Kogun (standard:horror, 3630 words)
Author: Lev821	Added: Jul 02 2009	Views/Reads: 3144/1926	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
A new employee turns up for work with new injuries. Perhaps his boss should not investigate why.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story


The two other workers who were at the desks looked at Kevin as if to
say: ‘Well, probe him further or send him home', but he didn't, then 
simply said: “I'm going the shop, anybody want anything?” Everyone 
shook their heads, and he left, the door shutting slowly behind him. 

The following day, Martin turned up for work as usual, but there were no
more marks on his face. The black-eye was still there, as was his 
swollen lip and plaster, but Kevin hoped that would be all. However, 
the day after, his face was still the same, but his right hand was 
bandaged, and he walked with a limp. Again, Kevin felt he had to say 
something, and approached him at his desk. “Martin. Do you need time 
off to recover? What's been happening to you?” The telephone on his 
desk rang. “Nothing,” Martin said, rather loudly, and the look in his 
eyes would have made Medusa proud. He reached for the telephone, and 
answered it, and again Kevin knew that that was all he was going to 
get, and simply stood there, not knowing what to say. Should he pull 
rank and disconnect the call and demand to know what was wrong. ‘I am 
your boss and I want to know what's happened or you do not work here 
anymore', or go back to his office to decide what to do. 

While he was there, pacing around, trying to sum up courage to confront
him again, he heard a raised voice from outside at the desks. “Nothing, 
ok, there's nothing wrong, alright, I'm fine”. The door opened and 
Isabel walked in with wide, questioning eyes. She hooked her thumb over 
her shoulder and kept her voice low. “I've just asked Martin about...” 
“Yes I know,” “Well, I think you should do something. Give him time off 
or, well, whatever”. “Yes thank-you Isabel. I'll do something”. She 
looked at him for a few seconds, and he realised that she knew full 
well that he had no idea what to do, or had any nerve to do what she 
knew he ought to, so she simply turned and left, and Kevin sat back in 
his chair, and then knew exactly what he was going to do. It however, 
required more courage that what he needed now. He was almost ashamed of 
himself for not dealing with him more forcefully, for not discipling 
him. Bosses didn't get where they were by being nice. Some of them get 
where they do by illegal and unfair means, and by plenty of 
back-stabbing. Some, however, reach higher levels without resorting to 
illict behaviour. They, though, are mostly exceptions. 

The thought of having to sack him brought a wave of apprehension through
him. He'd never had to discipline anybody, but this was the highest 
position he had reached and so far had been content with his workforce. 
He rifled through the metal filing cabinet to find Martin's details and 
CV, and listened for the door opening incase he was caught. He needed 
the address and quickly wrote it down on a notepad, tearing it out and 
shoving it into his pocket. He decided to try one more time before 
Martin went home, but found he was with a customer, so busied himself 
with straightening brochures, and was about to go back to his office 
when the customer stood up and shook Martin's hand. He left with a 
smile on his face. No question he can do the job, Kevin thought. He 
crossed to his desk. “Are you sure you don't want to tell me what's...” 
He pointed to his own eye again. Martin just stared at him, as if he 
was surprised he had the cheek to ask, then looked at the computer and 
treated Kevin as if he was not there. Kevin simply wandered back to his 
office rather sheepishly, and closed the door behind him. In his 
pocket, he felt the piece of paper bearing Martin's address. 

At 20:04pm that night, rain pelted the city as though a hurricane was in
rehearsal, and wind buffeted the blue Peugeot 206, parked across the 
road from Martin's basement flat. Kevin watched the building, feeling 
rather like a stalker, or a private detective hired to spy on somebody. 
All he could hear was the rain lashing the car, and the rubbery squeak 
of the windscreen wipers as they tried in vain to wash the water away. 
Again, apprehension soared through him, and he knew it was now or 
never. He wasn't going to knock, just see if he could see anything that 
could give him answers. 

He pushed hard to open the door as the wind pushed against it. He soon
found himself slamming it shut, and running across the road, bathed in 
light from the street-lamp in front of the fence, bordering an unkempt 
square of grass. When he reached the gate, he found he was soaked. A 
path led to steps leading up into a three-storey building, but beside 
that, there were steps curving down to a door. At floor level, there 
was a window approximately fourteen inches high and eight feet long. 
The light was on, and he pushed the wooden gate open, again, the wind 
protesting, but he soon found himself walking slowly across to the 
window, and looking down into a kitchen. He suddenly took a few steps 
back, as he had seen a man there. As rain pelted him, and wind pushed 
against him, he slowly edged his way back, careful to avoid casting his 
shadow inside, and looked down at the man, who was simply leaning 
against the counter, arms folded, looking at a kettle as steam rose 
from it. He was topless, and Kevin guessed he was simply waiting for 
the kettle to boil, but he could see no cup ready. Around a minute 
passed, and two other people walked in. They were chatting and smiling. 
One of them was Martin, who lay several items on the counter. Lighter 
fuel and matches, a hammer, a shard of glass, a wooden mallet, and what 
looked to be a knitting needle. 

