by Novilune
If someone is to read these bloodied parchments of mine, I sincerely hope that in finding these final sentiments you yourself have not fallen into the same treacherous despair as I have. I deter anyone from investigating further, for I do not wish to be liable for any one’s psychological break and subsequent demise. I suppose context is necessary: I worked as an embalmer. I had always had an acute fascination with the dead — I suppose this originates from a life of indifference, which is to say, that I had not longed for the human spirit.
Such an occupation originally appealed to my puritan ideals, viewing such bereaved ones as being of the utmost purity, comparable to that of a newborn child. I confess, I longed for something more; this desire was perhaps the spark in which I would be inducted into a process of social delineation, an inherently superfluous curiosity — spurred by a singularity; a pale, archaic star.
It was around June when an unidentified corpse had been uncovered from a nearby sewer tract. That night I recall a cascading downpour that seemed to span centuries, whereas on that night the sight that befell my gaze in the morgue was one that I had not seen before. Yes, for this was the particular moment when a morbid intrigue took hold of me — a beached carcass, washed up from the impervious deep of the great blue. It was the kind of sight that left one disconcerted without reason, the very thing that eroded my self-agency which had previously comforted me in my endeavours. I felt my curiosity at this moment could not be satiated, even if I were to scour every inch of the cavernous sewers in which it originated.
One can infer that the man (for he was discernibly male) that lay in front of me had once been an intimidating figure. His frame was quite large, not to the extent of say a bodybuilder but possessing the general physique that was proportionate to his bulking six feet eight inch build. He sported oily undulating locks of black hair as well as a dense and unkempt beard that had been ravaged by vermin, complementing his pallid and immovable countenance, of which he seemed to be in a nocturnal slumber.
Muscular atrophy had extended itself to each bilateral muscle, being most outwardly predominant in the pectoral and dorsal muscles. A sporadic rot had sullied every inch of his corpse with multiple abrasions lining his body. His skin took on a fetid, repulsive quality; any embalming fluid seemed futile in this stage of decomposition, left in the wake of arrant abhorrence. What was left of his gravelous face may indicate a man who had monstrous deformities, one that can be said to be similar in its elongated and retarding form to that of a neanderthal.
The identifiable characteristics of this man had inevitably become indiscernible amidst the bile and grot that had accumulated onto his rotting flesh, accentuating his protruding features, as if he had lived the remainder of his days in a forlorn mould of himself, irreversible from years of living as a troglodyte. I stared into his lost, wistful gaze, hoping to find some sign of humanity — I was met with anything but; bereft of anything at all humane, what stared back was a creature of pure carnality. It felt as if he followed my every move with a reserved judgement, for I was to him but another feeble observer.
He seemed to be a relic of an era long gone, some kind of artifact that had been confounded by modernity. His body had so deeply engrossed itself in its own sickness that the burden of such lonely ideals seemed tame in comparison. I saw in those very moments a symbolic gesturing of the prescient for a decadence in which I wasn’t entirely sure he had any connection to. This man felt like an unseen pariah, of an otherworldly form, one who coddled with the impossibilities of human nature, of what man had been capable of. Looking at the stillness of his body made me uneasy; I felt there was something innate inside him, as if he would awake from his slumber and tear you limb from limb.
I fell into deep rumination, imagining how the everyday man would react to such a sight; would it create a paradox in their mind? Feeling both pity and contempt — for adhering to such contrarianism seemed laughable. By doing this they reaffirm themselves in their insipid occupations, postulating their narrative of a presupposed world in which they find it easy to understand. Though, I suppose I was no better, feeling as if to contradict these feelings would be defying my existence. I left later that very night, feeling uncomfortable and afraid, an uncanny fear had clouded my sensibility.
I remember feeling uneasy when returning to my apartment — I went to bed in order to be granted solitude from my night of turmoil. In the vilifying, tempestuous heat of night, I had a feverish nightmare. In this state of quasi-lucidity, I recall a sense of imbalance, my gait that of a drunkard. I found myself in a place unknown to me — an abyssal pocket deep below the earth, interconnected cavities led deeper into the dark underbelly of the cave I had found myself within. Stalagmites lined the ceiling, like sharp stakes that threatened to impale me. I wandered aimlessly, guided by unchiseled pillars and mounds of rock. I carefully maneuvered my way about the cave as to avoid falling into the transient and perpetual darkness, lost in the absence of form.
As I counted my steps, one.. two.. three.. four—I heard it. Quick, heavy footsteps suddenly became audible, shaking the confines of the cave. I became paralyzed. I stood motionless, sitting and staring into the voracious black in a state of terror, fearing what dreaded creature so swiftly moved towards me. It was in that dreaded stupor that I ran. I stumbled and fell, colliding with pebbles and stones that further heightened my sense of urgency, anticipating and preparing to submit to a fate surely worse than death. As I ran, the rocks seemed to protrude less and less, retreating back into their stoned surfaces as the walls of the cave moulded into a rounded form. I now found myself in an area more familiar to me, for it was purely the product of man. I listened — the footsteps were no more, yet I felt no less uneasy.
