Day 334 - Gate Story

Gate Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

It was the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end or some other such transitional moment. Left, right. Forward, backwards. They always led in one of two directions. There were always two choices. It could go either way. One or the other. Hardly ever both. But that was another way of looking at these things altogether.

Choice. That was the key. It was the choice of free will or the choice of destiny. It was the choice to cross the threshold and take what came.

John looked at the gate and thought about his choice. He could slip out and around things and he had the uncanny knack of being able to look both ways. He didn’t always know what he was looking at. He didn’t always know which was real and which was just possible. It was unfair and made the process difficult. But that was the way things were.

The gate offered choice. It would do things. All one had to do was step through. It wasn’t a promise, it wasn’t a guarantee. It didn’t make any particular outcome turn out more likely any more than it made any other outcome occur. What it did was make an opportunity point. It made a moment of potential and a moment of divergence. Things could go either way. There was no way of knowing which way.

Most people couldn’t see their options. Most people didn’t know. John could slip outside of the normal space-time flow of things and see more than he should have been able to see. He was presented with too many choices, too many opportunities. There were too many outcomes to process. There were more outcomes than he could properly conceive of or comprehend. Every opportunity point presented an infinity of choice. It was too much to take. There was no way he was going to properly analyze them all and make a well-educated choice. The failure was debilitating.

One versus two would have been okay. Maybe. One versus a million was impossible.

John wanted to go back. He could go back. He thought maybe he should go back. He could ignore all the current choices and just go back and start over. He could start at the beginning and subtly nudge everything in one direction. He could pick a path and aim for it. Everything was achievable. Time was mutable. He could make a perfect decision and create a perfect outcome.

But there were too many paths. Too many directions. He didn’t know where to begin or what to do if he could figure out which beginning was the correct beginning.

John looked at the gate. He thought about the gate. He just stood there. Going back, there were too many options. Going forward, there was no way of knowing which forward was going to turn out to be the real forward. There were just too many of them to understand them all. He didn’t know and what he didn’t know froze him with fear.

On the other side of things, Janice had stood and looked at the gate long enough. The intrigue of possibilities was too great and she had to find out. She took a step forward and crossed the threshold into the gate. For her, everything was change.

Day 333 - Katzenklavier Story

Katzenklavier Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

The music, if it could be called that, was a painful screeching that wreaked havoc on the ear. The instrument was handmade and had a keyboard like a piano that was attached to a bizarre box structure. The player, because it would be an injustice to call him a musician, sat at the keyboard but his body and face were hidden, cloaked in a strange darkness. It was as if his arms were pulled and stretched away from his body. He sat so far away from the keyboard that it seemed as if it would be impossible for him to reach the keys. And yet he did. Elongated arms and elongated fingers. It hardly looked human at all.

Strange sounds came from the box – hissing sounds, screeching sounds, scratching sounds. They were cries of painful torture. But there was a tone and a pitch and a tune that carried from one scream to the next. Somewhere within the suffering was a melody. A dark and twisted melody, but a melody all the same. There was some method to the torturous madness.

Felix was afraid to look inside the box. He didn’t want to see what was making that terrible noise. He didn’t want to know. He was scared it would just be too awful.

And yet, he was weirdly drawn to it. Knowing it was forbidden made it all the more tempting. Knowing it would be terrible made it all the most fascinating.

Felix looked back at the player, as if he would somehow lend Felix his support. All Felix wanted was a word, a nod or an acknowledgement of some sort. The player made no attempt to connect, and made no effort to console. The player was masked in shadow and doubt. Felix was on his own.

And still, the box beckoned.

Fingers to the lid, knowledge always came at a price, but Felix didn’t care. He had to see it. He had to know.

Inside, instead of strings, there were sixteen children, bound and confined. Instead of the hammer there was a nail attached to the hammer shank. The nail would strike a different child depending on which key on the keyboard was pressed. Each child cried a different cry. It was a cacophony of pain.

Felix was instantly horrified. He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew something was wrong about all of this. He looked down at his hands and he suddenly had paws and claws. He was covered in fur. He was suddenly transformed into a feline.

