TRAPPED

On a good day, I may manage to avoid death half of the time. How long I have been in this situation, I don't know, trapped within this odd prison of events, all of them aimed at my death, but each death merely the end of one terrifying situation. Then I wake up in a new one, but not really new, because I know that once again there will be those, invisible or at least hidden, plotting my death.

Think of Poe's tale, "The Pit and the Pendulum", but imagine that, rather than fainting, Poe's half-mad victim of the Inquisition is actually slashed through the heart by the pendulum's blade or wanders blindly into the pit...only to awaken to new tortures. This would reflect my horrifying existence.

And yet, as I said, on a good day, I manage to avoid death half the time. But those are the weirdest times. When I die, I cease to exist for a moment and awaken in a new world. When I don't die, I remain conscious and watch as a whole world melts away and a new world comes into being in its place. And this is what makes it truly hard.

I remember a time before this endless round of battles with death began. I was a scholar, an alchemist, a powerful magus. I studied the darkest, most forbidden texts. In this I was odd for my time. Sure, there were plenty of fools who wasted their time with the likes of Crowley, Regardie, Porridge and their ilk. But to dare to look... and to leap... into the abyss. That was rare indeed.

Most likely it was the backfire of some spell that sent me into this horrific cycle. And I know that within those unhallowed and forbidden tomes that had been my life, within those pages penned by the hands or claws or tentacles of every species with the daring intelligence to demand the unknown, I could find a way out. But how do I research these books and scrolls? How do I explore them, when my worlds keep changing, when I continually die, when I have no way of knowing what form a text has taken from one world to the next?

And yet I maintain my self, my will. And with these I intend to find a way out of this trap, a way to continue to build my power, to become the master of my fate once again.

HER PUTRID ART

I would never pose for the pictures she would paint. Ghastly, putrid greens that almost stank of rot and vomit. I knew that hse resented my refusal. Her lips would curl into a sneer when I entered the room. Icould hear the curses she aimed at me under her breath. I saw the hidden signs she made behind her hands. But I knew her only real powers lay in her painting...

I had watched the little boy toys she had talked into modelling waste away, turn a sickly green and slowly liquefy. All closed casket funerals, since there was nothing left to see but festering green stew... it was very clear that something had to be done about her.

But despite her pretensions as a witch, she had no idea where her real magic lay. She honestly mourned her lost boy toys, wondering what strange disease was stealing them away from her, even going to the clinic to get checked for STDs. But no clinic could detect such an illness...

I, however, knew. I am well-versed in certain less quotidian skills and lore. I had known others like her, filled with certain unusual (and, in her case, less than pleasant) talents, but completely unaware of these abilities, and so prone to unwittingly unleashing them where they would least desire. As you can see, however much her pettiness might annoy me, she did not deserve to die. She just needed to be taught who she was...