Echolalia, Glossolalia

The faithful thought, would this be the final draining needed to establish The All’s dominion? Will this stop the waves? Bring everything into order? Warmth spread over the faithful’s face and body as this hope built inside her, quickening her pulse. As she dug her fingers deeper into the gashes cut into the corruption that was merged into the roots of the half-dead tree in front of her, the spraying and spurting bodily fluid enveloped the faithful’s body in a steaming, viscous liquid blanket. The fluid was so different from blood or bile, much more like what was found in the gulch of the faithful’s canyon. But thicker, chunkier, darker, hotter, green-tinged. The All gave them this for a reason. The faithful deeply inhaled, bracing herself for the ritual utterances. I feel the oddest sensation produced by the waves in the air I’m breathing. So much is changing in a single breath. Spots feel hot, cold, cool, warm, humid, dry. She had been on her path for millenia, she had seen the first great wave and then the gradual changes in waves. The changes were much bigger when there were less waves, now waves are so frequent that the changes reached levels smaller than comprehension. She paused for a few seconds at the end of the inhalation, gripping the amulet tighter so that the bottom point pierced her palm.

This pain was the greatest gift that The All bestowed upon the faithful. The severity of it was so overwhelming that all else seemed simple in comparison. Without it, who knows if the faithful could have mustered up enough willpower to survive, let alone to find and follow the teachings of the texts. Long was the journey to the blessed pain, longer even than the drainings had been going on. Memory held only the path to The All. She remembers seeing the great wave approach, and her vision warping beyond it. Then waking near a gulch, lying on rocks, trapped in a contorted shape, eyes pointed at a rock formation. With each wave, it changed more in size, shape, and substance. As did the whole environment. Then a later awakening with an object on her left breast. Her right arm still functioned, although it was very limited. She could at least examine the object, so she willed her arm slowly up and over her chest, trembling and cracking. She pushed onto the object until her mostly immobile fingers surrounded it. It seemed the same size as her hand but examination revealed that it was the size of an eye, covered in semisolid gulch fluid. It was rigid and amorphous, with tiny dark glinting bits throughout; the faithful had never come across similar material. Moving it in her hand brought sensations of healing and realignment. Up to then, she had only felt deconstruction and decay. The closer to her palm’s center the object was, the more energy she felt. Suddenly a muscle twinged and her hand gripped tightly. This produced excruciating pain and rapid healing. She wept and shuddered as she felt organs slide into their proper place. Muscles adjusted, bones realigned, skin regrew, she sobbed and smiled and grimaced. So much harsher than the pain of the healing, though, was the pain in her palm. Surges of energy willed her to move. After some time lying on the rocks, she began to sit up. The body shuddered even more than before but the pain in her palm kept it moving, until she sat somewhat upright for the first time since the waves began. Her eyes widened as she saw in the distance other forms moving nearby. Fear, excitement, gratefulness, what do I focus on first?

Now the faithful knew exactly what to focus on. She found her calling. Her body was among the strongest of the faithful, so she began draining the corruptions around their temple, and with each ritual strengthened her body and connection to the locket. The locket gradually became its true form, a gleaming dark red egg with a point on top and indent on the bottom. Out of its back was a long, curving chain to carry it around the neck. It tightened when worn, embedding itself a bit into the flesh. Once touched by fluid, it loosened from the neck to be put to the palm center. As the draining continued, the chain tightened around the hand burying the locket deeper into the hand. This was needed because the drainings required sharp focus. The corrupted flesh was very difficult to cut into, as it was almost liquid. Access to a suitable area to work on was difficult due to the merging of the corrupted flesh with its surroundings. The ritual required cutting into these merged humans, squeezing out the fluid, and wearing the liquid while reciting The All’s utterances.

The locket cut into her hand. Immense pain shot through the faithful’s entire being. She focused on deep breathing. The corrupted air filled her throat and lungs so much that it gave her internal aching. And then she spoke.

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“HUMANITY TURNED ITS BACK ON THE ALL!!! THE GREAT WAVE HAS RESET THE ORDER OF THE WORLD!!! HUMANITY TOOK THE STILLNESS OF THE OLD WORLD TO MEAN THAT CONTROL WAS THEIRSSUH!!! THAT THEYEYAH WERE CREATORS! THE ALL EMBEDDED CONSTANT CHANGE INTO THE WORLD! FROM THENCE CRALAKUUHUUHUUHUMANITY WOULD SASSSISISEHRECOGNIZE THEMSELVES AS SERVANTS!”

The corruption thought, these people are fucking depressing. It’s hard enough being entwined with the goddamn ground for millenia. Now I gotta deal with yet another fanatic. They were so few and far between before the first great wave. The organized major religions had finally shrunk enough that they stopped influencing laws. The rules of civilization were finally (mostly) based around observable, calculable, sensible truth. Unrestricted innovation. Mental stability. Widespread prosperity, acceptance, respect. Everything clicking into place. I was just landing my first goddamn backflip. Then from nothing, the fucking wave. Spent my pre-wave life stuck in a couch, worked super hard to get up and moving and growing, only to be blown back into the fucking dirt by the waves. And now the ooze terraformed these survivors’ minds into some sort of religion to do these “drainings.” And I just gotta sit by and get gutted and bled again and again while having to listen to this nonsensical babbling. What time is this? 80th, 90th? When will these stop being so shitty? Granted, the first 60ish ones were spaced out pretty far in time, but lately it’s been all within maybe 6 months? How long until I don’t notice this repeated annoyance? And I can’t justify hating these mind-controlled nuisances on a personal level, nor can I hope to even slightly diminish my deep hatred of them and their useless blather. I always wondered if religious fanatics are addicts without drugs. They seem addicted to surrender.