And that was the moment he woke and the dream ended.

It was a little after four in the morning. It was far too early to be awake. Somewhere, in a nearby place, there was an annoying cat doing its best to shriek the night away and keep Felix from falling back asleep. It was far too early and Felix’s mind was still far too groggy, but he wished it had been that cat inside the organ box from his dream and he was the player inflicting the damage. It was going to be a long night and he was going to get very little additional sleep.

Day 332 - Tithonian Story

Tithonian Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

“Drink the drink of me and I shall drink the drink of you and together we shall be free...” – from the poem “Eos and Tithonos” by Winston Alexander Whitmore, circa 1923.

“Tithonian Brotherhood does exist.  Rituals leave members all too mortal.” – Note from the research journal of renowned occultist Mortimer Thornewill.

The Tithonian Brotherhood was a sham, a bunch of fakes, rubes and yokels who had been duped by charismatic cult-like leaders who preyed upon the weak and the insecure. They made promises to the elderly and sick. Their rituals were nothing but pretense. Their followers were fools and their leaders were criminals. The Brotherhood knew nothing and could do nothing when it came to the promise of their beliefs.

Or so it was claimed. That, like many other things in this world, could be disproven for the right amount of money. Mortimer Thornewill had the right amount of money and then he had some more. Mortimer Thornewill had been born with a fortune and through skill, luck, lies and circumstance spent a good deal of his life adding to that wealth. He then spent much of his mid to late adult life traveling and trying to discover the forgotten secrets of the world. He wrote many books about myth, magic and the occult, of lost civilizations and ancient answers to modern day problems. The most interesting parts were usually left out. The most interesting parts could add to his already great fortunes.

Tithonus the Trojan had been granted eternal life by Zeus, the twist being that he would still age. Whereas most people today believed Tithonus to be a myth like all the rest, The Brotherhood knew better, or at least they believed they did. They had no real evidence of this, but they claimed that Tithonus was a real man who really existed and really did age nearly forever. They were founded as his disciples. Of course that was thousands of years ago and members had come and gone and there had been division and factions and civil wars within their society. There were orders and monks and disciples and they all had different beliefs and different goals. The one thing they all shared was the belief in the possibility of immortality. There might be no proof, but there was still plenty of belief.

The Brotherhood didn’t care for Thornewill, but they did appreciate his money. He helped them hide their existence and funded their search for any remaining evidence of Tithonus’ existence, and in return, they promised him the secret of immortality, should they ever find it.

The Brotherhood believed the secret to youth and to immortality lay in the water. Tithonus had a water nymph for a mother. Water was his element. Water would be his power. His life had been tragedy. Tithonus cried a million tears over the course of a million years. The Tithonian Tears Ritual was a transubstantiation ritual where followers dripped water into their eyes in an attempt to somehow absorb Tithonus’ unique ability. Not all sects performed the ritual. The Brotherhood didn’t care for it. They knew the tears were fake. They knew the water ritual would grant no such special powers. They knew this because they knew that there were real tears that had been collected from Tithonus himself. They knew this in the same way they knew Tithonus was real – because ancient artifacts and texts told them so. Supposedly no one had seen the real man for thousands of years. That didn’t stop them from believing.

Thornewill and his money were put to the task. The world would be scoured. The world would be discovered.

A city was unearthed beneath another city – a holy land underneath another holy land. It was a lengthy excavation. Most of it was done under the guise of research and proper archeological restraint. But then there was also the secret dig that focused on the opening of an ancient and private burial site. Thronewill had lived a long life by this point and was willing to spend a disproportionate amount of his fortune to ensure he had a chance to live a much longer one. The dig worked nonstop. There were only two outcomes that could stop the work – the discovery or Thornewill’s demise.

Thornewill was led to the chamber. The work was done. The leaders of the Brotherhood joined him, but he was to be the first. It had been his money, his efforts. The rewards would begin with him.

