Minty! My sister!
I am leaking.
Is this some sort of curse?
Vile noxious goo excretes from every orifice. As I write I weep. Great fat round meaningless tears. Sickness? Regret?
I regret nothing!
I received your little package, Minty. And you sent me the mandrake. You sent it! I am so sorry to be a disappointment to you, but I lied. It is for the ritual. It is already planted deep in the mucus of the sinkdark, ready to be harvested tomorrow at dawn for the precursor. This time you will not stop me.
As I write I am sitting in a tepid bath, Minty. Since I am made of liquid I thought I should be in my element, and I have been here for hours now. Five minutes hence I left for a moment, unceremoniously hacked off the beard I have nurtured for months, and returned. No more do I feel as if I have a damp sponge clinging onto my mouth. I look young again, Minty. And tomorrow perhaps I will be young again! Or old. Or all things, for tomorrow time will no longer exist to me and I will fly with the angels.
I crept into the sinkdark this time – I did not seek detection. I chose today because my body is almost entirely mucoid anyway. Even the chitinous bugs didn’t detect me. Certainly the professor did not detect me, although I could hear her talking with the bugs. She’s planning something. The bugs were talking back. They have reached some sort of an alliance I fear, but all of this will be nothing once I have ascended to Godhood. I planted your mandrake in a distant polyp, precisely as detailed by Stigpole in “Muci et Radices in Tenebris” – just a single drop of blood and the incantation thrice. Tomorrow should yield the screaming head. So long as it escapes the notice of my old professor and her growing bug army, tomorrow at midnight I will prove once and for all that the rite of Carth-Natrax can be successfully performed without destroying the world. I will ascend.
For now though, I must sustain this weak leaking body. Sausages and beans, and I’ve even put some in the fridge for tomorrow. Just in case, you know?
This plague has not left me yet. I long to see the sun again, but I fear in my current state I will dissolve should I be exposed to its rays. Instead I plan to tidy up tomorrow. It wouldn’t do for a deity to live in a flat with pants all over the floor. I will begin to wash my raiments, clean my surfaces, pass moving air through my space and make this garret an appropriate space for a ritual that has almost brought about the end of the world six times, and has exploded six of the greatest thinkers. None of them understood the importance of the mandrake precursor. With it in place, I surely cannot explode. Stigpole was almost correct – it was his bad math that ended him. He paved the way.
Thank you for the mandrake my dear sister. Once I am a God you shall win the lottery.
Now I must continue to experience this deliquescence that nature has chosen to bestow upon me. I have been earth, I am now liquid, tomorrow I will be fire. Then air.
Goodnight dear sister.
Have no regrets,
Al
AlBarclay 