The Pen and Paper Initiative

Creativity Workshop #3: My Three Goals

2010-05-05T05:16:00.000-07:00

The way this creativity workshop works is that each writer creates three goals - typically from the list of Issues and Interests we'd been asked to compile just a few days earlier - and then spends a month devoted to each goal, with one short story written towards that goal each week. Each of the stories in the sequence should be linked, somehow.

Three goals; one goal a month; one story a week; three months, twelve stories.

It's going to be quite the ride.

This post, essentially, is me tentatively outlining my three goals, the tasks within those goals, and maybe - just maybe - a rough outline of what I'm writing for each week. I haven't really thought that far ahead, but you know. Have to have something planned.

Below, comrades, the Glorious Goals of my Three-Month Plan:

1. Australia Dreaming

Whatnow: For the past, oh, two or three years Australia has been of much fascination to me, especially as a setting in which to place urban fantasy. I want to explore this further, with a deeper emphasis on Australia itself. I want to do urban fantasy, especially set around Melbourne. This is the easiest goal, being strongly related to my writing past and a throwback to my earlier attempts at a novel, and yet something I wish to reach a state of perfection on.

Links and Stories: Exoteric setting, obviously. Each story will be set in Australia. They'll also be tied together, I think, by a common protagonist - a riff on the Sorcerer and Private Investigator trope I find myself enjoying more and more, in the lines of Harry Dresden, John Taylor, etc - who's actually given up magic entirely. A murder brings him back to the Art, but he finds that he's lost the talent forever - and yet his old enemies haven't forgotten him, things are heating up, etc. These four stories will be vignettes from the overall tale. I like the idea of a protagonist who is powerless in the sense that he has no supernatural abilities and yet strives towards a different sort of power - the power to be free and secure.

Tasks: 1. Write for thirty minutes to an hour each night, no matter what. 2. Figure out exactly what four stories you wish to tell, and where in Australia they fit. 3. Think some more on the protagonist. 4. Finish the stories.

2. Mars! Exotic Mars!

Whatnow: The Sword and Planet subgenre of speculative fiction has long been a favourite of mine. John Carter, Lietenant Gulliver, whatshisname Carson, Michael Kane: I enjoy them all. I love the idea of a jungle-wrought, savage Mars, a place so close to our world and yet so far... and I've long been wanting to write a series of stories set in my own fictional Mars, Aukrahk. I want to pay loving homage to the stories which have so recently inspired me, to the pulps of that era, and to the idea of good, readable fantasy with my own unique spin. The last time I wrote an honest fantasy? It was my first story and novelette, written when I was ten or eleven, entitled The Unholy Ale. It's been a while - time to try my hand once again at a genre I love and a subgenre I adore. This will also be my chance to start thinking about the Exotic Cultures held within the cradle of the Red Planet, merging - I hope - two of my Interests.

Links: The setting will be the link between the four stories - Mars - though each story will take place with different characters within a different Martian locale, whether it be the Earth-obsessed, sprawling Yordes or the metal-infested utterly western, antagonistic nation of Edgarb. The stories..? I'm not entirely sure, yet.

Tasks: 1. Start reading some more Savage Mars fiction - both to get me in the mood and because I still haven't finished Edgar Rice Burroughs full Barsoom sequence. 2. Solidify my understanding of Aukrahk so that I might feasibly set a series of tales within it.

3. The End

Whatnow: Okay, this might sound a little mad, but for my last, and presumably toughest, goal I want to write each of four stories to be an understanding of the ending, the finale - I'm not entirely sure what the technical term is, but each story will encapture an ending to a longer tale, perhaps explained, maybe not. Each story should, if I succeed, at once be as self-containing as a good short story, wrapping up all loose ends, while simultaneously feeling as if it were an ending of something larger. It's evoking a false, though perhaps valid, sense of mood through the style of the story itself. I hope.

Links: The link will be the fact that they have all been designed to feel like an ending. Probably nothing else, though each story may explore unused Issues/Interests from my list.

Tasks: 1. Don't give up. You're going to want to because you're a coward, Nat, and this will be hard. But it doesn't matter whether you succeed wonderfully or fail miserably - all that matters is that you learn and you finish what you start. 2. Start seriously studying how the Ending is formed, and how I can try to emulate that.

Creative Workshop #2: Icebreaker Mission

2010-05-03T12:23:00.000-07:00

Merrilee Faber is crazy. Her 'icebreaker' exercise involves sorting through 31 blogs in what must be a parody of the traditional scavenger hunt, trying to attach 31 clues to 31 writers. Madness.

But it's awesome.

And I love a challenge.

So below is my attempt..

Missing purple? Try under the trapdoor. Vixen Phillips; Lyrical Trance
English author rapping in the bath? Umbrella required! Rosalind Adam is writing in the rain
Moon across the ocean blue. Where’s the long white cloud? Anna Caro
Who says you have to grow up? On Escapism
Five times I love you. Aurora's Creative Corner
California garden with a foxhound. Of Angels and Plants
21 + 6 + 5 + 5. Oh, and a chicken. Coyote; LykosEcho
Considers the lillies, but still a wage-slave to the empire. Sigh. Constant Revision
Lips as red as cherries, hair as blue as…electric? The Magic Spoon
All singing, all writing bird! I’m so Lost… Kayla Olson; Owl and Sparrow
Pigs DO fly! I told you so. Valerie Sloan; It's All Make Believe
Manchester daisies. Greener than home? Kerryn Angell; No Excuses. Just Write
Not in Penzance, and the gender’s all wrong, but still! Raise the Jolly Roger, arrr! Amandasea; Pirate Queen at the Helm
Raising goats, joyfully. Hallelujah! Amber Dawn Weaver; Joy of Dawn
There are thirteen ribs, apparently. Ashley Nava; Right Brain Spasms
Love and stars and hearts and butterflies and swirls! One Big Adventure
RIP Cooper, dear friend. Catherine Mede Writes
Who’s to blame for the rain? Blame it on the Weatherman
Living in Melbourne, dreaming of Mars. Me; Pen and Paper Initiative
Canada’s in the pink! Chibi Doucet
Siochain’s amulet, 50% off! Davina Pearson
Not a serial killer, but an explorer. Exploring Eliza
Bun in the oven, two kids, no time! J.C. Hart; Just Cassie
Beautiful Jalal. Out of my Mind
Africa? Australia? Jicama? Africanaussie
Japanese poetry, in the popular form. Stories of Sommer
Mother, 8, grandmother, 12, not enough chairs in the garden! The Grandmother's Garden
Law of Attraction, no magnets here! Janette Dalgliesh
Ngapuhi? (Gesundheit!) Letters from Silent Hill
I’ve got your contest right here! Epic? You bet! Simon C. Larter; Constant Revision
This is not the Olympics, no matter what the header says. Five Rings

My God this is crazy.

Creative Workshop #1: Issues and Interests

2010-05-02T05:35:00.000-07:00

So, I’ve stumbled across the magnificent writing blog of Merrilee Faber, and not a moment too soon - she’s taken the time to begin an online writing creativity workshop. Everyone who owns a keyboard and blog is invited, and as I, myself, am always looking to increase my own productivity and the quality of my ideas I thought I’d give it a shot. Ms. Faber being genuinely lovely and my love for a challenge don’t hurt, either.

As a sort of preliminary task we’re supposed to write about issues and interests we face as a writer. I present to you, my readership - the list of Nathaniel Robinson:

1. Momentum and Discipline - issue

I really only get things done when I place deadlines upon myself and stick to them. That only begins to happen, mind you, when I’ve gathered sufficient momentum to do so – to see an end in sight and then, naturally, begin to think of the destination. This happens all too rarely. I often lose momentum, and then it is a struggle just to continue. I know a lot of begins with discipline; my own sense of discipline is something I need to realise if I wish to seriously up my game.

2. Versatility of Character – issue

My typical protagonist: white, young, male, often a writer, sometimes smokes (I do not), often bitter about some tragedy he inflicted upon himself. This is because I am male and white and often a writer and often screw things up, as well as a host of other reasons that I’m not entirely sure of myself. Nevertheless, my most recent short story involved a jinn who was of Arabic descent (tick), had no particular interest in writing (tick), was powerfully ancient (tick) and did not smoke (tick). He was, unfortunately, male and inclined to messing up. But I enjoyed the process of studying an entirely different character, adding variety to my typical writing, and so I’d like to continue to buck my fascination with bland characters.

3. Dialogue – issue

Frankly? My dialogue sucks. It gets better with revision, but I still execute it poorly, I feel, perhaps because I personally believe that the speech of the individual is the truest indicator of their character. I want to be able to do dialogue damn well. I want my readers to almost be able to hear the words coming out of the character’s mouth.

4. Unpleasantness – issue
My stories never really have a happy ending. It’s always bittersweet at best, horrific at worst. As I am no Roald Dahl I can’t always pull it off well, and my writing suffers for it.

5. Exotic culture – fascination

Culture in general fascinates me. Especially culture I, personally, find exotic – it is the relative strangeness in thought and activity (at least compared to my own culture). The most enjoyable thing about writing the aforementioned jinn story, besides the nonstandard character, was researching and grasping Islamic culture, extremist and otherwise, ancient and modern, esoteric and exoteric. I’d like to continue with this.

6. Man versus Mythology – fascination

This is a theme that I find cropping up more and more in my writing. The idea of a man battling against his culture has consumed me over this past month. Whether it’s the life of an atheist man who bitterly searches for his ascended religious wife after the Christian Rapture, or the career of a superhero learning to actively despise the task of saving people, or the struggles of a genie trying to break free of his cultural programming – it all fascinates me. This is something I’d really like to explore. In a way, it’s almost about personal control versus the external world, with a twist of the fantastic, and I like it. It harkens back to Greek myths and prophecy and the idea of fate, karma, destiny… and there is something subtle and powerful about it.

7. Romance and Lost Love – fascination

As a writer I tend to throw in a lot of my own life into my stories (as, I am sure, most writers tend to do). Recently this has manifested through the motif of romantic screw-ups, lost loves, etc, especially through the actions of the protagonist. I’ve tried to keep away from other favourite themes – such as the absentee father or the idea of addiction to action – but this channeling of personal guilt into the story has formed something positive: a slow love for the romantic (in the modern sense) genre. I like to see one individual chase after another; I like to see them fail and I like to see them succeed.

9. Mars (and the pulps) - fascination

Hey, who doesn’t love the pulps? Don’t answer that. I’m absolutely intrigued at the moment with the idea of writing stories in the vein of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom stories (and the further stories of Michael Moorcock and several others). Sword and Planet is a subgenre I’ve come to truly love.

10. Home – fascination

Australia isn’t boring. Melbourne is exceptionally interesting. So why don’t I write more stories set in Aus? Now, to my credit, most of my more recent tales have been set in Australia… but I’d really love to focus on the mystery, the culture, the power of Australia. Australia can’t be less interesting than America, after all, and look how many novels are set in the United States.

11. The End – fascination

So I’ve recently finished watching the entire first season of the soap opera teen drama frenzy The O.C. with my girlfriend. (Before you judge, the dialogue is much greater than I remember. The plotting – while ridiculous at times – is dense and well-executed, the characterization is fantastic and the entire set up is very clever. That’s where I stand.) The last episode was quite sand, and she was weeping as the credits roll. Even I, the epitome of all that is MAN, felt a little teary. That is an affect I sorely want to emulate – I need to learn how to craft the perfect ending.

The Rabbit

2010-02-25T00:03:00.000-08:00

The rabbit was white and menacing. It came out at night to watch things happen, loitering in the backyard like a dead saint. Word on the street claimed that it drew sustenance from the corpses of dead felines. The cats were nervous. They could not catch the rabbit, for it possessed the alacrity of a snake, the cunning of a bird and the bizarre fortune of a dog.

There were sixteen cats living within Dell Road. All of them were frightened of the rabbit.

Cats lived in strange cells of two or three, only meeting fully on certain special or mystical dates, though they were all ruled by the wisest cat on the road. This cat was known to its brother felines as Lapradush, or ‘destroyer of Hare’. This was very funny to the wisest cat, whose owner was entirely bald. Nevertheless, he took his role as protector, destroyer and seer very seriously, and had sworn a bitter oath to rid the street of the rabbit.

A short while after the rabbit moved in under the house, the tenants moved out. A human boy had fallen mysteriously ill – rot of the lungs - and had quietly died a few nights before. A fish lived at the house, the companion of the dead boy, and had spoken quickly and confidently to Lapradush.

“Do not eat me,” said the fish.

“I will not, little thing,” said the wisest cat. “I am here to speak.”

“That is good, Kashkakash,” said the fish. Kashkakash was the name the bowl-kept fish of the road had named the wisest cat. It meant ‘destroyer of Fish’. “Speak.”

“What killed your master? Was it the whitest rabbit? There is talk of your family moving out of the road… this disturbs us greatly.”

“Yes, they are planning to move out,” said the fish. “The rabbit comes, sometimes, you know. To watch. I tried to speak to it, at first. Then I begged it to go. It would not leave. It would not even speak.”

“How did it gain entrance? Was there a hole – a door left unlocked?” said Lapradush. He knew that the fish – despite being bowl-ridden – was intimately familiar with the home.

The fish blinked.

“I do not know how,” it finally admitted. “All the doors were locked. No open windows. No holes. Unless, perhaps, a cat let him…” The fish knew that all cats – despite their supposed distaste at all things mechanical – were intimately familiar with locks, keys and doors.

“No. The cats would not.”

“Sometimes, the rabbit comes to watch me. I know that the hopping folk do not care for meat, least of all the flesh of fish, but… what if it…? What if it is here for – what if it killed Matthew so that it could get to – to me…?”

“Goodbye, little fish,” said Lapradush, known as Kashkakash, ‘destroyer of Fish’, as he leapt out the window.

Batting for Phobos

2010-02-22T03:05:00.000-08:00

(So this was meant to be a short exercise to get me in the mood for my more impressive - I hope - savage Mars novel, 'Dreaming of Mars', which you'll all be able to read soon enough. As such it might seem to finish abruptly. Honestly, that is simply when the story ended.. I had no interest in what happened to the Martians, or the Englishmen, or any of that. My goal was simply to write a little about the situation. Enjoy.)

The twentieth century, it seemed, would be a hundred years of further rain. The savages weren’t panicked by the weather. It was unfortunate, however, that the test had to be further delayed by half a week. They kept practicing in the rain, and I supposed they needed the practice, a gentleman’s game like cricket as utterly alien as it was to their unruly culture.
I watched. There was a strategy, here. Can’t trust an alien to play a genuinely British match. Protected only by my coat and jacket, the storm battled around me, further sullying my mood. I knew that in a remarkably short amount of time they’d become adequate players – possibly even good players.
But we were Britain’s finest.
Earth’s premiere batsmen.
The Martians were good at batting, I knew – the four spindly, twisted arms weren’t as much of a handicap to them as I’d reasoned.

“Learn much int’resting, Cap?”
I turned, and rain lashed at my face. The voice was familiar – it was our unread, uneducated wicket-keeper, ex-Private John Smithson.
His near-Cyclopean face leered out at me from within the gloom.
“Smithson,” I said, attempting conversation with the brute, “Why do you think they continue practicing in the rain?”
“On the field, Cap?”
“Yes, on the field. It is a disturbingly dangerous activity.”
“Ball don’t spin right, Cap, sure is men’cing. P’rhaps… perhaps the blue-skinned devils aren’t like us. P’raps they’ve got tougher skins, Cap.”
“Perhaps,” I replied, and lit a cigarette.

“You can’t lose this one, Vinall. It’s rather important to the human race as a whole that you don’t let this one go.”
The Colonel’s face was obscured by smoke. The rain had stopped, but the pitch was drowned. We met at dusk, while the team drank and the Martians prayed.
There had to be a direct connection between the unsightly nature of one’s face and their role in the world, I mused. The Colonel was built like some bizarre chimera, half-cat, half-opium fiend, and half-ogre. There seemed to be no humanity within those eyes. He was a big man.
None of the government or military cads I’d had talks with had good looks or a roguish smile.
“Why is it so important? We’ll win, you know that. We’re the best. Do make yourself useful, Colonel, and worry about something else. How could we lose?”
My smile was grim, but only out of distaste. The very notion - !
“They’ve given us gifts, Vinall,” said the Colonel. “Military rifles made of glass that can shoot up to fifteen hundred paces and emit pure light. Strange foods and wines. A flying machine, for God’s sake! Their technology must be extremely advanced…”
“Ahah.” I smirked. I knew where this was going – I’d been fielding for England for far too long not to understand how this worked.
“Vinall…?”
“If we win, we’re given more gifts. Greater technologies. There’s a wager, here, Colonel.”
“Isn’t there always? You’re sharp, Vinall, I’ll give you that, but only half-correct. The Martian mind, it seems, is a simple and impish thing… they enjoy a gamble, as you’d know.”
I knew. After practice and prayer, they’d often cheat my men out of all of their pounds by beating them in games of chance – even games such as Gleek or Loo, entirely native to Earth. The Martians had brought with them their own game of nok-Rasool, an alien game of cards that works almost similarly to the Persian game of Nas, with many added peculiarities. It was massively popular with much of the military and our own team, as poor as we were at actually managing with the absurd, high-blue cards.
The Colonel continued. I lit another cigarette.
“It’s more serious then you’d imagine. If we win, we’ve offered to give them one of the colonies: India, specifically, as the climate in most of the sub-continent suits their assumed preferences nicely. They’ll have it all, and, if they wish, the Indians with them.”
“That’ll close any chance they have at independence,” I remarked. “But what could convince His Majesty to offer them such a large part of the kingdom?”
“If we win, and this, you’ll find, is the extremely cunning bit,” said the Colonel, “if we win, they leave Earth, leaving a substantial amount of their scientific texts and the like with them, and they’ll give us Phobos, Hall’s moon of Mars. To colonize. The British flag will fly proudly once more, Vinall – fly above the luminiferous aether itself!”

The stakes were high.
It was obvious that the Martians – the Colonel called them the Shai’eev, but they were from Mars and that makes them bloody Martians – hadn’t quite given England the intelligence regarding inter-planetary flight, or anything at all, really, regarding that field. How we’d colonize Phobos without rocket-ships was a mystery to me, but it could have been part of the deal…
It was raining again.
I was watching the Martians.
“Our intelligence, Vinall, the intelligence suggests that Mars is hot and wet. Rains all the time there, the Shai’eev indicate. Fills up those great canals… so they’re quite happy in this kind’ve weather,” said the Colonel. We were discussing tactics. I told him our tactic was to be really clever with how we hit the ball, since they had four hands to catch us out with, and that seemed to satisfy him.
“They look like big bloody frogs,” I said, watching the droplets run down their amphibious backs. I was repulsed by their bulbous eyes, their broad backs and contrastingly thin arms, the six fingers on all four of their hands, dark red fingernails over bright blue flesh…
The Colonel laughed at my comparison.
“I wonder how they’d get along with the frogs over the English Channel,” he said, between cackles of laughter. We both knew that the French had been desperate for access to the Martians.

“They’re a funny ol’ bunch now, aren’t they, Cap?”
Johnson Smith had a particular habit where he would sight me sitting miserably, often smoking tobacco, often in the rain, and he’d think that I was lonely. So, in the spirit of friendship, he’d come and bother me.
It wasn’t raining.
The pitch was dry.
The sun was out.
“They’re giving sacrifice to their sun deity,” I said. I’d realized just how much information about the savages I’d acquired watching them play. “Asking him for blessings, victory on this day, the like…”
“Ain’t really sporting, though, is it?” asked Johnson. “Mean, there’ve gotta be rules, Laws of Cricket, y’know, Cap?”
“I know,” I sighed. “It’s not against the rules, because we don’t believe their sun deity is capable of such a feat as allowing them to beat us at a match of our own game.”
The wicket-keeper’s mouth rounded in shock. It was most displeasing. I could see the food stuck between his teeth.
“Shame, Cap, shame,” said Johnson, shaking his head. “They’d be cheating and we wouldn’t ev’n think it.”
They couldn’t be cheating.
They weren’t smart enough.
We were cheating.

“Have you ever had a Martian, Cap?”
I looked at Knowles. Summoning my greatest death-stare, I tried to obliterate him with sheer will alone. Harrison Knowles was good batsman, and a brilliant bowler, but occasionally the real Knowles would come out. The filth-loving, whore-punching pervert was the secret shame of the team, and the only reason I tolerated him was because we couldn’t find a better spinner. So I let him on, for cricket’s sake.
“They brought their women with them. We told them, told them if they wanted to stay, they need to consent to, aheh, get this, ‘biological research’. Ahah. So they’re doing these tests, right, and now they’re up to this bloody stage – you won’t believe it – where they’re trying’ta see if Martians and humans can mate, y’know, ubermensch stuff, so…”
I sipped at my scotch. There was a cigarette in my hand, but I didn’t quite feel like it. Outside, torrents of liquid smashed at the windows.
“Not interested, Knowling,” I said. “Just let me drink, mate…”
“No, seriously, y’gotta hear this,” he said, “So they need blokes who’ve, liked, who’re local and who can keep their mouth shut, y’know, and the Colonel comes to me and he’s all like, ‘Oy, there’s a good mate, yeah? Wanna bitta this?’ and shows me a photo, like, and I see the four arms and the breasts – oh god the breasts…”
“Fantastic, Knowling,” I said. “But that’s enough. Degrading, just a bit, yeah? I don’t need to know…”
“So put us in a room, yeah? Sorry mate, I mean Cap, won’t take long at all, so we’re just in this room, and the poor little blue thing looks scared – they’re much smaller than the males! So we get there and I, y’know, take everything off, and it’s really just…”
I lose my temper.
Knowles saunters away, bragging about his interspecies conquests to the rest of the men in the pub.

“The plan’s a good one,” said the Colonel.
I was wet.
I was not in the mood.
“Better than beating them fairly and playing a good match of cricket?” I asked, a little spitefully.
The savages were playing in the rain.
“Oh, yes,” said the Colonel. “Turns out the Shai’keev have many addictive substances themselves. Certain weeds, chemicals, the lot… they’ve got a whole city, you know, called Hoosk? Do you know what Hoosk means, Vinall?”
“Enlighten me,” I muttered.
“Hoosk, in their language, means, ‘City of Illusions’, or mirages, or something similar. The city’s built on a huge desert, and the desert is found atop a huge deposit of gasses. The gasses rise, sometimes slowly – sometimes quickly – and the city hallucinates.”
I nodded.
“What’s your point, Colonel? I mean, it’s all fascinating, but we’re never going to go there…”
“Don’t be so sure…”
“And anyway,” I said, “What does our cricket match have to do with the city of Hoosk?”
“Nothing at all,” grinned the Colonel. “But you know one thing the Shai’keev don’t have? Vinall, pay attention here: they don’t have tobacco.”
I’d had a few drinks. I wasn’t as sharp as I typically am.
“We’ll sell them tobacco and get them to throw the match?”
The Colonel laughed, the fat on his face wobbling ever so slightly as he did so.
“No, no,” he said. “They love the stuff. We’ve been giving it to them, not charging them a cent, since we twigged on that they didn’t have any…”
“So…?”
“The tobacco, Vinall, is laced with the isolated form of Strychnos ignatia.”
I didn’t say a word.
“And we’ve checked, young son, oh yes – Vinall, that Martian whore we shacked Knowles with? She’s dead. We tested it. Strychnine kills them, Vinall. Kills them dead.”
I nodded.
“It is a pretty good plan…”
It was quite cunning. The Martians would drop dead, or be too sick to play, and we’d win the match. We hadn’t been poisoning all of them, of course. They needed the technology… it was only the cricket-playing aliens who we needed to exterminate.
Clever, yes, in the finest traditions of Great Britannia. But something about it made me feel ill. I didn’t hold any sympathy for the creatures – they were anathema to my entire way of life, cold-blooded savages who spoke a strange language and made my flesh recoil every time I had to touch their amphibious flesh – but they were noble, I supposed, in their own way. My own code of honour demanded that schemes such as the Colonel’s should not be practiced upon anyone or anything – but it was out of my hands.
It wasn’t Captain Vinall running the show.

THE FICTOGNOSTICS WANT THEIR BOOKSHOP BACK (Fifteen-Sixteen)

2009-11-11T08:34:00.000-08:00

FIFTEEN

“Go on,” said Vic the Jester. “You may as well. At least this way – this way, you’ll have a chance.”

