CHAPTER 2
You enter the inn through a large tunnel. At it's end is a velvet drape. You lift it.
The eyes of a man by the corner bulge out. His mustache is lifted from the cup by it's long thin wisps: "You know, giant, you are wanted dead or alive! Bold of you to come here assuming you are untouchable!" you see his left eye is missing.
Two black hands dine upon a rich pig; the oils drip from the toothy grin as the meat is delicately placed between the gnashing, white teeth.
The lips spit out: "Leave him. He is not wanted dead." the voice is quick and abrasive; like the sting of a wasp.
The black hands form an archway and from the lips below the guarded bridge of two yellow soldiers of eyes a voice so brutalizing you feel as if your insides were being boiled by the snarling brow and jagged teeth of a jackal:
"I will bring him broken before the Citadel of Law. But he will not die. He will beg for the sweet kiss of air...Until all escapes before the soft carress of the hangman's noose."
Aye, a jackal it is! Wearing the skin of a man!
"Leave him." speaks the soft mechanisms of the spitting revolver.
"Sheriff...you are defending this criminal?" says the fat mustached man
"Wanted, aye, but not guilty. Not in my eyes. And here in Harpidiom I am the Law; I decide who is guilty or who isn't."
It is a man beneath the shadow of the hat, yet it is of a pure white complexion. You see now as he turns to face you, that his face is deformed; bloated. He has no nose. Plainly, he looks like the skull of something bloated with gas or malformed birth.
The 'jackal' gets up from his chair. He is two heads taller than you; yet so unbelievably thin.
From here you see him outstretch his hands. He looks like a vulture preying upon a child. The position of his hands, it is not unlike the negative space that defines all shapes; and you see his hands, like claws, they grab at the air. The shape of his body, it is of a character not wholly human! Yet he is so unbelievably still...his torso thin like a strand of hair! Who is this? You can't take a look at his face...
His face! A monster! The air...you're lungs, they feel stripped of everything! Two black hands! Gloves, a doctor's gloves! A scream inhuman, a hornbeast!
You fall unconscious.