SkyCetacean
10-05-2012, 07:52 PM
So in one of my classes today we had to write a short story, the prompt being "write about someone making a horrible mistake," and we had about an hour to write. I decided to post it here because even though I do recognize that it's derivative and the pacing is abysmal, I want to see what people make of it and what other lessons I can glean from it.
---
To Stare Into The Abyss
Dear Thomas,
You’ll probably say like the rest of them that I should have seen this coming, and that’s a sentiment I often echo myself. However, I think without having been there, without having experienced it, that jerking, captivating, almost gravitational pull of the curious mind there is no way you could hope to understand my actions or judge my rationality. I do hope to explain, though, with as much clarity as I can muster at this point, what I think happened.
It began, as I see it, on a drizzly autumn afternoon. It was a... Blurry sort of day as I recall, like a rough pencil sketch or a photograph out of focus, or like a memory long since faded. Looking out the window I can vaguely recall that the morning fog had not yet lifted, and it hovered and crept along the pavement like a spectre, cut apart at various point by the dozens of street lamps that line my block. That’s all I seem to be able to remember about that particular day, except of course for the letter I received, the letter that set into motion this whole chain of events, that set me down this accursed path. Of course I couldn’t have known what would happen at the time, and I was probably very excited about it. After all, I had just started my correspondence with the professor, and looking back at my initial response I seemed quite ecstatic. I know that I’ve mentioned the professor in passing to you and that you know a bit about the circumstances of our meeting, but allow me to take this time to describe him in detail and my reasons for contacting him.
The professor, of course, is one Friedrich Angell, the teacher of Anthropology at Jamestown University. You’ve probably heard rumors of him, most of which are tenuous at best. He is an odd man, or so I thought, though recently I’ve been thinking that he was more lucid that he might have appeared. Anyway, he’s a very religious man who will take any opportunity he can to talk about his conversion, which was clearly a fairly pivotal point in his life. In particular, there was always one verse that he liked to quote and the topic of his religion would almost never come up without him mentioning it in some fashion or another. It was from Revelation, and went, “And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. He had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name.” An odd passage to be fond of perhaps, but he was certainly an odd man.
We had been acquainted by a friend several months prior to my contacting him and not long before I had gotten my hands on a book full of strange, otherworldy drawings, charcoal sketches mostly and some in a material that even now I have been unable to identify, as well as the indecipherable text, unlike any language I had ever seen before. It was partly with the rumors in mind and partly out of curiosity I got it in my head to ask him about the book and what it could mean.
He replied very quickly, and I recieved his reply on that fateful October day. I don’t have the letter anymore, I’ve long since burned it, but the idea was simple enough. He said he was glad at least somebody had confidence in him about the dreams and visions he’d been having, and that the book was naturally very important to him, and that it would mean a lot if I could meet him at the university and show it to him. Naturally I agreed and we set a date for the next weekend.
Not much went on from the period of my receiving the letter and so to keep from boring you I’ll skip ahead to the date of our meeting. It was an harshly sunny day, and the trees around the university drooped and twisted and seemed dead and desiccated in the raging heat. It was sweaty and uncomfortable outside and so I quickly made my way to the professor’s office, which was not far from where I’d parked.
When I got to his office and opened the door I beheld a totally different man than I had expected. He was not aged, as I had assumed by his extreme religiosity and his lofty title of professor, but rather a young, handsome, if somewhat disheveled-looking man, the sort of man you might expect to see in a poorly-made romance film. He was busily jotting things down in a notebook when I walked in and barely noticed me until I gave a stout “a-hem,” at which he looked up and greeted me warmly, though he seemed rather distant, as though caught in a dream or some deep thought.
“You’re here about the book, yes?”
“Indeed I am.”
“Thank God someone’s found it... Sit down, then, go ahead.”
So I sat and held up the book for him to see. It was a thick paperback and the cover sort of threw the glinting light from the window all across the room.
“That’d be the one,” he laughed hesitantly.
