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AI work at a historical collective of the occult. I found a letter mentioning countries that never existed.
Hey, everyone! I work at a small occult historical collective in Oregon, and we’re currently doing a requisition project of stories that could’ve been lost during the Second World War. Why anyone thought that a group of less than fifteen people at the opposite end of the world would be able to effectively log anything from what is at the exact opposite end of the world is lost on me. We managed to get our hands on a couple collections from some history archives overseas that didn’t care enough to log it themselves. They’ve been pretty normal so far, but this one I just found seems a little off. It might be a translation error as I know they’ve passed hands a couple times already, or just some bored French guy wanting to pull our leg, but it seems to mention countries that never existed. Putting this out there in hopes that someone can figure out why the names got so jumbled up. Thank you so much for the help!
\-Casper
Content warnings: War, suicide, loss of family members.
Letter goes as follow:
I offer this letter as a record of events. I hope that in departing this information I may somehow aid Boudreaux one last time. All I ask in return is that you understand my effort as a soldier simply trying to save his country. I have left this letter unsigned to protect the memory of myself, as well as my family.
I served in the Second Great War in the first infantry regiment of Bordeaux. I was deployed on the northeastern front. To give the horrors of my enlistment any true justice would require too much time; however, I will tell you how it ended. In the latter half of the war, The Bohemian Empire had pushed us through Reims, and the terrible possibility of losing Paris was becoming more plausible. The general had become desperate. His name was Hugo Ardennes. He was old, even for a general. His skin was pallid, and thin, as if being pulled taught against his salient skeleton. His face was gaunt, tired, and cold. Appearing as if his flesh were trying to retreat inside of him for warmth. Even in the regiment's worst states, he would never relinquish himself of his night blue parade uniform. He wore them like vestments, refusing even to remove his hat to show respect for the soldiers he allowed to die. As the war raged on we found ourselves footslogging deeper into our territory. The Bohemians never left us a moment of true respite. Their artillery fired from a distance. I don't think they were firing on us to kill, they hardly hit anyone, but what they did do was break the will of our tired regiment. Soldiers would first go quiet. Not long after they would shamble their way to the side of the road, stop, and sit down, as if waiting for someone to come pick them up. Trying to convince them to come along was impossible.
I probably would have found myself waiting along with them if it wasn’t for Alain. We had become close friends during the war. When I first met him I thought I was gazing into a mirror. His hair was brown like mine, his voice carrying the same cadence and nasally tone as mine did, and his face bearing the same angular features I inherited from my father. The question of paternity was out of the picture as my father died in the first great war, only months after my conception, and Alain was two years younger than I was. He had a family like mine, a daughter and wife waiting for him when he returned from the war. He said his daughter took an interest in the arts which he took with exasperated acceptance. “I never should’ve taken her to see that play in Paris”.
As the Bohemian forces carved through our territory, taking what little land we had left, the general decided to take a stand along the Marne River, just outside of the city limits. The position was impossible to defend. We were given no time to fortify. The mud collapsed in on itself as we struggled to dig through it to muster a defensible position. When Bohemian forces re-entered their effective range our troops had only managed to harrow the mud into a thin network of trenches. That's when the general began sending groups into no man's land. He would pace through the trenches in a feverish fervour, frantically ranting on how we would not let these barbarians take Paris, that we would stop them in their tracks, and all we had to do was make one last stand. He would rake his bony claws against the back of his pockmarked, scabbed neck, pulling out what thin grey hairs remained, as he began making his way through the trenches. He selected the soldiers at random. Some soldiers tried staying quiet; It didn’t save them. When some refused the general would shoot them himself. It went on like this for months. I watched as man after man was marched up the steppe like clockwork. None ever returned. It was only a matter of time before his finger would point towards me followed by the simple call of “You”. He said it, so swiftly and calmly, as if assigning teams in a game. I knew my time was coming, but I didn’t expect that finger to land on Alain next.
