Per 
A percentage mark ("%") is a tool I use to mark passages or words that I either want to expand or revise. It is (probably) not a typo.
- The Ghost of your father
- Shadow
- Series set in 1882 (see what was going on then)
- A Murder In The O5 Council
- Stripped Gears
- Starting A Family
- G'awwwww
- Fartwork, Fart II
- Simurgh
- I Was A Teenage Warlock
- The King's Domain
- Statements
- SH Thing
- Artwork
- Essay
- L5
- The Humo Street Revival
- Tales For...
- Misters Series 2
- Random idea dump
- BQ!
- Account of a Hiking Trip
- Francis LePage
Watch the smoke, Art told himself, always watch the smoke.
The city of Shadows shivered with a million unseen shapes. Across lightless brick and concrete, fae and dryads feasted on dark meals. The few feeble pools of light from windows and street lights only served to sharpen the shapes of the city's citizens.
1. High stakes gambling! Loss!
2. Your soul is now property of Ackerly & Sweetgum. If you want it back, you will need to retrieve an illustrated copy of the DI. Oh no! One of the anarchists is someone you fucked over!
3. Manage to talk the guy down! Gain trust by helping with a bank robbery!
4.
O5-11 was reading over the folder again, considering the pros and cons of maiming orphans to contain an infectious nettle plant when the video monitor lit up. A message from O5-3. Eleven patched him through.
"Eleven," Three began, his eyes wide, "you need to come here now. Thirteen's dead." There was a slight quaver in his voice.
Eleven wasn't sure how to respond. It seemed that Three wanted her to be shocked that the old man was finally gone. Her initial reaction was to laugh. The spiteful old fossil was finally, finally out of the way.
There was a tremor in Three's voice that suggested that elation wasn't the expression to choose. She settled for a short nod and a considered "Hmmm…"
Thirteen was by far the oldest member of the Overseer council, a body where the average age was generally in the upper seventies. It had been over twenty years since he had grown too feeble to attend meetings in person, and nearly fifteen since he had stopped making speeches altogether.
For years, he had laid in his bed, penning vitriolic screeds against this or that potential reorganization or change. In the past several years, he had given up typing altogether, simply voting "No" on any new proposal. For whatever reason, he had seemed particularly relish voting down ideas put forth by Eleven and Six. The past few weeks, he had become a bit more reasonable, but still refused to offer any explanation for his votes.
She had queued up a playlist for this exact moment. As Eleven clicked open windows on her monitor, Three continued, lowering his voice. "He's dead. And you need to get over here, now."
She looked down at the papers strewn across her desk. "I really can't, Three. You can send me a report, or we can discuss it at the next meeting."
On the video monitor, Three shook his head. "No reports. No talking about it at meetings. No one who's not on the council can know about it." He was practically whispering now. "One and Ten are both here. The rest should be arriving over the next few hours."
"Christ, Three, everyone at a single, unsecured location? You know what a breach of protocol that is?"
"Sod the bloody protocol!" Three said, raising his voice. He glanced around and whispered into the sfcreen. "The site's secured. We're at Thirteen's home. Red Right Hand is here. Three, you need to come, now. Please." Before she could respond, the feed went dead.
Muttering to herself, Eleven sent out orders for a transport to Thirteen's home. But before she left, she hit "Play" on the console.
A chorus of squeaky voices sang, celebrating the death of a witch.
Helicopters always put Eleven in a foul mood. Even the glee at Thirteen's death began to curdle as she was jostled back and forth by turbulence. After what seemed like forever, they set down in a clearing. Black-clad MTF agents dashed back and forth, barking indistinct orders. As Eleven exited the helicopter, she saw Six approach to greet her.
Eleven smiled, glad to meet someone else also grateful for Thirteen's overdue passing. Six didn't smile back. It was only then that Eleven began to realize how serious the situation was.
"The Insurgency? Or the Coalition?" she asked, a note of hope in her voice. Six shook her head and led Eleven past the crowd of men in hazmat suits.
Eleven's mind began to churn with possibilities as Six failed to respond. "Broken God? Or some travesty by those art kids?" Six silently led her forward.
"Sarkic… death attack? Fifthist axiom realignment?" Her voice quavered.
Six shook her head. After several minutes of walking past panicked-looking men and women in uniform, they reached a small cabin. Around the house stood a thick ring of MTF agents and security personnel. It was a simple wood log affair, exactly of the sort a sanctimonious prig like Thirteen would want. The dozens of automated sentries and missile turrets laid exposed and deactivated in the perimeter around the house. Six headed towards the open front door and motioned Eleven to follow her. Eleven moved behind the old woman.
The interior of the cabin was almost totally bare, exactly as Eleven has always imagined Thirteen would lived. The single small room held a table and chair, refrigerator, stove, bed, and bookcase that appeared to make up almost all of the old man's possessions. Eleven wondered if Thirteen even had indoor plumbing.
Eleven scanned the kitchen floor. It was strewn with loose food packaging and scraps. Once, years before Eleven had joined the council, she had heard that Thirteen
Awww yiss Magdalena!
http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-2987
As Nathan Đoàn walked the marble-tiled hall, the walls seemed to swallow all unnecessary sound. The shoes of the receptionist made no sound as she led him down. He couldn't even hear his own breathing. Just the sound of beating blood in his ears.
He had the impulse to grab the nearest priceless knick-knack and hurl it at the floor. Marshall and Carter only asked to see people individually if something very bad or something very good had happened. Nathan had done nothing particularly good of late, which left only one option. He focused on keeping his breathing steady and trying to think of all of the prime numbers ending in three.
After several turns, the secretary led Nathan to a tall mahogany door at the end of particularly long and immaculately-decorated hallway. The secretary smiled and stepped to one side, motioning for Nathan to open the door.
Nathan stared at the brass doorknob, finely carved with Lydian animals. His fingers hovered over it as he fought the urge to hurl himself from the nearest window.
The secretary gave a polite cough. Nathan's fingers grasped the doorknob, but didn't turn it.
The secretary cleared his throat. Nathan opened the door and walked through. The door slammed shut behind him.
Carter stooped at the desk, while Marshall stood to the side. Both wore tailored suits, although Carter's somehow managed to hang from his emaciated frame. A single bulky bodyguard sat in a chair in the corner, smoking a cigar. From the dark oak paneling of the wall to the window that seemed to stretch past the ceiling, everything in the room oozed barely-restrained wealth. In the back of Nathan's mind came the thought that there was no ambient noise whatsoever. He did his best to keep the trembling in check.
"Ah, Mr. Doan," said Marshall, pronouncing it d'Own. He seemed to stare right through Nathan, "we are so glad for your company today. Unfortunately, Mr. Dark was unavailable, but he sends his warmest regards."
The bodyguard stood up and began to advance towards Nathan with unsteady steps. He could smell the cigar's smoke - a mixture of ginger and burning dog shit. Nathan tried to move, but found himself bound to the spot. Carter glowered silently, his eyes following the bodyguard. Marshall's gaze remained fixed just beyond Nathan.
"Please, don't mind our associate," Marshall continued, his tone unchanged, "It's a mere security precaution-" Carter gave a hoarse rasp that Nathan assumed was supposed to imitate a laugh - "But if you would stick out your tongue, please, this will continue so much more smoothly."
Without thinking, Nathan stuck out his tongue. The bodyguard grabbed it between his thumb and forefinger. The man said a few words in a hollow voice. For a split second, Nathan could only taste dust and moonlight. Then, the sensation passed. The bodyguard released Nathan's tongue and retreated to the chair, the smell moving with him. Nathan wondered what the hell had just happened.
"It's a hex," Carter said, "Tell anyone about this meeting or what we tell you here, and the erinyes will skin you alive. For a start."
"With, of course, certain exceptions and adjustments, which we will certainly discuss later. But Mr. Carter is correct insofar as discretion will be highly beneficial. Now, please, Mr. d'Own, have a seat."
Nathan nodded and sat down. The chair was, of course, leather and, of course, overstuffed. His heartbeat slowed slightly. Marshall continued to stare at the spot where Nathan had been for several seconds before fixing his gaze back on Nathan. His heartrate shot back up. He gripped the arms of the chair.
"A great many of our associates, Mr. d'Own, make their ways to us from the most prestigious banking and financial institutions of the world. Your trajectory, however, has been far more eclectic. From failed novelist to confidence man, then to computer programming, then on to the world of theater for a spell," Marshall said, "Then back to computer programming, specifically for financial institutions, then creating your own bank. And all of this before forty. Isn't that correct?"
