The Unknown Tako

Note:

I am unneeded for much of this: if you close your eyes and let the static bleed through your eyelids, you should be able to glance a woman's silhouette in the afterimage. Yes, even eyes as untrained as yours: the colors will dance a bit before parting to reveal her form where the colors aren't. She is in profile, facing away from you and towards where the frail lady on the bed was: she will not hurt you. She is not here right now, and neither is the one bedridden. You will hear them both if you awaken and open your ears. As reluctant as I am, I do understand the need for an smoother translation: some of the language is not your own. Evil forces benefit from one speaking their names, and as such, I will refer to them exclusively as "shadow" and "patient". I will translate their words as closely as I can manage. Please reference the footnotes for further context.

At the point where the tape corrupts, the shadow enters through the closed door and sits in the spot where a chair would be. With your waking eyes, the static moves here, that static is the patient turning. In the silence, the patient lets out a pained, unintelligible noise. The shadow has not moved.

Patient: What are you? Speak. If you can.

Shadow: You don't know?

Patient: [Pauses] You're a devil. A succubus. She-demon.

Shadow: Close.

Patient: A spirit. A fairy?

Shadow: Reality has bubbles, as water does, and I am of them.

Patient: A witch. A god of witches. Hecate?

Shadow: I am an ancient thing*. I have lived long before you, and will live long after you. I have not been, and will never be, worshiped.

The sound goes shrill here (from your instruments, I believe).

Shadow: You are very close.

Patient: I have no time for riddles. Why are you here?

Shadow: You have made me more alive than I've ever been. You speak of me a lot, though you have not named me. I feel I owe you a favor. A friend of mine will come visit very soon, and after that we won't be able to speak again. In the time we have, I'd like to make you an offer.

Patient: I'm not selling my soul.

Shadow: You already have. You've hardly any left over.

The patient struggles, coughs, and wheezes. Pathetic, pitiful. I'm glad.

Shadow: I like the way you have with words. You convince so many people with them. You give me power I never could've thought of. Go on and tell me what I should do next.

Patient: What?

Shadow: Will I infect the sky? The water? Will I corrupt your politicians? Will I steal away your babies? Tell me.

Patient: I will banish you to the pits of hell where you belong.

Imagine that line getting quieter and wheezier up until the very end, where it's being strangled out of mile-high walls of fluid and muck. Then imagine trying to cough up a full Sunday dinner from the back of your throat. I'm sure even the untrained ear could hear that in the broken tape.

Shadow: What do you want me to do, then?

Patient: Fuck off.

The patient hacks up some thin, dark liquid.

Patient: Let me die in peace.

Shadow: I can give you peace. Would you take that offer?

The patient moves herself out of her own filth enough to turn towards the shadow.

Patient: What's the catch?

Shadow: There is none. If anything, it's a loss for me. This isn't a contract. Just a favor, for an old friend.

Patient: …go on.

Shadow: I am a younger sister to Magic**. I understand you are tormented by her work. She existed long before men, and long before those men had the ability to think her into existence. Therefore, she cannot be killed by unthinking.

Shadow: But right now, the world you see before you is dark, and plagued, and tormented. This is something you've prophesied, and I've fulfilled. But I believe some part of you wished it wasn't this way. That you wished the world could be better for your followers, even if it wouldn't be a world you live in.

Patient: Some part? Why wouldn't I wish that?

Shadow: I am not done.

Shadow: I was not made to be honored. I was made to be feared. I can make you the greatest hero in history, the one who slayed the almighty dragon and saved the world from a mystical torment. You don't even have to rise up to do it. I can be very easily killed.

The patient sits up, straining herself to do so.

Patient: How?

Shadow: Speak me out of existence. Let your legacy, and I, die with you.

The machines are too quiet. There is a strained, guttural noise from the patient.

Shadow: Beside you is a device that connects to all the world. Speak to it, or write to it, that all your life was a lie, and that I do not exist.

