Easter break has come and almost gone for my uni. I’ve spent most of this time…uh… “relieving unresolved stress” from the Labyrinth escapade (and according to Arkady, rather loudly…sorry mate…) and getting myself mentally back in order. Mostly a fellow Thelemite girl that I would occasionally do sex magick with when I got started with this Crowley stuff. Tracking her down took a little bit of work, since I’d kinda misplaced her phone number. But it all worked itself out in the end.
I’ve reconfigured my room a bit to start on rituals and get back into the groove with this Slender business. I also tried to reclaim Porfiry’s body but naturally it was gone. Fiddlesticks. But that’s life I suppose.
I did briefly consider, and I do mean briefly, getting the girl (let’s call her “Babs”) to help me with the Slender One, but common sense and a desire not to drag other people into the mythos sort of slapped me in the face and reminded me that that would be a terrible idea. Really terrible. Like, “Summon Slenderman into my Living Room” terrible. And I try to limit those kinds of catastrophic mistakes to “once in a lifetime.”
I’ve considered briefly looking into this Javert fellow, but he and Arkady have some great chemistry going and I feel like I’d be intruding. You know what they say, three is an orgy but four is forever. With Porfiry gone and Arkady wanting Javert all to himself (I think that’s also mutual) I’m kinda just stuck playing with myself until someone interesting comes along.
I had so much fun writing that last paragraph. You don’t even know.
Anyways, that’s about it for me. I’ll keep you guys posted and let you know when something exciting happens. With our luck, it’ll probably be something soon.
As always
Love Under Will
93/93
Previous/Next
Monday, April 25, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
Resurrection: Sixth Communion
The ceremony cradles my head in trance
I brush dust from my teeth
Fleeing hands and spiders
plead for salvation
They wash the clawed of a priest
ritual mockery rectified doubt
I'm holding with arms open wide
sleeping endless sleep
on a bed of nails
Wake me up with your kiss
I'm waiting for consummation
I'm waiting for contemplation
I'm waiting for confrontation
waiting for a place to
Lay my body down
The proud encasing of another soul
buried deep 'neath the shroud
Flourished with the venom
of the serpent's son
I close my eyes retreat
The prayer hands lays down
on the edge of my sleep
Sister Death in lepers's guise
through crimson eyes
of the holy one
All will learn to see
Invocations are invitations
to the bloody red sheets
The circle is broken
by the sleeve
A sacrifice of one
Resurrection- past reflection
Revelation- last discretion
Confession- Confession
Incomplete
Resurrection
By Rozz Williams
Previous/Next
I brush dust from my teeth
Fleeing hands and spiders
plead for salvation
They wash the clawed of a priest
ritual mockery rectified doubt
I'm holding with arms open wide
sleeping endless sleep
on a bed of nails
Wake me up with your kiss
I'm waiting for consummation
I'm waiting for contemplation
I'm waiting for confrontation
waiting for a place to
Lay my body down
The proud encasing of another soul
buried deep 'neath the shroud
Flourished with the venom
of the serpent's son
I close my eyes retreat
The prayer hands lays down
on the edge of my sleep
Sister Death in lepers's guise
through crimson eyes
of the holy one
All will learn to see
Invocations are invitations
to the bloody red sheets
The circle is broken
by the sleeve
A sacrifice of one
Resurrection- past reflection
Revelation- last discretion
Confession- Confession
Incomplete
Resurrection
By Rozz Williams
Previous/Next
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Labyrinth Part 2
So there I was staring up into the colorless eyes of Asmoday. The 32nd spirit of the Goetia met my gaze with his own, his face contorted into a snide smile.
“Well, well, well Damien. Look at what you’ve gotten yourself into,” Asmoday said, his voice an exact match to the ones that had danced in my head just moments before.
I stared haplessly, my mouth agape in awe and amazement at the sight of the demon. Its imposing figure shone in the light of the library, its pale skin glowing faintly like moonlight. The creature it sat upon craned its neck up and snarled angrily at nothing in particular. I took an involuntary step backwards, not out of fear (as would have been rational) but rather to try and take its towering figure into view.
Before I could take another step, I felt a strong burst of wind kick up through the aisles. I braced myself against the headwind as books flew off the shelves by the dozens, hurled by the gale force winds onto the ground before an updraft threw them into the air where several of these books, despite nature and reasoning, froze. Their pages turned by the wind while they hung suspended in mid air. I fell to one knee, determined not to fall to the ground in a helpless state. And from the center of those damned tomes floating in the air erupted lengths of cold, steel chains. Each one snapped around my limbs and tightened, holding me immobile. I tried to move my arms and legs, but the chains retracted into their books with incredible force. I couldn’t move. There I was, bound to these books and completely helpless.
Asmoday laughed.
“You poor, stupid child.”
“What the fuck is going on!” I shouted, though I have no doubt that the fear in my voice was very obvious to my demonic captor.
“Oh Damien. You still don’t know? Of course you do. You may be a fool, but even you are not so blind!” His voice was thick with contempt.
I struggled for a moment to understand what he meant, but he was correct. It was as if my mind had formed some horrific protective barrier, aware that such an idea would have been too horrible to allow into my conscious thought. But in the face of absolute fear and hopelessness, there was nothing left to protect me from the terrifying possibility.
If Asmoday were a Goetic demon…he had to have come from my own psyche.
As if he could read my thoughts (and one would imagine, given the circumstances, that he could), Asmoday laughed again. Seeing my face change with the sudden understanding must have given him immense joy.
“Now you’re getting it, Damien,” Asmoday chuckled. “I am your self-loathing made manifest. Your self-hatred turned against you. That never ending desire in your mind to destroy yourself slowly and so painfully.”
