maybe i'm just tired

[RobertMason]

Transcript Two begins

MARIE GRAYSON: Hello, Doctor Thurgood.
SHEILA THURGOOD: Hello.
MG: Have you been well?
ST: Very good. How have you been, Marie?
(pause)
MG: I've had a bit of an unpleasant surprise this weekend, but it's all par for the course, I'm afraid. I'll manage, and laugh about it, a year from now.
ST: Would you like to talk about it?
MG: No, that's quite alright. Thank you for the offer, but it's entirely my own matter to deal with. I'm afraid that you'd only muck things up, if you don't mind me putting it bluntly. (pause) My favorite color isn't blue, by the way. It's orange. I just figured I'd clear that up. Everybody thinks it's blue. Damn my name.
ST: Could you tell me about your father?
MG: Sure. I am most certainly not harboring a secret desire to kill my mother and take her place as my father's wife, regardless of what Freud thinks.
(pause)
ST: I'm not entirely sure it was Freud who said that. Oedipus complex, certainly, but I don't he was the one who came up with the Electra Complex.
MG: My aunt is... an interesting character. I like her. I think it's because of her face.
ST: Her face?
MG: She has this utterly, utterly unremarkable face. So very ordinary. You would forget it in an instant if you saw her in a crowd. But the way she's got her hair— it hangs just below her ears— frames it so that it looks positively brilliant. (MG chuckles) Brilliant. I like that word. Brilliant. It's like water, flowing out the mouth. Brilliant. (MG chuckles) Sorry. Where were we? Ah, yes. My aunt. Her face sets the tone, I think.
ST: What do you mean?
MG: She just looks like this utterly unremarkable person, and then there are all these little tiny details that make her into something... Something very interesting.
ST: That's how many people are.
MG: No. Most people only turn out to be even more unremarkable, if it's at all possible for them to do so. My aunt doesn't really like new people. I don't know why. I don't remember anything happening in my life, so it must have been before. Perhaps she'd simply heard too many of those stories about strangers as a child, and she never grew out of the fear. Aunt Mandy is quiet, when she's with somebody she doesn't know. She has a way of just sitting there so calmly, so statuesque, that she almost seems to suck out all the sound in the room. Whenever she talks to anybody, even me, she just stays still, so very still, like this...
(short silence)
MG: ...until you're done talking, and then she talks, in turn, and then she goes statue-like again. It's creepy. But wonderful. I love it. These little quirks of hers. She plays the piano, and she sings, and she's a master, we all tell her, but she doesn't have the confidence to do anything about it. She won't even do any singing in the church choir.
ST: You go to church?
MG: Of course. The... Evangelical Covenant Church, actually. Not the... Not the usual sort. We just... sort of fell into it, you could say. We go more for the people than the doctrine.
ST: Of course. What do you think of the soul, Marie? What do you think it is?
MG: The soul? I... (MG chuckles) Oh. I see. Right. It's hard to describe. I don't believe in an immortal soul, though. Perhaps it does last a long time, but even if it does, it certainly doesn't last forever. (pause) I believe that the soul is a sort of extension of ourselves, rooted in our biology. Maybe that's the best way to put it. Our souls develop as our bodies do, and they most likely are extinguished when our bodies die.
ST: Then what is the soul? What does it do? It is us, so to speak? The part of us that says "I," Marie?
(pause)
MG: Perhaps. (pause) I guess I could describe it best as being the Ego, or the Super-Ego, or whatever. One of the two. I haven't read Freud in a long while. But among the many other things it does, the soul restrains our Id. A person with two souls is no better off than a person with only one, but a person with no souls lacks all desire to restrain his urges, except so that he might be able to indulge in them more effectively. A restraint born out of cunning, not conscience. Souls can get sick. Souls can get stronger, especially the more it is tested without failing. Souls can be ripped out of you, and other things can be put in their place.
ST: Is that was you believe happened to John?
MG: Imagine that his soul was a person, and his body was an automobile. It is not a perfect analogy, since cars cannot move on their own, but... (pause) John's soul restrains him. It keeps the car going on a certain course. The Horror Artist ripped him out of the car, and had this been all it did, John would have continued his life, but concerned only with indulging his desires. Which would not be an inherently bad thing.
ST: It wouldn't?
MG: If a person really has a desire to do something which we would consider to be good, that person will still have the desire to do it, even without a soul. Losing the soul doesn't make a person evil. You can be a saint, even without a soul. It just takes that person and scrapes off everything but the Id, and cores out the sense of self, the sense of "I." (pause) That's as close of an explanation as I can give, but even most animals have something sort of like a soul.
ST: Interesting. Could you tell me about your brother?
MG: Howard's eleven. He has these thin little glasses that are always slipping off the edge of his nose. He's a bit small for his age, and I think this is why he's so quiet and shy. He's oddly intelligent, when it comes to some things. Relationships, feelings, and bugs. Very observant, especially when it comes to people. (pause) And bugs. We've had some conversations, here and there.
ST: About what?
(short silence)
MG: About me, mostly. I'm... I'm not exactly close to the rest of my family.
ST: I thought you—
MG: I lied. Honestly, couldn't you tell? (MG sighs) There are five children in my family, aged eleven and under. You're right. I don't talk to my father all that much. I have no idea what he does in the factories now, but whatever it is he does, he does it fifty hours a week. Once a month, he's gone for the weekend, doing drills with the Guard, plus another two weeks in April and two in October. He nearly kills himself trying to make sure to always have dinner with us, and then always have enough sleep so that he's fully alert in the factory. Mom sells shoes. Aunt Mandy is a bank teller. They both work a lot of hours, and while there's always one of them at home, it's rare that there's the both of them, before it's time to start making dinner. There's shopping to be done. There's cleaning to be done. I don't know the last time Aunt Mandy has been able to sit down and play the piano. Maybe it was a few months ago. Is it too much to ask that the seventeen-year old girl take care of herself?
ST: And what do you do?
MG: I take care of the garden, and I go to school, and I make money. (MG chuckles) I find it to be a point of pride that, for several years now, I've been able to feed myself only on what I myself have earned, and that I've usually been able to put a little bit more towards what the family in general has. (pause) I'm not just self-sufficient. I actually make a surplus. I'm a contributor.
ST: That's important to you.
MG: One of the few things that are. We don't really talk too much. There never seems to be enough time, and we're always so tired. I usually just read, when we have dinner together. Somebody says something, and I respond, if it's directed at me, and life goes on.
ST: Why don't you put the books away, and actually talk to them more?
MG: So that we don't find out that we don't have anything to talk about, anymore. I've grown up, and they don't entirely realize how I've done it. They don't understand how I think, or what I've gone through, and while that's the clichéd statement every teenager is required, by law, to say, it's true, in my case. Maybe Father has had some similar experiences, but if he's ever been hurt the way I have, physically, it certainly hasn't even been this young.
ST: How have you been hurt?
MG: I've had bones broken. I've had crushed glass rubbed into my skin. I've been burned. I've been stabbed countless times.
ST: I...
MG: Something wrong, Doctor Thurgood? Perhaps we could go on to the ink blots? Would that make you feel better?
ST: Maybe we should—
MG: What time is it?
ST: It's been about twelve minutes, Marie.
MG: Thank you.
ST: So, I'll hold up the ink—
MG: Yes, yes, I know. 
ST— Well, I'll hold up the cards one by one. Just tell me what comes to mind.
MG: It's a face of some sort. No, more like the... like a sort of bony plate over the top of a head. Not a human head. More... canine. Four eyes. Ears or short horns or something, on the side. Next, please.
(pause)
MG: Another face. His chin is red, and there's more blotches of red paint over his eyes. It looks three-dimensional, his face. Splotches of red all over his cheeks. Before you start thinking I'm a psycho, I think it's paint of some sort, not blood. His chin is a bit spiky. Two little prongs or whatever coming down from the bottom. I want to say that they're sensory appendages, or something. No teeth. So he's old. Do you see the... the spiky things?
