|
a thousand years of blue lava finally rolled off his tongue and into the wastebasket beside his desk. it immediately burned a hole through the bottom then through the carpet and wood, then onto the tenants below him. they screamed as the blue liquid fire showered down on them, boiling and burning them where they stood. it hissed when it hit the dishwater in the sink but there wasn't nearly enough water to stop it so it all just boiled away. then down to the next tenant. eventually the whole building was silent. he looked down into the hole he had just created. it went down twelve stories. the only thing he mourned was a claw foot tub, sitting on the floor below him with a hole in its belly. he stood up from his desk and jumped down the hole. when he landed in the lobby he found the blue lava melting the flesh of the landlord. he was already dead. the tenant sucked the lava back into his mouth and moved to a new building, taking only the lava and the clothes he was wearing.
he left the door open so the crows could clean up. soon a dozen had flown in and they were fighting over the dead landlord's eyeballs and plucked them both out. the crows jumped back when they saw his hand move and tentatively watched him. after seeing no further movement, they continued fighting, now over his tongue. as soon as they had torn it out he became fully awake. he thrashed at the birds blindly and they screeched and flew away. he couldn't see this, but one of them carried his tongue dangling in its claws, flapping in the air. his eyes had been torn to small bits that several of the crows had consumed. he searched around for his eyes and tongue on the ground but couldn't find them. his sense of touch, though he was dead, was now disturbingly acute after having been blinded. he followed the heat trail that could only be blue lava. he followed it into an apartment complex where he heard the bastard tenant's voice. he recognized it from when he signed the lease. "don't let him sign that lease!" the dead landlord said. but no one could understand him because he had no tongue. the tenant turned to his old landlord, bloodied ocular cavities, bloodied mouth, and deceased. "finally. you've come," said the tenant. he wrapped his tongue around the blue lava in his mouth and tore both his tongue and his eyes from his head and handed them to his dead landlord. "you have no idea what you've gotten yourself into," the tenant said. but no one could understand him because he had no tongue. the dead landlord greedily took the eyes and mashed them into place in his own head, then took the balled tongue and shoved it into his mouth. when the blue lava filled his mouth, he realized what the tenant had said. |