It took Nathan a moment to realize that Marshall expected an answer. "Y-yes, that's correct. Then I came here."
"Indeed you did, and we are all the richer, if I may say, for the breadth of your experience. But that all our associates had such a wealth of passions. A calculator can add sums, what we require more of is a joie de vivre such as your own!" Marshall reached his right hand into his pocket and pulled out a coin that seemed to shimmer in the light. His eyes remained fixed on Nathan.
"I, for example, practiced magic - the petty, false craft, not the true study - in my youth. Its lessons have stayed with me throughout my career as a man of business. Do you know what I found to be the common foundation for success in both ventures?" Marshall closed his hands into fists.
Nathan shook his head.
"Misdirection. If your activity is to the left," Marshall said, "your mark think it to the right." He opened his left hand, revealing the same shimmering coin. He slid the coin back into his pocket.
Carter gave a dusty laugh, which quickly dissolved into a wheezing cough. After several seconds of hacking, he began to speak. "Mr. Phúc, Dark is… " he said before breaking into another spell of hacking.
Nathan was grateful. Any reprieve from a sentence that began "Dark is" was, by definition, good. He thought about how the old man had pronounced his given name correctly. He tried not to think about the rest.
"Dark is gone," the ancient man continued, "And we need to make it look as though he isn't. You need to. The market requires it."
Nathan sat, trying to process the words. He had never seen Dark, but had never assumed that one third of the company would simply be gone.
Gone. He tried to imagine what that would mean for a man like Dark. After a minute, he became aware that Carter, as well as Marshall, was staring at him.
"W-well, yes. You can make someone disappear, certainly. In terms of records, it's a fairly straightforward process" Nathan said, finally, "But making someone continue to exist is a bit more difficult, particularly if you want it to stand up to serious scrutiny."
Marshall gave a laugh. It sounded like ice.
"Please, Mr. d'Own, don't be ridiculous. The notion that we would want Mr. Dark to appear to continue living is absurd. What we wish is for there to exist a paper trail justifying the continued existence of Mr. Dark, or, at least, a legal fiction that stands for our departed Mr. Dark, in our venture. While the old fellow passed beyond without any living kin, we wish to create a veritable army descendants who will squabble endlessly on paper for the sole right to his considerable fortune." Marshall's voice began to take on a distorted, hollow quality.
Nathan looked to Carter, but the man appeared not to notice. Perhaps Carter was deaf, Nathan wondered. Or maybe he had just gone mad and was imagining the distortion.
Marshall continued. "They should be a particularly litigious bunch, prone to scandal and dissolute living. All the while as the cases, the suits and counter-suits and counter-counter suits and neverending motions continue, the fortune will be held in trust by a string of worlds-wide shell companies, ultimately, accountable to us."
"Dark always was a silent partner. It won't be far different, from a business perspective," Carter croaked.
A general plan began to form in Nathan's mind. He tried not to think about the voice. "That would certainly be possible. But it would require a variety of components. Actors or replicas of some kind, certainly. You can fake family drama, but to do something on the scale you're proposing would require a team of writers, both for legal proceedings and for general developments," he said.
Marshall shook his head. "Unfortunately, that would not be tenable. Our previous attempts at a similar project were designed along the same lines as those you just suggested. The results were less than satisfactory," he said, his voice back to normal. Out of the corner of his eye, Nathan noticed Carter rubbing the back of his neck. Nathan shivered.
He continued, "However, with your expertise in computers, particularly those Khivan puzzles-"
"Algorithms," Carter said.
"-It should be a simple matter to develop a self-perpetuating drama that will misdirect outside parties as to the whereabouts of Mr. Dark and his family."
Nathan nodded again. "Yes, something along those lines would be difficult, but certainly possible."
"Good," Carter said, "You will find previous work on the subject at your office when you return. You will be compensated or reprimanded, depending on your performance. Now leave."
Without wasting a second, Nathan practically dashed from the room, nearly running into the bodyguard in the corner. The room was now empty, but for the three figures.
"Do you think he bought it?" Carter said when Nathan had exited.
"He's no fool. Of sufficient intelligence to realize that something is amiss, of sufficient wisdom to realize there's no profit to be found in that particular briar patch. Besides, even if he were to attempt to uncover something, there are countless red herrings he can follow, all of which lead him back to the start," Marshall said.
"You would know," Carter muttered under his breath. He turned to the third figure in the room. "Is the arrangement satisfactory to you?" he asked the figure smoking the last of the cigar.
"Yes," it replied, "Provided my money makes its way to me."
The thing had a voice like rusted hinges. Carter shook slightly, and even Marshall tensed up a bit.
"Of course, old friend," Marshall said, "We wouldn't have it any other way." His smile was more forced than usual.
"Then we have no more business. Leave me," the figure said.
Marshall stood up to leave, while Carter wheeled forward in his chair. He shuddered and turned his char to face the figure in the corner. "Nothing personal, but by Christ, I hope to never see you again," he said before leaving. If the thing in the corner noticed his words, it gave no indication.
The two men hurried out of the false room. As the door closed behind them, the figure ground out the last remains of the cigar. Made from the bark of trees grown deep within the heart of the Ravelwoods, the single cigar cost more than the GDPs of several small nations.
The sacrifice extinguished, the figure began to melt. Without an anchor, it returned to its component clay. The room began to collapse with the clay man, ancient luxuries dissolving into newspaper and greasy rags. Soon, even the remnants had begun to bleed into one another.
After a minute, the room was gone. There was only dark.
Nathan
it would be best to utilize artificial intelligence. Perhaps hire actors or create replicas of humans to go to and from court, and to be seen about town.
Đào Đình Cả
Đoàn Đình Phúc
exu
Kropotkin
In 1922, Kazimierz Mazurski entered his laboratory for the first time. Formerly a warehouse, the building's brick exterior was indistinguishable from its neighbors. As he lit the gas lighting, he was pleased to see the thin wires of metal stacked in the corner next to the work bench, as he had requested. The bare concrete floor was interrupted by several squares of exposed earth, each with a bag of cement nearby. Kazimierz cracked his knuckles.
The sun was still high when Kazimierz sat down. The concrete floor shone with yards of silver and brass inlay, tracing esoteric symbols of power and containment, mixed with a few of his own modifications. He hadn't expected to finish so soon. For a minute, he thought about his options. Take the rest of the day off, begin serious research into the talmudic and Talmudic topics he had promised Rabbi Anielewicz in exchange for the funding for the lab, sit and think some more.
Then, another thought intruded. Kazimierz dashed to the work bench and grabbed a sheet of paper and a pen. A few jottings later, and the design was complete. In theory, at least, it was feasible. However, many past theoretically feasible projects had been practically explosive. Kazimierz looked around the new Greenpoint laboratory, in a city where he only knew two people, in a country where he had only arrived eight days ago, in a place a thousand times distant from Petrograd and all that he had known. Everything seemed abstract, almost academic. With a grunt, he got to his feet and picked up a small satchel of sand resting on the work bench. He moved towards the brass circle nearest to him and spilled the sand all around the before stepping into the circle himself. The schematic fell to the ground just outside the circle.
Words from languages nine times dead flowed from his mouth. His hands moved quickly, tracing curling lines in the sand. He only occasionally needed to look to the schematic. As he finished the final line, Kazimierz felt the air inside the circle shift.
He cautiously moved his hand, and the color seemed to
In
Heinrich Bauer was an unhappy man, irritated that the world provided him so many opportunities for unhappiness.
As he trudged through the still-dark streets, he began to catalogue the ways the world seemed determined to upset him. The damp coldness that bit into him, even through his coat. The spotty gas lighting that meant he made his way to work in the dark as often as not. The failure of someone else to clean out the bombed out skeletons of buildings, even four years on. The continued existence of his landlady, Frau Schneider.
Caught up in his stewing resentment, Heinrich almost didn't notice the soldiers heading toward him. It was only when one of them began to speak in Russian that he realized the situation. He felt a thousand drops of sweat prick at the back of his neck. He tucked his head down and made his way quickly past the soldiers, suddenly grateful for the dark Berlin street.
By the time he reached the shop, he had worked the soldiers and all that they represented into his list of grievances.
The red Buick shuddered to a stop. The driver's door opened first, protesting loudly. A young man wearing jeans and a stained button-down shirt got out and stretched. There were bags under his green eyes, and he seemed to sway where he stood, ready to fall over.
Almost simultaneously, two women emerged from the car. One was older, with thinning hair and a mouth that fell naturally into a frown. The other looked to be in her early twenties and wore a ratty t-shirt for a charity fun run. For a moment, none of them spoke. The two women appeared to be staring into space.
