Video in which I retread old ground and revel in my favorite fascinations. Because I must.
A rough time stamping for those who havened mastered the fine art of the fifteen hour cappacino despite the fact that you cant spell it and the repo man approacheth.
9:00| Minimum Viable Product doesn’t make for good Literature Opinions on Storytelling
11:24| Description of ‘The Sketch of Sam Monroe’ my jungle themed novel in progress
12:55| Percy Fawcett and the Lost City of Z and Synchronicity
14:21| My Psychedelic Disclaimer and why some psychonauts are the worst kind of Presbyterian
17:50| Reading ‘The Green Cathedral’ the opening to ‘The Sketch of Sam Monroe’
20:16| The setting begets the story – vibe based storytelling
21:29| Aliens! Phil Schneider Alien Human War 1979! That weird 80s/90s ish Nichols/Cameron video Did this video inspire Stranger Things LOL The Grays Get Drunk and Smell Bed (Rednecks?) Patronus Sex Spell Unicorn wTf
A death in the family takes Jim Cleary from Boston to Appalachia. There amid the grey and green Kentucky hills sits the Cottage his great-grandfather built. The rustic calm gives little hint of what lies beneath the stars that hang so silent, cold, and bright.
Note: This narration contains music. Some of which may not fit the mood the story has you in. Difficult to have good production values on a limited budget of time and funds. So, I also uploaded without music:
Hey, everybody sorry for the huge lag in uploads. Life is life as the Laibach song goes. My schedule is all topsy turvy, night is day, day is night, and I’m still in a bloody hotel.
Whinging aside I’m rather happy to bring you a story I wrote earlier this morning.
As for the video it’s a “creepypasta” style narration with some stock footage in case you chance to glance at the screen and need to see something pretty while you listen.
All the music that really brings this story to life is provided via the creative commons license by the wonderful Kevin McLeod. You’ll find an attribution to the songs used in order of appearance at the bottom of this description.
Thanks so much for listening and best wishes.
Jim was stuck again by the shift in atmosphere. With all these bodies luxuriating by the firelight it was indeed downright homey. The warmth was pleasant.
But it was also naseuting. Jim did not trust these fine feelings. He did not want comradarie with these soft strangers.
“I’ve heard you call these things the El more than once. What is that…?”
“It is an emanation of the Most High or rather an echo. Whose seal is Saturn.”
“I thought they were from Saggitarius.”
“The manifestation on this plane is mediated through the sixth planet from the sun.”
“Huh?”
“What do you suppose it means to be cast down?”
“Uh…”
“Which fate is grimmest for an angel?”
Jim rolled his eyes.
“To be clothed in limit. Girded in restricting loins of flesh. Mind you it is possible to be immeasurably powerful despite such division. They are clever and it was they that taught us to forge the rawness of the earth into sword and iron.”
“So gremlins…are aliens…who are angels….because….reasons?”
The old man chuckled hollowly.
It did make a certain sense. All these various takes on a single phenomenon. Strange little introductions in a history that only appeared in snippets to the attentive. But so what? That’s the thing that Jim didn’t undestand. That he never understood about all this religious sort of stuff. So what?
Fine people perished along with the wicked. And of what consequence is it that they dwelt in grand eternities?
Of what consequence is a principilaity of imps in a thing like eternity? A thing that nullifies. Time the great healer, the great eraser, stretched limitless across the canvas of forever…whatever its mechanism…so what?
“Just be mindful that they don’t entrace you. There is cause. I see their poison dancing in your eyes.”
Jim gulped. He was still indeed between worlds.
“Can’t knock me down.” He insisted.
“At this late hour, they are a part of us all.”
“I have no parts.”
Elsa giggled.
“You are as fragmented as a mosaic. This is the lot of man. To gahter himself tile by tile, till he beholds his place in the firmament, and his connexion to the Godhead.”
“Right on man.” Jim mocked.
“Listen boy, it is at great cost that I and those here assembled have gathered enough of ourselves to see you through.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. As they seperate the spirit from the flesh so must you seperate their flesh from their spirit. They must not be allowed to cross the threshold as corporeal till the appointed season.”
“I don’t get it.”
“You don’t have to. No one expects a rotten tapestery to herald truth. You must follow for each faithful step will be be rewarded by increased sight.”
With this the adept clapped his hands and the cottage went dark.