(short silence)
ST: I believe so. But let's keep the discussion until afterwards.
MG: Of course, Doctor Thurgood. Next, please.
(pause)
MG: Thank you. Two women, bending slightly over some object. Their heads are pointed, almost. Their chins are, that is. But their heads look kinda masculine. They might be ripping the object apart. There's a sort of film thing between the two pieces. Their legs are very stiff and straight. There's some sort of flying animal— no. It's a bowtie. Sorry. Oh, and those red splotches are a pair of falling monkeys. I think they were dropped. They seem like smart monkeys. They wouldn't have just fallen. Unless it's a display. It looks like a show, kinda. They seem rather bored with it, not frightened, like they would be if they had been dropped. Next, please.
(pause)
MG: A dragon. A short-necked dragon. Very short-necked. I find it very hard to believe that Rorschach didn't make this one intentionally. All the details are just right, even the shading for where the eyes should be, and those little things trailing off the nostrils, and the spikes coming off around the eyes. I can't tell if those are tails or legs, at the end, though. I don't think it has legs at all, though. It probably spends its whole time just, you know, in flight. Like those birds. You know what I'm talking about, right? The birds?
ST: I believe so.
MG: Well, you're full of the same answers over and over, aren't you?
ST: I am trying not to affect the test.
MG: Next, please.
(pause)
MG: Thank you. A pretty butterfly. A pretty black butterfly, but there have to be black butterflies, too. It has a sort of fake head, on the other side, but it's so close to the body that I can't figure out how it would be a help at all. If something tried to bite it, it would still tear off half of the body with the fake head-and-antennae thing. Next, please.
(pause)
MG: Thank you. One of the crappers, I think. An elilogog. It's got the wings, and the cilia, and everything. Well, no tentacles, but nothing's perfect, right? It sort of gets too thin, as it goes up. (pause) Next, please.
(pause)
MG: I feel almost like a machine, going through that "Next, please. Thank you," routine. This one's a pair of apes or monkeys or something. Maybe gorillas. Silverbacks. "Humans" was on the tip of my tongue, but the faces are, I don't know, too stretched out, or protruding too far. You know what I mean. They're facing each other, and they're so fat that their bellies are just hanging out, and touching each other. Their eyebrows are very high up— perhaps they have very large eyes?— and they're engaged in a staring contest. Next, please.
(pause)
MG: Thank you. A seashell. Many different colors, of course. A sort of rainbow seashell? There's got to be some sort of scientific name for that. It also looks sort of like a faceplate. The blue splotches cover the eyes. So whatever is wearing it has to have some means of seeing through the mask. Or something. Perhaps that's all it is. Enhancing equipment. It really only looks like its covering the eyes and the mouth and the ears and such, and then some extra, to strap everything together. Well, that's got to be the nose. So perhaps it's not as human as I thought. That would be an oddly-shaped nose. On the other hand, it's nearly impossible to get perspective with most of these blots, so that might explain why the nose looks weird. It seems that the mask opens up in the front, splitting in half. Next, please.
(pause)
MG: Another dragon. Perhaps the same one as before, but I doubt it. The sides of the mouth aren't quite right, but it looks more stylistic than a representation of an actual lack of cheeks, or whatever those would be. It's just staring straight ahead, out of the picture. On the top of its head but, to the back, there are a pair of horns. Next, please.
(pause)
(indistinct noise)
MG: It looks like somebody dissected a yuggoth. All the parts are just... spread out on the table. So very colorful. I don't doubt that's what a yuggoth would look like, if you opened it up. The wings must have been ripped off. All I can see are the manipulatory limbs. The left mass of blue could be the head of a lizard. There's this one really dark dot that looks like an eye. The right splotch of yellow looks like a canary, with a really big eye. It's irritated at me for some reason. Or maybe it's just irritated at the world. The two middle streaks of yellow could be birds, too. Ostriches or emus. The green below it could be a weird mustache. And the orange bits could be odd carrots. Maybe squashes, somehow. The white could be the head of a strange-looking tarantula with a sort of frill standing up over its head, like one of those things that dimetrodon had. A sail, that's the word. And really big fangs. Like knives. But really, it's a dissected yuggoth with all the wings torn off.
ST: That's all there is.
MG: Well, that was more interesting than I'd thought it would be.
ST: Indeed. (pause) You mentioned quite a few odd things.
MG: Oh really?
ST: I'm not familiar with some of them. Like the cr— the elilogogs.
MG: Can't swear, eh?
ST: It's not proper, Marie, to do it so flippantly.
MG: Damn right it's not, Doctor Thurgood.
ST: Marie...
MG: You were just about asking for it, you know. A lot of us call them crappers because that's why they're important. Nowadays, they're dead, except for a few stragglers here and there. But back in the day, billions of years ago, they were spread all over the place. Now, what do you think happened? (chuckles) They defecated, or did something close enough to it— I don't know if it needs to be done in some particular fashion to qualify for the term— and they had trash, and rotting food that they'd throw in whatever sort of thing passed for a dumpster, for the elilogogs. And that's what we grew from. That's where life sprung forth from, here on Earth, and uncountable numbers of other worlds, all through the entire universe. One of the nice side effects of this is that, in many cases, you don't have to worry about not being able to eat anything, on another world. (pause) You could call them the Old Ones, or the Predecessors.
ST: That's a very... interesting story. What about the yuggoths?
MG: The yuggothr, actually. You add that "r" sound at the end, when it's plural. It's just a happy coincidence that the plural of elilogog adds an "s" like our language does.
ST: So what are the yuggothr like?
MG: Angry, bitter, paranoid. Nasty, but most of them have a good sense of humor. (laughs) Talk about alien psychologies all you want, but there are two universal languages that everyone understands: Mathematics, and black humor. (pause) Damn, that sounds racist. I mean dark humor. Void... Now you're going to write down that my problems are all related to racial insecurities or something...
ST: I know what you mean. Morbid humor. Gallows humor.
MG: Exactly. Thank you. The yuggothr are fatalists. They're pretty much resigned to what's coming.
ST: And what is that?
MG: Death. Extinction. I mentioned it before. They're the ones who served Him Who Is Not To Be Named. They were all Its Captains.
ST: You're throwing out too many confusing things at once. Who is that? Why are you switching between "Him" and "It" when you're talking about the same person? What do you mean, they were its captains?
MG: Its Captains, doctor. Honestly, one would think that you'd never developed the ability to hear when something's capitalized. Capital "I" in "It," like if we were talking about God and He— or It— was gender-neutral. Him Who Is Not To Be Named is one of the Princes, great big nasty things that are hard to understand, and which frequently come in conflict with each other. A full-out fight would break their playground, though, so They use us as proxies, when they aren't using us for other things. Or as They use us for other things; the Princes are mighty good multitaskers.
ST: And the Captains?
MG: I'm a Captain. The girl who saw possibilities, she was a Captain. We've all had one of our souls torn out, and replaced with a shard of the Prince we serve. The thaulsaunt, the knughst, the Chosen, the chutan, the Knights. We're the biggest and the baddest of the Princes' pawns. We're used to being limited to only a few spatial dimensions, we know how to stay hidden and below the notice of people like you, and we come up with stupid plans that our Princes never would have thought of, and which, against all odds, somehow manage to work. We're more capable than any number of cultists, and this is our home turf, and we're not about to be outmaneuvered by a bunch of pathetic leviathans who think they can just steal a body— if they even bother to do that— and then do as they please.
ST: Leviathan?
MG: The Princes are big leviathans. The biggest. There are littler ones. The... The thing that was using John... (pause) That was a leviathan. They're not native to this universe.
ST: I see...
MG: Hey, I'm out of here in thirty-odd weeks. What do I care if you think I'm insane? How much longer have I got?
(pause)
ST: You're just a little bit more than twenty minutes in, Marie.