Two weeks had passed in the kingdom of Cardanea. For thirteen days out of fourteen Justin had feasted, every morning, upon Cardanean pancakes, topped with Cardanean syrup. The syrup, he was told, boosted the body’s regenerative rate, and this seemed true enough; his leg was still stiff, but the gaping wounds had stopped gaping – they had healed.

He’d spent the entire first week resting and reading borrowed books from the Cardanean public library – non-fiction, all of it. Cardanean anthropology, sociology, archaeology, geography, ecology, psychology… it was all truly fascinating. An entire new world! One with different laws and customs, a different sphere of reality, a different paradigm of existence…

The beast that had shot him, Justin read, was known as a mechanea. Far, far to the north there was a deep pit known as Mogthandamechanea - the spawning place of the strange beasts made of rust and rage. It was a sacred site to most Cardaneans. Their entire concept of ‘hell’, such as it was, was tied to the place… in less civilized times, Justin read, prisoners and dissidents were thrown into the pit to be eaten alive by the mechanea.

This was before the arrival of a prophesied sorcerer-king and master scientist known as Archival King Reed. Justin felt an electric surge run through his gut when he read the name… there was a definite link to the bookshop, to the mysterious bookseller Reed.

Reed came and unified the warring tribal clans of Cardanea through reason, justice, philosophy, religion and charisma. He ruled with reason – he taught many of the chiefs and craftsmen how to read, how to use numbers, how to write, the things typically reserved for shamans and seers… he taught them how to think clearly, and to act with such clarity in mind; he ruled with justice – there was to be no rape and no torture within his military force, or within those who served under him, and he punished such crimes with severity.

Reed ruled with philosophy and with religion – he spoke to them of honour, and of objective and subjective truth, and of the divide between materialism and spiritualism, of existentialism and pragmatism and skepticism and rationalism and many more… of mythical proto-peoples, such as the ‘Greeks’ – this philosophy caught the Cardaneans by storm, and they delighted in theorizing and refining as best they could, reveling in their glorious rationality. The animism and astrology of the clans were soon assimilated by a fast-growing religious movement - the cult of Reed – and he was claimed to be a living, immortal god.

(At this, Justin was surprised – not at the supposition, which was almost expected, but at the claim of immortality… according to the Archival City histories, Reed had been ruling for just over a thousand years, which verified the immortality claim. Justin was disquieted a little at the idea of Reed being more than ten decades in age…)

Finally, Reed ruled with charisma – there was no doubt about that. Followers flocked to him like sheep to the shepherd, like bees to pollen, and he soon amassed enough followers to crush any who opposed him, as rare as violence was needed. Soon, his followers were eager to march on to Mogthandamechanea, which Reed objected to – it was too dangerous even for them, he claimed. A few days later and he claimed that the pit was sacred ground, their ancient mechanical enemies demons sent to test their vigilance, and that they should instead engage in something more productive – the building of a proper city, perhaps.

And so Archival City was born.

The printing press came soon, under Reed’s knowing guidance, and not long after that their was a complete revolution – gunpowder, advanced agriculture, artistic and literary booms, humanism as a goal, the pursuit of physics, chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, biology… and so it was that Archival City became a true archival city, both in purpose and name. Book-burning was an offence punishable by forced pilgrimage to Mogthandamechanea, and every citizen was required to learn how to read, write, and know numbers. Literatures abound…

Justin knew there was more, of course. He’d read enough about Cardanean psychology to realize that they held the idea that both sexual and violent release were needed for a well-adjusted individual, and that the weeping trees of the southern forests held saps of many different pseudo-mystical properties. There was much more to learn…

Justin knew that he was to see Archival King Reed on the fourteenth day, and was looking forward to the meeting. He’d read as much as his mind could handle without exploding – he had a million (or more) questions for Reed about the place and of his exact involvement in it.

On the fourteenth day, his leg almost fully healed, Justin was dressed in heavy white cloth and given a single snow flower – a gift for Archival King Reed. He was escorted by two soldiers, each heavily armed, and led through silver doors into the King’s grand chambers.

And then there was judgment; swords; a friend returned; and escape.

“Go on,” said Vic the Jester. “You may as well. At least this way – this way, you’ll have a chance.”

SIXTEEN

It took very little work, but was still considered by most of the magical underground to be one of the deadliest forms of sorcery; the hubris conjured simply in employing had staggered many a naïve magician in the past.

Still, at one point or another in their lives every fictional-sorcerer would, if they took the craft seriously, be forced to use it. Many natural-born occultists fell into the trap of abusing the magic before they even became aware of the greater delights involved in the manipulation of sorcery – a trap which very few escape.

It was, to put it very mildly, a highly addictive practice.

“Patterning, it’s called,” said Reed. “It’s nothing at all major, very little chance of anything going wrong…”

He was lying.

When it became obvious that Michael Hardaes, as unreal as he might be, had no idea how to properly use a semi-automatic weapon, Reed had to think fast. He’d already exhausted much of his inner reservoir of power while building a fictional replacement for Justin. It wouldn’t be wise to tap into a Babilu shard for something so petty…

Patterning: the science of creating fictional patterns – expressed through history, memory, experience, conditioning – and forcing them upon a persona. The typical result is that the individual feels as if they’ve truly lived out that experience, and gains all of the associated baggage that comes with such an experience. It is not easy to live a life filled with events that you know for certain did not occur.

Patterning is dangerous. Addictive, a narcotic of the mind – it is easy to fall into the trap of believing that fabricated knowledge matches the truthful equivalent – easy to spend all of one’s time assimilating information, gathering skills, learning languages, becoming a master in a dozen – more – different crafts…

The mind can only take so much strain before it is overwhelmed; the story of the soul is a precious thing, and should not be polluted casually. For every lie the magician makes real, he is enforcing another pattern upon the tapestry of his spirit.
“Very easy process,” said Reed. “Okay. Okay – close your eyes, Michael.”

Imposing a fictional pattern upon a creature made solely of fictional patterns was even riskier than attempting it on an individual that contained some truth – luckily, they were also a little more expendable.

Michael closed his eyes.

“Do you feel the gun? The rifle – in your hands?”

“Yes, lord.”

Reed knew that the weapon was not loaded. He still felt uneasy.

There was a wave of the hands…

… And Michael Hadriguez had spent five years serving his country in the Australian Defence Force. Training had been during summer and had occurred in the Australian Capital Territory – he was a qualified engineer, and had qualified for a higher-rung technician job, but they saw officer material… saw an officer in the way he held himself, in his reserved loyalty, in his rational eyes, in his unflinching discipline. He remembered a hot day – easily forty-five degrees Celsius – where he and his squad had dressed in heavy fatigues and practiced with the automatic weapons – the Steyr was his favourite. It was sleek, felt natural – almost sexy in his hands. He had a girlfriend at home, and…

“Enough,” said Reed.

… And two nights before that, Lieutenant Hadriguez had learnt that she’d been fucking Garry. Garry was a mechanic from Melbourne, once Michael’s best mate – Mike and Garry they were known ha ha ha – and they’d have a few beers together, maybe watch the cricket, maybe go to a car show, catch up down at the pub and he was fucking her, performing the sacred alchemical rite upon his girlfriend – his fiancée, fiancée, she’d accepted and she was his fiancée – and oh yes Michael was very good with the weapons great with an assault rifle but not so bad with a handgun and it was relatively simple to…

“Enough!” roared Reed.

… Relatively simple to get the handgun and load it six little bullets very nice yes he told them he liked to shoot targets yes they thought ceramics but no flesh targets are good to him and Gary best mates yes and he shot him shot Garry twice, thrice, four times and shot him again and again and she screamed no I love you and he laughed and shot her and then himself and…

And Michael Hardaes had the Steyr in his hand and was slamming his head against the rifle. His eyes were wild, unfocused, and drool flowed freely from his mouth, surrounded his teeth, fangs, visible and glinting as he tried to gnaw at the weapon and smash his own brains out at the same time.

Reed wasted no time – he knew the word that would not be written, and said it.

As he said the word it was if a thousand moths had flown into the room. The air shimmered with unseen flight. There was a gnawing at the place, a gathering around the lights, that snuffed all sound and plunged the room into a state of stillness and silence. Reed felt bile rise in his throat, a bitter taste on the tip of his tongue. Every time the word was spoken aloud it lost a little of its power – still, there was enough there.

A clatter broke the silence – steel on tiles. The rifle had fallen, hit the tiles. Michael Hardaes was gone, the fiction unraveled, the creature destroyed.

Reed felt sick. He needed something, needed to sate some addiction, something that him in its grip… he knew what it was, but as was usual his mind went through the motions. Caffeine? This morning – coffee. Nicotine? Not for over a decade, since he’d given them up. Sex? Too long – not since the oath of abstinence, twenty, twenty-five years ago…

Magic.

Real magic.

He had just ruined a life.

It was insubstantial, more a semblance of a life – a photograph of a life – but he’d crushed it and it had felt good.

He’d said the word. Worked the pattern.

Reed slumped in his chair. His body went limp and his eyes rolled back as he savored the taste of black magic.

THE FICTOGNOSTICS WANT THEIR BOOKSHOP BACK (Eleven-Thirteen)

2009-11-08T06:57:00.000-08:00

ELEVEN

Snow slashed at the skies of Cardanea like an orchestra of white knives. Accompanying the snow, as was often the case, was the bitter, biting cold; as disoriented as Justin was, his cognitive abilities had recovered enough to scold him for not wearing a heavier jacket. His jeans were soaked, his hands rubbed raw.

When Justin breathed, steam rose from his mouth – as if he were a dragon. This did not make Justin feel better. He did not feel like a dragon.

Justin couldn’t stop shaking.

That didn’t seem much like something a dragon would suffer from.

Still, he was exhausted, and found it difficult summoning the willpower just to raise his head, let alone standing up. His head throbbed. It hurt to move his lips, they were so cold. Justin didn’t know how long he’d lain there, or even how long he’d been conscious.

There was, in the distance, a great creaking sound – like an avalanche born of steel and rust. Justin felt a little panicked, but remained where he was – very still. A sharp tang hit his nostrils – he saw smoke through the trees.

Fire…?

No. Still there was the groaning, the shrill screaming of metal, the broken sounds of something mechanical moving through the snow. Something heavy. Justin heard the clankclankclank of gears against gears, felt the hit of adrenaline warm his body. Adrenaline spiked with fear.

The smell got stronger. The sounds got louder. Justin coughed weakly, not bothering to cover with his hand. In a surge of bravery, he sat up suddenly. Less than half a kilometer in front of him rumbled the beast, edging closer and closer…

He hadn’t gotten more than a glimpse of it, but what he did see inspired enough terror. Easily twelve feet tall – a giant – and made, as assumed, of battered iron or steel. Pipes, like the horns of the devil, spat black smog into the clear sky. A giant made of frosted grey, its face marked by a red and orange war-mask, eyes leering, watching, tracking… it was more demon than machine, and it was edging closer.

Closer.

It had arms, yes, but Justin had read enough trashy science fiction to realize that they functioned as some kind of automatic chain-gun; he felt, rather than heard, the whirring, the clicking, of bullets and bullets and bullets –

“Oh,” said Justin.

He scrambled. He ran. It was a deeply courageous act. As he ran, he saw white, stumbled, ran as fast as he could. It was snowing in Cardanea. That did not help. He slipped, slid, fell, chased by the creature of the mask…

“Jade,” said Justin.

He knew he’d be safe if he could reach the trees. If only it wasn’t so damn cold! If only his head didn’t hurt, if only he was fitter, if only he’d worn something more suitable… the trees were close.

Closer.

He heard the whirring, knew it for real, heard it with his goddamn ears. There was a flash of nothing, and dark red fell upon the pure white. Stumbled, fell, and couldn’t get up. He saw his leg, mangled by blazing iron; a misshapen thing burst right open by the bullets. There was a little pain – like stubbing your toe – but nothing else. Despair, perhaps, but the pain was minimal…

Oh, he hurt. He screamed. He wept and he begged. But there was no pain.

“RETAIL RECOMMENDED PRICE US$16.99 (CAN $18.75) AU$29.95,” said the machine,
hovering over Justin. He knew the beast would enjoy this, would savor it…

There was a crack – it split the air like a gunshot.

Like a gunshot.

Justin saw the men rise, dressed in heavy white, from the snow. They were once invisible – still only blurs upon the landscape, silver firearms the only giveaway. Another crack. Another. The machine whirred.

ClankclankBOOMclankBOOMBOOMclunkclunk –

Saved by the Cardanean knights, bullets whirring through the iron – a considerable lack of ricochets which Justin was quite thankful for – Justin tried to pull his meager body away from the machine. He failed. Soon, however, the masked beast toppled, falling to the side with a marvelous crash.

A pallid soldier moved towards Justin. “Blasted leg,” said the man, nodding to another. “You’re going to be alright, I think, not that you deserve it – stupid, isn’t it, messing around out here? We’ll take you home, fix you up…” Justin could only see her eyes, the face covered with the white mask. It reminded him of surgical attire – he was bleeding…

“Got a name?” asked another soldier, moving to pick Justin up by the arms.

“I’m – I’m Reed’s assistant, Justin, I work, at the bookshop, I mean I work at the bookshop,” said Justin, very aware that he was raving. Still, he knew he couldn’t stop. “Can you get me back – back to the shop? Reed’ll be, he’ll be angry, dock my pay…”

“Reed?” he saw the medic raise an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t be talking about Archivist King Reed, would it, Mike?”

“Wouldn’t have an idea,” replied the soldier named Mike. “Charlene, don’t think he’s from around here, though. Seems unlikely. Clothing wasn’t made for snow. If he’s a visitor, he’ll need to go through the Lord Archivist regardless…”

“Yeah,” said Charlene. “Tssk. Denim. Impractical.”

“Justin,” said Justin. “My name is Justin!”

The soldiers exchanged glances. Mike gave orders to the half-dozen others; they were to continue the patrol.

“You hungry, Justin?” he asked, kindly. “We’ve got the finest pancakes you’ll ever taste.”

“So hungry pancakes yes,” said Justin.

TWELVE

Soror Twist passed the fictional Reed the Bookseller as if he wasn’t there at all. She found the real Reed sitting in the kitchen, shaking, sipping black coffee. Twist knew that he wanted her to think that he was reading the newspaper, but they both know that he couldn’t. He was too frazzled.

A mop and bucket sat next to him. The bucket read PROPERTY OF REED’S BOOKS but if it was alive, it kept silent. Reed had mopped up the fictoplasm as best he could, but it would take months of reweaving the reality of the place before the black would fully fade. The blood of sorcerers was sticky stuff indeed.

“Twist,” said Reed, managing a smile. “Good of you to come. Cherry with you…?”

“She’s being massaged, pampered and given very thorough counseling in one of Sunsorta’s finest health resorts,” said Twist. “That’s why I’m late, sorry. I’ve liquidated everything Vic owned, too. We’ve got a million or so in worthless,” she said, meaning cash, “And a Babilu shard and a half otherwise. Don’t know what he did with those blasting rods you set him up with, but they’re gone. All his other talismanic gear has gone. It’s all vanished.”

Reed nodded, staring into his coffee. They knew what that meant.

“They didn’t know what the real stuff is,” said Reed. “Left the worthless books. Good for us, I suppose… what do you mean, ‘half a Babilu’?”

Twist sighed. Her magnificent red hair shimmered accordingly. “He’d had a thing for composing, apparently,” she said, “Music. We’ve got a Babilu shard, but it’s written in notes and staves. I can’t understand it.”

“Ah,” said Reed. “Always the tricky bastard, wasn’t he…?”

“Yeah,” said Twist.

There was a silence in the kitchen.

“Should I try and get the body to Blackwater? Did he mention anything about wanting to be buried with the world? Tradition and so forth?”

“No,” said Twist. “He was adamant about that. He wanted a traditional funeral, in the normal sense. Buried – tombstone - the lot. Apparently his Mum doesn’t know that he was into all the scary fiction shit… hah, oh, we had a laugh about that one.”
Twist took Frater Vic’s body and five Babilu shards – more wealth than most sorcerers would own in their lifetime - leaving Vic’s musical piece with Reed. Before she left, she asked to see Justin.

“Ah,” said Twist. “Got a fictional backup?”

“Not yet,” sighed Reed. “There’s a lot to do today. Maybe he’ll be easy enough to find. Still not sure what exactly triggered the escape…”

“Might’ve been the pancakes,” said Twist wryly, having noticed that the kitchen was full of empty bottles labeled CARDANEAN SYRUP COMPANY.

“Maybe,” said Reed, but he didn’t elaborate.

THIRTEEN

It had taken an hour for the two soldiers to carry Justin back to Archival City. They’d cleansed his wound as best they could, removed the bullets, and fed Justin the clear sap that would plunge him into a deep sleep.

Before Justin met a second unconsciousness, he saw the outskirts of Archival City. It seemed as if most things in Cardanea could be seen only in half-taken glimpses or rushed glances – Justin saw the great gun-towers, made of rusting iron, defending the city. There were at least half a dozen of them, built upon the tall stone and metal walls, and they surrounded the entire capital.

The clouds above Archival City were a dark grey, the colour of gravel, and it soon began to rain. Justin remembered feeling the lashes of freezing rain before the sap took hold and he fell into sleep.

THE FICTOGNOSTICS WANT THEIR BOOKSHOP BACK (Nine-Ten)

2009-11-05T09:54:00.000-08:00

NINE

There was an explosion of the soul.

Justin felt his incorporeal existence be cut in twain. It wasn’t a painful experience, but it was disconcerting. Whatever spirit he had was shook wildly and there was a moment where he felt a deep, scarring sense of terror at the great unknown – was he dying? Was he dead? He remembered falling down – and then –

He remembered how good those pancakes tasted.

He was the second soul, the active soul, the soul with a goddamn personality – it was that part which would rise to unknown heavens. It was this strange and uncertain thing that had lied to Jade, that considered itself a talented writer, that had an interest in mythology and science fiction, that had lied to Jade, that would make up stories just to feel good about himself – perhaps it was his grandmother falling terribly ill, or him having watched a completely mythical movie – and it was him who wanted to believe, but couldn’t, but needed to believe in UFO’s and the possibility of a hollow earth and the truth behind the eleventh of September, that had lied to Jade…

The other Justin remained.

This was the creature who understood that he needed to work much harder if he hoped to succeed, that had sunk many hours reading the philosophical texts, that had read the autobiographies of Oppenheimer, Thompson, Tolkien, that kept a passing interest in biology and accepted the theory of evolution, that knew enough about mathematics to understand that it was a system for understanding the world, that knew that he loved Jade, that was carefully learning Portuguese, perhaps successfully, that was able to understand how currency and Australian politics worked, that knew that Collins Street was before Bourke…

Even the facts were uncertain; but still, they remained. Only the fiction of the soul, the story – of sorts – was given life, given personality.

Justin looked down and saw his own fallen body, and the broken corpse of Vic. He felt every conceivable emotion at the death of the bastard sorcerer – rage, melancholy, sorrow, anxiety, joy, many more – in a single moment.

Suddenly, he was swimming, flailing, drowning, suffocating in a lake that was not a lake – the deepest lake. He felt the dark, cold waters take him, at once still and alive, and struggled not to sink.

There were no waves, and yet water crashed upon his head as he was pulled down by unseen hands. The breath was thrown from his lungs, and he knew he was going to die.
This was not a place to know.

Suddenly she was there, naked. He, too, was there – naked. She was sitting on the gap between his legs, his penis in her soft hands. Panting, a small giggle. It felt good – really good. He didn’t know what to say, so he kept it simple. A groan. Whispered, “Fuck.” Stroking.

He’d open his eyes. She’d smile. He’d look up, into her eyes.

Her eyes.

Her eyes her eyes her eyes her eyes her eyes her eyes her eyes her eyes her eyes her eyes her eyes her eyes her eyes were spiders and the spiders dropped down her face (she was weeping, crying spiders, arachnotears) and they dropped down upon his throbbing, wilting member and bit and bit and bit…

And he was drowning in a shallow lake. The lake was a bookstore, and he’d just put in his resume. Robertson’s in Frankston was the name of the place, and the manager appraised his meager qualifications with a cutting eye. He was old, thought Justin, with the eyes of a lion…

“Writer, huh?” said the manager. Not too old, actually – maybe a grey forty?

“Y-yes,” said Justin.

“What’ve you written, then?”

“Uh…”

“Come on, come out with it. The RECENT PUBLICATIONS area of this form is blank. What’ve you written? Anything we can stock? ISBN’s, maybe?”

Justin knew he hadn’t written anything. He liked putting ‘writer’ on his resume – made him feel a little qualified, a little special, maybe even legitimate. He couldn’t help putting down RECENT PUBLICATIONS, either, because what did a writer do except publish…?

They looked at him with empty eyes.

No spiders, but…

Black water rushed up to meet him. The ship was sinking. He’d be better off stacking shelves at Coles; maybe he could apply for the dole. Maybe, maybe, maybe…

He wanted pancakes!

They watched.

Justin screamed and fell –

“Are you ill?” asked the passerby. He was bald, with round – not chubby – features, eyes that twinkled like the stars… and he was wearing a dress. A nice dress. It was pink and rather conservative; didn’t show too much leg and was fairly acceptable around the bust. It had frills. The subtlety of the outfit was ruined by a combination of two elaborate gold earrings and garish makeup (lipstick of the blood, foundation of the flesh, eyeliner the colour of rot…).

“I said, are you ill?”

The man looked familiar. Something about the eyes. His naked head looked like it had been designed for funny Eastern hats… the kind of hats that magicians and snake-charmers wore. Indians – yoga – mysticism…

Justin had seen him before – on the back of one of his books. MOONCHILD… his name was Aleister Crowley, and he was in drag. Justin was too shaken to reply, and he was certainly in no condition to spot the raging erection that had caused the bottom of Crowley’s dress to go the way of a tent.

“Fine, fine, fine, th-thank you,” said Justin, nodding his head much too enthusiastically.

“I bet you are,” said the transsexual thaumaturgist, as he licked his lips. “I bet.”

Justin felt fear. Suddenly, Crowley was upon him, screaming all manner of obscenities: “Every man and woman is a star!”, “Love is the law, love under will!, “I am divided for love’s sake, for the chance of union!”, “Sit still! Stop thinking! Shut up! Get out!”, and, “I will fuck you in the arse, little boy!”

Crowley the rapist in drag tore at Justin’s clothes, and they fell away like fine silk. Crowley was there, then, the wand freed, held in his left hand – the hand of the destroyer – and he slapped Justin’s buttocks and giggled manically. The lipstick was smeared.

“Aha!”

There was a short moment of sodomy, and Justin was falling, crying, weeping – he needed the pancakes bad and he needed them now so hungry -

He awoke in Cardanea.

TEN

There were things to be done.

Reed had crashed into the kitchen only moments after Justin had left for his journey to Cardanea. When he saw the two sprawling bodies he dropped what he was holding and swore. Three heavy books, bound in the skin of Reed’s enemies, dropped to the floor. They were Babilu shards, expressions of power written by those sorcerers who had heard, in a moment of supreme gnosis, the first and final language of Babel…

Each was untitled, as was the tradition, named by he who owned them – a different interpretation for each possessor. Reed had named the first THE SECRET VOCAB OF SECRET MELBOURNE, the second ENOCHIA LOST, and the third AND GOD WAS GOOD ON HIS PROMISE. They might have been horrible titles, but hey were very good identities of power, and the shards themselves were happy.

They’d been written by Frater Vic himself, and thus the best possible sources to draw the required sorcery from to heal the wounded bastard sorcerer. Vic had sold the lot for two million dollars in cash, safe haven in the shop, and two perfectly crafted blasted rods. He was, as usual, rather desperate.

“No,” said Reed. “No, no – come on, Vic – damn it – come…”

There was enough of the sticky ink-like substance – the fictoplasm – for Reed to know. Vic was dead. The boy had gone into shock. It was a combination, probably, of the pancakes and the temporal mind-fuck. He’d expected this. Vic had come back, chased by Lovecraft’s damned angle-hounds, simply to warn him – and to deal with business in the hazy present.

The books would be fine were they were. The fictoplasm was still, now, killed by the harsh reality of oxygen and methane and everything else that freely composed the network mesh most referred to as ‘air’. There was no fiction in chemicals. Not yet.