The first sensation was confusion. The second was thirst. Jim had never been that thirsty. He was ungainly on his feet and had to grip the closet door to keep from rejoining the floor.
He swung it open and found everything normal. There were no cosmic abysses, orbs, or goblin swarms. There was nothing but the balmy light of a Kentucky summer percolating through the window.
‘What sorta stuff have those hicks been sprinklin in my whiskey?’
But this thought was impossible. His face was raw and gritty. He wiped at it and gasped at the stream of reddish sediment that action produced. The sand was all too tangible, all too real. He plodded kitchenward, out the bedroom door, propelled by the gravity of crumbling denial.
Jim descended the stairs like a drunk and stuck his head under the faucet. After a sort of microcosmic phylogeny of lapping water like a beast, he regained enough humanity to shoot a hand for a large tin cup.
After three brimfulls he filled a fourth and sat on the cool marble floor with his back against the freezer. Yes, the floor was cool. And Jim was cold. No, this wouldn’t do.
All his bones ached as he stumbled onto the porch, down its steps, and into the meadow. The warmth of the sun was pleasant and he sank down making a mat of the tall grasses. He lay on this organic stretcher long enough to begin to feel the first effects of sunburn.
Sitting up Jim noted that the rings were still all there. He recalled all the strangeness. It was an insane reality he could no longer deny. Though traces of rationalization still lingered the insinct for survival overwhelmed them.
Supernatural or not, he must at least keep whatever was going on at bay. Right now his best bet, insane as it was, would be to use Dutch’s trick.
Realizing it would be an arduous task he decided to breakfast. Chasing away the soporific effects of a hearty meal with a large coffee he set about the business of checmical warfare.
His first idea was to make a Clorox trail to the hole by the stump. He was amazed old Lizzy hadn’t fallen into the trap when she’d come there to greive. He patted the grass to make certain the hollowness beneath the veneer was indeed present. He was very much satisfied that it was, and laid a bit of Seng on the mossy side of the stump, for good measure.
Next he laid out tins of the alleged goblin booze in all cardinal directions of the wood. He poured trails that circled in figure eights. He poured trails that led to water. He poured trails that led to cliff edges.
Maybe risking the injury of one of these critters was unwise but Jim was too annoyed by the alien nuisance to care.
The whole ordeal took up a quarter of the day. It was late afternoon that he placed the now considerably lighter and empty Clorox barrel in the center of the odd granite formation.
Once he returned home, had a late lunch and whiskey, he found that he was too tired to read the letter that was so perfectly balanced on the couch’s arm.
Though there was the sense of time slipping away. Though Jim’s sleepward brain was producing images of skeletons, galaxies, and hourglasses; he could not help but sink into yet another deep slumber.
He awoke in a desert. There was nothing about save for countless dunes that undulated like waves in every direction. The reddish sand was cold. In fact everything was cold despite the brightest sun that Jim had ever beheld.
It was well nigh white in luminosity. So ferocious was its radiance that he was forced to squint.
“Here the wrath of God descended.” Came a familiar voice.
Jim turned to see an unfamiliar face.
Or rather a mostly unfamiliar face. It took some time but the silver haired Wildman that stood before him was the very same specter that had rescued him from the granite.
“You stand upon ashes of the proud.”
Jim was dumbfounded.
“But it’s better to kneel…” Jim gathered before lightning pain crackled through his knees at the scythe swing of ghoul’s staff.
“Do not stand lest Abaddon be tempted. In this the place of desolation, the dwelling of wild animals, Jehovah has given the archangel charge.”
“What the hell is going on?” Jim ventured through gritted teeth.
“This was once Gomorrah.”
“What’s that got to do with me?”
“They were brought low. They who stood so high. Who counted themselves the equal of the most high. Who succumbed to the gifts of the stars, they whom the archer commands, it was their arrows that armed the citadels Sodom built up against the Lord. They inclined their towers towards the fallen. And so their towers fell forever. Do you not hear the howling of the Djinn?”
“Let me go…”
“Impossible. It is not I who holds you. Not I, but folly. You are a fool.”
“I don’t care if I’m the dumbest motherfucker on Earth. This ain’t right. Let me out…!”
“I cannot. It is not I who holds you. Not I, but folly. So cease to be a fool…and go.”
Jim’s eyes darted about wildly. Nothing, there was absolutely nothing but cold desolation and the shrieking wind.