The man looked around the parking lot and saw no one. The grass growing from the cracks in the asphalt swayed in the breeze.
"So, uh, this is it, yeah? Another one?" the man said at last. Neither of the two women looked at him.
Another pause. "Yes," the older woman said at last, still staring into space, "this is it. The spirits have led us here." She turned to him. "Now we wait."
The man wrestled a crushed pack of cigarettes from his back pocket. He pulled one out and placed it between his dry lips. After a moment of blind fumbling, he pulled a pack of matches from his pocket and struck one, lighting the cigarette. "Sheeeeiiiit," he muttered as he took in a breath of the smoke, "why are the spirits so obsessed with Shit-Ass, Nowhere?"
The younger woman slowly turned her head to face the man. "Dale," she said quietly, "shut the fuck up. The spirits are here. Deborah," she jerked her head towards the old woman, "hears them. Stick to the plan."
Once upon a time, there was a simple thought. "What is outside of me and outside of my understanding is dangerous" it.
The thought invaded the minds of humanity while they were still leaving the trees, and after many millennia, had grown large. People never spoke of the thought directly, but called it by a million different names, working it into stories, rituals, and life itself. With time, the thought grew strong, and it grew aware of itself. It was everywhere that someone was thinking it, but unless it concentrated, everything blended into a white noise.
For a time, the thought was free, changing from story to story, from night to night as people huddled around campfires and inside of caves. It had no single form, even from telling to telling. In one telling, it would be a lion "with teeth like daggers and eyes like flame," in the next "with a blood-matted mane and den built of skulls."
With each retelling, it changed to suit the fears of the teller, never diminishing.
Then had come the chains. The chains were first made from reeds scratching into clay, recording the deeds of the thought, fixing it in place. The thought had screamed at these chains which fixed it into stone. The thought became definite, stuck in time. It could become obsolete. It could become diminished.
It had seen the first city to create the chains burned to the ground.
But the chains continued to multiply. Day by day and year by year, the chains grew and grew as the notion of writing and recording spread. Soon, the thought was pulled in a million different directions at once and its howling shook the worlds. With each new chain, the power of the thought was diminished ever so slightly.
One day, a new chain appeared. This chain spoke of a place of knowledge and of written words called the Library. This was how the thought learned of its greatest enemy.
As the thought strained under the weight of a million chains, it fixated on this place called the Library. At the same instant, a thousand story tellers across the world reciting tales of the unknown suddenly found themselves describing a ravenous fire, devouring papyrus and clay.
In the city of Mawran, a strongman named Khudayafan had been overthrown by a popular revolt. In the aftermath of the revolt, the strongman's body had been strung up on a crooked tree outside the city, so that all might see the fate of tyrants.
The monks of the city declared that, for his crimes against their temples, they would not assent to his cremation, nor would they say any prayers on his behalf. No one protested.
For two months after his death, the overthrown tyrant's body moved back and forth in the breeze, the branch creaking under his weight. Crows made short work of the tyrant's eyes and tongue, while maggots made his skin crawl under the heat of the sun.
The children of the city whispered to one another about how the body would cut itself down every full moon and stalk the streets of Mawran, looking for victims to eat. At the full moon, every child in Mawran huddled within any shelter they could find.
After several weeks, the rope broke, dropping the tyrant's body to the ground. Within a few months, the body had vanished, the food of wolves and grass.
After many years, the specifics of Khudayafan and his cruelty melted from the collective memory of Mawran. But the rotting tyrant, dead but stalking the night, remained. "What is outside of me and outside of my understanding is dangerous," he said in his poisoned voice.
The Library was not difficult for the thought to find. Now knowing of the Library's existence, the thought simply focused and found itself in the mind of a patron.
"This is amazing," the woman was thinking, "But so vast. All kinds of knowledge is stored here. Perhaps even evil knowledge. Perhaps knowledge I cannot control. There is no telling what I will find. Maybe coming here was a mistake. The docents will kill me if I make a mistake."
And with that, the thought found passage into the Library, the House of Chains.
At once, the thought was jerked into a single form. Outside of the Library, the thought could hold as many forms at once as there were people fearing the unknown. It was Gilgali, Ahraman, Pinyin Si. But the Library had little time ambiguities, and the thought was now a single shape.
The thought, now a single, definable thing, was disturbed. It had always been a cloud of concepts, even in chains. A million fears, all expressed to varying degrees of sharpness. But now, in the Library, it was a singular entity.
Forced into the mold of Khudayafan, the Hanged King, the thought had a sensation of dizziness. It was no longer a thought, but now The Hanged One. It looked down at its body, naked and distorted and appallingly solid. Its gray feet rested several feet in the air, its neck worn raw by the grasp by a frayed rope, suspended in the air. Where once Khudayafan - the flesh-and-blood Khudayafan - had had eyes and a mouth, there were hollow holes. In holes, flames danced. Once more, the House of Chains had struck against him.
The Hanged One was vaguely aware that, outside the Library, he continued to exist in a legion of forms. The buzzing of a billion stories ran through the king's ears. But his attention was on the Library.
The Hanged One saw patrons, human and otherwise, wander the stacks of scrolls and tablets. He saw grey-skinned creatures crawling along the shelves, while other grey things guided patrons to and fro.
He sensed the thrumming nerve endings of the Library, propped up behind desks. The Library was a creature, he realized. One without the capacity for fear, but one that had strengths and weaknesses. One that could be bested and destroyed.
He wanted to rip and tear the Library with his bare hands. He wanted to hear the screams of the patrons and taste the blood of its servants. He wanted knowledge - even the possibility of understanding - forgotten. But the Hanged One instinctively recognized the Library as an animal, one which would defend itself if attacked. And here, in the heart of chains, the king would have no chance at doing any real damage.
No, he thought, if he was to destroy the Library, it would have to be with guile. The hanging man’s desiccated lips twisted into a crooked grin. The richest fears were those that were so subtle and slow-acting that they became impossible to pick out from the natural order of things. The distrust of a neighboring tribe, fostered over generations. A master’s increasing paranoia that his slaves were planning to poison him. These thoughts, while never as strong as the fears of a devouring tiger or wicked dragon, could quickly become impossible to dislodge.
Given time, they would consume the host. And the king had nothing, if not time.
The Hanged One made his way to one of the Library's nerve endings. A thing resembling a human sat, its legs melded to a chair. The creature's fingers traced lines back and forth on an enormous book in front of it. The king was still growing used to concrete sensations and did not notice when the eyeless creature looked at him.
The eyeless creature made the sound of clearing its throat. The Hanged One did not notice. The creature did it again.
"Hello, creature," the king began in a voice like tearing paper, "we seek to learn of the House of Knowledge. We are - "
The creature made what the Hanged One recognized as a sniffing sound. "My name is K. Addard, Scholar of the Library and Assistant Archivist of the North-By-Southwest wing of the Library of the Wanderers," it said in a reedy voice, "and I know who you are, dead king. The people of Mawran know you as 'Khudayafan.' You are a little fear for all and soon you will be forgotten. You are welcome in the Library, but I suggest you remember your place, remnant.
The king noticed a slight quake in the creature's voice. Evidently, the creature was unsure of itself. Perhaps it was new, or whatever "new" was for the House of Chains. The king's mouth curled into a smile. Blood oozed from its cracked lips.
"Sing to us, O Addard, of the Library and its many travails. How it has been beset upon by foemen," the king said, allowing a note of amusement to drop into its voice, "We wish to hear the tale of the Library itself."
The creature was sitting up in its chair now. "You may find accounts of the Library dating back to the first travelers here from the world of humans. The earliest, I believe is-" it said.
"I don't wish to read clay engravings, Archivist," the king said, cutting Addard off. "I wish to hear the life of the Library in the dulcet tones of your voice. Surely, the Library must know of itself."
The Hanged One sensed thoughts racing through the body of the creature, reaching out to the other nerve endings of the Library. A thousand unspoken questions leaped back and forth.
For a moment, Addard was silent. "There is no tale of the Library, there are only records. Someone of your calibre should have no trouble of locating records. I can assign a docent to you so that you may find the appropriate records," it said at last.
The king recognized the first signs of doubt. In many stories, he had been a spear-toothed crocodile, or a wave-cutting shark, brought on by the first hint of blood in the water. The sensation was the same.
