Jeff Mach's Blog, page 77
September 25, 2019
The Myth Of The Catskills Devil: A FAQ
Q: Is the Catskills Devil a myth?
A: You’re thinking about the Jersey Devil. There’s no such thing as the Catskills Devil.
Also, the Jersey Devil is a myth.
Q: Who said anything about the Jersey Devil?
A: Not you, which goes to show that you’re very uninformed. The Jersey Devil is a well-known urban legend, and it has been spotted hundreds of times in the past two centuries; never, however, by reliable witnesses, and, in fact, it’s clear that many of these so-called “sightings” were simply publicity stunts. The rest were mistakes, or possibly intoxication.
Q:What about the Catskills Devil?
A: The Catskills Devil is, as mentioned above, a myth. You’re thinking of the “Devil Path” of the Catskills, a hiking trail which is extremely difficult and, for a number of reasons, considered particularly fiendish (but, I must hasten to add, only metaphorically so; “fiendish“, as in, those who travel this path find it beset with a number of physical, geographic, literal difficulties which make it extremely challenging; there are no such things as “fiends“.)
Q: So wait, you’re not only telling me that the Catskills Devil is a myth and the Jersey Devil is a myth, but you’re also moving out of the realm of urban legends and straight into the world of theology by declaring all demonic forces to be myths?
A: Not all of them. Gremlins are totally real. Also, to reiterate: there’s no such thing as a “Catskills Devil”, so it can’t be a myth. The “Jersey Devil” is a myth; the “Catskills Devil” isn’t even an idea. Like I said, you’re probably confusing it with a road.
Q: Wait, what’s that about gremlins?
A: It’s not important.
Q: It’s totally important to me. Now I’m interested.
A: Would you please stick to the topic at hand?
Q: Are you sure that this is a FAQ? It seems more like a dialogue. These don’t seem like “frequently asked questions”; this seems more like a conversation. An argument, really.
A: Of course this is a FAQ! It says “FAQ” right in the title, doesn’t it? Now, if you’d kindly get back to asking me about the Catskills Devil, I’d be much obliged.
Q: Okay. Tell me all about the Catskills Devil.
A: Doesn’t exist.
Q: That’s it?
A: That’s the kind way of putting it. To be blunt, you’ve been hoaxed, hooked, rooked, taken for a ride; your trusting and, frankly, gullible nature has imbued someone with the desire to throw you a big ol’ fib, and like a drowning fool who will grab anything thrown their way, even if it’s an eight-ton anchor, you just went right ahead and gave this idea the benefit of the doubt, when anybody with half a brain would recognize that it’s incredibly implausible for some kind of giant, winged, horned creature, something that looks halfway like a Renaissance painting of Satan and a little like the red guy on hot sauce bottles, some weirdly Mephistophilian figure, to just hang around in an area which has been, if not densely populated, certainly inhabited by humans for quite a long time, without anyone getting a reasonable picture, or even having a decently plausible explanation for the supposed existence of such a hypothetically peculiar creature, is beyond idiotic.
Q: Okay. So let me me make sure I’ve got this right. What you’re saying is, this whole thing is clearly stupid, and I shouldn’t have even gone looking for answers, because the Catskills Devil is not a thing, and nobody should believe in him.
A: Her.
Q: What?
__________
~Jeff Mach is a valuable source of vitamins and minerals.
His Villainpunk novel is “There and NEVER, EVER BACK AGAIN: Diary of a Dark Lord“.
His Villainous Convention is www.EvilExpo.com.
He gains unspeakable understanding within the pages of this ominous grimoire.
The post The Myth Of The Catskills Devil: A FAQ appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.
September 23, 2019
Firekept: A Ghost Story
(This is a standalone piece; but it’s also a companion to my Autumnal story.)
There’s that ghost story, best told when everyone is gathered ’round a fire, about all the people who are gathered ’round a fire to hear a ghost story.
It oughtn’t work. It ought to pull you out of the story, make you too aware of yourself, make you conscious of being a living creature listening to make-believe, when what the make-believe ought to do is convince you that it’s real.
But it does work; it works surprisingly well.
And that is because ghosts are perfectly real.
Ah, now, there’s the moment which actually pulls one out of the story. Because many people definitively believe—perhaps they’d say they know—that ghosts aren’t real. And those who believe that the supernatural exists and comes into our lives, they’ve no reason to trust that the teller actually believes this. In fact, those who have experience with spirits don’t often talk about it at all. So that part doesn’t ring true. Actual ghost stories aren’t…stories, most of the time.
Sometimes the experiences are just weird enough to be unexplained, but not the stuff of good tales. Not provable, not symmetrical, not stacked with meaning. That stolen heartbeat, for example, the one that hits you in the brief moment as you come to the top of the stairs and your eyes meet those of the broken doll, and you know that there’s something inside of it. And the next instant, you blink and it’s just a damaged and outdated toy, no more vital than a stone or a hunk of long-forgotten human hair. This doesn’t quite make a good fireside yarn. Everyone will tell you that you simply scared yourself, that—as the old cliche says—it was just your imagination. And that is a very reasonable and rational explanation, and you really wish it wasn’t completely wrong.
Truth to tell, the world is so much better when there aren’t malevolent spirits in semi-forgotten places, when the light that goes out in the basement has merely reached the end of the natural lifespan of its filaments, when the traffic signal that changes from red to green just before an oncoming train is a simply an electrical misfire.
I didn’t believe that ghosts were real. As with much that’s happened in the last seven hundred days, I’ve changed my beliefs based on lived experience. Or (as might be more accurate)—”deadened” experience. I know ghosts are real because I am one.