“I…I…I can’t.”
“What’s that fool? You say you cannot cease your folly?”
“..Shu..sure.”
“Good.” Again, the lightning pain flashed this time on his neck as his face met the sand. “Then eat of the dead. It’ll keep that God damned mouth closed and those ears good and open, fool.”
Jim was powerless.
“Principalities and powers abound. They whom the Lord established and they who war. It is your duty to discern the true voice. But, not even I have done this. Not even our line…ranging to the very first pillars of Ur. Their cunning is great and we are inextricably bound to serve. For the most high hears the cry of all his creatures and even the most wicked are given their due. So through sin we have been cursed to guard the gate. We who propitiated Ammon in our madness must to this late day continue. For all must pass in its hour. So our duty is to turn the glass. And to turn aright one MUST READ.”
The sand filled his lungs utterly and Jim awoke coughing in the closet.
There it was balanced just so on the couch’s arm. Everything was the same. Manila colored, red lettered, and all – it was Hant’s letter. The very correspondence he’d so recently consigned to the fire.
“No.” He said rising to his feet and reeling.
“No, no, no, no , no….”
‘They drugged me.’
‘Keep it together.’
He once again unfastened the pin.
“I know you are a fool…” That first familiar line struck him like a blow.
He tossed it onto the coffee table. Some of the topmost pages scattered.
“Shit.”
There was that poem.
“They dance and play,
They with silver skin,
Sleek in the twilight,
Far from the day,
Children of the black sun,
Spirits so bright,
See how they run,
In rings,
Round,
Though without wings,
Flit overhead,
Above all kings,
Twilight world,
That sprang all this,
Symmetry unfurled,
By a distant kiss,
Apollo, o Apollo, appeal, to the maze of Saturn’s weal,
And send them as a dance
To heal
From this morbid trance
For mid-summer,
For mid-summer,
Give a root,
For the runner,
For the runner,
Dangerous,
Just so,
But just so,
Be sure to do,
Only if you know,
The black sun,
O the black sun…”
‘Must be the way the page is weighted, or the way it’s stapled, for it to fall open like that.’ Jim frantically theorized as his fracturing psyche grasped for the convenient nepenthe of amnesia. The document’s recent destruction was forgotten. After all he did drink heavily. He may well have dreamed the whole thing.
He looked out his window at the early evening. There they were. Rings, those damned rings, spread concentric and overlapping, in a dizzying maze pregnant with suggestion.
Jim shook his head and looked away.
But, his ears were still open. The sounds that sauntered through them were not pleasing. Amidst the incessant buzz of cicadas there was an occasional chirping.
Jim considered scattering the hicks with the Mossberg. But last night’s ordeal or… nightmare had dampened his spirit. He put on the nearest record.
“Abasalom, Absalom, why do you not heed?” A familiar nordic lilt flitted through the mystic stillness.
Jim arrested the spin with his finger. There was a green apple there in the center. It was Abbey Road.
Jim was about to play the record again, to confirm that he hadn’t hallucinated the obviously dubbed-in intro, when he heard three steady knocks.
He grabbed the Mossberg left leaning on the couch.
“Who is it?” He asked fingering the trigger.
“Dutch.” Came the plain clear answer.
“What the hell are ya doin’ here Dutch? Isn’t it past your bedtime?”
“I got somethin ya need.”
“I doubt it.”
“Ya really wanna disappear into the Earth?” Dutch asked coldly.
Normally Jim would have written this off, and told him to go fuck himself but too much had happened in too quick a succession.
As the giant entered Jim was overwhelmed by a strong chemical odor.
“Ya smell like a fuckin’ janitor…what the hell is up man?”
“Hant’s way is better, but this should work for ye… for a time.” Dutch said in a concerned tone.
“Huh?”
“Hold on.”
The giant leaned through the still open door and wrestled in an enormous metal barrel that wobbled and came to rest with a liquid thud.
“The fuck is that?” Jim demanded pinching his nose at the pungent present.
“Clorox.”
“….Clorox…do I look like a maid…isn’t this place clean enough?”
“It’s for them.”
“Them?”
“The goblins.”
Jim laughed. “I thought they were fairies.”
“Goblins, faeries, demons, it don’t matter. They love this stuff. Gets em drunker than a striplin ater his first moonshine.”
