As Stipulated by James Montrose

That January 27th, 1979 was a cold and rainy one. Unusual, but not out of place; San Jorje was a city whose clouds were like grey dirty cotton balls. It was a place where rain was a constant and the city was but a gothic mural in where the only pigments used where black, white and grey. It had no nightlife. The streets were barren and no one dared to go outside. The mighty bell tower that once served as lighthouse back then lords over the city as the tolls of its great bronze bell inviting everyone to the equally ancient Augustine Cathedral. Our story begins on Kuro-og Street, in an apartment office whose sign hung from the window facing the street.
In this cramp space lie typewriters, shelves among shelves of books and records and coffee cups with coffee stains that were as old as the court cases they were previously consumed in. This was the office of Richard Danik Sinco, Attorney at law and Ashton Villaflores, Financial Adviser.

As the Montrose family lawyer, Danik, as he was called, had just opened up a case with his confidant and friend Ashton, who was also the family’s accountant. The family was quite rich indeed if they were able to employ the both of them on reserve.
They owned several branches of a popular delicatessen in which their CEO and family patriarch, James Irving Montrose-Maglinte, had just died and left his will along with a fabulous amount of money. The family, of Italian-Filipino decent, were squabbling over his wealth like the imbeciles they were, having been spoiled rotten by him prior to his death. Even at the funeral they clawed over the jewellery on his dead body, to the disgust of the then bishop and nonagenarian Bishop Charles Balbuena, who was the celebrant of his requiem.

“I can’t stand people like this…” Ashton remarked, reading through Danik’s court recordings. “These people are nothing but rabid fucking animals!”

“Might I remind you that these ‘rabid fucking animals’ are our employers…” Danik told him.

“Save your chivalry for when we’re facing them…” Ashton told him. “They pay good, that’s the only reason I’m here.”
“Is that it?” Danik asked as he fumbled through his papers.

“Oh, and of course…” Ashton remembered. “To help you!” he said sarcastically, rolling his eyes.

“Save your sarcasm for when I can see you…” Danik chuckled.

The old friends shared in their company as they read the paper attached to Mr. Montrose-Maglinte’s will.
---

I had just returned from my grandfather’s funeral, both with grief in my heart and a new found knowledge that I had inherited a large delicatessen from him. He was quite the influential and well-loved figure in this town. His charcutterie was world-renowned, and so was his aspic. His dark chocolate crunch cakes were given out to the children as they all over the neighborhood. My grandfather left me a legacy to continue.

Meat and offal was delivered to me by his old friend. He was gout and silent. His eyes seem to be closed all the time, his skin was pale and his teeth rotting. But he smiled everytime he saw me. Grandfather must have made very good connections, I thought-for these cuts of meat where very oddly shaped and very flavorful...”
---
“Okay....” Danik muttered. “Charcutterie and deli branches…” he said. “What are the insurance claims for that?” he asked, turning to ashton.
“Danik…” Ashton told him. “Think we might have to read a little longer. “ Ashton told danik as he pointed his finger at a verse on the will.
---

But years past by before I realized the odd shape and taste was not from some exotic, high-class pedigree pig or beef. It had all started when I noticed the children back in granpa’s time growing up. I was forty-four back then. It was 1933.

The children that grew up eating the salami and blood cakes of my grandfather would suddenly become ill at time for no given reason. I, wanting to live up to my grandfather’s standards, went around their houses and gave their mothers free deli items and the kids, the sweet chocolate crunch cookies my grandfather’s friend supplied; the very same one who supplied the meats
.
But as I went up to Dr. Carter’s house, who was the town’s only physician back then, he told me to turn back and never come near his house nor his children ever again. It was rude gesture indeed, but I soon found out why:

It began when I interrogated my grandfather’s friend, whom I later got to know as a man names Arzul. He was old, but firm and not a word would loosen from his mouth.

I had about enough interrogating a man that would not speak when asked. I let him go.