But Justin was fine. Shocked, but fine. Reed knew he’d probably find him wandering around an eternal labyrinth – chased by mustached cutlery, perhaps, or something even more sinister – or maybe, if the kid was lucky, stuck somewhere in the Outer Thoughts, chased by a bomb-throwing Marx or having conversation with the darkly romantic Poe…

Reed almost went to fetch the books on summoning the soul and reanimating the dead – on the resurrection and the story – before he realized it was hopeless. Even if he burnt out the three Babilu shards, used everything he had, too much of Vic’s fiction lay on the floor, staining the kitchen tiles, pitch on white. Everything of Vic that wasn’t solid, that wasn’t nailed down – and that was a lot – had been ruined, twisted beyond repair. Perhaps something was salvageable…

Reed shook his head. There would be nothing. He knew how they worked. Attacks upon the story of a soul was a vicious, heinous crime, even amongst the lawfully challenged fictomagicians, but something irreparable – something so terrible – were loathed and feared in equal parts…

Either the Queenslander was back in town, or this was the work of the Inquisition of the Strangest Truth. Reed knew Vic’s history, knew his vendetta, and was secure in the assumption that it was the latter. The cold war had turned hot. Soon, fiction would fly, and the whole occult landscape of Melbourne would be warped irrevocably…
But that was the future.

Reed shuddered, fear stinging his gut, and concentrated on the now.

The phone rang thrice.

“He’s fucking dead.”

Her tone was reserved, deadbeat, the tone of someone who had felt the crushing gears of fate.

“Soror Twist – I’m sorry. I tried to call him, but they’d messed with his story, and, I’m sorry, damn it, I’m really sorry,” said Reed. He was crying. Madly, he hoped that a customer wouldn’t stroll in to catch him like this.

“It’s – he knew it was coming, right? Kid had a knack for the cards. I’ve got to get out, Daniel. I can’t stay here. I was his partner… they’d get me and do worse. I’m just glad – just glad,” she said, and Reed heard sobbing. “I’m glad they didn’t get him. He was always good at escaping, but now – if the bastards haven’t, haven’t already – they’ll take Cherry. Can’t let that happen…”

“No, no, you can’t,” said Reed. His voice sounded lame, weak. Wounded. “Look, where are you going to go? Blackwater’ll be going down within hours. It won’t survive, not a death like that.”

“No,” said Twist. Reed could imagine her dark red hair, her eyes – stained with eyeliner, broken with grief. “Sunsorta’s safe, for now. I’ve got the thing protected – recently installed my entire mortgage details, right into the landscape. It won’t fall easily. Maybe, later, I’ll get him to Cardanea… but I don’t know. Got to get Cherry out.”

“Yeah. You know Cardanea’s always open to you… look, Twist, I know you’ve got to act now, but why don’t you come by the shop? Take a few shards. Take them all, for all I fucking care! Just make sure Cherry’s safe. Spend a shard on an untraceable, fictional personality – make her a Sunsortan princess. Somewhere on the beach. She’ll like that…”

“Yeah, she would,” said Twist. They both tried to smile. “I’ll be around, Daniel. Thank you – thank you. You’re a miserable old bastard, but you’ve always been good to us.”

“Don’t, uh, mention it. Good business and all. See you in a bit. Get Cherry first.”

“Yeah.”

She clicked off. Reed was left listening to the silence of the receiver for a few moments, and continued the work.

The signs were all very excited. EFTPOS ACCEPTED $10 MINIMUM assaulted Reed with questions when he reentered the bookstore. “What happened, boss? Will the bastard be okay? He’s hurt up bad… some bad people do this?”

Reed silenced him with a gesture. He felt exhausted. Didn’t get much sleep the night before, and now this…

“Little fact,” he said, speaking to EFTPOS ACCEPTED $10 MINIMUM quietly. “I’m going to have to put you for sleep. Just for a while. Just a little bit… your energies are needed elsewhere. Is that okay, little fact? I really need it.”

EFTPOS ACCEPTED $10 MINIMUM was shocked. He hadn’t been around that long, true – Reed had stubbornly refused to install an electronic transaction system for as long as he rationally could – but he hadn’t heard the master like this before. He knew what Reed needed, and felt a wild terror within him at the idea of being transformed, but knew enough not to argue.

“Anything you need, boss,” said EFTPOS ACCEPTED $10 MINIMUM. “Shall I ready the others?”

“Please…”

It was done. Reed let himself grin. EFTPOS ACCEPTED $10 MINIMUM was a strong little sign; one of his better creations. He knew what the thing must be feeling.

Reed unstuck the sign – the little being shrieked in pain – and removed the sacred blutack. He turned the sign over. It now read DANIEL REED HAS AN ELEVEN INCH PENIS. He placed the blutack on the original side, and replaced the scandalous sign upon the desk.

This was done for each of the signs. Reed knew none of the non-fictional people who wandered by the bookshop would notice.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO HAVE A BROWSE :) became REED’S BOOKSHOP IS WHERE THE HEADQUARTERS OF THE INQUISITION ARE LOCATED.

TECHNICAL MANUALS AND EDUCATION BOOKS SECOND HAND became SOMETIMES I WONDER WHAT MAGIC IS REALLY ALL ABOUT.

CLOSED became DANGEROUSLY OPEN.

REED’S BOOKSHOP became REED’S BARBER.

PART-TIME STAFF WANTED APPLY WITHIN became nothing. It was dead.

The signs were few – as many as Reed could handle – but they were powerful, facts reversed, and they were enough. To the old bookseller’s satisfaction, he saw the space behind the counter blur, grow out of shape, and slowly – the full process would take an hour – become an identical physical copy of himself. This was Reed the Bookseller; a fictional creation that could be relied on to watch the shop while the real Reed was busy, say, cleaning up after a dead friend.

The customers – those wise enough to realise – would be insulted when they learnt that they were being served by a fictional character.

Fuck the customers.

Reed spent the hour watching the blur slowly take form and pondering over what to do with Vic’s body. He’d cleaned up the fictoplasm as best he could – stories tend to tarnish everything they come into contact with – and resolved to wait for the arrival of Twist before making a decision.

He checked Justin’s pulse again – just to make sure – and, satisfied with that, pulled the kid’s body out of kitchen, through the corridor and carried it Upstairs, with the exotic books. Later, he’d probably need to make a fictional copy to replace Justin for a smile while, but he had all day for that.

It was getting warm outside. The day, Reed realized with a sigh, had just begun.

THE FICTOGNOSTICS WANT THEIR BOOKSHOP BACK (Seven-Eight)

2009-11-03T09:35:00.000-08:00

SEVEN

How you have fallen from heaven,

O star of the morning, son of the dawn!

You have been cut down to the earth,

You who have weakened the nations!

ISAIAH 14:12

He’d gotten it from a little book of stories named THE BIBLE.

EIGHT

The spell was broken by the slamming of the front door.

“It is the return of the bastard sorcerer,” announced EFTOS ACCEPTED $10 MINUMUM.

“The fat one with bad teeth,” added PLEASE FEEL FREE TO HAVE A BROWSE :), a little nastier than was necessary.

Justin did not hear the heralding; neither did the magician. Reed, however, returned from Shaitan to Daniel to simply Reed the Bookseller. There was no brimstone in the air… Justin considered the possibility that he’d smelled someone cooking eggs. There were no horns. He wasn’t harmed in any way – it was the crazy man. The crazy scary man had hit him (but not too painfully) and he might have had a panic attack or maybe he was tired enough to experience sleight of eyes…

Justin picked himself up. He hadn’t exactly been blinded by the sight of the obscured sun, but had had enough regardless. And there was a customer – at quarter to seven in the morning.

He saw the bastard sorcerer.

In one of those half-epiphanies which are either entirely meaningless or the keys that will one day unlock the universe, Justin saw the sorcerer and recognized himself – only for a moment. It was a fleeting thing. Almost certainly meaningless.

It was the sorcerer’s grin that captured his attention – the grin of a bastard. There was the craziness in that grin, the manic power of personality which also defined Reed – albeit a little more subtly – the grin that disclosed, to the entire world and less than discreetly, that the guy could do anything.

Occasionally an individual might be gifted with one of those dreams that will involve the dreamer brutally chopping up a spouse (or similar loved) one and then hungrily devouring their flesh. It is that grin which defines the serial killer, the cannibal, and the sorcerer.

The man was unshaven. Stubble tried to hide from the smirk and failed. His teeth weren’t bad, per se, but a little yellow – Justin wondered, idly and without fully processing the thought, whether or not raw human flesh could harm the teeth like that. His hair was like the best beaches – sandy and clean. He might’ve been thirty.

There were conventional Adidas shoes, a long black trench-coat, dark t-shirt. Plain, functional. Battered dog-tags and silver rings. The man was pale – shaking?

“Frater,” said Reed, smile lighting his face. “Brother. It is early. How can I help you? I must say, I never expect you until past midday…”

“Jesus, Daniel,” gasped the man, grin slipping. Justin realized he was sick… felt a twang of fear as he considered the possibility that the man might be dying. “Cut the shit. I need a fucking, what’s the thing, that word that we’re meant to know…”

Softness came into Reed’s eyes. He cared for his clients – and the bastard sorcerer was one of his prized customers.

“Babilu, Babilu… shhh,” he said, grabbing the sorcerer under the shoulders, lending his support. Justin rushed to meet the other arm. “Vic… what’d you do? What’ve you done? You’re dying, Vic…”

Justin stumbled as the man – Vic – staggered, fell, collapsed. He was heavy, but Reed, despite giving an air of frailty, easily took more weight then Justin could have managed.

They dragged Vic to the kitchen. Vic coughed, and it was a hacking thing, as if he were exorcising his lungs. Black goop fell from his mouth. When it hit the floor, it writhed as if alive, and then fell completely still.

“A – does he, uh, smoke?” asked Justin.

“Fictoplasm,” said Reed. “Quiet. Just – just stand back, watch. Please.” He turned back to the broken bastard sorcerer. “Vic, Vic, Vic… come on, Vicci, Vicci…”

His voice cracked a little. Justin did as he was told. Reed slapped Vic thrice with his hands. There was a stirring…

“Vic, how’s Cherry? Come on, mate, it’s been ages since you took her round. Ages. You should – you should bring her over. We’ll have dinner. I liked it when we had dinner… bloody hell, she makes a grand pavlova! You can taste it, can’t you? Cream and meringue… peaches, no, it was strawberries… we all laughed when you asked if it was named after a Russian tsar, remember?”

Vic groaned a little – maybe in affirmation.

“Damn it, Vic, you remember?”

The frown was turned upside down, and Vic smiled a little.

“I – remember… and we sent her… the tsar – and she laughed, and thought he was real… women – don’t get magic… ha – ha – ha…”

“Hah! Don’t let Twist hear that, or she’ll shoot you in the legs – hell, I still remember her letting go at you for, what was it…?”

“Beat up… her boyfriend…”

“Boyfriend? He was a whore!”

“Ha – ha… yes! Yes… maybe the other one... but I beat him… for being an arse – assault, huh? Assault… get away with assault… fuck, I can do anything, I’m a – I’m a – I’m a fucking conjure man. Anything. I almost, almost killed the guy…”

“Broke a few ribs. Come on, be honest…”

“Ha! Ha! Honest… from you? Ha! No, I put him – in hospital – I swear…”

“Bullshit.”

“Come - off it…”

The colour was returning, however slightly, to Vic’s face. The smile had turned to a smirk, and that smirk almost became a furious grin. He sat up, a little, in Reed’s lap. Once he saw Justin, trying to keep inconspicuous in the corner of the kitchen, the grin went the way of the phoenix – the smile almost reached each ear.

“Hey,” he said, quietly. “You got a kid, Dan. You got a new one… ha… ha…”

Reed’s face went pale. His smile turned thin.

“Leave him alone, Vic. You remember what we said…”

“This – that is – that fat shit?”

The insult apparently didn’t register, because Justin only blinked. He knew the man was speaking to him, but his words were slurred and this crazy it was seven o’clock in the morning and some gangster comes in and they talk about his girlfriend and…

“Jesus,” said Vic. He laughed – hard and full – but stopped after a short moment, his body wracked with pain. “Thank God for me, huh? Ha! Abra-ha-fucking-dabra! Oh - God – where’re, where’re those fucking Babyshards, Daniel? I’m good for the – I’m good. Do you… do you want my fucking, my fucking – card? Credit card? Numbers’n all…”

“Ahm, yes,” said Reed. He looked over to Justin, and then back to the kitchen’s exit. “Justin, talk to him. Make sure he keeps talking. Vic – Vic, I’ll get you the Babilu, don’t worry about it. Get me a bottle or something, we’re even. Make sure you talk to him, Justin, for the love of them all… just keep him talking.”
He rushed out of the room, a blur of brown and grey.

“See you, Frater,” said Vic, waving half-heartedly after Reed. “Good-bye…”

“Um. How’s it going, Mister Vic, I’m Justin. Good to, uh…”

“Justin, yeah? How the – how the fuck do you think I’m, how do you think – I’m going?”

“Sorry.”

“Stop – fucking apologizing. Christ. Toughen up. I’m – here I am fucking dying, yes, yes, look at me like that, it’s fucking obvious but I am, you know, probably – actually – might very well die, and here you are… apologizing! Did you kill – ha – kill me?”

“N-no.”

“Ha! Ha! Oh, that’s – fucking – great! Great. Work here now…?”

“I started this morning, um, Vic. Not used to the early starts – I should still be in bed, even.”

“Yes, I agree. Agree. Too – early. Where’re those fucking shards? I need the fucking…”

“What Reed’s gone to get?”

“Yeah, yeah, they might be able - to heal me up… listen, kid. Justin. You need – while he’s out, out of the room – you need to know, I mean, you’ve got, uh, um… a girlfriend, don’t you?”

There was only a moment’s awkward silence. There was a lie.

“Yes,” said Justin.

“What’s – don’t just say ‘yes’ and nod, nod fucking dumbly – no – ha – what’s her name? C’mon, I’m fucking dying – don’t be, uh, what’s that word, shy…”

“Jade,” said Justin.

“Jade? Jade… such a …” He stopped for a moment. Tears streamed down his face. “Forgive a dying – dying man tears. We can cry, you know, we… can cry. You can’t – ha! – but we can, yes. Dying. Look. You – you go home, tonight, and you call her and – and – fuck, you tell her you love her. Jesus. Make sure she knows…”

Justin jumped as he hacked again, this time curling over. Justin could only manage a weak, “Are you okay…?” before Vic had curled over and was retching, vomiting, throwing up the black stuff, the spidery stuff, and as it fell there was something…

Something.

Justin went pale, tried to hold Justin, tried to save him, tried to do something, anything…

Vic was shaking. He was throwing himself about the room. He might have been in agony. His body was caught in seizures. He vomited more of the stuff. As it fell, the Grandfather of Time won, and a sorcerer saw his demise.

“Can’t – fucking – I will… will escape the judgment,” Vic cried softly, as he died.
Justin had flung himself against the pantry. He’d thrown himself into the pantry to begin with, but came out soon enough, his head buzzing with panic, his hands moving to no affect, his mouth caught in the grimace that was the harbinger of honest, straight, human bile…

He fell, expunged the bile, tried to look at the dead man and failed. His fingers hurt, and they were red with blood – his own. He’d been clawing against the brick wall. Tried to wipe the bile from his mouth and failed. Tried to save the man and failed.

Justin collapsed, everything going grey then blue then black, and he’d left the waking world. He did not get a chance to call his pseudo-girlfriend, and he did not get a chance to tell her he loved her.

THE FICTOGNOSTICS WANT THEIR BOOKSHOP BACK (Four-Six)

2009-11-03T07:10:00.000-08:00

FOUR

“Pancakes,” said Reed. “D’you eat pancakes?”

Justin could only nod numbly. It was five-twenty, ante meridiem, and he’d gotten up at four-thirty just to make it there. He’d gotten a full six hours sleep – but felt like he needed another six. A mug of billowing coffee sat in front of him. He knew he couldn’t stomach it, let alone pancakes – what kind of maniac cooked pancakes at five-thirty in the morning?

“Maple syrup, of course,” said Reed. “None of that chemical shit, no… we’ve got real Cardanean maple syrup, here…”

“Mmmn,” said Justin.

“Canadian maple syrup, all the way from Canada, ever tried it before, boy?”

“Hrhmm.”

“Sorry?”

“Hmn - no, sir…”

“Daniel. Reed. Reed.”

“Reed, sorry, sorry – no, never had Canadian maple syrup, sorry…”

“Stop apologizing. You’re in for a treat. Big boy – three? Four?”

“Um, one…”

“With all that meat? Yeah, three’ll do. Eat. At six we’ve got work. Come on, drink the coffee.”

“Sorry.”

“There’s a good man, there we are…”

A lone thought ran through Justin’s mind, as barren as it was at that moment.
These pancakes are fucking delicious.

The pancakes melted in Justin’s mouth. It was a cacophony of sweet tastes, at the perfect temperature, the perfect thickness. The syrup was fantastic. Orgasmic, even.

“These are, they’re very good,” said Justin, munching through his third pancake. Reed smiled wickedly and placed two more searing pancakes on his plate. Justin finished them both, and washed the meal down with the remaining lukewarm coffee.

He was wide awake.

“Good?”

“Great!”

“Want some more?”

“I – I’m pretty full, actually, but…”

“It’s okay. I’ll make them again tomorrow. I’ll just deduct it from your pay.”

“Ah.”

“I kid, boy, I kid. Now, it’s getting close to dawn. Well-read?”

“I think so. Milton, Pynchon, Dunsany, Asimov, Lovecraft…”

Reed nodded approvingly at the mention of Lovecraft. His eyebrows curled affectionately. He was a completely different man in the morning…

“Lovecraft, good. Good. Respect that one. I was thinking more Crowley? Blavatsky? Gurdjieff?”

Justin hesitated for a moment. He thought a little.

“The first one sounds familiar…”

“He damn well should. Tonight you’ll be taking home a copy of Crowley’s finer works…” Reed wandered away, muttering to himself, out of his dingy little kitchen and into the bookshop proper.

He returned with several heavy books, each looking at least fifty years old. The paper had turned the dark yellow shade that defines the large community of bibliogeriatrics. The covers were faded, and simple.

Reed smiled.

“MOONCHILD. Read that first. Vitally important. DIARY OF A DRUG-FIEND, too, though I doubt you’d get the point… and then there’s some nonfiction… MAGICK IV, BOOK OF LIES, BOOK OF THE LAW… ah, yes, MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS, THE GOETIA…”

“Magic…? Nonfiction?”

A politely dubious look had been conjured upon Justin’s face, as if by magic. Reed understood his skepticism, but argued against it, using the medium of a heavy book being slapped, hard, against Justin’s fragile little face.

“If you’re going to be working here for, uh, whatever it was, then you’re going to be open-minded and you’re going to read whatever I goddamn tell you. Right?”

“Sorry. Yes, right.”

Justin took the pile of books. The stack was easily the height of his forearm. It was true; he enjoyed reading, but the job that came with homework…

Forty-five dollars an hour.

Justin resolved to read the books.

FIVE

She’d called the night before. Or he’d called. He didn’t remember, but knew – deep down – that it was probably him who’d dialed the numbers. He was a little scared. They’d spoken online, but… call her? That was a little rough. What if she hated him? What if…

The clock gave a show of light: 3:20 ante meridiem.

AM.

Morning.

When she’d picked up, her words were slurred, her voice blurred – sleeping had occurred. He was not deterred.

“Jade, I’m sorry, I don’t know what…”

She silenced him with her own apology; she told him she missed him. He was silent for a moment. What to say? What was right to say? He told her he missed her as well. She told him she loved him.

They went on to more mundane things. He mentioned the job. She honestly congratulated him. He asked about university, about studying education… and she told him. He told her about how the holistic medicine thing was going, and she was very impressed.

She told him she loved him.

He apologized, explained that he didn’t know why he’d called… he wasn’t that lonely, but sometimes – sometimes he missed her. She was crying by the end of it. He hung up and tried to go to sleep.

SIX

At six o’clock ante meridiem, with less then two hours sleep and a stomach filled with Cardanean pancakes, Justin found himself fully prostrated towards the eastern direction. The style immediately reminded him of the Islamic prayers.

Much to the disappointment of several of the more vulgar books, Justin was not naked, and Reed had no intention of taking a sexual relationship. It was a purely ascetic position. “Practice,” Reed had said. “Adorations to the sun are very good for a boy your age.”

Justin knew the man was crazy. It was obvious by the way he spoke – manically, dryly, and sometimes wryly – and obvious by the way he looked. The tiger’s eyes glinted with a madness that Justin imagined would consume the bookseller.

Reed watched as Justin adored the sun that he could not see. Between him and the great ball of gas and flame: roughly two hundred books, an ancient-looking wooden bookcase, plaster, ten centimeters of paper mached textbooks – the stuff of Newton, Einstein, Oppenheimer, Darwin – filled with theoretical half-truth, bricks, mortar, and a sign.

The sign read PLEASE FEEL FREE TO HAVE A BROWSE :), hand-written. Created by Reed’s own hand – as opposed to Cold Mother Typewriter or the Machine of the Windows – gave it a sort of power that not a lot of other signs had. As such it had an inflated opinion of itself, perhaps justified. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO HAVE A BROWSE :) could speak every language of man, understood the whispers of the Machine, and destroy any book-thief with a single word of power.

That word will not be written.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO HAVE A BROWSE :) watched Justin curiously, and said in the hushed tongue of all informative papers: “There’s nothing to you, kid, nothing at all, and there’s nothing he’ll find. The sun’s a test. To make sure you won’t die. Make sure you won’t wither. Disappear. Don’t think you’ll equate to too much :).”

Justin didn’t hear him, of course. Even though PLEASE FEEL FREE TO HAVE A BROWSE :) could speak English better than most native-born Australians, he knew better than to warn Justin of his presence.

“Do you see the sun?” asked Reed, hovering frighteningly over his newest part-timer.

“I don’t – there are books there,” said Justin.

It was true. All he could see where books. MATHEMATIC EXCERCISES FOR THE AUTISTIC!, NOW YOU CAN DRINK ABSITHE AND WRITE POETRY and similar titles obscured his vision. If Justin had got a little more sleep he might have been curious as to why the books were named so cheekily, but he hadn’t and he wasn’t.

Therrr-whoack is the sound of one book slapping. The book was seminal countercultural novel ILLUMINATUS!, and it loved to slap - and other things besides.

“Christ!” spat Justin, as he toppled sideways. The assault had caught him by surprise. Reed watched him, thunder in the eyes. He held the book in his left hand – the hand of the destroyer. Sammael, Lightbringer, Shaitan… the Adversary.

Justin swore he could almost see the horns.

Brimstone…?

“Oldest trick in the book,” said PLEASE FEEL FREE TO HAVE A BROWSE :), a little disdainfully.

EFTOS ACCEPTED $10 MINUMUM agreed, nodded sagely, and went back to sleep.

THE FICTOGNOSTICS WANT THEIR BOOKSHOP BACK (One-Three)

2009-11-01T09:38:00.000-08:00

ONE

She knew he was lying.

“I just – I mean, I just don’t think that I love you. We’ve changed. I moved – moved to the city, went to a new school – and I changed. Anyone would change. It’s just natural and – I mean, the distance hasn’t exactly helped, has it? I don’t know… I don’t know what to say. I don’t love you anymore.”

She was right. He was lying. He did still love her. But school was finished, and it was November: November was the time when his biological clock shook him by the shoulders and told him he needed a new mate, lest his precious seed go to waste. Sometimes, most Novembers, this would manifest via him developing an extremely small adoration for another girl.

He never courted them. He barely spoke to them. That was irrelevant.
After, bathed in guilt and dressed in self-hate, he would remain mentally chaste for the next eleven months, and then the cycle would continue once more. But sometimes – sometimes he made mistakes.

This particular spring, he’d brainwashed himself into thinking that this particular girl wasn’t good enough for him. It was deceit of the greatest quality – not only did it fool others, it fooled himself.

Five years – high school sweethearts – thrown away.

“I just don’t understand why,” she said, through the sobs. “I just don’t – you were fine yesterday! I know we were fine. We were happy. We’ve fought a little lately, yeah, but I – I – I don’t really know, why? What made you feel like this? Why?”

She stopped trying to hide it. Tears streamed down her face, but he couldn’t see that. He’d broken up with her over the phone. He could tell, though, that her body was being wracked as she wept. He knew that wracked was the right word: most dictionaries defined it as ‘a state of intense anguish’.

She truly loved him.

