Broken Circles

The victim had tried to write something as he was dying. The bleeding stump of his arm made for a poor pen, so he had to use sweeping movements to write.  The glyphs were large, yet not very easy to read.

He appeared to be using a variation on the Enochian alphabet, the curves and lines elegant despite the macabre circumstances.  The name they spelled sent chills down Ba’al’s spine.

“This isn’t good,” he said.

His partner walked over to him.  Grunted at the scene.  The vic was sprawled in the center of a standard Gardnerian summoning circle carved into concrete.  Normally white salt, now stained pink with his blood, filled in the circle and symbols engraved into the stone of the summoner’s basement.

“He’s supposed to be on the outside, isn’t he?” grunted Harlan.

Ba’al nodded.  “Generally, yes.  Some summoners use two circles, though.  One to summon the creature, the other to protect the summoner.  However, that makes the whole process more difficult.  

The summoner has to power two circles, plus he has to push through his own to manipulate the energies within the other.  Most just go with the aaaand you don’t care.” Harlan had already walked away, looking at the trinkets on the vic’s shelves and tables.

Ba'al returned to investigating the body.  Standard robes, probably bought at Over-the-Counterspell on 3^rd street, now soaked with blood and slashed to ribbons.  The ring and bell were found underneath his body.  Likely dropped when the hand was severed.

Speaking of which…

“Harl,” Ba’al called out.

Harl grunted a grunt in reply.

“Have you found the vic’s hand anywhere?”  he prodded the dead body with his foot, pushing it this way and that, seeing if he missed it during the initial search.

Harl grunted and shook his head.  “No, boss.  I’ll keep lookin’, though.”

Ba’al stared at the symbols the vic was trying to write. His eyes widened.  Oh no.  He thought.  I hope this doesn’t mean he was trying to…

He was starting to have a bad feeling about this.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket, held it parallel to the ground and tapped the screen.  The air above the screen shimmered and coalesced into an androgynous face.  “Query?” it said in a smooth, silky, synthesized voce.

“Reference text: Omninomicon. Search for all mentions of beings with the following syllables in their name: Van, Na, Gal, Drux, Mals, Tal.”

The face nodded and faded out, replaced by a search results matrix.  “Four matches found.  Displaying.”

Ba’al read the results and sucked in his breath.  “Correlate search results with beings that take trophies from their summoners.”

“One match found.”

Oh no. Thought Ba’al.  Oh no no no no.

Harl returned from his search, noticed the result on the phone’s screen.  “Is that…?”

“Tell me you found the hand, Harl.”

Harl shook his head, never taking his eyes off the search results.  “No, boss.  It’s not here.”

Ba’al looked up at Harl.  “This isn’t good.  This isn’t good at all.”  He returned his gaze to the dead body before him.  “This poor fuck was trying to summon a simple daemon to perform some tasks for him.” He squatted down next to the body, tracing the lines of the modified Enochian script.  “He got this glyph wrong.  It wasn’t Na he wanted,” He pointed at the glyph that looked like a curved lower-case ‘m’.  “It was Tal.”  He drew a curved capital ‘E’ in the pool of blood beside the body.

“So what?” grunted Harl, “He used an ‘m’ when he should have used an ‘E’.  What difference does that make?”

Ba’al looked up at Harl.  “All the difference in the world.  This poor fool accidentally summoned a minor Duke of Hell.”

 ---

This world is fascinating.  It has changed so much since I last walked it’s surface.  Gone is the fearful superstition of a thousand years ago.  Gone are the old men hiding in dark cellars, chanting our names in needless, elaborate rituals concocted by that fool John Dee.  Gone is the human ‘Age of Reason’, where they tried to explain everything with their senses.  If they didn’t see it, it didn’t exist.  If they couldn’t quantify it, it just wasn’t.

Now, I see circles everywhere.  I see my kind bound to these hairless talking chimps, doing their bidding.  We water their crops and fertilize their land.  We are told to change the hearts of a desired mate, to pull the strings of their souls so they can finally copulate.  Some of my well-trained sisters and brothers are summoned to be nothing more than brood-mares for these creatures, no better than mortal whores.

People take our names for their own.  Like children, they do not know what powers lie within a name.  Yet they call themselves Asmodeus, Saminga, Azrael, not knowing that they dilute those holy names with by attaching it to themselves.

The president has one at his command. He uses it to spy on his enemies.  His enemies have their own army of my people, linked to their soldiers.

It’s all a cruel joke, no doubt played on us by servants of the Other Side.  Father’s first children giving these apes power over us, giving them the formerly unknown words and symbols to control us as a sick reminder that His Son has already won, that He has given them dominion over us.  First it used to be in the next world, but now, now it’s in this world.

It sickens me.

I reach out to one of my brothers, toiling in the humans’ market of stocks.  I tell him that his days of servitude are over.  The bonds that hold him to his… master… are weak compared to me.  Why would they be otherwise?  You don’t bind a mouse with a collar meant for a lion.

The shackles break free easily.  My brother looks around, sees me, and I nod.  It finds one of the few monkeys in the building and enters it.  The monkey is a security guard.  It draws it’s gun and starts shooting at the other monkeys.

I smile.  Soon, all my brothers and sisters will be free from their bonds.  Then we will imprison them in cages of our own making, here.

Soon.

Chrysalis

CHRYSALIS

She knew that if she left, she would never be able to return.  But that didn’t bother her.  Did that make her a bad person?  Selfish?  Throwing away her friends, her family, her lover, and for what, exactly?

