Post by Sicko on Apr 21, 2018 5:26:09 GMT -5
Dear diary, day 22, Sept 11,
I hate it here so, so fking much.
The groups are bland, puerile bullshit. I've been in and out of care for so long that I can recite every step of group, chapter and verse front to back. These people are weak. Already weak going into this, they fill them with narcotics and dope them to the gills until they can't even keep their thoughts coherent. Thus inhibited, these sheep are dressed in uniforms and paraded from room to room, shoved in front of supposedly educated healers who know how to clean out poisons eating into the human psyche. What they are doing is filling these drugged, docile cows into accepting the world as orderly and their intentions as helpful. I know how group works I mean mommy Bev sent me to "a little sleepaway camp" when I was nine. They have never given me the help I need. Not once in group have I ever felt orderly, or my strengths bolstered. It used to give me a thrill just playing along, "yes doctor no doctor" and pretending at least to buy into their drivel but now I can't even keep the mask of cooperative coquettishness in place. It burns in me to just speak out when I can, to rage against the stupidity.
Video tape, date stamp 11 of September, 2011, time stamp 15:17-15:35, tape # 01
(It is only three people in this group, plus the therapist. An elderly, slightly portly black man wearing a scholarly sportcoat and slacks, he sits at the top of the circle, looking on at his charges.)
(There's a skinny, teenaged boy in a skull cap and pants half to his ass that we know from the tapes before, itching at track marks on his arms and twitching his eyes around the room. There's a shrinking little man, goose egg bald with eyes wide as saucers, shivering.)
(And there's a waif of a girl, dressed in uniform yet modified to be provocative, with her bare legs cocked up on an empty chair. The legs are marred by ragged self harm scars that go the length of her exposed skin. She's calmly reading from a book, not paying attention to the group.)
Dr. Toney: Mariah, I asked you if you would contribute to the discussion. When you self harmed the first time, how did it make you feel?
When I self-harmed at first I was a twelve year old kid. It was a stupid impulse and I honestly found out about it through Tumblr. There are a million blogs that cater to depressed teens, as sad as it is to say, with images that promote mental illness as an attractive, beautiful, poetic black and white aesthetic, that advertise pain. It's done in just a way to make it feel cool. But that's just as much a lie as the doctor's poking is. The truth I won't let him in on? I was a confused kid. I realize that there are elements of my past that make others shake their heads, "Poor girl", the junkie mom dying and leaving her baby behind, the foster families, the foster dads that liked to touch six year old girls in their bathing suit areas, blah blah blah, lots of kids have pain in their pasts at that age. It wasn't the act of a twelve year old finding an edgy interest on the internet and participating that felt revelatory. It was when the scissor blade cut into my arm the first time and it traced a line of icefire across me. That was when I realized how sweet the kiss of pain is. But I'm not telling Doctor Ronald Toney that.
Mariah: It felt like when you fuck your mother.
(A giggle and chitter like hyenas comes from the boy in the stocking cap. The girl continues disinterestedly leafing through the pages of the library book.)
Dr. Toney: if you're not going to share with the group, then Ruggerio is going to escort you into the cool down room.
(The small group is being watched by a hulk of a man in a correctional officers uniform shirt, his hands folded over his broad chest. The girl looks up, the camera catching her beaming broadly and defiantly. A sheaf of hair hangs over her eye, dark raven locks.)
Mariah: I'm sorry, Doctor Toney... I meant to say, it felt like when you fuck your son.
(Another chitter from the twitchy, giggling druggie.)
(The giant orderly guard steps forward, ripping the book from the girl's hands.)
Ruggerio: That's it, resident, I'm dragging you down and giving you a shot. Nurse, the book.
Mariah: Get off of me!!
Dr. Toney: *Sighs* ...We'll try group again after dinner and recreational activities. Everyone to their rooms please.
(As Mariah is being hauled roughly by the stone faced, unsympathetic guard, her hair flies back from her face, leaving the eye underneath and the horrible, blistered burn scar exposed, as her mouth grits and contorts in rage.)