“Uhuh…” Jim laughed. This he could handle. It was actually amusing. Even if his immideate suspicion regarding illicit drug manufacture were true. The story was adorable.
‘Drunk fuckin goblins…’ He continued to chuckle.
“Ja, they love the smell of it. I left trails n cups o the stuff all through the wood. Keep em distracted till ya do yer homework.”
“Uhuh…” Jim said glancing at the letter.
“Mmmhmm, I’d suggest ya read that real careful like. Gonna take ye a bit to digest. In the meantime do like I did put this out in tins or whatever. Spray it in trails. They got a nose for it. For as smart as they are they’re kinda like bugs…it’ll send em in a tizzy. Kinda funny to watch em run ater it.”
“Ok.” Jim said smirking.
“Ye don’t believe now. But ye will. Ye’ll make real good use of this.”
“I’m sure.” Jim said.
The giant gave him an appraising look.
“Ya want a drink buddy?” Jim asked good naturedly. The story had amused him and he didn’t want solitude to bring fresh worries.
Dutch shook his massive head slowly.
“Nah, I must get goin’. Gotta look after Ma.”
“Ok…then…”
“Afore I go…we need to put this in the basement. Otherwise this’ll just bring em here.”
“Ok.” Jim said. He had no complaints about removing the eye watering cleaning product as far from his living spaces as possible.
Jim nearly fell as he and Dutch double-teamed the unwieldy demon booze down the steep stairs.
He really wasn’t keen on being alone despite the rise in spirit that the comical redneck lore had caused.
“Ya sure ya don’t want a drink?” Jim said pointing to the mantel.
Dutch simply shook his head and departed in that charecteriscally efficient manner.
Jim shook his head. “Where the hell do ya get a barell of fuckin Clorox…Boy, am I gonna have stories to tell…”
Jim did not see. His return to the cottage was not accompanied by a deepend reverence. Quite the opposite, his recklessness increased.
“This is all bullshit.” He said as he tossed his uncle’s letter into the fire.
Whenever he heard the chirping he’d run out like a wildman, Mossberg in hand, and fire wildly at the trees. Wooping profanities that would put any sailor to shame.
“I can always get more shells, cocksuckers!”
It did seem to work.
“Goblins my ass…hicks with whistles aren’t about to make a heel outta Jim Cleary.”
He actually considered burning the wood. His life had not been easy and, once kindled, his nihilistic rage was capable of profound wickedness. He wasn’t unfamiliar with a cellblock nor much afraid of returning to one.
But the pay was good. And despite Lizzy’s warnings it had not ceased.
He kept finding those strange heel-less tracks. But remained unphased. Figuring it was just another trick.
It was weeks since the ordeal that had found him on the shores of Luckadoo’s lake that denial began to grow impossible.
First, his temper finally began to subside, allowing for a touch of introspection. He felt bad for consigning crazy Hant’s ramblings to the flame. It was like sucker punching his spirit in the gut. The old nut meant well.
It did not help that Jim received a sudden fortune. A turn of luck that explained everything and could only mean one thing.
On his return from the post office, bank statement in hand, he heard an inhuman wailing.
It made his heart sink to the very depths of his stomach.
Lizzy was at the stump doubled over and shreiking into the evening. Her long gray locks hung in ragged clumps completely obscuring her face.
A twig snapped as Jim approached to comfort her. She gazed up. And he turned to go.
All the fire was gone from her eyes. The spry twiggy motions had given way to shivers and sobs. He could not bear it and fled into the wood.
He sat by the cold stones a long time. Staring at the bit of paper that informed him that he was a sevenfold millionaire. It gave him a stomach ache. He actually felt naseaus.
He’d done nothing but surreptriously mock the old man his whole life. To reveive such a kindness after burning the last bit of spirit that Hant had passed on was flooring. Jim lay on the cold granite, too callous for weeping, too penitent for comfort.
The heavens that peaked through the swaying trees were agonizingly bright. With a cheerful beauty that mocked the mercenary hideousness of his soul. Sagitarius with his bow was hypnotic.
He did not know how long he lay there staring till thirst took hold. He tried to rise but to his horror found himself unable to move at all.
It was then that he realized it was absolutely silent.
