I woke up from my attempted suicide a day later with immense stomach pain. I found myself strapped on a medical bed; the doctors explained they saved my life and vacuumed my stomach, saying that the poison I consumed had expired. I am no longer fit to work anywhere nor considered safe to be let out in public. I was labelled Criminally Insane after my brutal murder of Chief O'Bannon, which was covered up, and no news was presented to the public.
They locked me up in Black Spring State Hospital for the criminally insane, located on the banks of the Connecticut River, in the middle of the boneyard nowhere, far from civilization and far from any normal folk who'd go snooping around here. I've been told by other special case inmates that this place is a top-secret government facility that houses people who have had encounters and connections with the strange paranormal world beyond our reality. They tell me it is run by a shadowy organization known simply as K9. There is a military outpost here that poses as a middle-of-nowhere US army base and barracks where veteran knights of K9 are stationed here to guard us, along with the black suit boys from the FBI; they call it now, which are under some special shadow department that concerns itself with strange cases like mine.
I have resided in Black Spring for the past ten years now. I talk very little to the other inmates, who are rather wild, violent and outlandish compared to me. I ask myself constantly each day I wake. What's the point in keeping us here to slowly wither away? Is it all some sadistic scheme to maintain the fragile facades of normalcy they try to present to the public? It doesn't matter. It will all fall apart like a rotten house of cards one day. Like me, rotting in my cell here.
I spent the last ten years of my life here, playing a good boy, talking with the nurses and doctors, and being cooperative when they needed to gather information about my experiences. The staff here is highly educated and works with secret organizations of many governments and military branches worldwide, but they don't tell me much. I am given pens and paper as rewards for complying with their inquiry.
Five years ago, I was given my father's last letter from Doctor Bradley. He said it was held in his possession when I first came here, as my apartment was raided and cleared out. I opened that damn letter after all these years. My father confessed to me that he came from Bremen Island before the purge of 1895. I had an aunt, his sister, who gave birth to a cousin named Rudolf. Married my mother in 1900 and had me, their proud little shit. I couldn't believe it! I was a freak like Rudolf, Ostermann, and my father. But he confessed he drank to keep his demons at bay, but it wasn't enough to calm his wrath and rage, and he took it out on me and my mother for so long until he died. In the last lengthy letter he wrote, he apologized for all those years of abuse he did and asked for my forgiveness for all he had done. I didn't know what to think, as I held onto these letters and had them taped to my notebook, looking at them every now and then and just wondering, wondering, what am I even?
As the years have passed, I have become known as a hoarder in my cell block due to my collection of writing material; I have decorated the walls of my cell and my body with familiar sigils, runes, and hieroglyphs, all strangely sacred to me that I revere deeply now. But in my day-to-day diary, I hide away from prying eyes in a small nook in the walls I've carved out, where I keep my most intimate thoughts and this story hidden.
The wardens and head of security here are sardonic jackasses that I play ball with, pretending to be a good little boy for their mind fuck games and to hold myself as an example, a good cooperative patient of their psychological methods controlling the insane. I have grown to have nothing but utter fucking contempt for how they treated me. It kills me like a poison I hold inside me, burning every day that I wish to spit it out at them! Seeing how they'll always condescend to me, pat me on the head, and parade me like a good little monkey who does his sideshow on a whim whenever the "Higher Ups" from 9E, who inspect this place to procure more funding to continue to hold me and the many freaks who dwell here.
Ever since I've been here, every year on my birthday, which I was born on the 30th of April 1900, I get a gift in the form of a whole Peking duck to eat for myself that Doctor Bradley gives to me. I find peace when I eat my favourite meal, but it just makes me miss the outside so much, so badly. Midway through those rewarding meals, I find myself crying in misery, savouring that duck so greedily that I only got once a year since I've been here. Gosh, it hits me like a brick wall how much I miss Boston, my home, the smell of the sea and being in my old stomping ground. God damn it! I miss it so fucking much!
Tonight will be my last entry in this diary of mine, as it is February 18th, 1935, the night of the pregnant moon, ten years since that unmentioned incident. As I write this, my body is weakened and ravaged through the ten years of rotting in this prison. My life is all but destroyed, the things I did for my country are all but forgotten, and the things I saw will forever haunt and torment me. They still do haunt me. It haunts me every waking moment. And will haunt me into my death.
The regret I felt in that ceremonial chamber weighs heavily on me the most, and it hurts, it hurts really badly. How that perfect life I wished to have, is nothing but dust now in the memory hole of this miserable existence I call my pathetic life. I can't help but feel Ostermann is somewhere out in our world, alive and well and reforming his cult with new eager followers. He's an immortal who walks among us, disguised in our very flesh, yet he profanes the air we breathe with each breath he takes as he preaches his demonic Gospel of the Dreaded All-Father that I dare not name. Ostermann is a demonic god, bearer of great and dire knowledge beyond our human comprehension and understanding that the Elder Gods who gave him such gifts would laugh at our feeble attempts at trying to reason with or understand their immeasurable ageless beings.
At this hour of the evening, at half-past 11, when all are in slumber, the guards are slowly making their rounds in each cell block. I look upon the noose I've made with my bedsheets tied to the bars of my window, basking in the light of the full moon. I can't help but feel peace will never come to me once I hang from my own gallows. Ever since that dark day that tainted my soul, I have found there is no peace in the universe, only momentary ceasefires. There never was peace, only chaos that birthed forth all of creation, cursed to be forever in a constant cycle of combat and never-ending change. Where old orders fall, and new orders rise from the ashes of the old, and thus the cycle repeats itself for an infinite amount of times that is immeasurable and maddening to comprehend. Nevertheless, I have come to accept this deep understanding I struggle with as profound, beautiful truth.
It is truer than all the scriptures of humankind's conception of false gods, made in their flawed image with shallow understandings beyond our three-dimensional realm and selfish desires for salvation. This reality where humanity is a fragile meaningless thing caught in the web of a vast spectrum between Chaos and Order that collectively, we are not meant to live long in the cosmic scheme of things, only a few chosen or those who drank from the high deep wells of knowledge of the Elder Gods who've beckon to all in their dreams to surmount their mountains of trials and to find their hidden Shangri-La. The few who accepted this offer and triumphed over the trials are fortunate to go beyond our mere mortal coils and stand next to the shoulders of immortal beings. We're all looked down upon, the ignorant masses who are left behind. We're no better than herded animals.
As my final moments draw near, I can only hope the last thread I hold to my heart so dearly, so greedily, that my only hope and wish now is to see Wise Yarnǒtho, ruling the shadows from beyond our world where he connected with us for a few seconds through me, that I, a mere human mortal blessed by his holy hand. With this, my last hope, Wise Yarnǒtho will forgive me of my sins against him and his acolytes, and take up my shattered soul, laid out bare and naked before his sacred shadow, and bring peace to me in his realm so chaotic and twisted, yet so fascinating and magnificent. That is my only hope now, that is my only hope, is my only hope, is my hope, my hope.
Gærlash Nelsh'nä Yärlnǒtholl, félin'glúyi, nágesh'félin'dhömm ashnül'grähmm alm'nagrásh darish'nalümm Drömm'fhyitällgen...
-Fin-
YOU ARE READING
Fragility
HorrorIt's 1925. The Height of Prohibition Era America. Detective John Lancy works for the Boston Police Department, when on the 2nd of February, John Lancy is requested by a mysterious woman to find her missing father which leads into a strange undergrou...