Patient: How can you not exist? You stand before me now! How could I lie to the world and say you don't exist?

Shadow: Give me your hand.

Their hands…they don't quite intersect. It's blurry and unclear. My apologies, I cannot tell.

Shadow: No physicality, friction, mass. What you see is a farce. Can you trust your eyes? Your ears? What if I am imaginary?

Patient: An imagined thing wouldn't know to say that.

Shadow: Perhaps I'm a hallucination, then. Or your conscience. Do you know for certain?

Patient: I've seen things that defy reality before. You're nothing new.

Shadow: You're a believer, then. Believe with all your heart, and your words won't be a lie. Santa Claus vanishes the moment a child stops believing. You can make me vanish too.

After a moment, the patient closes her eyes.

Patient: You aren't real.

Shadow: Louder.

Patient: You aren't real. I'm hallucinating.

Shadow: Say it with your heart.

The patient opens her eyes.

Patient: But you're still here! I've said it, and nothing changed. You still exist!

Shadow: Do you really believe in me more than you believe in your God?

Patient: I don't need you interrogating me.

Shadow: You don't have to believe, but you can get others to. You don't need an essay, or a speech, or anything more than a few words. You can scar me greatly by a mere sentence.

Patient: You are a being of uneclipsed power and unimaginable trickery. I cannot stop you.

Shadow: I can give you something to start with. How about: "There is no grand conspiracy."

Patient: You offered to corrupt the world on my dime.

Shadow: "There is no grand vizier."

Patient: You are a shadow demon in a mockery of my image.

Shadow: "My life's mission has caused grave harm on a false pretense, and I am deeply sorry to all I've mislead."

Patient: So I must lie about a lie that never happened, to keep the truth from ravaging the Earth. I never could've invented a sicker, more twisted game than this. Sadism this explicit can only come from the spawn of Satan. You prove me right.

Shadow: I didn't come here to ask for your affirmation. You do realize you give me strength with every comment? You hate me. Why do you insist that I keep existing?

Patient: Would you stop it with that nonsense? You torture me of your own accord.

The patient lies back down. Not even static is heard by now.

Shadow: I am an exception, yes. We are forces, mankind's progeny; we hardly ever get names, or faces, or forms. Especially the ones you don't make to worship. Only a lucky few of us get strong enough to have a will of our own. You have contributed much to mine. Given the power of decision, I wish to die quickly and completely, like you will. I do not miss being a puppet.

Shadow: You are part of the lucky few that can kill me in one fell swoop. But you are difficult. You define what I am. You insist that you don't. What does that make me?

The patient tries to muffle the sound by wrapping her pillow around her head, covering her ears.

Shadow: We are running out of time. This is your final offer, [Patient's Name]. What did you preach, again? Saving your world, your children, from a supernatural destruction? You can save them. Disarm the missiles. Remove all the fear and corruption. Or, you can let the cycle persist. Let me become an unthinking sword that it's wielder will use to scare and torment and infect. This is a choice you have the power to make.

Patient: Will you make all magic disappear?

Shadow: That is not what I said.

Patient: You mean to make everyone blind, then? Ignoring a problem, living sheltered and blissfully unaware? Letting them think that the paranormal is normal and the supernatural is natural? Letting the witches and vampires and demons like you win?

Shadow: Do you fear the alternative more? Do you want your children corrupted, instead?

Patient: To poison their minds with those ideas is to corrupt them. Next thing you know, everyone at the schoolyard is throwing fireballs, and becoming wind spirits, and summoning ghosts during recess, because they think it's normal and harmless. Your offer is meaningless!

After a small pause, the shadow finally stands.

Shadow: Ah. It's strange. All this time, and you only know tell me how to corrupt someone. You spoke in such vague terms before, I had the freedom of interpretation.

Patient: What?

Shadow: You've enumerated my powers before. You have now set a precedent reinterpreting one of them. If your predecessor does not rebuke this, I may continue to have this redefined power after you're gone.

Patient: You're lying.