TWO

Justin wandered into the eccentric little bookshop – the sign claimed that it sold TECHNICAL MANUALS AND EDUCATIONAL BOOKS SECOND HAND. He tried to suppress the thought that next sprung to life within his mind, but didn’t quite succeed. Did the bookshop sell technical books and educational manuals as well…?

Another sign: REED’S BOOKSHOP.

And another: PART-TIME STAFF WANTED APPLY WITHIN.

Justin had shown up, resume in hand. He’d written it himself. He was a little proud.

The shop didn’t look successful enough to hire a part-timer, and the man behind the cluttered desk looked a little ill. Perhaps terminally. His eyes were shot with the red scars of the habitually under-slept. The little hair that the man had left was grey and caught in the process of withering away. His clothes were eccentric. Brown on brown - with a matching brown tie. Highly peculiar in the dullest of ways.

The man didn’t look up as Justin wandered through the bookshop, feigning interest in the encyclopedias, atlases, and text-books; he didn’t have much time for non-fiction books, himself. Work was work, though, and a bookshop was a bookshop - and he was very much in love with the smell of old books…

“What do you want?” asked the man, almost conversationally. It sounded very much like, “How might I help you?”

“I, uh, well,” said Justin. “I’m just having a look, thanks. Actually – um – actually, I saw your sign, and I’m wondering if you’re still accepting applications…”

“Is the sign still up?”

“Well, yes, and I…”

“Splendid. Give me your resume.”

He said ‘splendid’ the same way most people would say ‘funeral’ – dry, flat, as if he himself were locked, without chance of release, within a coffin.

Justin stumbled a little, fumbled a little, mumbled a little as he searched through his backpack, but he soon had the stapled sheets out. He passed them to the man.

“I’m Reed,” said the man, through grunts of acknowledgment, as he flipped through Justin’s unimpressive resume. “You can call me Reed. Or Daniel. Resume’s… a little interesting. You say you can write?”

“I’d like to, um, study journalism or editing or something. I’m hoping Melbourne University. Don’t know if I got the marks, though – journalism’s hard to get into… need a score of ninety, I think.”

An eyebrow rose accusingly.

“Says here you write short stories,” said Reed.

“Yeah… mostly short stories. Finished a novel last year.”

There was a smirk.

“You wrote here that you graduated this month from Northcote High. That’s quite clever.”

“Oh? Is it -?”

“Yeah. Didn’t realise Northington was out already. What’re you messing about with journalism for? There’s a whole world out there, maybe a few for someone with clever eyes, like you. Clever words, too, but you’re a bit of a fool with them. You don’t need the job. Go get crazy, like the rest of them, and go make something.”

Justin felt himself be taken upon a strong current of confusion. He knew that he would soon drown within bewilderment if he didn’t say something soon.

“Um.”

“Well?”

“I’m sorry, Mister Reed -”

“Reed.”

“Reed – I’m sorry, but I don’t quite get what you mean. I mean, thank you, but… I’m just a guy who graduated from Northcote and is looking for some part-time work. I write – I mean, that’s what I make, if that’s what you mean.”

Reed’s eyebrows – archetypically wizardly – fell suspiciously. His thin mouth, caught in stubble, frowned. He looked - long and hard - at Justin.

“You’re not from Northington.”

“No, I went to Northcote – inner city -”

“You’re in my store, and you’re clever, but nothing special.”

“Sorry.”

“Hmmm,” said Reed. A smile broke his face. “You know what? It’ll probably kill me, but you’ve got it. You work to my schedule, right?”

“Of course.”

“Okay. Two or three shifts a week?”

“Um, fine, thank you.”

“Forty-five dollars an hour?”

Forty-five dollars an hour?

“That – sorry?”

“I can pay forty-five dollars an hour. Fifty, even. Is fifty enough…?”

“Thanks. Thank you. That’d be great, thanks. Um.”

Reed looked at him. The brown suddenly looked a very menacing auburn. Justin felt that the man had eyes like a tiger – but he’d never seen a tiger that close, and had no special inkling of what their eyes might look like. The analogy, however, stuck.

“You can come in tomorrow. Five-thirty till, say, three.”

“In the morning?”

“Yes, damn it, in the morning!”

“Okay, um. Okay. Until three in the afternoon.”

“Yes. That would be around five hundred dollars. That should be fine.”

“It is, um, thanks. It’s fine. Thank you.”

Reed smiled once more. It was a librarian’s smile, bitter and thin but genuine.

“Now get out of my shop. We’re closed.”

“Yes, right, thank you…”

“Five-thirty.”

“Right.”

By the time Justin made it home, it was dark, and the moon was slowly rising in the night.

THREE

In the late afternoon, Daniel Reed closed the curtains and emptied the cash register – he’d made fifteen dollars, which wasn’t so bad considering most people couldn’t even find the place. He usually strived to eat dinner and be in bed by seven, in order to get enough sleep for the second round of customers, who typically popped in just past one in the morning.

Reed was determined, however – he had personal business to attend to. He would suffer Chinese for dinner and deal with an hour’s less sleep.

There was a fourth sign upon the shop window: CLOSED.

“There’s a new one coming,” said CLOSED, rather quietly and in a language most cannot understand, to his brothers.

“That was the chubby-looking boy?” said REED’S BOOKSHOP eagerly.

“Can’t be,” said PART-TIME STAFF WANTED APPLY WITHIN.

“What would you know?” TECHNICAL MANUALS AND EDUCATIONAL BOOKS SECOND HAND snarled.

“Haven’t been here long,” said CLOSED, feeling rather hurt.

“Certainly not long enough to be making comments like that.”

There was muttering and arguing amongst the four. The consensus was this: it was highly unlikely, yes, that the boy was the part-timer, but CLOSED wasn’t a liar or an idiot, and he knew what he heard. The boy wasn’t fictional, no, not in the Gnostic sense, but…

“Found the shop, I guess,” said PART-TIME STAFF WANTED APPLY WITHIN, defeated. “Definitely counts for something.”

There was a rustling from inside, and a creak as the door was opened from the inside. Reed stepped outside, still in his brown coat, and whispered grumpily to the signs.

“It’s nighttime, little facts, and time for your master to go to sleep. So be quiet. Quieter. What if a passerby heard you? What would they think then? Go to sleep, little facts! You may talk in the busy day!”

“Is it true that you’ve got a new assistant? I don’t think it can be true, because he was very real, and couldn’t be a very good assistant, boss, but CLOSED thinks that you have, and I told him he was an idiot, because -”

PART-TIME STAFF WANTED APPLY WITHIN stopped talking. Reed was watching him with the tiger’s eyes, a silent growl caught within his throat. TECHNICAL MANUALS AND EDUCATIONAL BOOKS SECOND HAND whimpered.

“Don’t need you anymore,” said Reed, tearing PART-TIME STAFF WANTED APPLY WITHIN from the window. PART-TIME squirmed invisibly, squealed silently. Reed crumpled the sign into a ball, ducked back into the shop. The other, more permanent signs could hear PART-TIME’s screams. There was a whirring sound. They knew what that meant. That meant the shredder.

CLOSED shuddered.

The screams stopped. Reed stepped back out.

“Sleep, my little facts,” he said, and the remaining signs went quiet.
They were all very scared of Master Reed.

2009-10-26T00:08:00.000-07:00

(Something I wrote for Sheray's music industry assignment - she needed a press kit for her false band, SOPHISTICATED NOVEMBER, and since she was a little panicked about the workload of her course I promised I'd write something to contribute to it. Here, for your pleasure, the pseudo-reviews in question..)

AN INTERVIEW WITH NOVEMBER

THERE’S a certain sense of style that comes with most punk rock bands.

Ties, scarves, dyed hair, combat boots – it is that image, that look, which earn most punk groups of the scorn of John Lydon and the enraptured, undying love of their fans. It is that package, so to speak, that most people think makes punk.

Not so, says Sophisticated November, Melbourne’s chart-topping, premiere rock band. It is two hours after November performed their Sydney show, and lead vocalist Cheray Wait is sitting in front of me, sipping meekly from her champagne.

Definitely not the screaming, chanting - almost hypnotic - woman who’d just performed in front of six thousand people. She seems almost shy, but when she talks there is no hint of timidity. She knows what she wants to say, and she knows how to say it.

Like how she dresses?

“Well, no,” laughs Cheray. “Maybe. I mean, I dress how I feel like dressing – I’ve always liked blue sequins, for example. The red coat is almost – almost symbolic of Sophisticated November now, like Nathan’s glasses… wouldn’t go into a show without them, you know?”

Sophisticated November isn’t your typical rock band. Yes, there’s Wait’s red coat, or Nathan Revolver’s signature glasses – but that’s it. Revolver is fond of suit jackets and nice jeans. Jard Hard – drummer – enjoys the humble hoodie, and Elise Veebee keeps it simple. But it’s not plain.

Just simple enough to spark curiousity.

“Exactly,” says Wait. “We kind’ve went into this thinking, ‘We don’t need to dress crazily to be punk… no, punk’s different. Punk should be in the music. In the philosophy. We’re all a little bit different… the glasses, for example – Nathan’s glasses. He likes to claim they were John Lennon’s.”

We both laugh at this. As if called, Nathan Revolver wanders into the room, shirtless. As he gets closer, I realise he is also sans pants. He sits down next to us, dropping something heavy and white onto the table. I try not to stare at any of the fleshy bits. Cheray smiles apologetically.

“See this skull?” says Nathan Revolver, lead guitarist and self-proclaimed percussionist extraordinaire. He is, I see, holding a human skull in his hand. “This was given to me. By an African conjure man. So the spirits would watch over me. They watch, too. He was right. I thanked the man, and if I could I’d thank him again. This skull is my success in music.”

What about the glasses? I ask.

“No, no.” Revolver shakes his head. “You’ve got it all wrong. This is the skull. This is King Solomon’s skull, and with it I shall cut all of the children of the world in half!”

He cackles at this, like a maniac, and wanders off. Despite my vow to keep my eyes, I notice that he has a nice arse. I attempt to casually bring up the rumour’s concerning Revolver’s drug use…

“Ah, well, see… they’re wrong there,” replies Cheray, mischievous look in her eyes. The look that made Sophisticated November’s debut album go triple-platinum. “No drugs, no booze… he does a lot of meditation, though. Stuff like that. Mystic stuff. But no drugs. Not a lot of women, either… he’s just weird like that.”

Insane?

“A little. Maybe.”

She remains tight-lipped about it.

I ask about their Melbourne gig, and she smiles again.

“We save the best for last,” she says. “We all grew up here, and – well, you know, before the band, Elise got married here…”

She’s referring to Elise’s 2004 marriage to Reuben van Bemmel, author of The God Illusion and Sophisticated November’s manager and spokesperson. They were wed before the group of disparate performers even thought about forming their own band…

Hang on a second, I say; didn’t Cheray Wait once date Nathan Revolver?

“Maybe,” she says, and there’s magic in her eyes.

Sophisticated November is just that – mysterious, esoteric, similar but different, noble, a little quirky. All this forms to one of the greatest bands to come out of Melbourne’s eclectic music scene, and one of Australia’s best-loved group of all time.

Their third album, Sexy Testshot Lachlan, will be released on September 3rd.

Sophisticated November will be playing at The Forum August 23rd, 24th, 25th and 28th. Tickets on sale now through Ticketek.

AFTER THE FORUM GIG

THERE are crashes and then there are crashes.

Sophisticated November played at The Forum on the 24th of August, and their performance was a crash.

In a very good way.

Playing most of their songs from November’s first two albums – Sophisticated November and The Word Lakushna – as well as a smattering of surprise tracks from their imminent album Sexy Testshot Lachlan, the audience couldn’t help but walk away satisfied.

There was an electric tension evident as Cheray Wait, lead singer, threw words into the microphone – as if the entire venue had been struck by a bolt of lightning. There were roars, screams, cries of adoration.

Then the thunder - Nathan Revolver struck the guitar, Elise Veebee following closely behind. They started with “Tulu Luvin’”, and it couldn’t have been a better choice. The fan-favourite brought the place down.

Fears that Sophisticated November weren’t as great live as they were recorded were quickly crushed. Male fans swooned when Cheray smiled their way, and the crowd couldn’t help but be stunned in silence as Nathan Revolver played the melody of “Harnessing Margarita” with his toes.

Then Jard Hard took his shirt off… and the adoring screams continued.

Sophisticated November deserves the love. They deserve the acclaim. There was no insecurity in Wait’s voice, and the pyrotechnics kept everyone pleased. Veebee’s sweet, melodious voice in “Dangerous Mister Big” was nothing less than divine.

The Forum was ablaze with fresh sounds and the rapture of thousands. Sophisticated November handed out free deluxe programs with the lyrics of every song printed out for all to chime along to. A hundred and sixty minutes of proved, once and for all, that Sophisticated November knows, as Revolver continues to claim, that music reigns over the Earth.

“I’d like to dedicate this one to my Mum,” said Elise Veebee at the beginning of “Danger Danger Danger Oh No”, “And, of course, to my beautiful husband.” It didn’t sound forced, and it didn’t sound cheesy.

It was sincere, and that sincerity is Sophisticated November’s greatest strength. Easily one of their best shows yet – tickets for the 28th show have almost sold out, so hurry; you don’t want to miss out.

Snippet

The gig was good.

Very, very good.

Songs from Sophisticated November’s first albums – The Word Lakushna and Sophisticated November – were freely mixed with a handful of advanced hearings from Sophisticated November’s soon to be released album, Sexy Teshot Lachlan, there were no complaints heard.

The quality of the music almost made you want to sing along. Lyrics were given, in free programs, just incase you wanted to give into that urge. I know I did.

The new album – containing songs such as “Danger Danger Danger Oh No” and “Cigarettes of Constantine” – will, it has been decided, be better than the last.

And that is no mean feat.

The air was filled with energy. There was a huge amount of care and passion evident in the performances. Nathan Revolver shocked, Cheray Wait awed, Elise Veebee summoned a cacophony of ‘awwwwws’ from the audience, and Jard Hard continued to be the teenage heartthrob of 2009.

“Move over, Robert Pattinson,” whispered Jard Hard at the beginning of the show, “Move over, you creepy-lookin’ pale-faced hack. There’s a new guy in town. Baby, I don’t sparkle in the sunlight… I fuckin’ explode!”

Suddenly, the venue suddenly got much warmer as throngs of girls screamed their admiration.

Sophisticated November is the best Australian group of 2009, and this concert matched that with a rare ease.

Five stars out of five.

Oasis of the Blackened

2009-10-23T12:35:00.000-07:00

(More Theogenesis stuff, this piece being a flashback of one of the character's - his first meeting with the Dreaded Lord of the last piece - that I'm a little fond of for reasons I'm not entirely sure. Enjoy.)

It was cool when the hooded figure came to see him.

Sura, upon his return from the Urth, had been dabbling with the principles of Western Alchemy, an idea popular during the renaissance which had hit Europe during Sura's visit. The Door was shattered, and Sura thirsted for the world which had shown him such miracles as gunpowder, the printing press, true architecture..

He was desperate to restore it. He knew the Europeans had the answer. They'd built the door themselves, after all, and it was their Highest Immortal who had deemed Sura worthy of worship. For a single precious year Sura had ruled the Esoteric Order of Iunpu, had a hundred score powerful magicians willing to do his bidding, had unleashed the strangest fires upon London..

But it was gone. The gate was broken, taken by worms in the Plains that Stirred. He had tried digging for it, but to no success. The scraps had been devoured by creatures of soil.

The hooded figure was ignored by the ten thousand ceremonial warriors that lined the black sands of the Oasis of Akhenatan, the great desert paradise which encompassed the entire Realm. He'd found Sura in the pyramid, and watched him work at the furnace for an hour before Sura even realized he was there.

Sura saw something of himself in the figure.

"Hello, my friend," spoke the black figure. "I see you are working on something. Might I inquire as to what it is?"

"Alchemy," said Sura. "From a world long distant. Dead, for all I know. You wouldn't understand."

"Perhaps I would," replied the figure. "Have you heard of the World-Tree, Yggdrasil, and it's splendor?"

"Only in the rantings of madmen," said Sura, turning back to the furnace. "Supposedly the thing that holds the universe together. Myth. Odin's cult.. popular, yes, but nothing compared to this." He held in one hand a small lump of gold which he'd been able to transmute this morning. "Nothing compared to the Great Work."

There was a silence for a moment.

"You rule over a beautiful kingdom, friend," spoke the figure.

"I am the God of the Oasis," replied Sura. "Is it not natural that my oasis, my desert retreat, is the finest?"

"Lovely, nevertheless. Sura.. what if I told you your efforts were futile? That the so-called 'Western Alchemical Tradition' of the Europeans was a weak thing, with one success every thousand years? That there was a faster way to Earth?"

Sura suddenly leaped to the side, grabbing his curved scimitar and swinging towards the intruder.

Osiris only stared as he turned the thing to sand.

"I.. I don't believe it," said Sura, through gritted teeth. "It doesn't make any sense. You're telling lies, friend."

Osiris smiled as he waved a hand, and Sura was attacked with visions of the World Tree; of the Real of Anvils; of the City of Alkan; of Ratatosk; of the true Greatest Work; finally, of Earth.

Sura collapsed, crying manically.

--

The hooded figure only watched as Sura took the Dagger of Imminence, accepting the change. He knew what would happen. Sura gripped the dagger, raised it as high as he could, and called for the ceremonial warriors to commit their ritual suicide.

It was done quickly, with a minimum of screams.

Finally, the Dagger had done it's work, and Sura stepped down.

Once more he wept as the most beautiful Oasis in the Realm Supernatural fell to white sand, destroying all life. The ceremonial warriors remained. They would serve the Realm in undeath. The hooded figure cackled as the entire realm collapsed upon itself, devoured itself, became the fine white soot fell.

There was only the Oasis of the Blackened left, the tiny shrine to a world before.

Sura knew that when the time was right, he'd be forced to destroy that, too.

"Show me Yggdrasil," said Sura, through hardened tears.

Osiris complied.

Roberston and Mass 2: Poetry and Cupboards, Part One

2009-10-19T08:34:00.000-07:00

(Part One of Two for the second Robertson and Mass story, written to please Anthony, insult someone else, and to train my 'fast-writing' skills for Nanowrimo. Enjoy.)

They’d caught the bastard.
Twenty-three days they’d spent playing around with the board, asking the spirits silly questions, such as “Is anyone there?” To be fair, though, they enjoyed cursing the hypothetical ghosts with ridiculous threats. There was a certain amount of fun about the whole thing, like insulting your best friend’s mother.
Tony’s favourite by far was the inscrutably dramatic: “O thou wicked and disobedient spirit Callum “Calm” Flint, because thou hast rebelled, and thou hast obeyed nor regarded my words with which I have rehearsed; they being all glorious and incomprehensible names of the true God, the maker and creator of thee and of me, and of all the world; the power and the names of which no creature is able to resist, curse thee into the depths of the Bottomless Abyss…”
When Tony first incanted these dreaded lines, Nicholas put down the knife and let the struggling chicken roam free for a bit. He was, frankly, unimpressed.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” said Nicholas, his expression distasteful.
“I’m invoking the true incomprehensible names of God, who,” said Tony, “may I remind you, created you and me and everything. So if you could try not to interrupt…”
“This is ridiculous. Incomprehensible names of God? How, exactly, do you plan on invoking them if you can’t even comprehend them, let alone speak them? It sounds great, yeah, but even the stupidest spirit is going to switch on to the fact that you’re full of shit.”
“I know plenty of names of God!”
“Oh yeah?”
When it was proven that ‘Jesus’ and ‘uh, maybe Barack Obama’ weren’t the True Incomprehensible names of God, things moved along much faster. The threats went through a slow change, changing from the baroque and hideously occult to the rather exoteric and vulgar.
“Come on you little bastard,” said Tony, prodding the Ouija board. “Worthless sack of shit, if you don’t show up now I swear…”
They got proper results soon enough. The planchette moved by an unseen hand, going from I to A to M and finally spelling out: I AM HERE AND I HAVE RETURNED. WHAT IS IT YOU DESIRE?
“Ah! Christ!” said Nicholas, his voice a shrill scream. It wasn’t meant to do that!
“Bloody hell, mate,” said Tony to the board, “Couldn’t you give us a bit of warning? We’ve been trying for weeks, and then you go and start chatting away as if nothing’s happened. This is Calm, right?”
“Calm Flint?” added Nicholas helpfully.
YES. THIS IS CALM FLINT.
“Oh, nice,” said Tony. “How’s it going?”
“Hey, hey, hey,” said Nat, his voice betraying his suspicion. “That could be anyone. We’ve got no proof it’s anyone.”
“Hmmm.” Tony thought for small while. “Okay. We’ll try some free association. We can figure out whether it’s Calm or not by the way he reacts to certain words. Hopefully his mind’s intact…”
“Yeah, the Kabala’s a little bit iffy on that one,” said Nicholas. “But it’s a good enough idea. Go on, Tony, you start.”
“Right. Calm, you there? Good. Great. Now, when I say Star Wars, you say…”
ORIGINAL SAGA. PAZAAK.
“Oh, yeah, no, I think he’s…”
“Anyone could’ve gotten that one. Come on,” Nicholas’s tone was abrupt, sharp, like an impatient rattlesnake, “anyone could’ve gotten that one. We’ll try something harder… Calm, how’s your Spanish?”
EL BOGO EL BOGO YO ADORA EL BOGO.
“Hmmm, close,” said Tony. “He’s doing pretty well… one more. Calm, can you tell us anything about, say… an ex-girlfriend, maybe?”
FUCKING SOCIALIST ROBOT-EMOTIONED –
“Ahahahah,” said Nicholas, quickly putting his hand on the planchette. “Okay, it’s you… I’m pretty well convinced.”
“Good to have you back, Calm,” said Tony.

They were eating lunch. Well, kind of. Nicholas had devoured his sandwiches, and Tony was gazing absentmindedly over a fizzing can of Pepsi Max. They were still waiting for Calm to finish eating.
Being an incorporeal being apparently didn’t do much to dissuade the appetite, and Calm had expressed, with much disdain, that Nicholas was to make him a sandwich. White bread, mayonnaise, pickles, salami, fresh salad and onion… it was, once, Calm’s favourite.
It sat there, decomposing – slowly.
Tony expressed raised his eyebrows, giving Nicholas the signature “What the fuck?” look that came up so often in their line of work. Nicholas returned the gesture, hoping that the invisible smear upon reality that was Calm Flint couldn’t see.
The sandwich remained, the Ouija board placed slightly behind it expectantly. The planchette did not move.
“You, uh, you there, man?” asked Tony.
YES.
“Oh, good… good. We’ll just, um. We’ll just wait for you,” he said weakly.
A few minutes passed. The crisp lettuce became simply lettuce, the sweet mayonnaise went sloppy. The tomatoes remained tomatoes, but look even less appealing than before.
Nicholas had enough. He opened the laptop, showed the ethereal being summoned within the board as best he could. He wasn’t even sure that Calm could see…
The planchette moved.
YOU HAVE A BLOG, TONY. VERY GOOD. I SHALL ENJOY READING IT. I LIKE YOUR THOUGHTS.
“Uh, yes, well,” said Tony, looking a little ashamed. “It’s just for when I feel a little down, when I need something to rant…”
“Not important,” said Nicholas. “Yes, he has a blog. Tony-has-a-blog.com… it’s very popular, despite the whiny bullshit he shows off to the whole world. Despite the poetry, it racks close to five million hits a month. Five million. It’s insane.”
“I dunno,” said Tony. “I like some of it. Some of it’s nice. ‘A rose like your nose, never tasted as sweet as some cheese for your knees…’”
‘AND I WAKE UP IN A POOL OF MY OWN BLOOD. JEEZ!’ finished Calm, quoting the second line of the poem.
“Again, not important,” said Nicholas. “A few months ago… when you, uh, when you…”
WHAT?
“When, um…” said Tony.
“When you, like, went dead,” said Nicholas. “We crossed the threshold. We became major players. We’d entered occult Melbourne, and I don’t think we can ever return.”
OH.
“Yeah. Actually, I’m… I’m sorry about that,” said Tony, his eyes down in shame.
“Yeah, uh, we shouldn’t’ve called you…” said Nicholas.
IT’S OKAY.
“No, really,” said Nicholas. “It wasn’t on.”
REALLY. IT’S OKAY.
“Wasn’t polite,” finished Tony. “I mean, we just kind’ve left your body…”
DID YOU KILL THE LITTLE SPINED BASTARD?
“Yeah. I think so. Maybe. Hit it with a hammer. Put it in the freezer.”
“Ran like all fuck,” said Tony.