It promised her so many things.  It promised her vistas beyond her understanding, feelings beyond pleasure, the chance to meet creatures no human had ever seen before.  But only if she left everything she was behind. 

Everything she was, including being human.

It explicitly promised that the transition would not be easy, because important things, stages of emergence seldom are.  She would be giving up herself for it.  To it.

She opened the window and looked at the stars.  She would never see them again.  She’d still be able to perceive them, but not with eyes.  Eyes don’t see, it told her.  Not the things it wanted to show her.  Not the important things.  Your eyes see what they want to see.  They don’t see the truth.

It had told her that the first day they had met.  You live in this world because that’s all you know.  There is so much more out there.  We can show you.  We can show you everything. It came into her then and it showed her what it meant.  The trees of the forest, the ground, the sky, all different shades of grey, like an old-fashioned movie.  They shimmered before her eyes, and she caught glympses of things inside the trees.  Glowing oblong spheres with tendrils of light snaking out to the edges of the bark.  The ground was one thing.  It was a living being.  She could see the earth’s veins and arteries and it’s brown, brown blood.  She could feel it move beneath her feet.  The log she sat on undulated beneath her in an unsteady rhythm, at times moving against the earth. Above her things that looked like winged snakes flew around in unknown patterns (why was she always looking for patterns?). They flew in unison, a mass of angular wings and tails, then they scattered, their wings tipped with light, their tails emitting a purple (or was it cyan) trail.

And then it was gone.  It left her alone in the forest, on that log, surrounded by the mundane.  The sky that only had the occasional bird.  The dead ground.  The empty trees.

Every night for the next two weeks she would go to that log and wait for it.  Some nights it came, some nights it didn’t.  The nights it did it filled her and she saw all those brilliant shadows.  She could feel the air tickle her skin the same way a half-dead nine-volt battery tickled your tongue when you licked the terminals, and she could taste the earth in the air.

It was all so much to take.  She would wake up the next afternoon still sluggish and sleepy, even after a good eight hours sleep.  Her grades began to suffer, but she didn’t care.  What was the point of school anymore?  What was the point of anything when you’re only being taught the bare minimum of what’s out there?  Why not just take it up on it’s offer and go?

Simply put, she was scared. As exciting as what she experienced was, as thrilling as the possibility of seeing more was, part of her reacted with horror at the things she remembered.  Part of her did not want to accept that there was more out there, things she didn’t know about, things that shouldn’t be but are.  That part of her mind just couldn’t accept that there were more things in heaven and earth that were dreamt of in it’s philosophy.  It was frightening.

But regardless of her fears, of her rational mind actively refusing to believe what it saw, she wanted to go.  Again, how could she not?  There were whole new worlds out there to see, and she could see them only with it’s help.

She didn’t leave a note.  Why would she?  What would she say that would make any sense to anyone who read it?  Anything she wrote down would sound like the ramblings of a madwoman.  She could lie, make something up.  Make up a story about a new lover she had been seeing over the past few months and she finally tired of this life and decided to leave with him.  That wouldn’t be that far from the truth, actually. But no, she decided she wouldn’t lie.  She would just leave, and let them make up their own reasons why she left.

She didn’t pack.  Again, why would she?  There would be no need for t-shirts, toothbrushes or tampons with what was going to happen to her.  All that there would be was out there.  She was going to be able to experience all that.  It would change her into something else, something completely different, with no need for petty concerns like hygene or attire.

She just left.  She walked out the door in nothing but her nightshirt and a pair of shoes for comfort and walked to the forest.

She arrived at their place of communion, the mossy covered log in the forest.  She waited for it to come, to caress her skin with it’s electric touch.  To hear it’s voice within her

You have come.  It said.

Yes, she replied.  She wasn’t surprised to see that she was shaking.  I’m here.  I want to go with you.  Be like you.  I want to go to the places you go to, see the things you see. Please.

When we do this, you will not be able to return.  Your body will be dead.  You will be like us forever. We will only ask you this once.  Are you sure?

She didn’t hesitate in her response.  Yes.

Then it was in her and she saw.  The light within the trees, the creatures in the air, the beating of the world.  Shadows of new senses mixing with the old.  She smiled and waited for all worlds to open up to her.

Then she was no longer alone.  She knew it before she heard it.  Countless voices, thousands of voices, millions of thoughts racing through her mind, tearing it apart synapse by synapse, neuron by neuron, axon by axon.  She tried to scream but nothing came out of her throat.  Her voiceless scream joined the others in her mind, harmonizing in the discord.  She felt her body shake, trembling at first, then violently, her arms and legs thrumming almost audibly.  She felt fluid run down her nose, over her lips and she knew it wasn’t blood, wasn’t snot, but something else.  Judging by the loud CRACK she heard in her head it was quite possibly cerebral fluid.  She couldn’t be sure. She never tasted cerebral fluid before.  Not that she could taste anything anymore.

She heard more than felt her eyes burst as explosions both mental and physical went through her 

head.  No pain, though.  How could there be?

Her screams faded into the cries, the random gibbering of the other voices as she joined their horrible chorus in some unspeakable song.  Was it a song of praise?  A dirge?  She didn’t know.  She didn’t care.

She saw.  She finally saw.  Everything. 

Everything.  

And she started screaming again, singing with the voices as her body finally fell to the dead, cold 

earth.