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zombocomme · 11 days ago

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Zombocomme: Welcome back from our brief intermission. We are excited to have our four part episode's penultimate part drop live in the studio.

*cue audience clap*

A special Satanic Shoutout once again to The Newton Brothers once again, and of course, to our wonderful grown from home, GHOST the band.

Zombocome: Now let us continue out tale of that tale as old as time. The guidance of the morning star leading the way into the void, and watching the black light guide us beyond... into the twilight of life...

And Now, Ministry 📺TV presents.

Featuring @frjimdefroque and @ask-miasma-ghoul in

RBRG/ FRJD and AMG:

✨️🗻🪭🚪☄️Combiverse❄️🪞☂️🗻✨️

Spin off Episode: Part 3

Between The Lines, Episode 7 PART 3 of 4: “So help you god…you're set free”

Enjoy

🔞NFW: MDNI : Rated-R:🔞⚠️(Mature themes TV)⚠️ *mentions death and dead bodies, bugs, gore and frontier diseases and violence, guns, religious interpretation of trauma, consumption of body and blood, allusions to murder/self and description macabre, and ghosts of the espooky kind.

“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” KJV- Mathew 25:37-40

Please, interact with us, our music cues will be highlighted for your convenience

[Ashes plays:]

Lucius groaned, his chest flaring in pain that was sharp, shooting through his left arm. “Satanas” he harshed, clutching at the pain, nails digging deep. He felt the familiar itch creep up his neck. His fingers flexed and his breath heavier. It was coming on again.

“ENOUGH!” he gasped, trying to stop the throbbing in his veins as the sensation of infernal flame clawed up from the base of his spine, flames writhing between the vertebral spaces, like hot velvet making him shudder.

“Not again- HNNGG!!” He grunted, doubling over.

Demon or not, sometimes one looks for their gift in the fire and the flames… in this case, as of late, the flame had come to him. The molten heat pluming through him threatened to stop his heart, which, while immortal to such maladies as would stop such a heart as dark as his, the human in him felt like it was screaming. Begging to be spared. And the darkness brought on by that infernal green light, was hurdling across that lake of fire like a bullet to an outstretched hand.

“STOP!” Lucius screamed. But no. The flames abide by no will but their own… Coiling around him, they ignited and sparked and bound him, captive in their scorching fingers... his head fell back as they clung to him, sinking into the flesh burning through his flesh. It didn’t give a damn that he was in agony. Or rapture. It would bestow its vision to him. And within it, his vision burned his eyes like something as cruel and powerful as the eyes of god. He felt like he was spinning and then, as if his face was being degloved, the flames worked beneath his skin, taking root into his very bones. And he could see it… Everyone dies at The End.

[Infestissumam plays:]

The end he set on the mortals as a path. Lucius’ hand trembled and gripped at the rug he had fallen back onto, gasping in fear as a bright blue light burst in front of him. His eyes like silver glass, seeing a light that chased away the infernal. Burning it away as if blasted away by the split of an atom…Babylon, laid to waste. Like an eclipse of white light shone over the great city, almost too bright to look at directly, stinging his eyes and making them tear… thunder all around seemed to carry a voice in the wind that praised… something.. “The Seventh day in motion” it seemed to say.

Above the rubble stood a great towering statue of man’s hubris. But as he both admired and feared the visage, a great meteor struck it down, and the ground below him cracked open. As the visage toppled into the depths, the great city destroyed , the rubble smoked and steamed, the inhabitants no more… and the wild dogs ran through the treats tearing one another apart. Where fear had been turned into an aching need - to descend like the ravenous and shake the very world in his teeth!. My how tender a rotted fleshing sound could seem to the ears, a slurping soup of degradation and carnality that bordered on the true Evil’s of the world.

It wasn't just recreational consumption. It certainly wasn't because the beast was starved, no, clearly it’s fill would be satiated, it was just to see how many bodies lay at the bottom of the crater that was mankind in the world.

“Who will pray for them…Who prays for Babylon? Who celebrates their destruction and ultimate consumption. To be drawn in and shat out.” Could a creator God really find this so just, so cruel a thing?

Human kind really was filthy in every sense of the word and Lucius had seen it so many times before…

He had seen the faithless fail in their wills to live, mankind's instinctual feral drive to self destruct, it was almost poetry, the way *a singular word* can unhinge the jaw of that beast that is somehow inherently selfish at its most sadistic… But ah the visionary expression of the utmost disgust at partaking of a world that does nothing but burn, down, and down to the depths of “non-existence” lost to the annals of time… oh yes, it was nothing short of, masochistic…

Nothing speaks about evil more than the murderer filling on its brother’s flesh… but even as Lucius watched the story write itself, he felt the human in him look out from his eyes.