They soon stopped talking, and joined the man in looking at the kettle
as they waited for it to boil. Around thirty seconds passed and Kevin 
saw the appliance click off, steam billowing into the air. The man 
suddenly lunged for it, opened its top, picked it up and emptied the 
water over himself, his face, shoulders and chest scalding and turning 
red. He screamed in pain, the last drop leaving the kettle before he 
dropped it. He writhed around and collapsed to the floor. In his pain, 
he made a few pleading gestures towards something that Kevin could not 
see. The look on his face could have been perceived as pleasure, or 
pain. The other two looked at him with smiles on their faces, then 
Martin wandered away, and returned seconds later with what was clearly 
barbed-wire around two-foot long. He no longer had the plaster on his 
face, but still had the bandage on one hand, but on the other, he got 
the other man to wrap it around like a knuckle-duster. Soon his hand 
looked like it was wearing a metal glove. The scalded man was on his 
knees, trembling, but still looking at something out of Kevin's view. 

Martin then stood beside the kneeling man, and proceeded to strike
himself repeatedly in the face, instantly drawing blood, then punching 
at his ear, then scraping it down the side of his neck. Blood streamed 
down onto his T-shirt. He punched his face a few more times, drawing 
blood from his nose, and then gestured a kind of appeal in the same 
direction as the scalded man. He looked exhausted, and Kevin saw the 
other man cross to the kitchen sink, just below, out of his view. 
Martin turned to speak to the man, but stopped. Something had caught 
his eye. He looked directly up at Kevin, his bloodied face turning to 
anger. He then stalked away, and Kevin panicked, and made a few steps 
away, then realised there was no point in running. The basement flat 
door opened, and out walked Martin, who stood holding the door open, 
looking at Kevin. His anger seemed to have gone, as if on his journey 
to the entrance he'd gave up and just accepted that Kevin should know. 
Rain lashed at Martin, washing the blood away in seconds. He nodded 
inside, and Kevin slowly walked in. Martin closed the door, and Kevin 
followed him into the kitchen. The other two men looked at him in 
surprise, the scalded man looking through scrunched, pain filled eyes. 
“This is my nosy boss,” said Martin, “Spying on us”. The others said 
nothing, and it was then that Kevin saw what had been out of his view. 
On a kitchen table, which was draped with a green silk sheet, was a 
large wooden sculpture of what looked like a deep-sea angler fish, 
crossed with other fish found in the depths. It was around three-feet 
tall by five feet long. The huge maw of its mouth contained jagged, 
sharp wooden teeth, its large round eyes staring forward as though it 
could see the men. It was a rather amateurish sculpture, as though a 
student who wasn't really into the subject had done it for an exam. 
There was also dark splashes of red over it, where blood had been shed. 
“That,” said Martin, “Is Kogun. The God of suffering, of pain. Sculpted 
by Jeremy here,” he gestured to the other man, a rather rotund 
gentleman with an unkempt black beard who looked to be in his late 
forties. He simply stared at Kevin, then looked at Martin and said: 
“Despite him, It's now my turn”. Martin nodded. “Yes, it is”. “So it's 
all just...” said Kevin, stopping when he saw Jeremy pick up a 
specially selected shard of glass, which he could see was already 
stained with dried blood. It was around six inches, half of it wrapped 
in crimson cloth. 

Jeremy turned and looked at the deity, brought out his tongue, and
pressed the glass onto it, easily tearing through the soft flesh. It 
penetrated around an inch before he gagged on blood and coughed it up 
onto the floor. He dropped the glass and put a trembling hand to his 
head, pain pulsing through him. After a few seconds, he reached onto 
the counter to pick up a sharpened knitting needle and mallet. Standing 
there for a few seconds, blood streaming from his mouth, he looked at 
the idol in admiration, fear, and pain. 

