Completed! The Prophet

The Prophet

A short short story written by Cory Kutschker


Wild paroxysms of panic throttled hearts, the evening before that day.  A general anxiety and odd palpitations bled out into the populations. Their children whimpered, wailed and cried into the wee hours of night. Street folk were riled and spoke stranger than before, obscure dialects found in equally obscure corners of the world. The unending droning of phones rang out across the emergency services and for the most part went unanswered. From this all was exhausted into an anguish and despair.
It was strange, however, that there were some of the population in which existed an unbridled jubilation.
In the early morning a silence overcame the globe. In the wilds there were no night calls of birds, or even the chirping of crickets or growl of nocturnal beasts. In the locales that already observed light and were into their day or perhaps just entering into evening, they also saw no activity. There was no cacophony of car horns or the loud baying of dogs or even the joyous laughter of children on the playground. The swing sets lay still making no squeaks and any cars were parked and silent, not an engine running. There was not even the light fluttering of a newspaper being dragged across the street by a breeze. All that made noise drew still, as though in some anticipation.  Then came the noise. It was not earthly by any means, but every man distinguished it as a distant whine until it grew to a vociferous and monotonous din of a deep horn being sounded.
In the dawn, instead of the sun, he came, the effulgent terror. What words I have for that day are not enough, but it was as though the sky boiled and peeled. It scraped from the black folds, exposing us to the gloom, the monstrous and yawning cosmos, still and black, oddly giving little light from the stars. Every eye grew mad by that great blackness spread over and around them. The arbitrator was inattentive to the long pleas wailing from mouths and lungs being starved of oxygen. Caves were lined with nail marks as asylum seekers were withdrawn into his gaze wherein they wilted onto their knees in deluges of tears. All the 'scapes of the earth were tilled and plained as he walked with eyes aflame.
He had an odd effect upon the earth, for every step of his would command a most verdant growth of grass to spring forth from the ground. Long dead plants would regain vigor and limp trees emboldened their trunks as pillars. Queer shadows grew long and challenged with hissing maws but were easily slain by him as they were cast into that abyss that seethed and rolled over itself, hungry for more.
A city had descended, magnificent and radiant enclosed by four walls equidistant.
What of the jubilant you ask? The four walls were built for them. But outside, There were long lines as the gavel was swung making hard rapping terminations as they took the long walk into that same abysmal mouth, licking over them. There they remained writhing, tortured and screaming back through the eons, coming under my ink.

I know I keep on starting projects but...

... It's so much fun! I don't normally go for sci-fi but then there are just some genres that work really well for some concepts and poor for others. This project is a derivative of an idea that actually was started by a friend of mine which I took and expanded and changed. Luckily, he's ok with me writing a story using it. This is another teaser.


Blasphemy Came

A short story by Cory Kutschker

Eternal and limited strands twisted and turned, careening along unknown folds. Over it all and interwoven was the cosmos, the stars and planets in their respective orbits, cyclopean boulder asteroids ploughing into dusty and grey moons, and miasmic nebulas sustained in gaseous colours. These fields of worlds and many substances thereof his mind knew as he sat upon the rock underneath the white dotted sky of Pt. It all shone in the night and remained Shal'ma'at.

Speaking of reboots...

              There have been numerous reboots of movie franchises in the past few years and I find myself restarting my oldest project that I started somewhere in the vicinity of 2008 entitled "The Dream Journal." The aim was simple, write a story where dreams were a form of divine communication addressing the main character's worldview. I had written close to sixty pages only to find that the character's despair was more a misery and the prose fraught with incessant whining. And I simply could not find a way to have his dreams and interpret them as well. Thus, the project entered phase two, scrap the first draft and reboot it under the new Cory Kutschker writing OS, which had been subjected to and heavily utilized the programming language of weird fiction and horror. There was a small excerpt that I posted some time ago on this blog that displayed that level of writing. So here is the the reupholstered introduction.