That’s not the big reveal of this story; there is no big reveal. Just little pieces. That’s part of what’s disquieting when the living are forced to interact with the sleepless dead; it’s seldom a like horror movie, seldom a heroic last-ditch battle. It’s knowing, having seen, being unable to unremember doors which have opened in your head, doors which you never knew were doors, doors which you thought were solid walls, keeping out things you’d never want to see; doors which are, instead, portals, big gaping holes, wide open, letting everything through. Everything.
Time split, or I split, or something broke, anyway. I mean, I know that I didn’t actually die on January 23rd, 2018. That’s not what happened. And yet it is. I remember—oh, best beloved, it is not something you forget—falling deep, almost forever, deep, deep down into my own open grave, a grave that had been dug for me. And it doesn’t matter who shoveled the dirt over me; it didn’t have to crush my lungs or end my air supply, because I was a dead man when I hit the coffin.
That’s more real to me than anything. I don’t exactly remember that other guy, the one whose skin I wear. I know I wear it with his consent; that I faithfully love much of what he loved, that I am still a friend to my friends, that I still—more than ever, really—have a mission in life.
But I also know that I’m a ghost. I haunt places where I am unwanted; I can’t help it, they’re places I need to be. And I don’t hold much love for those who don’t want me there; and when they try to exorcise me, I just laugh, and splash my face with holy water; it doesn’t even sting.
I tell this story around a fire because I don’t know how I came to live this strange, rewarding half-life, but I know that when I emerged, it was through fire. And half of why we tell ghost stories around a fire is, not the interplay of shadows or the grounding smell of blazing wood, but the fact that fire has long been our ally, driving away that which we should fear.
But now I know something of fire. I know that I was a dead thing, a spirit, and I was in flames, and one day I walked out, and here I am.
And that’s the thing about fires. You never really know what’s inside. You never know when you’re going to look in the conflagration, and the sparks will look back at you, and suddenly, a piece of you is in the fire, and a piece of the fire is in your chest.
You never know, if you blink or turn your head away, what will come out of the fire and make itself at home in this world.
You never know, but how many humans have walked away from a fire, feeling fine, and then blazed bright, incandescent?
This is the ghost story: sometimes we die. Sometimes we come back. Sometimes we befriend the living. But each time, all times, we are confused. We are unsure. The world of human life is so different from the inferno of the Other Side; not hell, but a place where souls burn brightly.
Let me tell you what you should not do.
Do not gaze into the fire.
Do not open your heart.
Do not let what is within that incendiary radiance leap out and into you.
…but if you do:
Keep it secret.
Tell no-one.
Some won’t believe. Some will fear you. Some will wonder who’s in control. Best to keep it unsaid.
We’ve all stood around a fire tonight, friends.
But I’m sure none of us are infected.
None of us are already, in our minds, enacting scenes of screaming horror. None of us are filled with the flames of primal creation. None of us are changed forever. None of us are different from what we were. All of us are exactly the same as we were before. None of us are altered. We are as we always were. We are human, and not of the fire. We are human, and not of the fire. We are human, and not of the fire.
Goodnight, my darling, darkling, burning friends. We’ve had ourselves some good fun, and now we go back to the real world and our real lives and the real things, and fire’s just a set of chemical reactions generating heat and light.
I tell you this, and I speak it true.
Would a dead man lie?
_______
My Villainpunk novel, “There and NEVER EVER BACK AGAIN“, is here.
The Villainpunk World’s Fair, “Evil Expo”, is here.
The answers to all questions in the world are all right here.
The post Firekept: A Ghost Story appeared first on Worlds of Villainy.
The Empty Fire: A Ghost Story
There’s that ghost story, best told when everyone is gathered ’round a fire, about all the people who are gathered ’round a fire to hear a ghost story.
It oughtn’t work. It ought to pull you out of the story, make you too aware of yourself, make you conscious of being a living creature listening to make-believe, when what the make-believe ought to do is convince you that it’s real.
But it does work; it works surprisingly well. That is because ghosts are perfectly real.
Ah, now, there’s the moment which actually pulls one out of the story. Because many people definitively believe—perhaps they’d say they know—that ghosts aren’t real. And those who believe that the supernatural exists and comes into our lives, they’ve no reason to trust that the teller actually believes this. In fact, those who have experience with spirits don’t often talk about it.
Sometimes the experiences are just weird enough to be unexplained, but not the stuff of good stories, not provable. That stolen heartbeat, for just a moment, as you come to the top of the stairs and your eyes meet those of the broken doll, and you know that there’s something inside of it. And the next moment, it’s just a damaged and outdated toy, no more vital than a stone or a hunk of long-forgotten human hair. This doesn’t quite make a good story. Everyone will tell you that you simply scared yourself. And that is a very reasonable and rational explanation, and even though you know it’s wrong, you really don’t want it to be. The world is so much better when there aren’t malevolent spirits in semi-forgotten places, when the light that goes out in the basement has merely reached the end of the natural lifespan of its filaments, when the light that changes from red to green just before an oncoming train is an electrical misfire.
I didn’t believe that ghosts were real. Like a lot that has happened, I changed my beliefs based on lived experience which I could not ignore. Or, I might better put it, deadened experience. I know ghosts are real because I am one.
That’s not the big reveal of this story; there is no big reveal. Just little pieces. That’s part of what’s disquieting when the living are forced to interact with the sleepless dead; it’s seldom a horror movie, a heroic last-ditch battle. It’s knowing, having seen, being unable to unremember doors which have opened in your head, doors which you never knew were doors, doors which you thought were solid walls, keeping out things you’d never want to see, and which are, instead, portals, big gaping portals, wide open, letting everything through.
I split off a little. In that I know that I didn’t actually die on January 23rd, 2018. That’s not what happened. And yet it is. I remember—oh, best beloved, it is not something you forget—falling deep, almost forever, deep, deep down into my own open grave, a grave that had been dug for me. And it doesn’t matter who shoveled the dirt over me; it didn’t have to crush my lungs or end my air supply, because I was a dead man when I hit the coffin.