The sharpened end of the needle, he placed into his left ear, sliding it
in around three centimetres, and keeping it there with his right hand. 
He then proceeded to bang it in with the mallet. He managed two 
strikes, screaming as the needle penetrated around three inches. Both 
Kevin and Martin flinched at the loudness of him, and Jeremy collapsed 
to his knees, and then to the floor, shuddering in agony as though a 
powerful electric current was surging through him. “What the......why?” 
said Kevin, “What on earth is this?” He continued, not waiting for 
answer: “You're insane, you know that?” A wave of confidence swept over 
him. “You're sacked. That's it, you're out”. “On what grounds?” said 
Martin, “What I do in my spare time has nothing to do with you. You 
can't sack me”. “If it's affecting your work, then it is, and I don't 
employ psychos” he tapped the side of his head. “Do you think this is 
some poxy cult? Kogun calls to us, demands our pain to appease him. 
He's the God who was cast out of the history books, not mentioned, 
forgotten, because of the suffering he caused to innocents when he 
lived in this realm. The other Gods cast him into another dimension 
where he could not interfere with anything on Earth, but he managed to 
be able to call to those people whom he knew would understand. There 
are many of us across the world, and now he is bound here by devotee's 
pain. As long as somebody somewhere on this earth is in pain in 
devotion to him, then he is here, in this dimension. If not, then he 
goes back to the realm where there is nothing, he being the only God 
where there is only space and time. No planets, no other life. Infinite 
nothingness in all directions. So on this world when somebody suffers 
in worship to him, it brings him back here”. “So he is here, then” said 
Kevin, his tone of voice heavy with scepticism. “He's here right now 
because those two are in pain”. He gestured to the two men. Jeremy had 
now managed to reached out a hand in a pleading gesture to the statue, 
as if to say ‘Am I suffering enough?'. “Yes, he's here” said Martin, 
“but he also could be elsewhere in the world as long as somebody is 
worshipping in pain. Gods can be two, three, eight thousand places at 
once. He's not just some pathetic deity you know, worshipped by some 
weird cult who....” A look of horror sank onto Martin's face, followed 
by fear. He looked at the sculpture, his eyes wide in panic. “I'm 
sorry,”  he shouted. “I'm sorry. You're not pathetic, I'm so sorry. 
Forgive me. Forgive me I beg you.” He fell to his knees and clasped his 
hands, pleading, tears streaming down his face. He reached up onto the 
counter and picked up the claw hammer which looked new. He grasped it 
in both hands and did not hesitate in repeatedly slamming it into his 
mouth as hard as he could, shattering his teeth and cracking his jaw. 
His skin ripped and pieces of teeth embedded into his tongue, and some 
spilled out onto the floor, blood dripping to mix with Jeremys. He 
cracked his fore-head and left cheek-bone and bridge of his nose. His 
face was a mask of scarlet, the fluid pouring down, as it still did 
from Jeremy's mouth. They all reached out to the statue, pleading. “I'm 
sorry,” said Martin, “Please forgive me”. He then collapsed to the 
floor, the pain ripping through his nerves and pulsing into his brain. 

Kevin just stood behind them, his face that of confusion, a frown
creasing his fore-head, his hands on his hips. After a few seconds, he 
looked up at the sculpture, and his face became more serious, because 
he knew something was there, another being inside the carving. It 
somehow took on a more realistic appearance. Its teeth looked white and 
sharp, and it seemed to have shiny green scales. Suddenly words formed 
in his mind, and he knew it wasn't him, or his subconscious. ‘Worship 
me with pain,' it said, and fear surged through Kevin. ‘Worship me with 
pain'. The statues eyes shone with white, and Kevin picked up the 
lighter fuel and matches, and squeezed at least half of the can onto 
his face, some spilling onto his shirt which was still damp from the 
rain. He threw the can down, and struck a match. 

Not through fear, but through devotion, Kevin brought the flame to his
face, and it instantly became a flaming mask of pain. He sank to his 
knees in the blood, and opened his arms wide in worship as his hair 
burned and his face began to melt. 

The following day, he turned up for work as normal, his face red and
tender, some of the skin having drooped beneath his eyes and around his 
mouth, but he preferred work to hospital, and guessed he could easily 
cope with questions. With his hair having been blazing, he had decided 
to shave it all off, so his whole head was different shades of red. 

Isabel entered his office, and hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “Martin
looks even worse, I don't know what...” she stopped as she saw Kevin. 
“What the...?” “It's nothing, ok, out!” he nodded to the door, and 
Isabel simply stood there for a few seconds, staring at him, then 
turned and left. Kevin stood up and walked to the door, opened it and 
leaned against the frame. He looked across at Martin's desk. Martin was 
busy sorting through papers, and out of the corner of his eye, saw his 
superior. They smiled at each other, then Kevin turned back into his 
office, and quietly closed the door behind him. 


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