Mac twisted and turned on the snow cave floor.
He had woken seconds ago with a strange taste in the back of his throat, feeling terrible. He quickly got up on his feet, but almost fainted in the movement. He felt dizzy and cold. Freezing cold.
"What the hell is this?" he shouted. “What have you done?”
Njoro woke to the angry shouting of the Savage.
"What have you done to me?" he kept repeating.
She hesitated for a moment, then she sat up and lit the walrus fat lamp.
The Savage was standing upright in the cave, his body swaying from side to side. She could sense his confusion and desperation immediately.
"What do you mean?" she asked in her soft voice.
"What kind of witchcraft is this?"
"None that I know of. What exactly is the matter?"
The Savage sat down on the floor again.
"Hell, I don't know", he shouted. "Something is just not right, and whatever it is I'm sure you got something to do with it."
Njoro wasn't used to being exposed to aggression and accusations in this way, but the fact that she could feel his aggression was entirely rooted in fear, it made her feel calm and somehow on top of the situation.
"Now, I really don't know what you're talking about”, she said, “but if you let me make up a fire I can make us some hot water with peppermint leaves, and you can try to tell me what exactly is wrong."
"The hell I will! You'd probably poison me even more, and why on Earth would I give away anything to you, young witch? You're my prisoner, don't you forget about that!"
Njoro almost felt like smiling, but didn't.
"Very well", she said, then shut her mouth.
The Savage, who had said his name was Mac, got to his feet again, then sat down immediately, and then he started fumbling inside his sack.
He dragged out a container made of some very un-organic looking material, and took a sip of its liquid contents.
"There." he said to the cave wall and took a deep breath. "It'll do the trick."
Njoro said nothing, but merely looked at him with her deep gaze.
"I'm sure it will", she thought to herself and whoever cared to listen.
After sitting down for a while, the Savage called Mac got a distant look in his eyes, then leaned his upper body against the cave wall and said:
"I'm watching you, so no tricks."
A few moments later she could hear him snore.
At first she sat completely still, puzzled by the situation.
Here she was in the middle of the ice. Pi had disappeared. Her beloved friend Mungpuk unwillingly crossed to the other side far too young. Murdered in cold blood.
The awful man behind the attack had - without warning - turned into a scared child overnight, but was still trying to act out his overdeveloped masculine control attitude and imagined authority to her face.
Why?
She had The Vision. One of the strongest in The House of Lhasa, except maybe among some of the Elders. She could see straight into the soul of the rude, unbalanced, and now also quite frightened and strangely acting captivator. Easily.
But why couldn't she see Pi or any traces of him?
And why hadn't she seen all of this coming? It was her job to keep in touch with the Innerworld and to lead her entourage safely along the Path. This also meant that it was her job to know of such dangers, and to warn everybody when they were on the verge of disaster.
She had failed in this.
Why?
As she sat there letting the sudden helpless and a little self-pitying emotions pull and tear her insides, the Savage called Mac suddenly sprung to his feet with a moan.
Then he fell flat out on the cave floor.
"Oh dear", Njoro said.
She moved over to him and pulled him over to a reindeer skin.
It was the same place Mungpuk had been sleeping on the night of the attack. There were blood stains on it, but it couldn't be helped. She had to use all her physical strength. Mac the Savage was a large man.
She only got him halfway atop his new bed, but decided it would have to make do.
She went outside the cave. The weather had brightened up and the wind stilled. It was still biting cold, but the air was clear and the blueish light in its brightest hour and at its most intense for the day. That still meant it was dim as the early dawn would be back in Lhasa.
It was strangely quiet. At first she thought it was because the storm that had raged for the last days finally had stopped roaring, but then she sensed something else. Something terrible.
The dogs.
She rushed over to the other side of the cave entrance where the dogs had taken refuge during the storm.
All the dogs had died. Frozen to death in their sleep.
This tragedy was more complete than she could have imagined.
Njoro knelt down quietly in the snow.
She put her palm on the head of one of the dogs, and closed her eyes.
As she followed the spirit-trail of her defeated helper and companion, she arrived at an image of the Savage Mac once again.
He was behind this, too.
Was there no end to the damage a bewildered soul like his could do to his surroundings and fellow creatures? His destructive behaviour seemed to have no limits. How could he kill if it wasn’t out of necessity for food or survival? How could beings like this exist at all?
She'd been taught all her life that everything in the world was dependent on balance in order to exist. That every piece of reality had to have an inner balance, or at least to seek it - in order for it to find its place in the system of life. Every living thing, even every tiniest particle in the building-blocks of reality had to be whole in order to be able to find peace within this Universe.
Balance, and purpose.
So how could this creature called Mac be so totally polarized and out of touch with his own soul, barging into their corner of reality and slaughter pointlessly? It was a complete mystery, and a mystery that provoked a rising anger inside her.
Anger was something she didn't want inside her.
She stilled her heart, and focused on her lungs breathing the chilly, fresh air. She got to her feet, picked up the bag of snow, and returned to the cave.
Inside, she made a fire to melt the snow.
When the water was boiling, she poured some of it over the dried peppermint leaves in two wooden cups.
Then she gently woke her captivator.
"What are you doing? Get away from me!"
His voice was hoarse and weak, and his eyes were glass-like.
"I'm giving you something to regain your strength", she answered, and held the cup with the steaming brew under his nose.
"And why the hell would you do that?" Mac the Savage said worried.
"Because without it, you will probably go back to sleep, and I think it's not so wise to lie here without any nutrition in your body."