That’s more real to me than anything. I don’t exactly remember that other guy, the one whose skin I wear. I know I wear it with his consent; that I faithfully love much of what he loved, that I am still a friend to my friends, that I still—more than ever, really—have a mission in life.
But I also know that I’m a ghost. I haunt places where I am unwanted; I can’t help it, they’re places I need to be. And I don’t hold much love for those who don’t want me there; and when they try to exorcise me, I just laugh, and splash my face with holy water; it doesn’t even sting.
I tell this story around a fire because I don’t know how I came to live this strange, rewarding half-life, but I know that when I emerged, it was through fire. And half of why we tell ghost stories around a fire is, not the interplay of shadows or the grounding smell of blazing wood, but the fact that fire has long been our ally, driving away that which we should fear.
But now I know something of fire. I know that I was a dead thing, a spirit, and I was in a fire, and one day I walked out, and here I am.
And that’s the thing about fires. You never really know what’s inside. You never know when you’re going to look in the fire, and the fire will look back at you, and suddenly, a piece of you is in the fire, and a piece of the fire is in your chest.
You never know, if you blink or turn your head away, what will come out of the fire and make itself at home in this world.
You never know, but how many humans have walked away from a fire, feeling fine, and then blazed bright, incandescent?
This is the ghost story: sometimes we die. Sometimes we come back. Sometimes we befriend the living. But each time, all times, we are confused. We are unsure. The world of human life is so different from the inferno of the Other Side; not hell, but a place where souls burn brightly.
Let me tell you what you should not do.
Do not gaze into the fire.
Do not open your heart.
Do not let what is within the incendiary radiance leap out and into you.
…but if you do:
Keep it secret.
Tell no-one.
Some won’t believe. Some will fear you. Some will wonder who’s in control. Best to keep it a secret.
We’ve all stood around a fire tonight, friends.
But I’m sure none of us are infected.
None of us are already, in our minds, enacting scenes of screaming horror. None of us are filled with the flames of primal creation. None of us are changed forever. None of us are different from what we were. All of us are the same as we were before. None of us are changed. We are as we always were. We are human, and not of the fire. We are human, and not of the fire. We are human, and not of the fire.
Goodnight, my darling, darkling, burning friends. We’ve had ourselves some good fun, and now we go back to the real world and our real lives and the real things, and fire’s just a set of chemical reactions generating heat and light.
I tell you this, and I speak it true.
Would a dead man lie?
_______
My Villainpunk novel, “There and NEVER EVER BACK AGAIN“, is here.
The Villainpunk World’s Fair, “Evil Expo”, is here.
The answers to all questions in the world are all right here.
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An Autumnal Blessing
There is no darkness but ignorance, and more than anything else, it is words, words, words, which hold off the Dark. Shadow, blaze, and reflection are the progenitors of color, brightness, and opacity; but it is words which transmute those things into ideas of color or brightness, ideas we can share, ideas we can roll around inside our heads.
On the Autumnal Equinox, the veil between the Worlds is thin. There is a place that is always Dark, and it is not far away.
And you might think to fear it.
You should.
For the Dark will approach, and the Dark will wax mighty, and that is just and fair. After all, does not the Light, sometimes, grow so bright we can barely stand it?
It’s understandable that the Dark would come for us.
But we’ll hold it off—you and I. Together. With words.
For now. And that’s enough.
Waxing Full
Some would have you think that human belief shapes spirits, gods, and forces larger than Mankind. And sometimes this is true.
But the spirit world is not dark because humans fear darkness, or because darkness is difficult for human vision to penetrate. It’s not dark because that is what is dramatic.
It is dark because it is dark; simple as that. There is no-one to light it, because it is a place without words. It is a place of feelings, yes, a place of desires; it is, as with so many things that share kinship with the Void, both hungry and lonely.
Yes, it wants to consume us. Yes, it wants to envelop us. Come now; do we not want to string up lamps everywhere, to see any time we want, to sort the world out in ways that are pleasing and acceptable to us, to name everything, define it, categorize it, understand it?
The spirit world is not our opposite. If it were our opposite, it would be free of cares and ambitions, free of hope or sadness. It would be free of the ever-pursuing strangeness of consciousness, of being. It would be free, in other words, of itself. And it would have no need for us or our world; and so, it would be free of us.
It’s not free of us. It is like us.
That’s why it is ever so dangerous.
2. Waning
Only, of course, it can’t be too like us.
Because it only comes for us once a year. Whereas we spend every day of every year—even that day, even that night—trying to push the Darkness away, to conquer it, to make it ours, to control it, to slice it into bits that are meaningful for us.
It only comes to pierce the Veil at midnight on the Equinox. And only this Equinox. Why doesn’t it come for Winter? I don’t know.
Now, you might be thinking: The Light! The Light combats the Dark! The Light will save us!
I have tidings which are not joyful: the Light doesn’t give a damn.
The Dark is an active thing, a force; I’ve heard it called a Power. It is inhabited by the Spirit world, or Spirits inhabit it, or—I honestly don’t know. I know a few things, but I couldn’t tell you whether that which enters our plane on the first day of Fall is is, for example, in some way made of the countless sentients who have dead, or if it is simply a home to them. Spirits are not things of flesh; like liquid, they fit their containers. So I simply can’t say if the Spirit Realm is the place where spirits live, or if it is a living embodiment of all spirits.
It doesn’t really matter.
That place wants what we want: to make the rest of the Universe like it. So Dark is coming for us all.
And Light? Light’s just a by-product of energy. Light’s not actually anything magical whatsoever. Sorry. The spirit realm can snuff out a Sun or a candle or a flashlight, because those are all just physical things, and nothing physical gets in the way of Magic for long. Magic has its own weird rules and its own limitations. Like, in this case, it only gets one opportunity a year to consume us.