Before long I had found myself knee-deep in a malodorous sewage tunnel. Large, cylindrical and interconnected tunnels stretched indefinitely, pipelines and brick layered the walls and ceilings; the restless, industrial maze that man had created. I recall feeling languid — my movements had become dulled; I felt the entrenchments of vile matter coarse through my blood, oppressing each step I took as I waded through what felt like tar. It was after I felt I had walked for eternities that I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. Rejuvenated in that moment, I began to sprint toward the light.
In that moment of the purest ecstasy I had not realized that each step I took blackened the already murky waters and that it now reached my waist. It crept up my body ever so slowly, its aqueous claws threatened to subdue me in its turgid mightiness. As my feet left the ground in which I had been walking on, I began to swim with a fervent terror. I thrashed and struggled, yet it was inevitable that I would sink, for I was but a germ in a colony of waste. I stopped fighting, ceasing to move my limbs. I began to sink — I looked up in my idle state, the sight of the ceiling slowly diminished as I drifted deeper and deeper into its bottomless pit — I assumed a fetal position.
I awoke from that tumultuous night in a dreary, panicked state. I had never been pious, yet that night I was compelled to pray to god. Over the course of a few days I had developed into a surreptitious insomniac; it began to trickle into my everyday life and inevitably would take a toll on my wellbeing — my thoughts would often stray to that very man, occupying my every thought. At home I would see him barely perceptible outside of my peripheral vision, a towering indefinable mass lurking, as if he awaited a moment of weakness, able to strike at any moment.
Very soon I had been let off of work as I was deemed ‘unfit to continue working’. An inquiry was made on my mental wellbeing — of course nothing ever came of this, as I (for the most part) kept to myself. The visions inched closer, seldom did I sleep in the wake of madness, his imposing presence making itself known at every turn. One night I got up to go to the bathroom.
The warm fluorescent light reflected off of the bathroom tiles, producing a sickly yellow that induced a soporific dreariness in me. I dared not look up at myself, for surely my harsh dealings with the woes of paranoia had transfigured me into a grotesque caricature of myself. As I looked down, my gaze was met by the hideous countenance of a corpse — it had been him in that drain, that illusory fiend that appeared to me that rainy night, entombed within the confines of my bathroom drain. His eyes were now two sunken black holes; one felt that they could plunge into its depths.
I screamed and bolted out of the room. I left my apartment and kept running, never looking back for a second. In that state of abject horror and adrenaline I felt alleviated somehow — my earlier trepidations had formed into a hypnagogic elation, unsure if I was fully conscious yet more alive than I had ever been in my waking hours. After running aimlessly that night, by some miracle of predestination, I had found myself in a peculiar place; I stood staring blankly into the vacuous mouth of the behemoth before me — the entrance to large, cylindrical sewage tunnel opened its jaws, like that of a giant basking shark. It was my own foolishness that had led me to that place, for I secretly yearned for such; I obeyed my drives and entered the edifice of its inescapable bowels.
I had found myself knee-deep in a malodorous sewage tunnel. Large, cylindrical and interconnected tunnels stretched indefinitely, pipelines and brick layered the walls and ceilings; the restless, industrial maze that man had created. I recall feeling languid — my movements had become dulled; I felt the entrenchments of vile matter coarse through my blood, oppressing each step I took as I waded through what felt like tar. This time however, no light at the tunnel appeared to me, only the same unflinching darkness which doomed me to ruin.
Escape seemed futile, for it pulled one further into its depths. I cannot even remember if there even had been an entrance, for an entrance would imply an exit — yet every pathway led into a different desolate area of sewage, never bearing any possibility of escape.
No hymn or prayer may save me now, as my soul is doomed to drift in a catatonic plight. My blood remains the only ink readily available to me; if we were to suppose that my mad writings were not lost, these bloodied parchments of mine will remain the remnants of a time long gone.
No one will be able to hear the fervorous temor of my voice, for these sewers have stripped me of every vocal chord I had, any fight I had in me. I applaud the cretin that I met that day, for he had unknowingly become my Mephistopheles, a deviant of callous trickery. I wonder how many of them reside under the earth as I do, oblivious to mankind, sheltered from the lunacy such evolved men would bring. I believe I have reached the end of my account, so I feel it is my duty to inform any such unfortunate reader who may have come across these ravings of mine — please be wary of the caveman, for his archaic flame always burns anew, quoth his prey, lured into the depths of hellish futility.