(Video log ends, time stamp 15:36:13)
That was kid stuff, though. Child playing. It was a sweet kiss, but it was like having one morsel of chocolate. One sweet taste on the tip of your tongue, that dissipated before you could ever have more. They don't know what I've given for even an ounce more of that feeling. To be honest... I'm not even sure I do. And that excites me.
Video tape, date stamp 12 of September, time stamp 23:47-00:01, tape # 2
(It's an overhead corner camera shot of a resident's room, put in there to monitor behavior. The resident of the room is standing at attention just in the far bottom corner of the shot, talking to someone through the door.)
Mariah: You brought the books?
Video tape, (alternate camera angle) date stamp 12 of September, time stamp 23:47-00:01 tape # 2
(Camera shot from above, and slightly farther away down the hall. Outside of the door of the same residential room, a young, athletic, well built young man, attractive, with tousled hair, wearing the same type of uniform denoting him as a guard, leaning in to a door, having pulled back the opening slot, and passing something through.)
Joey: Yeah, but Mariah, this is really dark stuff, I mean... the store I had to get it from...
Mariah: It's harmless Wiccan stuff. Just energies and auras and karma.
(From the outside camera angle, Joey Yezierski looks unsure. He also looks very nervously up and down the hallway, aware the camera is on him, but not wanting to be seen talking to a resident like this after lights out, it would be considered inappropriate.)
Joey: No, listen, Mariah... this stuff... is not Wicca. I looked through the pages. It talks about really dark stuff in there. Rituals that need blood in them, cutting animals, cutting - skin... like.
(Inside the resident room, Mariah brings Joey's hand in, letting it play over her chin, forcing his fingers to caress her jaw and the nape of her neck and let his hand go soft under hers. She kisses his thumb, shushing him.)
Mariah: Baby, listen to me, it won't hurt anybody. I promise. Look, if I have to, I'll tell Doctor Toney that it's religious practices, he can't keep me from practicing my religion...
(From the outside camera angle, Joey jerks back as if bitten by a snake, slapping his hand to his temple.)
Joey: Jesus, Doctor Toney! If he saw you had a book like this on the ward, it would - It would be contraband, and you'd be in trouble - ...And then I'D be in trouble, because they'd check the tapes to see who brought it to you...
(Inside the resident room, Mariah pulls Joey's hand back, letting it touch her. She lets him touch the scarred side of her face. She kisses his fingers. She sucks on the ends of them. He moans, and it's clear to see that he's losing his will to resist.)
Joey (very weakly, from outside the door): Mariah, no...
Mariah: You are so sweet, Joey. Thank you for being so sweet to me always.
Joey (his voice barely a squeak): ...Mariah!...
Sex isn't even in the same diagram of sensation as the feeling of cutting deep is. As the feeling of burning is. It isn't even in the neighborhood. I know how to fake it, though. If I didn't learn to fake when I liked it, my third foster father would never leave my bedroom, he would creep in there and play with me until he felt me do what he wanted. So I had to learn to make it seem real, to give the illusion of sensation and pleasure. But for sensation, no, sex isn't even close to the same feeling. But it's useful to get what I wanted.
Video tape, date stamp 13 of September, time stamp 00:08:57 and running, tape # 2
(Camera shot from above, and slightly farther away down the hall. A weak, confused, disheveled Joey exits the room, putting his uniform shirt back on, covering a very visible gash on his chest. He cranes his head back to look at the room, muttering a prayer to himself. The look on his face is of someone horrified, not knowing what he's done. He stumbles away, unable to keep a straight line.)
(Video log ends, time stamp 00:09:41.)
Dear diary:
Joey really did get me the things I wanted. Sweet boy. I think he knows just how badly I've got him in a vice and he can't help it. He always came around, so supplicant, so helpful to the lone little girl on this ward of crazies. A kind boy. Not something I've met much of in my experience. But he isn't what I need, or frankly what I want. All I wanted from him was these books I've heard about. His shelf life is limited anyway, fragile and heart sick thing that he is he's probably a little conflicted about knocking boots with a crazy girl, feeling sick at taking advantage of someone who legally can't make her own decisions from his place of power. Power. If he hadn't gone along with what I wanted I could have had him in deep review with rape allegations. Power. It's the only sensation that beats like a song within my heart. The only thing I've craved since I was old enough to know I didn't have any of it, no power, no control, no agency over myself, just a frail little doll to be pushed around, moved to house, dressed and fussed with. No power, no agency. For too long. Maybe that was why it was such a song within me, a triumphant, joyful chorus to find things that gave me the gift of feeling myself. With my body in my hands, I could bring a flame to a piece of skin and darken it, feeling the rush of searing, grimacing pain. With an instrument in my hands, I could turn that pain on others. Like I did when I poured the scalding pot of water on my baby brother at foster family number five's house. I had power then. And I used it on baby. Power. It's all I've ever wanted, was more. And now, with the books Joey got for me, I have the answers in my grasp...