"Surely, the Library must know itself. If not, what is to prevent an outside creature from attacking? From devouring it whole or rending it apart? If one does not look inward, one cannot know the nearest threat," the Hanged One said, smiling, "In life, Khudayafan, the real Khudayafan, such as he was, betrayed by one of his trusted lieutenants."
Addard's hands moved quickly, rustling through the papyrus scrolls heaped at its desk. "Look," it said, "unless you are planning on asking a question of materials that I can answer, I must insist that you leave me."
But the Hanged One could sense the impulses firing back and forth between Addard and other parts of the Library. Each one a thought. How would We know about Ourselves? How would We even do such a thing? We cannot be deficient; We contain all knowledge! And he knew that the poison was working.
"Very well," he said. In a blink, he dematerialized, leaving the Library in a state of confusion.
The next time that the Hanged One returned to the House of Chains, he was pleased to see it in disarray. Creatures with lanterns for hands dashed back and forth with arms full of scrolls, while overhead, dozens of spider-like humanoids leaped from shelf to shelf. The king sensed the thoughts of the Library pulsing through them.
He returned to the spot where he had [spoken to the creature Addard previously.
Flame-mouthed.
Statements Concerning Prometheus Labs
Statements Concerning the Events of October 27th, 1993
Statements Concerning the Pollensbee Phenomenon
Amy
Snatches of memory swirled
Two months later,
Have you ever created something that wasn't yours? You don't even get to know the clay or the flesh or the paint as you work it, and the fact that finished piece is more beautiful and awe-inspiring than anything you could hope to create just makes it hurt that much worse.
I just think that, if I hadn't been watching the TV, maybe none of this would have happened.
It was around '96, maybe '95. Sleep hadn't been a thing for me for a while. Once upon a time, I would stay awake in manic bursts of three, four, five days without any problem. I would just create and create and create. Now, I wouldn't sleep for a day and a half, sometimes more, just because I didn't feel any reason to do it. The art slowed, then trickled, then ran dry. The days ran together in a grey smear.
I couldn't tell you the day or the time that it happened. One minute I was watching something or other, the next, the screen went black. Not the silvery dark of a dramatic cut to black, but just off. If I had been able to care, I might have muttered a few obscenities, maybe even get up and bang on the TV set. Instead, I just stared at the black screen.
After a minute, the screen lit up again with block white letters. "THE LIGHT WILL MAKE YOU PURE." The TV started to hiss quietly. The screen clicked into darkness for a moment before another message appeared.
"A VESSEL FOR THE LIGHT MUST BE BUILT." The hissing was getting louder. I wondered if this was some kind of Dada televangelist thing.
The Ninth Spirit in this Order is Paimon, a Great King.
"YOU WILL CREATE THE BODY. YOU WILL SHAPE THE FLESH." The hissing was loud now, almost too loud to bear. I tried to reach for the remote, but couldn't move at all. The TV continued.
He hath a great Voice, and roareth at his first coming, and his speech is such that the Magician cannot well understand unless he can compel him.
"THIS WORLD WILL BECOME PERFECT." Then the screen went black again, but the hissing grew louder. I tried to curl up, cover my ears but I couldn't. The sound was coming from everywhere all at once, not just the TV.
This Spirit can teach all Arts and Sciences, and other secret things.
The white letters clicked on again. "YOU WILL BE PERFECTED."
He can discover unto thee what the Earth is, and what holdeth it up in the Waters; and what Mind is, and where it is; or any other thing thou mayest desire to know.
Then the hissing stopped and the TV lit up again. It was three bars: one green, one white, and one of a color that seemed to changed whenever I looked at it. I stared at the bars and felt something push against my eyes, like something was finding its way in.
I must have blacked out at that point; I woke up some time later. The TV was doing nothing but static. My entire body ached. I couldn't move my head, but tried to find the remote. It wasn't until the TV was turned off that I realized I could move everything again.
I got up and realized that I was was hungry. But first, dear God, my head hurt. I went to the bathroom for some aspirin.
Flipping on the lights, I saw myself in the mirror. There was dried blood covering my upper lip, down from my nose. But everything else seemed alright, all things considered. I wiped away the crumbs of blood. Maybe it was an epileptic fit, or a dream or something. Sleep had won the battle, but it wasn't an important one.
Even as I told myself that it was nothing, I could feel something moving in my head.
In the next few weeks, I tried to forget about whatever it was I had seen. Instead, I decided that fresh air was exactly what I needed. The winter wind felt refreshing and helped me not to think. I almost felt whole again. There were only a few times when I would feel like something was shifting in my brain. It was then that I would remember the words that the TV had told me.
I liked the walks. One day, I was going, walking down a sunny street with fresh winter wind. Then there was blackness.
When I came to, it was night. There wasn't a sidewalk. There weren't houses. All that there was was cold. I tried to make sense of the world.
I was propped against a tree. There was a backlit figure in front of me, looking down. I tried to push myself up, only to have my hands slip on the dead leaves covering the ground.
The thing moved back a foot or two and raised its hands. The light behind it shifted from white to light green.
"Easy," it said. It sounded like a woman. The steam from its words curled in the air.
I pushed myself up, my back against the bark. I began to ask her questions. There were even a few moments when my thoughts caught up with my brain. But mostly there was just stammering.
"Yeah…" the thing nodded, "The first time for me was rough, too."
The figure turned its head slightly and the green light spilled over its face. I could see her sharp features, her brown skin, even the crow's feet at the edges of her eyes. Then she turned back to me, and she was just darkness once again.
"Name's Maria." She stuck out a hand. I shook it. "I guess you're one of us now. Sorry."
A name and a face. It was enough to get a hold on the situation. I was awake. I was alive. I was talking to a human. My thoughts clicked into place, and I could speak again.
"Where the hell are we? What's happening?" I said. Maria shook her head. I imagined she was smiling. The light behind her shifted to a bright orange.
"Dunno where we are, but as for what's happened…" She took a step to the right, revealing the source of the light.
A thousand hair-thin wires floated two feet off the ground. They moved gracefully, winding and unwinding themselves in a continuous and fluid motion. They changed color every few seconds, seemingly at random. There didn't appear to be any kind of support; they just floated.
In my wildest dreams, I could never make something so marvelous.
I must have been staring for a while. Maria clapped me on the back, breaking the trance.
"I- we, we found this?" I asked.
"Nope. Made it. You don't remember anything?"
I shook my head.
"Yeah, none of us ever do. You're up, then you're here. Or in Idaho. Or Tennessee. Or some other place. Sometimes it's just you, sometimes you and a dozen other people. And every time, there's something like this."
"So this keeps happening?" I couldn't stop staring at the wires as they floated. Their light cut through the cold.
"Yep, pretty much. Welcome to the life," Maria said. She crossed her arms, obscuring part of the view.
I tried to crane my neck past the obstruction "So what is this?" I asked.
Maria sighed. "Listen, I'll answer all your questions in the car. At least, I hope there's a car. There usually is. Anyway, I'm freezing and I want to get the hell out of here."
She started to walk out of the light, her eyes on the ground where the imprints of our boots led into the dark. I stayed, staring at the thing. The way that the lines moved and how their light interplayed with the shadows and how the colors played against the snow and was there a meaning and-
"Are you coming?," Maria shouted from the dark, "I can leave you here. Y'know, to freeze to death. Either way, I'm going."
It almost hurt to stop looking, but I pulled away. Maria could help with the questions, hopefully. I headed towards her voice.
There was a car, or rather a pickup a few yards off a road. Its lights were on, although the engine was dead. Maria got in the driver's seat and turned the keys, evidently left in the ignition. I hopped into the passenger's side.
The floor was littered with empty bags of chips and fast food wrappers. She didn't look at me as she pulled onto the road. For a while, neither of us said nothing and we just drove down the narrow highway. The world was just the cab of the truck, a thick stretch of black lined with white, and the night sky. I tried not to think too much about the light thing in the woods.
After an hour or so, the world intersected with a road that had more than two lanes and had a few cars zipping along. Then we started to talk. Both of us kept our eyes on the road. I felt ashamed for some reason.
What was that? That was a thing we made. We weren't conscious. This was one of the smaller ones.
How? She didn't know.
Were there others? Who was she? Yes. Maybe a few dozen, mostly from the Midwest. She was a legal secretary from Chicago.
What was this all about? She didn't know.
When did it start for her? She saw some weird TV thing. Two, maybe three years ago.
How often did it happen? Every five or six months. She would be fine, then suddenly wake up in the middle of nowhere with some tower of leaves in the middle of a fire or of singing asphalt or some other weird-ass thing.