[Darlica]

I find this story of yours very interesting.
Disturbing but entertaining and interesting and I happen to be a fan of those qualities. 

There is a Role playing game called Unknown Armies or UA for short, which both L and I are quite fond of, I have a feeling your story would fit very well into that world (RPG literature might have a bad reputation but I don't mean it as a negative critique nor do I think you are stealing ideas).

I'll comment more later, I'd like to see where you take this story first.

[RobertMason]

No offense taken at all. In fact, I positively love Unknown Armies, and the idea that maybe i'm just tired would fit well into it has made my day.

Also, again, feel free to throw out questions (and, as well, any ideas as to where you think this may be going, once it's a bit further in and you have the lay of the land, since I'm trying to give specific impressions and encourage certain theories, and I'd like to know how well I'm succeeding, and whether or not the game is being given up sooner than I'd expect).

[Aggie]

I'm intrigued about the concept of the soul-as-Ego/Super-Ego, and keen to see what develops out of this.

_{(on a personal level, I'm contemplating what it would look like to core out the Ego and leave both the Id and the Super-Ego intact - taking away the "I" without removing the conscience)}

[RobertMason]

Should you ever read a horrifying story about the consequences of a Prince's desire to see what happens when He does just that, know that it's all your fault. 

/goes off to write the idea down.

No doubt there's a Prince doing that in Chicago.

[Darlica]

Heh.

You are actually going more for Call of Cthulhu than UA on this one, right? I was too tired to see that before read the whole "transcript two" which I hadn't done when I posted my comment.

I still think the setting smells of UA although the creatures and the universe seems Lovecraftian so to speak.





Suddenly I feel like translating some of my weirdest stories and post them here...

[RobertMason]

Yes. More Call of Cthulhu than UA.

I'm rather unable to pin down just how bad it is on the "OMFG CTHULHU WILL EAT US ALL AND WE ARE DOOMED AND THE UNIVERSE HATES US" scale.

Marie manages to go toe-to-toe with horrible Lovecraftian monsters, and win.

On the other hand, she's about as mentally healthy as one of that egg in the old This is your brain on drugs commercials, if the egg had been thrown on the ground and stepped on repeatedly before being thrown onto the oven.