The following day, I had seen old Arzul in the Milk bar that afternoon. He had just debauched in his favourite poison and had blathered out wild stories that nobody in their right minds would believe. This reminded me of a short story I read when I was in my teens. This notion and the fact that he was willing to blabber outlandishly at the taste of alcohol gave me an idea.

I had gone to the convenience store to pick up a bag of cornick to serve as a light snack to nibble on, but as I passed by the liquor section, I happened to glance by a bottle of Empressa Maria. It was a cheap brand of liquor the town imbeciles would give their firstborns for, the prefect liquid crowbar for this old fool’s iron mouth.

I bought one bottle and checked it out privately, not wanting to spoil my dapper and image of temperance and class. I then invited Arzul over for a drink later that night. I was optimistic that the drink would loosen the screws holding his jaws together and he would spew forth eldritch truths that had been waiting for this whole time. I didn’t matter if they were true or false; I just wanted to get a clue or a slip of the tongue on where this godforsaken meat came from!

He slurped down the entire bottle as if it were a juice pack. No words, no exposition; just a drunken old man struggling to say ‘thank you’ as he waltzed out of my kitchen door.

I would not have any of this anymore. I decided to follow him…
---
‘Hold on, hold on…” Danik said as he handed the will to Ashton and went over to his filing cabinet.

“Did you find something?” Ashton asked him as he approached the filing cabinet, will at hand.

“I may have…” Danik said as he pulled out a sheet headline ‘City Health Statistics 1810-1940’. “It says here that the rate of prion diseases jolted up by 24 percent by 1816 and continued to rise heavily until…now basically…” Danik read aloud from the record, shocked by his own declamation.

“Aren’t prion diseases cuased by folded proteins in the DNA?” Ashton pointed out.

Their heads turned simultaneously to the paper, paying close attention to each and every detail of Mr. Montrose’s account religiously.
---

This elusive old man, though his senses watered down by the cheap liquor, walked and fumbled towards his shed. I kept my distance and even from that far, I could see that his shed had no fencing to encompass any pigs or cows in which he would have to be slaughtering hundreds of a month to keep my demands in check. My suspicion grew as I walked closer to him, but kept my distance still. I was confident that his peripheral vision had gone along with his soberness.

But before we could get half a kilometre to his shed, she collapses on the dirt road. Not wanting to be the main suspect of the murder of old-man Arzul, I took his body and dragged his thin, flimsy limps and torso to the shed.

It is that this part that I look back a few hours ago. I should have stayed, I should have just taken the produce without question. I should have just stayed quite.

My curiosity would eventually lead me to insanity, for as I opened the door; I saw the eviscerated carcasses of the deformed and obese. Neither of pig nor cow carcasses as I had hoped; but that of men, women and even children! I had dropped the unconscious but still alive Arzul in shock. The back of his head hit the doorstopper, instantly killing him.

I hadn’t noticed for I was engulfed in a state of catatonic shock. There ribs were opened wide and their viscera on tubs on the floor. The men were hung by the ankle bone, the women by the armpits and the children by the neck.

If I had not known the human feeling of sympathy that came with the pity for a dead brother, I would have not noticed these as people at all! They were horribly deformed. Men born without lips and jaws and some of them with tumours spouting of their groin areas, women of excruciatingly painful bone malignancies that twisted their figures into unholy and bloody physical abstractions.

The children were the worst. They were multi-limbed, some one-eyed, some with tails like that of a hairless monkey. They were thin and malnourished, suggesting they were kidnapped and kept here.

I looked at Arzul, but as I turned to see him he had already been lying dead for a few minutes. This murderous attitude was contagious I had thought. Then from the corner of my eye, at the far room back door I had seen a figure; a butcher of sorts. I never would’ve thought to be trembling upon meeting someone who shared my craft.

