Read Online Autopsy of an Eldritch City: Ten Tales of Strange and Unproductive Thinking by James Champagne - Free Book Online
Authors: James Champagne
Ads: Link
mentioned in Irish mythology. In their variation of it, Tir-Na-Nog consisted of a vast crater filled with amniotic plasma, presided over by a crone that was possibly an avatar of the goddess known as Cerridwen. Their name for this 5th-dimensional crater was the Fecundating Cauldron. They believed that our reality was nothing more than a bubble that was forming on the surface of the Cauldron’s broth, a bubble that was ever-expanding but which would, one day, pop into nothingness. The Sect claimed that all life, all ideas, all universes, all of everything could be traced back to this archetypal cauldron, and they worshipped it as if it were a god (or, to be more precise, a goddess, for it essentially functioned as a cosmic womb).
Another aspect of the Sect’s theology was a figure they referred to as “The Perpetual Martyr,” a messiah-type character of a transient identity who they classified as the true savior of our world. The Sect believed that it was the suffering and death agonies experienced by The Perpetual Martyr that kept the bubble of our universe from popping: it suffered so that we didn’t have to. The Sect taught that The Perpetual Martyr usually manifested itself in the guise of fiction, usually as the main character in horror short stories, especially those of a pessimistic bent. Such stories, as I’ve explained earlier, usually end with the main character either dying, going insane, mutating into some wretched new life form, and so on. Its purpose thus served, The Perpetual Martyr would be cast back into the cauldron, until some new writer would once again call it forth, giving it a new name, a new identity, for in truth it had no name, or race, or gender. Its only purpose was to be put through Hell, over and over again, for all-time. This latter aspect of the cult’s theology didn’t strike me as all that far-fetched: after all, I was aware of Irish folklore and legends which told of dead warriors being placed into cauldrons and being returned back into a soulless existence to fight again. Such a legend had even been used as a major plot point of Lloyd Alexander’s The Black Cauldron , which had been one of my favorite books to read as a child.
The Sect put this praxis of torturing the Martyr into practice by training their acolytes at a young age in the art of writing weird fiction. Ms. Paddock had been one of those acolytes, and on her tape she had named a few other horror writers as well, some of them big names in the field, but for fear of being accused of slander, I won’t name names here. For many years, Ms. Paddock had played her part, torturing The Perpetual Martyr innumerous times in her sinister stories. But in the end, her own inner cauldron of creativity had dried up, and she took up a new task: seeking a new acolyte to take her place, to continue the torturing of The Perpetual Martyr and the worship of the Fecundating Cauldron. The tape ended with Ms. Paddock’s revelation that I was that new acolyte, that she had been grooming me to take her place for years now. And now that the truth was known to me, I was ready to fulfill my role and join the Sect of the Fecundating Cauldron. With those words being uttered, the tape came to an end, and it evaporated into ashes inside the tape player.
I directed my attention towards the typewriter, saw that a blank sheet of paper was already in place and ready to go, a white field crying out to be irrigated with words. I sat down and ran my fingers over the keys, which felt as cold as frozen bone beneath my touch. I thought back to my earlier failed adolescent attempts at writing pessimistic cosmic horror fiction, my reluctance to usher more nihilism and darkness onto a world that was already so weary of such things, that for countless years had gluttoned itself on gloom. But if there was a divine purpose behind such fiction, if it did in fact serve some holy function, then perhaps, perhaps…
Outside of the house, on the front lawn, the children
Another aspect of the Sect’s theology was a figure they referred to as “The Perpetual Martyr,” a messiah-type character of a transient identity who they classified as the true savior of our world. The Sect believed that it was the suffering and death agonies experienced by The Perpetual Martyr that kept the bubble of our universe from popping: it suffered so that we didn’t have to. The Sect taught that The Perpetual Martyr usually manifested itself in the guise of fiction, usually as the main character in horror short stories, especially those of a pessimistic bent. Such stories, as I’ve explained earlier, usually end with the main character either dying, going insane, mutating into some wretched new life form, and so on. Its purpose thus served, The Perpetual Martyr would be cast back into the cauldron, until some new writer would once again call it forth, giving it a new name, a new identity, for in truth it had no name, or race, or gender. Its only purpose was to be put through Hell, over and over again, for all-time. This latter aspect of the cult’s theology didn’t strike me as all that far-fetched: after all, I was aware of Irish folklore and legends which told of dead warriors being placed into cauldrons and being returned back into a soulless existence to fight again. Such a legend had even been used as a major plot point of Lloyd Alexander’s The Black Cauldron , which had been one of my favorite books to read as a child.
The Sect put this praxis of torturing the Martyr into practice by training their acolytes at a young age in the art of writing weird fiction. Ms. Paddock had been one of those acolytes, and on her tape she had named a few other horror writers as well, some of them big names in the field, but for fear of being accused of slander, I won’t name names here. For many years, Ms. Paddock had played her part, torturing The Perpetual Martyr innumerous times in her sinister stories. But in the end, her own inner cauldron of creativity had dried up, and she took up a new task: seeking a new acolyte to take her place, to continue the torturing of The Perpetual Martyr and the worship of the Fecundating Cauldron. The tape ended with Ms. Paddock’s revelation that I was that new acolyte, that she had been grooming me to take her place for years now. And now that the truth was known to me, I was ready to fulfill my role and join the Sect of the Fecundating Cauldron. With those words being uttered, the tape came to an end, and it evaporated into ashes inside the tape player.
I directed my attention towards the typewriter, saw that a blank sheet of paper was already in place and ready to go, a white field crying out to be irrigated with words. I sat down and ran my fingers over the keys, which felt as cold as frozen bone beneath my touch. I thought back to my earlier failed adolescent attempts at writing pessimistic cosmic horror fiction, my reluctance to usher more nihilism and darkness onto a world that was already so weary of such things, that for countless years had gluttoned itself on gloom. But if there was a divine purpose behind such fiction, if it did in fact serve some holy function, then perhaps, perhaps…
Outside of the house, on the front lawn, the children
Similar Books