[Darlica]

*snipp*
Marie manages to go toe-to-toe with horrible Lovecraftian monsters, and win.

On the other hand, she's about as mentally healthy as one of that egg in the old This is your brain on drugs commercials, if the egg had been thrown on the ground and stepped on repeatedly before being thrown onto the oven.

That makes perfect sense in a Lovecraftian world, the less sanity you have, the less will the sanity loss that you will suffer by facing an Old One or their offspring affect you.






BTW in the Open Water there's a forum called The Library with a sub-forum for games,  RPGs, boardgames, computer and video games. It's in hibernation at the moment but that doesn't mean you can't wake it up!

[RobertMason]

That makes perfect sense in a Lovecraftian world, the less sanity you have, the less will the sanity loss that you will suffer by facing an Old One or their offspring affect you.

The sanity loss isn't so much Lovecraftian-related (there's a wee bit, but mostly she's shielded from the worst effects,slightly by her leviathan but primarily by the fact that her mind, like most Captains', has become very flexible when it comes to things like this) as it is lifestyle-related.

[RobertMason]

MG: They didn't come from some crapper's rotting lunch.
ST: Who didn't?
MG: The yuggothr. Life on their world developed the old-fashioned hard way, and they were damn lucky that they had some of their basic food sources exported before Him Who Is Not To Be Named decided to smash their civilization to rubble and drive them to extinction.
ST: Why did He—
MG: It.
ST: Why did It do that?
MG: Oh my. You're asking questions like you actually half-believe this stuff, do you know that?
ST: If you believe it, then it's worth asking about, if I'm going to learn about your mind. Even if you don't believe it, the fact that you thought these things gives me a look into your head. Besides, this is all interesting. I like a good story. So why did It do that?
MG: Because they were sick of the Captain gig, Doctor Thurgood. They were tired of Him Who Is Not To Be Named calling the shots, and ordering them all about, and they called It out, and It was the sort of boss who did things like exterminate an entire species because some of the people were tired of working for It. Which is kind of why they were sick of things, honestly. I'll give the yuggothr... Oh, I'll give them a couple of thousand years. There's some eleven thousand of them, spread throughout three galaxies, they've become very good at hiding over the past century, since they made their move, and they're all sterile. Oh, and each and every one of them has a tiny, self-aware shard of Him Who Is Not To Be Named. Admittedly, shards which have been separate from the original for no less than a full century, and often several, meaning that most of them will have probably begun to consider themselves separate entities from Him Who Is Not To Be Named by now, but... Out of eleven thousand, some of those shards have to still be loyal, so to speak. And some of those have to have been more strong-willed than their fleshy yuggoth partners. And some of those have to have been smart enough to blend in, and not give away the fact that it isn't the yuggoth in the—
(pause)
ST: Marie?
MG: Perhaps we could talk about something else?
ST: What's wrong?
MG: I don't... (short silence) There's a buzzing in my ears, and it feels like something is gnawing on my head, and I think that I'd really like to talk about something else. I'm thinking about things I don't want to think about right now, Doctor Thurgood.
(pause)
ST: Of course, Marie.
MG: How much longer do I have before I can go?
ST: It's only been a few minutes since you asked last. We have a little bit more than half an hour left.
MG: Alright, then.
ST: What do you value most?
(pause)
MG: The city. Chicago. (pause) There's so very little I wouldn't do for this city. I'd die for it. I don't know if it's because I nearly have died for it on occasion, or if it's because of my leviathan, but I would die for this city. About the only thing I wouldn't do for Chicago is...  I... I actually... I'm not really sure.
ST: Why are you not sure?
MG: Right now, I know, I know that I wouldn't hurt Zelia. My parents, Aunt Mandy, Howard, Avery, April, Fran... I wouldn't want to hurt them, but I'd do it without a second thought if it was between any of them— even all of them— and Zelia. She wins, hands down. But... But there was a time that I thought the same about John. (pause) If memory serves, I disemboweled him.
ST: I thought you said that you hadn't killed him, but that there was something else controlling his body.
MG: Oh, so now you believe me?
(pause)
ST: I won't lie. I don't believe that there was something possessing your boyfriend. But I'm trying to point out an inconsistency in your own logic.
MG: There wasn't anything left of John, when I killed him. His soul had been ripped out of the driver's seat, probably even eaten, and the leviathan was at the wheel. But it was still hard to do it. If I had acted sooner, there would be two more people alive right now. If I had discovered what had happened to him, sooner, there would be three. If I hadn't slipped up, and allowed it to escape before, they would be alive, and John wouldn't have been taken. (pause) The important thing here, though, is that I would have killed John even if it really had been him behind it all. That's why I broke down. Not because of what I had just done, but because I realized that I would have done it even if it had been John.
ST: You knew about what he was doing, before he attacked you?
MG: (MG sighs) Let's get something straight here, Doctor Thurgood. He didn't attack me. At least, not at first. Not until I started attacking him. I followed him out of his house as he went for another outing, for another "masterpiece," and then I ambushed him. It took me a good long while to kill him, and I must have burned the flesh clear off his face and sliced off a few limbs before I finally managed to break him.
ST: What are you talking about, Marie? There were some burns on his clothes, but his face was, I can assure you, quite intact.