It is often commented among the hardened occultists of Australia that a truly capable sorcerer cannot be arrested. It is a physical impossibility. The theory goes that since these magicians have already broken all of the physical laws of the universe, replacing them with their own, vaguer ‘guidelines’, human-made law gave up.
This was the reason the police never got involved in monster killings, or in ritualized human sacrifice, or why ‘there is no evidence for the existence of child-abuse in most Satanist cults’. The evidence was clearly there. It was obvious, for almost everyone, to see. You can’t hide, say, the group suicide of a thousand cultists. But the justice world had no interest in matters magical and arcane…
Still, it was very, very close for Robertson and Mass.
Nicholas only passed because he’d read enough books to pass the literacy tests, and cast a few minor conjurations – mostly adequate sorceries designed to get him a few girlfriends, but never quite enough to let him keep them. He was also reasonably good at casting the Tarot… but reading it was another matter entirely.
It was Tony who had the major success – the heavy magic that Nicholas secretly envied. It was mostly a fluke. He’d drawn the pentacles in chalk, killed a toad on the full moon, masturbated over the sigils… and then, deciding that nothing would happen, decided to joke around.
He’d summoned the spirit of Adolf Hitler within the magical circle.
It wasn’t he’d greatest moment. Something had happened that night, something horrible… Nicholas had found him a gibbering wreck, locked within his own closet. He was wearing his sister’s lingerie – the special pair that her boyfriend enjoyed – and singing Follow the Yellow Brick Road off tune. It seemed Hitler had a sense of humour.
Still – Tony had done something real. He’d accomplished something, as batshit insane as it might have been. He’d seen the real, true face of the occult… and it had winked at him.
The police didn’t question them. As far as the two budding occultists knew, Nikita Richards would be serving life in prison for killing two innocent males – one Calm, the other her brother – without apparently laying a finger on them. They were never connected to the crime.
They had nothing to worry about.

The point was, one pathetic slice of the internet shouldn’t be stealing five million views a month. That was a little excessive. Hell, two hundred would be excessive, especially considering what Tony was writing.
SO WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?
Calm didn’t understand. How could he? He hadn’t tried reading it…
“The problem,” said Nicholas, patiently, “is that Tony is the next Aleister Crowley.”
Silence. The planchette didn’t move.
Stillness.
“You, uh, there?” asked Tony, nervously.
Nothing happened.
WHAT?
“You heard me,” said Nicholas. “His poetry is worse than Aleister Crowley’s, and both are written in a very specific way. They’re not even bad, per se… it’s just that… well, they’re written for a very specific audience.”
“Mmmmn,” said Tony. “We’re talking Lovecraft audiences, here.”
I DON’T QUITE UNDERSTAND.
“A certain poem,” said Nicholas, patiently, “entitled My Love for You is a Slightly Wilting Rose in a Vase of Very Nice Water is available, thanks to Tony, online – free for everyone to see. Upon taking it down, a simple Google search,” he tapped the laptop a little, as if to prove his point, “shows that it has spread about the internet, stored on websites we have no control over, copied and mutilated… impossible to get rid of…”
“So we put it right back on tony-has-a-blog.com, because it feels nice to have so many people reading,” said Tony, his smile betraying the slight wonder at his own poetic abilities.
Tony, of course, had created something magical.
Oh, if you listened to Crowley and studied basic occult theory you’d soon learn that, according to the Ascended Masters, almost anything a magician could do was a magical act, and thus everything was magic.
In reality, this theory fell flat. Nicholas had been trying to do real magic for many years. He’d drawn all the magic circles – with the squiggly lines and all – and butchered the cat and chanted to Satan and all the rest, but it never seemed to help.
Tony had gone and done it twice.
The poem My Love for You is a Slightly Wilting Rose in a Vase of Very Nice Water had somehow channeled invisible entities of one sort or another, and Tony had found himself writing on of the internet’s finest occult grimoires. In the finest tradition of magical tomes, it was encoded – in the form of one single diabolically shit attempt at poetry – and was so esoterically occult that even the writer didn’t know what he was creating.
Five million hits – every greedy little occultist who’d realized just what My Love for You was and just what it could do. It could be assumed that half the sorcerers on Earth had downloaded and printed out a copy of the verse, and were tapping its eldritch powers for reasons unthinkable.
When Nicholas had figured out just what Tony’d done, he knew he had to try it.

SO THERE’S SOMETHING IN YOUR CUPBOARD.
“Yes, that’s essentially it,” said Nicholas.
“We’d used our best candles,” said Tony.
“And somehow, using whatever grimoire Tony’s cooked up, we’ve evoked something into the cupboard,” said Nicholas.
DID YOU TRY EXORCISM?
“Of course!” said Tony. “We bought as much incense as we could, and Nicholas went and filled his water bottle up from the Church’s taps…”
“You’d be surprised,” said Nicholas, his voice echoing mysteriously, “to know that Roman Catholic holy water tastes exactly like normal water.”
DID YOU TRY THE LESSER BANISHING RITUAL OF THE PENTAGRAM?
“What little bit we could remember,” said Tony, “but we kept pronouncing the angels wrong. So we kind’ve said fuck it.”
“We’re much better at summoning than banishing, anyway,” said Nicholas.
“Oh, yeah, we can summon almost anything! We’re really quite good at it. But when it comes to banishing…”
“It’s all ‘Uh-oh! What are we going to do now? There’s a hobgoblin in our cupboard and it won’t leave!’”
HOBGOBLIN? YOU THINK IT IS A HOBGOBLIN?
“Well,” said Nicholas. “Probably not. Hobgoblins are a little silly. I don’t know what it is, frankly. We open the cupboard and something slimy slithers around and says something bad in a language we don’t understand…”
“And then we close the cupboard, Calm, because it’s pretty goddamn scary,” said Tony. “It’s occult weirdness of the highest kind!”
The Ouija board nodded in agreement.
CAN YOU LET ME HAVE A LOOK AT WHAT’S INSIDE THE CUPBOARD?

The Birth of Osiris-Ra

2009-10-18T02:43:00.000-07:00

(A piece I wrote, very quickly - at six AM, so let's get all the excuses out've the way, huh? - for a roleplaying game I write and run, Theogenesis. It's quite a hit in some internet circles. It's the first actual non-rules writing I've done for it, and it was very enjoyable. Anyway. Osiris-Ra is the Big Bad Guy of the setting.)

As the doomed prophet had known, on the sixth day the Star of the Eye had shone a blasted red. It was an omen, and the omen bid him continue the purification rituals. He was completely confident that it would work. They would get a day of light, now.. twelve hours, more than the paltry sixty minutes they'd been granted last time. He was secure, ecstatic, but scared. He knew what the ritual would mean.

He would have to die.

Die, so that the Dreaded Lord would live.

The star twinkled in the cold night, casting its evil stare upon the hooded cultists. Each had the mark of Osiris-Ra tattooed in scathing ink upon their backs - an eye within a star within a sun. They had all been groomed, trained for this night. The prophet was of the fifth degree, one of the few chosen rulers of the Cult of Osiris-Ra, and he wished - secretly - that it was proper for a lesser being to be used. One of the first-degree acolytes, perhaps. But no. No. That would be an insult to the Dreaded Lord.. one he would not stand for. They needed someone who had mastered the invocations of the sun, braved the seventeen nights of the arid salts, conjured the demon Barvasaul and spat in his face, murdered an Isubanite..

Completed the initiations. He was right. It was his turn.. it would be his honour. Joy filled him again. He was a deeply conflicted man. The prophet would always be deeply conflicted. The stars were right.

"Ready?" he rasped, beneath the iron mask, to a first-degree. The acolyte nodded.

The sacred spot had been chosen by consulting the spilled innards of Bravus, God of Merchants, abducted as he was from the pathetic marketplace of the Conclave. White sand, white stone. Grasping the eight other fifth-degree masters by the arms, they thanked him in their way, slapped him, spat at him and cheered him on. He was lashed, seventeen times.. the number of Osiris-Ra. The lashings didn't hurt. He was used to worse.

He removed the black cloak, and noted the deathly chill of the night. It was never this cold in Tushmuthut.. another omen. They brought the torches, and he was held down as the scorpions stung his back. It was to be a scar, a permanent tattoo that would become irrelevant before the hour was over.. they tattooed the binding invocations, the calling evocations, the summonings, the blasted glyphs, the mark of the Red Star..

He screamed. This was necessary, to show proper respect to the scorpion-folk.

Finally, it was done, and the prophet turned to his fellows - his fellow masters of the fifth-degree, the overseers of the fourth.. down to the acolytes of the first-degree, who - unknowingly - would be slaughtered after the return. He grinned with unseen malice; the mask kept his face an iron image, caught in a scowl.

It was easy enough to get the Holy Desert on this eve. The Lord Councilman Lictros - rat servant of the Conclave - was easy enough to pay off. His duty was to watch Tushmuthut and to guard it from all invaders, but tonight a sudden illness had struck most of the Conclave guards, and the others were easily murdered. The True Sons of Metatron, typically easily to manipulate, had been turned so that they'd raid the Shrine.. three enemies down. The Servants of the Nuclear Eye didn't care either way about Osiris-Ra, and left the Cult well enough alone.

Suddenly, the prophet's brother stabbed at him with the consecrated silver blade, and he fell, gurgling. It was not his place to scream here, unless it was with joy. He gave a verbal oblation to the Dreaded Lord, and was slashed again and again and again. He knew, though he would never see it, that he would be chopped into five pieces, symbolic of the five cut pieces of Osiris-Ra..

And he was dead.

A minute passed. Another. Sixteen.

They Cult waited. They knew the sacred number. The sacrifice was given, the stars watched..

Seventeen.

The corpse of the prophet stirred.

There was rejoicing among the brothers and sisters of the Cult of Osiris-Ra.

The five pieces of the doomed prophet stirred some more, stopped. A rustling.. and they turned to fine black sand.

The cult yelled in dedication, screamed their love.

The sand rose, formed into a humanoid figure, took the black robe and the iron mask. He waved a hand in acknowledgment.

Every first-degree cultist - those who had not mastered the Invocations of the Sun - turned suddenly to white sand, the fine powder gushing out of their robes. There may have been a smirk beneath the iron mask.

"I have returned!" boomed Osiris-Ra.

It was only temporarily, and in twelve hours he would be blasted to oblivion once more.. but for now, the Dreaded Lord had returned. Twelve hours was a very long time. A lot could die in a sun's day.

--

It was the seventh hour, and Osiris-Ra had returned to his ancient realm.

He'd done much this day.

Now he looked upon the desert, accompanied by the fourth-degree overseers. He waved a hand over the sacred spot, where he was reborn, and looked upon it.

"Tushmuthut.."

The words were like daggers, castrating the Conclave, cutting the throat of Metatron, and blinding Isuban.

Another hand, and a violent motion with his palms.

The sand rose suddenly, swirled. The Dreaded Lord was lost in the swirl. It rose higher and higher.. a tempest of white sand, obscuring the sky. Finally, it settled. In it's place was the lost city of Tushmuthut, labyrinthine, made of white stone and designed to kill all intruders..

It would be here where the Black Callisti of Isuban would be gathered, and where they would be shattered. Here where Metatron would have his neck cut, where the 'Highest' would have his blood pool. Here where the bastard Roid would have each of his eyes burnt out with a white-hot flame..

Here where the Cult of Osiris-Ra would seize their headquarters. The profess-houses of Niborkerese would not do. This was their new home. When Osiris-Ra would be blasted to oblivion once more, they would continue the work, and resurrect him once more upon this place..

He stood, now, outside the City of Tushmuthut.

"My children." His voice was a single boom. "Come here and inflate your ranks. Secrecy is no longer needed. Come here and draw all those who would fight for me! Smash your fist upon the enemy!"

He saw with pleasure that the cultists were more than eager to have an entire city to themselves.

"Now!" he cried. "I call my generals. Gather before me!"

Robertson and Mass (and Flint)

2009-09-28T10:18:00.000-07:00

(Another attempt, at one in the morning, to break through writer's block. Not sure how well I did. I don't know if I was aiming for comedy, but as I reread it - and flinch - I laughed a little. Don't know how readable or entertaining you'll find this, and if I happen to offend Anthony/Callum/Shea if they read this, uh, sorry. It was a joke.

Shea, I don't really think you're the scariest woman Western occultism's ever seen. That honour goes to Blavatsky. You're second.)

There was nothing left in the fridge.
Not in itself unusual, but James lived alone, and he was very particular about food. He liked to have a fully stocked kitchen at all times. There was nothing particularly superstitious or clinical about it. It was just something he did.
So where did the food go?
James was a nervous individual by nature, and this sudden revelation filled him with a sense of cosmic horror. It was an aberration. There was nothing right with the situation. No obvious reason for why the food had disappeared. James wracked his mind, but cold rationality got him nowhere when confronted with the facts.
Had he been robbed? Had his sister come in to eat, maybe…?
No.
The fridge had been normal, had been full an hour ago – when grabbed the beer and made the sandwich – and nothing else was taken or otherwise molested. Not to his knowledge. He’d been home for the hour, too.
Practical joke…?
He’d never know.

The office phone rang. A piercing series of screeches erupted from the thing, like a banshee on a bad date. It hurt Nick’s ears every time someone called… but that was rare enough. Business was bad. Economic recession. An age of science. Richard Dawkins proves the nonexistence of supernatural forces. Et cetera, et cetera.
Frankly, he was shocked that the line was still connected. He’d semi-purposely forgotten to pay the bill.
“Robertson and Mass, occult specialists,” he said, with as much charm as he could muster.
“Hello?”
A woman’s voice. Ragged, yes, but sensuous. Distraught and on the verge of tears, panicked, a little hopeful… her voice showed all of these.
“Hello. Nicholas F. Roberston speaking. Robertson and Mass, occult specialists…”
“Um, hello. I’d like to inquire as to, as to how much an investigation costs…”
Investigation? She wanted them to do spiritual combat work… and get paid for it? It sounded too good to be true. It probably was. Nevertheless, Nicholas latched onto the idea of actual monetary pay, and upped the level of charm considerably.
“We’d have to give you a quote, ma’am. Could I have your name, address, telephone number? We’ll send a representative down to give you a hand…”
“Oh, yes, yes. Um. Nikita Richards…”
She gave him her number and address.
“It’s, um, it’s an emergency,” she added.
Nicholas nodded, and then realized Nikita couldn’t see him nod.
“You’re close. We’ll be there within an hour.”
Nick gathered his ceremonial dagger, battered trench coat, mobile phone and wallet. He made sure to lock up before he left, and within ten minutes he was on a Melbourne-bound tram, headed towards the first real job in three months.
As he trammed, he dialed a number.

“Tony Mass, Robertson and Mass…”
This voice was deep. Strong, a little edgy. The kind of voice a drug-dealing cactus would have.
A little static. Nick adjusted the phone, placed it a little closer to his ear. It was raining in Melbourne. The tram was packed with sopping commuters, and as Nick talked they shot him a series of contemptuous glances. Each had the kind of look that clearly said, “How dare you interrupt our miserable silence with your incessant chatter? How dare you?”
Nick knew that Tony knew that it was Nick who called, but he also knew that Tony got a rush out of saying ‘Robertson and Mass’. Nick couldn’t blame him.
“Tony!” said Nick.
“Hey, Nick. What’s up? How’s business?” said Tony.
“Booming. We’ve got a job. A real one, I think, with a paying customer.”
“Work?” Suspicion hid in Tony’s voice.
“Yeah. Richmond. Want to come down? Could be a bit of fun.”

Tony met him on the corner of Nikita’s street. He also wore a battered trench coat. His hair was dark, long, and soaked due to the rain.
Inside was Nikita Richards: a long, tall, red-haired woman with a grim smile and hollow eyes. She wore a bright red sweater than clashed, amusingly enough, with her hair. She was alive.
Further inside was James Richards: red-haired like his sister, skinny frame, splayed upon the kitchen floor. He was very much dead. He was not wearing a sweater, but had some sort of yellow spike lodged into the back of his neck… logically, the thing that killed him. His eyes were hollow, but not with grief: he’d experienced something terrible.
The kitchen floor was not covered in blood.
It was spotless.
Impeccable.
“Oh, um, uh,” said Tony.
“Um,” said Nick.
“Have you tried calling the police?” asked Tony delicately.
Nikita took a while to respond.
“Every time I call, they say they’ll dispatch a unit… but no one shows up. Everyone I tell looks at me aghast and then promptly forgets whatever they heard. They act like nothing had happened. Talking to the police in person doesn’t help. I’d gotten hold of your number from, well… your advertisement in the paper today.”
“Oh?” said Nick. He wasn’t aware they’d lodged an advertisement. Tony shrugged. Synchronicity.
“Yeah… funny names, I thought, and I was curious as to what – as to what a … an occult specialist would do…”
Her face was streaming with tears. Tony went to hug her. Nicholas stayed still. He was a little fearful. This was heavy stuff. Either Nikita was some sort of fratricidal serial killer… or something seriously occult had happened.
Both were bad.

Calm Flint was Robertson and Mass called him, because his real birth name was phonetically similar and they firmly believed that ‘Calm’ was a brilliant first name. That’s what they christened him as, that’s what he was listed under when searched in their mobile phones, and that’s how he’d began to refer to himself.
He was a smalltime occultist and was halfway through a dangerously dull Bachelors of Archaeology, taking a minor interest in mythology and anthropology. For this reason, he was often called upon by the duo to give a hand in the tenser situations; if Nicholas was the dedicated, eidetic occult scholar, and Tony was the rational thinker and people’s person, then Calm was the individual in between, the person who filled in the gaps.
Of course, they didn’t want to pay him, and that’s why Robertson and Mass remained Robertson and Mass and did not become, say, Robertson, Mass and Flint.
Nevertheless, he was useful. He knew things. He’d read lots of books that Nicholas hadn’t. They may refuse to pay him, but they definitely appreciated what they did for him.

Calm showed up at James’s residence about an hour after Nicholas and Tony had. When he saw the corpse, he vomited.
When his world stopped spinning and when he’d stopped heaving, Calm asked what had happened.
“We kind’ve thought you’d have an idea,” said Tony.
“Where’s the sister?” said Calm.
“We put her in bed. She’s too tense to sleep, but the quiet’ll do her some good.”
“If you could take out your little laptop and run a search for us, that’d be great,” said Nick.
Calm didn’t know what to say. They hadn’t found anything as hideously weird as this before. There was the Ouija board that wouldn’t stop moving, and the spirit that had possessed someone’s bathroom, but this…
“I can’t do this,” said Calm, “I can’t. It’s too big. Someone died! Someone had been killed! We can’t do this.”
“Come on,” said Tony, “It’ll be a laugh. He probably slipped or something.”

The spread was interesting. The Tarot cards were almost as objectively meaningless as the I Ching coin-tosses and the runes, but the implication was spelt a little more explicitly.
DEATH was the major card in the spread, the grinning skull surrounded by cards depicting little discs and wands and a sword. It wasn’t all meaningless, of course. It did mean something. That was the problem: it meant too many things. Nick couldn’t figure out which things it was referring to.
“Death?” said Tony, snorting. “That’s a little bit bloody obvious.”
“It means change, you idiot,” said Calm.
They both had valid points.
But Nick was lost. This didn’t help them with what they needed to do. The DEATH card was a little clear, sure, but those other, minor arcana? Useless. Completely useless.
“Did you get anything?” Nick said.
“With the runes?” replied Calm. “Not much. The death rune came up. And the blank rune, which I think in this case means, real actual death.”
Calm threw a little red book towards Nick: THE SECRETS OF RUNES REVEALED! The title almost gasped with enthusiasm. Tony picked it up.
“Hmmmm…” said Tony, thumbing through the pages. “The woman who wrote this apparently joined a band, found paganism, visited all of the sacred areas in Britain, fell into the punk movement, joined Zoroastrianism, started an internet business and then found paganism again. Oh! I didn’t know there was a rune for law suits.”
“There is,” said Calm proudly. “And a separate one for lawyers.”
“I’m not getting anything from these cards,” said Nat. “Maybe I’ll have to call another contact…”
“But who?” asked Tony. “Who could help us?”
“Possibly Louis?” said Nick. “She’s been in this business a long time…”
Louis McKay was a volatile witch who’d been practicing magic and witchcraft for close to a decade. That was a very long time in occultism, which most people picked up when they were fourteen and dropped once they were old enough to start enjoying sex.
“No, no,” said Tony. “No. She scares me. That woman scares me. She is thunder in a bottle, Nick, and I do not want her around.”
Before Tony realized that he had close to little aptitude towards the occult, he’d attempted to conjure the spirit of Hitler into a magical circle. He’d failed miserably, of course, but this foolish action caused Louis – who knew everything that was everything within the occult scene of Melbourne – to slap him so hard that the force ricocheted, hitting all the spirits on the astral plane.
“Hmm… she is a little gung-ho,” said Nick, who’d personally seen Louis shoot a young magician in the leg.
All the youth had done was ask Louis whether she’d reflected on the possibility that all magic was black magic, and because all magic was interconnected that meant – logically – that every magical act was evil. Had she reflected on that, the young magician asked?
“Yeah. Don’t call her,” said Tony, fear tinting his manly voice.

“The fridge is empty!” cried Calm.
They’d moved the corpse of poor James to the house’s study. It was hygienic, after all, to leave it in the kitchen.
“We’d have to walk down to the Fish and Chips place or something,” said Tony disdainfully.
“No, no…” replied Calm. “You don’t understand. There’s nothing in the fridge. Nothing at all!”
“I… ah,” said Nick, not quite understanding what was being said.
“Yes,” said Calm, “And what do we know that kills with poisoned spikes and has a huge appetite?”
“I… some sort of porcupine-bear?” said Tony.
“No! The Nadubi!”
“Ah?”
“Evil Aboriginal spirit of poison and hunger? Lives in the Arnham Lands? Kills with its spines?”
Calm was excited. Tony and Nick had never heard of it. Australian mythology wasn’t their forte.
“If it… lives in the Arnham lands…” said Nick, carefully, “Then what is it doing down here? In Melbourne?”
“Food. There’s food down here. The cheeky bastard’s been feeding on the food of North Melbourne yuppies.”
“Hmm…” said Tony, unsure.

It was, of course, the Nadubi.
It watched curiously as the three inept occultists argued over its existence. It felt at ease. It had recently eaten, and had also taken the great pleasure of spiking a human. Food and murder: everything a spirit needed.
As it watched, it realized that it was hungry again. Hungry for human flesh. It had gotten greedy when it attacked James – it wasn’t truly ready to eat again, and now the body had withered away. Unfit for consumption…
It wasn’t starving, either. It couldn’t eat the big one… or his sandy-haired friend. Maybe the scrawny-looking mortal? The one who had dared hypothesize its existence?
Yes.

“Oh Jesus what the fuck was that?”
Calm felt his leg. No blood… but something large, worn, with a texture like bone…
Nadubi spike.
As he collapsed, the Nadubi leapt out from the crack between the fridge and the sink. It was the size of a large garden gnome, except skinny and vicious. Its neck, wrists, elbows, and feet were spiked – they looked comical on the beast. Its teeth were razors, its eyes slits.
It was, all in all, a scary bastard of a thing.
Calm had collapsed, pale and skeletal.
Tony was the first to react.
“Shit, shit, shit!” he cried, trying to crush the thing with his boot.
Nick was chanting – half in prayer, half in an attempt at banishing – but it wasn’t doing very much. He grabbed a bag of rock salt from one of the nearby benches and tried throwing the thing at the Nadubi. No luck. It screeched a little and plunged its teeth into Calm’s leg.
“Oh Christ oh Christ!”

It was too late for Calm – by the time Tony had beaten the Nadubi to death with a hammer, Calm had join James as one of the dead. The ancient spirit of poison and hunger lay splattered on the red floor, its black blood steaming.
Tony and Nick looked at each other silently. They knew what’d happen now. There was no supernatural presence stopping the police.
Nakita came down from her room. “What’s going on?” she said drowsily.
Robertson and Mass had dashed for freedom. They were nowhere to be found. Nikita now had to deal with two unexplainable corpses. It was a rough shock.
When she called Robertson and Mass, the phone line had been disconnected and they’d changed offices. She was soon arrested for two counts of murder.

WHAT IS MAGIC: Magical Traditions (Part One)

2009-09-28T05:53:00.000-07:00

What, exactly, is magic?

He’s at it again.