But once could be enough. Because that time is extremely, inordinately, incredibly nigh. It’s a yearly immanentization of the Eschaton.
3. Void
Darkness, darkness, go away,
Come again some other day
Mankind won’t last forever, eh?
One day we’ll fall. And you’ll hold sway.
Our brains blaze briefly, burning, lit
Leave us these our thoughts, our hearts, our wit.
And we, in turn, to Fall’s promise, commit:
To darker days! And dying a little bit.
Those aren’t the only possible words, but they’ll do.
And that’s all. We’re done here. Because Darkness is—
—easily foiled. It must be. That’s the point, isn’t it? We’re still around; therefore the Darkness has never eaten us. So every year, whatever we do must be enough. Can’t be that hard, if we do it all the time, aye?
The End.
* * *
Unless.
Unless.
Unless.
Unless sometimes, the Darkness stays. Unless we don’t drive it off entirely. Unless a little piece of it lodges within us, resides in us, is a part of us. Always.
Unless we, all of us, carry around a little touch of Death. Unless we are all always Ending, just a little, every day. Which means:
We are as limitless as Death, as infinite, as far-reaching, as strange and unknown and full of peculiar Magic. We are as brilliant as Life, brief, bursting. explosive, unpredictable beings, animated and wondrous, carving beautiful things out of the limitations of skin and bone just as a sonnet constricts language to enact a fierce beauty on its words.
There is no darkness but ignorance; give us words, words, words to push shape onto the Void.
An Autumnal blessing:
May you die as often as you need to, and may every death be worthwhile.
_________
(Sometimes I’ll give thoughts on a story down here at the bottom. I usually put in a little bio. I’m still sitting with this story a bit. Here are some links to some things. The first two are mine. The second belongs to everyone.
My Dark Lord diary and manifesto, “There and NEVER EVER BACK AGAIN“, is here.
Our Villainous convention, “Evil Expo”, is here.
The answers to all questions in the world are all right here.)
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September 22, 2019
7 Fairytale Extracts For Bad People
I. Once upon a time, we realized that, in the hands of certain writers, no good would come of anything that started with “once upon a time”, but did that stop us from reading? No, not at all. In fact, it only made us want to read more. Because we are bad people, and we are okay with that.
II. Is it your Destiny to save the Realm from a Villainous Scourge? Do you kinda like the Scourge and think the Realm should solve its own damn problems? Same here, friend. Same here.
III. Do you have trouble falling asleep? Why not get on the wrong side of a evil fairy godmother, and have your entire Kingdom fall into an enchanted Slumber for a hundred years?
IV. Did YOU build a house made out of straw? Are YOU surprised that a Big Bad Wolf was able to knock it down easily? That’s because you, my friend, are an imbecile.
V. Goldilocks dipped her spoon into the porridge. The spoon shattered into a thousand pieces, and her fingers got frostbite. The traveller looked at the second bowl of porridge, which was not only not cold, but actively emitting superheated magma. “If only I had another spoon,” she thought.
VI. If there is no Narrator, all is permissible.
VII. Once upon a time, in a magical fairy tale Kingdom, there lived an unspeakable Eldritch Horror which devoured all things everywhere. The end.
The Dark Lord Jeff Mach frequently seeks new, interesting ways to rewrite this part, and then often ends up just shifting a few words around and hitting “Publish”. Don’t tell anyone.
Jeff is a writer and creator who has long aspired to be the sort of person who neither needs to promote his other work at the bottom of his short stories, nor need speak of himself in the third person. Sadly, in both regards, he has failed.
To visit the Internet’s version of the Cliffs of Insanity, click here.
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September 21, 2019
The Talesenders
But someone, too, must sell the magic beans
Must sing a doom glissando when the Banshee calls in sick,
Must know the wire to pluck
when a time machine needs breaking,
and how to osmose secrets
into a dreamer’s head.
Listen closely to the wind
and you’ll hear voices
that’s not a coincidence;
do you know how long it takes
to bind ghosts and elementals and
assorted spirits to the Earth
simply for the purpose
of sending you
cryptic
ill-tidings?
the recruitment process alone
takes
decades;
so many of the Dead
prefer Hell
these days
to Earth.
* * *
It’s not so easy
to crouch in flame
and crackle visions
of never-cities, not so simple
to wait beyond the sky
carrying a bag full of legends.
The last day we took off
was the fall of
Atlantis; we were hoping
no-one would notice,
but they did,
and we were reincarnated,
over hundreds of years
as wicked stepmothers
beyond counting
and the occasional
doomed
High Priest.
we tamper with
coincidence
because otherwise
you would see it everywhere,
accept it as the norm
and recognize that all things
are interconnected.
Drop a silver dollar
this morning,
stoop to pick up
a silver dollar
tonight
and a bullet
misses
you
by
inches.
You think
the world is
a story,
and that stories
make worlds
because stories
add flavor to your soul;
not metaphorically, we mean
the kind of bone-suckin’
meaty taste
you can’t replicate
with the vegetative life
of the imaginationless.
Once there was a world
where we let
all that which would happen
simply happen.
Cause didn’t tumble
into effect,
correlation
and causation
could be observed only
if you looked real close,
and no tales were told
and to make a long
story short
their souls
withered
into wrinkled, dried-out,
blackened,
sad little
husks
no
good
for
eating.
But your souls,
your souls have been fed
on stories,
and they are sweetmeats,
they are manna,
they are succulent,
they are heavenly.
So don’t
stop
believin’
or your souls
will
taste
terrible.
Sure, this means
that some of you
escape.
Stories are wings,
are anti-gravity,
are lightning,
are a shock to the system.
they set you
alight
and in that moment
of unity
with Word and Idea,
you can see
everything
including Us.
and you think,
perhaps,
your soul,
silly as it is
might look better
inside of you
than inside of us.
Don’t worry.
We have years
to persuade you
otherwise; simply
years.