MG: Leviathans regenerate themselves, doctor. (pause) They heal almost instantly, but to do this, to do a lot of things, they have to exert themselves just a little bit. It's mental exertion, is all, but that can still be tiring. So imagine a fight between two people who are, more or less, unkillable. If you slice one's arm off, it'll re-grow it through sheer force of will. So what you have here is not a quick, clean fight like between two people, where the only stuff that lasts more than a minute or two, generally, is that ceremonial crap. You have a battle of wills here, clawing and slicing and cutting and bashing and burning and all sorts of nastiness, until one side just can't deal with the pain and the mental fatigue, maybe is even just plain demoralized, and can't summon up the energy to repair the damage of that last blow. It's another reason why we Captains are so useful; two minds to draw strength from.
ST: That's a very interesting scenario, Marie.
MG: (MG chuckles) Yes, yes, I'm a lunatic, I know.
(pause)
ST: Perhaps. I wouldn't say lunatic, Marie, but do I think that the line between reality and fantasy is a little bit blurred for you? Yes. Certainly. I do believe, however, that you would make an excellent writer. Have you ever considered the field? I've seen you scribbling in that notebook of yours a few times since you got here, and last time, too.
MG: I'm... more into art, actually.
ST: Oh? Are you good at it?
MG: Somewhat. Mr. Chirac says I have talent, but I've been getting busier and busier, and I think he's wondering why the quality of my artwork is slipping.
ST: How is your relationship with Mr. Chirac?
(pause)
MG: Good enough, I suppose. He's very helpful. Helpful to a fault. (MG chuckles) Mr. Chirac would give a donation to what was more than likely a scam, if he didn't have definitive proof that it was, just on the off chance that it wasn't, and he's admitted as much, too. I... think he wants to protect me. He's got that sort of personality.
ST: Is that a bad thing?
MG: I don't need looking after, Doctor Thurgood. I'm his student, not his daughter, and while I'm rather glad that he does the same thing to the rest of his students, and so I'm not getting special treatment of some sort, he's still young enough that he could have children, if he wanted someone to protect. Or he could at least leave me alone. He won't stop bugging me.
ST: Does he make you feel uncomfortable, Marie?
MG: Of course, that's what I'm—
ST: No, no, Marie. That's not what I mean. (pause) Does he seem dangerous? Does he worry you? Does he—
MG: No, no, and I don't know what you were going to say next, but still, probably negatory all the same. It's not like that, doctor. Don't worry. (MG chuckles) He's basically just Overprotective Father Number Two, is all. If I had to spend the night at somebody else's house, I'd go to his, because he isn't going to do anything untoward at all. He'd probably snap a dozen locks on the back door and keep a watch on the front one all night, gun in hand, because one of his students was at his house, and that meant that he had to be even more vigilant. Mr. Chirac would submit to the empty void before he let one of his students get so much as a scrape, under his watch.
ST: I've noticed, Marie, that you use some Ecumenical terms, like "void" and "Holy Spirit," but you said that you were part of the Evangelical Covenant Church.
MG: It's part of the culture, doctor. It's everywhere. Hell, will people know what hell is, five hundred years from now? (MG chuckles) And I might remind you that the Christians had been using "Holy Spirit" long before the Congress of Religions co-opted the term for their whatever-it-is grand spirity thingamajig, back in '07. (MG laughs) They had balls, though.
ST: How so?
MG: It sounds sensible enough now, but back then, come on, doctor. Come. On. "Hey, let's all get together and figure out what we can all agree on being important, and then say that nothing else besides that is necessary for salvation or whatever you want." They got the Pope to agree to the stuff they hammered out.
ST: That could have been because he was one of the many people making up the Congress of Religions.
MG: It's still ridiculous. Like Sgoldstino being elected. Purely hilarious, and totally unlikely. You never would have bet a penny on it happening, a year before the fact. Although I find the "empty void" to be the funniest thing of all. Hell is other people, doctor, not centaurs poking you with sticks, or a great big whirlwind of lust, and certainly not eternal sensory deprivation for all eternity.
ST: Wasn't that a bit redundant?
MG: I don't think that you can emphasize "eternity" enough. Eternity is an eternally long eternal length of time, lasting for all eternity, and then some, plus an infinite bit of forever, on top. But eternal sensory deprivation for all eternity and forever and ever, and even longer than that? Sure. Sign me up. I don't care what heaven is like. I want some peace and quiet, and I want to sleep for a very long time.
ST: Wouldn't it be lonely?
MG: No lonelier than it is in a crowd where nobody knows your name, or even consciously recognizes you as an individual person, separate and distinct from all the other faces in sight. We tell a story, at school. It is about Mr. Joyner, who teaches Chinese. I don't think we should be dealing with the Chinese, but that's another story. The language is still dead useful, since we are training guerillas there to fight against Russian Aggression and even spreading some sort of Bolshevik heresy, and boy, you just know how that's going to turn out. Still, the intelligence agencies seem to have an incredible talent for doing things that turn right around and bite them back in the ass.
ST: What is this story?
MG: Right. The story. (MG chuckles) What you need to understand, first of all, is that Mr. Joyner is a very odd man. He has a bullet scar on his right arm. This has no relation to the story, though, and instead is part of another story, wherein Mr. Joyner shot by a private who tripped backwards during a march, and accidentally fired because he had his finger on the trigger. But Mr. Joyner blows things totally out of proportion, whether these things are good or bad, and he reads all sorts of stupid trivia, like how many species of ant are in the world, or the world record for the greatest number of sugar cubes ever stacked on top of each other. He indulges in mayonnaise, which he calls "the other white ketchup," even though he never tells us what the first one is, and he puts sour cream on popcorn, but crunchy peanut butter is evil.
