The Grimscribe's Puppets (39 page)

Never let it be said I mind having somewhere to pull my head in, for a while; it’s kind of nice to have a safe little hidey-hole, I guess, when the open spaces outside remain so goddamn scary. Would be, at least, if I didn’t know that somebody else holds the keys—or if I had any sort of idea how long this particular set of adjustments is going to take, exactly, either.

No one likes to be forgotten.

On the other hand, the anhedonia my cocktail deals out mainly serves to make me wonder why anyone would struggle so hard to be remembered, to stay alive; how anyone could want so badly to prolong this particular... stasis, this awful pause between nothing and nothing. Because oh sure, I’m safe in here from the worst of it, the truly painful blankness, where input slips away until everything becomes equally hollow and sharp and unbearable—but so what? How much, exactly, is a life without extremes worth, when all’s said and done? No depression, no joy. Just grey, marching grey, simplest of all possible forward motions at barely impulse speed, like algae. Existing, not living.

But okay, enough, I didn’t forget: Write down my dreams. Here’s one.

I dreamt I found a closet in that short little hallway between my bedroom and the living room, the one we both know backs onto Apartment Seven, which means there couldn’t possibly be a door there. So of course, I opened it. And inside it was full of what seemed like miles on miles of snarled yarn, knotted in on itself, all dirty and wet and vile-smelling. Yet in I went, clearing a path like Lucy through the wardrobe, the yarn-mounds getting progressively colder ‘til they iced up, froze almost solid, and I had to tear at them with my numbing hands, kicking myself free. And at last it gave way, became another doorway opening onto... nothing. Empty space, star-speckled, with a wind howling past me; a night sky too far away from any sun to ever see real daylight.

After which I heard a voice, some girl, and though I already knew it was a dream this only confirmed it, because it didn’t scare me at all that I felt as though I recognized it. Saying:
They call it the Kuiper Belt. Think it’s a nothing place, all dead debris and endless absence, but they’re wrong, so wrong
. With that little trembly note in her voice that you get when you’re so happy you’re close to weeping.
Tiamat non delenda est! How could it be? It only moved—Translated
(I heard the capital),
like we’ll be. It’s real—more real, more beautiful than any agreed-upon construct in this whole “real” world. Perfect, like we’ll be perfect. Perfected. Perfection. The ur-planet. The ur-.

And everyone else will end up here, now, instead. No Heaven or Hell. Just a swirling knot of souls, too tangled to untie themselves without tearing, so far gone that by the time they come back ‘round again the earth’ll already be inside the Sun. Everyone who’s not us, sooner or later. Everyone who’s not tuned to the Signal...

Which is what?
I wanted to ask, desperately. But even as I strung the words, let alone sent them dropping to my tongue, it already had me; I was
inside
it, moving through it while it moved through me, all echoing clicks and breath and liquid twittering, keystroke static on an empty station. Classic SETI shit, Translating as it went. A cruel brightness that slapped me back down into the waking world again, even as it simultaneously revealed said “world” to be nothing but skin on howl, a burning scrim, the mere and flattest parody of whatever it was meant to conceal—

So, anyhow: Thanks for the cheap trip, Yelena, like I wasn’t already feeling...
nothing
enough, already.

Put that on your expanded Cymbalta symptoms list, and smoke it.

Yelena Rostov, Notes:

Kuiper Belt:
The outer rim of the Solar System, a belt of asteroids and small bodies; includes Pluto’s orbit. Dreams of dark empty places common symbol of depression—may be good sign that T.’s seeing herself separate from it, rather than in it.

Tiamat:
Babylonian dragon-goddess, slain by hero-god Marduk.

Interesting connection to Kuiper Belt—’70s pop pseudoscience said there was another planet (Tiamat, natch) where Belt is now, way-station for aliens; Belt’s supposed to be its remains, post-destruction.

(Like
Chariots of the Gods?
Grill T. on her reading before coming here.)

Tiamat non delenda est:
Riff on
Cartago delenda est?
“Tiamat must not be destroyed”?

“The Signal”
: ?

