Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-27612790-20160115020718

The tolling of church bells yanked the writer from his restless sleep. The dingy apartment in which he resided was lit only by meager moonlight streaming through the blinds, and the screen of his laptop. He had crashed while sitting at his desk, his face on the keyboard. The formerly blank document was now filled with three pages worth of the letter “r”. The writer sighed audibly and downed the last of the room temperature coffee in his mug. He deleted the “r’s” and stared at the blank page. The endless expanse of white mocked him and did little justice to the visions of epic battles and nightmarish creatures that his mind could conjure up.

As he made himself another coffee, using whiskey in the place of creamer, he grew increasingly frustrated. Frustrated at himself, at the debt, at the loneliness, at all of it. His frustration grew into anger, which matured into rage. Rage came with its good friend, desperation. It was because of that desperation that he ended up sitting cross-legged in a circle of candles, slashing the throat of a goat.

It had been easy to find the ritual, every self-respecting new age movement website had one. They all came attached with warnings, but the writer was far beyond any state of mind where he cared about his physical well-being. They all had different recipes or nuances, but the general process was the same. Goat’s blood, Sulfur dust, and a sacrifice were things every ritual had in common. They also required that the performer of the ritual kill someone prior to the summoning.

He had gone to an alley in the seedier side of the next town over. Well, more correctly, he had searched seven different alley’s before finding one that housed a sleeping homeless man. After getting out of his car, he maneuvered towards the unconscious form of the vagrant. At first, he was careful not to wake him, but the seven empty bottles of beer littering the ground around the homeless man made him reasonably confident that he wouldn’t be waking up anytime soon. He slid out the small knife he had brought and for just a moment, he realized how crazy this whole thing was. The moment faded, and the doubt was replaced with rage. He drove the knife into the man’s abdomen. He had been aiming for the chest, but his shaking hands had failed him. The drunk drifter bolted up and was immediately aware of the blade in his abdomen. The writer stumbled back as the vagrant flailed his arms wildly and began to shout. The writer’s mind told him to run, but desperation rooted him in place. He was unshakeably convinced he had to kill this man.

He decided to act before the vagrant’s errant screams attracted attention. He leaped forwards and easily tackled him, his hands searching for the knife that the man had already yanked out of his body and tossed aside. Cursing himself for not bringing a backup weapon, the writer grabbed the man by the throat and climbed on top of him. The drunk feebly battered the writer, his blows losing strength as he lost oxygen. Once he had fallen unconscious, the writer stood up and found the knife. He got on his knees and plunged it into the vagrant’s throat. The man opened his eyes for only a moment, before producing a sickening gurgling sound and slipping from the land of the living. The writer calmly stood and tossed the knife aside. He went back to his car and stuffed the bloody gloves and his jacket into a bag, which he threw out of his car on the way back to his house.

The rest was far easier by comparison. He bought a goat off of Craigslist, deciding  to check the sacrifice and the goat's blood off his list at the same time. He grabbed a bag of sulfur dust and some candles at his local hardware store. The whole preparation process took about two weeks. He hummed softly as he made a pentagram on his floor out of chalk. He lit candles at certain points on the pentagram. He dragged the protesting goat into the circle, quite happy his neighbors were gone for the night. It was a simple matter to behead the goat, the creature bleats not phasing him. He mixed the goat’s blood, the sulfur dust, and a piece of paper with his wish written upon it into a large bowl. He then dropped a lit match into the bowl and, to his surprise, it immediately ignited in a brilliant blue flame. He watched, transfixed, as the flames began to twist into the form of the creature he was summoning.

The being had no lower body, its torso streamed from the bowl like a genie from a lamp. Its face was surprisingly human and conveyed indifference. The fiery being then spoke to the writer.

“Is it you who summons me?” Its voice was not unlike the sound of someone crushing shards of glass underfoot. The writer nodded affirmatively. The being stared at him, his eyes boring into his soul. The writer’s body became numb. “I know what you desire, draw closer and I will provide it,” it then smiled “but know there will be a price.” The writer stepped closer and the being extended one fiery arm and touched his forehead. Its’ fingers burned his forehead, but nothing else happened. Just as he began to back away, every experience over the course of human history flooded his mind. War, peace, famine, feasts, joy, anger, fear, desperation, an entire species worth of emotions and experience taken on by one man. His knees buckled and he fell to the ground. He laid there and screamed as he became the wisest, happiest, and most troubled man all at once. He stood on shaky legs and thanked the being, for it had granted his wish. With the sum of all humanity’s experiences in his mind, he would have no trouble writing. “Don’t thank me just yet.” Just as he was about to ask why, his eyes began burning.

It was a pain on a level he’d never felt before. It felt as though someone was holding a blowtorch to his eyes. He screamed and threw his head back, his eyes becoming solid orbs of searing white light. For just a moment, he saw everything. Everything that was hidden by the veil of reality. It shook him to his core, terrifying him in ways beyond his comprehension. Then his world folded in on itself, and there was silence.

When he woke in the morning, the being was gone. He no longer saw beyond the veil, but his eyes still burned. It had dulled significantly, but it was there all the same. He threw his materials in the trash, excluding the goat, which he carried outside. It was while he was doing that that he discovered he could no longer see in sunlight. The second it touched his eyes, his head exploded with pain and a blanket was thrown over his vision. He retreated inside and sat down at his computer. Some might have said that the constant burning and millennia worth of horrible memories would drive him mad. They’d be correct. Insane or not he was a skilled writer, with a nearly infinite source of knowledge and inspiration in his mind. So, the writer began typing, knowing that he had work to do. 