The Red Queen - 2011 Ghost story Event - Matsuyama Japan

[Alarum]

This was written for the annual Matsuyama 百物語怪談会 (A Gathering of One Hundred Supernatural Tales), a Japanese summer-time tradition, recited in Dogo Park in 2011.


The Red Queen

I do not have much time and so I must be brief. There are things in this world that are frankly incomprehensible to the normal man and so here I find myself attempting to explain the impossible and yet I will endeavor none the less.

Within the depths of the mind there exists unfathomable vistas, unknown to most, worlds where our petty understanding of nature holds no sway, a place where realities can be woven and shaped. These places await those who find the correct tools in this life, and maybe for some once they have shed their mortal bonds. It is a place few could image and even fewer have attempted to gain access to.
When I first became aware of these worlds, I had little understanding of the vast, obsidian intelligence's that wait at the thresholds. Suddenly and without warning bizarre events began to unfold. I was a young man at the time, still finding my place in this ravaged, post-war city. I had no knowledge of the vast, seething potentia that churns and broils in the core of the minds eye.

One day while resting by the Themes a young girl dressed in crimson rags raced by me. The docks were unusually quiet for the season and so when I turned to see her tare down the causeway I found that we were alone. The girl was blazing a trail of fire and blood that flowed from her as she sped away and in the darkness of her wake I saw a thousand stars glitter and die. Magnetically drawn, I gave chase and found myself flowing through a vortex, as planes and dimensions tilted and flowed about me like mercury.
She halted suddenly at the end of the pier and as I witnessed the violent rivets of blood red energy swirl around her, illuminated by the ageless fires of creation, she slowly turned herself toward me.
"We're waiting," she said, her voice a symphony of discord.

From that day I began to see the world differently. Patterns would reveal themselves to me, structures formed in a mental eye I had hitherto unimagined. Higher levels of reality began to unwind and I found secret paths and tunnels that lead through the forgotten corners of creation. I found myself seeing layers in those patterns, I could see tides of energy that created unimaginable futures, currents of time that folded in upon themselves and in the far distance a continually growing presence, as of a vast and cold omnipotent intelligence ever watching from infinite shadows.


Months turned to years, I found that I could flow between worlds, I found colours that should not be, I saw the spaces between form and void, the dark places where chaos reigns in swirling miasmas, where whole worlds are created and torn apart in the smallest sets of measurable time. All the while my fleshy body remained trapped and ridged in my tiny flat by the river side. A prisoner of clammy flesh and bone.

One morning as the cold sun struggled through the fog I found myself in my bed, soaked in urine and filth, the vivid stench palpable as the teaming fractals of a previous creation fled my senses. The four guardians of the gates loomed about the corners of my room, drawn as it were by the nature of our geometry.
"She is almost here", their voices blasted from within the soft structures of my head, blistering neurons. "An errant sequence code from another reality has breached this plain; we are gathering the free souls to meet this affront. The Red Queen draws near."
Having delivered their message and with a spasm of twisting plasma the guardians departed.
The muted light cast long shadows and I found myself dazed by the cacophony of dust swirling through the putrid air.
The full impact of the message took a moment to settle and as its implications manifested within the limited confines of my fleshy brain a sickening horror took hold of me. The Red Queen, she who waits at the edges of creation. 'We're waiting' was the whispering echo that gripped me as I lay in catatonic fever.
Our world is no longer safe, the Guardians, those that give our world distinction from others, have made a call. She who gorges upon the Spheres has made her gambit on this world.
I have no knowledge of how or when she will fully manifest, I have since scoured the resplendent ether and have seen her intent scorched into the patterns of every future; every realization of space and time. There seems little hope.
Not long after I began my task of gathering those other free souls, those travelers of light and paths unseen, I was accosted and brought here, a place where I am fed noxious substances that dull my mind and blunt my focus. They make me explain my task to them over and over and examine me daily with mental tests. I have told them about the Watchers in the Dark, of the Guardians of the Threshold, of Carcosa and the glorious worlds that glow with holy light between matter and void. They care nothing of the dangers that will soon face our reality or of the Red Queen and her dark legions.
I am lost here now and hope that one day my message will be heard by sympathetic ears and that I will be freed to continue my task of allying the Free Souls.
Our world is labyrinthine and infinite and I have found myself trapped in a solitary nightmare. I must find an escape.

The Red Queen no longer waits.

[Alysyrose]

Excellent. Thanks for this. Mind if we add it to an upcoming Ellis document?

[Alarum]

By all means.