ST: Don't you think that sour cream might be the first "white ketchup?"
MG: Oh, yes. But he refuses to tell us this, claiming that it's a secret. He took a boat to Australia.
ST: How is this odd?
MG: It's not, by itself. But I'm getting into the story, now, you see. The very odd story circulating about Mr. Joyner, our very odd teacher of the Chinese language. He does not ever talk about having ever lived in China, you see, and vehemently denies having ever done so.
ST: Perhaps he did not.
MG: But that is no fun at all. Logic has no right to exist when it interferes with the telling of a story like this. En route to Australia, his ship went massively off-course, because the captain did not realize that he had been holding the map upside down, and that he had been using the compass next to a massive magnet that somebody had brought onboard. Everybody panicked, after hearing about how they were lost, but soon enough this was rendered unimportant.
ST: Why?
MG: Polynesian pirates. From them, he found himself in the hands of a group of Thai slavers, who decided to sell the annoyingly talkative man to their enemies, as revenge for the death of one of their men. Mr. Joyner, you see, talks a lot, and it's been theorized by many at my school that either removing his vocal cords is impossible, or that it has no effect. No doubt, the Thai slavers tried to do it, anyways. Once he was in China, however, it wasn't three days before he was accused of theft and, unable to defend himself because he couldn't speak the language, thrown into prison. After twelve years of imprisonment, he suddenly demonstrated not only a mastery of the Chinese language, but also of the Chinese legal system, and he successfully appealed his sentence, only to learn that they had unlocked the door eleven years and four months earlier, and he had simply not understood them when they said he was free.
ST: That's... certainly interesting...
MG: The same thing happened in India, shortly after crossing the border, although that time he kept in mind the moral of the previous story.
ST: And what is that?
MG: Always remember what the foreign people are saying, even when you can't understand them, because you might just later find out that they had told you that your sentence was over.
ST: That's certainly sensible advice. (ST chuckles)
MG: Well of course it is.
ST: When are you most comfortable, Marie?
MG: When I'm alone. Utterly alone, preferably, but that never happens. Nobody is ever totally alone, least of all me. But the silence, or relative silence, lets me think, and plan. I used to prefer time with John, with "being alone" coming in close. We'd waltz quite a bit. Just put something on the record player— again, it didn't have to be proper waltzing music— and just dance. We'd make a game of it, sometimes. We would just randomly pick a record, and figure out how to waltz to it. I think it's because of my grandfather. He taught me how to dance, when I was very little. I would stand on his feet and he would move me around to the music and... (pause) My family is a close second, after the city.
ST: The things that are most important to you?
MG: The family I have now, and the family I hope to have one day. City and family. It worries me, though.
ST: What does? Your priorities? Why?
MG: I like to fancy myself a hardcore patriot. I like to think that I have my priorities in order. I give my all, to this country. But... it comes third.
ST: In a manner of thinking, Marie. But wouldn't you have to keep the country safe to keep Chicago safe, Marie? Don't think of it as choosing Chicago over America. Think of it as condensing this country into something a little bit smaller, and easier to put in perspective. You're not putting this city before your country; you're just scaling things down a little bit. Many people do it all the time. As for your family... If you were to put your family before your country, that would be perfectly normal. Even in today's environment, it wouldn't be uncommon. It might also be argued, too, that you're simply scaling the country down even further than with the city. You're not putting Chicago and your family before your country. Instead, you're just looking at smaller bits of the greater whole, so that you can focus on it better.
MG: That... actually helps. Thank you.
ST: It's what I'm here for, Marie. (pause) Do you believe in fate?
MG: I don't really believe in that, no, but I have feel— I know, really— that there are some things I can't stop, and even when these things are really, really far off, like the death of the universe, I still can't help but be a little disturbed by it.
ST: Why?
MG: Think about it, doctor. It's all going to end. Oh, sure, the Princes and the leviathans will probably survive it, and eternity is a pretty long time, so if something new doesn't pop up naturally, They'll make sure to make something Themselves, but still... It's all going to end. No matter what we do.
(pause)
ST: Do you believe in a Holy Spirit or a God, Marie?
MG: So far as I know, God is a bunch of multicolored bubbles. Is there some sort of Oversoul or Holy Spirit beyond that, who guides us and loves us and wants the best for us? (pause) I have no idea, and I believe that it is entirely irrelevant to me.
ST: Why do you say that?
MG: If He exists, and He's worth worshiping, then He'll recognize that my responsibilities make it a bit hard for me to take the time out to figure out if He exists and then go through the proper motions of worship, and He'll recognize that my experiences make me a bit skeptical of anything that would claim to be Him. In all other cases, He isn't worth worshiping, or doesn't exist. I have more important things to do than figure out if there really is a Holy Spirit. But I find it just a little bit unlikely.
ST: Why?
MG: This is a very cold universe, Doctor Thurgood. It is a very harsh one. It is a place where even big, nasty things like Him in the Gulf don't stand a chance in the end. Things which could kill you so easily that they didn't even notice your death... Those things, They can get smashed, too. This is a very scary place, and it helps if you don't ever look at the big picture.

