Abomination

Winter 2008 - The goal he had been working towards for nearly 40 years was complete, "Seraphim" or "the Devine Configuration "...
from the journal of N.G. - [link]

" I feel the need to put down on paper the most frightening and powerful of all my encounters. It began like this; since completing ‘Seraphim’ in ealy February, nothing of any great interest had happened. I did not know what I expected to happen, but to have nothing felt... disappointing, to say the least. Then in August I felt a compulsion to return to England. Indeed, so strong was it that I was on the plane before I even began to wonder where this sudden need had come from. But then I don't suppose I had much choice. she controls me now, as then, my Divine box... she knows where to go and takes me with her. I like to imagine that I have some level of control, but i suppose that is little more than fantasy. Still, she is what I have worked towards all these years and to complain seems childish. Upon my arrival I was left again without direction and confused as to why I was here for a short time before, in early September, I felt drawn to.... somewhere; so I drove on the motorway, not really knowing where I was going but nonetheless knowing with a great surety that wherever it was, I had to go.
Sometime in the early hours, exhausted and frustrated by my lack of direction or progress I pulled into a service station, both to rest and attempt to bolster my flagging alertness with coffee and caffeine tablets purchased at the usual exorbitant motorway prices.

It was then that I saw her and knew - she was the one I had been unknowingly seeking.

Sitting some three tables across from me in the cafe, nursing a thee quarter empty paper cup of cold tea with a lost, fearful and uncomprehending look in her unfocused red rimmed eyes I had learned by experience to associate with Lemarchands damned creations, sat my goal.
My first feeling towards her was one of great compassion, but as I moved forward, her eyes unglazed and she looked directly at me with a look I can only describe as... malevolent… an inadequate word for what I felt, but it will have to do. In an instant I sensed a mixture of hatred, anger and cruel intention so strong it took my breath away and for a moment the world span and my vision closed in like a grey curtain before my eyes as unconsciousness threatened me; then just as suddenly the sensation ceased and the young woman before me seemed as vulnerable and afraid as she did before.

She was in her early twenties by my estimate, but the lines etched by stress made her appear older at first glance. Her hair was just beyond shoulder length, a brown so deep it was almost black and it was so unwashed and matted it was clear to me that she had been in this state for quite some time. Her clothing was similarly disheveled and she could easily have been mistaken for a vagrant, but I noticed that on her dirty wrist she wore what appeared to be a gold watch with diamonds on the face and her clothing bore labels I knew to be expensive in the extreme.
Gathering my shaken senses I dusted the food crumbs from the plastic seat opposite and sat down.
Her expression changed again, this time to one of fear mixed with curiosity, but she did not speak. I smiled gently at her to try and allay her fears and said:

"You don’t know me, but my name is Nathan, and I’ve come here to help you. I understand that you are afraid but if I am to help you you must trust me completely. I have with me something that will reassure you of my intent."

So saying I reached into my bag and brought out Magdalenes Salvation [link] . I saw her flinch in the manner of one who has seen such a construct before and learned to fear it before Magdalenes calming influence started to take hold. Silently I slid the box across the table and she tentatively reached out with a mixture of awe and hope on her dirty, tear stained face.

With her previous tight expression gone I saw that beneath the dirt hidden was a very beautiful woman and as she touched the box I saw the now familiar to me flurry of expressions as its effects took hold and soothed her soul. Then with a suddenness that startled me her expression turned to one of rage as she recoiled from my creation as if its touch had burned her and let out a scream that chilled me to the bone, before the anger slipped slowly away and her expression reverted back to the distant expression she had worn when I first saw her.

This was completely beyond my experience. Magdalenes Salvation was usually more than enough to help those in need of helping back to a place where they could begin to rebuild their shattered lives. I had never before seen a reaction like this - for the first time in many years I was afraid.

As I sat staring at her like an animal caught in the headlights of their approaching demise her eyes flickered upwards so that only the whites could be seen, As they rolled back down the beginnings of understanding began to dawn.

When I had first seen her, her eyes and been a pure bright green, seeming all the brighter for the bloodshot redness of her whites, now they appeared a dirty yellow.. no pupil was visible in the putrid filth that was now her gaze - indeed it now seemed her eyes were no more than fetid balls of puss in her sockets, and I felt a wave of nausea at the sight.. not just at the vileness of the transformation but because I had seen those 'eyes' before.

Her entire face relaxed as the eyes rolled down, like the face of the dead her flesh hung from the bone, before control returned and the mouth spread into a smile so wide her lips began to split and a thin trickle of vividly red blood trickled down her chin.
Her head tilted languidly to one side and in a voice like warm honey, as unnatural and beautiful as her face was now unnatural and horrific, she spoke.

"AAAAAAAHHH… AT LAST.... MY CAPTAIN.. "

She giggled softly, moaning gently in pleasure as the flesh of her lips tore further and the blood flowed afresh.