The buzz of the cicada had ceased. No more did he hear the song of the owl and whippoorwill. Not even the strange chirping could be heard. Normally he would have been greatful for this fact. Especially given his current handicap. But, the damnable sound was replaced by something worse. It was a low and subtle sort of hum accompanied on occasion by light stealthy footsteps. As if a troop of children were playing hide and seek. Except the gait suggested by the footfalls was all wrong.
Jim could not move his head. But his eyes rolled freely. He gazed left at the sound of a snapping twig and beheld a silver head. A small bald thing was bobbing in his direction with several more in tow.
They stopped just beyond his line of sight and began to sway rhythmically. To his horror he found himself sinking into the stone. He tried to cry out but his dry constricted throat failed to produce so much as a chortle. Slowly, agonizingly, he felt himself becoming one with the granite.
Then quite suddenly a booming voice burst through the nightmare. “Fool!”
It was Hant’s voice. But the figure he glimpsed was not Hant. It was not the clean cut rustic but a wild bearded silver haired apparation.
The wicked dwarves scattered before the cold grey light of the wizard.
“I hope ye choke on drink. All that I gave ye..may you drink up…to the dregs…you fool.”
Jim felt a vicious kick in his rib.
But the pain was soon replaced by pleasure as he realized he could move again. He raced homeward not heeding the briars. Collapsing on the soft leather of the couch Jim fell into the deepest sleep of his life.
Why must they be so cryptic? There was too much room for interpretation. Nothing fell into place. Or rather the places that it fell were too fantastic to be seriously entertained.
Maybe he should read after all.
But what would he read?
More cryptic hints at the illimitable…
Towards what end?
He watched the drops gather and slide. Such a natural symbiosis with gravity. Yes, it was such a simple thing. And Jim wished very much, o so very much, to be as simple.
But it was not possible.
So, he opened the envelope.
He read. Or rather he tried to read.
His eye was draw to a thin column a quarter way down the seventh page.
“They dance and play,
They with silver skin,
Sleek in the twilight,
Far from the day,
Children of the black sun,
Spirits so bright,
See how they run,
In rings,
Round,
Though without wings,
Flit overhead,
Above all kings,
Twilight world,
That sprang all this,
Symmetry unfurled,
By a distant kiss,
Apollo, o Apollo, appeal, to the maze of Saturn’s weal,
And send them as a dance
To heal
From this morbid trance
For mid-summer,
For mid-summer,
Give a root,
For the runner,
For the runner,
Dangerous,
Just so,
But just so,
Be sure to do,
Only if you know,
The black sun,
O the black sun…”
“See,” Jim mused aloud. “That…that is not helpful at all.”
He tossed the stack onto the coffee table and poured another whiskey.
Staring into the fire he found that it offered no comfort.
He felt colder than he had ever felt before. The world was old.
Before, he felt himself separate from it.
Yet now he too felt old.
Hanging there in the abyss by a slowly dying star.
A fire whose fuel was as febrile and dwindling as that which crumpled so steady before his gaze.
“Where would we go?” He muttered.
How would he keep the warmth from sapping out his bones into the inky night? How would they? How would we?
He removed his shoes, then his socks.
He let the cold wood panel seep into the balls of his feet, up his ankles, femurs and find its rest in the base of his spine.
He began to dance. Frantic and drunk he hooped and he hollered in the isolation.
Placing the revolver by his head he pondered.
Faint suggestions flickered through his conscious.
Jim felt very small. He imagined that he was the proportion of the reflection in the brass of the poker. He felt himself to be his own homunculus.
He dropped the gun and ventured unshod into the black old night.
Standing in the middle of the meadow he beheld a heaven so close and bright that he could taste it. Again, he began to dance. He twirled among the rings. He danced in rings among rings within rings.
And with each step a strange awareness took hold. It was as if his feet were eyes and he were reading things writ long ago. So long ago that were he not in motion to counteract…the dizziness of age…of dimension he would surely fall.
It was narcosis. It was rapture. It was a deep read.
For he beheld the passage of odd teardrops towards a green-blue orb.
“We are locusts.” He said and began to eat the grass.
Yes, this sudden Nebuchadnezzar was profound aware of the vanity of kingship.
But why?
He was drunk on abandon. Absolutely floored by possibility, utterly drowned by eternity, he could do nothing but dance.
His feet bled. Yet he danced on heedless of the pain of prickling grasses and wild litter.
The fire, that very fire of mortal displeasure, sent him forward, launched him like an arrow towards the granite arcade.
The Fractal Journal 