“Look at your body—
A painted puppet, a poor toy
Of jointed parts ready to collapse,
A diseased and suffering thing
With a head full of false imaginings.”
― The Dhammapada
I knocked at her door. My heart was pounding through my chest almost purely out of confusion. She did not answer immediately and I regret to say I barged in out of fear for her safety. Tears were streaming down her face and her once-lively makeup was being washed away. Upon registering my presence she screamed at me to leave. No amount of sorries could fix it. I went back outside to the snowy and lonely night contemplating everything that led up to this moment. I never interacted with her again after this. Before that night we were the closest of friends and trusted each other with just about everything. One moment of loose lips seemed to have undermined all of this. This was not the first time I found myself pitifully companionless and sadly it would not be the last. I went back home and prepared for a few days of bed-ridden silence, but I could not even have that. When I was about to try and sleep away my suffering I noticed some of my ever ghoulish skin flaking off. Despite what had happened; what I somehow remember the most vividly is what I saw in the window of a picture frame store. Within one of these frames was this photo of a happy healthy human family. The most unfelt thing in this world.
The trials and turbulence has reached its end. My life as a human is at its end. I will escape this putrid mount of flesh once and for all. I tried living among you to the best of my own troubled ability but I can’t help but feel in this dark hour that it was all for not. I cannot take a single moment of this inescapable pain and creeping alienation any longer.
I know the dangers of holding onto the past, perhaps more intimately than most, however I can not help but think of the days that came before humanity. The age of agelessness. Before all these expanding galaxies made it too difficult to live and move freely as we once did. The age where my kind frolicked across the never-ending darkness with an indescribable wander.
No weak corporeal beasts of a body to keep any of us down. We were those who existed before existence. Those who occupied the emptiness. Formless and Independent essences that lived before entire worlds did. Sentient spherical lights traveling across the vacuum of time and space, each one of us flashing unique colors that still remain unseen on planet earth to this very day. All of infinity was ours and we cherished every moment of it.
But good things never last as they say. When the great robust expansion of inorganic matter and biological life cornered us we had no choice but to escape and spread out or we were to meet confrontation with newer vindictive deities battling for control over many countless dimensions. Being caught in the middle of these conflicts would have wiped us from the solar system. With great reluctance we went our separate ways. And I spent an agglomeration of time traveling across the cosmos to find a new place to call home.
After much traversing of the never-ending I discovered a meager little planet that peaked my curiosity. Earth as I would come to know it as. In it a primitive race that was weak yet filled with strong amounts of arrogance in face of the chaotic ground they walk. Entranced by this circus of savagery, juxtapositioned with islands of righteousness, I decidedly made my landing upon its blue surface.
I picked a random city propped by humans and, after much ghostly inquiry, was conceived through a infertile young couple. With them I came into the worldly flesh. My human parents loved me and did their best but they could sense from the very start that I was different from the rest. My transition into flesh and bone was imperfect as it became abundantly clear when I started school and the other kids were inexplicably scared by me. I stayed off to the side of playgrounds with my own imagination and while the human children played hopscotch with each other. There I was, the freak. Out of sync with everyone and treated as lesser. I did not belong. A trend that would continue into adulthood.
It was a brisk day that my Earth mother expired on. By this point, days of denial and panic melted into silent acceptance of this unforgiving truth. Surrounded by loved ones she fell asleep to never wake up again. Not even the most talkative of my clan spoke a word. It must be noted even in her gasping hours final hours did I not reveal to her the nature of my origins from the farthest-reaches of the solar system. She wouldn’t have cared. I was her baby and her affection for me was a self-evident truth. Looking back on it now, I remember her final words to me and how relevant it is to my darkest hour, “Never give into sorrow for a baby bird will always find his flock”. On the day of her funeral, and much to the strong displeasure of her family, I didn’t shed a single tear both out of her own wisdom and out of my ancient understanding that all life will inevitably reckon with death. Mourning would mean do or mean nothing. As their harsh whispers implied my family disagreed greatly and angrily. In response to my perceived coldness all of them stopped being so welcoming towards me. My father never even really looked at me again. I was cared for by nannies as he worked and drank in his upstairs study. That small forsaken room was and still is the only place in which he finds any kind of peace. It was a mercy that I passed high school and subsequently started university.
I was only in my twenties but my pathetic mortal bones became less able to hold in my inhumanly bright celestial core. The traditional sciences in all their progress and limitations provided helped slightly but it was not the kind I truly needed. The excruciating cricks and cracks of my strange ghastly threads needed something much more. Even to this moment, I resemble a horrible albeit humanoid beast.
One too many doctors shrugged uncomfortably one many times and I was driven to the world-bending and the arcane for salvation. The same kind of aeons-old mysticism used in those same outer dimensional wars that divided my kind all those millenniums ago. To find what I desired I made plans to spend a few months in Arkham so I may read the research papers archived within Miskatonic University.
