A terrible tale

It all began on the fateful day when a strange envelope arrived at my dwelling-place. Little did I contemplate, in my innocence, what dread consequences would follow on its arrival.


With grave trepidation, I sought the companionship of others who, like me, were fascinated by the unholy lure of occult terrors from beyond the land of Hollywood. And one dark night, while ensconced in an eyrie far above the dank streets of a city I shall not name, far above the muttering antlike hordes who parade in oft-recurring procession to worship the nine-bodied Cyanocitta cristata at a strange, glowing ovoid temple surmounted by a viciously-pointed tower that seems to strive to pierce the very heavens themselves, I commended myself to all that was holy and Fiendish... and opened the envelope.


What madness sprang forth! What silent scuttering images flickered across my eyeballs, in mute but fearsome testimony to the power of the ancient legends that were thus revealed!

I cannot relate here the full horror that was revealed. Should I do so, it is certain that vile ai-Shunzuuv Koppei rites would hound me to my very grave... and beyond! It was both new and old, newly created but bearing the scratches and debris of ages; silent but with a persistent throbbing sound that filled the very soul with dread.

And yet I was compelled to look upon it again, and again, and again. Erstwhile friends, seeing my strangely elated condition, insisted on examining the strange artifact which exerted such an effect on me. Only too soon, they began to exhibit the same bizarre effects. Within days, a perverse kind of missionary fervor had possessed one of them to translate the accursed thing into LOJBAN.

I cannot forget it, even if I wished to do so. Ai! The period costumes, in horribly clashing colors which somehow blended harmoniously into shades of monochrome... The eyeshadow! The makeup!... The storyboards! The oceans of billowing cloth! The buildings that are there, and not there! The ship smaller than a hand, which yet bears a crew of stout men to utter destruction! Ia! The non-euclidean geometry of cardboard towers from whence issue stop-motion models!.... Even now, I see it rising before me! Ia! Ia!....

Editor's note: This message was found inexplicably abandoned as roadkill on the median strip of the Information Superhighway. It is presented in unedited form, including the rather abrupt ending. The author seems to have abandoned it in mid stream, or been interrupted by some force beyond his control.