We were quiet as we waited. It's like we thought the general would forget us if we simply stayed quiet enough. Of course that would never work, and we were eventually ushered up across the step into no man's lands. As I breached the surface. The pale sun scorched down through the low-hanging fog revealing fields of corpses. Blue-skinned and as green as their uniforms. Their flesh oozed through their torn uniforms, heavy with their drink. It dragged them down as if being amalgamated into its unanimous, undivided mass. Some were more visible than others, their torsos still rising above the mud, others you could only see by their boots, or flecks of colour in their uniforms. We were barely on our feet when the birdlike whistle of mortar fire grew closer, and the mud around our feet was turned into a treacherous ocean of sludge. We ran, and hid; ran and hid; ran and hid; there were eleven of us now; ran and hid; nine; ran and hid seven; ran and hid; six; the whistling stopped as a shell had landed right in the middle of our troupe. I barely had time to react before my fellow soldiers were sent cascading into the air, falling apart from the force.
I awoke to a sharp stabbing pain in my left leg. The pink mist had settled. I was the only survivor. Alain was in the creator with me, or half of him was. There were men farther from the blast that were killed. Alain was farther from the shell than I was, but he was dead, and all I wasn’t. I didn’t move after the blast. Not that I could have, so I sat there for fourteen hours. Fourteen hours spent in that crater with Alain. I thought of the men in the mud, and whether I was going to become one. There were countless men lying on the surface, but as I lay there, I could feel the thousands more lying in wait, slumbering deep within the murk below. Unable to move from the weight above them; their crying voices now clogged in the dirt; their bleeding nails that once clawed through the mud now motionless; they were safe from the artillery which still boomed overhead. I watched the soil take Alain, dragging him deeper into its earthy sodden maw. Our parliament would surrender that morning. The men laid down their weapons and tore the flags from their jackets. Bohemian soldiers made their way into their newly acquired Paris, and Hugo Ardennes would take his life with the very same revolver he used on his men.
I would spend a brief period in a Bohemian military hospital. I survived the blood loss, but I lost my leg to the following infection. After a month I was sent back to my family in Montbard. My town was one of the regions offered to the Bohemians in trade for peace. The town was empty now, aside from a few who shambled through the streets as they were pulled through life with the guide of habit. I returned to my wife, daughter, and mother. I returned home. The shelling of the war had left most of the town levelled, yet there it stood. The resonating thunder of artillery has turned its pipes into an ever-seeping mass of lead. My leg had made finding a job challenging. We had to rely on my wife's inheritance.
I began work as a collector of sorts. I would collect shipments of guns and gear found in the now abandoned war zones. I’d try and fix them, then send them back to whatever buyer I could find. I dealt with a lot of veterans myself who found an odd comfort in the rifles which defended them during the war, however, my biggest customer was my new empire. It didn’t bring in much money, my daughter was entering school, and my mother's condition which left her wheelchair-bound was worsening.
It was a year into my new career when I found it. It was brought to me in a shipment from one of the contractors I commonly dealt with. The shipment was ordinary, containing rusted swords of dead officers, and mud-caked rifles fished from the rolling hills of the east, but amongst this shipment was a Modele 1892 Revolver. It was rusty and still bore the dry blood stains of its previous owner. The chamber only spun in one direction, forwards. At the end of the cylinder was a singular expelled round, that would not budge no matter how hard I pried. Despite its condition, it was apparent to me that this revolver was a beauty in its prime, and that it was a real tragedy it had fallen into such a sullen state. There was one trait of it that seemed to still be visible through the muck and rust, an engraving at the base of the handle. It read H.G. t that moment I knew who the revolver belonged to. I understand that countless men bear the same initials as my late general, but I can assure you that that revolver belonged to him and that it was the same one he used to take his life those two years ago. Upon this revelation, a deep terror resounded within my bones and spread inside me. I immediately threw the revolver in a case and put it in the back of my workshop. The rest of the night would go as normal, sorting through the remaining equipment and deeming which ones would be worth repairing, and what I would need to do so.