Ignoring the superstitious and overzealous protests of my professors I insistently pushed forward. What few companions I had in my life fell out of touch while I spent my days reading forbidden texts and rare books on rare subjects. Using these timeless tombs I put together an ancient prayer in a ages-old language man has mostly forgotten. In my mostly unfurnished room cluttered with books, notes, and empty prescription bottles I prayed to the God of Healing and Lord of the Great Abyss himself: Nodens the Elder One.
I sat on the foot of my bed. Spider-webs of anger and frustration lighting up my brain. I rubbed my balding head with one hand. The other I used to hold onto the engagement ring that I gave to my now ex-husband. He was at least kind enough to leave it behind when he ran off with his new man. Someone else who he claims is more warm and less distant than me. I bitterly pawned the jewel encrusted ring off in the morning and tried my damnedest to forget about him. But he was all I thought about for ages. At one point in the sleepless night I felt an unexpected sensation on my face. Touching it I realized what it was. A single tear rolling down my face. This has simply never happened before.
Twenty four hours later I was taken up into the star-lighted night-sky by Noden’s Servants. Though grabbed out of left-field and carried at a break-neck speed there was a haunting serenity to flying in the dark world above that I forgot. I did not remember entering or even exiting any visible gateway, any keen perception of such oddities have been dulled out by my mammal senses, and I soon realized that I was no longer in the same realm anymore.
I was dropped down onto a mountain-like structure located in the middle of this harsh freezing wilderness. Once grounded and given a chance to breathe, the faceless bat-like nightgaunts led me into the vast throne chamber of Nodens. There he gave me an offer that would spare me from my agony.
His booming voice and demeanor disturbed me in inexplicable ways. Perhaps, I had taken on more of man’s meekness than I would care to admit. Being faced with a figure above and beyond my brittle brain was almost mind-shattering for someone who had once traveled across strange galaxies and planetary terrains. The deal for the more careless individuals would have been a generous one but I was unable to accept his terms.
At a slight movement of the god’s wrist I was cast away back onto mortal soil. He wanted me to spill the blood of my estranged Earth-father as an offering in exchange for eternal youth. I could not betray my own family, not even my loathsome Earth-father.
From broken friendship to broken friendship it rarely ever lasted a few months with any given circle. Even once they got past my anorexic and diseased appearance they found an awkward person who was becoming increasingly impulsive and unstable in my interactions with them. On a September afternoon, I received a letter from a buddy of mine. It said bluntly and hurtfully never to speak to him again. This combined with me flunking out of university. This combined with barely securing a dead-end job that never really covered the bills I swallowed down an entire bottle of pain medication wanting all this to finally be over. Nothing happened of course besides some deep physical numbness and nausea that lasted for a week or so. I don’t quite remember what stupidity was going through my head; after all, I could not die unless I made intentional effort for my light to leave this walking corpse. It dawned on me how human my inhumanity has become.
I was unbelievably stupid when I first graced down here on Earth from the stars or perhaps just deeply naive. I knew from the start there was much sorrow in these masses of bipedaled brutes. But those Islands, those islands of altruism and brotherhood, were scattered across this globe and I thought I could make take refuge in one. I missed my mark by miles. I was not born close enough to one to escape these endless cycles of suffering mortals are trapped in. And that's what gets me the most. My body and even my own ancient mind could not handle the turmoil; this is indisputable. But then again neither could you. You left me in the dark and on the side-lines.
So close yet so far to your warmth. But the smiling faces and polite gestures were mostly a facade. I could feel the pain engulfing so many of you. I could witness the aging processes claiming your lumps of rotting meat. We are all diseased and suffering things. I could not hide it to all of you but you could keep it an open secret among your fellows. You walked right by me or over me when we were both grasping for something more in life.
I shattered into a million little pieces while small cracks were growing in the shells that protected you and what little sanity you salvaged. I’m tired of trying to fit among you like a broken puzzle piece. I’ve come to hate you too much to come to you as a man. But I love you all too much to abandon your kind whilst you face the horrors of life. Instead I have a different plan.
My Earth mother in her simple wisdom taught me that a baby bird will always find its flock. I’ve come to realize that I’ve always had a flock. Not any given village of fools but rather all mankind. All of the twisted souls on this planet are my flock. Tonight I will transcend beyond this mortal skin and bring forth my ever-burning light whenever it's needed. Coming to you as the one who existed before existence.
To the suicidal man, I will show him astonishing sights to keep him going. To the man in prison, I will give him freedom in ways previously inconceivable to him. To the orphaned child, I will let him see his parents for the last time in whatever higher plane they now walk. And lastly, to those who are different than the rest, I will show you that this is where your strength ultimatley comes from. Do not cry when I arrive to you but smile for we are fellow-suffers. We are each other's only solace.