Seeing the destruction, the absolute indifference of indifferent stars, even the morning ones that pelt through the earth, laying to waste in remnant wisps of dust… he felt that still, small, voice in his head feel the sorrow and pain, the pity for such a wretched creator as what squatted before him feasting on the dead and rotten. “There is no God” he told that soft light filled creature shadowed in his hardened dark heart. But from the sinews like the bars of a cage, meant to shelter but rather, imprisoning, the voice held at the bars of his heart and asked, in a voice so innocent and tender that Time stopped and Lucius felt his heart actually, this time, stop beating...

“You would pray for Babylon?”

“Would you?” Lucius replied, his voice as distant as the lingering thunder around the sky…in his heart…where scars were that would never heal… it was expected, he was a demon after all, to relish in the suffering. And yet such suffering gave Lucius pause, as if he was looking out of himself, the taste, sour...

Then the vision ended, and He was alone once more in his personal study hidden behind the fireplace… where he brooded his innermost thoughts. He sat back in his chair, fingers brushing the back of his lips as he brooded.

“Will you?” he said aloud.

His thoughts turning to the Cleric,

and the *word that had haunted everyone like a brewing storm, like a harbinger of doom…*

“The Cleric… and-,”

he growled at the last,

“*and ...The Cannibal…*”

[The Weeping Willow plays:]

Falling head first into the dark was like falling out of the pit of his eye. Miasma blinked and stared at the Bible in his hands. All these names. And yet the Diary had not accounted for them. Till now. At the death of “Father Evight Vonhassel”. The gathered darkness around them was deep. And the void seemed to stare back. The unknown, of what Miasma knew, he didn’t want to hear…

Jim signed the cross over his heart and shook the diary as if bracing himself , his breath held as if to power through what he knew would be a difficult story to tell. And an even harsher one for Miasma to hear.

*December 3rd. How bleak this world looks now… Snow was heavy today. Evight Vanhassel had succumbed to the cold. He had been fucking frozen. It took hours to try and dig the frozen ground.. The worst of it was, it wasn’t Father Vanhassel that most were crying for now… now, it was for the hunger in everyone’s bellies. The game had long since moved on. It seemed damn near ALL of them did. The furs are being used but the gnawing in the belly is a curious thing, and if only the ice and snow could fill the emptiness. No… holding from the emotion, it isn’t right….

We, we already started the leather but, shoes and straps do little to stave away the weakness, and the pangs… No help it seems will come…Since November we have been unable to reach the mountain fort. Its like the valley refuses to let us go. It must be evil. Or at the very leased cures. We sent out four men. Only two have returned whole , confirming our worst fears. The avalanche had blocked the pass. And surely we would all die trying to brave it. Or so says Diego Rivera and Armand Avalo… Ezekiel Smith was lost. And Jeremy Bridger, in their arms, wearing the fatal marks of a bear attack. I've seen injuries on the trail, this was… different. They swore the creature was taller than ten feet, brushing the top of the pines. They did their best to fight it but no…Conveniently they managed to save their hides… and not a single shot fired from their guns… I cocked them myself… inspected them. Clean. dry. Despite the perilous journey through that god-awful forest where it seems even the trees wander, you get so lost… And they arrive, without even a rabbit for company… not even a rat?!

“The river is too dangerous… the trek, too long… we can’t afford to lose another man” they said… Certainly, we can’t afford to lose another man like Father Vanhassel. Everyone is suspicious of one another now. Everyone with that strange look in the eyes. I don’t like it. And the almost hunger in Diego’s eyes at the stripped clothing from the late Father… “It pains that we should deprive the dead of their earthly possessions, but the kingdom beyond has no need for wool shirts and gloves”... such hate for such practicality, so bravely spoken by the foreign man, and yet it remains unequivocally true…This is an unusual winter…and I fear that we have only just begun to see how the infighting has been turning men into savages, fighting like godless-heathens in the snow, rolling around and at each other's throats. I fired my pistol and the fighting stopped.*

Jim turned the page.

[I Couldn’t Sleep plays:]

*“There will be order in this camp! There will be civility, and justice! This I swear! You wish to wrangle and tear at your hides like dogs then by God I’ll shoot you like one myself!” I vowed, pointing the barrel at everyone gathered there. “We nurse our wounded and bury our dead. Or we burn them. This is not the first passing among us and under God’s eye we shall keep ourselves ready to meet our maker on any day. To expire is the natural order of the world, and no less what the Son of man did for three days before rising once more to His fathers kingdom! So too we shall rise above this! And we will make our peace to die or live another day.” I said. For a moment the camp held the same rapturous gaze that they held for the late Father. And I felt the mantle heavy on my shoulders…seeing their pale gazes, their gaunt, starved faces, like sheep walking towards the slaughter, eager to be held in gentle arms before they are ultimately bled dry. Well, If I’m the shepherd I must keep them in my sight, and go for the lost. And yet I could not. For my cowardice, I left a prayer unanswered… I sent no man to search for Ezekiel that day… God forgive me…”*

Miasma smudged the impossibly wet ink in the bible in his lap. Jim could see the writing on the wall. But if this was the origin of the blood stone, it had to be brought to the light…it had to be…

It was like taking a confession from a dead man. He felt the obligation clawing at him the way a sinner might beg for a holy’s mans’ touch of mercy.

