Emissaries of the Shuttermouth

Art by Jason Barnett

   In a backwash of nightfall, as the haze of rain drift freezes in a slanted down glide under arc-light, a razor-edged grimace reveals itself in a weakened pulse of strobe flashing to a lower frequency than that of the long dead starry night's final throes of shed light.

   The moon lowers its crescent nail through the skin of dawn, peeling it back to reveal its underside, the fat layer of eventide. In a darkened alleyway rows of serrated teeth close down one after another until they wink out altogether into a shut mouth.

   A stranger hides in obscurity keeping a tightly clamped grin. It advances just before dawn under the cloud cover of an almost new moon. Only the light of this outsider's occasionally leaked smiles reveals the cobbled path before it in splintery, shard-like reflections.

   Its eyes, should they ever provide the opportunity to be closely examined, would reveal blacknesses compacted into an even deeper dark. They are of an extreme pitch; hidden eyes that themselves see vividly without the need of light. The pupils are triggered to blossom by a strange and remote aperture system, and for this reason fill the eyes with a striated obsidian of a most unusual configuration.

   The specimen standing silently in the alleyway is the Shuttermouth, lone leviathan of the night. It has been known by many names throughout humanity's mayfly-like existence: lycanthrope, doppelganger, vampyr, madman. But the Shuttermouth has no name other than those lent him by mankind.

   The Stygian configuration of its glossed pupils lost in impenetrable inkiness form an almost impossible to see triangulation whose three points open into tiny clustered triumvirates budding from the tips. They realize a gaze which leads back from a descending line of an unfolding sentience whose purpose is to visually inform the master entity delivering it.

   This primordial being is even lesser known than the Shuttermouth, and with far fewer names attributed to it, if any. It sleeps in a special kind of dormancy. It could be described, in human terms, as the Buried Thing. It sends its messenger spies throughout time and across various latitudes of the world. These emissaries live, and die, just as men do. Some live longer than others; some continue to elude death.

   The Shuttermouth is one such tenacious deputy of the Buried Thing. It functions as a sort of remote camera device, and occasionally as messenger or courier. Like very few others that have and still exist, its life has spanned at least a couple and maybe well over a few centuries, the actual date of birth impossible to pinpoint. But then virtually every piece, part and bit of information that mankind acquires over its brief career on planet earth amounts to largely a collection of assumptions on its behalf, placed over that empty abyss that has been labeled "the unknown".

   The unbeknownst: that vicinity from which all knowledge takes root. Thus, this tree of knowledge has its roots sunken in oblivion. We homo sapiens cannot be consciously aware of oblivion's real nature, for not only do human memories fade away fast, but oblivion itself by definition may not manifest within the human universe. Man's most common mistake in this matter is thinking oblivion awaits them, when the truth may approach something closer to the opposite.

   Oblivion resides before the past and everything that has already passed. Oblivion remains absent from time and space. Humanity and other life forms have been slowly seeded from it throughout the ages.
 
   What lies beyond for humankind is merely death, patiently awaiting with jaws agape for its  complimentary sustenance: creation itself, swirling down the drain and into the cosmic disposal machine. Oblivion lies beyond death's reach. We have appeared here as Sustenance for the Serpent of Time.


   That is why individual humans are like ants learning how to fly. The stragglers which continue to elude death, those few survivors, camped out along the banks of time, which refuse to give in to the sand trap awaiting at what would normally be the end of their lives, these are the "special ones" which the Undesignated Thing has sent out its delegates for.

   They are the ones the Shuttermouth has most especially been sent to retrieve. The very ones it loves to prey on the most. Individuals such as yourself who love to read and listen to the most arcane memoirs imaginable, such as the one you're reading now. Take heed on the darkened streets before dawn. Best keep moving and watch your backs under the open light of the Sun.