I peered into it closer and saw that the man with the large cleaver’s actions was far too mechanical and robotic. It seemed as if it was just another corpse. Further peering into what seemed to be an indiscernible backlight of the tinted red and brown of blood and excrement accompanied by the weak, flickering light of a dying bulb above went to prove that the man was indeed dead; no longer alive, but merely controlled like some macabre puppet.

I had not known what came over me; the temptation, in singeth deeply within. I took a few steps, treading over viscera and blood, not minding the child’s arm that I had just snapped like a dry twig.

I was but a few feet from the sight of madness when I saw the puppeteer be an upright dog-like creature, which stood nearly seven feet tall. Its hairy arms and snout was bound with bandages and was draped with a luminously white blanket or some sort of drapery.
As the creature caught sight of me, strings from the upper rafts of the open roof dropped the man’s carcass in front of it. It stared at me, I could not see its eyes, therefore I wasn’t not sure whether it was blind and I needed to run from it or if it indeed saw me and running would only aggravate it. The indecision paralyzed me.

Soon, I heard the floor planks behind me creek, as if something heavy was suddenly removed from it. I was far too afraid to turn back, if I did and found nothing; that would leave me open to any advances the creature I stood in front of would attempt.
I took my very last eldritch glimpse into the untimely face of unknown fear that night. I turned my head and saw before me, the dead reincarnated: the eviscerated, slaughtered, bloodied corpses on their feet and breathing. Behind all them was Arzul himself.
He began to bleed into the floor until he was nothing but a puddle of blood. That puddle then flowed towards me, manoeuvring the reanimated deformed corpses and then manoeuvring around me. I turned to the dog-creature and the blood that flowed from Arzul’s pool of blood fill the creature to the brim. Then in there, I saw its cursed, blood-drunk eyes. The eyes of the devil!
…
…
…
---
Danik dropped the will, shivering coldly. Ashton had vomited slightly into a mug, sickened by the twisted descriptions of the old man’s account.

“This is insanity!” Danik declared. “This will is null! Their Montrose-Maglinte fortune will be dissolved and given of charity!” Danik said.

“Hold on for a minute…” Ashton rebelled. “You’re dissolving the fund because of a short story?” he told him, slowly recovering from his nausea induced vertigo.

“No…” Danik replied. “This is no short story, Ashton…” Danik replied. “The time and date of this seemingly fictous tale fit statistics and records of missing persons so accurately…” Danik said.

He turned to the phone to ring up the Department of Health branch in their province. After a few minutes of inquiry he turned to Ashton.

“This not just a story…I know the place.” Danik told Ashton.

He went to the door and got his rain coat and biretta. He pulled his cane from the stand and got his car keys.

“Where are you off to?” Ashton asked.

“Grab your coat, Ashton…” Danik said. “We’re going to see Arzul’s shack…” he said.

Ashton went over to Danik as he put on his coat. He treaded over the will as he walked over to him. They soon got out a rushed down to Danik’s car and drove south of the city into the barren glen over the outskirt to see Arzul’s shack. They failed to read the last page of the will, which read:

---
I was forgiven of my trespass and was set free; under one circumstance however: I shall take over Arzul’s place. And that is to capture, murder, drain, and eviscerate the disabled and weak and feed their organs to the dog-creature that controlled me. My disobedience would result in facing the very same fate as old-man Arzul did as my blood would be drain out of me and be assimilated in what I have now concluded to be an unholy amalgamation of murderers before me and Arzul.
I shouldn’t cal it that. It had told me its name as it caressed by chin with its deformed, bloody claw: Harhil’gnur, it uttered.
Let my will be that the unholy shack be burned to the ground along with my empire and the wealth I had garnered from my crimes and indiscretions.
---

As the will lay there, a pool of blood began to spill out between the wooden cracks of the door. It engulfed the will until the paper was soaked and the typewriter ink was smudged. The only words you could read before the papers were completely engulfed were the technical legal measures to the will; ‘As stipulated by James Montrose.’