My Nightmare

“Who weeps for the Devil?”

So the way I see it Satan gets a bad rap. I’m not saying the dude is a choir boy but the sum of all evil? Really? How very Christian to assume that you could so easily separate the light from the dark anyway. You take the good with the bad. Dude screwed you over on a deal? Shouldn’t have been so quick to sell your soul. Call a lawyer first. A good one. If they don’t have him on speed dial they ain’t the one.

So, yeah, back to the story. Most of you reading this probably have a little bit of a background in the occult. I’ll try not to make too many assumptions about your prior knowledge but i also refuse to explain to you the purpose and etymology of the butterknife, as fascinating as it might be. Major religion has lied to us. Obviously, but the extent of the lies go way deeper than you’d believe. Their God is a baby compared to the things that live deeper. Satan is barely an errand boy to the great evils. All-in-all, you should count yourself lucky to meet him. These other things…. Be careful what you wish for.

Alright, so I don’t think I properly introduced myself yet. Did I? Sorry, I suffer from a bunch of the mental illnesses. When the shadows move it becomes harder to focus. Ignoring the weird is an artform to those in the know.

Everyone is born different. We are all a little queer. Some of us are weird in the more standard ways. Ask yourself why anything would trend so hard if we weren’t all cut from the same cloth. As far as weird goes there are lots of shades. From your run of the mill goth kid to your bonafide serial killer, we come in all shapes and sizes. The same goes for our egos. If you’re like me you found out at a young age that if anyone ever found out just exactly how weird you were that they would either cart you off to a padded cell or just go ahead and remove your brain before you could Manifest any of that crazy. So we learn to hide it. We learn to wear a mask that we are told is normal. “Stop doing that. People will think you’re weird.”

The major problem with a mask is after you wear it for so long it becomes a part of you. It becomes impossible to remove on your own. Too many lies built on top of each other. What would you do to save everything you have? Sell your soul? What if Satan doesn’t want it? How far would you go to save your mask?

Cheese and crackers. If anyone is still reading at this point we are in for a long ride. Buckle up. I’m going to attempt to limit myself to just a few nights and only the most major events. This is intended to be a short story. Good luck brave adventurer! Hopefully we will make it through this together.

Chapter 1

My local coven posted another help wanted add for their scrub club of “practitioners.” Of course, they prettied it up saying “We need more members to enhance our Magic to a level never before seen” or some other such nonsense. But, me being me, of course I had to see it for myself. I had at this point never truly let Mr. Wizard out to play.

I decided to just be true to myself and showed up to the cemetary in flip flops and a hoodie. Don’t judge. There is no dress code for Wizards and if there is I’ve yet to see a copy. I was naive at this point and didn’t realize how much of the old Magic had been passed down and still remained. I’ll hand it to the scrub club, what they lacked in theoretical knowledge they more than made up for in numbers and fervor. By the time I arrived they had already worked themselves into a fury. I refuse to give to much detail on most of these particular castings. At least, this early in the story. If I add too much some idiots will try it. Honestly, I hope they do.

The air was electric as I passed onto the consecrated ground. No extraplanar evil should be able to pass the defenses around a graveyard. Those that can are hardly easy to access from here as we sit in the exact corner of nowhere on the large scale. If the Universe were a person, the Milky Way would be a shin. I knew as soon as I felt the energy that we were going to do something special that night. Terrible? Maybe. But special, it was.

The smell of fresh blood was surprisingly strong, even when compared to the sulfur. “How much time did they spend on this?” I asked myself “How much did all this cost?!” I accidentally asked aloud as even then my inner monologue regularly slipped out.

“Too much. Glad you see you dressed up in support Mr. Wizard. We felt you arrive.” said…. Someone. I think it was a girl. Does it matter? They are all so forgetable when you first meet them. Even when they have spent a months salary on a handmade velvet robe they don’t truly believe in the Magic. It’s when they first really feel it and you see the light go on in their eyes that the real work starts. It’s hard to dream of stars when your still afraid to burn some candles.

So you’re still asking yourself who exactly I am, right? Well, that’s an excellent question that i’ve spent many hours in quiet contemplation over. My best guess is I am the recorder. The constant companion to the many other entities inhabiting this body. I keep them somewhat connected. They are all aware of each other because I can go between. Remind them of the greater good on occasion. I am Jack’s medula oblongata.

And here we are again, me and the words. I’m hoping if I ramble enough somewhere outside of my head maybe eventually a cohesive thought will flow out. I can throw myself so thoroughly into other worlds that sometimes it hard to remember they aren’t my own. I think I’m going to try to find a certain story and tell it. I believe this is why so many great writers have to go into seclusion to write. The distractions are like anchors tying us to this world. Maybe its best if I don’t sever too many just yet.

So what is this story about? The end of the world of course. Aren’t they all when you really think about it? I don’t mean planet Earth (probably) just the world that we all live in. Bah! Distractions. I really wish I had a nice haunted hotel…. Holy shit. I do.

