Professor Amarinth,
It may be customary to open a letter with the word “Dear”. You are not dear to me.
You will likely never receive this letter, confined as I have you in the sinkdark. There is no light for you there, Amarinth. No postal service but the chitinous bugs. No release until I choose it.
You underestimated me, Amarinth. “You’re an idiot!” That’s what you told me, so many times, and before you and your cohorts had me expelled. For what? For allegedly infecting the whole upper school with spellplague? THEY CHOSE TO BE INFECTED. By attempting to protect themselves they merely exposed themselves as being fearful. Even as I felt the first flashes of sickness I ran wild amongst them laughing. Yes, I urinated in the water supply. Yes, I licked every fork in the lunch hall. But it was not me that gave them spellplague, it was their slavish adherence to the doctrine of casting “sanctuary” on themselves as they started the day. The sanctuary spell has existed for hundreds of years, if not thousands. But it is designed to infect, not to protect. To track and to infect. I understand things better than people who have studied and passed down knowledge over generations because my knowledge is FRESH. Had my fellow students not cast sanctuary, they would probably have been immune. Or something. Sure I refused to cast sanctuary on myself and I was infected but that was just … that was just just bad luck. Or somebody infected me ON PURPOSE because I knew things. Yes! Ha!
You will never understand. Even though everybody always called me an idiot, I knew then that I was cleverer than everybody. That is partly why I trapped you in the sinkdark. And it is 100% how I trapped you. Ha! Ah ha ha! Because I am cleverer than you! Ah ha ha hahaaa.
But I digress.
Once again I have a plague. Not the spellplague. A more pedestrian plague. Almost a nothingplague, but one which has caused ideological conflict and economy damage much greater than anything I could’ve done to upper school with what you told me was my “cavalier and narcissistic belief in [my] own constructed worldview”.
I am alone with just a weather loach, a clown loach, and a horde of uninteresting loaches and tetras for company. Outside, in the park I so loved with my sister Minty, I hear fireworks being set off – maybe even illuminating the spot where we did the deed – and before Minty stopped me. I might have been a God. Maybe she was right? Even as I write I hear the sirens of the law enforcement on the street below. Not for me this time.
Maybe even dimly, through the haze between dimensions, I hear your screams as well professor – your pleas, like the last time I saw you: “Free me! You’re clever! You’re really really clever!” I know you’re lying. Well no, you’re not lying, because I AM clever and it wasn’t just blind luck me trapping you because you underestimated me. Nevertheless I know you’re only SAYING I’m clever now because you want to be freed. Because I’m not cle… Well no I am. I AM clever. But… Oh shut up. This is too confusing even for a man of my intellect.
I’m writing to you, you fool, because here now with the fish I’m considering once more attempting the rite of Carth-Natrax. You first made me aware of it in your lecture “Carth-Natrax and the end of the world: a treatise against hubris.” Then there is your books “Why nobody should ever attempt the rite of Carth-Natrax,” and “Murphy Stigpole and six other notable deaths on the road to Carth-Natrax,” both of which I read. I didn’t literally actually read them but there was a guy who I agree with who summarised them for me. He’s a qualified professor as well as you, and he has the certificate to prove it. Plus he’s 40 years younger than you from privilege and good looking so he probably knows more than you and if he doesn’t he’s nicer to look at and he has nice things and can buy reach. His summary of your books, written as you say in your introduction “over many sad decades of work, poverty, loneliness and thought” – his summary made me think you were wrong. Maybe you’d have been better off having money and being good at volleyball. He was very good in bed.
Problem is, Amarinth, that the plastic snotdoctor is making me stay at home now. Add to that the issue that I have no mandrake root for the precursor, unless my sister sends me some. And of course there’s the issue of you being in the sinkdark which is partly why I’m thinking of you now. You don’t come into my thoughts very often.
To even begin the initial preparation I must plant the mandrake slivers in the sinkdark, as suggested in Stigpole’s treatise: “Muci et Radices in Tenebris”
There is every chance though that you will uproot it were you still to be there. Perhaps I should wipe your memory and release you? But then you will quickly start to call me stupid again. And I am not stupid. I am clever.
I will work the rite of Carth-Natrax. My fingers have the power. I will transcend time and become a God despite you and despite my beloved sister. Oh God the thought of her again and perhaps I must change my course.
Oh how I wish I could be with my sister for new year, or with Lou, confined by the sea in Brighton. But here I am with the loaches. With their tentacled mouths so reminiscent of the face of the elder one so long buried.
No more. Farewell professor. I must try to have a happy new year despite the plague and the insane thoughts that fill me every waking hour. I hope I have the strength not to open they portal in my head and sink once more to where you lie. I hope that everybody has a happy new year. Despite the plague and the opinions and the clevernesses. Happy New Year, professor. And also to the chitinous bugs, your company and your food. Hopefully I will not see you shortly.
Al
AlBarclay 