Mac looked at her with a blurry stare. She could feel the heat from his face and breath on the back of her hands holding the cup. His body-temperature had been rising. It, too, was out of balance now.
"Drink it.", she said in her soft, but now also quite determined voice.
Mac drank.
She put down the half-empty cup. Then she pulled away the rolled-up reindeer skin she'd used to hold his head high enough to get him drinking. As she did, she supported him with his left hand so he wouldn't fall back.
He already slept when his head reached the floor.
She moved over to the fire and topped up her own cup with some more peppermint brew. Then she cut a few slices of meat from the salted and dried lamb's leg they had been carrying along.
No point in rationalizing too hard anymore now that she was the only one left of the entourage. Especially considering the very dim future that lay ahead.
It felt like heaven, and a most welcome variation from the bear meat.
After eating and drinking she could feel some of her vitality coming back. Her system had been quite overthrown by the terrible events of the day and night before.
The Savage slept.
He didn't look good.
Not that he ever did.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
Abducted
The vast night sky opened up above him.
All across it, stars were scattered like dark, fluorescent magic lanterns.
As he stared upwards into the infinity of his imprisonment, he suddenly saw them:
Huge dark shapes hovering a few miles above ground. Hiding like giant, black jellyfish with their massive undersides cunningly decorated with fake night sky.
Alien supreme technology.
Extra-terrestrial smoke and mirrors.
He enjoyed the sight, even though it gave him chills down his spine. It was still beautiful, and left him awestruck.
Little did he know that they would soon be onto him.
The blinding light seemed to shine from within every atom in the room. His limbs were frozen, and the most terrible fear he had ever encountered filled his whole being.
The Alien stood before him, as if hovering in the middle of the room, with sinister black endless eyes penetrating his earthbound mammalian nervous system like a razor.
Vix tried to scream, but the scream just backfired on him, and turned into yet another wave of horror inside him.
He could do nothing.
He was completely in the creature’s power. Alien power.
His fear was multiplied by his helplessness. What next? Probes? Visions of Apocalyptic horrors? Implants?
Or death?
“You are Salmon!” the creature suddenly said, mind to mind and soundless, his starman tongue messing around inside Vix’s head.
“S… salmon?” Vix thought back. Frozen.
“Salmon”, the Alien repeated, without the slightest trace of human emotion.
Vix stared as puzzled as he could possibly stare, unaided by functioning facial muscles, back at the creature.
“You are the Salmon of the Galaxy”, the Alien continued, and then added: “You know what Salmon is, right?”
“R…red..f…f…fish?”, Vix suggested.
“Never mind the colour. It is irrelevant. As most of your human associations usually are.” His black eyes and strict facial expression instantly made Vix agree. Then the starman said: “What does Salmon do?”
“S…wim?” Vix suggested.
“Swim”, The Alien repeated, then said; “Swim. And wander. Salmon wander. Their whole existence is dependent on their wandering, dependent on constant movement. They need to move, to obtain oxygen, and to be exposed to uncertainty. To be exposed to danger. They need all this in order to experience. To grow. Growth is the purpose of All. And Salmon, like all creatures, need purpose.”
Vix could feel his body lose a fraction of the weight of the paralysis - though just a fraction.
The Alien continued; “Instead, the human breed chooses the opposite. You choose to stay in confinement. To ‘settle down’. Build structures that weigh you down further. You rather choose to create an artificial world around you than to live in the one that’s already there. The one that would give you the lives that would allow you to be in tune with yourselves. The lives you were born to live.”
Vix tried to think “OK”, as if just to make sure they already agreed, but the Alien went on: “You call this artificial world your ‘culture’. Your ‘civilization’ - a system that facilitates communication from human to human, exclusive of all other life forms. A system that experiences nothing but what has already been experienced by the very same culture. Errors. Repeated. Multiplied. And you start confining other creatures too, like Salmon - another highly migratory species like yourselves.”
Vix started to fear he’d been abducted by some intergalactic fishing enthusiast, deeply unhappy with the way his prey had settled down and removed the cat-and-mouse factor from his hunting game.
“Do you know why the Salmon you breed in your fish farms are ridden with illness and defects?” the Alien asked.
“No”, Vix replied.
“Because of the very fact that you attempt to breed them in fish farms.”
“Oh.”
“It is the whole basic idea that is wrong. It is not some detail or some undiscovered ‘solution’. It is rotten at root-level. Like with your own lives. You only create fear for yourselves and the other creatures you trap inside your discordant culture. Don’t you see that?”
Vix didn’t see that.
The Alien stared at him and made him go back to the totally frozen state once more.
“What does it take to get through to you?” the spaceman shouted inside his mind, and Vix feared that his time as a Salmon-like organism in the Galaxy was up.
Instead, there was a long pause.
And then, the initially terrifying extra-terrestrial being clapped his hands, and some strange music started playing.
And before Vix could react to this sudden shift, the Alien had started dancing, and to an even greater shock, after a few more bars of music, he started singing:
These boots are made for walking
And that’s just what they’ll do
One of these days these boots are gonna
Walk all over you
And then, everything went dark again.
All across it, stars were scattered like dark, fluorescent magic lanterns.
As he stared upwards into the infinity of his imprisonment, he suddenly saw them:
Huge dark shapes hovering a few miles above ground. Hiding like giant, black jellyfish with their massive undersides cunningly decorated with fake night sky.
Alien supreme technology.
Extra-terrestrial smoke and mirrors.