It’s the howling, mostly, and the weird banging late at night. If I had a crown for each time I’ve awoken to Jasper shouting invocations in Latin I’d be a very rich man. There are sometimes screams, sometimes moans, but he assures me that he isn’t actually killing anything: those are just the spirits. They protest, apparently.

He doesn’t name them ‘demons’, but what he does is no secret.

I’ve been at this for forty years. I need my rest. I shouldn’t be forced to try and sleep through six hours of some would-be chanting and muttering. People should have the decency to keep their blasted magic in the daylight.

There are four types of supernatural abilities available to Perdurade magicians. The first, and by far most commonly practiced, is known simply as Magic.

Each character within the Club has at least some ability in a handful of Magical Traditions. Most of these traditions involve ritual of some kind or another, and almost all are difficult to apply fully in a tense situation. Magic is reserved for the downtime between investigations.

Me?

I wouldn’t be caught bootless with that dreadful muck. What he’s doing isn’t really magic at all… it’s conjuration, yes, but it’s unwieldy and unsubtle. Not fitting for a Perdurade magician to resort to such methods. Not fitting at all.

I speak to the Earth. I use salt, sometimes, or a dowsing cane. Stones, too, and branches made of oak. The land has a song that it must sing. It is important that I hear it.

Up at dawn, for the Absolutions of the Sun. Then, before breakfast, a short divinatory peering – I cast stones into a salt circle – and maybe a small walk. I can change form, too, yes. You’ve heard that. They think I can’t manage anymore, but I can. I’m the chosen sorcerer-druid of the New Century. The Earth has chosen me for its supreme work…

That isn’t to say that all Magic involves lengthy rituals. Some of it can be cast extremely quickly. On the fly, as it were. More often than not this involves preparations beforehand, but it can be done…

Divination, for one – a common method of identifying invisible threats and forces within a certain sphere – can be found throughout most of the Traditions. Geomancy, for example, often uses the casting of stones. Diabolists read the spilled entrails of freshly killed animals.

A few of the Traditions, at least at the higher levels of initiation, have means to deal with sudden threats through mystical Blasting – though most occultists would rather rely on a blazing firearm of cold steel to see them through. Advanced Geomancers are famed for their alleged ability to change forms, and Diabolists are feared for their ability to ruin a man with a wave of a hand or a simple gesture.

Each Magical Tradition has its own form of Abjurations – wards and cleansing rites which can, in some cases, protect one from supernatural horrors. Following the same example, it is widely known that Geomancers carry twelve sacred stones with them at all times – and if these are placed to form a sacred circle, anything within that circle is impervious to magical harm. The Diabolist takes a different route, calling upon Jehovah in his mightiest aspects to destroy whatever threatens.

Reminds me a little of the time I had to share a room with Cooper, now that we’re on the topic...

Cooper was always a fiddler. I have the greatest respect for the man, of course – his crazed ranting about metaphysical non-truths and the illusions of magic ignored – because he knew real magic. He performed all his magic in light of day (admittedly, always after noon, but at least his lazy approach gave me a free morning of ritual). His sorcery might have been a little hit-and-miss, but it was always spectacular, and I never heard rumours about him making blood pacts with the Devil.

That just wasn’t his style.

American Burnings

2009-09-23T08:14:00.001-07:00

(A small, rushed piece I did for the CTRL+ALT+DLT Writer's Block forum contest. I like to compete sometimes.. but I always leave it until the night before the deadline. Oh well.)

Smoke.

They’d caught Jimmy at it. Burning things. It made me feel a little sick. We’d all liked to play with fire. Just little things… flicking matches, starting lighters: small pieces of grass, a little paper, something to make them feel a little cool. A little bad.

They were kids. Kids did that. Everyone loved fire.

Jimmy had lit the school auditorium. The whole thing had gone down. No deaths, unfortunately, so he lost points for that – but he was caught, so he wouldn’t have gotten points anyway. That wasn’t the way the game worked.

Wasn’t the way it worked according to the Book.

The Book: a little charred on the edges, but the red came through. When I first saw it, for a tiny moment I thought it might have been blood. But it was just the colour. You opened the book and the two greatest smells in the world rushed to meet you: the old book smell, that one you get in the used bookstores, and the smell of smoke, the smell of something burnt to a crisp.

Something burnt to all hell.

Thomas, before he’d disappeared, explained the game to us. We’d been exploring the house that’d gone up in flames recently. It was a ruined shell – nothing but ash, the darkness of memories gone up in flame. We found nothing good to steal except the Book.

The title: American Burnings.

“Flip it,” said Thomas, “Flip the Book. It’ll tell you where to go. You’ll figure out what to use. Ten points for a successful burning, five for a partial, five bonus points for a death. Injuries don’t count. Fifteen points if the fire gets out of control and hits somewhere else. Get caught and you lose them all.”

So we did it.

We took turns, of course. That’s what the Book said to do. Thomas went first. We think he died. Jimmy used to describe to us what it’d look like – his pale skin burning up, red hair met with crimson fire, a scream that can’t be heard over the popping, the cackling of it all.

Jimmy got the auditorium. Then it was my turn. I got the park.

Kerosene, the Book said, but that wasn’t a problem. Dad had plenty of kerosene. I stole a can, took it to the park. There was no one around. That was good – I wanted the five points, sure, but I didn’t want to hurt anybody. It smelt like rain. The air tasted fresh.

It was the first rain we’d gotten in a long time.

I can smell it now. It’s dark, but the hills are red with burning. A burning need to escape. To consume. To destroy and to kill. A siren howls past. I’m meant to be packing my things - Dad said we’d be evacuating in ten minutes. My clothes smell like smoke. Everything smells like smoke.

I’m scared, but I can’t stop playing with the Book.

Who is.. Jasper Solomon?

2009-09-15T01:31:00.001-07:00

("Who is..?" being a series of sporadic articles detailing the members, famed and obscure, of the controversial Perdurade Club. In these modern nights one would hope that the superstition and mysticism of a darker age might be quashed completely, but the profile's of fraudsters and charlatans never cease to stir delight in the bellies of the enlightened, and so they are presented here for The Reader's satisfaction..)

Jasper Solomon

Thirty-Four (34) years of age as of 1903 AD
Joined the Perdurade Club at age 23 in 1880 AD
Full Membership (Resident)

Affiliation: Rational Magic

Astrological Profile

Born in late January, Jasper Solomon is thus influenced by the Blasted Moon. This manifests through his great natural intuition, which allows him to easily come to correct conclusions and grants him a reputation of eerily high intelligence and deductive power. Unfortunately, this trait also makes him occasionally careless and overly hasty, rushing into dangerous situations without planning ahead or formulating a plan.

Appearance and Personality

Jasper is fond of wearing bright colours, a quirk that makes him the but of many a wry joke within the Club. While his hair is a wild sandy-blond, shoulder-length and unkempt, his sense of fashion is impeccable; he spends much of his monthly retainer on new items of clothes and shoes. He is especially fond of fine Italian leather dress-shoes. He is never seen without an evening jacket - sometimes a conservative black, sometimes dark red or even a bright purple - and his cuff links are always a sparkling silver.

Both of Jasper's ears are pierced, though it is rare that both will hold jewelry, and he is especially keen in regards to rings and pendants. He does not seem like an especially vain man, however, regardless of the what he may wear; his eyes are dark, betraying Jasper's inclination towards tragedy (instead of romance), and they rest upon heavy bags. He does not sleep or eat enough. One may wonder if the brightness of cloth is the only shred colour in his life.

Jasper Solomon is a somber, sober individual. Jasper's female guests often claim that he is jovial and relaxed in private, but among all but his closest friends and lovers he seems weary, tense, and a little paranoid. Do not allow this description to persuade you that he is unfriendly, however - he does smile, and he contains a particular kindness rare among magicians.

One has the impression that he is a deeply conflicted man, passionate about his work and about bettering the Perdurade Club and, perhaps, mankind - but also inclined towards compassion and empathy. This estimate may not be so far from the truth.

Aspects

There are three aspects to Jasper Solomon. Any of these might be considered for the Perdurade Club game, and while the three are certainly diverse they should not conflict with one another too harshly. They each shed light on a different part of Jasper Solomon, each one as valid as the next, an the player should choose an aspect he is comfortable with and personally drawn to.

Jasper Solomon, Grim Diabolist: Jasper Solomon is shares a name with one of the most famous magical grimoires in history - the Clavicle of Solomon, an eldritch manual detailing how to traffick with demons and break them to one's will. It is considered, by most, to be in league with the Black Arts and to place more emphasis on personal power then spiritual enlightenment, but one can't deny it's effectiveness. Those few members of the Perdurade Club who know what mystical practices Jasper engages in keep quiet for the sake of themselves and the Club; the benefits it reaps outweigh most risks. Jasper is himself deeply serious about the practice - fully understanding the dangers, risks, and ethical difficulties involved - and casts his magic with insight and moderation. He does not joke about the calling of the Damned.

Jasper Solomon, Parapsychologist Dilettante: Jasper Solomon dresses like an obscure, wealthy European noble, and his interest in parapsychology and the weirdness of modern science only add to the rumours of his eccentricity. His retainer from the Perdurade Club - coupled with a deep and stable personal wealth accumulated in his early years working as a brilliant freelance consultant of the occult (back in the few years when the practice was dying but there was still work to be done) - allows him to personally investigate, without care of whether or not he has Perdurade permission, any supernatural occurrence he happens to take an interest in. His natural intuition allows him to survive these often deadly solo inquiries, but he's almost died more times then he cares to admit and the job has aged him at least a decade.

Jasper Solomon, Encyclopedic Sorcerer: Jasper Solomon is famed within the Perdurade Club for his insight regarding events thaumaturgical and arcane within the city. His other eccentricities - the fashion, his parapsychology work, the diabolism - is quietly ignored by the Club officials as he fills an important niche within the place: Jasper is the man who can connect the dots. His knowledge of magical lore in general, and of the Black Arts in particular, is impressive, and it was he who found the Cult of the Hidden Pharaoh in 1884 and he who realised that the only way to kill the Dragon of the Lake was to feed it a red-headed virgin woman in 1891. In this aspect, Jasper Solomon is jack-of-all-trades occultist, having theoretical proficiency in most of the arcane arts and a strong practical proficiency in Ceremonial Magic (specializing, naturally, in diabolism).

Rumours

(The player may choose three rumours to be truthful in regards to Jasper Solomon - one specific (tied to an aspect), one general (tied only to Jasper), and one negative (also tied to Jasper). The rest can be assumed as true unless proven false. The player is under no obligation to share which rumours are true and which are false with the other players; on the contrary, it is advised that he keep them secret.

Here are only a few examples.)

"You know what I heard? I heard that, with all those bright colours and the frilled clothing.. I heard that Solomon was a little peculiar, you know? A little strange. As in, I wouldn't be surprised if he preferred the, ah, company of men.." (Negative)

"He has a condition, you know. A sickness. Caught it while we battled the Plagued Hook in, oh, 1898. Like a worm of the stomach. Can't digest most food - which is why we never see him dining, or drinking anything but Russian vodka - and it's hard for him to move around for very long. He's not dying, I don't think, just in a bad state.." (Negative)

"I know - don't ask me how or why, but I damn well know - that Solomon's in league with the Devil. He traded his very soul for arcane power. It's all that Black Magic he's into.. it was really just a matter of time. He's a danger to the entire Club, if you ask me, the rotten core. He needs to be expelled." (Negative)

"I've heard that he's not only seen it, but he's actually been there. Visited it.. the Blasted Moon itself. He's actually set foot on the grey soil of the wastes - seen the City of Fools.." (General)

"It's the Dagger of the Denarius. Created from reforged silver coin - the very silver given to Judas for betraying Christ! The Dagger was given to him by the demon Vassago, and if he kills with it at dawn on the sixth day of the sixth month.. all his enemies will wither and die, blasted by the fury of the blackest spirits." (Specific: Jasper Solomon, Grim Diabolist)

"He dresses like that because of his allegiance to the Court of Bale. Faeries. Worse than that - ancient Ottoman killer faeries. He might even be part Fae himself. Wouldn't surprise me. Explains the ridiculous choice of dress.. and his demeanor. Cold bastard. Never cared much for him. What I'd pay to see him beaten with a club of cold iron.." (General)

"He's searching for something. I don't know what, but it's out there, and Solomon thinks he can find it. That's why he continues to go on these damn fool investigations of his. Lunacy. Whatever it is, I hope it's worth the price he's paying.." (Specific: Jasper Solomon, Parapsychologist Dilettante)

"A pair of spectacles. Shaded blue. Yes, I know, blue.. bear with me. He claimed.. he claimed they were from the future. From the 1960's - sixty years ahead! How did he get them? Hell if I know. Still.. if the kid really can time-travel.." (General)

"He has a mind made of clockwork. A machine for a brain. I saw him die. I saw the High Priest of the Cult of the Door beat him till he was dead.. I saw them drag him off.. and I met - briefly, yes, but I met the doctor behind saving him. Transferring his memories to the new mind.. before the brain had fully ceased to be.. crazy, yes, but it'd explain the fountain of knowledge he has stored within there, right?" (Specific: Jasper Solomon, Encyclopedic Sorcerer)

Conclusion

That is, essentially, it. As one can see, there is much more to Jasper Solomon than can be gathered by a simple inquiry.. he is truly a member of the Perdurade Club. Madness comes with the territory.

The Original Perdurade

2009-09-15T01:25:00.000-07:00

(Being the original seed of the idea that would flourish and turn into what I have now of the Perdurade Club, as well as existing as the first tiny bit of story written about the setting. It's unfinished - a drabble at best - but worth putting up, I think.)

They watched the Perdurade Club with clicking, twisting eyes. The Perdurade Club returned their gaze, nervous but ready. An air of paranoia filled the streets. They were named clock-punks by the gentlemen of the Perdurade for their clockwork eyes and the punk sound of gears against leather. The members of the Perdurade were fearful of those mechanical eyes. They did not blink.

Three weeks had passed since the first clock-punk had stood outside the gates, and now two dozen of the creatures assaulted the grounds with their silent watching. The play on words, of clock and watch, did not amuse the members of the Perdurade as it might have.

Opinions as to the nature of the clock-punks were varied. Jasper Solomon, a young man fond of bright colours yet grim in character, believed them to be artificial homunculi crafted by some unseen enemy of the Club. This was supported partially by a handful of Jewish members who believed that the things could very well be modern golems, those creatures of stone mentioned in the most mysterious of Judaic texts.

Other members disagreed. Richard Francis Kantam, who claimed the ability to speak to angles, decided upon venturing out of the Club to study them. He was not harmed, and returned with the opinion that no conjurer could have created such things: they were fantastic, yes, but ultimately mundane.

This disappointed many, but instilled a new sense of fear within the members. Technology, industry… these were men who filled their lives with dry tobacco and dusty tomes, strange archeology and serpentine mysteries. They were detectives… some of the occult, some not, but all had a powerful connection to the forces of the unseen.

But there is more to the occult than mysticism. It is the business of secrets, and secrecy is not limited to the ethereal and the astral. This was why the members were not simply occultists or magicians or detectives – they lusted for the mystery that these things brought.

The clock-punks were an enigma, and this excited the gentlemen as much as it scared them. What did these clock-men signify? Of whom were they agents of? Did they have a motive?

The Perdurade Club

2009-09-14T06:21:00.000-07:00

Remember the time..

At the MacGraw manor, on that frightful Winter night, when we fought the ghost of the law Lord David McGraw? How he shrieked and wailed, shattered all the windows, filled us with the coldest chills, snuffed all hope from our souls.. and drowned poor William? Remember how our Father prayed, yes, thank you Father, how Cooper used his electromagnetic wand to cast it aside, how Alice trapped it within her glass bottle?

Remember the time..

When the Cult of the One-Eyed Sultan took Freedom Square, attempting to use their black rituals to call their blasphemous deity to the Earth and destroy mankind? Remember the gibbering horror.. how it came towards us, legs and wings and tentacles and claws.. how it struck, how it gooped, how it fed on the brains of men? Only fire could defeat it.. do you remember?

Remember the time..

There is a correlation, I'm sure! Why else would the spirit of the Rabbi stop his attacks on the local Muslims unless my extoplasmic defribrillation wand had some affect.. I know it. And the laser? What of the laser? It burnt a hole in the moon! You all saw it! Imagine if I could localise that field, narrow it, allow it for closer use.. if we could use it on the Toothless Baron?

Remember the time..

Bah. Wands and scepters and wizards hats and poncy robes.. that's all you have behind you. This trash doesn't scare me and it never will, Cooper. There's always a rational explanation behind things. No, I don't believe in God. Don't need to. Science's on my side..

Ah - times have changed.

The city has exploded. Technological boom, they say. Machinery and gears everywhere. Steam-soldiers walk the streets, and the Cult of Science reigns supreme. No need for the older league - the detectives supernaturale, the hard-bitten occultists, the misfits of the world. No need for the league that once protected the city, once guarded it's doors from the darker forces in the cosmos.

Half the original investigators are dead. More. Most are too old to do anything except drink whiskey and discuss the golden days of paranormal investigation. To watch intelligent machines wander past, to witness the advent of free energy, to sight upon citizens integrating technology into themselves like one replaces the old gears of a clock..

Did you here about the Golem? Monstrosity made of metal and clay, the burning words of the Torah in it's skull.. killed fifteen Jews until it was solved. Yes, solved. By fifty-five elite steam-troopers, automatic rifles in hand, silent and burning.. three were killed, but the Golem fell. They even caught the man behind it all. Jewish? No, Christian. Stole the writings, stole the magic words. They threw the body of the thing into the furnace. Didn't make the news. Yes, a pity.

The Perdurade Club. That's the name the Crowned Government gave it. Sprawling manor, dozens of rooms, estate of it's own, with a small townhouse in the city.. but it's a token, that's all. Something to ease us, to thank us for all our work in the past and to remind us that it's over. We've been paid. They don't need us anymore. Even the rationalists - even old Cooper was furious at that, and he's a self-professed 'man of science'.

They managed to bring the Doom that Holds the Gates to manifest upon the mortal plane. Sank the entire Island of Cante - took them two weeks to capture it. You heard me correctly. Capture it. The Doom that Holds caught like any mundane fish! I couldn't hold my laughter once I managed to believe it. The Cult of the Door's in tatters, of course.. better job than any of us could've managed to do.. they're studying it now in their top-secret science vaults. Instantaneous apportation less then a decade off, they say..

There are fresh faces, of course. Some long for the previous century, where our work was not only reasonably common but damn well appreciated. Some are cursed with the role, trapped by fate. Some are learned apprentices - well, sons and daughters, mostly, of the old stock. But there's not much for them to do except for fence and paint and write poetry..

Not much until now.

There was a recent series of murders upon members of the Perdurade Club, and following that an instance of actual assault upon it's grounds. The Club waved it off as simply a revenge attack from one of their old enemies.. but the murders haven't stopped, and as far as any can tell, all the enemies are inactive or innocent of that particular crime. There are rumours of a Dark Lodge, a Lodge devoted to the Black Arts and to the Unspeakable Religion.. a Lodge dedicated to conquering the city - and the world - and destroying everything in their way, including the Perdurade Club.

Especially the Perdurade Club.

The Crowned Government claim to have no knowledge regarding any resurgence of mystical crimes - for all the Club knows of it, they may be in league with the enemy. The Perdurade Club - even as it keeps it's cool facade - is in a state of panic obvious to everyone within. Divination, while not, strictly speaking, useless, isn't doing much to help. The killings continue. Black magic looms.

There's nothing more for them to do except for their job: to investigate the blasted, the paranormal, the mystical and the strange. To wander into the unknown, and to fight tooth-and-nail with horrors unfathomable, for the good of man and for the continued existence of humanity.

Fuck science.

Breaking the Writer's Block

2009-09-11T09:32:00.000-07:00

My amazing method to beat the dreaded writer's block is to write whatever comes to my head, or to try and illustrate a dream that I had an especially gripped me (in the way that only dreams can). This is a case of the latter, with an added mixture of the first. It is to break the writer's block that hit me due to a succession of deeply distressing events that have occurred over the past week.

It won't make sense. It won't satisfy you. It isn't a good story. I hope, for a moment, that it will amuse you.

---

They found her trapped within one of the storage cupboards, bruised and battered and broken ribbed – a mess. The cupboard typically held books, but in this case it had trapped his grandmother, caught within the tiny space like a worm. Her eyes had crusted over with blood. He didn’t know what to feel, because he’d dreamt this.
Or something that was close enough: the murder, he knew, wasn’t a murder. It was simply assault. There was a book involved, a single book – and it was the weapon used by the attacker – but he couldn’t quite remember the specific title. There were other aspects of the crime.
He wasn’t a very good psychic.
Nevertheless, he knew he was onto something.
His grandfather, Grand Mason of the Fifth Lodge of the Society of Ra, didn’t know what to say. He didn’t believe in psychic detection, or in auras or anything silly like that. He wasn’t the kind of man who would easily describe what he believed in. You didn’t get to be one of the most powerful pseudo-magicians of the twenty-second century by being easy to pin down.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “Perhaps when she went missing your subconscious mind conjured up the image of to prepare you for what was to come?”
His face, bearded, contrasted with the baldness of his head. Creases – kind but firm – scarred his face, showing his true age. He wore glasses. They weren’t modified.
“Let me look,” he said, a little desperately. “I know I can help. I know it. Let me take a small look.”
“Absolutely not. Out of the question. No. No, Nicholas. You’re just not ready.”

The train sloped down; almost hit the horses, and then the buffalo sprinted past. It did not stop. Nicholas felt as if the train should have hit them, should have damaged them, should have broken them… but it didn’t. It never did. The train was conditioned against violent crimes.
Soon, before anyone realized it, they’d hit the city loop. Sixteen stops, all part of the city, round and round. The train was mostly a city loop train. Nicholas had come to visit his grandfather. He needed to access the cult.
“Don’t bother,” said his grandmother. She’d been viciously beaten, of course, but was now enjoying a paid holiday within the Society’s lush gardens. “It was a random occurrence. Nothing to worry yourself over.”
But why the dream?

He’d finally remembered the title of the book.
An Inhabitant in Carcosa.
Ambrose Bierce.
1891.
Almost two hundred years old.
A real book!

“She’d been beaten with a mallet,” said the doctor. “And with fists. A book… that’s ludicrous. Especially if it was printed in the nineteenth century.”
“Ludicrous?”
“It’d crumble. To dust.”
“If it was a reprint…?”
“Possibly. But we’d know. There’d be book-related injury. We’d find traces of paper. Ink. Something.”
“Can you sign this?”
“Prescription?”
“Hyperdifictomine.”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“I suffer from hyper-sanity. I see things. Numbers everywhere. Can’t function. Too clear.”
“Get the hell out.”

Who read books these days?
Everyone: it was the latest craze.
Grandfather was out of town for the week. The national conference of ‘Alternate Spirituality Now’ – he was to be a guest speaker. He liked speaking. Nicholas remembered his father’s second failed wedding. He’d spoken for hours. Still had the .sound around, somewhere…

… and holy shit it was the twenty-first century and it was plain and boring and a little dull and there was war and starvation and nothing much on television unless you paid extra for the extra digital subscription or downloaded it illegally from the internet but who’d do that why would they do that you’re not just burning a digital video disc you’re burning the Australian film and television industry it just wasn’t on oh god the Federal Police…
He needed a hit.
Had a pill left?
Hyperdifictomine – one.
And it was done.

… Where was that .sound? Didn’t matter. Someone would have it, somewhere.
Nicholas smiled. “Yes, ma’am. A real occult detective. Ghosts, mostly, some cases of possession. Like Scooby Doo.”
“Oh, I love Scooby Doo,” said the elderly woman in charge of manning the gates. “But, I don’t know. The Grand Mason said we weren’t allowed to let in any guests…”
“But you have a ghost. A real ghost. I’ve been called from the council. Oh, and to check your water system. I’m a plumber, too.”
The woman smiled broadly. Her kind face lit up with enthusiasm.
“Oh, our water’s been cold, lately,” she admitted, and Nicholas knew he was in. “Do you think it’s a ghost?”
“That depends, ma’am,” he said. “Does your – uh – alternate religious order engage in occult or spiritualist ritual?”
“Well, we are a hidden occult order,” the woman said defensively. “Been around since the Egyptians resurrected Atlantis.”