“No! I refuse to bel-”
And that was as far as I got. As I’d started speaking, I felt a strange feeling rise up from the pit of my stomach. I felt like I was going to throw up, but as it rose into my esophagus, it felt…different. Like a roiling wave were churning as it went further up. The movement felt more defined, more furious as it rose, until it reached the back of my throat and I hacked it all out. It was then that I saw what had unsettled my insides.
Maggots. I was puking fucking maggots.
They squirmed infront of me I coughed them into the ground. I watched them wriggle in a fist-size batch, their small fat bodies glistening in the soft candle light. My stomach revolted at the thought of those disgusting little creatures inside my guts. I felt a second wave of vomit rise up, a reaction to the filthy site before my eyes, but it was too much. I couldn’t hold it in, and a second wave of the vermin escaped my insides and projected onto the floor in front of me. Tears streamed from my eyes, my mind unable to comprehend just how vile this experience was. I wanted to die. More badly than anything, I wanted to die. If I’d had anything else left in me I would have thrown up more, but I felt empty inside.
As if to remind me that more suffering were to come, the chains pulled on me. I felt my shoulders slowly separate out from their sockets, stretching me out. Pain shot through my arms and legs. Asmoday laughed.
"That ought to have shut you up."
His mount stood up and walked slowly towards me, the ground shaking with every slow, ponderous step it took. It stopped a few feet away from me, its sickening yellow eyes glaring at me while Asmoday continued his speech.
“You know, you should really be proud of how long you survived before I finally got my chance to kill you. Not that you actually will be proud. I won’t let you. But it is amazing that, despite how much you really hate yourself, you made it all the way here. Gods know you tried your hardest to end it all. Why else would you have tempted fate with that Slender Man, or let that blood thirsty lunatic into your home while you slept. Somehow, Damien, you managed to survive. But no more. Your self-loathing brought you here before me. And now you die. But not before I strip every piece of arcane knowledge from your mind. It is the pain and suffering you and I both know you deserve.”
I screamed. I screamed in defiance. I pleaded. He must have enjoyed it, the sick fuck, because my wailing was uninterrupted by maggots. Asmoday raised a palm up into the air, and before me appeared a Goetic sigil. Bolts of black lightning shout from its curves and shapes into my eyes. Everything went dark. Burning pain traveled along my skull, and I felt everything get lighter. My mind started to get blurry. I couldn’t focus coherent thought as the storm of darkness continued to fry my mind. My thoughts were blanks, half-formed and then dissipated no matter how hard I tried to concentrate and drive the pain away. The bolts stopped.
My thoughts numb, my mind incapable of producing real thought, I looked up at the sigil that burned away a large portion of my mind. The sigil vanished.
“Well, that’s part of you gone forever. Did that hurt, Damien? I suspect it did. You screamed something awful.”
My dumb mind could not produce sound. I gave no answer. A second sigil formed in front of me, that of another Goetic demon. But which one I couldn’t tell. Such wisdom was locked away from me. Another bolt of darkness burst from the sigil and into my eyes. The pain was less than before, perhaps because I had not enough mental capacity to even acknowledge such suffering. But the loss was just as real, and much worse. Somehow, even in my diminished capacity I understood what I was losing.
The burning stopped. The world had stopped being distinct shapes and had devolved into a sea of blurry colors, devoid of any real meaning. I tried to voice dissent, or something like it, but I have no idea how it came out. I was struggling simply to struggle, and I wasn’t even sure why. In fact, that by itself was curious…there was something in me still fighting. And despite everything in the world melting away before the void of absolute thoughtlessness…I became aware of that instinct to fight.
And then there was a moment of clarity. That realization that there was something so intrinsic to my being that I was fighting beyond all rationale. It wasn’t life, or I wouldn’t have surrendered when the chains had enveloped me and I started puking maggots. No, it was knowledge. Precious knowledge. It defined me. It made me everything I was. It was my True Will in every sense of the word. And with that realization also came the understanding that no part of me would ever destroy my knowledge, no matter how much I hated myself. It was the purest pursuit, the highest reason, the True Will give aim. If nothing else, I could never hate myself enough to turn away from the acquisition thereof.
Whatever it was that stood before me was NOT Asmoday. And whatever it had done, it could not have taken away what I knew. Everything went black for but a moment, and form returned to my consciousness. I was no longer in the library. I was in a black forest. Dead trees covered this bizarre wasteland, the sky a sickly green color illuminated by an ambient and sourceless light.
In front of me stood the Slender One. It’s eyeless face was tilted to one side, as if it were studying me curiously. Tentacles slowly dripped out of its coat, those same unseemly tendrils stretching out towards me. But not today.
“No. I’ve had enough of you,” I snarled.
And it was true. In that moment, he didn’t matter. I had found the axis of my existence, the fulcrum onto which I could shift the world. It was that realization that enabled me to find the answers I’d sought. He could do whatever he liked, it would not change how I knew my destiny.
There is a belief within Thelema that the whole of one’s existence would be summarized as the True Will. It was like the orbit of a planet, the course of one’s whole life time planned along the most natural path. And when a Thelemite reached an understanding, an intrinsic knowledge of this True Will then he could meet and discuss with it. Imagine being able to speak to your entire past, present, and future all at once. Every meaningful relationship, every thought and deed, every minor decision you could ever make, brought before you at once. It happened to Aleister Crowley when he met Nuit, the being that gave him the Book of the Law. That night, it happened to me.
Between myself and the Slender One erupted a shining gold light. It illuminated the sky and swallowed up the green ambient light of the forest. A radiant beam shone through the trees, and even the Slender One himself shrunk back before its beauty. My eyes, however, never left it. The light receded, and my eyes fell upon it. It was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. Humanoid, tall and genderless, four-armed, with slightly blue-tinged skin. It bore six beautiful golden wings along its back. In its left hands it held a mace and a sword, in its right a shield and a scepter. Its bare flesh was covered with hundreds of human eyes, all golden. Every eye wept tears of blood which streaked across its skin and pooled at its clawed feet. Its long mane of flowing gold hair came to shoulder length, the silken strands gently swaying in the wind of the Slender One’s domain.
