Living Humor

The kind of town it was, it wasn’t so much as a town, as it was just a spot where buildings sometimes were. Sometimes. Sometimes there were two roads that intersected here, sometimes one road passed nearby and sometimes there were no roads at all. No one ever really traveled on the roads, anyway. And we don’t need anything from the buildings, not food, not beds, not even the shelter. There wasn’t any weather. I’m not sure there was even day and night, or time, for that matter. A nice place to visit but a terrible place to live, right?

You wouldn’t think that a place like this really existed. And maybe it doesn’t. But I find myself here pretty often. As often as the wisps that sort of, kind of resemble my feet can carry me here. All the most popular wisps congregate around these buildings, when they’re here. I’m not sure where we go when the buildings fold into themselves like some erasing origami skeletons. Aspen, maybe?
That’s a “living joke”. I don’t even remember why it would be funny, but some part of my wispy brain tells me that it should be. Was it? None of us here would get it. I don’t think any of us know how to laugh.
We know how to scream, though. I remember that. I’ll always remember the sound of the screaming; of one of us experiencing something other than just the high winds whistling and the aimless drifting of our existence...

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The sound was whiny and high pitched, but with a thinner tone than when a building vanishes. A nearby wisp looked back at me with some uncertainty. We were hovering on a slight hilltop that had erupted out of the landscape recently. We could see all of the buildings in such a way that the word “skyline” might come to mind, if that could happen here.
The sound faltered, stuttered a couple times and then resumed with even more power. Without really thinking about it, I found myself maneuvering down towards the sound. I can’t recall feeling scared or apprehensive about it. Just felt a simple pull that direction along with everything else here that was shifting. But there was a crowd.
Lots of wispy bodies, shambling and shuffling towards the beacon of sound, which got louder and more painfully off-key as we all got closer. There was a dark wisp, which upon closer inspection would prove to certainly not be a wisp, hovering over and partially through another one of our regular wisps. Focusing on anything here seems to be a monumental task, as very few things are ever fully in-focus. But we were all intently trying to focus on what was happening; as difficult as our situations made that.
The wisp that looked like us was the one making the sound, and it was purely and terrifyingly afraid. Emotions were not often felt here, and they certainly were never heard. All of us, as a group, suddenly tried to remember the words “confusion”, “panic” and “hysteria”. Wisps began to scatter. I, unfortunately, had found focus and I was wishing I had not.
The wisp that did not look like us seemed to have glinting sharp pieces in odd places and was able to move them quickly about. Like teeth, but not. Like spikes, but not. Like claws, but not. They were rending and tearing the other wisp. Tendons sprang from odd places inside of it, with a faint spray of dusty, burgundy blood that was immediately carried away on the wind, spattering the the dark wisp. Some sort of entrail, heavy in its opaqueness and solidity fell to the rubbery ground with a splash, still connected deep inside the wailing wisp. It was instantly disconnected with a reddish-stained silvery snip of the dark wisp’s sharp pieces and fell again with the same sickening splash. Something dark and viscous leeched out of the two severed ends.
With an upwards thrust of a strangely animate appendage, the dark creature drove some sort of undulating and pulsing spike up through the now gaping and sucking open cavity of the wisp, through its neck and into its head. The screaming had reached a peak and then it was suddenly replaced with a quiet gurgling sound of fluids leaking.
There was an underlying chattering noise, like a horde of metal insect legs walking, and a kind of ragged breathing joining it. The dark creature stood over its kill and absently picked flecks and pieces off of itself. The ground was already folding and undulating beneath it, as though to clean up the pool of congealing fluids.
I looked around and realized I was the only wisp left in the vicinity. I don’t remember what self-preservation felt like, but for one moment, I remembered what all of the hair on your body standing on end felt like. The dark one flashed its head over its shoulder towards me. The chattering noise got louder.
A loud noise rang out and even found enough purchase from the tenuous architecture to echo. The dark creature’s head evaporated in a fine mist; one moment there, the next, gone. Its body fell stiffly to the ground, its claws spasming three times before finally laying still. I nervously angled towards the sound.
A real living man stood there. His weapon still smoked as he took a deep breath and lowered it to his side. He walked with heavy, corporeal steps towards the grisly scene and knelt over the dark one’s body. A gleaming knife appeared in his hands and messily dissected a small token from the corpse. His boots left thick smudged footprints in the surrounding puddle. He stood and wiped the filth from his fingers and blade on his cloak. His body was opaque, and buffeted by the high winds.
His eyes flicked to me, briefly and back to the two bodies intertwined nearby.
“Sorry about your friend.”
I obviously don’t get “living humor” anymore.

Flash Fiction Assignment. Genre: Splatterpunk. Setting: Limbo. Character: Vigilante. Word Count: 998