A new currency.

[Eater of Clowns]

Well that marks the first time writing that I've scared the piss out of myself.   

[The Good Reverend Roger]

WOW.   

[Eater of Clowns]

WOW.   

I was going to write all three guardians, but I started delving into the first and I just thought "no, no I think I'm going to need a break."

[LMNO]

Whoa.

[minuspace]

He had to remember how.  He had to remember how to make it work again.  The blinking CRT terminal stared back at him, blankly. A single cluster of green pixels, the cursor, strobed hypnotically to illuminate his half-reflection on the monitor's curved glass, splicing darkness between the fading specularity of his likeness.  It was over.  He had forgotten.  There had been a time, he thought, that this could never happen, that he would never be alone.  He was wrong. The time between days had started to dissolve.

It had been three months now since his own machine crashed and things were starting to not look so good.  With every passing day the prospects for returning would narrow, untill eventually, well, he preferred not to get stuck in that thought.  Meanwhile, as he tried to fix the recalcitrant little shit, the only operational computer to be found was on display at the Meso American museum, still intermitently undergoing renovation.

He had to sit in a cubicle set on a pedistal for display in a recreation of late 20th C. life, replete with a working snapshot of the internet at that time.  To his left, faux-synthetic taxidermied apes stood frozen in mid-movement.  They appeared to brachiate across model trees interspersed with accents of actually dead shrubbery, the blending of which with the set diorama was clearly more appropriare than anything their living counterparts could have ever, given the circumstances, intentionally achieved.  To his right, Dolly, the cloned sheep, looked at him quixotically with opaque ceramic eyes,  beyond him and into the future they had together helped destroy.

The first signs of our unraveling genetic code started manifesting, on a global level, with the increased advent of negative population growth rates.  That this was a result of our own tampering was more difficult to accept, initially, until everyone was to blame.  That is, untill everyone became subject to protoplasmic reversion. There were no more innocents.  At the prospect of extinction, all that was left was to investigate that primordial fire, behind this curtain of empty shells.

A sound of intollerable beauty rings throughout the vacant warehouse.  The weight of 10 000 lives recombined into one fallen necronomicoin, hitting that perfect note with a devastating and unfathomable reverberation of crystaline harmonic bliss.

[shells]

[P3nT4gR4m]

"This is where the guards will be."

Her words were barely whispered and still shockingly loud after all this silence. I had a nightmare once, the normal kind, where just before I was scared into wakefulness I heard a woman's voice, rich and clear. Lara sounded like that.

"What kind of guards? More headlamps?"

"J. This is dangerous for you. Stop smirking and listen to me."

She was afraid. More, she was afraid for me.

"There will be three of them," she said, "there are an infinite number but you will only face three. I don't know what to expect, but they can be deadly. Just be ready for anything."

"You aren't coming, then?"

"I'm not carrying any Necronomicoins. If I walked toward that pool with you, we wouldn't be going to the same place." She sighed and shifted her feet. "Good luck."

I looked at her for a moment and inhaled sharply. Then I walked toward the reflecting pool. I took ten steps and the weight of the mountain above doubled. Lara was another lifetime and Colombia was another era and Massachusetts was never there. That J. was in line at the RMV registering his motorcycle and still failing with women and never found the little shop down the alley in Medellin. He was going to die at seventy eight like old men do and in the time between now and then he would never shatter his being and hold its fragments as a million little coins, within one, in the palm of his hand.

After twenty steps the salt veins in the walls burst from the pressure of the rock, fine white powder spraying violently outward and gently settling onto the floor. The rail and signs around the reflecting pool were gone. Its edge was less defined and it was no longer in its rectangular shape.

I froze midstride, through no power of my own. My eyes were stuck fast and I couldn't look around but a grey thing shambled at the edge of my vision, closer and closer. The abomination was barely human shaped but somewhere far in the back of my mind I knew that all its light and dimension were not visible to my pathetic eyes. I could not move. It was an angel, a real angel, and my helpless self was blessed to be in its radiance. It drew closer and there were wings, every kind of wing, dragonfly wings and feathery bird wings, veiny bat wings and wings of bone and sinew and flesh, shifting and morphing as quickly as a thought. As a thought. My thoughts its thoughts one thought the wings were moth wings the creature was no angel the creature was no demon it was God it told me that is greater than either and here I knew God, lucky mortal, lucky small mortal. I could not move.