My Heavenly Guardian Angel, my destiny made manifest.
The Heavenly Guardian Angel stretched its wings. The light shone ever more brightly as the Slender One backed away, raising its arms defensively to its face. The angel lifted its upper most arms and pointed its shining scepter at the Slender One. A beautiful ray of golden light emanated from it and shot forth like a wave towards the Slender One. I watched as the light struck the creature, as the shadow of its corporeal being twisted and writhed under the mystickal assault laid down against it. I must applaud the Slender One. It survived a whole 5 seconds of pure exposure before it faded away.
I knew it wasn’t dead or gone. It had merely retreated. But it didn’t matter. The Angel rose up and shone its light upon the entire dead wasteland. I watched beautiful green grass grow where there was once only death. Up above us, clouds swirled together into a beautiful storm. A bolt of lightning struck one of the dead trees. And then another. And another. The forest slowly burned. I watched the wind carry ashes from the burning trees onto the ground. Flowers sprouted from the barren earth. Life renewed itself as the ruined, hollow grounds of old gave way to a vital new existence. It was all so clear to me. My past and my future.
The angel accepted my wordless understanding. It nodded as I watched the spectacle, and then lifted me up in its arms. We rose through the storm clouds and into the darkness of space. I watched the stars shine brighter and brighter. Shooting stars hurled through the empty darkness, filling the void with limitless light. It was here in this place that the Heavenly Guardian Angel finally spoke to me, directly, and revealed to me all things that will come to pass.
What exactly did the Angel say, you may ask, about my future? To tell you would be meaningless. To put it into words as the Angel did would be a vulgar travesty. All that matters is that I have been given the Law, and I will execute it. There is no recourse.
To you, my readers, I say to you what I have always said, knowing now what truth shall be made manifest.
Love Is The Law
Love Under Will
93/93
Previous/Next
“Well, well, well Damien. Look at what you’ve gotten yourself into,” Asmoday said, his voice an exact match to the ones that had danced in my head just moments before.
I stared haplessly, my mouth agape in awe and amazement at the sight of the demon. Its imposing figure shone in the light of the library, its pale skin glowing faintly like moonlight. The creature it sat upon craned its neck up and snarled angrily at nothing in particular. I took an involuntary step backwards, not out of fear (as would have been rational) but rather to try and take its towering figure into view.
Before I could take another step, I felt a strong burst of wind kick up through the aisles. I braced myself against the headwind as books flew off the shelves by the dozens, hurled by the gale force winds onto the ground before an updraft threw them into the air where several of these books, despite nature and reasoning, froze. Their pages turned by the wind while they hung suspended in mid air. I fell to one knee, determined not to fall to the ground in a helpless state. And from the center of those damned tomes floating in the air erupted lengths of cold, steel chains. Each one snapped around my limbs and tightened, holding me immobile. I tried to move my arms and legs, but the chains retracted into their books with incredible force. I couldn’t move. There I was, bound to these books and completely helpless.
Asmoday laughed.
“You poor, stupid child.”
“What the fuck is going on!” I shouted, though I have no doubt that the fear in my voice was very obvious to my demonic captor.
“Oh Damien. You still don’t know? Of course you do. You may be a fool, but even you are not so blind!” His voice was thick with contempt.
I struggled for a moment to understand what he meant, but he was correct. It was as if my mind had formed some horrific protective barrier, aware that such an idea would have been too horrible to allow into my conscious thought. But in the face of absolute fear and hopelessness, there was nothing left to protect me from the terrifying possibility.
If Asmoday were a Goetic demon…he had to have come from my own psyche.
As if he could read my thoughts (and one would imagine, given the circumstances, that he could), Asmoday laughed again. Seeing my face change with the sudden understanding must have given him immense joy.
“Now you’re getting it, Damien,” Asmoday chuckled. “I am your self-loathing made manifest. Your self-hatred turned against you. That never ending desire in your mind to destroy yourself slowly and so painfully.”
“No! I refuse to bel-”
And that was as far as I got. As I’d started speaking, I felt a strange feeling rise up from the pit of my stomach. I felt like I was going to throw up, but as it rose into my esophagus, it felt…different. Like a roiling wave were churning as it went further up. The movement felt more defined, more furious as it rose, until it reached the back of my throat and I hacked it all out. It was then that I saw what had unsettled my insides.
Maggots. I was puking fucking maggots.
They squirmed infront of me I coughed them into the ground. I watched them wriggle in a fist-size batch, their small fat bodies glistening in the soft candle light. My stomach revolted at the thought of those disgusting little creatures inside my guts. I felt a second wave of vomit rise up, a reaction to the filthy site before my eyes, but it was too much. I couldn’t hold it in, and a second wave of the vermin escaped my insides and projected onto the floor in front of me. Tears streamed from my eyes, my mind unable to comprehend just how vile this experience was. I wanted to die. More badly than anything, I wanted to die. If I’d had anything else left in me I would have thrown up more, but I felt empty inside.
As if to remind me that more suffering were to come, the chains pulled on me. I felt my shoulders slowly separate out from their sockets, stretching me out. Pain shot through my arms and legs. Asmoday laughed.
"That ought to have shut you up."
His mount stood up and walked slowly towards me, the ground shaking with every slow, ponderous step it took. It stopped a few feet away from me, its sickening yellow eyes glaring at me while Asmoday continued his speech.