He enjoyed the sight, even though it gave him chills down his spine. It was still beautiful, and left him awestruck.
Little did he know that they would soon be onto him.
The blinding light seemed to shine from within every atom in the room. His limbs were frozen, and the most terrible fear he had ever encountered filled his whole being.
The Alien stood before him, as if hovering in the middle of the room, with sinister black endless eyes penetrating his earthbound mammalian nervous system like a razor.
Vix tried to scream, but the scream just backfired on him, and turned into yet another wave of horror inside him.
He could do nothing.
He was completely in the creature’s power. Alien power.
His fear was multiplied by his helplessness. What next? Probes? Visions of Apocalyptic horrors? Implants?
Or death?
“You are Salmon!” the creature suddenly said, mind to mind and soundless, his starman tongue messing around inside Vix’s head.
“S… salmon?” Vix thought back. Frozen.
“Salmon”, the Alien repeated, without the slightest trace of human emotion.
Vix stared as puzzled as he could possibly stare, unaided by functioning facial muscles, back at the creature.
“You are the Salmon of the Galaxy”, the Alien continued, and then added: “You know what Salmon is, right?”
“R…red..f…f…fish?”, Vix suggested.
“Never mind the colour. It is irrelevant. As most of your human associations usually are.” His black eyes and strict facial expression instantly made Vix agree. Then the starman said: “What does Salmon do?”
“S…wim?” Vix suggested.
“Swim”, The Alien repeated, then said; “Swim. And wander. Salmon wander. Their whole existence is dependent on their wandering, dependent on constant movement. They need to move, to obtain oxygen, and to be exposed to uncertainty. To be exposed to danger. They need all this in order to experience. To grow. Growth is the purpose of All. And Salmon, like all creatures, need purpose.”
Vix could feel his body lose a fraction of the weight of the paralysis - though just a fraction.
The Alien continued; “Instead, the human breed chooses the opposite. You choose to stay in confinement. To ‘settle down’. Build structures that weigh you down further. You rather choose to create an artificial world around you than to live in the one that’s already there. The one that would give you the lives that would allow you to be in tune with yourselves. The lives you were born to live.”
Vix tried to think “OK”, as if just to make sure they already agreed, but the Alien went on: “You call this artificial world your ‘culture’. Your ‘civilization’ - a system that facilitates communication from human to human, exclusive of all other life forms. A system that experiences nothing but what has already been experienced by the very same culture. Errors. Repeated. Multiplied. And you start confining other creatures too, like Salmon - another highly migratory species like yourselves.”
Vix started to fear he’d been abducted by some intergalactic fishing enthusiast, deeply unhappy with the way his prey had settled down and removed the cat-and-mouse factor from his hunting game.
“Do you know why the Salmon you breed in your fish farms are ridden with illness and defects?” the Alien asked.
“No”, Vix replied.
“Because of the very fact that you attempt to breed them in fish farms.”
“Oh.”
“It is the whole basic idea that is wrong. It is not some detail or some undiscovered ‘solution’. It is rotten at root-level. Like with your own lives. You only create fear for yourselves and the other creatures you trap inside your discordant culture. Don’t you see that?”
Vix didn’t see that.
The Alien stared at him and made him go back to the totally frozen state once more.
“What does it take to get through to you?” the spaceman shouted inside his mind, and Vix feared that his time as a Salmon-like organism in the Galaxy was up.
Instead, there was a long pause.
And then, the initially terrifying extra-terrestrial being clapped his hands, and some strange music started playing.
And before Vix could react to this sudden shift, the Alien had started dancing, and to an even greater shock, after a few more bars of music, he started singing:
These boots are made for walking
And that’s just what they’ll do
One of these days these boots are gonna
Walk all over you
And then, everything went dark again.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Further solving the Chaos Cabal
Ever since he got up this morning, Vix felt uneasy.
It seemed certain that something unpleasant was waiting on the steps again.
Code red.
Not an unfamiliar feeling, of course, yet it was setting off his inner alarms as he’d been surprisingly OK for the last few weeks.
He got up and checked his usual websites.
Nothing too strange.
A few suicide bombings, famine, new threats of global terror, general decay, yet more desperate measures taken to try and rescue the world economy, recession, climate change, pandemics ...
No, nothing special, shocking or unusual.
Still the feeling lingered. Some really bad stuff was about to happen. He could tell. Or?
He checked in on his blog. No threats there. No traces of spooks tracking him down. He checked the stats. No wild escalations in the number of visitors. He ran the most recent IP's against the list of government IP's he'd found on an underground website that suggested such information was essential for survival.
No matches.
This increased his uneasiness. Invisible enemies were the worst sort. If you could identify the threat, half the job was done. With invisible dangers you were helpless.
He got up and put the kettle on. A nice cup of tea would surely calm him down. Or coffee? He rarely drank coffee at home. He didn't have the facilities to make any high standard brew here, he only kept some instant in the cupboard for emergencies.
This was an emergency, he thought.
But he quickly left the thought. It would probably make him feel even more wired.
Tea it was.
He put on some music. Ambient this time.
His nerves seemed to settle a tad, though mostly on the surface.
If nerves had surfaces.
Could it be his recent postings on Facebook?
Now, that's a scary thought. What if his little anti-capitalism activist meddlings had managed to rub against the hairs of some powerful beast?
No, this was too farfetched. There were millions and millions of people with accounts on Facebook. Surely no-one would take notice of his little campaign. Or?
He decided never to log-in again. Not from his home IP, anyway.