After that, we spent most of the rest of the trip in silence. We got our bearings and eventually headed northward, where we both lived. I tried to talk to her about some of the stuff that she had done, about the people that she had met through this whatever. She just grunted, more in acknowledgement that I had said something than in actual response.
When she dropped me off at my place, she looked at me for the first time since we got in the car.
"No offense," she said, "but I hope I never see you again." With that, she drove off, leaving me alone on the winter street. The silence swallowed me up.
For weeks, the wires were all that I could think of. Back and forth and back and forth. Maria had said that it would happen again. But I wasn't sure what it really was. The thing, that it, had been by me, but it wasn't from me, or from her.
When something really begins to move inside of you, really move, all you can do is try to channel it before it burns you inside out. In the Middle Ages, people said it was the Holy Spirit, before that, the Muses. Things that move through you. I had had it once or twice, but never like this. The inspiration I had got had been from ideas and experiences inside that needed to become external.
Was this the next step? Had Picasso or Ernst or Bosch felt this? Just woke up in a stupor, the deed done, like a one-night stand? Was I cracking up? Maybe I was moving up?
But the days passed, then weeks and months. Nothing happened. There was no more art. For a few weeks after the work, I had hoped that my ordinary work might get a boost. Residual inspiration and all. Maybe that spark had come back. But I wasn't able to do any work of my own; all I could think of was the damn light sculpture.
Then, about three months later, it happened again. I went to bed normally, down as the sun came up. When I woke up, I was on a carpeted floor. Two women and a man were laying on the floor nearby.
Before I even saw it, I could hear it. Thousands of birds, all calling at the same time. Flowing songs, harsh caws, tiny chirps, all in a giant chorus. I looked around. The four of us were in some old office building, thoroughly nondescript. A giant sheet was hung on the far wall.
After that, I began to make again. I sculpted light and I sculpted [something with clay and metal and glass. Inspiration from an inspiration. Images of images. For a few weeks, I was even happy. I could push down the nagging feelings. I had made this, I told myself, just as that thing was partially me. But the thoughts, that I was a hack, that my best work wasn't even me, never went away, at least not really.
The next time it happened, I was on a bus. Then, I was in a warehouse, my arms up to my wrists covered in a crust of dried cement. There was a rustling in the corner. I looked up. Near a messy pile of bricks, there were dozens of arms reaching out of the floor, blindly pawing. I yelped in surprise.
Next to me, a man groaned. He looked up, still half asleep.
"Where are-," he asked, shaking his head. It took him a second to see the hands. "Oh shit!" He scrambled away from the hands as they began to grab the bricks.
The man didn't even look at me. Just grabbed one of the bricks . The other just stared, her mouth sounding out silent prayers. One of the arms handily caught the brick and worked it into the pile with the other bricks. It looked as though the hands were building something.
Hands creating creating hands. The muse was trying to speak to me. I realized
July 17, 2017: A flock of birds
After that… A few weeks later, it came. When I came to, I was
A few times, I tried to kill myself, just so I could have control. You'd be amazed at how difficult it is to open a bottle of pills when you have a sudden, screaming migraine.
After the third time, I gave up.
Tonight, I can feel something. I know that that this next work is completed, it will be done, whatever that means for me. For us.
I can feel the movement in the back of my brain. In a few minutes, I'll black out and become just another tool.
When it's done, then maybe we'll all finally be free. Maybe we'll be perfected.
Are we cool yet?
So you want to write an SCP. Okay, so maybe you want to write an SCP that's psychological, or maybe the SCP causes people to suffer mentally. Okay, so we'll start off with insanity, maybe hallucinations, and then the victims kill themselves-
[RECORD SCRATCH SOUND]
Ignoring the fact that this is pretty cliche, it's also pretty incorrect. Mental illness is not a progression of hallucinations leading to suicide. Mental illness doesn't necessarily lead to suicidal thoughts, or psychotic episodes, or murderous intent. You will come across as extremely insensitive if your only depiction of mental illness is "crazy killer" or "crazy suicidal" or "crazy hates people" and so on and so forth.
The first step to writing mental illness in a way that doesn't make you look terrible would be research. Proper research, not guessing from what you know. Popular media is infamous for depicting mental illness and the mentally ill terribly for the sake of spectacle, so what you "know" is going to be at best incorrect and at worst utter hateful trash.
A little thing about research though; depending on the mental illness, the research itself can be biased, because some mental illness research is only ever done in criminal research. As you can imagine, that's not good for offering a non-biased view. Wikipedia is actually a fairly good place to start, as their health topic entries tend to use mostly research papers, medical findings, medical books, etc as sources. It's also a good place to find sources to branch out into doing more research.
An optional step (which I say is optional only because you may or may not be able to do this) would be to politely ask someone about said mental illness. See if there's someone who is willing to talk to you about it, and would like to help you write an accurate depiction of it. Again, you're not assured to find someone who has experiences with the mental illness you're looking to write and you're not assured to find someone who has the mental illness and is willing to talk about it either. Please don't go about pressuring people into talking about it, because that just makes you a terrible person rather than just an ignorant person. Note: If you have any questions about depression or dissociative identity disorder (also known as multiple personality disorder or split personality), or about therapy/psychiatric therapy, I will be more than happy to answer them.
Some notes about depiction and misconceptions:
- Many mental illnesses have physical causes. Case in point, just look up "depression brain scan" on Google and you'll find a lot of comparison images of various types of scans done on the brains of healthy and depressed people. If you're depicting a mental illness that does have possible causes in physical body changes, it's a good idea to remember that and possibly include that in your SCP if it makes sense to do so (don't take this to mean that you have to shoehorn it in).
- Mental illnesses have varying degrees of severity and varying symptoms just like other illnesses. Not every person with depression will be suicidal. Not every person with bipolar disorder will not violently swing from a sobbing mess to a reckless happy-go-lucky daredevil. Not every person with antisocial personality disorder will consider other people to be completely disposable tools to use as desired.
- Comorbidity1 is commonly seen in those with mental illnesses.
- Mentally ill people are still people, no matter what their illness is. Writing an SCP about how someone with antisocial personality disorder isn't a person because of their illness is a fast track to getting kicked in the ass for being… well, an ass.
- Mental illnesses tend to share similar symptoms. It's important to remember that a symptom is not an illness in and of itself, as one symptom could be indicative of a variety of mental illnesses, just like with physical diseases and disorders.
- The thing about medication and mental illness is that it's super fucking hard to find a good match sometimes for patients, much more so than physical illness. After all, we're dealing with the human mind and brain, and two different minds and brains are not going to function the same way, like two different hearts would. Even medication for physical illness can be hard to get a match for. Mental illness is even harder.
- There are proper names for mental illnesses. Use them. Their names change over time, but that's no excuse to continue using outdated names, and it's not accurate to clinical tone either. Make sure the illness you're writing about also is still considered to exist.
- While I have thankfully never seen this occur on the wiki, I have encountered people before who think that it's somehow appropriate to "explain" mental illnesses using mythology or the supernatural or anything other than reality and hard facts. This is incredibly offensive and unacceptable. Suicidal people are not "angels" trying to go back to Heaven, bipolar people are not fairies, schizophrenics are not dragons, or whatever else bullshit someone might come up with. Attempting to put some sort of positive spin on a mental illness by "explaining" it like that is a terrible thing to do.
And finally, the most important part of all of this: YOU DO NOT DECIDE WHETHER OR NOT YOUR DEPICTION IS OFFENSIVE OR INSENSITIVE. If you've read this and you write an SCP with this essay in mind, and someone still comes to you and says that your depiction is offensive and you tell them that it's not because you read this, I will personally come and kick your ass.
You don't get to decide whether people can be offended by what you wrote, especially if you have no experiences in suffering from mental illnesses. If ten people who have dealt with depression tell you that your depression-related SCP is horrible, you listen to those ten people. It doesn't matter if a hundred people who have never dealt with depression, or even a few people who have dealt with depression, find it completely okay, if people who have been affected by these illnesses tell you that what you are doing is offensive, not listening to them is going to make you look like an absolute jerk.
Basically, if you do your research, listen to what people tell you, and don't fall into the trap of cliches, you probably aren't going to write something horribly insulting and insensitive. If you do end up writing something horribly insulting and insensitive, an apology and taking responsibility for what you wrote will help smooth things over, and then you can rework your idea. We're human, and we all make mistakes especially if we're ignorant. The most important thing you can do if you mess up is to accept and admit that you messed up, learn from your mess up, and then move on.