~*~

Handwritten “dream diary” of Thordis Hendricks:

July 31, 2012:

Dreamed I was living in a house, old & decrepit & dust-encrusted, & spent the whole day cleaning it. But when I had to muck out the basement, while I was down there I found a door in the floor & underneath the house a whole other house, equally dirty. So I went down there to clean up that one too & in its basement I found another door, another house, & so on. Smaller & dirtier & further down all the time, & they never stopped. I woke up before I found the bottom.

August 1, 2012:

Dreamed I was pregnant & had been for maybe a year & the doctor wanted to induce me but instead of going to the hospital we did it right here, in the living room. & then I started to feel sick & thought I was going to puke but instead I just doubled up & my stomach came open like a zipper, & inside there was just dust, red dust. & it all spilled out on the floor so I clawed at my own neck so badly I pulled my jugular open & bled to death, I could feel it happening. But I didn’t care.

August 2, 2012:

A knock at the door. It’s a package & I open it without thinking. A photo-frame with one tiny hole in it, like an ikon, black magic Advent window. An eye, peering out. So I slide off the back & find out it’s a picture of me laid upside-down, staring eye transmuted to blank terror simply by being reversed.

August 3, 2012:

Nothing.

August 4, 2012:

Nothing.

August 5, 2012:

Just floating again, out in the black on an orbital track so elliptical I knew I’d reach the thinnest part of my gravitational field & just slip off like a bead from a thread, go drifting away into nothing & never stop unless I hit something.

August 6, 2012:

Dreamed I was a horse with bones braided through my mane being ridden by something gigantic, this crushing weight, faster & faster, being ridden to death. Every breath a razorblade turning in my chest.

August 7, 2012:

Trapped under a car. I could feel oil dripping on me, maybe gas, or maybe I’d wet myself. That weird smell of hot rubber and dusty asphalt. & at any time the car might collapse further, something might spark, I might burn alive, but I don’t think I was scared. I could hear the Signal far off in the distance, getting stronger.

August 8, 2012:

Corpse posture meditation, & I felt like I was going to blend into the floor, all heavy & cold & hot at the same time, every part of my body ticking with life I couldn’t control. & then I was standing up & looking down on myself, & I looked so good empty, so perfected. Transitioned. But then I started to rot, & then I was melting, I then I was gone. Just the mat left behind.

August 9, 2012:

I was a man who wanted to be a woman, or maybe a woman who’d been a man. But one way or the other I was bad & wrecked now, broken & I knew it, & there was nothing I could do about it, because whatever choice I’d made was the wrong one. So I took a knife from the kitchen & started cutting parts of myself off anywhere I could & eating them, hoping that would help.

August 10, 2012:

Nothing.

August 11, 2012:

Nothing.

August 12, 2012:

Dreamed I was up on a hill & looked down into the valley & there were three people standing there with bags over their head, clear plastic bags, so I could see their faces when they all turned & looked up at me, but I didn’t recognize any of them. & I think they were trying to tell me something but it was too far away & I couldn’t hear them because of the bags & then I just woke up.

August 13, 2012:

Dreamed I looked in the mirror & I was somebody else, & then that person told me to go get ready because we were going on a long trip together & pretty soon it would be time to leave. But instead of packing or anything we just sat down in the living room & kissed each other & said goodbye. & then we both gave each other pills & we took them at the same time & then everything went dark & that was the end.

Yelena Rostov, Notes:

Some dreams seem specifically parallel to previous tenants—Bissionette (post-partum depression with self-harm), Siemanczski (Vicodin abuse after vehicular injury), Lin (body-image dysmorphia with false transgender self-diagnosis)—even though no way T. could know about any of that. But pattern v. clear, impossible to ignore.

All dreams end badly, but with no sense of unhappiness. Transfiguration imagery. Change resulting in bodily dissolution.

Who else lived in here, before the Big Three?

Check to see if pattern continues in either direction.