“So it seems... I was hoping you would help me decipher its meaning and what it says, these characters are all crooked and strange and I can’t make out a word of them.”
“Neither can I,” he smiled a little sheepishly. “Based on my limited knowledge of linguistics I was able to make out a bit of it... Things like dates and names, odd names, not of any culture I’ve encountered previously, and this location by the sea, that’s where I saw the beast of course,” he paused, contemplating something. “You do believe me, right? About that.”
“I’ll believe anything you want, really, I’m just interested in the book,” I shrugged with a little chuckle.
“Well alright, I’ll tell you what I know. Basically the book seems to be some sort of... Chronicle of some sorts, a chronicle of some ill-fated local fishing expedition... Happened some hundreds of years ago, around the sixteen-hundreds if my translations are to be believed. They said they encountered something on the high-seas, at a particular coordinate. A thing they said, I assume they spoke of the beast I saw. The coordinate is...” He paused again. “It’s around [redacted],” (I won’t put the coordinate, in case this letter falls under prying eyes. If you want you can come ask me yourself or the professor, though I’ve heard he’s went to the asylum recently) I only tell you this because I trust you and that you’ll believe and perhaps corroborate what I’m saying, understand?”
I nodded, and said yes.
“If you could do me a favor, then, would you mind traveling to that place? As I said, I want someone to corroborate with me, I don’t want to believe that I’ve gone mad, like everyone else does... Will you do it for me? Oh - you can keep the book, I think I’ve done enough with it as is, I’m just glad someone else has confidence in me, anyway will you do it for me?”
“I’m curious myself.”
“Yes, yes, curiosity, certainly, certainly, that’s a good enough reason as any, and it will help me as well,” said the professor with a strained smile. “There’s a small fishing boat called the Daedelus, they should be willing to take you out for a small price, you can take that out of my own personal account... I’ll give you the number, I don’t really have much use for the money I get anyway.”
He gave me the number, which I would feel uncomfortable relating here.
After that we exchanged some pleasantries about this and that, the weather and such, and then I left him to his work. As I left, though, I noticed that he didn’t seem to be writing in English, rather, the furious scribbling he had engaged in seemed to be not unlike the incomprehensible language of the book I’d found, a haunting, shadowy language, and I thought with a shudder that this must be a product of his twisted dreams or visions.
After contacting the ship owner and arranging a tour to the coordinate for that night I decided to make my way down to the shipyard early. The sun was beginning to set and the shadows of trees and street lamps seemed to twist and bulge, like awful black cysts growing onto the earth, and this dark view was only amplified by my growing anxiety. Somehow the professor’s words had scared me, left me with an ominous feeling of doubt. Was this really a good idea?
I walked onto the pier and the ship’s captain greeted me in a warm manner; we both boarded the ship uneventfully, but something seemed strange. The sun had almost entirely set by this time and the waves were tinted a dark crimson, and aside the sound of the sea crashing against the ship’s side, everything seemed strangely silent. As we made our way for the coordinate mentioned by the professor night slowly fell upon the earth, and the glow of the sun was replaced by the silvery, ghostly light of the moon, reflecting cold and white on the water. I could sense something, something big and vast and beyond me at the end of the path that I took but I stayed silent, and just listened to the sound of the sea, ebbing and pulsating and raising the ship up and down in an almost rhythmic manner.
Then we arrived at the point, and I heard a sort of thud, as the boat landed against something solid. The captain rushed out to see what was wrong and tried and more than a little perturbed set to getting the boat right. I had expected something big to happen when we got the the coordinate, but as with the rest of the night, things remained lonely and silent for a time.
Then I felt a rumbling, almost like a roar and the boat shook and turned as though beset by a mighty storm. The seas churned angrily, tossing us about with a force unlike any other I had ever encountered, and from the thundering waves rose the beast.