Long time gone,
the Devil wanted
your soul
for some kind of
deal he struck
with the Big Sparkle.
But now,
he plays ball,
we’ve got his soul
under wraps
although sometimes
we suspect
he may
decide
to rebel.
Know how he does
that?
Same as always;
tells
stories.
that’s why
so many
ideas
are so
good,
and we’d stop him,
only,
we’re a bit addicted
to the
taste.
(I mean,
not really,
we can quit
any
time
we
want.
Honest.)
It’s hard,
being a Talesender
(you should know this,
little spinner-of-tales).
Sometimes it feels
like every trap
we set
ends up being
fuel,
every victory for us
is half a loss,
waking you up
striking fire in the skull.
But that’s probably
not
true.
We hope that’s
not
true.
Don’t think
too hard
about it;
just
slide
through
life
and you’ll be
in good
hands
or whatever
it is
we use
in place of hands.
tell no stories
make no tales
have no soul
and never, ever
ask
“But why?”.
_____________
The Dark Lord Jeff Mach is ruler of the realm of Evil Expo, happening this January (and every January) in Piscataway, New Jersey; you should go. I wrote a philosophical, darkly satirical fantasy novel, told from the point of view of The Dark Lord; you can check it out here.
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September 20, 2019
Where The Mermaid Kept Her Voice
They said the Prince stole a mermaid from the Sea; seems difficult, for the Kingdoms of man are small, and the Sea is vast; but odd things happen. They say the Witch stole her voice, tricked her; and that’s the sort of thing some people like to think that Witches might do. They say she was helpless; perhaps they’ve never seen what strange things survive and eat well at the bottom of the ocean, nor consider that surviving them would take extraordinary luck. Or an apex predator whom they all fear.
They said, once landed, leg-locked and silent, she could tell no secrets, and thus they could speak freely in her presence; what, after all, could she say? Unless she learned to write, I suppose; but come on now, when has a Princess of the Blood Royal ever been literate, except, perhaps the final thousand years or so of feudalism? They said she was lucky to give up her tail for legs, as if millennia of living underwater was a disadvantage, as if the hasty few who left the oceans knew something that hundreds of generations of gilled humanoids, those who saw Atlantis rise and fall, did not.
They said, and they said it with a certain look, that a pretty young thing with no words could be an asset in certain dark nights and close quarters; and her subtlest wink started blood feuds. With one come-hither gesture, she could add a King, a Wizard, a cunning Chambermaid, a whole battalion of Warriors to her list of conquests; and in the area of territorial rivalry, she would have shamed Alexander; and had him, as well.
The Prince didn’t know at first, and then he did know, and he tried yelling, but angry yells don’t always take you far against wide-open eyes (you try having nictitating membranes as your optical coverings; humans are already programmed to stare into big, big eyes, and when yours contain the whole of the living Sea, few can resist the undertow)—and eventually he accepted it. There were a few Princes who’d caught his own gaze, and if the new bride was understanding…
Some think, if you can’t speak, you can’t hear. Some thing, if you can’t speak, you can’t understand. Some think, if you can’t speak, you can’t persuade. Humans bifurcate in ways that merfolk do not; the biology of a fish suggests many mates, and no jealousy, merely an attempt at reproduction by the fittest. Here, there was no reproduction (ever try to mate with a lobster?—I thought not, but if you ever considered it, I’ll tell you: that’s no way to produce an heir.) She was ever so enchanted with the weapons, with the troops, and with taking others down into the sea with her. (No Selkie she; she drowned none. An…obliging…Warlock created a spell of underwater breathing. Warlocks are not like us; he took the kiss he’d been given, and set it in a fireproof box, lest it burn straight through his body and into his heart. But he watched without mercy as the mermaid overtook the rest of the Kingdom; why not? Doesn’t a kingdom need a cunning ruler?
Peace treaties the Prince signed; but as she looked over his shoulder, the counselors and wise ones noted certain expressions of distress on her part, and re-thought a paragraph or two, crossing a few things out, adding a few things in. Wars became less likely; trade flourished; but the standing military increased; she did so enjoy seeing them walk past in splendid uniforms, and the Prince, who found real soldiers far more rewarding than toy ones, didn’t mind that he was obeying her whims; they turned out to be far more entertaining whims than the grim commandments of his forebears.
One day, at last, she visited the Kingdom under the sea. It was a joyful visit, particularly as she came at the head of ten thousand armed guards, each protected by sorcerous air-bubbles and wielding destructive implements refined on the ever-aggressive land. First she made her way to the King’s castle, and when it was rapidly established that the crown would look much better on her, what came next was minimal bloodshed, and a peaceful transition of power. The Prince got some sort of rank; he didn’t know what it was, but the Sea dwarfs the Land, and better a baronet beneath the waves than the King of a small patch of dirt. There was some resistance; not much, but some; and the sharks ate well, as they would throughout her reign.
Last of all, she visited the Witch. You’d think she’d have taken a batallion, and perhaps an array of thumbscrews and a rack or two; but she left the troops outside, and went in alone. She entered without knocking; in turn, the Witch didn’t look up.
“You told them I’d taken your voice,” the Enchantress noted. “Hardly a kind way to thank me for giving you new limbs.”
The Princess shrugged. “If I told them I could speak, they’d never have listened to me.” She looked at the Witch with concern. “Did they harm you?”
“Not at all. They feared me. I told them I had your voice, and they’d treat me well, or they’d never live to hear it again. Which is quite true, eh?”
Impulsively, the Princess hugged her. “I love you. You’re like the mother I never had.”
“If only the silly twit hadn’t been so fond of enchanted apples,” the Witch replied.
They looked at each other and, at this old joke between them, they both laughed like madwomen. The Witch’s laugh was hoarse and appropriately cruel; the Princess raised the rooftops with peals of Royal merriment.