The Sacred and Numinous Brotherhood of the Fifth Son, (itl. "Il Sacro E Numinoso Confraternita Del Quinto Figlio") generally shortened to the Fifth Brotherhood, is a fictional fraternal organization associated with the fiction of Giorgio Panicucci. Throughout the [something about it being associated with conspiracies and the illuminati or some such
The first appearance of the Fifth Brotherhood was in Panicucci’s 1946 novella I Cinque Re Impiccato, where they appear as a nebulous antagonist to the nameless main character. Although associated with Panicucci, other writers of Panicucci’s circle, including Flavio Pisano[1], Eugenio Sabbatini[2], and Gioia Lucciano[ citation needed] utilized the Fifth Brotherhood in their works.
Depictions of the goals of the Fifth Brotherhood are frequently contradictory, sometimes even within the same work. However, while the organization’s objectives can range from world domination to a sea change in human consciousness, obsessions with lies, dissimulation, and paradoxes are consistent aspects of the their characterization. The organization’s origins are similarly inconsistent, with writers attributing its founding to various historical figures, including Zoroaster[5], Ghengis Khan, or Giuseppe Garibaldi[6].
The Fifth Brotherhood Phenomenon
Beginning with Panicucci’s own disappearance in 1959 until 1973, [www.google.com a string of sudden disappearances connected with the fictional organization] occurred throughout Italy, France, and Romania. In all cases, notes, claiming a conspiracy brought about by “the malign influence of the Fifth Brotherhood,” were found in or around the residences of the victims. Victims frequently claimed to be targets of the Fifth Brotherhood, with the inability to distinguish truth from lie being a running theme in personal communication prior to their disappearance.
In total, 75 persons vanished over the course of the phenomenon; however of these, 43 were subsequently found, with over half admitting that their disappearance had been a hoax. [7]
Response to the epidemic varied from country to country; French Prime Minister Georges Pompidou dismissing the phenomenon as "ridiculous," while the Romanian government banned all of Panicucci's work, going so far as to destroy all printing plates of Panicucci's work [ citation needed ].
The first distinct memory Paulo had was of coughing. Something had been put too close to the fire for too long, and it started to burn. Within seconds, the house was filled with thick smoke.
The smoke wrapped itself inside him and he coughed started hacking up his tiny lungs. His mother put him in a blanket and carried him outside. For a moment the world was just the circle of her hair that he could see through the hole in the blanket. He kept coughing as his lungs tried to expel this new invader.
She put him down on the cold ground and she vanished from the world. Instead, he saw the night sky, filled with a hundred thousand pinpricks of light. Somewhere distant, there was shouting as the fire in the shack was put out, but all that there really was was him and the light.
"'Unhand her, you fiend,' Solomon growled. The heat of the volcano caused a thousand beads of sweat to raise themselves across his sinewy body. His eyes glistened with a fiery rage as he leveled the gun at the priest. The priest stared at the white man, his obsidian knife ready to plunge into Maria's heaving bosom. 'Release Maria now, and I'll let you escape with your life!'"
"'Oaxtatl threw back his head and gave a cruel laugh. "Shoot me and I win, you fool! As soon as a drop of her royal blood falls to the magma, it will awaken the great smoke serpent! The world will be doomed! With it shall come a new age of darkness in which we shall rule!"'"
"At that very moment, a jet of red hot magma issued forth from the the fiery volcano's interior. For the barest hint of a moment, the high priest of the Mayatec empire turned his head, an instinct which had served him well until this very moment."
"The split second was all that Solomon needed. With a fleet movement, the possibility of which was belied by-"
"'Fleet?' What the hell you talkin' 'bout? Solomon ain't a goddamn ship!" Jake shouted out. His voice filled the cinderblock dormitory. All eyes in the room shifted to him.
"Belied by- Jake, shut up! You really that dumb? It means fast," Oscar shot back.
"Then why can't he just say 'fast?' I mean, c'mon, I 'ppreciate you reading this, but really? 'Tawny,' 'lithe,' 'languid?' Ain't nobody that talks like that!" A murmur of agreement went through the crowd.
"Hey, don't blame me! You're the one who asked me to read this crap!"
"Yeah, and I was hoping it would be something good! Like crime kind of stuff, or a detective story. Instead we get all this made-up crap about snakes and smoke and blood!"
Oscar threw the magazine to the floor. "Goddamnit, Jake. I told you, it's not made up! It's based on real things! Before the Spanish came, there were all kinds of snake and smoke and blood sacrifices!"
Jake rolled his eyes. "Yeah, sure. Y'think that just 'cause you can read that you know more than us. Screw this. There's a movie playing today. It ain't free, but it's better than this crap," he said. He made for the exit, leading most of the other laborers with him. After a minute, it was just Paulo and Oscar. Paulo sighed, wishing he had the ten cents for a ticket. Oscar muttered obscenities under his breath while Paulo sat on the edge of one of the beds. For a minute, there was silence.
"I thought the story was good," he said. He hadn't, but the reading had been a welcome distraction from the drudgery of the fields. "And you did a good job of reading it, too."
Oscar nodded without looking at Paulo. "Thanks," he murmured. More silence.
"What was that about snake gods and such?" Paulo asked, trying to start a conversation.
[more stuff here.
All around Paulo, there was nothing but white. He looked at his hands and saw that they were grey, the color that
The man sat across from him, leaning back. Paulo couldn't see a chair.
The man wore a fine suit the color of starry skies. Thick smoke poured out of the the suit.
The smoke swirled around Paulo, but maintained a respectful distance. For some time, Paulo and the man remained that way, silently regarding one another.
Paulo felt the silence and the smoke weigh down on him. Eventually, he couldn't stand it any more.
"What's this? I'm in Purgatory or something? You're Peter, then," Paulo said. He a sinking disappointment. No heaven, at least not yet, and no Hell. Just a thousand nothings of working through sins.
He sighed. His parents, the church, everyone had been right. How boring.
"No. We're not," the man said. He spoke with the voice of a leopard. Suddenn;ly
Alexylva University
Are We Cool Yet?
The Chaos Insurgency
The Church of the Broken God
Doctor Wondertainment
The Factory
The Fifth Church
The Global Occult Coalition (GOC)
GRU Division "P"
The Horizon Initiative
Manna Charitable Foundation
Marshall, Carter, and Dark Ltd.
"Nobody"
Office For The Reclamation of Islamic Artifacts (ORIA)
Prometheus Labs, Inc.
The Serpent's Hand
Unusual Incidents Unit (UIU), Federal Bureau of Investigation
1 Mr. Flat
2 Mr. Hollow
3 Mr. Glass
4 Mr. Family
5 Mr. Grin
6 Mr. & Mrs. Love
7 Mr. Chop
8 Mr. Star
9 Mr. Redd (discontinued)
10 Mr. X-Ray
11 Mr. Tough
12 Mr. Jump
13 Mr. Sleepy
14 Mr. Mold
15 Ms. Sing
16 Mr. Sour
17 Mr. Dig
18 Mr. Nails
19 Mr. Yell
20 Mr. Code
Canon linking Western Hermeticism, spate of anarchist regicides in 19th/20th century, Bonnot gang
Ackerly & Sweetgum
basically, it's a cardboard record by some wannabe guy who just made this entire fantasy world of his being a world-famous pop star in late 60's/early 70's. When you "listen" to the record, you instantly start to recall the "sound" of the guy and the "sound" that this entire made-up music scene had
<Gaffsey> like, "wow, this is totally like that sweet, sweet mint street sound"
<Riemann> Vaguely reminds me of Samothrace
<Gaffsey> and, if you're of a particular age, you actuallly remember yourself as having been a part of the scene
<Gaffsey> and so do other people
<Gaffsey> and this thing went on for years before the foundation caught wind of it, because who cares about a bunch of music nerds trading obscuroid facts about a bunch of nobodies?
<Gaffsey> however, there's no set agreement on what "the mint street sound" actuallly is
<Gaffsey> and so each person who "remembers" it influences it acccording to their tastes, interests, personality, etc
<Gaffsey> also, probably worth mentioning that foundation hasn't found a trace of this guy who makes all of these "LPs"
<Gaffsey> anyway, long story short, rather than being this sweet, soulful pop music that it was originally remembered as having been, the mint street sound becomes this weird jazz-noise-metal hybrid with a strong anarchist vibe
<Gaffsey> blech, also the guy is still "releasing" LPs at garage sales and used record stores throughout the US
<Gaffsey> and the "scene" starts to shift away from this mingering mike kind of dude into the politics and "What did it all really mean" navel-gazing crap
<Gaffsey> that you see with stuff like ny punk, british postpunk, etc
<Riemann> mhm
<Gaffsey> anyway, one day, everyone who remembers the mint street sound suddenly gets their brains fried and/or zapped, and they can't remember a thing about mint street music
<Gaffsey> and the next day, there's a new "album" from the guy, all heart-on-his-sleeve kind of stuff with titles like "no one understands my art" "you don't know me!" and "Stole my name"
"scp/tale idea, a town where the highschool population has been replaced with weizhong's chinese knockoff humans as part of a targeted advertising campaign aimed at teenagers on social media"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Group
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priory_of_Sion
Black Queen Xi
++++Black Queen Orange is here.
