Monday, June 28, 2021

The Pipe


This one is brought to you by Sølvkre, a good friend of mine from the Kult:Elysium discord group, who took this photograph while taking a stroll through the borderlands one day, and wrote the below story inspired by it.
I thought it was eminently Kultish, and with his permission may now share it with you:




* * *

He was not well versed in the particulars of flora that made up the moist green film that had grown up where the water ran down the concrete wall. Nor did he care much. The water trickled out of a rusty metal pipe, a little over an inch wide, and had endowed the surface of the wall with a multitude of colors and textures before it splashed into a small pool formed by years of erosion. It had rained for several days in a row now, and the water gushed out of the pipe as from the urinary tract of some shameless slut. Illuminated by his halogen flashlight the water reflected strange hypnotic patterns on the walls of the small room. An empty space left behind by urban growth, disused and hidden, but nonetheless an artifact of human aspirations. He let his index finger run along the edge of the pipe's opening. While it had probably once been smooth it was now serrated and uneven with a layer of rust. Further in, the surface felt smoother, even delicately organic, lubricated as it was by oily residues transported through the pipe by the water. He turned the flashlight off, and pocketed it. In complete darkness he could no longer see the pipe, so he had to feel his way with both hands; his sense of kinesthesia somewhat hindered by the lack of sight. He found and gripped the pipe, and leaned forwards. Carefully. He stopped to take in the sweet odors of decay carried by the water before he stuck his tongue into the hole. At first carefully probing, and then with more conviction. He licked with growing enthusiasm as the water covered his face, ran into his mouth, dripped on his coat and further down onto his shoes. He forced his tongue deeper into the narrow hole and let his lips envelop the protuberance, feeling the metal scrape against his teeth.The sharp edges of the pipe opened several small cuts in his mouth where rusty particles mated with his hemoglobin to impregnate his body with the consciousness of the city up there. Rat feces, dislodged pieces of diseased animals of various sorts, urine from a drunkard two blocks away and nitrogen oxides from a thousand cars mixed in his mouth. His pelvis gyrated slowly against the wall as he worked his orbicularis oris around the pipe. Grime, metal, rust and blood. He held every conceivable secret of the city in his mouth and it was much too much for a single mind to process. He threw up several times. On the wall, on the floor and on his clothes. He was entirely spent, and slumped down against the wall behind him. Still in darkness. He was too exhausted to turn the flashlight back on. He needed to sit for a while and let the cold air remind him what he was. An animal with futile aspirations of becoming ... He didn't know what. The sound of water digging ever deeper into the little pool reverberated through the chamber as if nothing had happened. The room and the walls were entirely indifferent to him. 

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Sølvkre

 

 

 

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