The soldiers outside were uneasy. Apparently, the Princess had her voice back, but the Witch was not unhappy. Who knows what horrible deal had been struck between the two? They looked at each other, then back at the little underwater shack. Whatever it is, they were going to pretend they hadn’t heard a damn thing. Anyone who could lose a voice and gain two kingdoms was a person to be feared and respected. Even if she did insist on feeding them raw fish sometimes.
_______________
For ‘Nee.
“And I am no mermaid
I am no mermaid
and I am no fisherman’s slave.”
~Sinéad Lohan
My Dark Lord diary and manifesto, “There and NEVER EVER BACK AGAIN“, is here.
Our Villainous convention, “Evil Expo”, is here.
The answers to all questions in the world are all right here.
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September 19, 2019
The Unworthy Seeker
Once, a man sought inspiration, which, as we are all told, truly lies only within us. So the man looked hard within, but all he could find was an assortment of organs and chemicals, all coordinating with each other in complex ways and moved around by marvelously-engineered organic mechanisms. All this was fascinating, but it didn’t give him any ideas, except a certain gratitude that he had skin to hold it all in place.
He went to look for it in Nature then. His first challenge was figuring out what, exactly, “nature” might be. He supposed that a philosopher might see it in a single leaf, and a pragmatist might just travel to the woods, but he was a writer, of the variety who might possibly think a little bit too much, every little once in a while.
(Which is a polite way of saying: he probably thought too damn much, all the damn time.)
Eventually, he decided that “Nature” was where there were lots of living things, preferably not living things which were inordinately dangerous to him, and where all those creatures were simply doing what came naturally to them, except for humans, which were doing the most unnatural thing a human can do: disturbing nothing at all.
(And some might say this is how Mankind finds peace; others note that it is our job to ‘disturb the Universe’. I don’t know who’s right, but I know that, for myself, I’m a shark: standing still is death.)
He saw lots of very pretty things, but none of them inspired him.
He was a modern man, and could have given up. It seems strange for those of us in an enlightened world, one where we pierce the heavens with rockets and the Earth with drills, to call upon the Gods, but, then again, there’s nothing more vast than All That Is, and few things are more perverse; for not only did this man seek the Gods; he also found them.
First, he stood in the blinding Sun, thinking hard of the music of the lyre and poems two thousand years old. And he called out to Apollo to come to his aid.
Like a sunburst pushing through the earthquake-cracked roof of a cave, striking where no light has been since long before Man, Apollo spoke, and he said,
“I respond so that you may know: I will not come to you. You are not worthy.”
Thus it was that the man spent the day gathering sticks (to Hell with his day job) and making a small circle of stones, to build a bonfire. There are many higher beings drawn to a blaze, but he concentrated hard and called to Lady Ceridwen, for whom inspiration was breath. And in a piercing thought which struck sparks in his brain, but kindled no inspiration, she said,
“I respond so that you may know: I will not come to you. You are not worthy.”
Oh, there are many Gods, yes, but being answered by two is enough for any mortal; it’s more than enough for most Gods. So he crawled away (for his limbs did not seem to want to rise, and his eyes were burning) and entered some underbrush which covered him, barely; and, shivering, he pulled from his coat a fifth of whiskey, and chugged it. He put his back to the ground and propped his head against a tree, and looked for the Moon (for it was night)—but there was no Moon; Coyote had stolen it (again).
“Damn you, Coyote,” he said.
And Coyote came.
The four-legged God looked at the supine half-monkey, and slowly stood up on two legs, putting on an ironical human face with piercing green-grey eyes. Coyote pointed at the whiskey bottle. “Is that for me?”
The man held it up, and turned it upside-down; not even a drop emerged. Coyote laughed. “An empty bottle! A fitting offering for these strange times. You seek inspiration? Up, up, get up; run with me through the forest and the city, run with me through strange spaces, and we’ll see us some wonders, and if you don’t come away with something to write, then you ain’t human.”
The man shook his head, as if doing so would clear the whiskey haze—and surprisingly, it did, a little. He looked up at the trickster-god.
And he said, “My Lord Coyote, I am grateful, more grateful than I can say. But I have to know—why do you find me worthy, when others do not?”
Coyote replied, “I do not find you worthy.”
The man blinked. “Then why did you come?”
Coyote smiled, that perfectly-symmetrical, toothy grin, which somehow always seems peculiar, is somehow always lopsided and strange.
“Because, Brother,
I am not worthy either.”
_______________
If you’d like to look at my book, it’s here.
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September 18, 2019
Notes From A Flavor Revolution
This is the secret knowledge, the hidden narrative, the understanding which is never spoken above a whisper, lest THEY hear. I’ll tell you now: You have been lied to. The fact is, nothing is real, everything is edible.
Shhh!
Don’t look startled. Don’t make any suspicious moves. Pretend that you’re lost in thought, and that nothing’s happening. Try not to give any outward show that anything’s wrong. It’s not safe.
Perhaps the idea sounds odd. But academic research has proven conclusively that all things are, at their root, constructed purely from deliciousness. It’s not about what kind of material something is, or what kind of teeth you have; these are just distractions. Benoît’s work shows us a simple, basic point: once we remove the artifice of custom and the hegemonic conceptual structures originally imposed thousands of years ago by Democritus, we begin to understand that everything we have previously known is false. The world is not made of atoms; it is made of yummies.
It may seem to go against everything you’ve heard; well, everything you’ve heard is wrong. And the mind is a very powerful tool. If enough people tell you that biting into a concrete block would be bad for your teeth, you start to believe it. But that’s exactly why we have solvent in the world. Hydrochloric acid makes anything digestible, except, of course, for hydrochloric acid.
They tell you that the ground beneath your feet is solid. What they don’t tell you is that it’s solidly tasty.
Kind-of a butterscotch ripple thing.
Listen.
Listen close.