[Sibling DavidH]

I think in future I won't read this before bedtime.....
Excellent!   

[RobertMason]

ST: What is the Horror Artist, exactly?
(long silence)
ST: Marie? (pause) I—I'm sorry, I—
MG: You're fine. (pause) The Horror Artist was a leviathan. I don't know what they're made of. I don't know where they really come from, except that it's Somewhere That Isn't Here, and you can capitalize that, Doctor Thurgood. They can become whatever they want, flowing from shape to shape like intelligent mercury, and they come in all sorts of sizes. I've seen a leviathan as big as a house, once. They might be no smarter than an ant, or be a certified genius, although they never quite think like we do. If... (MG sighs) Imagine a synesthetic sociopath used to operating in more than a mere three spatial dimensions, maybe even an extra temporal dimension.
ST: Certainly odd, to say the least.
MG: They don't think like us, and it's hard for them to understand us, and us them. Basic things are easier to understand. Leviathans don't like being bored, for instance. They also seem to have a sort of creative streak or artistic bent. (pause) Have you ever noticed that artists seem to all be eccentrics? All the good ones, at least?
ST: (ST laughs) Oh yes. Very much so.
MG: Even Nikola Tesla can be thought of as an artist, I think. (pause) They can recognize terror, and love, and many other emotions— perhaps all of them— and it's often easy enough to understand that this or that leviathan has a taste for a particular emotion or feeling. Like the Horror Artist did.
ST: What did the Horror Artist like?
MG: A sort of self-disgust mixed with terror. It would take a person, and pour through their memories and their thoughts, taking a week or two to do this so as to make sure it didn't break their minds. The Horror Artist would do this so that it could find out what things that person most abhorred, and was disgusted by.
ST: And then it would do those things?
MG: (MG laughs) Exactly. Exactly. A simple enough concept, really. It would break them down, little by little, until they were completely powerless against the mental nudging and the voice in their ear that whispered day and night, whether they were asleep or awake. And then it would take them, ripping out one of the souls of its latest victim, and dominating her mind. By the time it actually moved in, she would be too tired to put up a fight. Most of the time, she wouldn't even realize that anything had happened.
ST: And then it would go on its sprees?
(pause)
MG: Yes. It was always women, up till John. That way, they still had a second soul, so that, once the Horror Artist left, its victim could still be human enough to be fully hit by what she thought she had done. It always made sure it had covered its tracks, and when it left, it would leave a strong impression of one overwhelming thought: She could do absolutely nothing. She could just go on with her life, as if nothing had happened. Nobody would ever find out what she had done. Or... she could call the cops. (pause) Three of the eight victims I've managed to track down have suffered complete breakdowns. They won't be leaving their mental health clinics anytime soon.
ST: Why did it take John?
MG: Purely because of me. It wanted to make me hurt. It told me some of the things that he had buried deep in his head, while I tried to kill it. (pause) Certainly, that would have hurt me, a few years ago. But I've since learned that everybody thinks things like that. I'm not going to be crushed just because John was like the rest of us mere mortals, and had an animal in his head. He kept it asleep, like he should have, and that's what counts.
ST: Marie?
MG: Yes, doctor?
ST: You have said before that you liked Lovecraft. So I'm sure that you recognize how some of what you have talked about is... Well, at the very least, a little bit reminiscent of his works. You even used the term "Old Ones" when you were describing—
MG: (MG laughs) I don't deny it. We both have the same source material, although he did get his mostly secondhand.
(pause)
ST: Well, that's certainly an interesting twist. (ST chuckles) Usually, in my experience, people just deny any connection between their beliefs and whatever piece of fiction those beliefs bear an unusual resemblance toward, or else claim that the fiction is one-hundred pure fact.
MG: How much longer do I have?
ST: Six minutes or so, Marie. We're almost done.
MG: I don't know who talked to Lovecraft, or what books he read. We don't really know how much of what he got wrong was because he got his facts wrong, how much of it was because he decided it didn't make for a good story, and how much of it was because he didn't want people to get The Truth, Undiluted, from his stories. There's something to be said for cover-ups and misinformation. But he certainly knew of some things, and those stories are actually useful, sometimes. Just make sure you take everything with a grain of salt.
ST: So when should I expect to see Cthulhu? Any idea when the stars will be right?
MG: (MG chuckles) Wipe that silly grin off your face, doctor. (pause) Actually, so far as I know, there is neither a sunken necropolis below the waves of the sea, whether in the Atlantic or the Pacific or any other ocean, or even lake or river or other body of water, nor any giant squid-headed dragon dead yet dreaming within it. Again, Howie made crap up. (pause) If he did exist, though, he wouldn't be a Prince. He'd be a Captain.
ST: Why do you say that?
MG: He was the great high priest of the Star Spawn, my good doctor, not their god.
(pause)
ST: Who would you most like to be like?
MG: Give me a mo— Lee Marvin, I suppose. I can't remember how badly he kept on getting shot up, and he never left, not until they practically threw him on that boat, and he still tried to get back to Portugal, even after. 
ST: Do you think that your particular moral code should be made law?
MG: To be honest, I don't even know what my moral code is, really. I'm more concerned with Chicago and my family than I am with anything else. I steal food from dead people. If the man has pockets, I rifle through them, just in case he's got some hard cash on him, or even some ration stamps, or anything else that I can use. I've killed people, I've tortured junkies and scared the crap out of homeless people, I've made back alley deals with nasty things in order to keep out nastier things. And I don't apologize for any of it. Whatever moral code I've got, it's really sketchy. I do what I think it right, but I've never really thought out was "right" was, too much.
ST: Marie, I must admit that I'm—
MG: I know what you want to do, and I have to ask: isn't there something about doctor-patient confidentiality here?
ST: If you told me that you were planning on killing a hundred innocent people, I'm afraid that I wouldn't be able to keep our discussions secret.
(pause)
MG: How about this, doctor? Everything I have done was to keep the city safe, and everything I will continue to do will be solely to keep this city safe. If I have to talk to you, fine. I'll keep on coming back here. I've saved lives, doctor. Even if you think I am mad as a hatter, let's keep everything here. Please. I don't want one more problem in my life.
(long silence)
ST: Now I have to wonder who's the insane one. (pause) I...
MG: Thank you.
ST: Marie? Marie! Get back here! I didn't say anything yet!
MG: You'll agree, Doctor Thurgood.
ST: Marie! You still have time left! Marie!
(indistinct, resembles "Marie" and other phrases, shouted some distance away, all in ST's voice)
(long silence)
ST: Well, that went wonderfully...

End of Transcript Two

[RobertMason]

I'm posting an extra bit because I'm hitting a lag in my writing, and I'm hoping that more feedback might be able to kick me back into gear.



"'A King approaches this world, and His sign is yellow,' is what Messenger said," Marie muttered under her breath, sorting through a pile of old books. She had built up quite a collection in the past five years, ranging from rather focused texts which would have been useful if she had, for instance, been dealing with this or that specific Prince or leviathan or other being, to odd things she'd written in her sleep, and which she needed her own leviathan to translate for her, to more useful things which she'd stolen from libraries both public and private. Lovecraft himself was always a useful source, despite all the things he'd gotten wrong or purposely obscured.

{You will not find/uncover/be-inspired-by anything in those. You have been going through those books for two days. You missed a Patrol, even}, admonished her leviathan, speaking in her head with something which approached the way her own thoughts sounded, in her head, but with the quality of shattered glass, and a certain indistinctness which, at times, led her mind to perceiving multiple words being spoken at once, since no single one carried the proper meaning alone.

"Messenger never brings good news," she muttered.

{You are going to be late for school,} it warned her, and Marie cursed, dropping the book she was holding, and bolting up. "I'll be glad when this year is over."