"IT HAS BEEN A LONG TIME BUT I KNEW YOU WOULD RETURN TO US. TO... ME"

Even though this face was new to me, I knew that voice. It was a sound like ecstacy - rose petals dipped in cyanide, beautiful and lethal. The last time I heard that voice I had been a young man with a promising military career. I had been on war exercises in Syria when I had, quite literally, stumbled over ‘Magdalenes Undoing [link] ; half buried in the sands in a particularly desolate part of the desert. Fascinated by its intricate design I had spent hours studying it, pawing over its fine detail, marveling at how its indeterminate amount of time in the desert sands had not managed to mar its perfection, when it suddenly and inexplicably began to move of its own volition. I remember my fascination as it seemed to unfold like a flower before its petals began to spin gracefully and re-arrange thamselves whilst playing the most beautiful tune I had ever heard, one which I have never been able to remember a single note of since that night. I remember the petals closing again to reveal the box - the flickering red light that lit the black smoke that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere and the fear as the torn and shredded figure crawled from the light before raising itself up with a regal bearing that belied its physical agony. I remember the way the chains wires and nails that held open its myriad of gaping wounds glittered in the hellish light, how its moans of ecstacy and giggles of mad pleasure had subsided as it grew close to my frozen form and in its beautiful voice it had made me its offer, and struck with me a deal for my soul.
It had sensed in me a skill I did not know I possessed; I was to be the new Lemarchand and create boxes anew for this beast and its brethren so that they might sow their ecstasies amongst mankind again, my reward would be power, wealth beyond imagining and a place amongst their ranks when the end time came…
As it spoke to me that night I knew it believed itself to be bestowing great honours. I also knew with a crystalline clarity I had never experienced before that if I survived that night, I would devote my life to the downfall of this demon and all its siblings.
Now, in the innocuous setting of a motorway cafe on a cold winters night, a moment I hoped would never come had arrived.

" YOU FAILED US. YOU BETRAYED US. WE HAD SUCH PLEASURES TO GIVE YOU AND YET YOU TURNED FROM OUR GIFTS AND TRIED TO DESTROY US. SURELY YOU MUST REALISE BY NOW THAT WE CANNOT BE UNDONE. OURS IS THE WORLD AND THE SKY AND THE SOULS OF THE CREATURES THAT SWARM ARE BUT PLAYTHINGS FOR OUR AMUSEMENT. YOU COULD HAVE BEEN ONE WITH US, TASTED OUR DELIGHTS, FELT THE RAPTURE OF OUR AGONIES. WHY WOULD YOU TURN YOUR BACK ON SUCH A WONDROUS GIFT?"

I remember that as it spoke my mind was a turmoil of ridiculous musings - was I to die here, in a motorway service station beneath the strip lights surrounded by half empty cups of cold tea? I remember noticing how the other people in the room did not seem to notice that one of Leviathans servants was amongst them, possessing the body of this fragile young woman. indeed they seemed to me to be moving with incredible slowness, as if space time itself was under the influence of the obcenity sitting across from me. perhaps it was. Never before had I even heard rumour of such a thing as now sat before me; the possessing of a human host? unheard of! ridiculous!
I managed to regain some control over my tongue and managed to rasp a question.

"How?"

Not much of a question, my intellect was working at a much reduced capacity at this point, but it seemed to understand.

"I REQUIRED A MEANS TO SEEK YOU OUT, AND YOU KNOW THAT MY MEANS ARE RESTRICTED BY LEMARCHANDS CONFIGURATIONS..."

Again she smiled the unnaturally wide tearing smile and new blood flowed.

"THIS BEAST OF BURDEN GAVE ME SUCCOR. SHE IS THE ANIMAL ON WHICH I RIDE FORTH TO SEEK YOU OUT; BUT YOU INSTEAD HAVE COME TO ME AND I AM GRATEFUL. YOU MAY NOT SIT AT MY SIDE , BUT I AM FORGIVING AND WILL GIVE YOU A TASTE OF MY ECSTASIES BEFORE YOU DEPART THE MORTAL WORLD.

At my feet my bag began to glow as Seraphim made her displeasure known.

Up until this moment I had known that Seraphim was special amongst my constructs, but I had never realised by just how much. All the boxes that had come before had been results of meticulous planning and reverse engineering of Lemarchand configurations, months in the planning and months in execution.
Seraphim had come to me in a dream.

I had awoken with every detail clear in my mind. A box of such immense complexity that it was beyond my understanding, even as I built her. Her parts moved in more dimensions than just three or four, in fact I was left with the dizzying impression that infinite dimensions turned and twisted with each movement of the box in our world. that what we saw as a box was not just the ‘tip of the iceberg’, but the tip of infinite universes. Every soul that had ever existed in all of those universes sang as each part of the box turned, and reality was unmade and recreated at her whim.
The bloody smile of the Cenobite seemed to fade and the puss filled eyes betrayed confusion....

"WHAT IS...."

The bleeding smile returned.

"AAAHH.. ONE OF YOUR PRETTY CONSTRUCTS. YOU MUST KNOW THAT THEY HAVE NO REAL POWER. THE ONLY REAL POWER IS THAT GIVEN BY LEVIATHAN AND FEAR. FEAR IS ENEMY TO MANY BUT FRIEND TO US. FEAR MAKES THE SWARM DO OUR BIDDING. FEAR GIVES US OUR RIGHTFUL PLACE IN CREATION. FEAR IS, NOW AND FOREVER, SERVANT TO US... AS ARE YOU."

And reality came to an end.

I cannot write here with any clarity what happened next, because I dont really understand what happened next.
I will write what I remember.



Light.



Brighter that a thousand suns, but without heat. blinding yet I could see. In its painless glare I saw something I had not thought possible; across from me the bleeding smile was replaced by a great gaping ‘O’ like a chasm as the yellow pupilless eyes stared at something behind me, something, I sensed, of infinite grace, compassion and power. I felt consumed by a howling storm that could destroy me in an instant but felt nothing, A sound unlike any ever heard by mortal ears screamed in the silence and left no echoes or pain in its wake. Peace flowed like blood from a vein from the dizzying occurrence, pulsing and full the promise of life and happiness to come.


Then it was gone.


Across from me, a beautiful woman in filthy clothes asked me where she was, inquired if she knew me.
I smiled shakily and in a voice that cracked slightly despite my best efforts, told her that I just came in for a coffee.”

My other Cenobites -
[link]
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