“In a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.” —Albert Camus, An Absurd Reasoning: Absurdity and Suicide
And there, lost, alone, hopeless, we may remain. Or we could proclaim some revelation of Truth, and hope to convince ourselves of its veracity. Or we could take the next step into an emptiness neither nihilistic nor revelatory. The emptiness of our own nature.
“What did I learn from my teacher? Nothing! He took everything away from me. When I became attached to what he was saying, he took it away from me. By meeting him I had taken everything away from me….. He crushed and crushed and completely crushed me…. He never let one hang on to anything. And that was his theory of teaching Buddhism…. After he died, people called me a heretic, but I am not good enough to have a heresy, because I have nothing. There is no Pure Land or Zen or Buddhism or philosophy. Nothing to hang on to. Nothing controls me. I was raised as a real, free man. And I am deeply grateful….” —Haya Akegarasu, Shout of Buddha
Go Further
It would be easy, to get stuck with Ligotti, his book like some modern day surrogate to Heraclitus’ disciple.
The fault of Ligotti’s argument is the fault of every argument that posits to depict the end of all questions, to portray the Truth, of a whole and defined cloth. Because it requires one to stop questioning and accept. And though Ligotti will deny such an interpretation, he has, just like those religious folks who believe you are going to hell if you don’t join them, come up with a bullet-proof rationale for why we might object and by doing so prove our participation in his conspiracy. It’s all a little too neat.
In the final analysis, I find myself, despite myself, giving a favorable review to the position of Faith, and have quoted Keirkegaard not once but twice in this treatment. As soon as Faith (aka Truth exists but is not Revealed) morphs into doctrinal or dogmatic certainty (aka Revealed Truth exists), as is the case with most modern religious movements, it becomes a liability to the seeker.
Ascendant over all the positions on the revealed truth question is Position Four: Truth exists but is revealed only through experience, with the caveat being the experiential and subjective nature of that truth. When, as with Ligotti, our search leads us to a Revealed Truth that kills inquiry and offers some final summation of existence, the Truth exposes itself as tarnished, rusted, a forgery.
What Ligotti offers us is a deep look into suffering and its reality. Don’t stop, as Ligotti advocates. Mine is not a suggestion for Buddhism or any particular path, other than endless inquiry and curiosity. Although I did want to note that Science fits the bill as a valid position four (Truth exists but may be revealed only via experience.) How cool is that?
These ideas and considerations are not in the realm of philosophers, scientists, writers, poets, monks, priests, and outside of the realm of the every day person. In the end, only each individual may decide what the ultimate Truth of the universe might be. I choose to believe in a path forward that is rational, and in which I might never cease to find wonder in the present moment, and to find strength to stand against the suffering that will come, and to remember that once I gave you, Dear Reader, a wink and said…
Who ya gonna trust? Me, or the weird wooden dummy beside me?
Brandon H. Bell is a writer of weird fiction and co-editor of The Aether Age: Helios & Fantastique Unfettered: A Periodical of Liberated Literature. His work has appeared in publications from Hadley Rille and M-Brane SF, as well as zines such as Everyday Weirdness, Nossa Morte, and Eschatology Journal. He is an advocate for sensible copyright and Creative Commons licensing, a member of the Outer Alliance (supporting his GBLTQ counterparts in the genre community) and a Rissho Kosei-kai Buddhist. He is working on a novel tentatively titled Shah Ferdowsi Space.
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A Beer and Tentacles
by Holliann Kim
GINA SLID INTO THE WOODEN BOOTH of the dimly lit pub, clutching her cold glass of Smithwick’s and watching to be sure the golden liquid didn’t spill over the brim. She grabbed a cardboard beer mat from across the table and put her glass down, conscious of the already sticky surface. After glancing around at the décor for a few minutes, mostly Guinness signs and rugby memorabilia, she pulled off her wet coat and placed it on the seat beside her, trying to concentrate on the warmth of the pub rather than her damp jeans.