~*~

From the Obituaries Section of the Toronto Star, September 21, 2000:

Leora SOONG, beloved daughter and sister, 1968 to 2000. Passed away suddenly but peacefully of natural causes. Her father Pak, mother Nureet and brother Doctor Tardesh Soong ask that in lieu of flowers, cash donations be directed to the department headed by Dr Maurice V. Corbray at Shumate House, in gratitude for their caring and professional treatment of Leora’s condition. No memorial service will be held.

From the Star’s Local News Section, same issue:

Almost one year exactly after the shocking discovery of thirteen dead bodies in a private Rosedale home, Leora Soong, the final survivor of Marc-Andre Rozant’s Pure Signalism cult (a splinter faction of the larger Anunnaki Signalist Movement) died in her sleep late Sunday night. She was discovered early Monday morning by the staff at Shumate House, the care facility her parents had placed her in.

A former University of Toronto medical student, Soong first came to national attention after she fled the Rozant house early in the morning on September 19, 1999 and flagged down a passing police car, informing the officers who stopped that Rozant had ordered the rest of the group to commit a Heaven’s Gate-style mass suicide. By the time an armed response team had been summoned, however, Rozant’s plans had already been put into effect, with only one other cult member—ex-NHL goalie Tyson Legasse—left alive. Legasse claimed he had been waiting for Soong, his “double-harness team-mate”, to return so that they could “Transition together properly”. When Soong still refused to go through with the suicide ceremony, Legasse cut his own throat with a concealed knife and then bled out before paramedics could get close enough to treat him...

Wikipedia Entry: Signalism

Anunnaki Signalism
was a Millennialist cult developed and based in Toronto, Canada, though many members were recruited from America, Europe, Russia and parts of Asia through Internet proselytization. After a schism split the original Movement, the fourteen members calling themselves
Pure Signalists
retreated to their leader’s Rosedale house in 1999 to commit ritual suicide.
¹
The massacre’s single survivor died of natural causes a year later, while still in deprogramming after-care therapy at Toronto’s
Shumate House
facility.
²

Doctrine

According to their internal newsletter, “The Secret Knowledge”
³
, the Signalists subscribed to the
Tiamat/Anunnaki Theory
, a variant derivation of the 12
^th
Planet Theory
of Azerbaijan-born American author
Zecharia Sitchin
, whose books propose an explanation for human origins involving
ancient astronauts
. Sitchin attributes the creation of the ancient Sumerian culture to the
Anunnaki
, whom he identifies as a race of extra-terrestrials from a hypothetical planet beyond Neptune called
Nibiru
. He believed this planet to follow an elongated, elliptical orbit in the Solar System, asserting that Sumerian mythology reflects this view. Sitchin’s books have sold millions of copies worldwide and have been translated into more than 25 languages.
^{[citation needed]}

The mathematical progression of
Bode’s law
suggests that a planet should exist between Mars and Jupiter, some 260 million miles from the Sun. 12
^th
Planet Theory posits that this planet (which Sitchin identifies with the Babylonian monster-goddess
Tiamat
) did in fact exist, but was struck and destroyed by Nibiru as its orbit intersected with our solar system, thus giving rise to the myth of Tiamat being “torn apart and spread across the sky” by the usurper-god
Marduk
. Gravitational redistribution from this event pulled some fragments of Tiamat and its moons into the orbit of the remaining planets, while others were driven further to form first the
asteroid belt
, then the
Kuiper Belt
.

The Signalist Movement builds on Sitchin’s theories by claiming that the planet Tiamat was not entirely destroyed. Though its inhabitants did not possess the technology of Nibiru, they did possess a hypersapient spiritual tradition, which led to their precognitive realization that such a collision was coming, and could not be avoided. They thus developed the
Signal
, a psychic “anchor” which would allow them to phase-shift the “best parts” of their planet and themselves into another dimension using zero-point energy. Like the
Heaven’s Gate
cultists who believed they could abandon their flawed human “vehicles” and catch a ride to Paradise on the
Hale-Bopp
comet’s
tail, Signalists believe that by tuning themselves to the Signal’s frequency, they will be able to translate themselves to a perfected version of Tiamat through a process called
Transition
.