They say that if you look long enough into the abyss that the abyss looks right back, and I think that perfectly describes how I felt at the moment I saw it. I was entranced. It was beautiful, unlike anything I had ever seen, and it was horrid, unlike anything I’d ever seen. Indeed, initially my eyes flicked and jetted away from it but with strong force of will I slowly shoved my vision toward it to look upon it. By this point my crewmates had all collapsed. I later learned that they were all found dead with me in the boat. (About the rumors that I killed them, they’re unfounded I assure you.) Looking straight on it was like rubbing sandpaper on my eyes, each passing moment shook my very core . But I could not take my eyes off of it. There it was, the creature I’d heard mentioned by the professor, the creature I, with idle curiosity, had sought out unknowing of the consequences, arrogant that I in my humanity could handle any truth which I was presented, and it was that very arrogance prevented me from turning my gaze. The worst part, though, was that it wasn’t just me. I could feel that beast, that monster. It was staring back at me.
It was staring back at me.
Finally, after what seemed like decades, I fainted. I was found later by that rescue crew which I’m sure you’ve heard plenty enough about already, the rumors about that particular expedition have become legend at this point.
I’ve been having visions since then, dreams, of something that I think was always there but constricted to the back of my mind. I try to keep it at bay, but there’s only so much. Looking into that thing’s eyes, it was like the whole of the universe had been bared before me, all the knowledge in the world, and it was an ugly, horrid thing.
You see, I think I understand the professor now. It may seem odd, that he would give me those coordinates, ask me to look into the face of the universe, and be maddened by its gaze, but looking back on its now it was really quite simple. To be the only one in the world with sheer, unrelenting force of knowledge threatening to split open your skull is a lonely thing indeed. He wanted a friend, a companion in his isolation. He needed me.
Now he is blinded by madness, and his mind is slipping. Pause to think for a moment, where does that leave me? I am like Atlas, and the weight of the truth of this world bears down me with excruciating force. Will you not join me in my despair? At least until the madness settles, would you please be my friend in all of this? I’m terrible lonely. I’ve lost everything, I tried to reach for the sun but I only burned up, and I need you to follow my spiral path down into the ocean with me. I need you to be with me. I need anyone to be with me, just, please, make it all go away.
Your Friend,
Allen Purdue
---
To Stare Into The Abyss
Dear Thomas,
You’ll probably say like the rest of them that I should have seen this coming, and that’s a sentiment I often echo myself. However, I think without having been there, without having experienced it, that jerking, captivating, almost gravitational pull of the curious mind there is no way you could hope to understand my actions or judge my rationality. I do hope to explain, though, with as much clarity as I can muster at this point, what I think happened.
It began, as I see it, on a drizzly autumn afternoon. It was a... Blurry sort of day as I recall, like a rough pencil sketch or a photograph out of focus, or like a memory long since faded. Looking out the window I can vaguely recall that the morning fog had not yet lifted, and it hovered and crept along the pavement like a spectre, cut apart at various point by the dozens of street lamps that line my block. That’s all I seem to be able to remember about that particular day, except of course for the letter I received, the letter that set into motion this whole chain of events, that set me down this accursed path. Of course I couldn’t have known what would happen at the time, and I was probably very excited about it. After all, I had just started my correspondence with the professor, and looking back at my initial response I seemed quite ecstatic. I know that I’ve mentioned the professor in passing to you and that you know a bit about the circumstances of our meeting, but allow me to take this time to describe him in detail and my reasons for contacting him.
The professor, of course, is one Friedrich Angell, the teacher of Anthropology at Jamestown University. You’ve probably heard rumors of him, most of which are tenuous at best. He is an odd man, or so I thought, though recently I’ve been thinking that he was more lucid that he might have appeared. Anyway, he’s a very religious man who will take any opportunity he can to talk about his conversion, which was clearly a fairly pivotal point in his life. In particular, there was always one verse that he liked to quote and the topic of his religion would almost never come up without him mentioning it in some fashion or another. It was from Revelation, and went, “And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. He had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name.” An odd passage to be fond of perhaps, but he was certainly an odd man.