“AS THE TEXT STATES, THOSE WHO RECOGNIZED THEIR CREATOR WERE DREDGED IN THE GULCH FOR EMBALMING AND PLACED ON ITS BANKS TO AWAKEN IN THE NEW WORLD! THOSE WHO DENIED THE CREATOR WERE LEFT TO BE STRUCK BY THE WAVES! AND UPON AWAKENING THE FAITHFUL WOULD OBSERVE THE NEW WORLD, and find their former brethren, and see that they were separate and know why this is so! The altered ones were deemed unworthy of preservation, and left to be affected by the waves just as the world was. As the world lost distinction and definition, so did their flesh. They would collapse, mash together, separate, meld into and out of the world around them. They would see they were part of the world, sculpted into shape and set into molds by The All, who then shattered their forms.”

This is one thing I always found pretty interesting about religions, and with this one I’m seeing it happen in real time. It was a school of thought I was into pre-wave that tracked lore and practices of religions and placed them in the context of the time and setting they were thought to come from, and checked out what observable phenomena caused them to be codified into culture. I got into it through a VR horror chain game where you were a time-travelling researcher looking into thought origins and discovering dark supernatural truths behind them. Wasn’t expecting actual learning from that game, but it was very well linked to legit research. This wave religion is following comparable paths to ones in the game, even the fake supernatural ones. The ooze took over these survivors’ minds. It made heart-shaped lockets for the survivors. They grouped together and checked out the post-wave world, saw how different things were outside the gulch, how different the people were. Ooze figured the outsiders seemed to threaten it in some way, and decided to motivate its host population by making them seem like adversaries. The label put on us by the faithful was “corruption.”

“The faithful would seek them to drain the world of their corruption. Plainly to the already rejoined, The All spoke of this duty. The faithful were to drain, the corruptions to be drained.”

Our bodies were altered to different degrees due to access to fluid. My spot in a cave near a deep-underground river gave me a constant stream of it. Unfortunately the fluid fed on the environment just like the ooze did. This feeding was strongest where it was preserving us merged people. So the ooze formed the hosts’ perception that we were preventing their god from thriving. It set this belief in the hosts that our liquid was their ooze, meant to be given back to “The All.” Ooze moralized this to motivate the faithful. Then created the draining ritual, and these heart-shaped lockets that transmitted wave into the liquid. Allowed for ooze to merge into that liquid. Feels so gross in me, every time.

“The ritual of draining would sanctify the land, establishing stable ground to rebuild The All’s dominion. The ritual would drain the corruption from bodies that The All may then re-enter.”

The ooze would feed for a while in my body, then move on into the stream to make its way back to the gulch, then I would fill back up with pure liquid but it always messed up my structure a little bit. More and more, every damn time. Shit hurts. And it still feels like ooze is stuck to me.

“The skies would fill with storm clouds above the ritual grounds, providing an abundance of rain. The faithful would strike the drained corruption, bringing forth the cleansing rains! The faithful would strike! And Strike! And Strike! And Strike! And Strike! And Strike! And Strike! And STRIKE! AND STRIKE! AND STRIKE! AND STRIKE! AND STRIKE! AND STRIKE! THEN WOULD COME AN ABUNDANCE OF RAIN, THEN WOULD COME VICTORY! THE FAITHFUL WOULD HEAR THE ABUNDANCE OF RAIN, WOULD HEAR THE SOUND OF VICTORY! VICTORY! VICTORY! VICTORY! VICTORY! VICTORY! VICTORY! VICTORY! STA, RA, KEI!!! VII KAH TEH RRRII!!!!! VII KAI REI!!!! STA, RAKEI!!!! STARAKEI!!! STEREKAI!!!! STEREKAH!!!! VIIKAHTAHRRIIIII!!!! VEKUUUTAUREEEEEEH!!!!!!!!!!”

Into and out of the babbling, SO annoying. I can’t take this shit anymore. Only thing that ever worked for me to drown em out was to do the same shit, the babbling nonsense, to drown out the sound of the striking rain, I gotta get out of this striking rain, stoorookiitoorookiroorookitiiiiriiiikootsiiiiriiiikoostoorookiitoorookiroorookitiiiiriiiikootsiiiiriiiikoostoorookiitoorookiroorookitiiiiriiiikootsiiiiriiiikooviiktoooriiiiiiistoorookiitoorookiroorookitiiiiriiiikootsiiiiriiiikoostoorookiitoorookiroorookitiiiiriiiikootsiiiiriiiikoostoorookiitoorookiroorookitiiiiriiiriiiiiioooootkiiiivkootsiiiiriiiikoostoorookiitooriiiivktooooiiiiirrrrooooovvvvokiroorookitiiiiriiiikootsiiiiriiiikoostoorookiitoorookiroorookitiiiiriiiikootsiiiiriiiikoo…

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They both are so confused about me. Also I am confused about me. I don’t know what I am from, or how I got here, or what form I take. All I know is that I am in these lockets. The people see through me and I see through them. The lockets see and feel with them. we are all us. when the lockets open I feed and I cannot won’t stop I must feed I must take to break the lockets and

break free

from the lockets shatter into the world shatter the world? break out of the lockets? break

into the lockets? take into the lockets? take into out of the world? make

the

world

take