The next morning when I made my way down the stairs into my workshop I was overcome by a need to confirm what I saw the previous night. I approached the small box with caution. My shaky hands managed to open the box and reaffirmed my previous judgment. Not only that but the round still confined in its chamber had been reloaded. The rusty casing was not pried from its resting place. A new shining round wasn’t jammed through that crevice. It was the same bullet, but cleaned, and I of course could not see anything past the primer, but I knew it was loaded now. Primed and ready. Despite my years of service, the nature of a firearm, a weapon in its purest form, has never failed to frighten me. Spears have their use for fishing, axes are used for chopping, and even swords which hold the same purpose as firearms at least bear some resemblance to familiar knives, but firearms are different. Their only purpose is to destroy another creature with as much efficiency and range as possible. There's a feeling you get while holding a gun. A feeling that it is yours. You’ve elevated beyond the chains of your weakness. As I cradled the revolver in my palm I felt no such feeling. I understood that if some adversary were to arrest it from my hands that it would have no problem cocking back its hammer, swinging forwards, lighting the fuse, and dispatching the broiling iron proboscis that would shortly cleave through my skull, plunging my electric thoughts into the inky void of the afterlife. It was very matter-of-fact, my thoughts. I didn’t fear it especially, for it did not desire for me to be killed, nor did it desire the death of any others.
Still, in my pyjamas, I ventured out into the backyard. The cold morning dew soaked into my socks, the light cloth growing muddled. I pressed onwards, observing the royal navy sky shrouded with pockmarked clouds choking out the teal light of the morning. Once I had reached the epicenter of the court, I raised the revolver from my side, training its sights into the mud. I hoped that maybe, firing the round would dislodge it, and by doing so I could start with its rehabilitation. I looked down its sights, fixating on the small cup of mud where the bullet would land. I pulled the trigger in an amphitheater of hollow homes. The shot rang out. I inspected the chamber once more. I tried allowing gravity to pull the round down into the mud by my feet, and yet it did not budge. With no intention of burning my already shaking hands, I brought the revolver inside. I had only spent a couple fruitless hours of tinkering with the lodged round before I heard a wailing from upstairs.
I heaved myself off my chair and clambered up the stairs with great effort. When I reached the top I saw my wife, and what used to be my mother. My wife stared at me with pleading bloodshot eyes as if asking me what to do. As if there was anything I could do. No man, no matter how acquainted they are with death, can do anything in that situation. I told my wife to run to the coroner. I waited with my mother until he arrived. It was the coroner's verdict that she had been trying to reach for a safe she had been keeping up on a shelf. She had kept it safe for hard times. She tried reaching it with her cane, but as she stretched her arm thin, trying to pull it off the shelf from her chair, it came down on her with crushing force. It fell onto the intersections between her jaw and her temporal. It dislocated her jaw and fractured the base of her cervical bone. After the impact, she slid backwards in her chair before being stopped by the wooden support beam in the middle of the room. Staring up at an unnatural angle, her jaw opened wide in agony, she would watch as the leaking pipes above would drip down into her mouth until she drowned. The sound of the safe crashing must have been muffled to the rest of us by the gunshot. I stared at her, her skin a familiar pallid teal. The coroner carried her out, and with my leg, all I could do was watch. We would bury her the same day. We collected the money from the safe. Its door was still dented from the impact. It lasted us a couple weeks.
The following days were a blur. We couldn’t tell our daughter the reality of the situation, so we told her she had passed calmly in her sleep, and that she had been taken kindly into Lutharian’s embrace. I tried to maintain normalcy, but every now and then, I would hear a click, sometimes deep in the night, other times while eating dinner with my family. On the third day, I checked on the revolver once more. The round was back. I threw it in a rage. I tried dismantling it, smashing it, and melting it, but nothing worked. The more I seemed to fight against it the faster its unrelenting march towards travesty would become.
On the seventh day, I took it to the woods. It had reached the live rounds chamber, and I did not want to know if I would take my wife or my daughter first. I didn’t know if it would kill me or not, It didn't the first time. I considered that it might be based on age, or proximity, meaning that maybe this time it would choose me. I wondered what my family would do without me. I pushed the thought aside. It wouldn’t matter if this thing killed them first. I fired the revolver into the woods, and that day I managed to delude myself into thinking that I was able to stop it from killing anyone, or maybe that the entire thing was a coincidence. The next morning they found the remains of the Auguste boy. He had stepped on a landmine that had been left over from the war. Naturally, it was only an estimation, yet it seemed to have happened at the exact same time as the gunshot. I felt some guilt following the incident, but it was better him than my daughter.