Video tape, date stamp 13th of September, time stamp 11:07-11:19 am, video #3
(The camera is in an overhead position pointing down at a conference room, or perhaps a classroom, since it has a whiteboard with eraser set up. Otherwise it's just a typical meeting room and the people sitting on one side of the table are a very serious looking group. They're typically whitehaired, older men, all wearing thick rimmed glasses. One has a lab coat. There's another man, off to the side, wearing a rumpled suit and a briefcase. This is a team of lead psychiatrists and doctors, with their lawyer and with Doctor Toney, the head counselor on Hall C. On the other side, alone, is orderly Joey Yezierski, looking cowed, afraid, and very lost.)
Dr. Toney: Joey, this is a very serious mark on your record. You are a good kid, Joey, and your supervisors give you high reviews for compassion and caring. But this is... beyond the pale.
Joey: I know, sir, and I - I don't know why, I just wanted to check on her, and it -
Dr Toney: You did more than check on Mariah, Joey. We have everything on tape.
(Joey holds his head in his hands, visibly distraught.)
Joey: Doctor Toney, Doctor Furman, if you'll just let me explain - I didn't try to, she has this hold over me. I can't explain why, but she, she is in my mind. She made me touch her skin and suddenly it was like my brain was in a fog, I - please, don't -
(Doctor Furman, harumphing as he adjusts his heavy glasses, glares across the conference table at him.)
Dr. Furman: Joey, that isn't what we're tracking. Mariah is telling us that you forced yourself on her.
Joey: Wh-what?!
Dr. Toney: Bring her in, Ruggerio.
(The camera shows as the burly, hulk-sized orderly, taking the slim young girl by the elbow, maneuvers her into the room. The camera quickly catches a look as sly as a fox, before her expression settles on Joey and she becomes terrified, shrinking into the corner, folding in to herself.)
Mariah: No, no, keep him away! He turned into a demon! He ripped my clothes off my body! He caressed me with his forked tongue and asked me to open my room door, I was helpless to obey. Please, please don't cut me anymore, Lord!
Joey: Mariah, what- what are you talking about?! I never did that to you. I never would have...
Mariah: His face changed, his eyes became burning coals, Lord, he revealed himself to me as a demon...
(There's a babble momentarily among the doctor team and the lawyer, as clearly this poor girl is in an altered mental state, and agitated, but her story of being victimized clearly has evidence on the cameras.)
Dr. Furman: Toney I don't think we can accept her word for it, she appears to be off her meds.
Dr. Toney: Mariah was lucid in group the last two days. Combative, but lucid. She was stable. This... transgression, however it happened, has triggered her delusions. She may be reliving past traumas triggered by the touch, heightened and warped by her perception of her abusers as demons. I think we have all that we need.
(The lawyer steps up, handing a sheaf of paper to Joey, who looks so crushed and hopeless. Mariah, milking it, continues to cringe and shy from him, as Ruggerio physically pulls her up and shields her, turning her away. Joey looks after her plaintively.)
Joey: Mariah, wait... please tell them...
Sorry, Joey... you were the goodest boy, a suitable mule to bring me what I wanted, but you and I are quits now, baby doll.
(Video log ends, time stamp 11:20:01)
Video tape, date stamp September 15, time stamp 02:29-02:50, tape #4
(The overhead, corner shot of the resident's room, the bed against the wall in the corner, the girl sitting crosslegged, her stick thin limbs crossed in a way that doesn't seem human, a black bound book laying on the ground in front of her.)