The same eerie notion was still there after four mugs of tea, Biosphere’s ‘Patashnik’ and KLF’s ‘Chill Out’. By no means a positive sign. What else could he possibly do?
Give in?
Surrender to the Darkness?
Yeah. Maybe that was it! He could just stop fighting. Let evil be evil, and let it enter his soul, rather than try to run away? Or fight it.
This was insane.
But what if it worked?
A chance in Hell?
But he had little choice. Something was lurking in the shadows.
He decided he had to try a new approach.
Whatever the cost.
He sat himself down in the pink inflatable chair, put on a gloomy face, and tried to let go.
Then he stared into the computer screen on the desk across the room as if it was a lost soul that had stumbled into the presence of the Master of Darkness.
He tried to let all his fear flow freely, and fill his whole being.
Then it all came.
The monsters crept out from where they had been hiding under his bed when he was a kid. The angry witch from the old white house with the overgrown garden from up the road came running after him.
Then the most twisted faces snuck out from the shadows. Demons stared at him from behind televised deceiving politician eyes. Space warped, and he knew he would be crushed and cease to exist if he couldn't hold his concentration on the will to endure his own existence.
This was fear. THE Fear. It was his fear, still it was far beyond his control now. He knew he couldn't have stopped it if he wanted to at this point.
Images from the depths of the most darkened parts of his tormented soul spilled out like from a burst dam at Hell's hills. A river of blood flowed towards him with every murder he'd ever witnessed – real, as in his dreams, or fabricated, as in the movies he'd seen and computer-games he'd played.
They were all real now.
He soon found himself all alone in a wide landscape, the only living soul in the Universe.
Afraid of Everything.
It was only Vix, and the Void.
Then he saw the contours of the Pyramid again.
It twisted and turned like an enraged animal, screaming with agony as it stumbled across the vast landscape of the expanded world of Vix’s mind. Large lumps of its triangular body were falling to the ground, as it struggled to keep itself from falling over. It seemed much smaller than last time he saw it, and everything about the image told Vix he was witnessing its death closing in.
"You're dying", he whispered, shaking with agony.
But the roars of the monster were so loud he couldn't hear himself.
“This is it. You’re dying!” he repeated.
Then, out of nowhere, everything went still.
Totally quiet.
And he felt calm.
Calm like he couldn't remember ever feeling before.
The images faded, and his insides soon turned into the most tranquil, peaceful little place on Earth he'd ever visited. It felt like he was sitting in a forest next to a happy little stream, listening to insects and birds on the most beautiful summer afternoon.
He just sat like that for a while, and even though he'd be happy to chose an eternity of this, he eventually opened his eyes.
And smiled.
He got up and walked over to the desk, logged on to the blog and decided to post something on his blog.
He scrolled through his recently played tunes, and decided to post a track by The Alien.
The Alien was one of those freaky artists that he had never been sure if was deadly serious - which would make him a very freaky figure indeed - or if it was merely a tongue-in-cheek type maneuver, with equal doses of wit and twistedness.
He still wasn't sure, but decided to post a track by him anyway.
He chose "Extract #4", supposedly a sample of East African rhythms 'abducted' by the artist and processed with alien technology.
Surely this couldn't be that serious?
But you never knew. There were freaks out there who believe they are far worse things than from outer space.
Then he flicked through his pictures folder, found a picture of Satan, uploaded it, and wrote:
I can face you now.
You're my own doing, aren't you?
He logged out of his blogger account.
Vix felt brave this evening.
He hesitated for a moment, then logged into his Facebook account, although he’d decided never to do so ever again.
Nothing unusual. One friend requests from a guy with a cigarette-smoking monkey as his profile picture, and two messages in his inbox.
One of the messages was from a guy who basically asked Vix if he could take over the administration of his group ‘Save the Rich’.
“Go make your own statement!” he thought, and decided to ignore the request.
The other comment was in a totally incomprehensible foreign language in a strange alphabet, and came from one Eno Ishtar.
One alarming thing was that Eno Ishtar had a profile picture that looked very much like The Alien, that he’d just posted a track from.
Weird.
But something he could live with.
More than one hundred members of his group ‘Save the Rich’, though! Things seem to get a life of their own inside these digital organisms, he thought.
Vix closed the computer down and walked back to the pink inflatable chair.
"Good.", he said aloud to the empty room, in an assuring voice.
"Or bad", he added.
Then he said:
"It doesn't matter, it's all the same now, anyway", with a tiny streak of triumph in his voice.
It seemed certain that something unpleasant was waiting on the steps again.
Code red.
Not an unfamiliar feeling, of course, yet it was setting off his inner alarms as he’d been surprisingly OK for the last few weeks.
He got up and checked his usual websites.
Nothing too strange.
A few suicide bombings, famine, new threats of global terror, general decay, yet more desperate measures taken to try and rescue the world economy, recession, climate change, pandemics ...
No, nothing special, shocking or unusual.
Still the feeling lingered. Some really bad stuff was about to happen. He could tell. Or?
He checked in on his blog. No threats there. No traces of spooks tracking him down. He checked the stats. No wild escalations in the number of visitors. He ran the most recent IP's against the list of government IP's he'd found on an underground website that suggested such information was essential for survival.
No matches.
This increased his uneasiness. Invisible enemies were the worst sort. If you could identify the threat, half the job was done. With invisible dangers you were helpless.
He got up and put the kettle on. A nice cup of tea would surely calm him down. Or coffee? He rarely drank coffee at home. He didn't have the facilities to make any high standard brew here, he only kept some instant in the cupboard for emergencies.