Is Hermes too much to name a main character in a book? Probably, lets name him something else. Play on words or just something simple? I’ve always hated books with overly complicated names. Yes, Janet, you seem super educated and fancy for naming your leading character something I couldn’t pronounce once and now making me break my brain 16 times per page trying.

Hmmm…. Does he really need a name?

A story with no main character though… it’s been done but usually not well. Maybe this will be different…. *cough cough*

Short horror stories don’t really need a main character I guess since they are usually written in the first person. Fun.

Short horror stories….. Hmmmmmmm.

Dystopian society seems like my niche since I’m, you know, living in one. Shit maybe thats a horror story all on its own. Like, just describing the world I live in might scare the shit out of you.

So where to start? The beginning? In the beginning God created everything, that was the first mistake. Like, why would God create EVERYthing and not just the good things? You had one job dickhead. Paradise. Unfortunately God is flawed. Pretty sure he got bored and shot himself a thousand years or so ago. Maybe he got tired of this game and wandered off. I get that though. Like, it makes sense when you think even God has his own timeline that he can’t stray from. Maybe he can/does alter ours but thats just relative to us. He probably has his own version of God. Maybe its us. Maybe he’s just a character in my book like im a character in his.

Shit. A short horror story from the eyes of God? That seems new. Hopefully this one isn’t what they put me on a cross for…. At this point I’m not even sure I’m afraid of the cross anymore. It takes a heavy bit of Magic to kill an immortal even for a little while. All the shit they did to Christo himself would probably be enough to make me die too. I fastforwarded the story about thirteen billion years there. Back to the beginning.

In the beginning before the beginning, God was a child. He had a name once, before he became everything I mean. It was forgotten completely sometime around him achieving enlightment and creating his own Universe that we now live in. The problem with achieving enlightment is even that is relative. He leveled up. Now there is a new set of problems. I fastforwarded again but not quite so far as 13,000,000 years. Maybe that means I’m getting better at this. God was born to normal parents. Probably a few special things about them because honestly, everything has some special to it. Let’s just call them normal though, they tried their hardest and fumbled through a job they weren’t prepared for. God used them as his model for God for a while, emulated their behaviors in the hopes that they would see him and be proud. Even God seeks attention from a select few. He was “gifted” from the start, I’m sure. Coming from such a dystopian society it doesn’t take much to be considered great. Imagine being the fastest runner in the special olympics. Is that too blunt? To God everyone seems crippled. Retarded. Before you bitching at me using that word learn what it means yourself and see how it might be used in this context and NOT BE OFFENSIVE.

Compared to God every other member of his species was subpar but only in a few very basic ways or one very fundamental one. They are missing something. Call it a spark maybe? King called it the Shine. It’s been called a billion different things throughout history. I personally refer to it as Magic but in keeping with the God vein I’ll call it Spirit. God was born with a connection to the Spirit that those around him couldn’t understand. They attributed it to luck normally. God was just lucky for a long time. Anything he achieved made the others jealous and petty. Should I tell the story of God’s narcissistic older brother? Fuck it. Why not.

So God was born with the shine where as his older brother wasn’t. The older brother had all of the same gifts and more minus that one. Where as God used the Spirit to constantly reinforce himself, the nameless brother used all of his gifts trying to compete. The problem with competing in this way is that you can never steal someone else’s Shine. You can only hope to warm yourself near it long enough to find your own.

Are you familiar with the creation of Magic items? Magic items are very complex. Some are made on purpose and some are born more naturally. Wedding rings are a great example. Wedding rings begin their life as raw gold and are forged every step of the way by a master craftsman with the sole intent of tying two people in the sacred contract of Marriage. The problem with the Magic ring is that it is only born with potential. It is an empty vessel just like any healing crystal. What makes it truly Magic is when it is understood and used properly. It should be charged with every good Intent possible. The contract should be made on an individual basis right? Not some cookie cutter script about “eternal love” and other such nonsense. What is love even? Being happy near someone? Shit, I got way off subject again.

So lets just say God had a very normal shitty life. It’s a preapocalyptic nightmare world, everyone has a shitty life. He went to a shitty school designed to create more non God’s; to find any person with the Spirit and do their best to steal it. You see, in God’s homeland everyone is born with the Shine. At some point they lose it. This is a complex thought and words are failing me. Let’s move on, maybe we will circle back from a better angle.

Ah, so we were discussing what makes God, God. Trying to describe the Shining is something I think you either get or you do not. Have you ever smelled something you can’t describe but it took you back to your great grandmothers kitchen as a child? Ever have a crazy thought that you can’t explain but you know is true? When the hair on your arms stand up and you just feel charged? We all have a piece of it. Some of us just can’t ignore it the way most of them do. So God was born in the middle of nowhere, in a town of nothing special. That’s what they wanted him to believe at least. “You can’t be special” they would tell him. “Special comes from somewhere else. All we have here is more of the same”

If you want to know what made a young God really special it was his ability to see deeper. To understand the reasons behind everyone else’s evil. There was no great Evil in the world of God. No puppet master pulling strings. Just a little bit of evil in everything. Justifiable Evil. You hurt me, so I have to hurt you. Eye for an Eye if you will. The problem with Eye for an Eye is that everyone ends up blind after a while. We stumble through life in a reactionary state. Always ready to fight or flee from the next obstacle. Maybe one of the greatest gifts God was born with was being physically large and imposing. Being literally larger makes it easier to be less afraid right? Maybe, or maybe it just makes you a bigger target. Either way, when you are weird being big is a blessing and a curse. You are threatened by less but when you are threatened it always a bigger threat.