“Justice and Mercy… The line for that is… never clear, is it.” Jim said, looking up at Miasma. Miasma refused to meet Jim's Gaze. He knew there was more…

More to this story. There were still pages left.

Jim turned the page and saw a single line entered.

[Flora plays:]

“December 6. God I pray we can hold off one more night. Just one. So that Evight can be left alone.”

Miasma scrunched his brow. “Left alone, he’s dead isn't he, surely such a well spoken captain hasn't descended to madness in three days to think he was alive-” Miasma chuckled, though the tone in it seemed apprehensive. The utter denial on his face, he knew he was being willingly foolish, purposefully dim witted. But it was easier than facing the truth. And in this he felt that familiar grip of guilt strangling his breath while his heart raced. He was content to stand by and let the world happen around him after his incarceration. And the voices within hushed in their whisperings, keeping their chatter constant enough to seem like white noise, yet interacting enough for Miasma to feel the chill finally, the way Jim had felt it all along. Ice cold on the sweat rolling down the back of his neck.

Jim licked his lips and took a baited breath, as he read the entry below it with confusion.

*“December 7, Jeremy Bridger… no one knows if he died or was smothered. His wounds were fatal, we knew. But the decision to put him out of his misery was riding on one more day. Except at midnight, once more, we lost a good man… and Diego Rivera was there, pulling the bloodied socks from the cold feet. Armand Avalo was standing over the corpse, blood spattered on his face, and a hand in the body. There were witnesses… He could have been trying to staunch a bleed, the sheets were soaked in blood. Or. something more… But all that would silence the camp were the two pistol shots I fired that afternoon… I pulled Thomas to the side, “You are a hunter aren't you. The hunt! Go. find us meat.” I hissed at him, “And don’t think I won’t think twice to inspect your iron boy, and take care of this mess!”*

[Turn of the Screw plays:]

*I knew the risk, and I stood by it… The camp went to bed, the bodies lay at the stockade as they lay… snow fell and froze the ground. Two shots fired in the night. The stockades were empty by morning. And my ever faithful Lt. Thomas Spencer, had provided. Everyone was silent at the first supper they had had in over a week. Bless it, there was peace at last. beside the graveyard, one fresh shallow grave stood tall and proud beside Father Evight. Two crude posts were erected beside that, with no crosses, as the executed men were not followers of our god. I don’t know their god or his rules. And I don’t give a fuck. Bellies are full. I don’t question the blessings God bestows to us.”*

Jim covered his mouth. Miasma chuckled wryly, “Ah yes, the way it is easiest to turn to what is “other”. No love hath no man than godly-hate”.

Jim scowled, “That the world plants a foot on that hill and blames the true evils on god, is that what you really think though?” He challenged.

Miasma stared deadpan into Jim's face, the tickle of his words in his own ears making him twitch slightly, “I’m just making an observation. It seems easy for one to kill those who “deserve it”. That still makes him a murderer…You’re telling me that I’m wrong?”

“I’m telling you, you are willfully ignorant.”

“And You, are being punitive. I voiced the truth, that things are as they are, do not blame me… that’s between you and your God! Narrow your scope all you want.” Miasma said sharply turning back to brood at the fireless place.

Jim started aback, like he had been slapped in the face. He knew what was coming in this story, but he wanted to believe they had no choice. That they were merely driven to their heinous deeds. Their crimes of moral corruption. Unconditional mercy, as long as it was confessed, and certainly here the Diary was confessing was it not?....wasn’t it…?

Jim was quiet. The fading light outside casting darker shadows in the room. Miasma got up, holding the bible to his chest absentmindedly, spending a long time getting the fire going. The wood was dry, and the chimney unblocked. And as the flames flickered, licking the walls of their home after being so long out, Miasma went to sit by the fire. He felt cold. Deep within,. And he had a mind to arm himself by the flames. Jim felt heat and anger rush his cheeks with red. He almost felt embarrassed. But he refused to feel shame for his hopes.

He kept reading. This time, it was his turn to be confused…

He skipped to the ending, rushing to recover his grip on the diary in his hands.