We had been acquainted by a friend several months prior to my contacting him and not long before I had gotten my hands on a book full of strange, otherworldy drawings, charcoal sketches mostly and some in a material that even now I have been unable to identify, as well as the indecipherable text, unlike any language I had ever seen before. It was partly with the rumors in mind and partly out of curiosity I got it in my head to ask him about the book and what it could mean.
He replied very quickly, and I recieved his reply on that fateful October day. I don’t have the letter anymore, I’ve long since burned it, but the idea was simple enough. He said he was glad at least somebody had confidence in him about the dreams and visions he’d been having, and that the book was naturally very important to him, and that it would mean a lot if I could meet him at the university and show it to him. Naturally I agreed and we set a date for the next weekend.
Not much went on from the period of my receiving the letter and so to keep from boring you I’ll skip ahead to the date of our meeting. It was an harshly sunny day, and the trees around the university drooped and twisted and seemed dead and desiccated in the raging heat. It was sweaty and uncomfortable outside and so I quickly made my way to the professor’s office, which was not far from where I’d parked.
When I got to his office and opened the door I beheld a totally different man than I had expected. He was not aged, as I had assumed by his extreme religiosity and his lofty title of professor, but rather a young, handsome, if somewhat disheveled-looking man, the sort of man you might expect to see in a poorly-made romance film. He was busily jotting things down in a notebook when I walked in and barely noticed me until I gave a stout “a-hem,” at which he looked up and greeted me warmly, though he seemed rather distant, as though caught in a dream or some deep thought.
“You’re here about the book, yes?”
“Indeed I am.”
“Thank God someone’s found it... Sit down, then, go ahead.”
So I sat and held up the book for him to see. It was a thick paperback and the cover sort of threw the glinting light from the window all across the room.
“That’d be the one,” he laughed hesitantly.
“So it seems... I was hoping you would help me decipher its meaning and what it says, these characters are all crooked and strange and I can’t make out a word of them.”
“Neither can I,” he smiled a little sheepishly. “Based on my limited knowledge of linguistics I was able to make out a bit of it... Things like dates and names, odd names, not of any culture I’ve encountered previously, and this location by the sea, that’s where I saw the beast of course,” he paused, contemplating something. “You do believe me, right? About that.”
“I’ll believe anything you want, really, I’m just interested in the book,” I shrugged with a little chuckle.
“Well alright, I’ll tell you what I know. Basically the book seems to be some sort of... Chronicle of some sorts, a chronicle of some ill-fated local fishing expedition... Happened some hundreds of years ago, around the sixteen-hundreds if my translations are to be believed. They said they encountered something on the high-seas, at a particular coordinate. A thing they said, I assume they spoke of the beast I saw. The coordinate is...” He paused again. “It’s around [redacted],” (I won’t put the coordinate, in case this letter falls under prying eyes. If you want you can come ask me yourself or the professor, though I’ve heard he’s went to the asylum recently) I only tell you this because I trust you and that you’ll believe and perhaps corroborate what I’m saying, understand?”
I nodded, and said yes.
“If you could do me a favor, then, would you mind traveling to that place? As I said, I want someone to corroborate with me, I don’t want to believe that I’ve gone mad, like everyone else does... Will you do it for me? Oh - you can keep the book, I think I’ve done enough with it as is, I’m just glad someone else has confidence in me, anyway will you do it for me?”
“I’m curious myself.”
“Yes, yes, curiosity, certainly, certainly, that’s a good enough reason as any, and it will help me as well,” said the professor with a strained smile. “There’s a small fishing boat called the Daedelus, they should be willing to take you out for a small price, you can take that out of my own personal account... I’ll give you the number, I don’t really have much use for the money I get anyway.”
He gave me the number, which I would feel uncomfortable relating here.