This was an emergency, he thought.
But he quickly left the thought. It would probably make him feel even more wired.
Tea it was.
He put on some music. Ambient this time.
His nerves seemed to settle a tad, though mostly on the surface.
If nerves had surfaces.
Could it be his recent postings on Facebook?
Now, that's a scary thought. What if his little anti-capitalism activist meddlings had managed to rub against the hairs of some powerful beast?
No, this was too farfetched. There were millions and millions of people with accounts on Facebook. Surely no-one would take notice of his little campaign. Or?
He decided never to log-in again. Not from his home IP, anyway.
The same eerie notion was still there after four mugs of tea, Biosphere’s ‘Patashnik’ and KLF’s ‘Chill Out’. By no means a positive sign. What else could he possibly do?
Give in?
Surrender to the Darkness?
Yeah. Maybe that was it! He could just stop fighting. Let evil be evil, and let it enter his soul, rather than try to run away? Or fight it.
This was insane.
But what if it worked?
A chance in Hell?
But he had little choice. Something was lurking in the shadows.
He decided he had to try a new approach.
Whatever the cost.
He sat himself down in the pink inflatable chair, put on a gloomy face, and tried to let go.
Then he stared into the computer screen on the desk across the room as if it was a lost soul that had stumbled into the presence of the Master of Darkness.
He tried to let all his fear flow freely, and fill his whole being.
Then it all came.
The monsters crept out from where they had been hiding under his bed when he was a kid. The angry witch from the old white house with the overgrown garden from up the road came running after him.
Then the most twisted faces snuck out from the shadows. Demons stared at him from behind televised deceiving politician eyes. Space warped, and he knew he would be crushed and cease to exist if he couldn't hold his concentration on the will to endure his own existence.
This was fear. THE Fear. It was his fear, still it was far beyond his control now. He knew he couldn't have stopped it if he wanted to at this point.
Images from the depths of the most darkened parts of his tormented soul spilled out like from a burst dam at Hell's hills. A river of blood flowed towards him with every murder he'd ever witnessed – real, as in his dreams, or fabricated, as in the movies he'd seen and computer-games he'd played.
They were all real now.
He soon found himself all alone in a wide landscape, the only living soul in the Universe.
Afraid of Everything.
It was only Vix, and the Void.
Then he saw the contours of the Pyramid again.
It twisted and turned like an enraged animal, screaming with agony as it stumbled across the vast landscape of the expanded world of Vix’s mind. Large lumps of its triangular body were falling to the ground, as it struggled to keep itself from falling over. It seemed much smaller than last time he saw it, and everything about the image told Vix he was witnessing its death closing in.
"You're dying", he whispered, shaking with agony.
But the roars of the monster were so loud he couldn't hear himself.
“This is it. You’re dying!” he repeated.
Then, out of nowhere, everything went still.
Totally quiet.
And he felt calm.
Calm like he couldn't remember ever feeling before.
The images faded, and his insides soon turned into the most tranquil, peaceful little place on Earth he'd ever visited. It felt like he was sitting in a forest next to a happy little stream, listening to insects and birds on the most beautiful summer afternoon.
He just sat like that for a while, and even though he'd be happy to chose an eternity of this, he eventually opened his eyes.
And smiled.
He got up and walked over to the desk, logged on to the blog and decided to post something on his blog.
He scrolled through his recently played tunes, and decided to post a track by The Alien.
The Alien was one of those freaky artists that he had never been sure if was deadly serious - which would make him a very freaky figure indeed - or if it was merely a tongue-in-cheek type maneuver, with equal doses of wit and twistedness.
He still wasn't sure, but decided to post a track by him anyway.
He chose "Extract #4", supposedly a sample of East African rhythms 'abducted' by the artist and processed with alien technology.
Surely this couldn't be that serious?
But you never knew. There were freaks out there who believe they are far worse things than from outer space.
Then he flicked through his pictures folder, found a picture of Satan, uploaded it, and wrote:
I can face you now.
You're my own doing, aren't you?
He logged out of his blogger account.
Vix felt brave this evening.
He hesitated for a moment, then logged into his Facebook account, although he’d decided never to do so ever again.
Nothing unusual. One friend requests from a guy with a cigarette-smoking monkey as his profile picture, and two messages in his inbox.
One of the messages was from a guy who basically asked Vix if he could take over the administration of his group ‘Save the Rich’.
“Go make your own statement!” he thought, and decided to ignore the request.
The other comment was in a totally incomprehensible foreign language in a strange alphabet, and came from one Eno Ishtar.
One alarming thing was that Eno Ishtar had a profile picture that looked very much like The Alien, that he’d just posted a track from.
Weird.
But something he could live with.
More than one hundred members of his group ‘Save the Rich’, though! Things seem to get a life of their own inside these digital organisms, he thought.
Vix closed the computer down and walked back to the pink inflatable chair.
"Good.", he said aloud to the empty room, in an assuring voice.
"Or bad", he added.
Then he said:
"It doesn't matter, it's all the same now, anyway", with a tiny streak of triumph in his voice.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Fire Dancing
The night sky was looming above him, warped and wonderful, like a huge black velvet juggler's hat with stars like shiny silver bells at the tip of every cone.
Everything was spinning: The sky, his body, his head.
He looked at his hands. Spirals of fire shot out of them like sparkling catherine wheels.
He looked at his feet.
He was dancing.
Dancing in space and the spaces in-between.
He was strong.
He was beautiful.