It stayed out of sight but it was just behind me. I could feel the wafting of its moth wings on my neck and I felt like the hairs would raise and my flesh would prickle but it was frozen. With a touch like algea and fire coral it drew the Necronomicion from my pocket and held it. Its palm closed over the thing and in that moment the abominationangeldemonGod wrapped itself around every fragment of myself held within. It was God, I thought it thought, for only God could be everywhere.

And the next moment I stumbled forward and blinked and breathed and my heart beat. Such young meat mind, I thought it thought. It must go and go with the seed I leave in its mind. With time the seed shall grow and propagate.

Then the first guardian was gone.

Dude, you just kicked HP Lovecraft's ass!

Never stop writing!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Brrrrr

[minuspace]

Green emerald serpentines swirl into the cool, open darkness; the very lines of space withdrawing like a hologram into prismatic gems made of the morning dew on Indra's Net.  Only two remain, right before him turning into the green eyes of some monstrous, silhouetted creature, slowly casting ever longer, flickering shadows.  They blink shut and are replaced by the cavernous roar of something abysmally ancient, deep underground.  Something that stirs in his core a fear that awakes the primal memory of eons past in constant terror of this primordial evil.  He dissolves into the darkness like a million grains of salt in the sea.

Slowly buzzing, whirling, and gently tumbling, he fades back into existence on a golden beach- on the shore, caressed by waves of infinite bliss.  A radient spark re-ignites his senses and the sand spins itself into a golden chain connecting him to that beyond the infinite.  He remembered that he was already this and also always so much more. Despite his having died so many times before, it was finally no longer of consequence to challenge the light to see if it could still do it again, just for him.  

Light don't do no requests no more, and you know this, sun.

Just then, even though you have a body, mind, and consciousness, you know you are not them.  Though they will die, this no longer matters.  The Father only is because He indeed transmitted that the Sun recognize what the Spirit understands.  You are the form of this Golden Egg, reaching across time to meet itself again:  that will be for here she comes.  We are reborn, into the dawn once more.

[Eater of Clowns]

One step forward. I could never trust my thoughts again. Any idea could be the growth of that horror. One step forward. And when its roots took hold they fed on what, were strengthened by what, choked out what. One step forward. Worse yet it said propagate, no, it made me think propagate. One step forward.

All the physical responses came at once after the first guardian released me. I shivered and goose bumps rolled about my flesh and the real fear, the visceral reaction of the gut to fear, washed over me. I looked back and Lara was nowhere in sight. I wondered if she knew of any such thing as that existing and remembered the scrawling on the bathroom wall read Befriend the Thief. There was no time to doubt my only real companion since the shop. The reflecting pool waited ahead. Between me and it were two more guardians.

One step closer. But no, I came no nearer to the mirrored watery surface. Whether or not it moved away or I did I couldn't tell. One step further. Nothing happened. I took a step backward and the faint light of the pool shot away to a distant speck. I looked behind me again and saw Lara. She was waving her arms frantically to get my attention, jumping up and down, cupping her hands to her mouth and calling. I couldn't make out the words. She was a tiny thing, this far away. I looked back and forth between Lara and the pool. If I went to her, would I have to face the guardian again?

If something had Lara that frantic it was undoubtedly trouble. I walked back toward her.

Cave walls sped past, blurring at the edges of my vision. My head swam with the effort of perspective. The pool had to be miles behind.

Lara screamed. It was desperate and far off. My foot fell and there was a sound like frail eggshell, tiny and sick.

I doubled over and vomited immediately. I put a hand on the floor to steady myself and a dozen more small crunches and a dozen little pinpricks bit my palm and a dozen more far off screams began and ended.

A world below me erupted with the terror of a million souls in fear of the creature above, too enormous to comprehend, whose breath burned them and tore them apart in a gale, whose heartbeat deafened them, whose barest movement shook their earth, the fragile things. Not all things from the outer dark are greater than humanity and not all those that are can understand their own vastness, helpless to stop their own destructiveness.

