Maniacs in The Fourth Dimension

by YT Whitemansson

''The moment I return, I'm taking you to hospital!''

  ''Okay. Run, Jove.''

  I can hear them. Now, I see them. Oh, fuck no. She threw the canister out of her hands, she's dripping wet with gasoline.

  ''NO!'', I screamed at her.

  ''What's her name?'', I asked the guy I saw her with before, but he didn't register me.

  I slapped the back of his head, too hard, he looked at me with pain on his face.

  ''What's her NAME?!''

  ''Alice.''

  ''Alice! Alice, look at me!''

  She did.

  ''Don't do this, Alice. I will make all this disappear, I will take you home, to sweet security of your home, right now, this moment, you just need to give me your hand.''

  I reached my hand towards her.

  ''Just take my hand, close your eyes and you will be back in the world you know and love. Please, Alice. This is not the way.''

  I took her hand. She spoke.

  ''You believe what you like to. Your eyes see what you want to see, and your ears hear what you want to hear, not what's really there.''

  She turned her head away, closed her eyes and constricted her lips, like she's awating a blow to her face.

  ''No.''

  No.

  Chapter twenty nine

  Cleit predicts his own death and other stories

  Jove says that we're in the Poplar-Ararat's. Hospital. I wouldn't know, I'm blind. Doctor doesn't believe that bolt hit my eyes. She says that my pupils are reacting to light, and I have begin seeing shapes, she says that's a good sign, that my sight is restoring. She put some ointment in my eyes and covered them with gauze. Now, I don't see even those murky shapes. I'm sitting on the hospital bed.

  Jove says that that girl that did this to me, Alice is her name according to Jove, burned herself to death, in front of Jove's naked eyes. He's not very chatty, I had to draw informations out of him. People cried. Kristen attacked Alice's boyfriend for what happened, blaming him for ignoring the signs of her mental meltdown. Alice was a very religious person and she didn't take all this very well. That's all I managed to get out of Jove.

  I'm the one that brought her there, and her meltdown, I brought them all there. Without me, they would all be staring at, or throwing junk at the medusas. Her death is on my hands. I must pay for it.

  ''Jove! Are you here?!''

  ''I'm here, man, don't yell, we're not alone, people are sleeping.''

  ''Where are you?''

  He touched my hand, I gripped his and pulled him towards me.

  ''Listen to me, Jove. You have to snap out of your condition, because there will be more death. I have to die for what happened to that girl, her death is on my hands, I brought her there, I've put the fire in her hands. Death for death, it's the way karma flips.''

  ''Stop saying that, you didn't do this to her. Fault is not yours. And you're not the only one losing it, man!''

  X X X

  ''Jove, are you there?''

  ''I'm here.''

  ''What's the doc like? On the scale?''

  ''Oh, she's good. An eight. Older gal, but good.''

  ''I knew it. Her voice is a ten. Brunette?''

  ''Yeah. What, you have the sixth sense, now?''

  ''What famous chick does she remind of?''

  ''I don't know… Maybe, Lena Olin.''

  ''Sweet Jesus! When she comes back, I'll tell her that the bolt also hit my genitals, and that she needs to rub that ointment on them.''

  ''Sure, do that.''

  ''Wait a sec. Are you fucking with me? A blind man? She's not some two hundred and twenty pounds ballooner with the face of Jack Nicholson?! Is she?!''

  ''Bwahahah! You'll have to wait and see for yourself. Bwahahah!''

  X X X

  ''I have an idea. We should catch some smaller gwangi, small enough to fit in the toilet bowl, take it back to our world, and close it in the toilet bowl at your place's. Then, when Isaac is around, we'll turn on MTV. As soon as he sees one of those scrawny ass bitches doing their thang, he'll get a boner, and run in the bathroom to jerk off. He'll lift the lid of the toilet bowl, and gwangi will spring at him. Bwahah! It's gonna be hilarious.''

  ''That's some straight youtube material, man. It has to be immortalized with camera. I'll fix the camera above the doors, so it can catch the whole thing. First, I have to get my camera back from Booboo, I gave it to him. We have to think of some good title for the video, before we put it on youtube. How about… Squeezing the lizard?''

  Chapter thirty

  Simon the Magus

  Listen to this. I googled it out.

  ’’But in each heaven I changed my form," says he, "in accordance with the form of those who were in each heaven, that I might escape the notice of my angelic powers and come down to the Thought, who is none other than her who is also called Prunikos and Holy Ghost, through whom I created the angels, while the angels created the world and men.’’