After confirming my suspicions I entered a routine. Once every week or week and a half, once times march had round its way through each empty chamber, I would venture to some fringe of the city, and pull the trigger. One of my most frequented locations was Semur-en-Auxois. After the war, the city was deemed habitable enough by Bohemian civilizations. To them, the town served as a bastion of the might of their all-powerful empire, and they were there to revel in their spoils. For them, it was easy enough to ignore the crimson engravings in their floorboards and the festering shallow mounds outside the city. I would frequent the city when I could. I chartered myself a carriage to make commutes more convenient. I had connections in the city, but that wasn’t really why I was there. After my first few visits, I started to like it. There was something powerful in it. Sometimes I like to think that revolver was having some anomalous effect on my psyche, but I don't know if I entirely believe that.
My trips grew more frequent as the weeks turned into months. I started firing it multiple times a journey, smiling at whatever fate befell those invaders. When I was lucky it would choose a soldier, and I would claim their belongings. It became my new purpose. It satisfied me. For the first time since the war, that I felt that my actions had meaning. This weapon could be used for so much destruction. I had to become its keeper. This burden had to be mine to bear. At some point, I had become the only one spinning its chamber.
There was a day marking the one-year anniversary of winning the war. The Bohemians planned on holding a parade in Semur-en-Auxois to honour their victory. I intended to be there. I left my house in a rush. My wife tried to stop me. God I should’ve listened to her, but the time of the parade was nearing and I had to be ready when the parade would start. I didn’t tell her where I intended to go.
I arrived in the city, with nothing but myself, my wallet, and the suitcase carrying the revolver. I rented a room in a hotel overlooking the river promenade. Peering out the window I watched as the soldiers moved like ants, assembling their belching iron arms with mindless precision. I almost pulled the trigger right then and there, but I held back. When the time came I would collapse their hollow-hearted exhibit of heroism. All would see their true nature as benign cannon fodder. The sun circled the sky, bleaching the houses white and furrowing the brows of the audience which gathered along the sidewalks.
The parade had started. I pulled the revolver from my suitcase and spun the chamber before it locked into place with a decisive, metallic snap. I watched as a young man lifted his rifle to the sky, ready to fire the blank which would bring the faceless men to march. I pulled the trigger with him. I saw the bayoneted rifle come loose from his hands as he fired. He stumbled forward to catch the runaway rifle. It wasn't long before he reacquired it by driving the bayonet through his throat.
Before the Bohemians could react I spun the chamber and fired again. The crowd began to panic. I saw a man get expunged by the mass and thrown into the street. The machinery continued its inexorable march as the man's screams were silenced by rolling treads. I spun and fired, and spun and fired until the iron burned in my hands, and the chamber screeched against its hinges. I watched as one of their howitzers went off, cleaving through the hoard. The screams were inaudible over the firing of artillery. I can only assume they were snuffed out quickly enough. I didn’t let it stop me. I felt the revolver spasm in my hand, but I kept firing and firing and firing. It was therapeutic to feel like I had power over it. I only stopped when I saw them. They were nestled among the crowd.
My wife and daughter were there. They shouldn’t have been, but they were. I tried stopping the revolver, but the act had already been committed. I had set it in motion, and it was going to collect its dues. My hands burned as I clawed at the cylinder. It snapped back into place, taking my ring finger with it. A howitzer groaned as its wheels dragged the long barrel through the crowd. I screamed at them to run, to duck, to do anything, but they couldn’t hear me at the heart of the maelstrom. The howitzer passed over them groaning as it came to a stop. I prayed that the coughing machine had already exhausted its load. The revolver convulsed as two cracks filled the air. I watched as the roiling metal caught fire and erupted mere feet away from them. They were nothing.
I left after that. They never caught me, the Bohemian officials. How could they? There was no evidence I did anything wrong. There was a time I considered turning myself in, for not much more reason than to see an end to it all. Call me a coward, but I could never bring myself to do it. Whether it be out of fear, or a strange sense of obligation to keep the revolver safe. If the wrong person were to find it the consequences could be catastrophic, so for my country, I will be its keeper. I booked a train to Prague. Nothing is keeping me here anymore, and I fear that my duty is far from over. If you have anyone located in Prague be wary; I intend on killing as many of them as I can before they figure out how to stop me.