“You know, you should really be proud of how long you survived before I finally got my chance to kill you. Not that you actually will be proud. I won’t let you. But it is amazing that, despite how much you really hate yourself, you made it all the way here. Gods know you tried your hardest to end it all. Why else would you have tempted fate with that Slender Man, or let that blood thirsty lunatic into your home while you slept. Somehow, Damien, you managed to survive. But no more. Your self-loathing brought you here before me. And now you die. But not before I strip every piece of arcane knowledge from your mind. It is the pain and suffering you and I both know you deserve.”
I screamed. I screamed in defiance. I pleaded. He must have enjoyed it, the sick fuck, because my wailing was uninterrupted by maggots. Asmoday raised a palm up into the air, and before me appeared a Goetic sigil. Bolts of black lightning shout from its curves and shapes into my eyes. Everything went dark. Burning pain traveled along my skull, and I felt everything get lighter. My mind started to get blurry. I couldn’t focus coherent thought as the storm of darkness continued to fry my mind. My thoughts were blanks, half-formed and then dissipated no matter how hard I tried to concentrate and drive the pain away. The bolts stopped.
My thoughts numb, my mind incapable of producing real thought, I looked up at the sigil that burned away a large portion of my mind. The sigil vanished.
“Well, that’s part of you gone forever. Did that hurt, Damien? I suspect it did. You screamed something awful.”
My dumb mind could not produce sound. I gave no answer. A second sigil formed in front of me, that of another Goetic demon. But which one I couldn’t tell. Such wisdom was locked away from me. Another bolt of darkness burst from the sigil and into my eyes. The pain was less than before, perhaps because I had not enough mental capacity to even acknowledge such suffering. But the loss was just as real, and much worse. Somehow, even in my diminished capacity I understood what I was losing.
The burning stopped. The world had stopped being distinct shapes and had devolved into a sea of blurry colors, devoid of any real meaning. I tried to voice dissent, or something like it, but I have no idea how it came out. I was struggling simply to struggle, and I wasn’t even sure why. In fact, that by itself was curious…there was something in me still fighting. And despite everything in the world melting away before the void of absolute thoughtlessness…I became aware of that instinct to fight.
And then there was a moment of clarity. That realization that there was something so intrinsic to my being that I was fighting beyond all rationale. It wasn’t life, or I wouldn’t have surrendered when the chains had enveloped me and I started puking maggots. No, it was knowledge. Precious knowledge. It defined me. It made me everything I was. It was my True Will in every sense of the word. And with that realization also came the understanding that no part of me would ever destroy my knowledge, no matter how much I hated myself. It was the purest pursuit, the highest reason, the True Will give aim. If nothing else, I could never hate myself enough to turn away from the acquisition thereof.
Whatever it was that stood before me was NOT Asmoday. And whatever it had done, it could not have taken away what I knew. Everything went black for but a moment, and form returned to my consciousness. I was no longer in the library. I was in a black forest. Dead trees covered this bizarre wasteland, the sky a sickly green color illuminated by an ambient and sourceless light.
In front of me stood the Slender One. It’s eyeless face was tilted to one side, as if it were studying me curiously. Tentacles slowly dripped out of its coat, those same unseemly tendrils stretching out towards me. But not today.
“No. I’ve had enough of you,” I snarled.
And it was true. In that moment, he didn’t matter. I had found the axis of my existence, the fulcrum onto which I could shift the world. It was that realization that enabled me to find the answers I’d sought. He could do whatever he liked, it would not change how I knew my destiny.
There is a belief within Thelema that the whole of one’s existence would be summarized as the True Will. It was like the orbit of a planet, the course of one’s whole life time planned along the most natural path. And when a Thelemite reached an understanding, an intrinsic knowledge of this True Will then he could meet and discuss with it. Imagine being able to speak to your entire past, present, and future all at once. Every meaningful relationship, every thought and deed, every minor decision you could ever make, brought before you at once. It happened to Aleister Crowley when he met Nuit, the being that gave him the Book of the Law. That night, it happened to me.
Between myself and the Slender One erupted a shining gold light. It illuminated the sky and swallowed up the green ambient light of the forest. A radiant beam shone through the trees, and even the Slender One himself shrunk back before its beauty. My eyes, however, never left it. The light receded, and my eyes fell upon it. It was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. Humanoid, tall and genderless, four-armed, with slightly blue-tinged skin. It bore six beautiful golden wings along its back. In its left hands it held a mace and a sword, in its right a shield and a scepter. Its bare flesh was covered with hundreds of human eyes, all golden. Every eye wept tears of blood which streaked across its skin and pooled at its clawed feet. Its long mane of flowing gold hair came to shoulder length, the silken strands gently swaying in the wind of the Slender One’s domain.
My Heavenly Guardian Angel, my destiny made manifest.
The Heavenly Guardian Angel stretched its wings. The light shone ever more brightly as the Slender One backed away, raising its arms defensively to its face. The angel lifted its upper most arms and pointed its shining scepter at the Slender One. A beautiful ray of golden light emanated from it and shot forth like a wave towards the Slender One. I watched as the light struck the creature, as the shadow of its corporeal being twisted and writhed under the mystickal assault laid down against it. I must applaud the Slender One. It survived a whole 5 seconds of pure exposure before it faded away.
I knew it wasn’t dead or gone. It had merely retreated. But it didn’t matter. The Angel rose up and shone its light upon the entire dead wasteland. I watched beautiful green grass grow where there was once only death. Up above us, clouds swirled together into a beautiful storm. A bolt of lightning struck one of the dead trees. And then another. And another. The forest slowly burned. I watched the wind carry ashes from the burning trees onto the ground. Flowers sprouted from the barren earth. Life renewed itself as the ruined, hollow grounds of old gave way to a vital new existence. It was all so clear to me. My past and my future.