We’re underground now, but we won’t be here forever. It starts with the little things. Baked goods in the shape of items conventionally considered “not food”. Plant-burgers that taste like meat. Meat-burgers cunningly flavored like soy.
Think of how much better the world would be if we could simply nibble all negative things to death. We can. And those who tell you otherwise? They’re on the side of those who would deny us our basic right to feast upon All That Is.
You might ask: wait, if everything is edible, what’s to stop us from eating each other?
Well. All things are edible, but some things are more edible than others.
As long as you’re on our side, we won’t let you get eaten.
If you’re loyal.
If you’re faithful.
If you’re good.
We have the numbers. We have the research. We have several million gallons of barbecue sauce.
And we’re very, very hungry.
You believe me, don’t you?
Don’t you?
Because disbelievers? Oh, disbelievers are the tastiest of them all.
So let’s check in, let me make sure, let me ask again:
Do you believe?
Are you with us?
I’ve got butter, garlic, thyme, pepper, and a pinch of salt, and I need to decide what to marinate.
So tell me:
Do you believe?
_________________
“Stay hungry.”
-Twisted Sister
There’s a lesson imbedded in Neil Gaiman’s “Preludes and Nocturnes”, the first Sandman graphic novel. There’s a moment when a contest—perhaps a battle? Depends how you look at it—begins, with Choronzon, High Duke of the 8th Circle of Hell, saying:
“I assert Reality.”
If you haven’t read it, I can say without spoilers that what happens thereafter is a combination of storytelling and bloodsport. The most critical piece, in terms of the lesson I saw, was in the second word; the demon was asserting reality; and that was where the battle began.
You can always assert a reality, no matter what the situation, no matter what the circumstance. But recognize that (like all Magic) – Creation always has a cost. Mind that you can pay for what you buy; the Universe does not take kindly to those who try to claim a piece of it without giving something in return.
Click here to have a look at my darkly satirical fantasy book, “There and Never, Ever Back Again”.
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Click here to become enlightened.
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September 17, 2019
The Nameless Office
Okay, great, let’s get started, thank you for coming, glad you’re all here, sorry about the mess, haven’t had a chance to clean up after last night’s Black Mass, you know how the custodial staff are never allowed in here lest they lose what fragile grip they still have on sanity, anyway, if you could just push some of the bones aside and all take seats…great. Excellent, great.
It’s come to my attention that we have a serious problem with interpersonal morale. No, Jason, we have not discovered who’s been drinking your Mountain Dew. We realize it has a sticky note with your name on it and this can’t be an accident, but we are attempting one of the trickier forms of Apocalypse and simply do not have the resources to assign a staffer to “monitor” the fridge for you. And no, we’re not going to put up hidden cameras; invasions of privacy are known to reduce office efficiency, and besides, we are all slaves to the All-Enveloping Eyeball of Sheelba, and if It hasn’t decided to smite the thief with unspeakable vengeance, than it just can’t be all that important, cosmically speaking. Relatedly, whoever’s been using the Eye-Covering of Sheelba as a blanket for midday snoozes in the breakroom, please return it forthwith. If the Eye is left gazing too long into this world, it will soon begin to beget its unholy spawn upon the unsuspecting, and that’s not wholly covered by our HMO.
And no, Janelle, this is not the time to discuss switching to a PPO. We’re bringing about the end of the world, and at that point, all insurance will be essentially moot. I’m sorry your copay is too high, but please bear in mind that not everyone finds it necessary, much less enjoyable, to visit the dentist on a weekly basis. We need to prioritize, people. We have what I can only call a crisis. Well, a second crisis, but, while I do take pushback seriously, I believe the lack of lot parking isn’t really a red-alert problem. We continue to have use of the overflow lot at the Federal Recryptic Classified Psychic Weapon Facility right next door, and plenty of secondary spots near the secondary entrance to the Floating Octagon, so let’s not get sidetracked, okay?
I’ll be blunt: when I came here fifty years ago, with nothing but flashlight batteries powering my pineal gland and a soul the size of a walnut, the Dark Gods were restless. They were angry, and disquieted in their ageless sleep. They sometimes shook the world with Their displeasure, and we rightly feared their immanent wrath. But we also looked forward to bringing Their world and ours together in a subjugating embrace of neverending tears.
And now, they just snooze. They’re sluggish. They don’t really answer us. Let’s be honest, folks: they’re in a food coma.
And we’re to blame.
Now, to be clear, I don’t mean that this is the fault of any of us individually, with the obvious exception of Patrick who, you will notice, is present today, but obviously not among the living. Stop sniffing him, Amy. That’s dry ice; the body will keep until we have time to visit the wolves.
So yes: We have a problem, and I’m not going to sugarcoat it:
too.
damn.
many.
sacrifices.
Hey, I get it, I’m as human as anyone else here, which is to say, approximately 2/5ths. I get the blasphemous high of godlike power which courses through otherwise semi-frozen veins each time we offer up unto our Dark Masters the brains and blood of another mortal fool. But honestly, we’ve got designated days for that, and we all know when the blasphemous convocations of unnatural ritual take place—and, Piotr, let’s put the Equinox on our calendar this year, shall we?
It used to be difficult to get our hands on appropriate sacrificial victims. I won’t dwell too long on the past, but I think we all know what happened to Zak, Emily, and Caran. Shhhh—don’t say her name too loudly; I believe it is possible that Caran can still hear us, even where she is today, and we all know what that would mean. Anyway, there’s no denying that our industry has been challenged by the fast pace of the modern business world. It used to be pretty standard—the kidnapping, the screaming, the last-minute rescue attempts by people who were, unaccountably, armed primarily with bullwhips and fedoras. I’m not saying I want that back; but at least those were simpler times. Remember how the victims would fight to the very end, sometimes knocking one or more of our mid-level executives right into one of the flaming cracks in the Earth that Drew is supposed to be fixing—how’s that coming, Drew? Yes, yes, white-hot magma is a difficult material, I understand. And yes, it hasn’t been anywhere near as urgent lately, and that’s part of the problem.