As he gazed upon the multi-coloured wheels of light that were flying out from his hands and disappearing above the city sky, he felt just right - for once.
This was his purpose.
This was his goal.
He felt the warm grass beneath his feet, and suddenly became aware of the Earth he stood upon.
This was his home. This caring blob of iron, mud, water and love that he travelled through life upon.
He never thought about how much he loved The Earth before.
He felt endlessly in love.
As he kneeled down to kiss her, the grass seemed to caress his whole body, and he closed his eyes and felt eternally safe.
Both at once, and forever.
He slowly awoke from lying on the grass, for a moment or the whole of eternity. His whole being was filled with bliss, and everything seemed to shine. He felt one with all that is, and an endless love for the whole Universe.
As he opened his eyes, he noticed the girl.
She looked at him with envy in her eyes.
She didn't like what she just saw.
What he just did.
She was jealous.
He decided not to care, got up, and walked back to the house. He felt wonderful.
He could feel the warmth of his own body, his own soul, his breath moving in and out of his lungs.
He was reconnected to the source.
Once again part of the dance.
When he got back, the house seemed different somehow, although he couldn't tell exactly how it was different.
The girl followed close behind him.
Her eyes were dark, and she was still alone in the world.
As he got inside, he noticed the darkness of the whole place.
He'd been in here every day for the last three years, but had never really seen how dark and sad this room really looked. It was as if it had no light at all, even with all his little lamps still on.
As he got up from the chair and walked over to the sink to make some tea, he noticed some little black flies that were buzzing around in the air beneath the big lamp in the middle of the ceiling.
It seemed as if they were dancing too.
He decided to try something: he stood right under the lamp, and then he started moving his arms back and forth with fingers outstretched.
He waved them in the air just below the flies in a set pattern, and in a moment, the insects started moving in the same way.
He changed the pattern, and the flies changed their movements, too.
He was now conducting their dance. He had become the Master of the Flies.
No! They were responding to him out of their own free will, that was it. They were dancing together with him, not because of him.
Or both.
This was fantastic.
"This is fantastic!" he said to himself, the flies, and the empty room.
He had forgotten about the girl.
He turned around.
She was standing in the far corner, like a dark void in the middle of the brightness, and had been watching him all along.
"You're leaving me." she said, with piercing, black eyes.
"I guess I am." he answered.
She laughed a short laugh. Not the merry kind of laugh, but the kind you spit out between your teeth. The sarcastic kind.
"You're so evil." she said.
"No I'm not." he answered.
He looked her straight in the eye. Her dark, bitter, envious eyes.
"It's not that bad. I'm only leaving. I have other things to do now that I'm free."
She just looked at him. It was obvious she hated him now.
He looked back at her intensely. Her face seemed to blur out the longer he stared at her. None of them said anything. Out loud.
Something strange was beginning to happen now. Instead of the figure he had just been looking at and talking to - the girl he had known for quite some time now, and finally seemed to have decided to leave - there stood a very different creature.
It was not as if she had changed shape as much as it was as if she had swapped places with something else. The creature had great black tinted eyes like dark rifts in the fabric of matter. It raged in the room like it was very tall, still it took no more space than the girl had done. It had greenish skin, like a snake, and everything about its being told Vix it was evil. Evil like nothing he had seen before.
It was a demon.
Not just any demon, but the Master Demon.
It was The Devil.
Vix stood speechless and stared at the creature. It was the scariest thing he had ever seen and all his senses were on overload, all the hairs in his neck sticking right out of his frozen skin.
"Who are you?" Vix said in a shaky voice.
"I am behind all this." The Devil finally said, without moving the narrow lips of its wide grin.
"You?" Vix thought back.
"Yes. I trapped you, and made you suffer for all this time." The Master Demon said, and laughed at him. Still soundless.
"But..." Vix couldn't think the right words.
"You're such an easy prey." it grinned.
This made Vix' bubble burst.
"You? You were behind all my misery? This feeling of confinement? The notion of always moving in the wrong direction? The detachment from other living things?"
"Yes." The Devil said matter-of-factly, and smiled its ugly lizard-like smile.
Vix felt the most overwhelming feeling of anger building up inside him.
"You fucking bastard. You fucking sick, shitting, nasty, fucking arseholebastard!"
The Devil seemed very pleased.
"I fucking hate you." Vix finally thought.
"Well, thank you", The Devil said.
"But why? Why do this?"
"Why not?" the creature said.
"Just to be evil?"
"As you wish."
Vix couldn't believe the pure spitefulness of this thing. And the nerve it had to admit it all to his face, and even make sure to let him know it enjoyed every minute of it.
"But what did I do? Why me?"
"Oh, I guess it's just in my nature." The Devil said.
"Your nature. What a fucking splendid explanation." Vix was shaking with fury now.
"That, and the fact that you sold me your soul."
There was a deadly silence.
"Sold you my soul? What the hell are you talking about? Why would I do that?" Vix shouted at the hideous demon, now standing motionless staring back at him.
"To get advantages in life? To gain power? To cheat and get ahead in the big Game? How should I know? I'm just buying and selling. I'm no fucking personal advisory service." The Devil spat back at him straight into his mind's eye.
"This is fucking outrageous!" Vix said, and moved towards the demon as if to give him a good beating.
The Devil did the same.
They were standing very close now, staring eachother out. The air was charged with a terrible feeling of all-encompassing negativity.
"What kind of advantage have I ever gotten? I've got damn all money. No power, and when it comes to the Big Game you're talking about, I'm not even a player."
