 |
|
|
Post By The Hooded Hood Wed Jan 24, 2007 at 08:34:56 pm EST |
Subject
Obscure Parodyverse Moments #8: Monsters On the Loose | |
|
|
Next In Thread >> | |
| Obscure Parodyverse Moments #8: Monsters On the Loose This story continues from Obscure Parodyverse Moments #7: Amnesia.  150 volts of direct current applied through wires gelled to the temples and earlobes is sufficient to cause a temporary seizure, to disrupt brain functions, to cause short term memory loss, to provoke loss of bodily functions. Dr Morningstar watched dispassionately as the subject strapped from the ceiling in his psychiatry lab convulsed.The naked man was hanging face downwards by straps around his arms, legs, chest, and forehead so that his vomit wouldn’t choke him. He continued to shudder for a few moments after Morningstar gestured for Bradley to detach the acid jars from the circuit. “I hope you appreciate this,” the doctor told his patient. “This treatment is very much ahead of its time. Far more advanced than the trepanation we used on you before.” The subject blinked as consciousness began to return. He gasped and spat blood from his mouth where the gag strap hadn’t stopped him biting his own tongue. “We’ll be going back to our usual questions in a short time, Ioldabaoth,” Morningstar promised, “I’m still very interested how a subject can recover from a pre-frontal lobotomy, not just one but on nine occasions. How you can restore yourself as if you’d never been operated on. But for now we have other matters to discuss.” At a gesture from the doctor, Bradley came forward and removed the gag. A swing of the wheel moved chains that lowered the operating table so the patient hung almost upright. Dr Morningstar leaned close. “The question I want to ask of you right now, Ioldabaoth, now that your demons and voices have been chased away by the bright crackle of science, is what you did to that young woman.” Had that happened? The madman couldn’t remember. He shivered in the darkness, trying not to move his arms because the heavy chains that held him to the wall had rubbed his wrists raw. Everything was fragmented to pieces. Time wasn’t working as it should. Nothing was as it should be. “She’s pretty,” the voice in the darkness observed. “And brave.” Ioldabaoth didn’t look up. It was pointless trying to see in the pitch blackness of his lunatic’s cell and the words came from his own head anyway. Besides, the girl had finally sobbed herself to sleep across his lap and it was the only release from nightmare he could offer her. “Of course,” the voice continued, Ioldabaoth’s voice but with some unfamiliar tang to it, “pretty and brave is a bad combination in this place.” “It is,” the madman admitted. “They’ll break her,” the voice persisted. “The wardens. You know what they’ll do.” “I know.” “And there are the others. The men who’ll pay to borrow her for their ‘medical examinations’.” “I know that too. I’ve heard the screams.” “And then there are the inmates. The sadists who’ve been locked away for public good. The wolves amongst the sheep.” Ioldabaoth dared move one heavily-fettered wrist and stroke the girl’s hair. Amnesia, they called her, for she had no past, no memory of the day before. She’s woken fresh and new into this nightmare asylum. This was all the world she remembered. “You promised to keep her safe,” the voice accused. “But soon the warders will come back for her. And what can you do then?” The madman’s hand moved to Amnesia’s neck. “I can kill her quickly. Save her.” “You might. It would be a kindness. Or…” “Or what?” “Or you could let me loose.” Ioldabaoth shuddered from more than the cold. “I can’t let you loose. You’re a monster.” “The girl had a monster outside. You have one inside. One wants to get in to her. One wants to get out to the world. But you know that I can do what you cannot. What you will not. And you know that it could save her life.” “I’ve dreamed your dreams,” the madman cried out loud in the dark. “They are terrible things! I can’t let you do that!” “And yet you will murder this girl to save your conscience? What kind of man does that?” “A madman,” Ioldabaoth admitted. “A madman who must choose his madness,” said the voice. The accent was Latverian. “What I want to know,” said Dr Morningstar, examining his subject as he spoke, “is what happened to the warders. And where has Amnesia gone now? She’s not left the asylum. All the doors are sealed, the windows barred. She’s hiding somewhere. But where? What did you see, Ioldabaoth? What did you do?” The madman strained in his straps. He winced as the doctor probed the poker burns from their session yesterday. “There was a monster,” he answered at last. “A monster. It certainly seemed that way, from the amount of blood on the walls outside your cell. From the four dead men with looks of horror on their faces and their innards ripped out. Or was that you, Ioldabaoth? You were loose from your chains. You were covered in blood.” “A monster,” the subject repeated. The cry had woken Amnesia. “What is it?” she asked. The panic was back in her throat. “I thought I heard voices!” “Only mine,” replied Ioldabaoth. “I am sorry to wake you.” “I dreamed again,” the girl confessed. She pulled herself up but kept her body in contact with the lunatic. Her warmth through the soft ragged fabric of her dirty tabard almost burned him. “I saw… a woman in a mask. I heard my monster whispering to me. I saw myself in a mirror. Just fragments.” “Fragments are all we have here,” mourned the madman. Amnesia composed herself. “What will happen to me?” she asked at last. “I know what the guards want. After that, I