  Epiphanius of Salamis' writing. It's one of the things I found when I typed 'Simon the Magus' in the browser of my phone. This Simon is a pseudo-historical figure from biblical times, according to most stories, a Samaritan, and a great sorcerer. Tradition has Simon levitating in Roman Forum, before Peter, Paul, and Nero, to convince them that he's a prophet, messiah, or something like that. That's why I remembered him, because of levitation, Abraxas said that the last two things from our world that will disappear in the very distant dimensions, are gravity and time.

  Tradition also list Simon as the first Gnostic. 'History of Gnosticism' is a course I attended, that’s where I first heard of Simon. If you’re not into religion, and you're not familiar with with the term 'Gnosticism', I’ll sum it up for you as mix of Christianity, oriental religions, and teachings of Pythagoras and Plato. Weird syncretic systems of beliefs. They still make a-hell-lot-more-sense than L. Ron.

  Anyway, Simon the Sorcerer fits just nicely in the world of '365 heavens', and judging by that excerpt above, he's not only multidimensional, but 'alldimensional'. I would share my discovery with Hubert, but beside the fact that he probably read it before, he's asleep in the chair. He's pretty sauced. But, I can imagine what would he say to this passage, he'd say that it's only one of many things from old literature about Gnosticism that inspired the world of '365 heavens', that exists only on paper.

  Myself, personally, don't know what to think.

  There's another interesting thing I found, googling about Simon. A famous and powerful druid from Irish legends, I don't remember his name, but I can google it out if need be, is said to be the student of Simon. Another druid is also a hero of '365 heavens'. Coincidence? Or, just another inspiration for the world that exist only on paper? It was said that druids were the excuse for Roman conquering of the Celtic world, they allegedly practiced human sacrifices, practice that disgusted Romans. So, Romans kept conquering to exterminate the druids, but nowhere is written that they actually ever found any of them. Romans saw druids in a way similar we today see the Masons, or some other secret group. It was written that the druids shared their secret knowledge only orally, hidden in forests and caves, and that it took up to twenty years of learning to become one. No piece of information can be confirmed about the druids, they remain the stuff of legends. Now, I have to ask myself, could the secret knowledge of the druids be their access to other worlds?

  I don't know what to think. I'll inform you if I google out something more.

  Chapter thirty one

  Various predatorial beasts

  Cleit wrestled Lempo to the ground, overpowered him and pressed his face in the dirt.

  ''How dared you?! HOW DARED YOU?!''

  I had to get Cleit off him.

  ''Control yourself man, you're starting to sparkle!''

  Electric charges are walking all over Cleit. He roared at all of them.

  ''We agreed! WE HAD A FUCKIN' DEAL!''

  What happened is that after Cleit and I walked out of Poplar-Ararat's, with Cleit's vision restored, we found none o
f them in the park. We found bunch of dead gwangis. Those peaceful gwangis that were browsing the fern, iguanodons. Killed. Which ever predator did that, I was afraid, probably encountered Lempo and the others. I was afraid that we're going to find them all dead.

  ''You're not going to find their dead bodies. They're not dead'', said Cleit: ''They're the ones that did this.''

  They took their energy to go further. Cleit wasn't here to protect the innocent animals. He sanked into some dark mood, that held him in the hospital, cuased by Alice's demise, he mumbled about death and karma. I asked him what do we do now.

  ''Do whatever you want, Jove.''

  He lyed down on the ground and closed his eyes. He wasn't lying there for long, and suddenly some darkness came to the fern forest. Nightfall or something else, I couldn't tell, time got fucked. Midnight passed long time ago, claimed my cellphone. They came with the darkness. They. I don't know what they are. I heard them behind gwangi's corpse. Cleit heard them too. He got up. We walked around the carcass. Good god. Human bodies. Canine heads. They were eating the corpse. One jumped at Cleit so fast that Cleit didn't even know what hit him, but as they fell to the ground bursts of electricity covered them. The other one yelped and ran at me, I’ve put out my arms in front of me, last I saw was the creature’s one eye.

  The creatures, the carcasses, the fern, the city, it all disappeared. Just bare rocks and dead plants. Lempo and others are here. Cleit exploded, as I said already. He's still screaming.

  ''YOU HAD NO FUCKIN' RIGHT!''

  He's having a stare off with Emily again.

  ''There's someone there!''

  Down the slope, a small human figure runs. Fast. He's shouting something. Jesus, is that Laszlo?!

  ''Cleit, it's Laszlo.''

  ''I think he's screaming 'Run!'.''