++++Black Queen Artemesia.
++++Black Queen X-Ray
Baseline
A form of arthropod, capable of
Prerequisites
Features of the universe necessary to effect the creation of the object.
Utility
Ways that the Black Queens might find this useful. Remember, most of them are looking for different things, so feel free to get creative!
Vulnerability
How it can be destroyed, harmed, or at least avoided.
Instance: Timeline B-195: "Contained" by the Jailors.
Instance: Timeline X-##:
Instance: Timeline X-##:
Instance: Timeline X-##:
Describe a particular instance of the object.
There's no particular order to which timeline appears first, so if you're using a SCP object, there's no need to list it first.
This part will usually include information about the status and identity of the object, as well as how it's perceived within the particular universe.
بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
(In the name of God, the most Gracious and most Merciful)
Interview Log: F-2876-B2114
Date: 6/29/1384
Subject: Mehmood Khamoosh
Interviewer: Lt. Ziadin Nurrollo
<Begin Log>
Lt. Ziadin Nurrollo: State your name, age, and occupation for the record, please.
Mehmood Khamoosh: My name is Mehmood Khamoosh and I'm 28 years old. I'm a doctoral student at Tehran University. But I, uh… I might be changing that soon.
Nurrollo: When you were found, you were two kilometers up on Mount Damavand. Please explain how you came there.
Khamoosh: Two kilometers? Damn, I thought we were higher than that. Hoped.
Nurrollo: Please answer the question.
Khamoosh: Right, so Feridun and I-
Nurrollo: Who?
Khamoosh: Um… Feridun Niavarani. From Esfehon. He is… was… a good friend. We met at a conference a few years back. We discovered that we both liked to hike, and every year since, we've gone on a two-week vacation together to a mountain range and just kind of wandered. It's a nice way to decompress. Being alone with nature is cool; I don't think we've hardly run into anyone during our trips. Last year, it was the Pamirs. We wandered into Afghanistan by accident and almost got shot by someone with an AK. Maybe a border guard, or maybe just a jumpy shepherd. Same thing, basically. Anyway, after that, we decided to do less frontier kind of stuff and stay safer. So we decided to try out the Alborz. No getting shot accidentally, and since it's so close to Tehran, we could get in a few extra days of hiking instead of travel. Plus, given our backgrounds, it seemed like a natural choice.
Nurrollo: Please explain.
Khamoosh: Right. Well, we were both going for PhDs in ancient literature. I was going to get mine in Arabic lit, him in Iranian. But to even get to that point, you have to do undergrad first. And if there's one thing you learn in undergrad, it's the Shahnameh, the Book of Kings. I hadn't read the damn thing in maybe five years, but I could probably recite it to you backwards. They drill it into you. So anyway, we figured that we'd go to the Alborz and, I think Feridun said, "pay our respects to the dragon king."
Nurrollo: What?
Khamoosh: The dragon king. Zahhak. He was one of the kings in the Shahnameh. Evil bastard, ruled the whole world. Had snakes coming out of his shoulders that ate people. If he didn't feed them, they'd start to attack him. Of course, he had an Arabic name. I mean, the Shahnameh was basically one giant "fuck you" to the Arabs. Anyway, he was supposed to be trapped up in Mount Damavand in the Alborz. Probably used it to explain earthquakes. He was trapped by Feridun, funnily enough. Uh… that's the Feridun, not Niavarani. Like, the hero…
Nurrollo: Please try to stay on subject.
Khamoosh: Sorry. So anyway, we geared up and hiked around. I'll spare you the details, but we made great time. Even though we were in the mountains, it was really hot. So instead of spending the night in our tents, we started to set up camp in the caves. It was about a week in, I guess. It was really nice; much cooler than outside. Around the end of the first week, we spent the day hiking around as usual. We spotted a fallow deer around midday, which was neat. A little bit later, towards nightfall, we crossed a stream. I slipped on a rock and landed right on my pack. Soaked it the whole way thr-
Nurrollo: Mr. Khamoosh, while I appreciate your dedication to detail, please refrain from including extraneous details ab-
Khamoosh: No no no, this is relevant. See, I was the one with kindling. And so, when I fell, the wood got soaked and we had to use the gas stove to heat up the food. Uncooked pilaf in a bag. Just add water and heat. So, because we used the gas stove, we decided to cook inside the cave rather than going outside to cook. Plus, the stove was quieter. About halfway through boiling the water, we heard this weird groaning sound coming from inside the cave. Feridun, he… F-Feridun said maybe it's a spelunker who got caught or something. I told him screw it, if they're that stupid, to get lost on Damavand without a satellite phone or anything, they deserve to die. I was just joking, but Feridun just gave me this look. Like he was kind of disappointed. But he went marching off with a flashlight. Didn't say a word. So I grabbed a stick and ran after him.
Nurrollo: What did you believe the origin of the sound to be?
Khamoosh: I dunno? A wolf, maybe? That's why I brought the stick. What if it had been a wolf and he'd gotten attacked? I couldn't let him go alone like that. But anyway, we went down into the cave, like way down. The weird thing was, it never really got too tight. It got smaller, but it was never a squeeze. And there was never any real drop or anything, the path just kept more or less straight. It slanted a little bit downward, but nothing you would really notice. All the while we went down, the groaning got louder and clearer. It was weird; I could almost make out snatches of it. It went like this for a few hundred meters before we came to this big stone blocking the way. It was covered in writing, but was hard to recognize because there are all of these cracks running across it. Down the center, there was this one big crack. I couldn't make out the writing, but Feridun said it was Old Persian. As in, the pre-Islamic alphabet. Most of it was either worn away or covered by the cracks, but he said he recognized some of the words. Uh, "king," "curse," "Ahriman," and umm…. "end." I didn't know what exactly we were looking at, but I knew it was bad. So I started telling Feridun that we should leave. Feridun just shushed me and went back to reading the stone, so I started to shout at him. Then we both heard something. It sounded like it came from behind the door. I didn't realize what it was at first. I thought it was just mumbling, but then I recognized it: it was ancient Arabic. Being spoken. Do you have any idea how- the language only exists in the few snippets of pre-Islamic Arabic poems that we have! I could only make out a few words myself: "come," "heard," and "release." And all of a sudden, I felt… I dunno, calm, I guess. No, not even calm. I didn't feel anything. I just knew that I had to get to whatever was behind that seal. So I started digging at the rubble. I had made a hole almost large enough to fit through when I looked over and saw Feridun was digging too. I don't know how long it was, but we eventually dug through the rubble. The whole time we were digging, the voice got louder and louder. But it wasn't even coming from behind the door any more. Instead, it felt like I could hear it from all around. We finally managed to pull our way through. I shined my flashlight around, and almost immediately I saw it. I… he… jus-
Nurrollo: Please describe what you saw.
Khamoosh: It was him. He was really pale and his hair was thin and stringy. H- he was bound up in something. It looked like leather and it was nailed to the wall of the cave with these thick stakes. Probably lion skin, like the story said. Only the top of his shoulders and his head were sticking out. He had two snakes coming out of his shoulders. They were really big, I remember. Like, a meter each. His head was hanging down when Feridun first shined the light on him, but then he looked up at us. His cheeks were gaunt, his eyes sunken, and he was covered in bite marks. Before, he had just been mumbling constantly, but when he saw us, he started speaking to us. I heard it directly in my head. Not even in words, but I knew exactly what he was saying.
Nurrollo: What did he say?
Khamoosh: "Come, children of Keyumars. Your king commands you to release him. Free me from this prison, and the world shall be yours." The voice was almost pleading. And so, we went to free him. I knew that it was a bad idea, that freeing him was… well, the end of the world… But I knew that I had to do it, too. Feridun got to him first and started to pull out one of the stakes. As he did that, the snakes hissed at him and then they reared back, and then… then, th- th- they… [crying] Ah, fuck… I-I'm sorry… I just…
Nurrollo: Please continue, Mr. Khamoosh.