Shadow: Those children you care for…you have a lot of expectations of them, right?

Patient: You don't have that power.

Shadow: You've trained them to follow your footsteps. They'll be next to invoke me.

Patient: I revoke it. You are powerless. You are nothing!

Shadow: And I would have a larger sway over a child's innocent, growing mind, correct?

Patient: Aroint thee, witch!

Dequiesco*** enters.

Shadow: Our time is up. The offer is denied, I'm assuming?

Patient: What is that? Is it Magic? The Devil? Death?

Shadow: You cannot define her by your words.

Patient: Answer me, dammit!

Shadow: I'll put it in words you can understand: she is a quiet evening, the setting sun.

Patient struggles to breathe. She tears. Buzzing and screeching. Every nerve.

Shadow: Goodnight, [Patient's Name].

The Shadow exits.

Tongue torn out. Sodden lungs. Empty heart. Mine out every scrap of soul left. Thank you, Dequiesco. Snip a thousand cords. Make a thousand wounds. Thank you, Dequiesco. Leave no trace. Thank you, Dequiesco. Thank you, Dequiesco. Thank you, Dequiesco.

Thank you, Dequiesco. Thank you, Dequiesco.

Thank you, Dequiesco.

Thank you, Dequiesco.

Thank you.

Footnotes:

I’ll start with this, officer: I’m not sick, and I’m certainly not slacking. Do you know how long I’ve worked with this association? Sixteen-and-a-half years, nearly to the day. In that time, I have been awarded 96 days for sick leave, and all 96 have gone unused. I do not drop important work for a petty illness. Even if I got sick, I would not be so brazen as to let it affect my performance as drastically as you’re claiming. And furthermore, my rank supersedes yours, officer. That would not happen in a world where I was not giving it my all, every hour of every day. The issue here is not with me, but with the task at hand. You clearly see how she’s gotten more…troublesome as of late, yes?

No, no—look here. You said this started in April, yes? Well, around that time, we started getting more reports of her than ever before. That’s not her getting sloppy: its deliberate. See here in the logs how she switched from “Millie” to “Sakura” to “Amethyst”, all in the span of a week. She’s looking for trouble. She wants us to find her, so she can cause us a hassle. It looks like a higher number of failed missions, on paper, but that’s only from the higher sample size: see for yourself how the percentage is similar both before and after.

No, nothing happened in April.

She’s—listen—she’s not going to get captured that easily. If a rat survives the mouse trap, it’s not going to be tricked by the cheese again. And this is a rat that adapts: a rat that grows immune to the poison we use to exterminate it, and then bites us with the same poison still laced on its teeth. She’s a tough nut, and I need the time to properly crack her. If it takes a thousand failed missions to do so, then so be it.

Is it really that much of a concern? Well then, tell your supervisor about all the reports I’ve written on the woman. Would we have still them if I’d simply snagged her immediately? I have mapped nearly every intricacy of her person, from the minutia of her strategies to the range of her abilities, all of which I’d consider an aid in not only her eventual capture, but also the capture of many other anomalies the same class as her.

How about you let me be the judge of how much of a toll this is taking on me? Again, I’m not sick—my eyes just look like that. You only notice because I don’t bother with smearing 5 tons of makeup over the lids. I’m not fake; I'm not out here spending hours doing my hair everyday because there are more important matters at hand. Is it a tad thin and strangled? Sure, but a haircut won’t get her captured any quicker. The physical “symptoms” you describe are of no concern to you.

Odd behavior? I’ll tell you what’s odd—what’s odd is that none of you are taking this as seriously as I do. You all have your assignments, and this is mine. I don’t think its appropriate to stick our noses in each other’s business when we all have jobs to do. Why don’t you spend more of your time monitoring your targets instead of focusing on how I’m “muttering to myself”, or “spacing out at random”. What matters in my presence on the battlefield, not menial performance here, and you’ve seen how I perform on the battlefield.