I couldn't stay for the suffering beneath and with more wretched crunches on the cave floor I fled again toward the pool. With every step I knew the entirety of each life I snuffed out, could comprehend them all in a mind made expansive, an infinity of fears and horrible silence. As I drew nearer the pool it was worlds, whole worlds, and stars and the worlds around them I crushed. For all the chaos in my passing I knew my presence would only be worse and I ran on, an untold death.

I stumbled and pitched forward. My palms hit bare rock and slid. They scraped raw. My right knee jolted with pain as it struck. My chin hit last, bloodying up the scar tissue from twenty-five year old stitches.

Laughter resounded in the cave.

And the second guardian was gone.

[LMNO]

Holy fucking shit.


I had to re-read that about five times before I truly understood the horror of what was happening. 

That's not a bad thing.  That means you wrote a horror so potent, I couldn't comprehend how bad it was.




I'm amazed I made it out of that bar alive.

[Eater of Clowns]

Finally able to write again, due to some training going on at work and a 36 hour Saturday Night this weekend.

Glad I was able to catch up on your contributions, Lucifer. They are awesome.

[Eater of Clowns]

Holy fucking shit.


I had to re-read that about five times before I truly understood the horror of what was happening. 

That's not a bad thing.  That means you wrote a horror so potent, I couldn't comprehend how bad it was.




I'm amazed I made it out of that bar alive.

Thank you.

and you didn't

[LMNO]

[Eater of Clowns]

I was tired. Panic and adrenaline used my body and the remains had another guardian yet to face. I was made a helpless man and made a helpless god and now I was exhausted and sluggish. My palms, my chin, my knee stung but they were small pains against the weight on my mind. I may have crushed worlds and galaxies. Lara may be dead.

I hated the reflecting pool and the mountain above it and the city around it, the country around that. I hated the Necronomicoin in my blue jeans and the fragments of myself within it and the rest of myself sitting on the cold cave floor. I grabbed it out of my pocket and clutched it, an eagle with a fresh catch, a pitcher on the mound. I raised my hand to whip the coin away and, absurdly, thought about the filthy thing touching my open scrapes.

I laughed. It was a chuckle at first but it felt good and I couldn't stop it. My arm relaxed, the hand with it, and the coin clattered to the floor. I could feel a grin spreading across my face and I laughed more at that, from the belly now, deeply and loudly. For a moment there was no infectious thought seed or memory of devastated galaxies. The pealing reverberated about the cave; not even that place could kill it. Tears were welling up in my eyes. My stomach was sore. I laid back, flat on the rock, and rode the laughter until it died with time. Still after that a few small ones escaped. I felt better.

I stood and brushed myself off. Salt residue from the rock stung in my various cuts. I reached down and picked up the Necronomicoin from the floor.

The reflecting pool lay just ahead. I took a moment to resent its serenity, and walked forward once more.

Laughing did more good than a week's worth of sleep which, for all I knew down here, was the length of time we'd been in the Cathedral of Salt. Lara might know what to do about the infectious mind seed.

I was a dozen yards from the pool when I dropped into the floor. The rock slipped away and surrounded me like water, covering me to my neck. I could move around in it but it was thick and heavy. I stopped moving. I thought I'd read somewhere that in quicksand, struggling makes you sink faster. But what was the method to escape it?

"What have we here?"

I cried out in surprise. It was a man's voice, gruff and bored sounding.

"You're human," he said. He walked carefully around the edge of the soft rock. He was stout, thick around the arms and waist and thighs. He wore a trucker cap and his eyes were tiny beneath the red brim. His green flannel shirt was rolled up to his elbows and tucked into a pair of faded blue jeans, secured by red suspenders and terminating in a well worn, muddy pair of work boots.

"Sorry," I said.

"Don't be," he crouched down just above my head, "that must mean the pretty little thing that brought you down here is human, too?" His beady eyes flicked up past me to the cave entrance. "What's she, back there with a cup of Juan Valdez?"

"Came alone," I said, "thought it'd make a nice stroll. Little help getting out of this?" I looked around the soft rock.

"Don't lie to me," he said. His lips hadn't moved. Thick black hair covered his forearms and the back of his neck and for a moment, it slithered. The flesh beneath looked wet. It was segmented like a worm.

"You aren't human," I said.

"I am nothing you would recognize," he said. He stood up, looming over me stuck there in the rock trap. Boots thudded away behind me, moving to the cave entrance. "I am the Debt Collector."

[LMNO]

More, please.