{Why bother with school now? There are other things for you to be concerned with, and it does not fulfill you.}

"Like hell it doesn't," Marie responded. "I'm not losing myself to this nonsense, no matter what you or Mr. Messenger or anyone else wants to see happen."

"Rhodes, dear..."

Marie sighed, and slipped on the backpack sitting on her bed. "Yes, Mom?"

"Are you doing anything today after school? I haven't seen much of you lately, you're so busy with schoolwork and the garden and your jobs, and—"

"And I'm still busy, Mom." Marie sighed, shaking her head. "I'll be home for dinner tomorrow. Or Thursday. But I'm really busy right now. I have another job to do this afternoon," she lied.

{You won't make good on that promise. You never do.}

{And you can keep quiet, if you'd like to help,} she thought to the leviathan.

"Rhodes, we're about to have the longest conversation we've had for almost four weeks. You don't even talk during dinner."

"Like I said, I'm busy." She shook her head, and tightened the backpack's straps, and buttoned up her dusty old leather coat. "I put food in my own mouth, Mom, and often enough I have extra to help support the family. But I can't do that and school and still have time to—" Marie sighed. "I'm late for school. Bye, Mom," she said, passing by her mother as she walked through the threshold, heading for the front door. "I'll have more time next year, I promise!"

{Oh, you lie.}

{Shut up now and dammit.}

{I am growing suspicious of Mr. Messenger in this endeavor.}

{You're always suspicious of him.}

{Are you not as well? And he is a Prince-killer, besides.}

[pieces o nine]

I'm enjoying this as well!   

[RobertMason]

Two sections being posted today since the first is incredibly small.



SHEILA THURGOOD— Her stories are interesting. I have to give her that much.

I must admit that I was unsettled by how she described some of the ink blots. I'm not used to so much description being given for them, either.

I really can't say much about this session right now. There's just something very off about everything. I don't want to say to say much about anything right now.

I'm very worried about her now. More than I was before.

If she skips the next session, I'll let it slide with a warning. I'm not seriously expecting her to come in next week.

My head hurts. I'm going to go to sleep early tonight I think. I think I might be coming down with a cold or something.



"Excuse me, but have you seen this person, young woman?"

There was something off about the tone of his voice— it was flat, like somebody had scraped over all of the bumps and irregularities in it— and despite herself, Marie turned around. She wasn't even two minutes away from the school and she was getting hassled by other people when all she would like to do is get on with the rest of her day. The habit of taking at least a first look at anything which sparked her curiosity, however, was deeply ingrained in her, even before she became a Captain.

She was glad that she had turned around.

"No. Never saw him. Halloween costume?" Marie asked?

The picture was blurry, and it was in black-and-white, but it was still quite clear that it was herself that she was looking at. Not looking like she did right now, of course. She was wearing the guise of the Star-Eyed Girl, and her leviathan was manifesting over her body, giving her a long dark coat which wrapped all around her body. Her face looked to be concealed beneath a skull mask— her second face, Marie called it— but where her eyes should have been, there were shining lights, quite close in appearance to the Pleiades.

"Yes," responded the man, and Marie tore her eyes from the picture to take a look at him. He had seen better days. His eyes were sunken, and his skin looked weathered. There was a crosshatch pattern of scars on the back of the hand which held the picture. ""Halloween costume," the man said, in that rubbed-down tone of his.

Marie stared at him.

He blinked normally. There was not a complete lack of blinking, like she might find in a leviathan new to the human condition, who had not yet realized that there even was such a thing as blinking. Nor was he blinking rapidly in the manner of a leviathan who had come to understand blinking, but had not gotten the timing down.
nor, either, the clockwork blinking of a leviathan who was putting too much effort into not blinking too much or too little.

Nothing said that he wasn't a leviathan. There were plenty of leviathans who got blinking down pat. But he wasn't new to the body, or at least to human bodies in general, and if he were concerned about blending in, then while he had gotten blinking down, he had entirely neglected his voice. This was not something which was done, in Marie's experience, by leviathans who wished to go unnoticed, and who had developed enough awareness to perfect their blinking. The voice was far more noticeable.

It was always possible that there was some explanation as to why a leviathan would act in such a way. Certainly, mere amusement or whim could explain it. There was, however, also the possibility that there was no leviathan behind those eyes.

It took only a second for her to go through her thoughts, and then she turned around and signaled the man to come along. She crossed the street— looking both ways before doing so, even though a car would never kill her now— and the man was following behind her. Marie took a path back behind a building, out of view from the streets.

A black dagger was in Marie's right hand. Her back was still facing the man.

She spun around and slashed. The dagger reached the place between the man's eyes, but while it penetrated, it was not the flesh which it penetrated.

Marie had the sensation of falling into herself, and she was surrounded by the sensation of a mind's walls crumbling as her leviathan broke through them. Then she saw something, something twisted and yellow, and she could not glimpse anything else in his mind. She left, and the moment that she no longer saw the symbol, she forgot all but its color. That was enough to suspect who had sent the man, however.

She walked away, leaving the man lying on the ground. He muttered something to himself but it was in no language which Marie had ever heard, and she was quite sure that it was in no language at all.

Marie had never been one for subtlety, nor for developing the ability to break into minds. It was something which came as part of the package of having access to the powers of a leviathan, and developing it further didn't come easily to her, and the matter rarely came up, although she privately admitted to herself that more opportunities to use the ability would arise if it didn't have such a drastic side effect. As it was, this man— and he was a man, and nothing more, for there had been no leviathan surrounding his mind— would be fit only for the mental health clinic now, and this was purely because she had not developed her skill to the point that she did not need to take such brutal measures to enter another's mind.

There were other things to be concerned about now, however. The king of whom Mr. Messenger had spoken, he was actively looking for her. It would be good to see if there were any other Captains being targeted, but she had a feeling that she was being singled out.

It was time to visit the usual den of depravity and hedonism, and start breaking bones until she got answers. Then she might break a few more bones, if the answers were particularly stress-inducing.

Marie could already almost feel things breaking under her power. It was a good feeling. She was getting calmer already.