#entertainment
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Hey, everyone! I work at a small occult historical collective in Oregon, and we’re currently doing a requisition project of stories that could’ve been lost during the Second World War. Why anyone thought that a group of less than fifteen people at the opposite end of the world would be able to effectively log anything from what is at the exact opposite end of the world is lost on me. We managed to get our hands on a couple collections from some history archives overseas that didn’t care enough to log it themselves. They’ve been pretty normal so far, but this one I just found seems a little off. It might be a translation error as I know they’ve passed hands a couple times already, or just some bored French guy wanting to pull our leg, but it seems to mention countries that never existed. Putting this out there in hopes that someone can figure out why the names got so jumbled up. Thank you so much for the help!
\-Casper
Content warnings: War, suicide, loss of family members.
Letter goes as follow:
I offer this letter as a record of events. I hope that in departing this information I may somehow aid Boudreaux one last time. All I ask in return is that you understand my effort as a soldier simply trying to save his country. I have left this letter unsigned to protect the memory of myself, as well as my family.
I served in the Second Great War in the first infantry regiment of Bordeaux. I was deployed on the northeastern front. To give the horrors of my enlistment any true justice would require too much time; however, I will tell you how it ended. In the latter half of the war, The Bohemian Empire had pushed us through Reims, and the terrible possibility of losing Paris was becoming more plausible. The general had become desperate. His name was Hugo Ardennes. He was old, even for a general. His skin was pallid, and thin, as if being pulled taught against his salient skeleton. His face was gaunt, tired, and cold. Appearing as if his flesh were trying to retreat inside of him for warmth. Even in the regiment's worst states, he would never relinquish himself of his night blue parade uniform. He wore them like vestments, refusing even to remove his hat to show respect for the soldiers he allowed to die. As the war raged on we found ourselves footslogging deeper into our territory. The Bohemians never left us a moment of true respite. Their artillery fired from a distance. I don't think they were firing on us to kill, they hardly hit anyone, but what they did do was break the will of our tired regiment. Soldiers would first go quiet. Not long after they would shamble their way to the side of the road, stop, and sit down, as if waiting for someone to come pick them up. Trying to convince them to come along was impossible.
I probably would have found myself waiting along with them if it wasn’t for Alain. We had become close friends during the war. When I first met him I thought I was gazing into a mirror. His hair was brown like mine, his voice carrying the same cadence and nasally tone as mine did, and his face bearing the same angular features I inherited from my father. The question of paternity was out of the picture as my father died in the first great war, only months after my conception, and Alain was two years younger than I was. He had a family like mine, a daughter and wife waiting for him when he returned from the war. He said his daughter took an interest in the arts which he took with exasperated acceptance. “I never should’ve taken her to see that play in Paris”.
As the Bohemian forces carved through our territory, taking what little land we had left, the general decided to take a stand along the Marne River, just outside of the city limits. The position was impossible to defend. We were given no time to fortify. The mud collapsed in on itself as we struggled to dig through it to muster a defensible position. When Bohemian forces re-entered their effective range our troops had only managed to harrow the mud into a thin network of trenches. That's when the general began sending groups into no man's land. He would pace through the trenches in a feverish fervour, frantically ranting on how we would not let these barbarians take Paris, that we would stop them in their tracks, and all we had to do was make one last stand. He would rake his bony claws against the back of his pockmarked, scabbed neck, pulling out what thin grey hairs remained, as he began making his way through the trenches. He selected the soldiers at random. Some soldiers tried staying quiet; It didn’t save them. When some refused the general would shoot them himself. It went on like this for months. I watched as man after man was marched up the steppe like clockwork. None ever returned. It was only a matter of time before his finger would point towards me followed by the simple call of “You”. He said it, so swiftly and calmly, as if assigning teams in a game. I knew my time was coming, but I didn’t expect that finger to land on Alain next.