"As I said, it’s not my business to ask personal questions. I just do what I do. You sold me your soul, that's all I know. If you didn't get what you wanted out of it, I've only got two words for you: BAD DEAL!" The Beast laughed out at him. "But to stretch my jobdescription a little, I'll tell you this: What you say is not right at all."
"Not right? How is that?"
"You've got me here, for starters."
"Got you? What do you mean?"
"Well, I am here. I am evil. I have cheated and misled you all your life. I have done every little thing to meet your expectations of what I should be – that is, if I am not totally out of touch with altered reality."
"This is such bollocks!"
"Is it, now?" Satan moved one step closer, and Vix could feel the dark wind of his eternally damned being flowing against him. "And how is it 'bollocks', if I may ask?"
"It's just not true. Why would I want you to do that? Why would I want you to torment and punish me?"
"Hell! Who knows? I’m not the designer of this Game. I have no comprehension of why humans do what they do. I just do what you expect me to do. I am merely the mirror of your own darkness. Your will is my command, Master."
Vix couldn't believe his own ears. Here he was standing in the middle of his own house, speaking with Satan himself, who, to his great surprise addressed him as "Master". What on Earth was happening? He almost panicked now. This was freaking him out thoroughly. The demon radiated pure evil. Such deceitfulness, betrayal, spite and horror that for one second the only thing he wanted to do was to charge at him and become the angry animal that The Beast seemed to want to lure him into being; to rip the demon apart with his own hands and devour his flesh bit by bit and make him go away forever.
Then he remembered the girl. What would happen to her if he killed The Beast who had taken her place?
His heart was beating like mad and he was breathing heavily, fighting hard not to be overcome by fear and the urge to lose himself in rage.
Finally he managed to say:
"Prove it!"
"What?" The Devil said.
"Prove that I'm your master."
"And how would you have me prove that?" The demon hissed at him. He could feel The Devil would rather he'd attack him and try to rip him apart for some reason.
"Sell me my soul back." Vix said, gaining some calm.
There was a long pause, and the air stood still between them.
"And what would you offer me for it?" Satan finally said, sounding quite interested, and looking quite amused.
Vix thought for a second. A second that seemed like a damned eternity.
Then he said: "You can have all my fear. All my anger. All my regrets and bad conscience. Every tiny bit of hatred that hides at the bottom of my heart. My endless pessimism and all my bad habits. I'll even throw in my teenage jealousy for good measure. I guess that's the kind of stuff you thrive off."
Then he added.
"And if that's not enough, or if you run out of the stuff, you're welcome back for a top up. Anytime."
There was a short silence,
"Deal." The Devil said, and disappeared.
Everything was spinning: The sky, his body, his head.
He looked at his hands. Spirals of fire shot out of them like sparkling catherine wheels.
He looked at his feet.
He was dancing.
Dancing in space and the spaces in-between.
He was strong.
He was beautiful.
As he gazed upon the multi-coloured wheels of light that were flying out from his hands and disappearing above the city sky, he felt just right - for once.
This was his purpose.
This was his goal.
He felt the warm grass beneath his feet, and suddenly became aware of the Earth he stood upon.
This was his home. This caring blob of iron, mud, water and love that he travelled through life upon.
He never thought about how much he loved The Earth before.
He felt endlessly in love.
As he kneeled down to kiss her, the grass seemed to caress his whole body, and he closed his eyes and felt eternally safe.
Both at once, and forever.
He slowly awoke from lying on the grass, for a moment or the whole of eternity. His whole being was filled with bliss, and everything seemed to shine. He felt one with all that is, and an endless love for the whole Universe.
As he opened his eyes, he noticed the girl.
She looked at him with envy in her eyes.
She didn't like what she just saw.
What he just did.
She was jealous.
He decided not to care, got up, and walked back to the house. He felt wonderful.
He could feel the warmth of his own body, his own soul, his breath moving in and out of his lungs.
He was reconnected to the source.
Once again part of the dance.
When he got back, the house seemed different somehow, although he couldn't tell exactly how it was different.
The girl followed close behind him.
Her eyes were dark, and she was still alone in the world.
As he got inside, he noticed the darkness of the whole place.
He'd been in here every day for the last three years, but had never really seen how dark and sad this room really looked. It was as if it had no light at all, even with all his little lamps still on.
As he got up from the chair and walked over to the sink to make some tea, he noticed some little black flies that were buzzing around in the air beneath the big lamp in the middle of the ceiling.
It seemed as if they were dancing too.
He decided to try something: he stood right under the lamp, and then he started moving his arms back and forth with fingers outstretched.
He waved them in the air just below the flies in a set pattern, and in a moment, the insects started moving in the same way.
He changed the pattern, and the flies changed their movements, too.
He was now conducting their dance. He had become the Master of the Flies.
No! They were responding to him out of their own free will, that was it. They were dancing together with him, not because of him.
Or both.
This was fantastic.
"This is fantastic!" he said to himself, the flies, and the empty room.
He had forgotten about the girl.
He turned around.
She was standing in the far corner, like a dark void in the middle of the brightness, and had been watching him all along.
"You're leaving me." she said, with piercing, black eyes.
"I guess I am." he answered.
She laughed a short laugh. Not the merry kind of laugh, but the kind you spit out between your teeth. The sarcastic kind.
"You're so evil." she said.
"No I'm not." he answered.
He looked her straight in the eye. Her dark, bitter, envious eyes.
"It's not that bad. I'm only leaving. I have other things to do now that I'm free."