The angel accepted my wordless understanding. It nodded as I watched the spectacle, and then lifted me up in its arms. We rose through the storm clouds and into the darkness of space. I watched the stars shine brighter and brighter. Shooting stars hurled through the empty darkness, filling the void with limitless light. It was here in this place that the Heavenly Guardian Angel finally spoke to me, directly, and revealed to me all things that will come to pass.
What exactly did the Angel say, you may ask, about my future? To tell you would be meaningless. To put it into words as the Angel did would be a vulgar travesty. All that matters is that I have been given the Law, and I will execute it. There is no recourse.
To you, my readers, I say to you what I have always said, knowing now what truth shall be made manifest.
Love Is The Law
Love Under Will
93/93
Previous/Next
The Labyrinth
I’m finally back. My absence was mostly unplanned, and I still do not know exactly how much time was lost to me. You see, readers, I've been on quite the journey since you last heard from me. I have decided to chronicle it mostly for the sake of Kal and Henry. From what little I've gathered from their blogs and such they seem to be out and about still. My cellphone is lost and neither of them are online at the moment, so I've decided to write out this story here for them to find. I'm far too tired to wait until morning to message them. They can read this when they wake up tomorrow, when I expect to still be asleep.
It started perhaps half an hour after my final post, the one detailing our little summoning gambit to buy Kal some time. If you recall, I signed off saying I had plans to get epically hammered. That’s a bit uncharacteristic of me, but I’d grown so tired of…Hell, existing that I felt the need to black out some part of my life for some amount of time.
The process of getting drunk is a bit blurry. I can’t tell you much of what happened except that Arkady, though mildly disappointed, decided I deserved the right to erase parts of my life from memory and dealt with it relatively well. The rest is just flashes of color and blurry recollections of various areas of my apartment. Lost in my bacchanalian revelry, I drifted aimlessly about and enjoyed the sweet bliss of thoughtlessness.
So imagine my surprise, then, when everything shifted into focus all at once. One minute I could barely make heads or tales of my own apartment, and the next…everything was put back in its place. My mind was still slow and my reasoning still faulty, mind you. But I wasn’t so far gone to realize just how odd this phenomenon was. Perhaps it was because of this surprising turn of events that I didn’t immediately notice what should have been obvious. The lights in the apartment were all turned off. Only the screen from my laptop provided any illumination into the hallway where I stood. But it was enough to cast a pale light against the white walls around me, where I watched as shadows gradually reached out from the darkness just beyond the computer’s comforting glow. Each one slithered across the wall slowly, glistening with an unclean sheen that made my skin crawl.
“Oh. It’s you.”
What else do you say in a situation like this? He stepped out of the darkness and into the hallway of my room. His thin, empty face turned in my general direction while his eyeless gaze bore holes into my mind. His suit, cleanly pressed, clung to his gaunt frame as the tendrils of shadow slipped out from the openings in his clothing. It was a strange thing to notice, how clean his appearance was in contrast to his slimy alien appendages. But those were the last thoughts that came to mind as I was suddenly thrust into oblivion.
I thought I was dead. I had no reason to believe otherwise. Where once was the long-limbed menace stood in my hallway was absolute stillness. No walls, no glowing screen. Then, warmth and a sudden flash of light. I opened my eyes and found myself alone. I had awoken on a hard wooden floor, which was rather different from my own carpeted apartment. I definitely was not home. Slowly I sat up and looked around at my surroundings. The place was filled with enormous wooden bookshelves twice my height and filled to the brim. There were tables scattered about, interestingly enough with old wax candles lit to provide the only lighting in the building. I scanned the white walls of what I assumed to be a library in search of a window, but found none. Nor did I see any doors. This…was troublesome.
I stood up and shook off the wave of exhaustion that hit me once the shock receded a bit and I became aware of myself again. My limbs ached and my body protested as I gradually trudged my way towards the nearest shelf. I picked a book at random, for no particular reason at all, and pulled it out of the shelf before cracking it open. There were a half dozen different things I was expecting, from a normal book to a book written in an alien language to a book filled with empty pages. What I was not expecting was the Grimoire Verum (link), which I then held in my very sore hands. Confused, I scanned the other books in the shelf. The whole damn thing was lined with occult manuscripts, books on ancient mythology and folk magick, Gnostic scriptures and more! Every single book in that shelf contained some bit of esoteric knowledge. I walked over towards the next shelf, my pain all but forgotten with this sudden reversal of fortunes, and checked the books there as well. Sure enough, more books on the same subject. The library might not have been that large, but there had to be thousands of books here!
I was giddy with excitement for a moment, but quickly composed myself. As unbelievable and fortunate as this was, I was still stuck in a library that seemed to have no exit. I knew better than to waste my time with physical escape since I clearly wasn’t in any place rational. But what I did have was an entire occult arsenal at my disposal, which I reasoned should make breaking out of this place easier. There had to be something in one of these tomes that could at least point me in the right direction. Success was almost certain, I was convinced. At least, I thought I was. Despite being certain I had everything I needed, there was this strange sense of uncertainty in the back of my consciousness. It was almost like a tiny voice whispering into my ear and building a sense of doubt, but doubt in what I wasn’t so sure. There was nothing I could tell myself to allay this wordless fear that gripped the pit of my stomatch.
I sat down at a table and started reading, getting an idea of what approach to take. But all the while, that uncertainty started to slowly fester in my mind. Book after book I devoured over the span of hours, or maybe days, but all the while the sensation of doubt ate away at me. The voice was slowly growing louder, and more pronounced. I decided to chalk it up to exhaustion. By then I had been up and reading for hours, my eyes were hurting, and I could not for the life of me focus on the book. I assumed if Slender Man wanted to come get me then I’d be just as defenseless asleep as I would be in my current dazed state. I crawled up onto a table and tried to drift to sleep, but found it immensely difficult to do so. More than just the doubt, I began to feel as if someone was watching me. I did a cursory walk through the aisles, hoping to catch a glimpse of some phantasm that was disturbing my much needed rest, but found nothing. I climbed back onto the table and tried to fall asleep. It did not come easy.