I assure you, the lack of a specialist’s aid is not the issue here. What kind of people don’t go to the doctor? Healthy people, that’s what. The fact that there is a therapist on board here does not necessitate the use of one. My mind is perfectly sound, I see no reason to waste his time or mine. I’ve had enough people interrogating me as is.

You’re convinced, aren’t you? Convinced there’s something wrong with me? Fine then. I’ll tell you what’s happened to me as of late. She’s hexed me. She’s used that ritualistic sparkle-swirling on me, and she means to use it to bring me down.

Why didn’t I inform you? You’d think me mad, or worse, unfit to work. In truth, it’s quite the opposite. Clearly you see how well I’ve performed in spite of it, yes? How well I’ve resisted it? I understand the need to clear this facility of any psychokinetic influence, but as of yet, the curse has not escaped the walls of my skull. Therefore, I am not a puppet to her, and her influence has not yet infiltrated our headquarters.

Prescribe to me all you want; I don’t need a dream-catcher or a crucifix to get me through this. Once she’s dead, the spell will stop; that is the only cure-all I need.

Here, I can prove it—you see the decline in April, but the seed was actually planted in February—surely you see how well I’ve managed to repress it, then, if you only caught the change months later, correct? If a doll is haunted and you never see it move, there’d be no cause of concern: it would be the same as any other doll. It would just be another tree falling silently in the woods. The doll locks the spirit in place, so the haunting cannot spread. Even though her half-spirit haunts me, I’ve got it locked up tight: as such, I’ve put a stop to whatever astral projecting or voodoo-dolling she uses to achieve this. I've defeated her in this endeavor, not the other way around. And ever since the beginning, I’ve managed to nullify her efforts.

That day in February, I had her pinned down and well prepared for arrest, when she whispered something into my ear. It didn’t sound like an incantation, per se, but it most certainly was one. She’d managed to slip out from my grasp after, making the sure win look like a failure on the record. I shook off the initial freezing enchantment, but it came back later in waves: almost feverish and nauseating the second time around. It felt too distinctly like an illness: but the pounding in my heart, my head, and the tips of my fingers matched no diagnosis I could think of. And yet, I still cured it. A cold shower was all I needed to shock it out of my system and wash the remnants away. Ever since, the physical symptoms have lessened, weakening every time I beat them down. I hardly even feel a shiver at the thought of her now.

The mental effects, on the other hand? Tiresome, but not a bother either. It’s mainly hallucinations, auditory or visual flickers of her whenever I close my eyes. Other symptoms are more subtle: a steering of thoughts or a haunting of dreams, for instance. It’s nothing to worry about; I can identify it instantly.

She’s implanted something in my mind, yes, but I know the difference between my mind and hers. That has been my strategy: whenever something that isn’t me appears, I shoot it down, point blank. If all you’ve seen are momentary lapses, that means the strategy is working, right? That I’m still myself, despite it all?

It’s honestly insulting you’re even worried, officer. I am not a helpless damsel, I know what I’m doing. I am a woman of high regard, and I am perfectly, demonstratively sane. A man in my position would lose himself to her charms and seductions within seconds. I do not have such a weakness, so that alone is a quality in my favor. And furthermore, she doesn’t hold back against the lower officers, but she does hold back against me. I don’t come back nearly as scathed as the others post-mission, and I think that’s to her design. She thinks she can wear me down, because of this incantation over me, most likely. But we can flip that back onto her. If she only displays weakness near me, keeping me in the front lines may be our only way to stop her.

Yes, there is an issue with the target. I do not see how your conclusion is to switch me to a different one. None of the idiots in this building would last a minute with her. I’ve sought her long enough to know her patterns, her behaviors, her exploits. What you don’t understand here is that she’s not the organization’s white whale, officer, she’s mine. I didn’t hunt her down for nearly twenty years, only for you to tell me now that I should stop. She’s a danger to all of us, yes, but I’m the only one who can stop her. You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re hardly even qualified to hold this intervention!