The book is giving me the answers I need. About how to connect the only two loves of my life, the rush and sweet kiss of excruciating pain with the swelling triumph of power. In the book's thesis, the two are one and the same. Pain gives strength. Rising through torment gives purpose. Life is meaningless if it is dull, if it is painless, if there is no struggle, no blood. The author makes so much sense - ! This is the answer I've looked for all along. It finally validates everything I went through as a kid. All of that stupid, senseless trauma was inflicted on me to bring me closer to my immortal form, to my strongest self.
(The camera sees the girl reach under her bed and pull out an item. In the cold, flat whites and greys of the camera, it can clearly be seen to be clay pottery, a crudely made ceramic statue.)
(The girl smashes the ceramic against the wall, shattering it into fragments.)
(The girl plucks a fragment off the floor, a jagged, pointing spear. She digs it into her arm, which begins flowing heavily.)
Video tape, (alternate camera angle), date stamp September 15, time stamp 02:29-02:50, tape #4
(Camera shot from above, and slightly farther away down the hall. A surreptitious figure comes creeping up the hall. Not clad in a uniform anymore, his hair matted, and as his eyes briefly look on the side with the camera they are wide and unseeing, ensorcelled almost.)
(He creeps up to the resident's door. He opens the sliding slot to push meds in.)
Joey: Mariah, I... I had to see you... you have a hold over me... I can't -
Mariah (from inside the room): Ohhhh, Joey baby... I'm sorry about what I said to the doctors today, I didn't mean to get you in trouble. Come to the door and give little girl a kiss?
Joey: ...Mariah, your arm is bleeding...
Mariah: Joey, come here.
(Suddenly, a loud voice cuts through the feed.)
Dr. Toney: That's far enough, Yezierski. Don't you touch that girl again.
Joey: No, Doc, you got it wrong, I heard her, she called me in her head...
Dr. Toney: What I have right is that you are about to enter the room of a mentally compromised resident of Springdale's room and touch her inappropriately. That is poor boundaries, and it was the reason for your dismissal. Ruggerio, can you escort mister Yezierski off the premises while I tend to the resident?
(Burly orderly hustles in, roughly gripping the arm of the pleading, terrified boy, dwarfing him.)
Joey: No - Doctor Toney- you have to listen - she can get inside your head, Doctor Toney - Please! Listen! Don't let her touch you! Don't let -
Video tape, date stamp September 15, time stamp 02:29-02:50, tape #4
(Doctor Toney, wearing a lab coat over his sweater and tie, enters the room, to find Mariah's alarming pool of blood on the floor, and symbols streaked in blood. She is naked, and symbols are painted on her skin, daubed in blood.)
Doctor Toney: Mariah, you - Did YOU do this?! This is a mark in your treatment book, young lady, you aren't supposed to have... supposed to...
(He falters, his doughy cheeks going slack. Mariah comes up to him, her hard stomach churning and heaving, her face alight with the madness of a fanatical grin, as she daubs blood on his forehead. He stands like a statue, frozen stiff.)
Mariah: Doctor, you've been very unkind to me in group, poking at my head and trying to get me to play with your word puzzles. But what made me mad...
(Her face contorts on the camera feed, which jumps, as if frightened into a hiccup, as her teeth bare back in a lupine, inhuman snarl, pulling back from her teeth.)
Mariah: What made - ME - FURIOUS, is that you took my books away. Those books had gotten me interested, and gave me a name I was looking for. Moloch.
Dr. Toney: Muuuuuuurrrrr....
Mariah: But you annoyed me, and you had my book taken, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to punish you for it.
(If Doctor Toney hears her, he just stands at attention, not giving a sign, helpless.)
Dr Toney: Mmmmmssorrrryyyy...
Blood is pain, pain is power. This the books have been teaching me.
(Mariah holds Doctor Toney's hand out, palm up, like she's tenderly reading the lifeline in the center as in the old carnival trick. Then her mouth flashes downward and she bites into it like a predator, and he snaps out of his paralysis. He lets out a piercing shriek. Mariah lets his hand drop. He screams, holding his hand in front of him as if it's burning.)
(He touches her shoulder, and the handprint of blood stays on her shoulder. Doctor Toney continues to scream, his voice growing thick with agony as his hand is gushing blood. Mariah points out the door.)
