Horrormirth contest entry: An Introduction

[LMNO]

You never know when it will happen.  You could live your life on the edge of terror, or you could spend every night on the couch watching "Dancing With The Stars."  Come to think of it, both those scenarios are pretty similar.  No matter.  Either way, it will find you, eventually; that quiet, silent place where you are confronted with what some of like to call "The Horrible Truth".

It doesn't matter what terms you use: Void, Abyss, Heart of Darkness, Da'ath, Chapel Perilous... The experience is identical.  The veneer of society's decorum is stripped away, and you catch a glimpse of the small gears that move the universe.  And you awake, perhaps for the first time, to how closely we cling to the scripts we've been given.

The way you see reality slips off its axis, and you're reminded that we are a pack of primates who spend most of their time replaying the same old stories, repeatedly poking each other in the eye with sharp sticks.  And when we're not doing that, we're spending the rest of the time constructing elaborate justifications for why we act like angry monkeys rather than the humans we claim to be.  And then, like a mirror slowly coming into focus, you see that you're just like them.

Usually, when people reach this point, their brain wants to go in one of two directions: Either deny the experience, and search for some kind of meaning to it all, or spiral hopelessly down into nihilistic despair.  Some start believing in things they can't prove, and use the lack of proof as evidence that it must be a "higher Truth".  Others leap straight into meaninglessness, and use our base mechanical nature as an excuse to abandon their principles. But either way, the gears grind away.  Both directions miss the point.  They're two sides to a useless coin.  But there's another way: You can laugh at it.

After all, if comedy is tragedy plus time, isn't the history of Homo Sapiens simply one extended pratfall, millennia long?  The Universe might be absurd and meaningless, but that just makes it the oldest Monty Python sketch ever: John Cleese getting hit with a fish for all eternity.  Look at all the horrible shit we do to each other of our own Free Will, all the time saying, "look what you made me do."  It's the greatest farce in existence, and we are all the punchline.  Yeah, it might not be the nicest joke ever told, but that's ok.  You can give yourself permission to laugh.  You can feel it building, can't you?  The Horror is right in front of you, and it's RIDICULOUS.



You know you've got it right when it sounds identical to screaming.

[Jenne]

So true.