We were quiet as we waited. It's like we thought the general would forget us if we simply stayed quiet enough. Of course that would never work, and we were eventually ushered up across the step into no man's lands. As I breached the surface. The pale sun scorched down through the low-hanging fog revealing fields of corpses. Blue-skinned and as green as their uniforms. Their flesh oozed through their torn uniforms, heavy with their drink. It dragged them down as if being amalgamated into its unanimous, undivided mass. Some were more visible than others, their torsos still rising above the mud, others you could only see by their boots, or flecks of colour in their uniforms. We were barely on our feet when the birdlike whistle of mortar fire grew closer, and the mud around our feet was turned into a treacherous ocean of sludge. We ran, and hid; ran and hid; ran and hid; there were eleven of us now; ran and hid; nine; ran and hid seven; ran and hid; six; the whistling stopped as a shell had landed right in the middle of our troupe. I barely had time to react before my fellow soldiers were sent cascading into the air, falling apart from the force.
I awoke to a sharp stabbing pain in my left leg. The pink mist had settled. I was the only survivor. Alain was in the creator with me, or half of him was. There were men farther from the blast that were killed. Alain was farther from the shell than I was, but he was dead, and all I wasn’t. I didn’t move after the blast. Not that I could have, so I sat there for fourteen hours. Fourteen hours spent in that crater with Alain. I thought of the men in the mud, and whether I was going to become one. There were countless men lying on the surface, but as I lay there, I could feel the thousands more lying in wait, slumbering deep within the murk below. Unable to move from the weight above them; their crying voices now clogged in the dirt; their bleeding nails that once clawed through the mud now motionless; they were safe from the artillery which still boomed overhead. I watched the soil take Alain, dragging him deeper into its earthy sodden maw. Our parliament would surrender that morning. The men laid down their weapons and tore the flags from their jackets. Bohemian soldiers made their way into their newly acquired Paris, and Hugo Ardennes would take his life with the very same revolver he used on his men.
I would spend a brief period in a Bohemian military hospital. I survived the blood loss, but I lost my leg to the following infection. After a month I was sent back to my family in Montbard. My town was one of the regions offered to the Bohemians in trade for peace. The town was empty now, aside from a few who shambled through the streets as they were pulled through life with the guide of habit. I returned to my wife, daughter, and mother. I returned home. The shelling of the war had left most of the town levelled, yet there it stood. The resonating thunder of artillery has turned its pipes into an ever-seeping mass of lead. My leg had made finding a job challenging. We had to rely on my wife's inheritance.
I began work as a collector of sorts. I would collect shipments of guns and gear found in the now abandoned war zones. I’d try and fix them, then send them back to whatever buyer I could find. I dealt with a lot of veterans myself who found an odd comfort in the rifles which defended them during the war, however, my biggest customer was my new empire. It didn’t bring in much money, my daughter was entering school, and my mother's condition which left her wheelchair-bound was worsening.
It was a year into my new career when I found it. It was brought to me in a shipment from one of the contractors I commonly dealt with. The shipment was ordinary, containing rusted swords of dead officers, and mud-caked rifles fished from the rolling hills of the east, but amongst this shipment was a Modele 1892 Revolver. It was rusty and still bore the dry blood stains of its previous owner. The chamber only spun in one direction, forwards. At the end of the cylinder was a singular expelled round, that would not budge no matter how hard I pried. Despite its condition, it was apparent to me that this revolver was a beauty in its prime, and that it was a real tragedy it had fallen into such a sullen state. There was one trait of it that seemed to still be visible through the muck and rust, an engraving at the base of the handle. It read H.G. t that moment I knew who the revolver belonged to. I understand that countless men bear the same initials as my late general, but I can assure you that that revolver belonged to him and that it was the same one he used to take his life those two years ago. Upon this revelation, a deep terror resounded within my bones and spread inside me. I immediately threw the revolver in a case and put it in the back of my workshop. The rest of the night would go as normal, sorting through the remaining equipment and deeming which ones would be worth repairing, and what I would need to do so.
