Kthaahthikha

This story, first written with the intention of complaining about an issue rather minor and yet pressing greatly upon my mind, has so diverged from its original purpose that I am forced to look out the window, in contemplation of the variety of strange and unfortunate circumstances which have pressed upon my mind much like that most recent of troubles, which forced me to put pen to paper in the defence of the national pride.

One cannot help but wonder at the circumstances which led to my uncovering that strange truth, which lay covered by a moth-eaten rag at the bottom of an old cedar chest in the caretaker’s closet at the Louvre. Having found myself there, in search of a mop, I investigated the case and was amazed that anyone might leave something of such import lying so carelessly locked away within a sturdy box, in a locked room in a secure and well-guarded building.

Having suppressed my wonderment, I held the thing up to the dim, uncovered globe, and was amaze to see that some small creature swirled and gestated inside of it. Curious, I slipped the object within my coat, and fled down the hallway in a swift but inconspicuous manner.

Once safely ensconced within my hotel room, a cheap place used more by locals than tourists, I laid the thing upon my chest of drawers and watched it carefully, intrigued by the strange patterns that its shadow formed through the translucent sheath of the casket.

I was unable to stay in Paris much longer, being greatly pressed for time in regards to my appointment with Lord Roqsnest. I took the airbus to London and from there transferred to the trans-Atlantic flight that would take me, via stopovers in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, to my home city of Melbourne where I might study the item further. During my brief pause in Chicago his Lordship and I agreed upon a suitable fee regarding the case of Ming-dynasty silverware that I was to broker for him, and I made a brief acquaintance with a lovely young women of scant means, to whom I played something of a benefactor, though not entirely selflessly.

At home, I stood in my apartment, the book opened before me from which it was intention to read. I recited cool, dark verses in a mellifluous vice imparted to me by long training under the enchanters of Tibet, and the casket began to glow with a preternatural inner light. It split apart into seven segments, each of which folded outwards from myself, and from the centre there emerged a creature unlike any that I had yet seen, a strange combination of the organic and the aethereal that seemed constructed of reality itself, and which opened wide in several directions as I tumbled forwards and yet also downwards into a circling pit, the light of the earth vanishing as it diminished away above me, and I fell into a strange world of bright lights and snatching tentacles that hissed and swirled about me, screaming with abject madness and delighting in the suffering which they presumed to impart to me, although I in fact rather enjoyed it.

It is here that I remain to this very day, swirling through the deconstructed elements of the universe, slipping under the skin of the everyday like some queer parasite as I emerge forth from time to time to spew-out some heinous monstrosity that passes up within a corporeal being and lays an icy, vice-like grip upon their mind. And I do this that I might impart a vital and chilling fragment of knowledge:

Youth culture is ruining the English language.

Indeed it is, and you are blest to be the one to impart such a profound knowledge upon us!

Not half as much corporate culture! We await furhter despatches...