The Last Supper

Author's Note: This is merely for practice, and was in no way intended to be a complete work, with complex characters, or even, a worthy plot. I solely intended to play around with writing, and will continue to do so, until I feel comfortable enough to embark upon writing anything grander. Any criticism or praise is appreciated, and more importantly, I would love advice.

Last Supper
(Presently Named)

April 19th , was an absurdly natural dark eve. The omniscient moon confidently exposed itself upon the setting, a less than natural gesture, for a town so secluded. Indeed, it was this April night, that the story of Henry Pickman concludes, in his house, in the damp, dreary, Innsmouth.

The bleary, pallid Pickman, was by all accounts, an investigator. An investigator in occupation, and his nature. Where there was something to deduce, curiosity and a sense of chase excited Pickman, and captivated his very soul. In the man's childhood, he escaped the troubles of the time, through the adventures, of one, Sherlock Holmes. This was a great inspiration, to the curious Pickman. Recently, prior to this exact date, the private eye put his work on hold, failing to solve the case of his ill health, much less the cases of others.

Last March, the detective began reporting chronic headaches, of unmeasurable pain, and unfathomable agony. He would ultimately confine himself, in his dark chambers, alone. The only company present to Pickman, was the blood curdling screams echoing out of his hollowed chest, spastic among the room, escaping through the long narrow hall, with it's fine, red cotton rug and paintings of departed ancestors. The music resonated throughout the cold estate, fading, but leaving horror in the mind of his loving wife, Annabel, and the lone servant. The sporadic attacks, worsened in their severity, and when he did come to, he spoke of the headaches as war drums, thunderous pounding on his fragile skull, feeble by abuse. Henry spoke of the ringing of death, that filled his head. The man was convinced that he had heard Death's plans, that no one was safe, and all was to end.

It was believed his service in The Great War, caused him much pain, and the apparent source of the misery. Upon examination, a wicked scar was found on the crown of Pickman's head. The broken soldier admitted his tumble on the front lines, that had him incapacitated him for a few days, and kept him in bed, a few days more. It was this reason he was honorably discharged, and sent back to his hometown, of the dark, Lodonesque, Innsmouth.

Those among the city, knew the Pickman estate, was one not to be approached. The dilapidated manor, a spawning of screams and spooks. Pickman, never leaving his domain, was considered a insane hermit, isolated in his sordid past, that no one really knew. Pickman's doctor, routinely makes visits to the ill man, hoping progress has been made, but that is the only visitor. Rumors quickly augmenting the outlandish tales of the host of the place, being a vampire, or wolfman. Some even believed Pickman, to already be deceased, and in a way, he already is.

The odd behavior of the mentally degrading man, only worsened. He stopped talking, only mumbled, and only half the time was his mumbling comprehensible. He stayed, always sitting in his brown leather chair, talking to himself, staring quite blankly. This man was sure of his shady future, that those of The Old would rise. Pickman knew, he knew well, that attempt at anything was futile, and one should hope to nothing. With the sinister future surely to come, he looked to the periled past, his dear parents, that he had loved well, and his wife, that shouldn't be dead. Oh, how he longed for sweet companionship. Perhaps he'll get a dog. The man, pondering all of this, sweating the same bullets that would have ended his life in the 1918 war.

A serene, blonde haired woman, with a kind, but appropriately worried expression upon her face, passed through the estate kitchen, and into the room the soaked man resided in. She spoke, sweetly, lovingly, her voice angelic, but unfortunately troubled.

“Oh Henry... you need to eat. I will make some ham, my love... Do you hear me Henry?,” Henry never hears his wife, not since she has been dead. Annabel strokes the man's ashen hair, but he doesn't feel it, he doesn't see her, his wife, the white withered hand of a specter.


She exits, knowing well that he will not respond. He is sickly oblivious, sitting uncomfortably, in his uncomfortable chair, distressing, yet unmoving. The unhomely living room, Gothic styled with subdued color and two dimensional wallpaper, polluted by condescending, dead stuffed birds; eagles and hawks. In the center of the opposing wall, across the fleshed mortal display, was a heated crackling fire, with it's orange ugly tongues, only troubling the bitter, dead man, even more. He stared, his incandescent blue eyes gazing upon the incandescent mockery, reheating the man's scars, the ones from a different kind of war. His mother, and father, rotting, decaying, gone, and fading. The subtle mist of a memory buried with time, erupts, as Henry remembers, perfectly.

The orphan, recalls when he was a boy, walking back from a day of simple math, and reading, as he passionately carried his copy, of 'A Study In Scarlet.' As he treads his path, his heart takes on weight, as a shadow creeps upon him. The apparition, merely a feeling of despair, as young Henry senses something far from usual. Something... Something... Smoke. Poisoned vapor, blocking out the light of the orange omniscient sun. Things darkened blackly, and a wintertime ash was somberly falling, specking the boy's black hair with the burning pieces of his childhood home. Watching his step for the patches of burning earth, he approached the collapsed home. The fires were all close to dying out by now.

The seated man stopped himself, abruptly. Pickman was unsure if he wanted to tumble down the rabbit hole of his past. Unsure if the memory of his dead parents was something he wanted to see. He's tried his best to conceal all his pain. Withdraw himself from emotion, commit to his work, serve his country, anything to escape all of the tragedy, all of the horrid death. He choked back tears, and he felt his head pain rising, the soldiers of war began their song, beating the same old, worn drums.

