Part 3 - Epicles, Without Honour

A salty, coppery, nitrate taste polluted his mouth, he tried to cough and found his mouth full. He reached to his lips, to find something soft, fleshy and bleeding, gagging him. With horror he realised that it was his very own genital. A muffled scream of terror died behind the blockage. As he stumbled to his feet, a raucous laugh made him jump; the sudden movement caused him to slip in a puddle of blood. He looked down to see the gaping, bleeding hole at the juncture of his loins. That laugh assaulted his senses again and he spun, slithering in the viscous slime of his own life, trying to see the source.

"Oh dishonourable one, you sought to advance yourself by standing on the shoulders of Giants, but you did not learn the secrets that are required to climb giants, instead you leapt and failed. Now look upon yourself, see what you have become!" a voice commanded, a voice cold as space, devoid of compassion as a stygian tomb, full of Cimmerian threats. Epicles tripped over his bloodstained feet, which began to sink into a quagmire of the blood that fell in torrents from his gory wound.

A movement caught his eye, and out of the shadow, a form appeared, a rectangle, like a portal. Another and another joined until he was being surrounded. As he moved the blood about his ankles, which was slowing swallowing him like quicksand, began to give off light, and in that light he saw that he was surrounded by reflections of himself. He looked on in incomprehension, first at one then another of the reflections until one of them spoke.

"God! How I hate you!" his reflection spat. "You make me sick!" He was astonished; he reached out, seeking aid from himself. The reflection extended its hands as well, hope glimmered in his eyes as the hands stretched forth and took hold of him. Then more hands touched him and he looked terrified to see that each mirror¹s reflection had reached forth and taken hold of him, the nails becoming talons and claws sinking into his flesh while the growling pool of blood sucked him down deeper and deeper.

His screams choked in his gagged throat as the talons tore into his flesh, twisting and pulling, tearing him limb from limb, while the lake of flaming blood tried to both drown him and regenerate him. "Why?" he asked himself, as the terror continued. "Why is this happening?"

"To put it simply Epi-Cles, Without-Honour, your own self loathing is you destruction. You have lived from lies so much; they have become you blood, drowning you as they sustain you. You doom is to live this endless war between your lies and your self hate." Again the voice laughed and in his mind, Epicles cried "NO!"