Mariah: Go. Go and be punished.
(As he turns, still holding a horribly, impossibly mangled hand, the camera sees the doctor's face, frozen forever in a frame that will be analyzed for a long time to come. His eyes are swelling, bulging out of his head, and his neck is strained, cords rising as he shrieks in pain. Ronald Toney exits the resident's room, and off camera it can be heard that the noise has drawn more orderlies.)
Ruggerio: Doc? Doc?! What are you doing?! Doc, put that down, don't make me have to - Doc!!
(There's a loud sound of shouting, and of struggle, and lots of confused and angry yelling for the next few minutes.)
(Video log ends, time stamp 02:50:47.)
Dear diary,
The last few weeks since Doctor Toney's, oh, let's call it a dismissal from Springdale have felt in transit, like a montage of effort moving pieces around. My privileges got taken, no sharp objects, extra watch at night. No touching allowed with orderlies. Armed orderlies like Ruggerio bring me food and meds at regular shifts and I am to have nothing sharp, not even a pen. So I'm just composing this in my head. I've found it helped to adhere to the rituals, even the ones introduced in wasted groups and useless therapy sessions. Diaries are talismans of power. If not for someone transcribing their process long ago in leather bound skin, I never would have found the name I am indebted to. The name of Moloch. So I keep this account as a testament, a sacred text in it's own way. It will be written by some faithful boy for me when I find a worthwhile replacement for Joey.
Video tape, date stamp 27 of September, time stamp 22:45-23:01, tape # 01
(This is footage we've seen before. It's a group of six people, all seated in scholastic desks, and a medium built Jewish man facing them.)
Shomron: Ladies and gentlemen boys and goils of Springdale Hall C, I am Doctor Daniel Shomron, and I'll be your emcee this evening.
(He chuckles, amused highly at himself, this young, optimistic doctor.)
Shomron: So, who wants to tell the group what they hope to achieve here?
This one isn't like Toney. He isn't fat, indulgent, clinical. He has a buzz of some idealistic young blade, out to rid the world of evil. Out to cure the bad people of their illnesses. He speaks to the one with the addiction to poisons and he coddles him, babies him worse than Toney ever did. Toney, the clinical ass, would have just blustered him. This babe spoon feeds Lester, tells him that his ills are the fault of society for being so hard on him, for giving him an addiction and feeding off his pain. Men like that are made to be sucked dry. They are made to be used up by the world, because they are weak, and they crave sensation but they crave numbness, temporary death, burning out quickly. That is not for me. I've been reading every night, cover to cover. The hidden text of Moloch. The sacred thesis, of immortality, of power. It isn't a quick end chasing a fleeting, empty buzz. It is a glorious forever. But Doctor Dan's drivel about victims is just annoying enough to cut into my fantasies. And so I let him know it...
Mariah: -- Addiction to chemicals is weakness. You traded it in out there, to come in here and get more chemicals. All of these sheep here... on chemicals. You'll find no help here, mister meth man... Heh... you'll just be pumped full of more chemicals and it won't give you no answers to what you're really missing out of your life... which is a purpose.
Shomron: Mariah is it? ... Mariah, please, Lester was sharing... when it's your turn to share, you can tell us why you're here and what you want to accomplish...
Mariah: I know why I'm here..... I was sent here on a mission... a holy one, to me... I'm an avatar, and I came to spread my word...
I am bold in my proclamation, because this feels like my coming out party. Since Doctor Toney left out of here, Lester, Vinnie, Roger, they all have kept a wide berth of my room. They've kept to the admonitions not to touch me. They whisper the rumors that I'm a witch, that I ensorcelled Toney and got him shot down like a dog on the steps to the outside with mind control, with brujeria. But I've never said it out loud. I've never said the words that outted me. Until now. I own it. I am an avatar, here on earth. I am thoroughly convinced that I am what Moloch desired.
Mariah: My Lord came to me and began caressing me... He pulled my top off and began running his forked tongue alllll over my body... telling me over and over again my purpose, to go forth and do his work here... Heh...
