Monday
29 November 1999
It's 2:30 a.m.- another 4 hrs. of darkness to accomplish my end. All of that frenzy that shredded by mind and soul has gone - or I pray so - for if this is only another interlude, I shall not return from the next foray into that Hell.
Now, I'm left cold and vacant and with such an exhaustion, the likes of which not even I have felt before, but my mind is clear and again my own. I try to convince myself that it was the effects of the fish and fevered infection from my neck - but the burn ---- Is it my mark of the Beast? ---- My brand as Precept Sow????
My body and soul carry frightening echos of that horror. I ache all over, as though beaten, and I'm clumsy - my feet & hands are not my own. I'm amazed that I am able to hold this pen, let alone write. I feel abused, defiled - raped, mutilated, sodomized. Though they are not, my breasts still feel heavy and full - they pain. I can scarcely bear the touch of my jeans - though whole, I am bruised, bloodied, and swollen. Walking is difficult. I move like a centenarian. I try to convince myself that I was in a street fight that I cannot recall, but I fear not. Did I do this to myself? In my madness did I attempt to follow Origen's example - self-castration in pursuit of purity, of sanity - or did the Beast act through me? Do I feel the seed within me? I feel something mutated, but I cannot say what. Hate? Panic? Rage? Despair? Desolation?
I was given 2 choices - eternity as a 'kettingzeug' - a grotesque, chained sow - an abomination - in the throes of an unremitting, endless cycle of brutalization, rape, pregnancy, birth, & suckling of monster after monster - or surrender and the reward of taking into myself the Anti-Christ - of becoming the Anti-Christ myself. If the seed is there now, growing - are these physical sensations the beginnings of my transformation into Madam Monstrosity? Is this why I could not enter the mission? Did the black seed implanted within me prevent me, or was my black soul repulsed by the presence of the Holy Light? Was that phantom Winston really my father? Once upon a time, Christina warned, "Like the father, comes the son, Derek Rayne, the 'Anointed One'." Were we all wrong? The "Anointed One" not as Michael's champion, but Satan's bastard? Lucifer's seed placed within the Legacy's womb to devour it from within. Were the successes only intended to disguise the plan for ultimate defeat, or were they sly traps? My mind cannot grasp it.
Was I penetrated by that obscenity in the portal chamber when I attempted to carry out our plan? I have the memory of being pinned on my back with that monster's hand at my throat. "Join me!" it cried. Father and son, two sides of the same coin. I remember the feel of sand in my hand as I grappled and searched for something, but I cannot recall what it was for which I searched. After that nothing save agony. Oh, God! Then what happened?
Was it all a farce - all those years of collecting the sepulchres, of hoping and betting that they could counter the portal? Was the whole charade - the whole pretense of jumping through Darkside hoops - was it all pointless? All of it - Satan's diversions? Not just the "Golgotha" text, but the sepulchres too - all to keep us chasing our tails, when it was me all along. Was I a marionette dancing to Lucifer's invisible strings? Was my soul black? No, I think not - not wholly. In my heart, I know I acted with honour and fought the best fight I knew how to fight. I know that just as there has always been a darkness within me, so there was Light, and it was a potent Light - once upon a time white fire blazed within me. How could a being demon-spawned - whether me or what I might carry within me - survive that?
All those tragedies that followed me - Alicia, Laura, Megan, William, Frank, even Father. What were they? Was I the source of their destruction, or were they mere distractions? Torments to break my spirit and fertilize the black seed that lay buried in my soul? If that great Corruptor still seeks to break me, it means that I still have a choice. Or is this part of his game? Or is it all my own insanity?
No matter - the only choice left is the one planned all along. I recall that as I prepared in those weeks following Kristin's defeat of Fr. Elias, there was first a depression that soon my time in this world would be at an end, and there was an exhaustion that set in as I went about my ever-observed charade - a tiredness of the body and a heaviness of the soul. Yet as the event approached, an elation grew - that soon there would be an end. I felt joy in playing the ultimate game and in the preparations. I was an emotional pendulum - exhausted and depressed one moment - filled with sublime anticipation of victoorious oblivion the next - absolute certainty in my belief that I could defeat the Darkside & no small amount of vanity in my own courage, control, and cleverness - pure hubris. But in my favour, there was the counterweight of my terror that I would weaken and fail - my vision of the consequences.