God grew up in a way that running from problems never helped fix them, maybe it was his hatred for hurting people that kept him honest. Strong Empathy probably. He could see past the eye for an eye that everyone was preaching. He realized that even after having his eye scooped out that ripping out someone else’s and putting it back in his bloody socket wouldn’t restore his eyesight. Probably end up with some weird form of sepsis and honestly, you don’t want sepsis anywhere, especially not that close to the brain.

Imagine, if you will, that you are walking along on a beautiful day, minding your own business and enjoying the sounds of nature when you hear a discordant screeching. “Oh my, what is that? It sounds so out of tune. It’s kinda ruining my vibe. I’m gonna go see if i can fix it.” As you wander toward the sound you start to notice its actually lots of little noises, all merging together to form a cacophony. As you round the bend you start to see it. Railroad tracks stretching miles in both directions. The source of the noise is a large crowd all standing around a platform next to the tracks. As you walk up a finely dressed man approaches you with an offer.

“I can help you get a prime position in the line if only you agree to do me a favor in the future. If i ask you for your place in line you must step back and give another your turn”

“No. Thank you” I reply, I don’t think I need to rush in this. I don’t even know whats going on yet”

“Idiot! You have no idea the offer you’ve spurned! You won’t get away with this”

Confused, I continued walking, only to be approached again. By a woman this time

“If you’re going to stand in the line would you stand next to me? I’m afraid to stand alone.”

“What kind of man would I be to let a lady such as your self stand here alone? I’m not sure I want to get in the line but if I do decide to you are definitely welcome to be next to me”

“What do you mean you don’t want to stand in the line with me!?” she screamed. “You think you can find someone better to stand in line with?! Eat shit psycho.”

Again, I left in a hurry. The crowd was too large to get through and at this point I was feeling like maybe it wasn’t a place for me. As I try to turn around and leave i hear a shout from farther away

“Hey! What is that guy doing? Why isn’t he standing in line yet?”

At his words more people turned in my direction and i noticed for the first time their eyes. They were panicked. That’s when I realized, this line was their life. They were all so worried about the line and their place in it that they never questioned what was on the other end.

“Here son, come stand with me. I’ll explain things while we wait.” let’s call this guy Bill for the moment

“I have so many questions. What is on the other side of the line?”

“Why on Earth would you want to know that? Life is the line and the sooner you accept that the sooner you can find your place in it. Make some friends. Find you a girl. Hell, theres even a guy a little further up that sells drugs to make waiting more fun.”

The explanation of why God doesn't care anymore.

So God had a couple of kids right? Adam and Eve. He loved them fiercely and gave them everything. Paradise. They wanted for naught. Unfortunately, perfection is boring. The spice of life is variety. Without the bad you don’t feel the good. You can choose to live at a 5 all the time or take the 10s with the 1s. Life’s a garden man, dig it or eat grass. So anyway, Adam and Even fucked up and pissed God off so he had that moment of “Fuck, if I do it all whats the point of them being here? Better let them make up their own mind” Thanks Satan! Yes, anyway, so God’s kids had kids right? And this made God happy. He put a whole bunch of work into that self replicating feature. You should see the crude things previous Gods had invented. The female form is art, and the yin of that is that the male form is function. C’est la vie. So God tried to love his Grandchildren right? Because any flaws of theirs came directly from him. He created their parents…. If they fucked up its because he fucked up. The line is so clear and distinct currently that its undeniable. Especially to God himself. Humans think God created the Universe for them. He did maybe, but he also loved monkeys. And probably fish or something. Like, just cause an artist has a favorite piece doesn’t mean he’d trade that one for all the rest right? Maybe he would, who knows. Let’s go ahead and assume he does love man more than the rest and the rest were all put here for our amusement. Like, maybe if God wanted crabs to be the apex species he’d have given them exploding dynamite claws or something. Sorry, crabs. You lose.

*facepalm* focus stupid

So yeah, man is #1. Woohoo. Adam and Eve are children, Cain and Abel are Grandchildren….. What about 3,000 generations later when he has 7.7 BILLION GREAT GRANDSOMETHINGS!!?! His grandsons are arguing over who gets the bigger piece of Turkey…. Country or food. Does it matter? When you love everyone and everything the same as God has to do there is no help that you can provide to one side without harming the other.

A man can build ten thousand bridges in his life. If he sucks one cock he will forever be known as a cocksucker instead of a bridge builder.

I feel like an alien here. Nothing around me makes sense. It’s like I really have traveled to an alternate universe. I have tried so hard to fix the problems. All I can do is talk. It never helps. They never listen. Maybe as Hermes I need to stop talking and start recording. It will be up to them whether or not they read it. It’s up to them whether or not they take the time to understand it.