The next morning when I made my way down the stairs into my workshop I was overcome by a need to confirm what I saw the previous night. I approached the small box with caution. My shaky hands managed to open the box and reaffirmed my previous judgment. Not only that but the round still confined in its chamber had been reloaded. The rusty casing was not pried from its resting place. A new shining round wasn’t jammed through that crevice. It was the same bullet, but cleaned, and I of course could not see anything past the primer, but I knew it was loaded now. Primed and ready. Despite my years of service, the nature of a firearm, a weapon in its purest form, has never failed to frighten me. Spears have their use for fishing, axes are used for chopping, and even swords which hold the same purpose as firearms at least bear some resemblance to familiar knives, but firearms are different. Their only purpose is to destroy another creature with as much efficiency and range as possible. There's a feeling you get while holding a gun. A feeling that it is yours. You’ve elevated beyond the chains of your weakness. As I cradled the revolver in my palm I felt no such feeling. I understood that if some adversary were to arrest it from my hands that it would have no problem cocking back its hammer, swinging forwards, lighting the fuse, and dispatching the broiling iron proboscis that would shortly cleave through my skull, plunging my electric thoughts into the inky void of the afterlife. It was very matter-of-fact, my thoughts. I didn’t fear it especially, for it did not desire for me to be killed, nor did it desire the death of any others.
Still, in my pyjamas, I ventured out into the backyard. The cold morning dew soaked into my socks, the light cloth growing muddled. I pressed onwards, observing the royal navy sky shrouded with pockmarked clouds choking out the teal light of the morning. Once I had reached the epicenter of the court, I raised the revolver from my side, training its sights into the mud. I hoped that maybe, firing the round would dislodge it, and by doing so I could start with its rehabilitation. I looked down its sights, fixating on the small cup of mud where the bullet would land. I pulled the trigger in an amphitheater of hollow homes. The shot rang out. I inspected the chamber once more. I tried allowing gravity to pull the round down into the mud by my feet, and yet it did not budge. With no intention of burning my already shaking hands, I brought the revolver inside. I had only spent a couple fruitless hours of tinkering with the lodged round before I heard a wailing from upstairs.
I heaved myself off my chair and clambered up the stairs with great effort. When I reached the top I saw my wife, and what used to be my mother. My wife stared at me with pleading bloodshot eyes as if asking me what to do. As if there was anything I could do. No man, no matter how acquainted they are with death, can do anything in that situation. I told my wife to run to the coroner. I waited with my mother until he arrived. It was the coroner's verdict that she had been trying to reach for a safe she had been keeping up on a shelf. She had kept it safe for hard times. She tried reaching it with her cane, but as she stretched her arm thin, trying to pull it off the shelf from her chair, it came down on her with crushing force. It fell onto the intersections between her jaw and her temporal. It dislocated her jaw and fractured the base of her cervical bone. After the impact, she slid backwards in her chair before being stopped by the wooden support beam in the middle of the room. Staring up at an unnatural angle, her jaw opened wide in agony, she would watch as the leaking pipes above would drip down into her mouth until she drowned. The sound of the safe crashing must have been muffled to the rest of us by the gunshot. I stared at her, her skin a familiar pallid teal. The coroner carried her out, and with my leg, all I could do was watch. We would bury her the same day. We collected the money from the safe. Its door was still dented from the impact. It lasted us a couple weeks.
The following days were a blur. We couldn’t tell our daughter the reality of the situation, so we told her she had passed calmly in her sleep, and that she had been taken kindly into Lutharian’s embrace. I tried to maintain normalcy, but every now and then, I would hear a click, sometimes deep in the night, other times while eating dinner with my family. On the third day, I checked on the revolver once more. The round was back. I threw it in a rage. I tried dismantling it, smashing it, and melting it, but nothing worked. The more I seemed to fight against it the faster its unrelenting march towards travesty would become.
On the seventh day, I took it to the woods. It had reached the live rounds chamber, and I did not want to know if I would take my wife or my daughter first. I didn’t know if it would kill me or not, It didn't the first time. I considered that it might be based on age, or proximity, meaning that maybe this time it would choose me. I wondered what my family would do without me. I pushed the thought aside. It wouldn’t matter if this thing killed them first. I fired the revolver into the woods, and that day I managed to delude myself into thinking that I was able to stop it from killing anyone, or maybe that the entire thing was a coincidence. The next morning they found the remains of the Auguste boy. He had stepped on a landmine that had been left over from the war. Naturally, it was only an estimation, yet it seemed to have happened at the exact same time as the gunshot. I felt some guilt following the incident, but it was better him than my daughter.