I woke up a few hours later, dizzy and in more pain. The voice of doubt in my mind had grown worse, and it began to tear at my psyche internally. As I would mull over escape plans in my head I would involuntarily flash to moments of failure, like when Porfiry nearly killed me despite my protective sigil. Or when Slender Man playfully cast aside my wards and stole my own research subject from me. The thought that I might never leave this place crept into my head constantly, no matter how hard I reassured myself that I was perfectly capable of engineering my escape. I picked up a book and tried to ignore it, but it distracted me from my reading which only shook my resolve. I felt like I was suffocating, as if the light of hope was being gradually smothered by an ebony tide of sourceless fear. My hands trembled as I held the book, my frustration nearly uncontrollable now that I was almost paralyzed with doubt. My thoughts led me to Kal and Henry, and the little girl. Where they alright? Did I really save them, or did I just prolongue the inevitable?
And still I felt that strange presence in the deserted library, as if some creature were lurking in the corners of the room and staring at me. I felt like a prisoner being watched over by a guard. That feeling gradually anchored itself in my mind, and slowly I began to see this endless sea of books not as a source of salvation, but as a prison. I aimlessly walked between aisles and started knocking down books from their shelves, kicking them across the room and shouting in frustration. All the while, that cancerous dread that had been building up inside me continued to erode away what little sanity I had left. I mentally directed criticisms at myself about this whole fiasco, everything that had gone wrong since the Slender One entered my life. About the stupid summoning plan to disprove his existence, about the sigils and nearly being killed by Porfiry. About how my books and research amounted to nothing. It was like I was shouting at myself within my own mind.
“Well, great job there kiddo. Look what you’ve gotten yourself into? An entire fucking arsenal of arcane knowledge and all you can do is impotently shout like a wild animal trapped in a cage.”
“God, you’re pathetic. Call yourself a Thelemite? If you’re so fucking smart, why aren’t you out of here yet?”
“You think you saved Kal? You can’t even save yourself. They’re dead. You’re dead. You’re all fucking dead and you don’t even know it yet.”
“You gave that stupid little girl hope when you saved her, only to have it taken away when Slender Man finally kills her. Who’s the monster now?”
“Just give up. Kill yourself and be spared the embarrassment.”
“Yeah, why don’t you kill yourself you worthless dog? You’ll never amount to anything.”
The sharp tone of the comments finally snapped something inside me. A something that made me realize in that entire moment of hopelessness and dread, that those criticisms weren’t just imaginary accusations. They were voices. Real fucking voices. In my head.
I fell to my knees, clutching my head and screaming to drown out the talking, but no matter how hard I screamed the voices were there, drowning out all sound but the corrosive venom they continued to spew.
“You can’t shut me up! You can’t shut me up! You can’t do anything! You’re fucking stupid! Keep covering your ears, see if that does any good! Scream like a child, a stupid little child!”
A splitting headache erupted through my head. It felt like my brains were pouring out of a gigantic crack in my skull. I lost my sight, my feeble brain trying to continue functioning against the horrific wave of stimulus beating itself against my consciousness.
And then the pain stopped. Everything. My sight was restored, and I saw the floor right beneath me where I had curled up to hide from the pain. I relaxed my breathing down to compose myself. The voices were gone. Everything seemed quiet. I waited, perhaps for a few minutes. And then I slowly lifted my head up, hoping to the gods that I had just woken up from some awful dream. But I hadn’t. I was still in the same stupid library, sitting on the same stupid wooden floor, lost in the same stupid aisles of books. But I was not alone. Before me stood a creature, the one I knew had been watching me this entire time. It sat atop a gargantuan monster easily as tall as an individual bookshelf, with sharp tusks, menacing eyes, and covered in fur. The creature was humanoid, but with three heads. That of a man, of a bull, and of a ram. The center head, the human head, bore a crown with an esoteric sigil upon it. Its outstretched leathery wings were poised behind it, immobile as it stared down at me from its enormous height. I looked up at it, all too familiar with the beast that gazed down upon me.
“Asmoday…”
Previous/Next
It started perhaps half an hour after my final post, the one detailing our little summoning gambit to buy Kal some time. If you recall, I signed off saying I had plans to get epically hammered. That’s a bit uncharacteristic of me, but I’d grown so tired of…Hell, existing that I felt the need to black out some part of my life for some amount of time.
The process of getting drunk is a bit blurry. I can’t tell you much of what happened except that Arkady, though mildly disappointed, decided I deserved the right to erase parts of my life from memory and dealt with it relatively well. The rest is just flashes of color and blurry recollections of various areas of my apartment. Lost in my bacchanalian revelry, I drifted aimlessly about and enjoyed the sweet bliss of thoughtlessness.
So imagine my surprise, then, when everything shifted into focus all at once. One minute I could barely make heads or tales of my own apartment, and the next…everything was put back in its place. My mind was still slow and my reasoning still faulty, mind you. But I wasn’t so far gone to realize just how odd this phenomenon was. Perhaps it was because of this surprising turn of events that I didn’t immediately notice what should have been obvious. The lights in the apartment were all turned off. Only the screen from my laptop provided any illumination into the hallway where I stood. But it was enough to cast a pale light against the white walls around me, where I watched as shadows gradually reached out from the darkness just beyond the computer’s comforting glow. Each one slithered across the wall slowly, glistening with an unclean sheen that made my skin crawl.
“Oh. It’s you.”