They weren’t pleased to see him. Why would they be?
Naturally, however, there was a ghost. He should have known better then to try lying.
It wailed and howled and screeched and there was nothing Nicholas to do except to banish it. He took at the Dagger of Freedom and the blasting rod and began chanting in Hebrew. Then he changed his mind, switched to Latin. Sounded much better.
“Are you Harry Potter?” one of the Sorors asked him.
“What?”
… and he was back and the girl was asking him silly questions like what was a witch these days and could he turn invisible did he worship Satan (even in secret) and did he really believe in magic and stuff?
He nodded, sipped at the Coke. The McDonalds made him feel queasy, but he ate it anyway. This was a date, after all. She smiled and asked him what he thought of the movie.
“Movie?” he asked.
… and he was back.
The ghost was gone.
“Thank heavens for that,” said the Soror. Soror was Latin for sister. It had mystical meanings. “A real ghost! Wait till Grand Mason Robertson finds out!”
“Uh, well,” said Nicholas, “I’ll need to see your pipes.”
“Right,” she said, “Down by the storage cabinets. Mind the old books. They’re fragile.”

He soon found it. He wasn’t looking for the pipes at all. He was looking for the book – and he found it!
An Inhabitant of Carcosa.
There were no blood stains. That was odd.
“And you like this guy? I mean, he isn’t really a writer, is he?”
He was back. Defensively so.
“Of course he is. Lovecraft is one of the greats. His style seems rigid and cold, but really, it’s the best way to convey the notions of cosmic horror that he was trying to express…”
She took a bite out of his ice-cream.
“He was a mad racist, too.”
“I finally meet a sweet girl who has read H.P. Lovecraft and she thinks he’s an overrated hack. The irony isn’t as funny as I’d have expected.”
“I do like Ambrose Bierce, though,” she said.
“Who?”
“You know, he wrote, Inhabitant of Carcosa? The one who Lovecraft habitually stole from?”
“Oh, right, him,” he shrugged it off, “A hack.”

His grandmother wasn’t attacked again. It was a freak occurrence. His skills as a psychic detective weren’t needed again in this century or the next.
The dream, it seemed, was meaningless.

Fictognostic: The Lie

2009-06-21T02:58:00.000-07:00

It might have been a small one: oh, my train was delayed, sorry, so sorry, I'll be there in an hour.

It might have been a heavier one: I can't make it to your wedding, I'm afraid, because we'll be in Hawaii that time - meeting the family, yes, only once a decade - sorry, but it's already booked, I'm sorry...

It may have been a huge one: Fucking your best friend? That's ridiculous! Why would I even think about having sex with him? You.. you're so fucking insecure!

They are all pieces of fiction passed hastily as items of fact: lies.

Fictognostics, those who seek Truth through Lies, are created in this manner. No one knows entirely what distinguishes one lie from another - some believe it to be astrological in nature, others are positive that it's just the universe trying to draw fictosorcerers together, most are unsure or have wilder theories - but it is one lie, the Lie, that makes a Fictognostic Qabal.

The funny thing is, most of the time the Fictognostics aren't even part of the lie. Say, for example, that Samantha is fucking Nicholas while she engaged to Mark. Mark, naturally, doesn't know, and Samantha doesn't exactly want to tell him. When this secret is exposed - and the really powerful, really bent ones always are - things happen. Samantha 'not' fucking Nicholas is the Lie.

Nicholas's brother, Daniel, is drawn in. Mark's ex-girlfriend, Suzanne, is as well. Samantha's best friend, Michelle, may as well be thrown in, and so is Mark's best friend, Troy. Troy, Michelle, Daniel, Suzanne: four individuals that have nothing to do with the Lie but are all linked through association.

One by one, they disappear from the world. The fiction gobbles them up. Their Fictognostic abilities are still freshly awakened, still raw; they manipulate fiction and fact through instinct and intuition instead of practice and discipline. They might lose their jobs; they might alienate their family; they might be committed to a sanitarium; they might vanish altogether. They have stopped being real.

While they are gone... they see worlds, impossible worlds, worlds that they control. They see with the true eyes, with eyes that can pierce the occult shroud that surrounds the world. They can discriminate and fabricate.. they are lost in illusion. This process might take months; it usually takes two to five years.

Assuming they aren't killed or sucked into horrible fantasy-places for eternity, they will return together. They will have seen and met each other in fiction, while they have projected their spirits into the world of fiction, and they will return as friends and allies: as a Qabal.

When they return, their initiation complete, they will escape their bonds. They will typically cut off whatever remaining ties they have to family and friends, and they will move in together, work together, fight together. They will have set up their sacred space, their alters, where they will work and live most of their lives.

Most Fictognostics will never leave their Qabal. They might go rogue, become solo practitioners, but they will never be accepted into another group. Qabal's are too personal for that.

They will have formed a Qabal - a group of two to six Fictognostics - and created a Lodge, the house where a Qabal is kept. The Lodge might, in time, join a Temple (a collection of Lodges), but this isn't a step most Lodges are prepared to take so quickly.

The Qabal will have greater things to worry about than Temples and the like, to begin with. They'll be busy exploring their new found powers and building their worlds. Unfortunately, all too soon their Shadow Lodge will form, and then the real struggle will begin..

My Passion

2009-06-18T07:27:00.000-07:00

(Taken from Miss Twist's perfect site, which you can find here, asking us to tell you about our passions without actually saying what it is. I doubt I can top Twist's, but I'll give it a shot anyways.)

Cold fingers on a colder keyboard.

Force and fire; silence and strength.

The white void laughs mockingly.

I laugh back. Tap tap tap. I laugh, and blackness takes the void.

The words come and go, but the page remains the same.

Cold outside, but the fire within is warmth enough.

The destruction of the blank page is satisfying, but knowing that I have destroyed it, and destroyed it well, is electric.

I kill it with a sword of words.

Enochia Lost I

2009-06-15T05:51:00.000-07:00

NANOWRIMO 2007: ENOCHIA LOST, CHAPTER ONE OF TWENTY TWO

(The first chapter for 2007's Nanowrimo entry. If people like it, or can even fathom it, I'll add more. I'd just finished reading Illuminatus! for the very first time, and a thousand bizarre ideas were buzzing around in my head, all at once. Out of twenty-two chapters, fourteen are finished, and only eight of them might ever see the light of day. A lot of this stuff would later be integrated into my second attempt at a novel, The Secret Vocab of Secret Melbourne. Enjoy having your head fucked a hundred different ways, even if it is only for the bad writing alone.)

(I stole a lot from the Illuminatus books, naturally. The entirety of this first chapter seems to be based on a single, weak premise: that when JK Rowling called Lord Voldemort 'He Who Must Not Be Named' she was really evoking the forces of Hastur, everyone's favourite Lovecraftian King in Yellow.)

(Bad writing: the way my mind deals with writing blocks. When I can't work on a project I usually just zoom off and write about UFO cults and Lovecraftian monsters and mix it all up, just to free my creative impulses.)

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I

The Adversary Wears Yellow

I OWN A STEAM POWERED TIME MACHINE. IT GIVES ME HEADACHES LIKE YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE.

I stare casually through the dim smoke, and as I stare it hits me; he knows, or he will know. He doesn’t know me, of course, but I know him; his name is Gerard Dorne. His mother is an accountant and his father owns a small bakery in East Brunswick. Gerard grew up a happy, curious child – he successfully passed his end of year exams last year, and is only now deciding what it is he actually wants to do with himself.

He sometimes feels attracted to men, and he knows his Irish mother would disown him if she knew. He subscribes to several pornography websites, and this costs him roughly a third of his monthly wages – he works part-time as a telemarketer.

Gerard doesn’t tell his friends he works as a telemarketer. He tells them he’s in multimedia and web design.

He’s drinking a light beer, and I know that he will soon need to excuse himself. I know his mates will pretend to be sad for him – but deep down they won’t really care. But, some do care for the boy; his mother will be driven to suicide, and his ex-girlfriend – no, current girlfriend – will name her child after him. Gerard won’t know she’s pregnant until he’s dead.

I don’t want to kill him; but it’s not like I have a real choice. The alternatives are much, much worse.

A while ago – a long, long, long while ago, before the advent of man and the discovery of fire, in a time before Atlantis, when the astral-currents ebbing from Enochia was all that could keep Earth’s feeble cycle of life from dying out, they came. They weren’t from our world, or even our universe, and came from a time that was perhaps a step to the left of ours – though many would argue it to be a step to the right. They were time-travelers, which isn’t really that new or rare now, but at the time it was pretty amazing; the Great Race of Yith was what they had called themselves, the title ‘Great’ referring to their then-dominance of the time-stream.

They came fleeing an ancient enemy, and as they entered our solar system they smiled. The great southern continent had enough energy for them; they would be able to set up a few bases around Enochia, perhaps dominating the primitive apes that inhabited our Earth. The Yithians traveled quickly and silently, but as they passed several people couldn’t help but notice them.

One of the lucky few to be able to watch the Yithian migration unto our planet, I was also at Woodstock, and also watching Gerard, and also having sex with what might or might not be a Martian. All of this happened almost simultaneously, but I’d had sex with a great deal of strange things in my time, I’d been to Woodstock almost two hundred times, and while the Yithian migration was pretty groovy, with all their lights and lasers and fire, it didn’t have the same affect on me as the now.

Gerard didn’t need to die, but I couldn’t exactly let him live, you know? It really didn’t work like that – well, I hoped it didn’t.

Jack sat down on one of the pub’s flimsy wooden stools – it was a nice day, so they’d decided to talk outside - and looked down at the picture – yeah, it wasn’t photo-shopped or anything. Karin looked that good.

“It’s a conspiracy,” he muttered, and the gorgeous brunette opposite of him tilted her head questioningly.

“What’s the matter, uh, Edgley?” Karin hadn’t been properly introduced with the man she had to partner up with, and he seemed a little aloof – but that just made him more attractive. He had a strange cuteness that Karin just wanted to gobble up; but that wouldn’t be professional, now, would it?

Jack looked at her, a small grin setting on his rugged face. “Well… they know I’m a married man. Why would they partner me up with the most attractive lady on the Force?”

Karin grinned. This was going to be fun.

+++

ATLANTIS BRIDGE IS FALLING DOWN
FALLING DOWN
FALLING DOWN

+++

John Dee opened up his cottage door, glaring at his new visitor – Edward Kelley, rival magician and master of the esoteric arts. Using that fallacy that can be called time, roughly two hundred and fifty years later Nikola Tesla did the same, opening the door to Thomas Edison. It is difficult to describe who was more troubled at the visit of their rival; both John and Nokola seemed pretty upset.

“What in the blazes do you want, you thieving bastard?” both the magician and the electrician snarled, their insults bouncing through time and space.

“Why, I just wanted to warn you,” the Edison-Kelley creature replied, “To stop researching into the Enochia – something disastrous might just come your way.”

It was a thinly veiled threat, and both Dee and Tesla shuddered. Edison was an incredibly powerful man, Kelley a prestigious sorcerer. The conversation ended in two separate ways.

“Both Vril and Freedom Energy will ruin the world, Tesla. Let the Vril-ya stay beneath the world, where the Vril-ya belong. Let their elixir, their energy, be forgotten to man. I beg of you.”

“Enochia belongs to me, Dee. The angels have said so. Our blessed Queen has said so. God wants it to be. I beg of you; let this not come to blows.”

It gets a hell of a lot more complicated when you throw in Aleister Crowley and Samuel Mathers, two occultists that fought around a hundred years after Edison and Tesla had their dispute. Suffice to say, this sort of dispute over Enochia happens often.

To prove my point, lets look at your present time; 2007. Crowl – who may or may not be the direct reincarnation of Crowley, but just to be safe let’s assume that he is – controls the Australian Government, which is not a good thing by the way you’d reckon it. He isn’t the Prime Minister, but instead the current leader of the Illuminated Seers of Bavaria, better known as the Illuminati. He isn’t evil, and he isn’t chaotic. He cannot truthfully be defined.

Crowl controls the Australian government, and is a lizardman. Or, if you prefer, a ‘reptilian’. He’d also answer to ‘Vulcanite’, or, ‘True Son of Vulcan’. He isn’t quite from this world, but his magic is; it has to be. The lizard magic died out a long time ago.

Crowl’s threatening Harold Crafte - who might or might not be the reincarnation of a certain pulp horror writer, but to be safe let’s assume he is – and Crafte is most certainly not part of the Illuminati.

(To be clear, he isn’t an Atlantean or an Alien or part of the New World Order. He isn’t an Anarchist, or a Discordian, or a terrorist; he isn’t from Mu, from Mars, from Mercury, Venus, or the Grand Halls of Vril. He is human, but he is also a pretty damn good magician.)

Crowl told Craft to back off, that Enochia will never belong to him – and he can stop trying and just disband his worthless band of rebels and dreamers. Craft likes the word, ‘Dreamer’, and wonders why he hadn’t thought of it before. It seemed so obvious; they work with the Dreamtime, so isn’t it natural they be called Dreamers?

Craft thanks Crowl, and ignores his threat, replacing it with one of his own: “Enochia is already mine. The Law of Fives pretty much sums it all up for you; by 2012 I will be the most powerful magician on this Earth, and humanity will own its birthright at last. It will no longer belong to the snakes that rule this planet. Poverty and wars will not own this planet. We’re going to mass-illuminate.”

Crowl, in his anger, orders the death of a hundred and fifty homeless people, just as Craft is whistling to himself – and I am watching Gerard, just as Jack and Karin are flirting. Jack now has a beer in one hand, the case in another.

“So… uh… Richard, right?” he asked himself. “Richard Sales. Editor, writer, journo; the whole thing. Runs The Sun is Black-“

“The Sun is Black?” Karin asks. “What the hell does that even mean? What sort of magazine is it?”

“Uh… looks like one of those occult types, the ones that search up UFO’s and the like. A leftist magazine. Half porn, half conspiracy crap. You know the drill. Our friend Rick has disappeared, and his offices have been firebombed.”

“Insurance?”

“Nothing. This wasn’t a fraud. Stop being so cynical, Kannin!”

Kannin? I raised an eyebrow just as I felt Gerard’s bladder slowly filling. They already have pet names for each other? His wife doesn’t have a hope in hell. What’s it supposed to mean, anyway? Cannon?

Ah. Gerard got up. I knew it wasn’t to get more drinks. I probably could have waited in the toilet, but I like the peaceful atmosphere this pub seems to give off. Nice atmosphere for thinking. As I think, I swallow bile; what am I going to do? I’m going to do what I’ve always done. What I’ve had to done. I was running Australia once, before it all got too much, and now I’m running Australia’s occult underground.

I wonder how Crafte’s doing. He’s fine; I check. Gerard enters the toilet. I should probably end it now, before it all gets too much for the kid. Maybe - perhaps. He doesn’t know he’ll know, but he knows that he shouldn’t know what he’s about to know; he’s been feeling uneasy all night.

+++

FREEMASONRY IS BORING. GIVE ME A NEW CONSPIRACY, BABY.
NO. WE NEED TO COVER IT AT SOME POINT, YOU FILTHY INGRATE.
WHY? SO THEY KILLED PEOPLE. SO THEY USED TO RUN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. BIG DEAL. YOU WOULDN’T RATHER HAVE LIZARDMEN? ALIENS? OCCULTISTS?
YOU KNOW I WOULD. BUT MY GRANDFATHER’S A FREEMASON.
SO WHAT?
SO, WE HAVE TO TELL HIM THE TRUTH. IT’S BORING, BUT IMPORTANT. MAYBE NEXT CHAPTER, EH? WE’LL WAIT A BIT.

+++

Jack’s looking through the file now. Karin hasn’t noticed; she’s quietly fantasizing about her police-officer partner. She doesn’t have a boyfriend – or a girlfriend. He does, a wife – and two kids! She knows it’s wrong, but…

“Hey, Karin, look at this. We’ve got issues of The Sun is Black … as well as bank records from that Rick Sales person. He transferred several million into a private Swiss account we can’t check out. Does HAROLD CRAFT mean anything to you?”

“Huh? What? No…” Karin wasn’t ready for stimulating conversation. Jack ignored her vagueness, took a sip of his beer.

“Yeah. Well, how a writer that had declared bankruptcy twice could gain that much cash is beyond. We’ve also got a whole list of his memos for next weeks – his team was working on a book of some sort. The Sun is Black: And So Are Our Moons.”

Karin wasn’t listening – Jack had to repeat her name a few times to get her attention, and then repeated his findings to her. She pretends to be interested. “Uh, great. So what is the book about?”

“Well, you’ll certainly laugh,” ah, there’s Jack’s boyish grin again. “Aliens, Atlantis, the Lost Cities of Australia, Lizardmen… secret occult wars… Satanism…” Jack finished with a shrug. “Typical tabloid bullshit, if you ask me.”

“Memo’s, right? That sounds kind of familiar. There’s this book I read, a long time ago… in the late eighties, I suppose…”

“A book? What was it like? Not this kind of thing, right?”

“Not, uh, really. Well, kind of. Called… uh… Illuminatia or Illuminatus or something. Two bloke cops find that this left-wing magazine’s headquarters have been firebombed, and the editor has disappeared. That’s pretty funny, eh?”

“Yeah, or whoever’s writing this novel is pretty unoriginal. Show me the memo, then.”

They both laugh at their little silly joke, like two unsuspecting and naïve dear about to be shot by the wary hunter. I am that hunter – Gerard has now entered the restrooms, and has one of the dingy cubicle’s all to himself… I hold my breath, as I hear him sharply exhale. He has it. I look at my hands, and turn the door to dust…

He doesn’t realize. The poor bastard doesn’t really care anymore. He’s added it all up, he knows the secrets, and nothing is a mystery any more. I blame myself, and Crowl. I had nothing to do with it, but… if only I could stop him. If I could stop him from visiting the restroom without getting myself shot, or something, then it would all be okay…

But, in the grand scheme of things, he is nothing. Less than a drop in that colossal lake we call time.

+++

TIME? TIME IS HUNGRY, THE LAKE IS DARK. A THOUSAND YOUNG, YOU KNOW.

+++

I’ve done this a few times in the past, but I still have to gather the willpower to end a human life. I give everything else a shot, but I know I’m running out of time; once they’ve changed, it’s only a matter of time before Crowl gets them. The shitbag magician is a cocky one, though – and I use that to my advantage. More time.

Hah, more time.

I can see Dee now. Even though it is late, John is awake, preparing the ritual. This has gone on long enough; Kelly is a slippery one, and as soon as he is dealt with the better. The magic circle – pardon, sigil – has been prepared, the candles and incense has been lit, and the rock salt and fresh herbs are scattered in all the right places. John has the sword in his hands, and it is a great large thing, the epitome of all phallic imagery. He has the cup, but though it isn’t the Holy Grail it serves the same dark purpose.

The Angels speak to him. He knows this. When he was a small boy, the enchanter had come to the village. Before being cast out for reasons still mysterious to John, the enchanter had told him a few things. Told him of a great city… of a great city in the clouds. Enochia! He called it, and the language the angels speak is called Enochian… he explained it all, explaining how magic works with Enochia, and how it all fits together… how Enochia belongs to humanity, and everyone should visit it before they die, lest their souls burn forever in hell… it was a pilgrimage, the most sacred of them all...

John Dee later came to conclude that the enchanter had, himself, been a guiding angel, instructed to teach and inspire the young magician. Tesla had the same kind of experience; he’d grown up with only his father in the small industrial village he’d called home, when a wandering spiritualist came for a visit. He was a tall, dark man, strangely clothed. He talked to Tesla quite often, having become close acquaintances with Tesla’s father, and loved to tell the young boy all about spirits, God, the Devil… it all seemed kind of boring to the youthful Nikola, and he only really got involved when the science was mentioned.

+++

ENOCHIA (En•oh•key•ah)
Tesla = Science
Dee = Séance
IT IS ALL ENOCHIA

+++

Enochia! It’s more than just a city. It’s a dream, it’s the dream. Atlantis, Mu, Danaan, Brigadoon, Lothowsow, Hyperborea, R’lyeh… it’s all just a pale reflection of Enochia. They exist, of course, but only in the way humanity both exists and doesn’t exist; trapped within time, nothing more than white specks of ash in a galaxy full of white specks of dust – we’re nothing, unnoticeable.

This is what I try to teach. Lovecraft was right. I am Lovecraft. I am also Harold Holte. This isn’t my story, really. It’s the story of the battle for the Great City, a battle for illumination and free enlightenment; it’s about the repressive government and the repressed psyche of the mind. It probably won’t make much sense to those of you who are trapped (prior 2012: most of you).

It doesn’t make much sense to me, but it made a lot of sense to Tesla. “Enochia,” said the nameless spiritualist “Is more than just a word. I speak to the dead; you have seen me, heard my talent. I help them move on. But there’s more than that. My power comes from Enochia, the secret city found on Australia’s strange shores. All true power does. Life came from Enochia; it could be said that Enochia is God’s Place. Many mortals can tap it, drawing on remarkable amounts of creativity and spirit; magicians do the same. But it’s not all just silly metaphysics. I know that’s not what a bright young lad like you wants.”

The man was most certainly crazy, Tesla thought, but his father liked the man – and it was respectful to at least listen to him for a short while. The spiritualist stopped talking about the dead, and angels, and started talking about the good stuff; “Now, boy, know this, for it is the secret that runs your theorems and your theories; all the “Secret Cities” exist, simply by the act of people searching for them; this is the Enochian effect. Magic works – and science, and metaphysics too - because we want it, and believe in it, and the City provides. All the best things and worse things in this world come from Enochia, and you should visit it if you can – but you probably can’t. Those who visit, they gain the strangest of manifestations…”

He spoke about the pilgrimage for a small while, and then; “Now, now, you ask – where is that science I promised? Well, it is here, and now. The world is round, flat, and slanted in a thousand different dimensions. Metaphysically, the world is round; natural cycles, everything going in circles; our globe is also technically round. But, to be completely honest, the world is more flat than anything; it all revolves, as a disc we cannot perceive, around Enochia. Everything is a shadow of the One True City. It is the only true poly-dimensional place on Earth. Now, Earth is also spiked because time is always spiked, and even though many who can walk through time believe it to be a simple illusion, that theory is simply another illusion… all time is one immaterial landscape…”

Boredom struck young Tesla again. The man was slowly getting more interesting, but his head seemed to be full of the most inane fiction. It picked up a bit later, however. “But, let me tell you this; there is an Earth below – the Hollow Earth, if you will – and it is a place of fiction, believe me you. There, the pulps rule, dinosaurs rule – banished by their cold, humanoid cousins - and as human creativity seeps deep into the Earth it is manifested by the lower depths of the Enochia. There is also an Earth above, a world of reason and intellect, and that is an even more terrifying place… the Vril-ya are the humans who live below are my point. You say you’re interested in science – more than that – in electricity? I can give you that. The Vril-ya are strange, pure white-skinned blue-eyed people, who brew an elixir called Vril, from which they are named… it both acts as an amplification to the natural abilities of humanity, such as strength and lifespan, as well as casting aside the lies and shadows above… it might be relevant to you, however, for the sole reason that if the right converter is built, Vril can be transmuted into a type of super energy, easily reused and incredibly potent…”

Tesla learned from this man from that point on, and slowly learnt that not all the spiritualist had been saying was a lie; the spiritualist organized a small expedition into the Hollow Earth, so they could study Vril, and it ended in tragedy… only Tesla and that estranged German boy, half Tesla’s age, had gotten out with their lives, and the very experience drove them both mad… but Dee was already mad. He knew he had to beat Kelly, because he knew that if he didn’t Kelly would have him killed…

As John Dee incanted the specifics for the ritual, the angels came and bade him not to do it. They had always spoken to him, but never to Kelly; no, Kelly was just jealous. The angels belonged to Dee, and he was going to summon the greatest one of them all. Dee’s esoteric mutterings didn’t go unnoticed by the entity, however, and neither did Tesla’s ranting and pseudo-incanting; Tesla screamed, clawed, fought as he tried to perfect the stabilizer. He worshipped an angel of his own; the angel of Reason, and it needed to be served… he wanted the Freedom Energy, and he didn’t care… he didn’t care what that strange youth was doing… Hitler? Yes, that was his name. Who cares who he’s killed, this damned reactor won’t work!

But I said there was a hundred years difference. So what? So what! I also said Vril increased a human’s natural lifespan… and at that point Tesla was pretty damn hooked on the juice… he was close to two hundred years old, and didn’t even notice…
“No!” Aleister Crowley snarled. It was 1948, and a depressingly wet day in New York. “You cannot beat me. All the legions of Hell stand behind me, ready to do my bidding; all the angels of Heaven stand afore me, ready to heed my call.”