The Brotherhood minded the tomb. They minded the sarcophagus. They respected everything. Thornewill didn’t care. He wasn’t there for history, he wasn’t there to pay homage to an ancient belief or leader; he was there for his own life, his own reward, his own immortality.

Thornewill drank first. He drank the bottled tears. He didn’t sip them. He drank them.

And then he and the Brotherhood leaders waited.

They didn’t wait long.

As the effects took hold, Thornewill finally looked around the room and took everything in. He noticed the bones. There were lots of skeletal remains. Of children. Infants. It was strange. Why would an immortal be buried with infants? Why would he be buried at all? What sort of immortality was this?

Thornewill suddenly wished he had sipped instead of drank.            

The Brotherhood watched as Thornewill transformed into a baby. He was young alright. He had been granted a new and long life, just not the one or the way that he expected.

Tithonus might have had followers. He might have had disciples to protect him. To nurture him. To raise him again. The Brotherhood had no such vested interest in Thornewill. They did however have access now to his remaining fortunes and to the tears.

Winston stepped forward and picked up the bottle of tears. He and his fellow brothers left the chamber while their followers began sealing it back up; the infant Thornewill was left behind.

Day 331 - Messenger Story

Messenger Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Evan looked to the horizon. It was getting late, the day was rapidly ending. The sun was getting too low. It could have been one hundred steps; it could have been ten thousand. It made no difference. The journey was long, but he had a job to do and he still had miles and miles left to go.

Evan had been charged with a delicate and extremely important task. He carried with him a stack of papers, ancient and rare. Evan didn’t know what they were or what they said. He took his job seriously and part of his job was to protect the privacy and anonymity of his clients. He didn’t ask what he was carrying. He didn’t want to know. Many men might have been tempted to read the papers. He wasn’t many men. His word was a sacred bond and he wasn’t going to break it just to read some antique and crumbling papers. Besides, he thought, what could they possibly have to say that was that important?

There had been a fire. Evan didn’t know about that. That wasn’t part of his job. But an archive had been burned. Most of the texts had been lost. There was an arsonist on the loose and the archive had been burned. There was supposed to be someone who was going to do something about that but apparently they had been unsuccessful so far. Again, none of this was Evan’s concern. He had one job and one job only – to deliver his package. He knew nothing of archives or arsonists or any of the rest.

Evan had been approached by a man named Nestor. And Nestor had a package for him. Evan was hired to make a delivery and that was what he was going to do. He didn’t ask Nestor what it was. He didn’t ask Nestor for any details regarding how he came to possess this package or why it seemed as if there were serious burn marks that were being poorly hidden by Nestor’s shirt. Nestor had been nervous. He was paranoid and always looking around. He was either a mad man or a man certain that he was being followed and was in danger. Nestor paid well and Evan didn’t ask questions. Nestor was incredibly relieved to hand the package over to Evan and be on his way.

Evan was always a careful man. But his exchange with Nestor left him uneasy. He hated when the client was nervous. It usually meant trouble. But he liked the money and he didn’t ask questions. It was better not to know. Still, he took every extra precaution he could think of.

Evan traveled on foot. No one knew where he was. There was no record. This wasn’t his normal way of delivering a package, but in this case he decided it was for the best. This was a special case. There could be no mistake. There could be no trail to be followed.

The sun was setting. The distance too great. The road was still too long. It could have been ten steps, it could have been a thousand, or it could have been a million. It didn’t matter – he had his job to do and he was going to do.

When Nestor had left, he offered Evan only one extra bit of advice, “don’t.”

It was such an odd thing to say, it caught Evan off-guard and he actually asked a question he normally never would have.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t. Just don’t. Don’t look at it. Don’t write anything down. Just don’t.”

The fear in Nestor’s voice stuck with Evan more than anything else. Evan didn’t get nervous often, it wasn’t a feeling he liked. Usually when a client was scared, it didn’t really affect him too greatly. This time it did. This time there was legitimate terror behind Nestor’s eyes. Evan believed it. He almost asked more. He wanted to ask more. But that wasn’t his thing. Still, he would be glad when the package was delivered and out of his hands and it was all over.