, all in
all, but I won’t hold it against you.” He absently tossed it, still twitching
and wriggling in its death-throes, into an ice-box that sat by his feet
amongst the rocks and mud.
“Before you come?” Orpheus asked.
The man knelt down and slowly drove a hook through a juicy worm
that he pulled from his pocket. Ignoring Orpheus’ alarmed glance, he
nodded. “You only come into life one way, unless if you know something
I don’t, and that thing lures you on your whole life, it calls to you,
and eventually…” He cast the line out into the water and looked up at the
moon.
Orpheus sat down on dry ground, saying quietly and with a little frustration
“I feel like Carlos Castenada.”
“Why’s that?” the man asked, not looking away from the moon.
“Because I run around from one surreal conversation to the next, trying
to make some kind of sense out of things by asking a lot of questions,
and all I get are enigmatic leads. You’re no Don Juan though.”
The man grunted again.
“So what do you do… I mean besides fish?” Orpheus asked a few
moments later.
He was still having a silent communion with the moon. “Devour the
souls of the damned.”
“What?!”
“Just kidding.” There was little humor in his voice.
Orpheus let out a sigh and fidgeted for a moment. “Can I wake up
now?”
The man finally looked away from the moon and turned to regard
Orpheus. His lips were drawn back in a horrid leer, yellowed teeth
glinted in the pale light. It seemed that the entire forest fell silent. Rising
to his full height, now seemingly dwarfing the entire clearing, he let his
presence be known in earnest: “I am the coffin-worm. I am your
shadow—I’m surprised you have forgotten already?”
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