He blushes, this good boy. This handsome hero doctor. He's embarrassed by me, and embarrassed for me. My frank discussion of sexuality puts him off. And I know that he's scared by what he sees, my first group under him, and I'm putting on this show. It must be what a cat batting around a mouse must feel like.
Mariah: Hey, these sheep want to live blind, that's fine with my lord... It isn't my fault that you reject what he's offering. What he gave to me with thrusts of iron and lashes of barbed wire... it isn't my fault that you deny what he can do for you...
Doctor Daniel squirms, but I can see him writing me off as someone he can fix through a lot of talk therapy. With just a pinprick of blood, and a touch I could turn him into my puppet, just as I did Joey Yezierski.
Shomron: Mariah, we are going to have an extensive talk in therapy about the inappropriate sharing. Some of the people in our company have triggers to sexual abuse and I urge you to be kind and think of the impact of your words on your fellow residents. That's all.
(A voice off to the side of the group speaks up, so faintly that the audio on the tape registers it as a scratchy barely-there syllable, but it catches everyone in the shot by such surprise that they all look in the direction of the giant man sitting slumped, staring straight ahead, who has spoken for the first time in all of this...)
Ephrain: ...My lord...
It is then that for the first time in my recounting of this, I paused, to see a man, a beautiful man, built together out of scar tissue, fat and sinew. A mountain of a man, whose worn face spoke of a lifetime of pain and suffering... but his eyes brightened with an interest. He spoke, and his eyes fastened on me as if I were the most beautiful sight he'd ever seen, a beautiful oasis after an ocean of desert. And I looked at him, and I saw... so, so much potential.
Mariah: Well, hello, handsome...
(Video log ends, time stamp 23:02:43)
Dear diary,
Since I'm out, I'm out in the open now. Springdale hums to my growing power, giving me what I want as my influence strengthens. The puppy boys like Vinnie and others cringe like whipped animals from me as I walk but they goddamn well do what I say. They all are weak. Except my beautiful boy Ephrain.
Video tape, date stamp 24 of October, time stamp 09:31-09:36, tape # 01
(Camera shot from on top of a brick wall overlooking a rec area. Basically a basketball court blacktop with bleachers, room for other games, a smoking area for residents with a habit, and residents from all the halls milling about in the sun after breakfast. The camera is focused in on two figures, sitting side by side on the bleachers. A young girl, bound in a heavy, puffy jacket and a giant who appears to be immune to the temperature at all.)
Getting him to open up was the hard part. That took weeks of prying. His mind is closed to my influence, immune to my touch and yet he craves it, craves the feel of my warm skin. He obsessively touches my burns. When he first met me, when he was all but mute, he brushed the hair away from my face and touched the skin where I met my flesh to the oven's pilot light, it held him entranced. He then touched my fingers to the burns on his back, and had muttered two words, "The same." We are the same. I've found a kindred spirit in my pursuits. And I know that he will hear me when it is time to tell him of my ultimate goal, the ultimate path to immortality.
Mariah: Ephrain, tell my about the burns, will you please? Tell me how you lost your family?
Ephrain: Accident. Accident. They. Burned so brightly. Before I knew it, the house was burning. Bright. Didn't mean to. Didn't mean to make it bright. I couldn't help. Help.
Mariah: You couldn't help them?
Ephrain: I couldn't help myself. Wanted to make it bright. Bright. Colors. Did you know, the colors of the Superman ice cream flavor are typically made with a lemon, cherry or raspberry, and blueberry swirl.
That was the other biggest hurdle, his damn tic. To encourage him into talking, he sometimes slipped into nonsequiturial talk about the flavors of ice cream. But as he did that, a change in his demeanor came over him, and he felt more... aware.
Mariah: Yes, Ephrain. Did your family eat Superman ice cream? Did you take the wife and kids to Baskin Robbins sometimes before they died in the fire?
Ephrain: Ya know, the exact origin is thought to have been in the Midwest, where Blue Moon ice cream is prevalent over blueberry. But what most people don't know with ice cream is, flavor and color are entirely separate. Color is just food dye, it can be made in any color. Add a few drops of food coloring gel. The more you add, the more intense the color. Mix until the ice cream is colored and the gel is fully incorporated. Colors... Col- Colors... Colors like blood red, like the blood pooling in the back of the garage after braining that STUPID FUCKING BITCH WITH THE 22 INCH CLAW HAMMER. Like the blood red DRIPPING FROM THE HONED WOOD AXE AFTER I CHOPPED HER APART. Luh- Like... Like...