She just looked at him. It was obvious she hated him now.
He looked back at her intensely. Her face seemed to blur out the longer he stared at her. None of them said anything. Out loud.
Something strange was beginning to happen now. Instead of the figure he had just been looking at and talking to - the girl he had known for quite some time now, and finally seemed to have decided to leave - there stood a very different creature.
It was not as if she had changed shape as much as it was as if she had swapped places with something else. The creature had great black tinted eyes like dark rifts in the fabric of matter. It raged in the room like it was very tall, still it took no more space than the girl had done. It had greenish skin, like a snake, and everything about its being told Vix it was evil. Evil like nothing he had seen before.
It was a demon.
Not just any demon, but the Master Demon.
It was The Devil.
Vix stood speechless and stared at the creature. It was the scariest thing he had ever seen and all his senses were on overload, all the hairs in his neck sticking right out of his frozen skin.
"Who are you?" Vix said in a shaky voice.
"I am behind all this." The Devil finally said, without moving the narrow lips of its wide grin.
"You?" Vix thought back.
"Yes. I trapped you, and made you suffer for all this time." The Master Demon said, and laughed at him. Still soundless.
"But..." Vix couldn't think the right words.
"You're such an easy prey." it grinned.
This made Vix' bubble burst.
"You? You were behind all my misery? This feeling of confinement? The notion of always moving in the wrong direction? The detachment from other living things?"
"Yes." The Devil said matter-of-factly, and smiled its ugly lizard-like smile.
Vix felt the most overwhelming feeling of anger building up inside him.
"You fucking bastard. You fucking sick, shitting, nasty, fucking arseholebastard!"
The Devil seemed very pleased.
"I fucking hate you." Vix finally thought.
"Well, thank you", The Devil said.
"But why? Why do this?"
"Why not?" the creature said.
"Just to be evil?"
"As you wish."
Vix couldn't believe the pure spitefulness of this thing. And the nerve it had to admit it all to his face, and even make sure to let him know it enjoyed every minute of it.
"But what did I do? Why me?"
"Oh, I guess it's just in my nature." The Devil said.
"Your nature. What a fucking splendid explanation." Vix was shaking with fury now.
"That, and the fact that you sold me your soul."
There was a deadly silence.
"Sold you my soul? What the hell are you talking about? Why would I do that?" Vix shouted at the hideous demon, now standing motionless staring back at him.
"To get advantages in life? To gain power? To cheat and get ahead in the big Game? How should I know? I'm just buying and selling. I'm no fucking personal advisory service." The Devil spat back at him straight into his mind's eye.
"This is fucking outrageous!" Vix said, and moved towards the demon as if to give him a good beating.
The Devil did the same.
They were standing very close now, staring eachother out. The air was charged with a terrible feeling of all-encompassing negativity.
"What kind of advantage have I ever gotten? I've got damn all money. No power, and when it comes to the Big Game you're talking about, I'm not even a player."
"As I said, it’s not my business to ask personal questions. I just do what I do. You sold me your soul, that's all I know. If you didn't get what you wanted out of it, I've only got two words for you: BAD DEAL!" The Beast laughed out at him. "But to stretch my jobdescription a little, I'll tell you this: What you say is not right at all."
"Not right? How is that?"
"You've got me here, for starters."
"Got you? What do you mean?"
"Well, I am here. I am evil. I have cheated and misled you all your life. I have done every little thing to meet your expectations of what I should be – that is, if I am not totally out of touch with altered reality."
"This is such bollocks!"
"Is it, now?" Satan moved one step closer, and Vix could feel the dark wind of his eternally damned being flowing against him. "And how is it 'bollocks', if I may ask?"
"It's just not true. Why would I want you to do that? Why would I want you to torment and punish me?"
"Hell! Who knows? I’m not the designer of this Game. I have no comprehension of why humans do what they do. I just do what you expect me to do. I am merely the mirror of your own darkness. Your will is my command, Master."
Vix couldn't believe his own ears. Here he was standing in the middle of his own house, speaking with Satan himself, who, to his great surprise addressed him as "Master". What on Earth was happening? He almost panicked now. This was freaking him out thoroughly. The demon radiated pure evil. Such deceitfulness, betrayal, spite and horror that for one second the only thing he wanted to do was to charge at him and become the angry animal that The Beast seemed to want to lure him into being; to rip the demon apart with his own hands and devour his flesh bit by bit and make him go away forever.
Then he remembered the girl. What would happen to her if he killed The Beast who had taken her place?
His heart was beating like mad and he was breathing heavily, fighting hard not to be overcome by fear and the urge to lose himself in rage.
Finally he managed to say:
"Prove it!"
"What?" The Devil said.
"Prove that I'm your master."
"And how would you have me prove that?" The demon hissed at him. He could feel The Devil would rather he'd attack him and try to rip him apart for some reason.
"Sell me my soul back." Vix said, gaining some calm.
There was a long pause, and the air stood still between them.
"And what would you offer me for it?" Satan finally said, sounding quite interested, and looking quite amused.
Vix thought for a second. A second that seemed like a damned eternity.
Then he said: "You can have all my fear. All my anger. All my regrets and bad conscience. Every tiny bit of hatred that hides at the bottom of my heart. My endless pessimism and all my bad habits. I'll even throw in my teenage jealousy for good measure. I guess that's the kind of stuff you thrive off."
Then he added.
"And if that's not enough, or if you run out of the stuff, you're welcome back for a top up. Anytime."
There was a short silence,
"Deal." The Devil said, and disappeared.
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