A tall, thin man entered and glanced around the nearly empty pub until his eyes rested on the lone girl. His red hair was plastered to his forehead and water dripped from his nose.
“God, I’m sorry I’m late, Gina.” He slid into the wooden booth opposite her, not yet shedding his threadbare woolen coat.
She smiled, close-lipped. “It’s okay, I’ve only just sat down myself.”
“Oh good. What will you have? Oh you’ve already got yourself a beer. Jesus, I’m a lousy friend. Hold there, I’ll get myself a Stella and be right back.”
Gina slowly sipped from her glass and absently tore at the edge of a spare beer mat, watching as Alan gave his order and money to the young, pretty bartender. It was only three o’clock in the afternoon, but the outside was as dark as night and the rain was falling sideways to spite the numerous umbrellas hurrying by on the sidewalk.
He slid back into the booth and wiped the water from his face with one hand, clutching the beer tightly in the other. There were dark circles under his eyes. They sat in silence for several seconds, taking small sips and not looking at each other. Gina broke the silence.
“For feck’s sake, Alan, what is it? You texted me for the first time in months yesterday, now out with it.”
He looked surprised by her outburst. “God, Gina, well, you see… I’ve got this problem, and I can’t talk to anyone else. I thought I’d buy you a beer and the words would come, but I can’t even get that first part right.”
Gina glared at him, and then looked away. She took another long sip before replying. “Listen, I don’t want to talk about what happened in the summer, and I don’t want to hear about any problems with one of your new girlfriends. So if you want my opinion or advice, you can forget it.”
Alan looked hurt. “Of course not, Gina. I can’t take back what happened, look, I’m sorry. I’ve apologized over and over again about that. But you were my best friend for so long, I don’t know of anyone else that I can trust. Please.”
Gina flinched at the words “best friend,” but she swallowed another sip of beer and recovered her composure. “Okay, out with it then.”
“You’re going to think that I’m crazy.”
“I already do.”
“This is way out there crazy. I want you to tell me if I’m going clinically insane.”
“Yes, you are.”
Alan sighed. “I’m seeing tentacles. Everywhere.”
“Uh, what?”
“Tentacles.”
“What do you mean by tentacles?”
“Slimy, suction-cup tentacles. Squid, octopus, even cuttlefish. Everywhere.”
“I’m not following you.”
Alan rubbed his hand over his hair, causing the back to stick up straight. “A few weeks after we, you know… wherever I look, everyone seems to have tentacles. See that man over there?”
Gina followed his finger to a man with white hair sitting alone, staring into his glass of Guinness. “Yeah.”
“Every so often, out of the corner of my eye, I’ll see purple fecking tentacles creeping out from under his jacket. When I look at him straight, no tentacles. And that bartender? White waving appendages, like some albino squid. I could hardly stand to be around her.”
Gina ripped another corner off the beer mat in front of her. “I never thought you would meet a bartender you didn’t like. What about me? Do I have tentacles?”
“Not yet. But no
doubt they’ll appear, given time.”
“Jesus, Alan. Have you been to see a doctor?”
“I can’t, I’m broke. Can hardly pay rent.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
Tears formed in the corners of Alan’s eyes. “God, I don’t know. Tell me I’m not crazy? That this will all go away?” With a sigh, Gina patted Alan’s hand resting on the table. “I’m no psychiatrist, but it is winter. Maybe you need some sunlight; Dublin is darker than hell this time of year. How long has it been since you visited your parents in Vermont? Maybe you could get them to buy you a ticket home. Get some fresh air.”
“And have them pump me through with anti-depressants like everyone else in the Northeast? No thank you, ma’am.”
“Then learn to like tentacles?”
Alan shuddered. “I was on a date, about a month ago…”
Gina threw a bit of the fluff from the destroyed beer mat at him. “I said, no dating stories, or I leave. It’s bad enough that I can’t get the image out of my head of you in bed with that bartender.”