  Behind him, on the hill, outlines of a huge silhouette appeared, black against the sun. It stepped down the slope and I saw, a figure formed of… of … scrap metal? Shit, there's football stadium LED display board on its shoulders.

  Chapter thirty two

  It can't be killed !

  Shit! Shit!

  ''Run, motherfuckers, RUN!''

  ''Holy mother of…''

  ''RUN! RUN! IT CAN'T BE KILLED!''

  ''What the fuck is that?!''

  ''Take cover! Take cover!''

  ''OH, FUUUUUUUUCK!''

  Oh, god… Jesus…

  ''It's turning around!''

  ''Duck! DUUUUCK!''

  ''Stay down, stay down…''

  The fuck is he doing?!

  ''Cleit! Cleit! NOOOOOOOOO!''

  ''Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!''

  ''What…''

  …just happened?

  Chapter thirty three

  A logical explanation

  That thing almost got Cleit. Cleit hit it three times, with no effect. Then, it hit Cleit, literally, with its arm, or whatever that was, and Cleit went down. The thing would have certainly killed Cleit, if Emily didn't somehow destroyed it with the power stream she shot at it. It somehow worked for her. Laszlo said that he also couldn't do nothing against the creature. After Emily hit it, it just fell apart to parts of trashed cars and metal scraps. I found a broken kid bicycle in the pile. Ding-Ding! Funny. The bell is still working. I don't understand how something like that could even exist. There's gotta be some logical explanation. Maybe… a sentient magnetic force that formed a body out of scrap metal. Sounds stupid? A ghost of an angry dinosaur possessing trash? Even stupider. Laszlo said that the thing attacked him at the junkyard.

  Apparently, Laszlo was all over the city hunting for energy. That thing chased him to this realm. And this realm is one big nothing. Just stones and rocky mountains. Not a single trace of any civilisation. Laszlo said he encountered 'dogheads', creatures Abraxas described pretty extensively in the comic. They live in the dimension of complete darkness, they eat the dead, and they move through dimensions looking for food. Jove and Cleit saw them too. Laszlo says they're hard to kill. He doesn't hold back when it comes to killing for energy. And Cleit flipped at me for those iguanodons. It's not like we would of do it if we had some other choice. That we didn't off 'em, something else would.

  Cleit has lost it. I never saw him like this back home. Back home, he's always tight. Dimension shifting is not for everyone. Like that girl that incinerated herself. She couldn't digest it, and neither can Cleit. He should go home. and Jove with him. I don't know did Jove inhale some shit again, or what the hell is wrong with him, but in such serious life threatening situation in which we are, he, completely uncalled for, found the time to talk about swollen prostate and blow jobs with a complete stranger. Just like he made friends with Laszlo - guy that has all the traits of a sociopath. Just listen, just listen what he's saying.

  ''…I never had prostate problems, but I know guys that did, I've heard quite some stories about that. Blow jobs simply stimulate the prostate overly for its capacity. These aren't my conclusions, it's simply biology. Nature didn't meant for our dicks to get sucked. Too much Clinton is bound to fuck up your prostate. Prostate is such a fragile organ, people abuse it. I'm not saying anything about you and your… your prostate, but I saw you back there, you were squeezing the lizard for like five minutes. Vibrating things are also not good for the prostate…''

  God, I can't listen to him anymore, I have to get away. I known him for years, he wasn't always like that, he used to be a cool guy, it's hash and those fuckin' shroo-

  ''Emily! Wait!''

  She stopped.

  ''Where are you going? Are you okay?''

  ''I have to go back, Lempo, I have to find Abraxas and get answers from him. After I destroyed that creature, I've started to feel different. I can see more now, more than I used too.''

  ''You shouldn't go alone.''

  ''Don't worry about me. I am much stronger now than any of you. If we are going forward, we have to know what we are up against. I will be back soon.''

  ''Em-''

  She's gone.

  Chapter thirty four

  Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

  ''What was that fuss all about?''

  ''I'll tell you one thing, Jove, never, NEVER help if you're not asked to. If you see a woman with a baby stroller struggling to open the door, just walk away, or your bound to get those doors in your face!''

  Bwahah. I bet that really happened to him. I don't get involved in acts of chivalry.

  ''Tell me what happened, man.''

  ''That motherfucker, Alden, he groped the elf girl and she screamed.''

  Oh, yeah, elf girl's got some major boobs packed in leather.

  ''Boobs.''

  ''No, not tits, it seems that he was touching her ears. Then her man appeared, punched him to the ground and threatened to kill him with an arrow.''

  ''That guy's got serious prostate problems.''