What else do you say in a situation like this? He stepped out of the darkness and into the hallway of my room. His thin, empty face turned in my general direction while his eyeless gaze bore holes into my mind. His suit, cleanly pressed, clung to his gaunt frame as the tendrils of shadow slipped out from the openings in his clothing. It was a strange thing to notice, how clean his appearance was in contrast to his slimy alien appendages. But those were the last thoughts that came to mind as I was suddenly thrust into oblivion.
I thought I was dead. I had no reason to believe otherwise. Where once was the long-limbed menace stood in my hallway was absolute stillness. No walls, no glowing screen. Then, warmth and a sudden flash of light. I opened my eyes and found myself alone. I had awoken on a hard wooden floor, which was rather different from my own carpeted apartment. I definitely was not home. Slowly I sat up and looked around at my surroundings. The place was filled with enormous wooden bookshelves twice my height and filled to the brim. There were tables scattered about, interestingly enough with old wax candles lit to provide the only lighting in the building. I scanned the white walls of what I assumed to be a library in search of a window, but found none. Nor did I see any doors. This…was troublesome.
I stood up and shook off the wave of exhaustion that hit me once the shock receded a bit and I became aware of myself again. My limbs ached and my body protested as I gradually trudged my way towards the nearest shelf. I picked a book at random, for no particular reason at all, and pulled it out of the shelf before cracking it open. There were a half dozen different things I was expecting, from a normal book to a book written in an alien language to a book filled with empty pages. What I was not expecting was the Grimoire Verum (link), which I then held in my very sore hands. Confused, I scanned the other books in the shelf. The whole damn thing was lined with occult manuscripts, books on ancient mythology and folk magick, Gnostic scriptures and more! Every single book in that shelf contained some bit of esoteric knowledge. I walked over towards the next shelf, my pain all but forgotten with this sudden reversal of fortunes, and checked the books there as well. Sure enough, more books on the same subject. The library might not have been that large, but there had to be thousands of books here!
I was giddy with excitement for a moment, but quickly composed myself. As unbelievable and fortunate as this was, I was still stuck in a library that seemed to have no exit. I knew better than to waste my time with physical escape since I clearly wasn’t in any place rational. But what I did have was an entire occult arsenal at my disposal, which I reasoned should make breaking out of this place easier. There had to be something in one of these tomes that could at least point me in the right direction. Success was almost certain, I was convinced. At least, I thought I was. Despite being certain I had everything I needed, there was this strange sense of uncertainty in the back of my consciousness. It was almost like a tiny voice whispering into my ear and building a sense of doubt, but doubt in what I wasn’t so sure. There was nothing I could tell myself to allay this wordless fear that gripped the pit of my stomatch.
I sat down at a table and started reading, getting an idea of what approach to take. But all the while, that uncertainty started to slowly fester in my mind. Book after book I devoured over the span of hours, or maybe days, but all the while the sensation of doubt ate away at me. The voice was slowly growing louder, and more pronounced. I decided to chalk it up to exhaustion. By then I had been up and reading for hours, my eyes were hurting, and I could not for the life of me focus on the book. I assumed if Slender Man wanted to come get me then I’d be just as defenseless asleep as I would be in my current dazed state. I crawled up onto a table and tried to drift to sleep, but found it immensely difficult to do so. More than just the doubt, I began to feel as if someone was watching me. I did a cursory walk through the aisles, hoping to catch a glimpse of some phantasm that was disturbing my much needed rest, but found nothing. I climbed back onto the table and tried to fall asleep. It did not come easy.
I woke up a few hours later, dizzy and in more pain. The voice of doubt in my mind had grown worse, and it began to tear at my psyche internally. As I would mull over escape plans in my head I would involuntarily flash to moments of failure, like when Porfiry nearly killed me despite my protective sigil. Or when Slender Man playfully cast aside my wards and stole my own research subject from me. The thought that I might never leave this place crept into my head constantly, no matter how hard I reassured myself that I was perfectly capable of engineering my escape. I picked up a book and tried to ignore it, but it distracted me from my reading which only shook my resolve. I felt like I was suffocating, as if the light of hope was being gradually smothered by an ebony tide of sourceless fear. My hands trembled as I held the book, my frustration nearly uncontrollable now that I was almost paralyzed with doubt. My thoughts led me to Kal and Henry, and the little girl. Where they alright? Did I really save them, or did I just prolongue the inevitable?
And still I felt that strange presence in the deserted library, as if some creature were lurking in the corners of the room and staring at me. I felt like a prisoner being watched over by a guard. That feeling gradually anchored itself in my mind, and slowly I began to see this endless sea of books not as a source of salvation, but as a prison. I aimlessly walked between aisles and started knocking down books from their shelves, kicking them across the room and shouting in frustration. All the while, that cancerous dread that had been building up inside me continued to erode away what little sanity I had left. I mentally directed criticisms at myself about this whole fiasco, everything that had gone wrong since the Slender One entered my life. About the stupid summoning plan to disprove his existence, about the sigils and nearly being killed by Porfiry. About how my books and research amounted to nothing. It was like I was shouting at myself within my own mind.
“Well, great job there kiddo. Look what you’ve gotten yourself into? An entire fucking arsenal of arcane knowledge and all you can do is impotently shout like a wild animal trapped in a cage.”
“God, you’re pathetic. Call yourself a Thelemite? If you’re so fucking smart, why aren’t you out of here yet?”
“You think you saved Kal? You can’t even save yourself. They’re dead. You’re dead. You’re all fucking dead and you don’t even know it yet.”
“You gave that stupid little girl hope when you saved her, only to have it taken away when Slender Man finally kills her. Who’s the monster now?”
“Just give up. Kill yourself and be spared the embarrassment.”
“Yeah, why don’t you kill yourself you worthless dog? You’ll never amount to anything.”
The sharp tone of the comments finally snapped something inside me. A something that made me realize in that entire moment of hopelessness and dread, that those criticisms weren’t just imaginary accusations. They were voices. Real fucking voices. In my head.