After that we exchanged some pleasantries about this and that, the weather and such, and then I left him to his work. As I left, though, I noticed that he didn’t seem to be writing in English, rather, the furious scribbling he had engaged in seemed to be not unlike the incomprehensible language of the book I’d found, a haunting, shadowy language, and I thought with a shudder that this must be a product of his twisted dreams or visions.
After contacting the ship owner and arranging a tour to the coordinate for that night I decided to make my way down to the shipyard early. The sun was beginning to set and the shadows of trees and street lamps seemed to twist and bulge, like awful black cysts growing onto the earth, and this dark view was only amplified by my growing anxiety. Somehow the professor’s words had scared me, left me with an ominous feeling of doubt. Was this really a good idea?
I walked onto the pier and the ship’s captain greeted me in a warm manner; we both boarded the ship uneventfully, but something seemed strange. The sun had almost entirely set by this time and the waves were tinted a dark crimson, and aside the sound of the sea crashing against the ship’s side, everything seemed strangely silent. As we made our way for the coordinate mentioned by the professor night slowly fell upon the earth, and the glow of the sun was replaced by the silvery, ghostly light of the moon, reflecting cold and white on the water. I could sense something, something big and vast and beyond me at the end of the path that I took but I stayed silent, and just listened to the sound of the sea, ebbing and pulsating and raising the ship up and down in an almost rhythmic manner.
Then we arrived at the point, and I heard a sort of thud, as the boat landed against something solid. The captain rushed out to see what was wrong and tried and more than a little perturbed set to getting the boat right. I had expected something big to happen when we got the the coordinate, but as with the rest of the night, things remained lonely and silent for a time.
Then I felt a rumbling, almost like a roar and the boat shook and turned as though beset by a mighty storm. The seas churned angrily, tossing us about with a force unlike any other I had ever encountered, and from the thundering waves rose the beast.
They say that if you look long enough into the abyss that the abyss looks right back, and I think that perfectly describes how I felt at the moment I saw it. I was entranced. It was beautiful, unlike anything I had ever seen, and it was horrid, unlike anything I’d ever seen. Indeed, initially my eyes flicked and jetted away from it but with strong force of will I slowly shoved my vision toward it to look upon it. By this point my crewmates had all collapsed. I later learned that they were all found dead with me in the boat. (About the rumors that I killed them, they’re unfounded I assure you.) Looking straight on it was like rubbing sandpaper on my eyes, each passing moment shook my very core . But I could not take my eyes off of it. There it was, the creature I’d heard mentioned by the professor, the creature I, with idle curiosity, had sought out unknowing of the consequences, arrogant that I in my humanity could handle any truth which I was presented, and it was that very arrogance prevented me from turning my gaze. The worst part, though, was that it wasn’t just me. I could feel that beast, that monster. It was staring back at me.
It was staring back at me.
Finally, after what seemed like decades, I fainted. I was found later by that rescue crew which I’m sure you’ve heard plenty enough about already, the rumors about that particular expedition have become legend at this point.
I’ve been having visions since then, dreams, of something that I think was always there but constricted to the back of my mind. I try to keep it at bay, but there’s only so much. Looking into that thing’s eyes, it was like the whole of the universe had been bared before me, all the knowledge in the world, and it was an ugly, horrid thing.
You see, I think I understand the professor now. It may seem odd, that he would give me those coordinates, ask me to look into the face of the universe, and be maddened by its gaze, but looking back on its now it was really quite simple. To be the only one in the world with sheer, unrelenting force of knowledge threatening to split open your skull is a lonely thing indeed. He wanted a friend, a companion in his isolation. He needed me.
Now he is blinded by madness, and his mind is slipping. Pause to think for a moment, where does that leave me? I am like Atlas, and the weight of the truth of this world bears down me with excruciating force. Will you not join me in my despair? At least until the madness settles, would you please be my friend in all of this? I’m terrible lonely. I’ve lost everything, I tried to reach for the sun but I only burned up, and I need you to follow my spiral path down into the ocean with me. I need you to be with me. I need anyone to be with me, just, please, make it all go away.
Your Friend,
Allen Purdue