How I longed for the nothingness - my body and soul craved it - no more battles - not with overcharging plumbers, nor obnoxious Legacy flunkies, nor creatures of the night - just the eternal peace of oblivion.
In my mad fever, I made my way here to the park across from Rachel's house - a homing instinct - the closest port in a storm. I must be careful. The press is here even in these wee hours, and a cop or two, as well. But what am I to them, save a mangy vagrant? I have the sense of being watched, but I cannot find the source. Perhaps, it is Satan's filthy, whispering minions - his little, black goblins that infested the House. Perhaps, with my "Sight" gone, I've lost the ability to see & hear them.
I think I had hoped that if I could get close enough to those closest to me, then, perhaps, as a dog's nose twitches at the scent of the familiar, so my "Sight," my real "Sight," if anything was left at all, might flutter in recognition - something other than the horror of the past hours - that it might discern the truth. Nothing. Not a twinge.
As I sit here beneath a dim, old-fashioned street lamp, enmeshed in these rambling thoughts, "If only" echoes through my mind. They will all receive my letters tomorrow - if only I had been able to voice all those sentiments face to face. Did I even try in those last hours? I suspect not. I feared my own humanity. I feared that affection would weaken me, that love would temper the righteous anger necessary for battle. I feared that emotions would affect logic & resolution, that it would sap my strength. I feared their affections for me - like Typhoid Mary, death and tragedy followed me. I wanted loyalty from my team, but I feared more. I castigate myself - and yet, I had ample reason for such fear. Dr. Goddard tried to help me work through my doubts and torments in the aftermath of William's loss. He desperately tried to help me break down my walls, to open my heart. I had to couch all in fanciful fabrications - make up a cock-n-bull story about business deals gone sour and grief over the loss of a friend, who had died in an accident that had been my fault. Look where it got poor Goddard - dead - just like all the others. Perhaps, I did choose the correct path - look, but never touch, or be touched - but "what if"??????
"To be or not to be" - Hamlet's question - poor Hamlet, always hesitant, always afraid to act. When I first put on my father's ring as precept, I vowed that I would always make the best choice I knew how, act with audacity upon that decision, and, though I might look back with regret, I would never utter a "what if". Not that tragic Dane would I be, but a Shylock, who would connive and fight to have his pound of flesh even from the Devil himself.
There is no such thing as "what if" - only "so be it" and get on with it... play the hand out to the end, whatever the end may be.
I saw David Royce leave about midnight. Rachel gave him a quick kiss at the door as he left. I've seen Alex's shadow at the upper window. I'd know her silhouette anywhere. Is Nick there, I wonder. Did I give him my ring as I planned? Did I have time? I want so much to walk across the street, knock, and be gathered into the warmth and light of friendship. Rachel's house always smells of cinnamon and roses.
No. I cannot. If my fever-born terrors have even the minutest chance of being the truth - and deep within my soul, I fear that the fever was my mind's way of revealing the truth to me - then the original plan must be carried through to completion. I must not fail this time. I must rid the world of Madam Monstrosity and her portal from Hell.
4 hours of darkness. If I leave now and hobble as best I may, I can be at the bridge in 90 min. 3:30 is a quiet time on the Golden Gate. The fog will lay low and thick. I'll imagine that I can see the beacon on Angel Island. I'll weight my pockets and act quickly. I can do no less. True or not, the risk is too great. I cannot endanger the world by permitting my presence in it. It won't be the end planned for Derek Rayne, but it will be my end - my oblivion - whatever I am or have become. Ironic that it will come on the day the death certificate will be issued - appropriate somehow. The water will be dark and cold and desolate - and oh, so welcome.
Rachel just turned out the last of her lights. Good-bye, my friends. I wish you life
and love, freedom from fear, and all the happiness I never knew. Pray for me, sweet
Ingrid. Glorious Prince St. Michael help me, forgive me, protect me as I do this thing, intercede
for me, have mercy & receive into the Light the soul of one who tried very hard to do thy work. Pax et benedictiones Dei omnibus vobiscum, amici mei, nunc et semper. Amen.
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