*March 2nd, The pass will open soon. What little we have will be found. This place is cursed and should never have been exploited. Misfortune and shame live here. Regrets and sins.. The lord cleansed the earth with a flood, and promised the end of days would be cleansed with fire.. There's no God in these cold woods. There is only death hanging in these trees. Only devils and empty bellies that never fill. The wretched can go back to the brick with their kin. I almost envy them. While us, the ones that still draw breath, we will be the devils to pay… perhaps it is fitting that fire is the trail we leave behind, rather than blood. Every man for himself now, and every man a devil. It would be better if the earth swallowed us up. It would be better if the pass stayed closed. Or at least, that when they find us, what's left, the world will move on, and the lost will stay lost.”*

Silence.

“Wait, wait that's it?!” Miasma asked incredulously, “No, no no no way” he chuckled darkly, strolling over tossing the bible into Jim’s lap and snatching the Diary up. He read that final entry over and over till his eyes felt sore from the shaky handwriting that he was surprised Jim could read. His face paled farther and farther with each word.

“So everyone dies, The End, I guess...?” Jim shrugged frustratedly.

“This is a stupid book” Miasma said throwing it at the ground before walking away, crossing his arms, brooding by the fire, searching for answers in the flickering tendrils of fingered flames.

Jim too seemed at a loss, his mind reeling from the uncharacteristically hopeless tone of the entry. Between December and March, The captain had gone from proudly uniting his brethren, to being content to watch their world burn, ashamed? It couldn’t be… that couldn’t be the end… not like this…

“Hold on” Jim said, standing suddenly, running out the door into the darkened cold. Miasma could hear his footsteps wandering to and fro hurriedly, like a man lost, until he returned, panting as he clutched the doorframe, “Pick those up” he said sternly jutting his chin to the discarded pair of books on the ground. Miasma began to protest, when Jim smacked the wooden door, the sound bouncing off the walls with every word as if banging all around,

“Pick up, the , damn, books, and get your sorry ass out here! Find a shovel, meet me at the bricks” and like that Jim disappeared outside from the closed off room. Miasma was shocked. Jim had never spoken to him that way. So earnestly. So harshly. Rebuking him almost, like a call to action, to move beyond the view of this room and see what lies beyond. And that certainly stirred something in that soupy brain of his…

[Spoksonate plays:]

The bricks… the… dilapidated hut of a building that reminded him of a large Kiln… As Miasma pawed around the room finding a broken shovel, the handle missing and the splinter somehow, *wet* he couldn't help the swirling thoughts in his mind.

*He yelled at me. He, he, I was worth being yelled at. Oh yes Jimmy, yesss….I'll do what you say. Do what father says. Hehe, Papa…Papa is good...Papa is kiiiiinnnnd. Mhmh, yes he will won’t he?… He will-” his hand palmed the wet end of the splintered shovel, coming away wet, the color dark in the light of the accusing flames that lit his features so intensely, “-taste so sweet” he whispered, his fingers absentmindedly wandering to his mouth where his tongue darted out to taste.

The metallic sting, the taste of blood, making his whole body shiver. He pulled his hand away, watching the liquid as it dried slightly, a string of it playing between his spread fingers.

“Hey! C’mon man, let's go!” Jim said, momentarily peering in the doorway, out of focus, “Oh, yes, I’m, I’m coming” Miasma said, his voice soft, tranced slightly, a little too saccharine for Jim’s taste.

Jim watched as the Ghoul twiddled his fingers in front of his face.

“You are one creepy dude,” Jim thought. The hand being stared at looked normal, he couldn't fathom why the ghoul seemed so intrigued by it in the firelight. He shook his head, “Everyone’s got their reasons” he shrugged, descending the steps and grabbing the shovel he had found outside and strode towards the fire-scarred earth down the “street” if you could call the path that.

The thunder in the mountains sounded like the pounding of hooves bouncing around the landscape, the whistle of the wind as if a whispering song, of the uncanny kind. The soft melody of deceit, putting him on edge. It felt like the false sense of security was a wool coming down over his eyes. No. like an executioner's hood gently falling over his sight, his breath fast in the cold sucking feeling in his chest, waiting for what felt like the anticipation of the short drop and sudden stop…

All the while feeling eyes on him, and it made his hair stand up, even as he kept his gaze away from the very thing he was fearing…Jim a few yards off, Miasma trailing behind.

Jim stopped in the middle of the street a moment, hesitant to continue down this path to hell that had no milestones or sign posts. But the truth had to win out. The truth was the only thing that was godly left in this valley now…

“Deus, Deus in absentia… in absentia…” He mouthed, his feet moving forward once more, a step farther than he had ever been…

Miasma’s hand on the broken shovel, staring, deadpan at the base of Jim’s skull…

(Ok, now close your eyes, lay back, and imagine, pickup from this scene. What you see. Feel. snow? Wind? Foreboding? Now in your head pictures, make a Super cool dramatic ANIME ENDING: The Last Shot. The Final Moment, to the music of...)

A special musical performance from the man himself for, Please Welcome a special cameo performance from, !!!

Please, interact with us, our music cues will be highlighted for your convenience

[ Sympathy For The Devil plays:]