the flagellants corpse

A community had grown up around and within the decaying penitent’s corpse, his right arm still wielding a cat-o'-nine-tails, still beating out a rhythm of wounds upon his chest. For all that the Ickulbs could see, for all that they could hear, it was life. Life in the shadow of a still animate limb, and the time keeping of atrophied flesh.

The Ickulbs lived in tower blocks that had sprouted somewhat organically from the open rotted wounds, cavities and holes, from beneath the arms and in the groin. Housing grown malignant, sideways and upwards.

The Ickulbs have no features, save for those viewed by each observer. Features and facial rictus personalised for every vicarious voyeurs psychic junctures, however similar the scene.

They lived in each others fantasies, in pockets of hope and unreality. Trampling, trammelling upon one anothers balloons of colour, smoothness, sun, riches and the other clichés of the imagined that breed life and ongoingness.

Their oral tradition was always short lived, existing only as fashion and of and for its time. What past story and song they had would be finally transmitted in the houses put aside for the fatally drunk, and, would die with them, in their final gasps and guttural saliva oiled sputterings.

Violence is unknown, savage and immediate. It lies dormant, innate and irrational, waiting for the joy of postponed shame. It waits within puppies and icecreams, creeps around recreational activities, around imbibed chemicals, promised home and corporeal enhancements. It waits to breath, to exhale limblessness and skull trauma.