infernal rapture .

a Cleménce & Auré excerpt.

Adam Burke, Horizonless

Serene.

She never could imagine that the end of the world would be shrouded in such calm. An affable tempest, she thought. Not so calm as an undisturbed tide, but the zephyr took with it a feeling of utter tranquillity. Is this the portent of Paradise Lost? That which they found in so many manuscripts, divined from so many dead, tortured out of so many daemons? Paradise Lost: humanity and their ambition, ever the augur for something final.

It was just as she foresaw. A great, looming tower on the horizon. They both knew it was not truly corporeal for the raging foam of waves clawing up its frame did not exist. It was an illusion, one likely only they could see, and the sight of this endless tower, colossal and incomprehensible, swelling in size the closer the earth got to it — well, dear reader, it caused something akin to infernal rapture in the hearts of Cleménce and Auré.

---

“Your mother did not teach you to leave your room a state, did she Clem?” He had timed his reprimand to as soon as she entered the office. Her footfalls were memorised, embroidered on his brain after so many months behind these walls. She slowed a little, tempo disrupted, she will not walk past but enter. He was correct every time.

Bearing yet another pile of books her urchins managed to politely borrow from the library, “to be dutifully returned once their use has been spent!”, Cleménce shot a deadly scowl the boy’s way. However could he, she thought, work in the direct glare of the sun I should never know. Thankfully my desk is far more practical.
The floor is surely far more convenient, the girl often had to defend. Both lamented over one another’s posture, yet neither sought to abide a non-shrimplike lifestyle.

“How do you know what my mother taught me, hm? Mdme. Merricourt was quite the progressive!” Her retort was spoken through half-concentration. Her eyes were instead fixed upon a certain word circled upon the tome in front of Auré.

“Paradise?”
He nodded in sudden ardour, dancing his lithe fingers across the page to highlight further quotes of import. Clem, free of her book-laden burden, gawked from over his shoulder, her cheek practically touching his, as often she did.

“Yes! Paradisus, Jann, Tiāntáng — it keeps cropping up in places I cannot rightly comprehend. Such an arbitrary word! Paracelsus, Flamel — it is unbitten, unconsumed. It right here, you see?” He shuffled some papers until he found a particularly aged scrap, inscribed in some kind of rune; half of which has been torn away. Her eyes, storm-laden, scintillated in the mid-morning sun.

“This is not the same word as that found in scripture,” Auré continued. “It has an essence of the arcane within the ink. Each one, the same. The way it is written — I wonder what you make of it.”

Clem took the scrap in awe-laden silence, pressing it to the window and examining it with mild zeal.
“Paradise.” Murmured she, tasting it, devouring it. Not right, it should not be devoured. It should be spoken as if it has never been spoken before.

“I cannot speak it. Ah — Auré! You clever bastard! Shrive your intellect before I grow envious of it, would you?” Clem spoke as she worked, skipping there, leaping here, collecting all manner of vials and philtres from their shelves. A pig’s ear here, something labelled “onyx brood” there. But most preciously, and with the utmost care, the mummified remains of a new born kitten. No, not even that, but one stillborn long before its time.

“Do explain? Though I take the compliment. It is an objective fact, after all.”

“Your poetics are finally coming in handy, my Byronic fellow! Un-bitten, you said. Undevoured. Untouched by a throat nor mind. The concept of Paradise, whatever the Old Gods deem so, must exist in all facets of mortal existence. The cat believes its sun-spot is Paradise; the human, a promised fate through devotion.” With her supplies, Clem retreated to her designated corner. A fort of tomes, the floorboards illustrated with charcoal runes, elements and characters. Is that blood?! Auré had once complained. She sat, took a surgical scalpel from her boot, dutifully borrowed of course, and began to slice open the feline’s miniscule corpse. Auré could only watch, numbed to her eccentricity.

“We must speak this word with a tongue that has not even comprehended it. That has never devoured it, and cannot. No longer. Ah— my spectacles if you could be so kind?”

---

The tower was approaching fast. Moaning, exhausting their minds which, however much they tried, could not manage the strain of comprehending the incomprehensible. Too human, Clem had once complained in the midst of one of their exhaustion-borne altercations. You are just too human; too stuck in this world concerned about meaningless things! Meaningless people. You are at the centre of your woes, Auré! Yet you dare to blame someone, anyone, else. I thought those bound for death are wiser in the face of it. Fear is what holds you back, Aurélien. Fear makes you mourn.

It did not matter now. They could regret it all, regret their wild, wind-bashed curiosity, regret their neglect and the sanity that they lost in the process. But he did not. Not as the sky above, grey and violent, wept; not as the ocean below thundered against the cliff face. The earth was angry with them, but he regretted nothing.

He took her hand and for a moment, her attention was drawn from the impending fate that awaited them; whatever that may be. With chagrin, Cleménce caught Auré’s eyes. They were both weeping, both on the brink of an arcane-borne insanity. Their minds, so close to damnation, comprehending more than they ever should have, were beginning to break. It felt infernal, their skin alight, their minds ablaze. An infernal rapture. Clem wished she could have looked at him for longer. She wished she devoured his features in her mind’s eye until it only existed there. Safe and sound. But something pulled them back. They gazed up in a grotesque sublime, pupils shrunk, vessels frozen.

I regret nothing, he managed to push through the din.
I regret it all, she squeezed his hand tight.

---

Thanks everyone.
I feel like I’ve lost my creative writing style a bit lately. I wanted to write something less abstract — as I used to, but I didn’t really know how to. But Lila inspired me (as always), and I pushed through the desire to write something overly poetic and return to something far less so. It’s not my best work but I seriously feel like I’ve lost a bit of skill a little bit.

I also feel like I haven’t been able to appreciate beautiful prose in literature for AGES. I wonder if it’s connected as reading beautiful writing always inspired me. I was first inspired by Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat to write in this Romanticist style… maybe I need to reread that book.

Just a bit of a ramble! Creatively… not burnt out necessarily but… something similar ig? I don’t know! ANYWAY ENOUGH OF ME!

Thank you for reading! If you wish to support me, do leave a like! If the mood takes you, do consider becoming a paid subscriber too for exclusive posts and full access to my archive. Or, just tip me on Buy Me A Coffee (Substack I beg you implement one-off tips please!)

❛ buy me a coffee ❜

❛ House of Hare fiction editor ❜

Ailing Loran YouTube