I fell to my knees, clutching my head and screaming to drown out the talking, but no matter how hard I screamed the voices were there, drowning out all sound but the corrosive venom they continued to spew.
“You can’t shut me up! You can’t shut me up! You can’t do anything! You’re fucking stupid! Keep covering your ears, see if that does any good! Scream like a child, a stupid little child!”
A splitting headache erupted through my head. It felt like my brains were pouring out of a gigantic crack in my skull. I lost my sight, my feeble brain trying to continue functioning against the horrific wave of stimulus beating itself against my consciousness.
And then the pain stopped. Everything. My sight was restored, and I saw the floor right beneath me where I had curled up to hide from the pain. I relaxed my breathing down to compose myself. The voices were gone. Everything seemed quiet. I waited, perhaps for a few minutes. And then I slowly lifted my head up, hoping to the gods that I had just woken up from some awful dream. But I hadn’t. I was still in the same stupid library, sitting on the same stupid wooden floor, lost in the same stupid aisles of books. But I was not alone. Before me stood a creature, the one I knew had been watching me this entire time. It sat atop a gargantuan monster easily as tall as an individual bookshelf, with sharp tusks, menacing eyes, and covered in fur. The creature was humanoid, but with three heads. That of a man, of a bull, and of a ram. The center head, the human head, bore a crown with an esoteric sigil upon it. Its outstretched leathery wings were poised behind it, immobile as it stared down at me from its enormous height. I looked up at it, all too familiar with the beast that gazed down upon me.
“Asmoday…”
Previous/Next
Monday, April 4, 2011
The Plan
Don’t have too much time to type. Got a brand spanking new bottle of La Clandestine ordered and it came in today. And it’s a perfect time to celebrate. Don’t really wanna dwell too much longer on how fucked over Arkady and I are. No, tonight is to be joyous because nowadays such opportunities are too few in number.
Shit had gone to Hell on FoL’s side. Arkady and I talked about it for a bit, and we ended up devising a plan. Remember how I fucked this entire mess over by bringing the Slender One to me? Well we decided that Kal and Henry needed some cover now that Henry has caved under the stress of watching his girl die. The Ars Goetia is all but faded back at their place, no doubt because of Henry’s mental state (not that I blame him). I called Kal and told him that I was gonna set up a distraction for the Slender One and that he needed to take Henry and the little girl with him and run far away.
Over on our end, Arkady and mine’s mission was simple. We were going to summon the Slender One again. Only neither of us can take him, much less me in my hurt state (arm still healing after what Porfiry did to it). So we got a little clever. We spent the entire day driving around Austin at random locations inscribing copies of the Goetic Summoning Circle I had used that stupid, fateful night. We also bought a bunch of those cheap voice recorders and recorded the incantation I had used along with a 10 minute long delay before the incantation kicked in. We went to one circle and set up the recorded incantation, then drove to the next circle and placed the next incantation. The idea was that the Slender One would be summoned to the circle and the incantation. The recorder would break and immediately free him, but by the time the Slender One would have gotten there Arkady and I would have set up the next recording. We would have effectively spent two hours summoning the Slender One all across town.
For the record, no I did not once stop to think about the horrible horrible possibilities this plan had, like if someone were to walk in during the Slender One’s summoning. I would like to retroactively apologize to the wandering vagrants of Austin who might have been killed by this gambit.
Called Kal as soon as the whole thing started. Got a call back when he said he was almost out of Denver. That was about 20 minutes into the gambit. I called a few minutes after we set down the last incantation and he said everything was going well. They were a bit shaken up, but given what they’ve gone through that’s understandable.
Moral of this story is that Kal and Henry and the little girl are safe and I’ve got me some delicious wonderful absinthe to drink…and drink…and drink until I can’t feel feelings anymore.
Love Under Will
93/93
Previous/Next
Shit had gone to Hell on FoL’s side. Arkady and I talked about it for a bit, and we ended up devising a plan. Remember how I fucked this entire mess over by bringing the Slender One to me? Well we decided that Kal and Henry needed some cover now that Henry has caved under the stress of watching his girl die. The Ars Goetia is all but faded back at their place, no doubt because of Henry’s mental state (not that I blame him). I called Kal and told him that I was gonna set up a distraction for the Slender One and that he needed to take Henry and the little girl with him and run far away.
Over on our end, Arkady and mine’s mission was simple. We were going to summon the Slender One again. Only neither of us can take him, much less me in my hurt state (arm still healing after what Porfiry did to it). So we got a little clever. We spent the entire day driving around Austin at random locations inscribing copies of the Goetic Summoning Circle I had used that stupid, fateful night. We also bought a bunch of those cheap voice recorders and recorded the incantation I had used along with a 10 minute long delay before the incantation kicked in. We went to one circle and set up the recorded incantation, then drove to the next circle and placed the next incantation. The idea was that the Slender One would be summoned to the circle and the incantation. The recorder would break and immediately free him, but by the time the Slender One would have gotten there Arkady and I would have set up the next recording. We would have effectively spent two hours summoning the Slender One all across town.
For the record, no I did not once stop to think about the horrible horrible possibilities this plan had, like if someone were to walk in during the Slender One’s summoning. I would like to retroactively apologize to the wandering vagrants of Austin who might have been killed by this gambit.
Called Kal as soon as the whole thing started. Got a call back when he said he was almost out of Denver. That was about 20 minutes into the gambit. I called a few minutes after we set down the last incantation and he said everything was going well. They were a bit shaken up, but given what they’ve gone through that’s understandable.
Moral of this story is that Kal and Henry and the little girl are safe and I’ve got me some delicious wonderful absinthe to drink…and drink…and drink until I can’t feel feelings anymore.
Love Under Will
93/93
Previous/Next
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