After confirming my suspicions I entered a routine. Once every week or week and a half, once times march had round its way through each empty chamber, I would venture to some fringe of the city, and pull the trigger. One of my most frequented locations was Semur-en-Auxois. After the war, the city was deemed habitable enough by Bohemian civilizations. To them, the town served as a bastion of the might of their all-powerful empire, and they were there to revel in their spoils. For them, it was easy enough to ignore the crimson engravings in their floorboards and the festering shallow mounds outside the city. I would frequent the city when I could. I chartered myself a carriage to make commutes more convenient. I had connections in the city, but that wasn’t really why I was there. After my first few visits, I started to like it. There was something powerful in it. Sometimes I like to think that revolver was having some anomalous effect on my psyche, but I don't know if I entirely believe that.
My trips grew more frequent as the weeks turned into months. I started firing it multiple times a journey, smiling at whatever fate befell those invaders. When I was lucky it would choose a soldier, and I would claim their belongings. It became my new purpose. It satisfied me. For the first time since the war, that I felt that my actions had meaning. This weapon could be used for so much destruction. I had to become its keeper. This burden had to be mine to bear. At some point, I had become the only one spinning its chamber.
There was a day marking the one-year anniversary of winning the war. The Bohemians planned on holding a parade in Semur-en-Auxois to honour their victory. I intended to be there. I left my house in a rush. My wife tried to stop me. God I should’ve listened to her, but the time of the parade was nearing and I had to be ready when the parade would start. I didn’t tell her where I intended to go.
I arrived in the city, with nothing but myself, my wallet, and the suitcase carrying the revolver. I rented a room in a hotel overlooking the river promenade. Peering out the window I watched as the soldiers moved like ants, assembling their belching iron arms with mindless precision. I almost pulled the trigger right then and there, but I held back. When the time came I would collapse their hollow-hearted exhibit of heroism. All would see their true nature as benign cannon fodder. The sun circled the sky, bleaching the houses white and furrowing the brows of the audience which gathered along the sidewalks.
The parade had started. I pulled the revolver from my suitcase and spun the chamber before it locked into place with a decisive, metallic snap. I watched as a young man lifted his rifle to the sky, ready to fire the blank which would bring the faceless men to march. I pulled the trigger with him. I saw the bayoneted rifle come loose from his hands as he fired. He stumbled forward to catch the runaway rifle. It wasn't long before he reacquired it by driving the bayonet through his throat.
Before the Bohemians could react I spun the chamber and fired again. The crowd began to panic. I saw a man get expunged by the mass and thrown into the street. The machinery continued its inexorable march as the man's screams were silenced by rolling treads. I spun and fired, and spun and fired until the iron burned in my hands, and the chamber screeched against its hinges. I watched as one of their howitzers went off, cleaving through the hoard. The screams were inaudible over the firing of artillery. I can only assume they were snuffed out quickly enough. I didn’t let it stop me. I felt the revolver spasm in my hand, but I kept firing and firing and firing. It was therapeutic to feel like I had power over it. I only stopped when I saw them. They were nestled among the crowd.
My wife and daughter were there. They shouldn’t have been, but they were. I tried stopping the revolver, but the act had already been committed. I had set it in motion, and it was going to collect its dues. My hands burned as I clawed at the cylinder. It snapped back into place, taking my ring finger with it. A howitzer groaned as its wheels dragged the long barrel through the crowd. I screamed at them to run, to duck, to do anything, but they couldn’t hear me at the heart of the maelstrom. The howitzer passed over them groaning as it came to a stop. I prayed that the coughing machine had already exhausted its load. The revolver convulsed as two cracks filled the air. I watched as the roiling metal caught fire and erupted mere feet away from them. They were nothing.
I left after that. They never caught me, the Bohemian officials. How could they? There was no evidence I did anything wrong. There was a time I considered turning myself in, for not much more reason than to see an end to it all. Call me a coward, but I could never bring myself to do it. Whether it be out of fear, or a strange sense of obligation to keep the revolver safe. If the wrong person were to find it the consequences could be catastrophic, so for my country, I will be its keeper. I booked a train to Prague. Nothing is keeping me here anymore, and I fear that my duty is far from over. If you have anyone located in Prague be wary; I intend on killing as many of them as I can before they figure out how to stop me.
#entertainment
source
| 9,000 mlx | |
| 7 | |
| 2 |