The Synopsis, or expectation of what I hope to achieve in the story:

       The story consists of journal entries written by Hugh, a nihilist, who is in a mental institution. He receives dreams and encounters a world that is far more than he knew or expected. Through this he gains understanding of the gospel.

The Dream Journal


 Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said:
“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Dress for action like a man;
    I will question you, and you make it known to me.
“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
    Tell me, if you have understanding.
  Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
    Or who stretched the line upon it?
   On what were its bases sunk,
    or who laid its cornerstone,
  when the morning stars sang together
    and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
 “Or who shut in the sea with doors
    when it burst out from the womb,
  when I made clouds its garment
    and thick darkness its swaddling band,
   and prescribed limits for it
    and set bars and doors,
   and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther,
    and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?

Job 38:1-11

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
    vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What does man gain by all the toil
    at which he toils under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation comes,
    but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
    and hastens to the place where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
    and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
    and on its circuits the wind returns.
All streams run to the sea,
    but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
    there they flow again.

Ecclesiastes 1:2-7

The Private Journal of Hugh

October 1, 2015

Emptiness, All I can think of is emptiness. It does not bite. It smiles - an obscene, jagged and empty black maw.  I have stared into its eyes, soulless paths into an infinite thick oblivion. It has a name, Nihil. Despite my injuries, I can feel it in my bones, a sickening malaise. My head throbs. I have a broken leg, a broken arm, and my skull is fractured. Doc says I was lucky. Nah, lucky is not the right word.
A storm was approaching this morning. When I saw it I found dread, No control. It was absolute, an immense black and boiling object pressing forward and unstoppable. There was an object that had pure power unlike myself, an insignificant piece of flesh quivering in the autumn air. This storm is very much similar to Nihil. It knows the smile - but it is its offspring, having the same vestiges of malignancy.  But this menace does not smile, it stares.
I am alone, watching the rain as it sloshes across the window, smearing and distorting the city. Elizabeth, she would have found this beautiful. She always loved the rain.
I had a roommate earlier. He was Latino and barking mad I think. I had awoken with a yell from a nightmare. To this, he responded, “wwh-wh-wh-what-where-problem?” He had stammered and then started nibbling at his fingernails, gazing nervously towards my side of the room, looking this way and that, side to side. Shortly thereafter, the putrid rankness of excrement reached my nostrils. A nurse came in. She was rather portly but had a kind and endearing face.
“Oh dear!” She had exclaimed as she became aware of the stench. She followed my gaze to him and proceeded to amend the situation.
“Come, let’s get you cleaned up” she said in a voice as though to a child.
She gestured for him to follow.
I don't know why I am writing in my journal. Perhaps the feeling of writing is therapeutic, a release? But the dry whispers of the pen dragging across the paper is one of the few familiar sounds in this hospital. This pen scintillates under the lamp. Not too many with a nub anymore. I had felt the tip, nearly sharp. It drew a neat line across my thumb.

I have a pen...

October 7, 2015

I was not successful.
Despite losing a lot of blood, a nurse had walked in just after the act. I was revived by the hospital staff. They did not have room in the psychiatric wing for another, so I was moved. I was relegated to the St. Agnes's Hospital for mental disorders. It is out in the countryside and has a 15 acre property. The building has two wings that curl around the front courtyard, which has two grand elms, each in front of their respective wing. The gate was high, made of wrought iron, and joined with an equally high fence line that circled the property. The grounds were a vivifying display of colour, the grass a deep green and flower beds awash with the colours of violet, rose, and sunflower yellow. Something, I am told, meant as a mood setter.

Another Hors d'oeuvre

The Drowning Man

A short, short story

Written by Cory Kutschker

A calm, a peace and then panic. An arrhythmia sets in and that grotesque overturning of the stomach upon that sight. The black is extending to me, swimming upwards, overtaking the grand blue of the sea. Within this time, a throttling of my limbs churns and distorts my field of vision as those precious and fleeting bubbles are produced from my mouth in abandonment. Oh dear Clara! Shall I never return to you?

