CAST OFF THE COASTS OF BAGUIO
BY
KENNETH CURTIS BROWN
Swinging, smashing, wildly astray, flung against Pacific waters of ink black. Under faces of angry, thunderous skies, our vessel struggles. Thrown and abused, children of a numb and cruel God, the weather-beaten ship wears, splinter by splinter, man by man, in and against uncaring squalls. Flares of unclean lightening mix with thunder’s deafening serenade, our world, a globe of planks and sails, explodes in an eruption of waters deluged in salt and shadow.
I gasp, choked by invisible devils of magma hot humidity. Half-dead, half-stumbling mess, my frame rises before landscapes of forbidden, luscious, green, jungles. Broken beast that I am, victim of the Pacific’s rage and hammer fist, I move onward.
In stalking shadows, I realize the fault of our crew is alone mine. My greed led men to tombs of seaweed and water, sent by desire, tainted by madness to deeper dig into the mysteries of untouched Baguio, the fabled lost city teeming with riches emblazoned with the misbegotten faces of abysmal aberrations seen once as gods.
Darkness moves with each step, enveloping me in emerald, unhallowed, hostility. In those shadows, my eyes, tired, near death, flutter with confusion. Orbs, orbs, I swear! Yellow eyes hover, lights of eldritch-fae origin haunt a man destined for damnation. My heart made of Christian steel warps.
Fears assail my apish mind, movement forms, images of darting natives drunk on hot blooded hostility. Reptilian remnants left from eons passed, the days of primal man take charge, my nerves snap the pain from my body. I run. Lord, I run!
I sprint into unfamiliar, fiend-laced nightmares. I am Dante trouncing through the terrors of his travels, to fall before an open clearing. The Devil grip of heat loosens just so as I face the goal of our dead expedition.
The tainted city soars, a spear stabbed into noble Earth by some outer terror. I look upon shaped structures of cyclopean make, sculpted steps no man could traverse, along streets not crafted for man’s use. The blasted landscape, nay hellscape, that should have stayed forgotten indeed bloomed gold with the allure of false fortune. My eyes spot movement of multi-limbed, multi-dimensional shapes. I know the gods of Baguio still rule over the insignificant forms of mankind that scuttle like crabs on the sand. In their presence, I weep. For all I am I weep!
END