Samuel Mathers, Crowley’s eternal enemy – and leader of the incredibly influential occult society The Golden Dawn – replied coldly, “Oh, but they all belong to me.”
Both Crowley and Mathers went to their luxurious manors – the headquarters of The Templi Orientis and The Golden Dawn, respectively – and started to invoke He Who Could Not Be Named. Two secretive societies were going to war and the Freemasons weren’t even involved!

Well, not yet, anyway.

You know, after all of this, I still tried talking to Gerard Dorne. “Man, come on, get up,” I kicked him softly. I had a minute and twenty three seconds…

+++

23! It all fits!

+++

…Before some one else was going to wander into the bathroom.
I kicked George Dorne a few times, and checked the scribbles on the cubicle wall. I know all the smutty comments and scribbles were there, but when I looked all I saw was –

555555555555555555555555555555555

Numerology was getting to me – I saw not the equation, but its answer. Hell, it had already gotten to Dorne. I tried talking some more sense it to him, but my words would only come out in fives; “Wake up, you’re just dreaming”, “Jesus, man, wake up, please!”, “You aren’t really that sick”, “Don’t you feel utterly free?”, “Oh fuck oh fuck … fuck!”

The Law of Fives. Once you realize that everything with mystical and spiritual connotations in the cosmos adds up to twenty three, everything material adds up to seventeen… and it all adds up to Fives… you’re trapped. The process usually takes a pretty rough trip to learn – or a successful First Pilgrimage to Enochia – but it can be forced on someone via subliminal brainwashing.

+++

SEE NOW: CAN YOU FNORD THE?
DID THAT SENTENCE MAKE SENSE?
IF NOT… YOU’RE TRAPPED.

+++

That’s what happened to poor Gerard. Crowl, the utter prick, did this to him; if he can breed those who have been truly awakened to the world, illuminated, he can abduct them and use them to power those deadly machines of his…

I couldn’t let him win. Gerard wasn’t ready for this information; it was too subtle. No mere human on our little planet Earth could have sussed out that the sexual innuendo, call-girl numbers, and random engravings on the right side of each toilet block, once given a numerological value, gives the mathematical construct of the universe.

Of course, you can’t usually figure that until you’re ready. Dorne wasn’t ready. I placed my hand on his skull, felt the psychic pressure within him build, and pressed hard…

All that was left was dust. Poor guy had aged a few thousand years. Trying to stumble away, I threw up onto the fine sand – all that remained of the late Gerard Dorne. Personalized time travel is a total fucking bitch, let me tell you… the prescience alone is enough to give you a permanent migraine…though Dee had a migraine for a different reason entirely. He was finally doing it, about to open the Yellow Seal; summoning HIM to the material world… he felt the power gather…

Kelly, who was hiding inside of John’s spacious closet, felt terror lurch through his spine. What was the fool doing? What was he trying to accomplish? Why? Why would you even bother to summon He Who is Not To Be Named?

+++

No, not Voldemort. Not yet, anyway.
Stay the fuck away from my holy book, Rowling.

+++

Kelly didn’t have the strength to stop Dee. He contemplated committing suicide, but was too scared for that as well. He knew that HE wasn’t an angel. He was the greatest magician after all, but he couldn’t believe he’d driven Dee to these lengths.

“GREAT HASTUR!” Dee screamed to the heavens, and they replied in turn with a silent symphony of their own macabre devising. “YELLOW HASTUR!” he screamed again, to Hell, and they replied with their constant screeches, sounds eschewing torture and mutilation…

UNSPEAKABLE HASTUR! Earth itself shuddered beneath the weight of the Unincantable Incantation, replying with its eternal screams…

(“Ah, so that’s what caused global warming!” Al Gore said menacingly.)

UNKNOWABLE HASTUR! Atlantis sinks, again, Mu disappears, again, and Brigadoon takes a thousand homeless Irish with it, again, in an unknowable effort to ward the Earth…

ASSATUR! XASTUR! KAIWAN! Enochia smiles. It doesn’t care. Hastur can’t beat it; it is the machine that makes Earth work…

Hastur comes, and he Comes In Yellow. Dee, Kelly, and Dee’s wife and two children see Hastur in all his glory, not even trying to resist as they die in an unquenchable fire. Dee had asked for Hastur to kill Kelly; Hastur obeyed.

Remember, in those times the term, “Be careful what you wish for”, didn’t exist.

+++

HASTUR HAS BEEN INVOKED ONCE, READERS.

+++

Ambrose Bierce smiles wickedly as he writes his next grand masterpiece. (It is 1893.) It is called Haïta the Shepard, and it will slowly reveal Hastur the world. It will strengthen his place in this world; create a new renaissance – a time of Painting, of Poetry, of Writing. A great age - the millennia of creativity, where Art will dominate all, when magic overcomes science once again…

Ambrose didn’t know about Enochia. He knew about black Elder Gods. All he wanted was the best for mankind, which was, funnily enough, his image of the future. That is usually a very, very, bad thing for mankind.

What Ambrose didn’t realize is that the story was not, as your modern occultists (uh… occultists in 2007) would call it, a hypersigil; it was not going to supercharge the creativity and collectively illuminate a large portion of the world.

Ambrose knew how to write; besides knowing how to be a complete and utter bastard; that was pretty much it. He didn’t know anything about the occult, and his theory was flawed. Instead of using Hastur to create a hypersigil – which he didn’t have enough talent to do regardless – Hastur was using Ambrose to bring his dark influence closer to Enochia, the closest thing that could be called a rival for the Elder God.

That was bad. Suffice to say, Ambrose brought the disease to Earth; by creating Hastur, he allowed Dee to summon it three hundred years from that point back. The epidemic then started to spread.

(If that made no sense, uh, can I just repeat that time is an illusion? If that’s too hard to grasp – and it might be, because time isn’t really an illusion – think of it as a huge oval, with all the points in history scattered around. You can move freely between one point to another, and something that happens can affect everything around it. Ambrose created Hastur, but Hastur was already alive within his soul; effectively, Ambrose was a rookie magician who fucked up and damned all of mankind. More on that later – I’m sure you’re getting bored.)

Ambrose Bierce disappeared in 1914. I’m sure you can gather why…

+++

HASTURE HAS BEEN INVOKED TWICE, READERS.

+++

“Get out of the house, Nikola. None of us want to see you hurt,” Edison was being remarkably patient; but this was necessary. He needed to be patient to get the most out of his rival’s demise; they were going to kill poor Tesla regardless. He had a group of fifteen of the government’s best men with him, each armed with rifles.

There was no reply, so they kicked the door down. They found Tesla dead, a strange sign carved unto his chest – it was as if three question marks had joined at the dot, and it was strangely disquieting. Poor old Nikola had probably sliced himself up in one of his frequent psychotic episodes.

Edison took the strange Vril-converter, and smiled to himself. He was also drinking steady amounts of Vril – what brilliant scientist wasn’t these days – and he couldn’t stop grinning at the chance to sell this to Hitler. Hitler needed it to fund his Last Reich, his Thousand Year Dictatorship, and Edison didn’t mind if he supplied that.

Edison had seen the Vril-ya. He knew they Aryans were the Master Race; this much was obvious. They could create Vril! Now, they’d have to supply Edison safe passage to the Hollow World, as Herr Fuhrer had promised. He needed to study the Vril-ya more, to know their secrets… and while it was dangerous trying to escape the Underworld; it should be safe when you’re actually down there…

(Yes. The history books have been lying to you. Time has been acting funny these past thousand years, you know…)

As long as Edison could get below before the war will begin, he should be safe. That’s what he told himself, anyway.

Adolf finally got the machine, but was a bit sad to hear of Tesla’s death. It had to be done, but… well, when he remember their expedition together, it brought back tears of nostalgia… that was the year when he finally found what he was looking for… the Master Race, the Vril-ya…

The converter didn’t work. It didn’t do anything. Hitler was furious; he belted Eva, had Edison killed, and started the war prematurely – against his own mystical advice, given to him by the Karotechia, that secret Nazi sect – which he ultimately lost.

The human sacrifice to Hastur was incredible. The machine wasn’t anything but a dark alter to the Yellow God, and HE reveled in HIS trick. More than ten million sacrificed was more than enough to add another point to the score…

+++

HASTUR HAS BEEN INVOKED THRICE, READERS.

+++

(There was once a sickly young horror writer living in the early 1920’s. Now, he is known as the modern father of horror – and he was also known for his cosmic writing and magnificent imagination. This man was directly influenced by Bierce, and has influenced millions more; his name is Howard Phillips Lovecraft. He has been reincarnated, maybe.

He wasn’t that great a writer. His dialogue was terrible, and his prose was structured in a way that could make readers weep. His brilliance in the field of imagination, however, was unparalleled – that, plus he was one of the very few Enochian-Sensitive Espers - there are only 23 born each century; only five of them truly had enough power to directly manipulate their abilities.

It was H.P. Lovecraft that first dreamt of the Yithians – those time-traveling immigrants whose tale I have not yet told – and who first chronicled their plight. He believed it all to be fiction; none of it to be true. That man could not separate fact that had existed naturally from fact created by him. He didn’t create the Yithians, only spread their word.

However, he also detailed the ancient Australian city of Pnakotus – the Library-City of the Great Race of Yith. It is the only legendary/secret/underground city not to be created as a shadow of Enochia – but simply created to study it. The Yithians had their own Great True City.

The point I am trying to make, however, is that many who have read H.P. Lovecraft’s tales might believe it was he who invented Hastur. That isn’t true. He romanticized the Elder God, and many believe wrongly.

Truly, Lovecraft did not write enough about Hastur to cause an invocation – however, he did invoke/create many other dark gods, most notably Cthulhu. Since Lovecraft didn’t really do anything new, it doesn’t really count, which is a little disappointing.)

+++

Crowley had his magic stripped from him, and was forced to fade into obscurity; he was lucky Hastur liked the old magus, or it would have been his life taken. Mathers, his ancient rival, just collapsed one day – and didn’t get up.

Hastur ruins those who use the magic given by Enochia, which is in essence all earthly magic. Crowley lost all fame, all reputation, all his abilities… being a notably stubborn man, he didn’t kill himself – but many others in that position would. He died happy, knowing that he’d defeated Mathers. Magic wasn’t important to him; it was the illumination it gave him that was the kicker.

+++

HASTUR HAS BEEN INVOKED FOR THE FOURTH TIME, READERS.

+++

So; we’ve jumped around a bit in space and time. I’m stumbling around blindly now, and surmise that I should have just poisoned the poor kid or something. It takes a lot of energy to hyper-decompose something, and while it’s great for leaving no evidence and being silent, that sort of personalized shift takes a toll on the body. Before I wanted off into the wet Melbourne streets, I make sure that Dorne’s girlfriend and family has an obscenely large amount of money in their accounts.

After the call, I look outside; it’s raining, and Jack and Karin are starting to move inside the very same pub. They eat dinner together; Jack ignores all the calls from his worried wife, and is only faintly surprised when he ends up sleeping with Karin.

Such is life, he laments. He has no idea that the Dreamers have manipulated this event to their satisfaction; we feel bad for his wife, but hell – this is a war!

+++

Rowling examines her finance sheets, grinning madly at her bank account totals. In twenty short years, her empire had grown from almost nothing to selling the most popular children’s novel ever. She’s writing the eighth Harry Potter novel now, hoping to surprise her readers when she resurrects You-Know-Who.

Ah, but that’s exactly what she’s doing; all these books being sold, bearing Hastur’s pseudonym (He Who Must Not Be Named, etc.) have finally gathered enough power to invoke him. She doesn’t know that, of course; by definition, the occult is a secretive Art, and all she thinks she is doing is drawing on power from ambiguously mystical sources to sell her book. It’s much easier to charm your novels to make them incredibly desirable that actually working to get them published (especially if you’re a half-rate unimaginative hack) – and after so many knock backs from the publishers, she thought a little bit of magic couldn’t hurt.

Well, it was a lot of magic, but no one seemed to notice – or care. If there was one thing powerful enough to fuel a spell that strong, it was her thirst for the United Kingdom Pound. Ah, how she loved the smell of money…

Miss Rowling kept grinning, like a skull. What should I do next? What can I do with Book Eight? She wondered. Throw in another few sentences without verbs? No one notices them anyway, thanks to the magic. Why don’t I make Dumbledore gay, bring him back from the dead, and have the older wizard molest Harry? And then… what if… what if Harry enjoys it, and Hermione gets jealous? Hell, I pretty much gave it away in the Seventh Book when Harry tried to find ‘The Elder Wand’…

Ah, so many choices. If only the Christians really knew how much she advocated witchcraft. If only the ravenous fan fiction community could imagine what she had in mind…

Giggling, she decided to tell all the children that Dumbledore was gay at her signing tomorrow. That’d be good for a laugh; and sales would boom…

Unwittingly, that one act pushed it over the edge –

+++

FIVE! FIVE TIMES! HASTUR HAS BEEN INVOKED FIVE TIMES!

+++

So, to make it clear to your readers, this is what happened; this is why Hastur is about to devour the Earth. A simple idea map will make it a bit more obvious, if you remember that five is the primal number that governs the universe.

+++

1. AMBROSE BIERCE – Created Hastur
2. JOHN DEE – Invoked Hastur for the first time/Human sacrifice
3. NIKOLA TESLA – Caused a mass human-sacrifice in Hastur’s name
4. ALEISTER CROWLEY – Gave up his magic to Hastur/Human Sacrifice
5. JK ROWLING – Spread the NAME of Hastur to the almost everybody in the known world

+++

Hastur has finally been invoked enough times to bring a direct manifestation of his will unto this Earth. That’s not good – this means that he is finally in the perfect position to destroy Enochia. Give him five years, and everything will be in place. He’ll be able to contend for Enochia’s power, after all these years… she may have created him, but that is all, he will replace her…

And mankind will belong to him.

Jack wakes up next to Karin. He feels a few small twangs of guilt for what he’s done, but it’s not like it was anything different with the hookers, anyway. And Karin is hot, he reminded himself. And his wife had been rather chunky ever since the first child.

Fuck her. As I walked down La Trobe Street, catching the tram back to our underground compound, I grimaced. This was the first Trip, of sorts, and it wasn’t the most pleasant of all the highs I’ve experienced.

++++

GOODNIGHT, MELBOURNE. I’LL CALL YOU TOMORROW.

Ideapad - June 15th 09

2009-06-14T08:21:00.000-07:00

(Ideapad: Where the ideas go)

ONE:

Blogs that I haven't written yet - I might one day write for it, or I might not - that everyone except myself can access, and read. They probably think I was the one who gave them the link to the blog. Maybe I write for the blog on a regular basis but can't ever remember doing it. Is something erasing my memories? Am I repressing my memories? Is it something else?

Very eerie, that's for sure.

Source: Speaking with Shea/Twist about my blogs, and her mentioning one I confusingly thought was from a sinister parallel dimension

Drabble: Goodbye, Dog

2009-06-14T07:09:00.000-07:00

(Drabble: A hundred-word short story)

Goodbye, Dog

The webcam flickered on. I waited. Nothing happened. This was not unusual.

I left. Goodbye, wife. Goodbye, kids. Goodbye, dog.

I returned, twelve hours later, to the sight of the dog. Hello, dog. The webcam flickered on. The dog whimpered. The dog left the room. I watched the footage.

Walking on two legs. While we were out. I was at work, the kids at school, the wife at tennis; the dog walked on two legs, read my emails. A dog can’t read, I thought. A dog can’t walk.

I knew it had been reading my emails. Now I had proof.

The Universe as Seen by the Fictognostic Cults

2009-06-14T05:11:00.000-07:00

THE UNIVERSE AS SEEN BY THE FICTOGNOSTIC CULTS

1. THE LOCKED CHEST. This is the deepest level of the metaphysical universe according to the Fictognostics. This is heaven and hell. This is God. This is where all the secrets of science and mysticism are held; of immortality, the cure for ills; of the true nature of the universe, or if there even is one; of the perfect mathematics that will one day replace all language.

Souls are locked here. After they have separated from the Story, and passed through the Universal Consciousness and the Dream Eternal, they enter the locked chest and become one with the core of the cosmos. This is why speed in all acts of necromancy is important, and why Fictognostics may often be resurrected years after their death: the weightier the soul, the faster it will fall and the less it will see as it plummets. What happens after souls enter the Chest are unknown, but there are many theories.

Humanity cannot enter the First Realm unless they are dead; breaking the lock destroys any chance of them returning alive. Fictoalchemy is the art, philosophy and science of fusing a living, human body with the Locked Chest. It is never successful. It has often been theorized that the perfect fictional character, perfected through from the Fictognostic Plane to the Locked Chest, may be able to pierce it; this is ultimate goal of all Fictognostic practices.

2. The Universal Consciousness.

When the Locked Chest opens, and humanity learns more about science/religion/philosophy/morality/etc., this is where that information is stored. This is where the very few 'objective facts' of reality that we have found are kept, such as the Principle of Sympathetics. All information humanity has ever had (as opposed to all information it will ever have) is kept here.

The landscape itself is often termed as being 'cold'; a collection of numbers, hard images, and objective outlines. Those fictions not based in perfection will be blasted to oblivion here. Human projections so close to the Chest often find that they've lost their ego, their personality, whatever makes them them... and often suffocate under the weight of their own nonexistence.

Souls travel through here from the Real, often learning as they go.

3. The Dream Eternal.

The Dream Eternal is where all the non-objective facts that humanity has ever learned are kept. Here a soul learns the answers to everything it has ever wondered; whether or not they are true, they instill a sense of ease within a soul. A Christian will learn that Christ is the saviour and God exists and that he/she is going to heaven; a Fictognostic will learn in turn that the Fictognostic model of the cosmos is correct, and that they are finally learning all of the secrets within the Locked Chest.

This is called the Dream Eternal not because it holds all of the world's stories - that the role of the Deepest Lake - but instead because it holds the sympathetic truth behind all of these stories. Here is where all the highly precognitive dreams are kept; those dreams that mirror the future, or eerily shadow the past, or offer maddening advice for the present.

If fictional characters make it to the Real before being blasted, they are often treated within the Dream Eternal; the heavy truths kept within make it a perfect place for a wounded character to rest and heal their injuries. There is a risk, though, that they might base themselves too heavily fact and either refuse to reenter the harrowing Real - which is common - or that they will sink and be blasted in the Universal consciousness.

4. The Real.

The Real, while considerably less real than the Lower Spheres, is still the only plane that living humans can naturally exist in. It is the world of here and now. It is Malkuth, the physical reflection of both the Locked Chest and the Last Depths. Here an individual is born - a fusing of his Story and his Soul, both which will part on the individual's death.

The Real is undoubtedly the most important sphere of existence for the Fictognostics. While they practice and dwell mostly in the Fictognostic Plane, and their ultimate goal revolves around manipulation of the Locked Chest, all of it is so that they can use their practices in the real world. Ultimately, it's not about what you find or learn in the other planes - it's about what you bring back.

Therein lies the trouble. The Fictognostic cabals have wildly varying views and philosophies on what, exactly, bettering the world through Fictognosis actually is. This is what they fight over: to reshape the world in their own, individually perfect image. Fictional characters, with enough effort and work, can exist in the Real; these are the agents that the Fictognostics pit against one another.

Knowledge of the Babilu Shards allows for imperfect fictions to exist on the Real. Howling, broken character-spirits from the Goetic grimoires may be summoned. Power words may be constructed and used to enchant people and artifacts. 'Real' information about rival Fictognostics may be fictionalized completely and destroyed, often killing the rival in question. Many other things may be accomplished, such as fictosynchronicity waves and the ever-popular 'storyreading': the art of reading minds.

5. The Deepest Lake.

The Deepest Lake: the pool of all of the stories, myths and legends, irrelevant of context or facts. Here they evolve and exist, pale reflections of humanity, and it is here where most Stories end up, too weak to travel any further.

Untrained necromancers often find that they've summoned the 'spirit' of an individual to the Real; this is usually just a personal Story from the Deepest Lake. They are incredibly easy to dredge up, but have only a limited reflection of the personality and character of their living counterpart.

Most people find everything they want in the Deepest Lake. Just the fact that they want it is enough for it to exist there. But the Lake isn't modifiable, and that is why it is next to useless for the Fictognostic. It just doesn't stick. If you create, it will soon just sink back into the lake. The easiest way to kill an enemy, using Fictognostic methods, is to bring the Story of, say, a speeding truck from the Lake and let it hit your enemy. The downside of this is that if the work is shoddy, or the Fictognostic's concentration is shot, the truck might just disappear before anything happens. The less conventional method and ultimately more reliable tactic is to use the information held within the Babilu Shards to rob a Fictognostic of their magic and to lock their psyche within the Deep Lake. They'll spend years drooling and muttering to themselves before they escape - and many don't escape at all.

6. The Outer Thoughts.

This is where powerful theories, most religions, and deeply potent personal Stories are found. Technically, they aren't 'true', but they resonate so deeply with humanity that it doesn't really matter. Most Stories don't want to be taken from the Outer Thoughts and actively resist any attempts at necromancy; the Outer Thoughts are so much more fulfilling than the Real could ever be.

The Outer Thoughts have solidified, and don't resemble the teeming mess of the Lake in any way. Many Fictognostics come here to seek counsel from Crowley or Einstein or Machiavelli or another; by this point, however, they are so defined by their personal legends that they resemble very little of their human selves. Outer Einstein, for example, knows more about quantum and Newtonian physics than anyone else in the Outer Thoughts; this doesn't resemble the Real at all, but the public perception of Einstein, and the knowledge can easily be applied in the Real.

Imperfect fictional characters are often blasted at this point; this is why none but the most potent characters escape the Fictognostic Plane, and it is the first obstacle novice Fictognostics learn to overcome. Many characters fall into the Outer Thoughts and resist being summoned to the Real, enjoying the interactions of the Outer Thoughts immensely.

7. The Fictognostic Plane.

Less of a plane and more of a collection of spheres of existence, the Fictognostic Plane exists solely of fictional worlds brought to life by a Fictognostic. This is best represented by fiction-lines, which act as roads between worlds, and the worlds themselves. This is where fictional characters are born.

Every Fictognostic has a fictional world; without it, they are simply a Fictosorcerer or Fictoscholar, both which receive no respect or prestige. They have control over their world: its geography, its rules of physics and reality, its inhabitants. Fictognostics are represented in their fictional worlds as fictional characters they control; kings, mighty sorcerers, wild-eyed heroes and divine messiahs are the most common.

Fictional worlds vary greatly in size and style; some are simple, savage realms where sorcery and sword-fighting is common, while others are giant pleasure-worlds filled with opium dens and brothers, and others still represent a mythological version of feudal China. Many are even more obscure, and because the only limits to these worlds are the Fictognostic's taste and skill, they are often perverse.

Fictional worlds need to be anchored with power information-codes drawn from sorcery performed in the Real, and these codes often manifest within the world as an item of power or an incredibly rare tome. Fictional worlds are easy to infiltrate, however, with fictional characters created by an enemy Fictognostic; these characters are used to destroy the world from the inside, or to seize these powerful information-codes and to break their puzzles so that Real information - credit card details, names, phone numbers - can be extracted, giving an opening to the Fictognostic.

Fictognostic's spend most of their considerable time 'projected' within a fictional character within their own worlds, enjoying the world and it's luxuries while building it's defenses and hiding it's anchors.

8. The Last Depths.

A purely hypothetical sphere of existence.. when Stories are summoned into a Fictional World from the Lake or the Thoughts, where do they go when they are banished? They cannot simply be destroyed, some would argue, and they do not return to their place of origin. Fictoscholars hypothesize an eighth realm, where Stories meet their true potential: the equivalent a of heaven for myths and legends.

The Pen and Paper Initiative

2009-06-14T05:02:00.000-07:00

This is a blog dedicated to the writings of Nathaniel Robinson. I am, naturally, Nathaniel Robinson. It is very nice to meet you. I am sure we will be the best of friends.

Most of the writing on The Pen and Paper Initiative will be conceptual stuff; ideas, trailings, little pieces and thoughts. A lot of it will be stuff for role-playing games I am designing. Some of it will not be for role-playing games that I am designing.

Ultimately, I hope this blog will act as an online conceptual notebook. You might be interested in that, or you might not. I don't really mind. I lose notebooks at a scarily fast rate, and all of the stuff within them, and hopefully this blog will cut my losses.

Enjoy your stay.
Nathaniel Robinson