He pressed on. He remembers the horror of walking on top of the house, unable to use the door, or even find it under the gray rubble. The entire building, was reduced to a heap of blackened wood and memories. Digging through his lost life, he found his parents, in the darkest corner of his poisoned mind. His father, where the kitchen should have been, was charred, blackened like barbecue. He would have been impossible to identify, if not for his father's red ruby ring, with a strange golden figure on the jewel. A winged figure, with an octopus shaped head, and humanoid torso. An odd creature. He remembered pocketing the valuable gem, obliviously, and only shedding a single tear. However, when he discovered his recently departed mother, the boy shattered, spewing tears, and crying vomit. The boy was sickened, appalled by the less severely burned, disfigured pile of bloody charcoal, wearing his mother's favorite red silk dress.


Red. Red Dress, Red Ruby, Red Crimson fire, Ruby Red Ring, fixated with crimson.

It was this the damaged man mumbled.

Pickman's head would bang and shake, his ears would ring and click, a quick cluttered tick, and clang of pounding pain. Anosmia overwhelmed him, his vision blurred, feeling disconnected from the world, with each word spat.

“Mother, Red, Wife... Dead”

He sat upon his tan fleshed throne, mumbling about his deceased, beautifully, terrifying wife, as her physical being prepared the beast's banquet upon the encaustic tiled floor of the varnished domain. Pickman regales himself with the red ridden images of crimson cardinal, soaking the youth's yellow dress, and his preciously dry hands. His hysterical cries of red hymns, drowned the drums of war, within. Just picturing the memory of his wife's downfall, he mumbles louder, turned to talking, turned to maniacal screaming. The man bursts louder and louder, unable to repress the sad tale of Annabel's sad undoing. He fought ferociously, screamed with sadistic intensity, but holding onto the torturous memory, was not within his capabilities.

Just like the memory of his parents, the vision is painted vividly, with surreal visual detail, as if the sensations of sight, held same even in his hindsight. A mental picture so powerful. Pickman was no longer king among the jest flames, but a peasant among laid tile. His lack of smell, was even in this demonic nightmare of repressed tragedy. The light seemed to bend to the Old One's will, as the idle puppet's sight emulated the likeness of a Caravaggio death scene. Artful occurrence, of glorified death, as the drums of Goya's sketches gave way to fallen dream.

Pickman was pressed upon the ground. He attempted, and attempted to put his hands on the kitchen floor, to support himself from collapse, but his red paws merely slid out from underneath his brutish body. The blood smeared on the white tile, like a child finger painting a masterpiece, for sick display of the pearl refrigerator. Failure to hold his massive weight under the conditions, the man deconstructs, and enters the fetal position, his scrambled head slamming against the solid floor.

In a state of blacked out, synaptic frenzy, Pickman devolves to the form of a mad lion. To hide the evidence of the painted white canvas, the blood matted kitten laps up the goddess' ichor, miraculously holding in the stomach of the impish minion. Tears, building upon the dam of his emptied eyes, explodes with pressure. The severing strings bound upon the maddened marionette, motions him in a wicked waltz. Pickman's warm lively soul, refuses the cold mechanized construct, that is committing the sacred act, of the sinful ceremony. The floor, finally blank, the hollowed optics of the fleshly Pinocchioesque Pickman, glances upon the inanimate mannequin, reduced to a form without life.

The realistic vision is interrupted by a violent sickness within the man's stomach. Horrid Henry slams his vulnerable eyes shut, cursing the cold flames that has taken so much from him. The hellish inferno, laughing at the knife so snugly held in the soldiers hand. He leans over across the arm of the chair, and vomited profusely upon the dead wood planks, nailed, and screaming. The beast's diet held the reasons for his grotesque relief. Pickman wipes his mouth, crying in a defeated manner, as he knows his life is now changed forever.

In his last memory, Pickman, appalled by what his own hands have done, treats the wound. The slit throat, a nasty cut upon the light body of heaven. Still broke upon the floor, the man holds Annabel, and all of the forgotten memories of how they had met, the dance they never danced, and the husband he had never been, never crossed his ruptured mind. Some undetermined strength allowed the man to pick his wife from the clean tile. Her lightened body was easily placed in the dining room chair, by the ghastly oak table, in the ethereal estate. Henry Pickman summoned the smoked ham from the oven. The aroma, filling the finally enlightened nostrils, of the changed man. The meat is served to the silhouette of his actual wife. This is Pickman's final meal, served with premature wine.

After the feast, the man realized something, and when he did, his unstable state was revived. Henry was deafened by the silence... no longer did he mumble, no longer beat the drums of madness in the back of his head. Solace was discovered, and freedom found him. But it found him vile. It found him sitting at the kitchen table, consuming his wife's food, as she sat down, dead beside him. He had almost forgotten about the tragedy in the miracle of his sensual epiphany. Almost. The next thing he had noticed, was the truth before him. He was sitting in the kitchen, with it's floral wallpaper, staring at the wide eyes of Annabel, and it had been no memory.

The servant, Marie Delphine, was never found. The estate was searched, the investigation uncovered many clues. The afternoon of April 23rd, Pickman's doctor made a visit to the home, and found the violent scene. Annabel, was found slumped in the kitchen chair, almost fully desperate of blood, and clearly patched up. A suspected effort from the husband. Pickman, was found halfway in the fireplace, from the waist up. He was burned, mostly upon the face, with a hole ran through his head. Henry Pickman clearly was positioned in front of the fire, on his knees. A pistol found near the body, confirms the bullet hole. Upon firing, Henry collapsed into the fire, disfiguring his face. It was apparent, that the time of death, was days away.

Within the fire, a burning gold object was found. Embedded in the ring, was a jewel, with a single obscure figure.