“Just hear me out, okay? I was on a date with this girl I met at a bar. We went to this horrible sushi restaurant, but she said that she loved Japanese food. Then she ordered a baby octopus salad. When they came out, God, it was all that I could do to stop from shitting my pants when I saw all of the tentacles twisted up with each other. When she put them in her mouth and bit down, I screamed. I literally screamed on a date. How fecking crazy am I?”
A smile played at the corners of Gina’s mouth. “Maybe you should avoid sushi and dates with randomers from the bar from now on.”
“This is serious, Gina. At first, when I saw flickers of tentacles on the girls, I thought that it was kind of sexy. You know, slippery can be hot. But now it’s all I can do to not run away, and it’s getting worse.”
“You thought that tentacles were sexy?”
Alan drained the rest of his glass. “I’m sorry, this was a bad idea. I thought that you’d be able to get past what happened and talk to me like a real friend. I was drunk, okay? I hardly even remember that night.”
The old man in the corner started singing to himself, one of the classic Irish ballads that involved someone dying or going away forever. The bartender looked at Gina, who shrugged and smiled, and they let him sing on undisturbed.
“I’m sorry, Alan, what you’re going through sounds horrible. I shouldn’t rag on you for past indiscretions. Water under the bridge.”
“Really?”
“Yes, this could just be the beer talking, but I forgive you. The American-born Irish have got to stick together.”
Alan smiled and raised his empty glass to her. “Cheers, Gina. I really appreciate it. Can I buy you another round?”
“How about dinner? Are you hungry?”
“Famished, I’ve barely been able to get groceries lately, what with the tentacles. Do you want to eat here?”
“Oh God no, remember how bad their fish and chips were the last time?”
Alan made a face. “Good point. Let’s go to O’Neills then, just like old times?”
Gina smiled, her green eyes lighting up for the first time. Alan squeezed her shoulder and excused himself to use the toilet before they departed.
When he was out of sight, she glanced around to make sure that the bartender and other patrons weren’t paying attention. Before she put her jacket on, she reached up behind her back and pulled her tentacles out of the aether, letting the waving ends spill out the back of her shirt. She had had her fun toying with Alan, but now she was hungry, and there were many dark alleyways on the way to O’Neills. Whoever said that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned had not met her father.
Holliann R. Kim completed her M.Phil in Popular Literature at Trinity College Dublin (Ireland), where she first came into contact with both Lovecraft and Irish pubs. She now lives in sunny Atlanta, where she works as a SF/Fantasy writer and copy editor, and is in the process of writing her first novel. You can learn more at http://www.holliannkim.com.
Story illustration by Robert Elrod.
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Now She Preys Through Endless Days
by Jenna M. Pitman
SHE HAD BEEN AGELESS but now she was young. She had been formless but now she was beautiful. She had been banished first and then she was stranded. They had cut her off from her power and set her adrift among the worlds, condemned to an eternal life of silence and isolation and impotence. And they had intended that to be forever but they had underestimated her.
Of course they had. They always had.
With the little strength she’d had left, she had latched onto the nearest planet with a glimmer of sentient life. She’d pulled herself closer over countless aeons and heaved herself into one of the oceans that covered its craggy flesh. It took another several millennia before she could crawl out of the salty stew that had her. But she was here and they were going to pay. Eventually.
So now she stood on the freshest planet of them all, before an audience that was happy to ingest the images she fed it. They saw what she wanted them to see. The youth, the beauty, the sultry starlet draped in swathes of silky, shimmering satin who crooned into a mesh of wires and electricity. Unknowingly they offered her sustenance, these two-legged pink beings in their dark suits and skin-tight skirts, still fragile from their second big war. So frail, so immature, and already on the verge of causing their own extinction.