Hypnotic. A field of terrible boiling light is before me, yet beckons.

A choice. To chance the abyss or to make agreement with this mystery.

I have chosen. A ring of orange with four black stripes splashes onto the surface of the sea. Oh! If only I could reach it! I cannot, but reach out to that fearful luminescence. With half a mind, I observe myself ascending slowly. My head breaks the water as it chops around me with caps foaming white as sturdy gales pile them up to staggering and frightful heights. But I remain atop of them as I grasp the ring firmly. The sea heaves and the skies churn as I bob along. I am small on this plain. A vessel is behind me, riding the rolls of the water. Loud cries erupt from the crew for me to "swim as [my] life depends upon it." I am dragged up onto the deck. As I gag and sputter, spewing out reams of vomit and swallowed water, I peer over the edge to know the nightmare, countless more heads bob out of the water wailing for help, as the vessel pursued a distant land on the horizon.

A larger excerpt of A Life In Requiem

A Life In Requiem

Another completed story

The Prophet: A Day Remembered

A short short story written by Cory Kutschker


Wild paroxysms of panic throttled hearts, the evening before that day.  A general anxiety and odd palpitations bled out into the populations. Their children whimpered, wailed and cried into the wee hours of night. Street folk were riled and spoke stranger than before, obscure dialects found in equally obscure corners of the world. The unending droning of phones rang out across the emergency services and for the most part went unanswered. From this all was exhausted into an anguish and despair.
It was strange, however, that there were some of the population in which existed an unbridled jubilation.
In the early morning a silence overcame the globe. In the wilds there were no night calls of birds, or even the chirping of crickets or growl of nocturnal beasts. In the locales that already observed light and were into their day or perhaps just entering into evening, they also saw no activity. There was no cacophony of car horns or the loud baying of dogs or even the joyous laughter of children on the playground. The swing sets lay still making no squeaks and any cars were parked and silent, not an engine running. There was not even the light fluttering of a breeze dragging a newspaper along the pavement of the empty street. All that made noise drew still, as though in some anticipation.  Then came the noise. It was not earthly by any means, but every man distinguished it as a distant whine until it grew to a vociferous and monotonous din of a deep horn being sounded.
In the dawn, instead of the sun, he came, the effulgent terror. What words I have for that day are not enough, but it was as though the sky boiled and peeled. It scraped from the black folds, exposing us to the gloom, the monstrous and yawning cosmos, still and black, oddly giving little light from the stars. Every eye grew mad by that great blackness spread over and around them. The arbitrator was inattentive to the long pleas wailing from mouths and lungs being starved of oxygen. Caves were lined with nail marks as asylum seekers were withdrawn into his gaze wherein they wilted onto their knees in deluges of tears. All the 'scapes of the earth were tilled and plained as he walked with eyes aflame.
He had an odd effect upon the earth, for every step of his would command a most verdant growth of grass to spring forth from the ground. Long dead plants would regain vigor and limp trees emboldened their trunks as pillars. Queer shadows grew long and challenged with hissing maws but were easily slain by him as they were cast into that abyss that seethed and rolled over itself, hungry for more.
A city had descended, magnificent and radiant enclosed by four walls equidistant.
What of the jubilant you ask? The four walls were built for them. But outside, There were long lines as the gavel was swung making hard rapping terminations as they took the long walk into that same abysmal mouth, licking over them. There they remained writhing, tortured and screaming back through the eons, coming under my ink.

Another Teaser

still trying to think of a title for this one and trying to avoid cheddar at camp (cheesy and or campy)


Wild paroxysms of panic throttled hearts, the evening before that day.  A general anxiety and odd palpitations bled out into the populations. Their children whimpered, wailed and cried into the wee hours of night. Street folk were riled and spoke stranger than before, obscure dialects found in equally obscure corners of the world. The unending droning of phones rang out across the emergency services and for the most part went unanswered. From this all was exhausted into an anguish and despair.
It was strange, however, that there were some of the population in which existed an unbridled jubilation.