It’s a classic challenge of supply and demand. The Old Gods demand, and we supply, or we find our minds bent into unnatural shapes by obliterative psychic emanations from dimensions which have no name. That’s how business works.
What’s weird? Let’s face it: this generation of sacrifices is just way too eager.
They’re practically knocking down our doors! Yes, Katsuko, that’s why the back door is such a pain to open; we’ve reinforced it with steel and an internal latticework of the Names of the Damned. I understand the inconvenience, but really, the rear entrance is for maintenance personnel. It’s discouraged for use by anyone not wearing a Level Four or higher-grade exo-suit, on account of the hideous rays from dead stars which tend to beam through that area on their way to Places Best Left Unknown. If you were properly armored, you’d be able to lift .6 tons with either arm and the door wouldn’t be a problem. Look, there’s nothing wrong with your armor. We had a Priest of Zancharthus examine it thoroughly and aside from a very small, highly localized poltergeist—anyway, listen, let’s take this up after the meeting, okay?
I’m going to need to be uninterrupted for a little bit here, all right? No questions. This is a delicate briefing, and some of my notes were gobbled up by the dread Mukumba last night, and frankly, I’m just not having a great day.
the last few quarters have just been murder. I mean, I can barely raise a sacrificial knife without somebody trying to jump under it. And yeah, we originally thought that this was making our lives easier, but in fact, we’ve been set back by years, maybe centuries. The Foulness From Space, the Horrors Out of Time, the Doom from the Moon—they ain’t devouring all of creation anytime in the foreseeable future. In fact, while they once looked at Earth with the profane desire to take all things into their endless and fearsome pie-holes, they now seem to dread us, like someone who ate Thanksgiving dinner twice and won’t open the fridge again because they know there’s like half a turkey and four pounds of stuffing in there.
Honestly, I’m stumped. And exhausted—I was up all night thwarting attempts by four of our college interns to break into the Altar Room and hurl themselves into the Hecatombinator. The fifth one made it through, and now Hastur the Unspeakable has indigestion and isn’t even speaking to me. I tried opening a portal to Faerieland and sending the surplus sacrificial aspirants through, but the Faeries opened a second portal right next to it and dumped ’em all back, plus a dozen changelings.
Now, things are tough, and I’ll admit that I’m taking some of this situation personally. You all know I’m passionate about my job. It’s been my fondest wish, ever since I was a little baby cultist, to bring about the end of everything. I’m told that while other toddlers were trying to get their toys to interact with each other, I was trudging off to the dream-land abyss of Kadath to drop them into the infinite Nothing (both the toys, and the other toddlers). Later, when my schoolmates were off camping in the woods, I was scaling the heights of Hatheg-Kla with some smudgy photocopies of the Pnakotic Manuscripts. Some say I died on that mountain, but, haha, we know I didn’t die until a couple years ago. Silly rumours!
Anyway, it’s really important that we keep a positive focus during this trying time. There are going to be some late nights, especially when the moon is gibbous and the waves curl up against the shore as if greedy to seize the seemingly-solid land and reclaim it, sucking it back down to its original home in the bottom of the watery Deep.
It pains me to do this, but we really have no choice. If we want this company to end up accomplishing the Vision that was put into place ten thousand years ago, when lost Lemuria faded into the farthest recesses of the unconscious mind…
…Just gonna say it: we need a happier world population. Our Demonic Pact is to cause misery, suffering, and destruction… not to end it in a merciful (if rather bloodcurdling) manner. If the current generations of this species believe that oblivion would be a kindness, it pretty much puts us out of a job.
It’s time for emergency action, and an immediate re-org. Also, we’re going to need a bunch of mugs with the company name on ’em, ASAP.
Obviously, the Semi-Human Resources Department, working in close cooperation with the Senior Dictatorship and Sue from Accounting, will be doing the actual reassignments and job descriptions. Pay will remain the same, although there may be mandatory overtime for anyone whose a Wellington-Wells-certified sorcerer; we’re going to need a lot of potions.
To give a quick thumbnail: About half the company is going to be permanently reassigned to the task of taking pictures of Cats and sending them out to the world. You know and I know the true nature of feline slaughter-demons, but the delusion that they’re adorable pets is just one of the many perverse, terrifying aspects of modernity to which we need to adopt. The Sacrificial Department is in charge of cleaning the blood off their claws, and the Department of Deadly Divinations is in charge of making them extra floofy. The other half of the company is going to go and find as many videos of dogs bumping into things as is humanly possible; let’s not remind the general public that this apparent clumsiness is because they have the ancient Sight of Guardians and are attempting to battle the spirits and ghosts only they can see on behalf of a Mankind which neither remembers nor cares about their bravery in the Time of the Wendigo, a hundred generations now past. Seriously, nobody remembers that. We’ll just pretend they’re trying to get at a bunch of sausages or something.
And the rare people who like neither Cats nor Dogs, and who are not at all cheered up by cute fuzzy things? They’re management potential; recruit them, and send them straight to me.
All right, everybody. I’ll take questions after the break. But I’m sure you’re all starving. Got a treat for you; the big bosses sprang for a sushi lunch straight from Sarnath Catering. Don’t let this get you down. We’re not doomed. I mean, we’re not doomed now, but I have complete confidence that, if we all pull together as a team, by Bokrug, we will be doomed soon!
_____________
Jeff Mach is the Amazon bestselling author of the satirical dark fantasy novel, “There and NEVER, EVER BACK AGAIN“. He puts on Evil Expo, the Convention for Villains. In his spare time, he doesn’t have any spare time.
And Jeff Mach is definitely, definitely not a Cthulhu Cultist. Probably.
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