mean. What happens tomorrow? And the day after that? And a year from now?” “Anything could happen.” “The truth, Ioldabaoth. What is likely to happen?” The madman swallowed. “It depends,” he said. “It depends if you are selected by Doctor Morningstar for his experiments.” “Experiments?” “Some madness is caused by disease. Syphilis, for example, rots the brain. Morningstar has experimented with infecting patients with malaria. The fever kills off the syphilis and is thought to retard the mind’s decay. Others – sexual inverts and the like - are conditioned by pain and beatings to conform. Or by purging and enema. Or by surgery. Castration calms aggression. Cauterising the clitoris dampens lust.” He shifted uncomfortably in his shackles. “Relief of pressure in the cerebral tissue by drilling holes in the skull is a common technique for controlling madness.” “That’s barbaric,” gasped Amensia. “It’s… insane!” “In mediaeval times they believed it let the demons out,” Ioldabaoth told her. “And before that. The earliest trepanations have been found on skulls dated to 11,000BC. The holes had partially closed, suggesting that the subjects continued to live.” “I have to get out of here!” Amnesia panicked. “We have to get out of here.” “Not me,” said Ioldabaoth, fiercely. “Not all monsters lurk outside walls of stone. Not all demons escape through holes poked in the head.” The girl picked up a chain and tugged to test its strength. “If we both pull together we might wrench it out of the wall,” she offered. “Then you can help me overpower the wardens, get their keys. We could make a run for it.” “I can’t!” She caught his face in her palms. “Ioldabaoth. You promised to save me. Were you lying?” “No. No, but I… You don’t know, Amnesia. You don’t understand what…” “Help me.” “You don’t know about the Black Chapel!” Amnesia pressed into him. Her lips touched his. A kiss. “Help me,” she said. Then the cell door was thrown open, blinding them with the glare of torchlight. The warders came in and grabbed Amnesia, pulled her away. The nightmare proper began. “Ioldabaoth,” considered Morningstar as he applied the leeches to his subject’s limbs. “The Gnostics believed that the God of This World had that name. The demi-urge. He was created by and for Sophia, wisdom, but he abandoned her in the darkness.” “I’m familiar with the theology,” said the madman. Morningstar went on with his erudition anyway. He quoted from a Coptic gospel manuscript that wouldn’t be discovered for many years yet “‘I am,’ it said. And in the darkness about it the being's knowledge was flawed, and it saw only the darkness and felt only its own power therein. And he had no knowledge of his origin and conceived that he must always have been, for there seemed to be none other in the eternal darkness where he found himself. ‘I am the All,’ he said. And he is Ioldabaoth.” “He is evil,” said the madman. “Brilliant, incomplete, creator and destroyer. Adversary. The enemy of God.” Morningstar selected a scalpel from his tray. “Depicted in ancient times with time and space wound around his hands. And hooded.” “Morningstar has a mythological significance too,” the madman replied. “But the light-bringer fell.” “Where did the girl go?” the doctor demanded, slicing his subject’s chest with his blade. “Where is she hiding?” “The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven,” quoted Ioldabaoth. “John Milton knew the Morningstar.” “Where is she?” The doctor let his patient’s blood drip down across his fingers. “Is she at the Black Chapel? Did you show her the way? Is she?” Ioldobaoth stifled a scream and took solace in Paradise Lost. “For who would lose, though full of pain, this intellectual being? Those thoughts that wander through eternity to perish rather, swallowed up and lost, in the wide womb of uncreated night…” “You can not save her. She is going to hell.” Ioldabaoth dragged at his chains, tearing open the livid scabs at his wrists. Amnesia was screaming. “You gave your word. You promised to save her. There was no reservation about the cost.” Ioldabaoth thought he’d dredged the depths of horror. Now he found he’s only touched the surface. “You are master of this place, if only you will claim it,” said the dry voice in his head. “Let me out. Let me be you.” He heard the smack of fist on flesh, a squeal of pain, the tearing of cloth. Ioldabaoth paid the price he had to give to save her. He opened his eyes and they glowed green in the gloom. The monster found its way in. It hadn’t been there before, but it was now. There was a chink in the defences around the ancient asylum, one crack that could be picked at and enlarged. It took a long time, left his claws raw and bloody, but he kept working. Tracking the girl was the easy part. He could hear the screaming. His vision washed red. Then the screaming wasn’t hers, and the blood wasn’t his. Afterwards he swept her battered unconscious body over his shoulder and loped off looking for escape. Or a hiding place. And there was the Black Chapel. “Monsters,” said Ioldabaoth, trembling in the darkness, alone except for the pain. “Monsters on the loose.” The asylum was filled with them, and he ruled the asylum. That made him the king of the monsters. And now it was time to rule. Here’s a first century drawing of the demi-urge Ioldabaoth:  The Hooded Hood's Homepage of DoomWho's Who in the Parodyverse Where's Where in the Parodyverse Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2007 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2007 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
| Echo™ v3.0 beta © 2003-2006 Powermad Software |
|
|