She lifted her eyes, countless pools of indescribable brown, infinite purple and incessant orange splattered across her undulating lumpy body in an uneven distribution. She opened her largest mouth, currently located in the middle of her most ample of masses, and let out another elegant squish. In their vision they saw scarlet bangs, smoky chocolate eyes, and red, red lips like Bing Cherries and spice. In their ears they heard her swooning about love and stars and moons and endless black skies. They listened and cheered, not understanding that the love she longed for was not of this world but of another place entirely. A place out there among the millions of burning suns and the vacuum of space. But her fans loved her; she could feel the energy of their emotions swirling around her. She supped from it, drinking it in, dreaming of the day when she could connect again to the source of her being.
High on that thought she burbled, her body rippling and shivering in a gelatinous quiver. Behind her the musicians, held taut by ropey tentacles that spawned from her center, played louder, more enthusiastically. Before her the devotees, held in rapture by a web of mucus, slumped and soared, ever her creatures, even the newest listeners, the strands expanding and groping to encompass them.
My mother’s good friend, the Private Investigator Ervin Harms, had let me go that night. He said he couldn’t keep me on, not if I wasn’t going to apply myself like he had. He’d wasted my time as he berated me for wasting his and harangued me for not handling the trauma of my war as well as he had. He could go to hell. If following the husbands of unhappy housewives was what made him feel alive, more power to him. I had found what gave my life meaning. Just because he and my mother didn’t agree with it? Well, she could go to hell too. It didn’t give him the right to ruin my evening.
It wasn’t my impending unemployment that was upsetting me however, it was my tardiness. I never missed a moment of her performances, every second of her voice was like gift from Heaven and I would never waste a drop. Except I had this time, the fucking PI and his priorities had held me back too long and now I was the last one to find a seat.
I felt the heat of shame burning up the back of my neck, down the sides of my cheeks and drying out my guts. An unreasonable part of me was worried that someone would notice my heresy, sneaking in at the middle of a song, one of the last in her first set if I recalled it correctly. But of course no one paid me mind, their eyes were sealed to her and nothing else mattered. It didn’t improve my mood much to learn that I had missed so much of the night though.
Then I sat down.
A flurry of
notes washed over me, claiming me as hers, every last fiber and pore. Just like that I felt at home. As long as I was here there was nothing I had to worry about.
A waitress slipped me a highball and I took a sip without breaking my visual contact with the stage. The staff never bothered anyone while she was singing. They just brought us something stiff and then slipped back into the shadows. I doubt they enjoyed the interruptions any more than the rest of us did.
No matter how long I live I don’t think I will ever see anything as half as perfect as she was. Her body, always wrapped in carmine, was the epitome of femininity with that tiny flared waist swelling into dangerous curves. Her voice was honey wrapped in the velvet of incense, rich and ruddy, an exciting balm that lit a fire and pacified all at once. Just like everything else about her. And that gorgeous set of eyes? It was as though they could see through me, pierce me to my core and singe out the transgressions of my past, cure me of my guilt and my wrongdoings. It was painful but the searing laceration was cleansing and in its stead was left a soothing sort of numb that made up for all the suffering of the last several years. It was as though she saw all, knew all, forgave all. I got more comfort here, inside this club, at the altar of alcohol and promised sex, than I ever had within the walls of my mother’s holy cathedrals.
I lit a cigarette and took a deep drag, now tranquil. Maybe the night wasn’t as lost as I had thought.
There were so many of them these days, feeding her the rich inner workings of their very souls. They made her giddy, all of those enraptured faces staring at her in silent reverence. There were no seats left, the few who were sneaking in late or walking in unaware only could stand. And yet it still wasn’t enough.
It had been so long since she had even a single strand of power to draw from but these animals, these tiny little beings who strode across this planet oblivious of the cosmoses and the planes around them and the forces that buffeted their diminutive world, they were the answer to her prayers. Alone they were nothing; she couldn’t bring herself to even focus on them, far too miniscule to single out. But together, when she gathered them to herself, encasing them like this in a network of meat and blood, they provided her with a link to the place from which she had come. She could leach from their adoration a faded echo of the force she once knew.
Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2012 - Issues 10 through 20 Page 26