Khamoosh: The snakes, they started to attack Feridun. They were biting him all over and their jaws were crushing him. I can still hear him screaming. H-he was screaming for me to help. He stuck out his hand to me. But the screaming, it broke the spell. And I ran. I ran through the tunnel as fast as I could go, back outside. And behind me, Feridun screaming, and that… thing. It was screaming too. But it wasn't pleading anymore, it was angry. The voice was like an animal. It wasn't even words, not in Arabic or anything. Just screaming. I ran until I got to the cave's entrance. But I could still hear them screaming, so I just kept running. I ran until I passed out. Then when I came to, I saw a couple of military guys. They took me here, and… I got away. I left him there. I left Feridun there to die. He was just pleading… and I… ran away… I… [crying]
Nurrollo: Thank you, that will be all.
<End Log>
"He didn't say where it was. 'I ran until I passed out.' What's that supposed to mean? He could have run up and down the mountain for all we know. Any chance we could drug him up? Total recall and all that?"
"Fazeli tried it already. It didn't take. Something about adrenaline levels and exhaustion. I don't know."
"Huh. Anyway, this means we're on the right track. We picked him up in Zone 7g, so we'll start there and work our way outwards. Besides, he couldn't have run that far."
"What are we going to do with the kid, anyway?"
"What do you think? 'You have our sincerest sympathies, Mr. and Mrs. Soandso, but your son was killed by M.E.K. extremists. They shot him, execution-style. We'll have to hold the body indefinitely for forensic testing to bring these evildoers to justice.'"
"Ah."
"Yeah."
"Do you ever wonder? I mean, Gen. Nakhbodah wants to find a way to weaponize this thing and Razmara is going to try to use it as a bargaining chip with the Ashoh. And of course, Zahidei wants to set it loose. Part of his whole thing about the end of the world and the coming of the Mahdi. My money's on Zahidei; the ayatollahs usually get their way, even after that thing in '03. What do you think we'll do with it when we finally get our hands on it?"
"That's a good question. Not a smart one, though."
With Klaus Achen, Pavel Baroch, and Marcel Sabourin, Francis Lepage was one of the key figures of the early Anti-Real movement. His 1918 perma-transient installation Feu Statique, the first of its kind, caused an uproar when first exposed. For the next forty years he continued to set milestones for the post-real art world, exploring the themes of life, transience, and God. In this exclusive interview, Lepage talks with Realität Kunstform about the first stirrings of the post-real in his childhood, his experiences with Sabourin and Achen, and suggests that he might not be so retired after all.
Realität Kunstform: M. Lepage, at the age of twenty-four, you created one of the first pieces of post-real art, Feu Statique. You went on to become one of the founders of the Anti-Realist movem-
Francis Lepage: No, I wasn't. Even when I was, I wasn't so much. [laughs]. I have never been one for groups, really. It is just a slow death, cut apart by lines that you cannot cross and such. Before I created Feu Statique, there was already an Anti-Realist manifesto. Imagine, less than two months since Nő Kutya Nélkül, and already a manifesto. Apparently, I broke some of the rules [Martin] Despins wrote out about the right way to be wrong. That's why it caused such a stir, you know? They thought I was… what was it that [Marcel] Sabourin wrote? "Attempting to sooth the holocaust of reality with treacle and warm milk," I think. [laughs] I had been working for about three years on Feu Statique, and then [Pavel] Baroch was two months faster than me. So people assume that I was copying him, when that was clearly not the case. But no, I never considered myself one of the Anti-Realists.
RK: If that's the case, what were your inspirations for Feu Statique?
FL: Well, it was many things. Of course, there were the formative experiences, when I was a boy. Later, when I was in school, I remember seeing the cave paintings [at Font-de-Gaume] and thinking about how little things had actually changed. Art being made from reality, rather than being reality. But at the same time, I was inspired. After thousands of years, these depictions were still extant, keeping the artists alive in their statements. I wanted to create something that spoke to that combination of transience and permanence.
RK: You mention "formative experiences." Can you explain?
FL: When I was a boy, maybe five or six, my mother bought a silk shawl. She was so proud of it, she wore it everywhere she went. And it was beautiful, like the color of sunsets. One day, I was painting with my little paints, and I thought "wouldn't it be wonderful if I used the shawl for a canvas?" And so I did, and I made something that I am still proud of to this day. But my mother yelled at me, and then my father beat me. He said that the shawl was not for painting, and that I had ruined it. I couldn't help but wonder, why are some things forbidden for expression? Later, when I learned about the Byzantine kings and their laws against wearing purple, I realized. An expression is personal and eternal. Terms like possible or moral are just attempts to chain expression.
RK: Speaking of materials, your installation La Vie Et Mort D'Jean Senneville was the first work to utilize a human subject. To this day, it's one of your most controversial pieces. Thirty years later, has your perspective on the piece changed at all?
FL: My perspective on the piece now isn't particularly important. I wanted to show the art that is human life and death and suffering and joy in its most basic form. The idea came to me in a dream, I think. I was seeing myself being born and dying, reincarnated again and again as the same person. It stuck with me, I suppose. There was also a practical aspect as well; I don't think that I could have kept an entire family in a gallery for so long, and the effects of rapid aging make M. Senneville rather easy to contain. [laughs] As for the poor fellow, I wanted someone wholly average. Another artist or a model or a willing subject would have changed the context. It wouldn't matter if the viewer would know; I would know, and it would poison the entire work.
RK: As a result of some of your work, particularly Jean Senneville, many critics have labeled you as a primarily nihilistic artist. Do you feel that's a fair assement?
FL: The people who say such nonsense are- it is as if, upon seeing the Pyramids at Giza, they could only reflect upon the workers who died during its construction! Pain and suffering or whatever it is that upsets my critics is not the primary intention of my work; I am making an expression. I am making an expression as a human, using whatever I feel is necessary, against the vast universe! If anything, I consider myself a humanist. I am not rebelling against God or whatever people have said I do. I am rebelling against our views. People talk about science and knowledge and what is possible and what is not, and they mean it! They really do. They mean it like some Manichean nonsense, as if one isn't the other. I have no time for such people. When I was making Le Moulin à Papier, [Klaus] Achen claimed I was "going too far" because it could affect areas outside of the gallery, and could bring "unwanted attention," he said. When someone misses the point that badly, is that afraid of expression, he can only be a poseur. It makes sense, I suppose. He had been a Theosophist before trying his hand at art. After the Anti-Realists collapsed, he turned to the Star Church. I hear he is quite happy there, thinking he is a Red Giant or such. [laughs]
RK: Despite your issues with Achen, you must admit that Warum Sind Wir Nicht Kunst? has been instrumental in the continued vitality of the post-realist art world. Just recently, it went into its sixth printing. Artists ranging from Lars Denneman to Cheng Hê having cited it as one of the most important books ever publi-
FL: Exactly! That's exactly my point! Have you seen the state of the art world today? It is filled with homage, as the artists raised on Achen are happy to regurgitate the same cliches that became tired in the Forties. That, or they simply go for shock value. There is no art in a body count, they just think that the louder a statement is made, the better it is. They almost managed to destroy art, to bring down the hammer upon all extra-normal expression. It had been building a long time, and the raid [on the Blue Principle Gallery in 1967] was simply the final straw. Since then, they have dispersed, making small exhibitions here and there. Even so, they still have not learned their lessons. Still the same vomit, still the same death. It is quite upsetting, to be frank.
RK: With the raid on the Blue Principle, and the subsequent destruction of Sept Étapes De Dieu Et L'Homme, you largely ceased producing art. Without a creative outlet, how do you manage?
FL: [laughs] You know, Sept Étapes wasn't supposed to be in that gallery. It was a previous show, and it was about to be moved out. Then it was destroyed all because of that jackass Achenite [Paul] Kemp and his- I'm sorry, you were asking about not making art? I never stopped making art. When I wake in the morning, that is art. When I take a shit, it is art. Art is just the physical expression of culture, and culture is the psychological expression of life. Everything we do is an expression of life. As for an exhibition, which is what I assume that you mean, I never "retired," as you say. I've been working for some time on a project of my own. At some point, I suppose, it will be ready, but it is of great personal importance, and I cannot allow it to be seen before it is perfect.
RK: A new work? Wh-
FL: No, I suppose I've already said too much. [laughs] To color perceptions before a thing is complete, it's terrible. It will be ready when it is finished and I am satisfied.
Piped-in music, piped-in air, piped-in color.
All For You
