The Anti Tarot: 22 paths of the Qlippoth

[jack_babalon]

~Painting
Francis Bacon,1946

When Adam is'nt shivering with cold, he's sweating & restless. It's hard to remember things right now. He has to pluck each thought out of a deep pool of mud. What he pulls up isn't quite what he was looking for. There's a horrible whining noise, grating at the edge of his attention. Best to play it safe. Best to stay on the couch. Whose couch? Shhh... no, it's not worth the bother of remembering. A party? Dave bought him here, (maybe) and April had told him to try something, it had a funny little name; Katye, Kate or Kaye. Special Name. He took a small little bump and....
...Nope. Lost it. The memory has slipped from his fingers and plummeted back into the primordial soup of his brain. 'For chrissakes' A complaint bubbles it way though, 'If only someone would do something about that fucking horrible noise'. Something bad growls in Adam's stomach. For a second he panics! He thinks he's shit himself. Now he's aware of all the people in the room. The sweats shift to shivers. The noise is going on and on in his head. He's gotta do something about this. There most be a way. He closes his eyes and summons a supreme point of will power, which he channels to accomplish the monstrous task of actually turning his head slightly to the left. There's a huge gray blur sitting next to him, he winces and for a second, he can make out an outline someone is sitting perpetually at the edge of his vision. His hearing pops back in and the noise squeals and whines its way down into something resembling a human voice speaking through an cardboard tube:'...the Hebrews called it the 'Qlippoth'. The 'Shells'. The realm of meat & bone devoid of spirit. This is where the demonic forces lurk,
and we're not talking about some abstract philosophical concept of 'evil'. No it's the whole shebang. Anthropomorphic monsters with the heads of animalzzzh
zzzhhh...zzzzshhhzzzzshhh'
The voice is being tuned out and changed. The speaker is'nt even aware that his word signal is being jammed. A wave of nausea washes over Adam. To say his head was spinning would imply a vast improvement over the swirling mix of colors now collapsing around the collapsing point, the catasophere point settling it's center on the island of the couch. He tries to slow things down, he tries to blink & rub some coherence into what he's seeing. He's moving underwater. Everything second that passes has the distant quality of a dream to it. He catches a quick glimpse of reality, everybodys there. College pagans & computer nerds, a natural, if not unlikely alliance he's seen in every city up and down the East .. ghost is talking to him again: 'zzzzzzchchzz skeleton is the archetypal shell. By itself it is a dead thing, but infuse it with a spark of life and it becomes a numinous and instantly recognisable manifestation of metaphysical evilllzzz...'
Adam is hearing these words for the second time, but the first time hasn't happened yet. Was this an article he read somewhere? Wasn't Dave trying to tell him about this on the way ... he stops and feels the roar of a head rush suddenly drown him out. He's sinking deeper and deeper into the secret waters that surrond the world. He's going down fast and everythings getting darker. He can hear that insect radio of that guy talking. He swims towards it.
'zzzsshhhell is one of the most common horror themes; take a mask, or a doll, or any dead representation of a living thing, shine a light out of its eyes, and becomes a thing of evil intent. The powers of evil appear in the shape of the animate dead - skulls, bones, zombies,vampires, phantasmsssszzzhhhhh'.
Adam reemerges out of the psychic flood. Gasping for air. He finds a reserve of energy and knows where to spend it.
'Loo' mahn, I duhn understan' a werd yer sayin' K?'
'You Understand me very well Ahhhdam.'
He looks again. The guy on the couch is still talking but no words are coming out of his mouth. 'Your in a specsshh ial place now. You can hear me nine years into your fut-shhh-ure'. Adam is looking at the mouth move out of synch with the words coming out. A bad movie translation. Another wave of nausea is coming up. Adam tries to get up, sways, shivers shift to sweat. He falls back into his seat, his ship sunk in port.
'Lissshhhen - the Qlippoth haszzz its map aszzz well. 22 paths. An Anti-Tarot made out of the carrion corpsssse of God. 22 paths to damnation. 22 shadow letters to unmake creation. 22 cards and here's yours...' There's a book in Adams lap, that wasn't there a second ago. An art book. Gloosy pages that have that wonderful smell of prints and freshly binded paper. He looks down, a horrible gray face is shadowed in an umbrella, revealing only a dismal mouth scarred with some unnamed veneral disease. Behind it some kind of animal carcass, crucified. The color of spoiled meat. The colors seem to have the softness of rot on them. Adam can't move. It's like a big insect crawled on him and he can't move until someone swats it for him. The Painting is growing closer and closer, eclipsing the horizon of Adam's world, until he is completely reduced before it. A speck of man on the canvas of the open sky. He looks up at the frozen monster. It's syphlitic grin carved for miles like a mountain range, unmoving, until finally, the gray lips of the mouth start grinding and the air rumbles with it's voice: 'This is the path of "The Hermit" in the land of Sshhhells Adam'. Then, the sound of a thousand pipes of steam burst at once all around him, the earth rumbles under Adam's feet, and then the face begins to emerge from out under the shadow of the umbrella.
Adam leaps up screaming. Throwing the book as far away from as he can. A trajectory that manages to hit April square in the head, from there ricochetting into a crowded table, sending drinks & paraphelnia everywhere. The music stops. The world refocuses. He spins around, but there's no one on the couch with him. Adam extends a nervous hand to feel the air around where the man was, a desperate attempt at gaining a tactile evidence. There's a commotion. Cursing. Someones screaming in Adams left ear and he can see David and three other extremely pissed off looking skins exiting the bathroom prematurely. Sniffing and grunting their way towards him. Adam decides to sit back down on the couch and enjoy the last few seconds before the arrival of the long crash.


The Qlippoth- the tree of life reversed

Comments

one of the few drugs i haven't done.

[quickly-9.livejournal.com]

you got me hooked. more adam please!!

!

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

Glad you liked it.

Sadly Adam is a most stubborn & willful character. That being said, he shows up in this journal whenever he wants, often unannounced. It's usually because he needs a place to crash and a fridge to raid.
I've also heard recent complaints from other authors that he walks in, quite uninvited, on other narratives. Bumming smokes and making moves on fictional femme fatales or the sexy fiction suits of lonely housewifes.

[vomikronnoxis.livejournal.com]

Awesome...

Also, sorry you didn't make the board gaming last night--you missed getting to watch a cockroach trick Mr. Clark & Mr. Wallace into destroying each other.

~rl

Re: The game

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

I've had problems with groups, crowds & gatherings over the last year. Not sure why, bad imprints and all that i'm sure. I can barely do the regularly scheduled game as is. Plus Marilyn fills me with blushes & nervous laughter.

But the real reason i'm replying what did a cockroach have to do with mssr.Clark & Wallace destroying each other.

Re: The game

[vomikronnoxis.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, Maid Marilyn is rich with such powers over folks. And crowds and gathers, I understand.

Ah, but yes... a roach ran across the floor and found its way into the center of the floor where our playing board was.

Mr. Clark reached forth to capture the bug with his hand--just as Mr. Wallace stomped forth to squish the bug under his boot.

It was an excellent, unintended slapstick moment. :)

~rl