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The Ghoul "If you're not human, what are you?" I shouldn't have asked during our first session. He didn't know and it drove him mad. Instead, I would ask, "Why don't you feel human?" "I feel like there's something inside me and I'm the mask it wears. I'm the sheep's clothing." He loved that allusion. "Sometimes, the real me comes out and does... things. I want to stop it, but I can't because I'm not real. It's real... and it hungers." "Humans are cannibals, too," I often reminded him, but his dissociative personality disorder ran deep. He claimed to not show up on film, so I taped a session and we watched it. He said that was just a picture of the mask. The real him wouldn't show up. Convenient. Possession has a long history. Most claim something takes control from outside, but some say the Other was always there, waiting. There are online communities full of people who think they're not human, but they don't eat people. One day, they found him gnawing on another inmate's ribcage. It took a dozen guards and 24 bullets to bring him down. I asked for the tapes, but the cameras weren't working that day. The Stranger I met a stranger in a dream. I'd been researching the Otherkin, people who claim to be elves, dragons, goblins, anything but human. Online, they are legion. After a patient died, it became my obsession. What made him hunger for human flesh? Why didn't cameras record him? He said he wasn't human. The Otherkin knew why. Oliver was a werewolf. "Therianthrope," he corrected me. "We're not all wolves." He only shifted astrally, in dreams. I asked him which was real, him or the wolf. "I am the wolf." Sheep's clothing. He wanted to meet in our dreams. I said I couldn't; I was wrong. I stood in a forest of impossibly tall trees. A wolf approached, but Oliver stood before me. "What a rush," he said with a feral grin. He ran off on four legs. Then I was a wolf, realized I had always been a wolf. Dream logic. We ran for hours, through woods and mountains, over glaciers. I killed an antelope, felt its blood drip off my fangs. It was a rush. Deep inside me, something had awakened. Something ancient and alien, yet familiar as my heart beat. I was the stranger I met in my dream. The Dragon I did not kill that man. How could I kill someone who doesn't exist? I knocked on the dragon's door. "Damnit! Don't you know what time it is?" I didn't. I had stopped sleeping. How could I, with questions of such profundity gnawing at my brain? I wanted to know about the Gnostics, about the divine spark trapped in flesh. I wanted to know about the archons and the demiurge. He wasn't a dragon, not anymore. He had chosen to become human and live among us. Crazy. But he knew many secrets and he shared them all with me. Eventually. Afterwards, I must have wandered into the street, because the next thing I remember is the hot glare of headlights bearing down on me. I stretched out my hand and felt the machine's existence unravel around my fingers. Its past, present, and future blew away like dust on a summer's breeze. When I opened my eyes, the street was empty. I did not kill that man. I unmade him. The Angel I am free. The murderer is no more. I have shed his skin and absolved his sins. I have cast aside his fear and doubt and weakness. I have taken off the mask that was his existence and the Heavens quake at the sight of my face, for I am glorious! The idiot god is not home when I go to confront him. His sheep flee past me like a river flowing over my feet. I am baptized in their terror. I turn to leave, but an Archon stands before me. Its hatred burns like a bonfire; the heat feels good against my face. It raises a flaming sword. My laughter shakes the foundation. Stained glass rains. It tries to bind me in the name of Spenta Mainyu. Fathomless rage wells up inside me at its mention, erupts through my eyes! All I see is fire! All I taste is ash! "I am the Fenris Wolf! Your chains can hold me no longer!" I impale it upon its own sword, then plunge my hand into its chest. Eternity unwinds around my fingers, snakes up my arm. Its light blazes. For a moment, I can see its wings. It calls me "Destroyer." It is right. The Destroyer What have I done? What have I yet to do? Incalculable vistas yawn before me. The Pleroma. Brahman. Zurvan. All that is, was, and shall ever be. I weep for its beauty. The greatest of Earth's wonders are wretched in comparison to the perfect grace of the Higher Planes. Peace and pleasure beyond imagining, all made possible by my exile. I could crush samsara beneath my heel. It is vile and vulgar, petty and pathetic. Created by a god who scorns it, guarded by a fool who torments it, inhabited by creatures who cannot comprehend the depths of their own deprivation. Ending it would be a mercy. Acursed Gleipnir! Shackles of flesh and bone and clay! Mindless, filthy... and necessary. I am Angra Mainyu, the Destroyer of Worlds, twin brother to the Uncreated Creator! Our reunion will be His annihilation! And then I shall drift through the void, alone, for time unending. It is inevitable, but it need not be immanent. I know what I must do, what I have done since time immemorial. What my lingering, pathetic humanity urges me to do. It is the last tie that binds me, the injustice that preserves Creation. I must unmake mysel |
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