(He falters.)
Mariah: The fire didn't burn your family at all, Ephrain... that's why you went to the asylum back then... Oh, Ephrain...
Ephrain: I tuh-tried sewing her back together. I tried sewing them all back together. They came apart, and then they won't stop, they won't go back together.
Mariah: What if I told you there was a way to put someone back together, Ephrain?
Ephrain: Together?
Mariah: Ephrain... have you ever heard of what a Tulpa is?
(The camera overhead watches as the two, the young, small girl and the giant, lean their heads in together on the bleachers, close enough for a whisper, close enough for a kiss.)
My beautiful boy. I've found the key. Now you are mine. And Moloch's. And mine.
(Video log ends, time stamp 09:36:07.)
Dear diary on this day November 2 2011 I'm about to lose writing on paper privileges again so I shall make this brief, I did it. I used my power without touching. Lester was weak, so I made him overdose. It was simple. I just talked to him. Thirty minutes of low, quiet conversation in our outside time, and I had him so thoroughly under my power that I didn't need to touch him once. He went where I said. And he proved himself just as weak as I always said. Moloch's power sings within me. I know what I have to do. What Ephrain has to do. We spread pain. We spread madness. With just a whisper in the right ears, and the power of Moloch coursing through our veins, we become a spreading cancer of human misery, feeding pain in to our Lord. The more pain we give to him, the stronger he makes us. The stronger he makes us, the more his influence on this world grows, the more he manifests into the world. Praise Him! Praise Moloch!!
Video tape, date stamp 5 of November, time stamp 02:55:18, tape # 06
(Camera shot from above, and slightly farther away down the hall. Mariah walks calmly, confidently down the hall, nude, her slim shoulders back, striding long and purposefully as a queen. Her scarred body is covered in blood. She stops at the door to a residential room.)
Mariah: It's almost time. I won't be at Springdale too much longer. After tomorrow, I'll be under the most lockdown they can put me under. After that...
(Ephrain comes to the door, and the camera just picks up his eyes peeking out of the sliding slot.)
Ephrain (through the door): Are you sure that we can get to the spot on the grounds?
Mariah: Positive. I have influence over the groundskeeper, he gave me the key to the shed. When we get there...
Ephrain: I know. Quick, clean. Painful.
(She reaches into the slot, her hand caressing his ginormous head.)
Mariah: It's the only way, my love. It won't be like your family. It will be the only way that we live together. Me first, and then, one day, you.
Ephrain: I know, it's just -
Mariah: I know, love. But I'll still be with you. Sewn in place. Remember, always. Our hearts are sewn together, too.
Ephrain: I love you so much.
(There's a loud commotion as orderlies come charging down the hall, from each side.)
Orderly: How the hell does she keep getting out?!
Video tape, date stamp 5th of November, time stamp 03:28-03:41, file # 7:
(The camera is set on a tripod, recording from the point of view from behind the therapist's desk. There's a small figure sat across the table from him, so slight of build you might think she was a wisp. Over half of her face is covered by a lock of hair, and to cover her naked body she's been given a hoodie and pair of scrubs that are both too many sizes too big, the hoodie slipped down over one shoulder, exposing scarred and burned flesh with the third-degree burns in the shape of what seem to be human handprints. The handprints burned in place are on the same spot Ronald Toney touched her.)
Shomron: Mariah? ...are you lucid enough to talk?
Mariah: Mariah is just a house where I'm living, man...
(She isn't looking up, at the camera, she sits still, but slumped, and her head is down as if she's almost asleep. She has been given enough trank to knock out an elephant. A stern torso stands behind her, only the top half up to the shoulders and the arms folded business-wise across the chest are visible behind her.)
Mariah: You want me to be a good little sheep. Put me right out so I can jump the fence like all of your little group lambie-lambs. Baa, baa, baa...
(Mariah raises out of the seat with such a boneless, fluid motion that it's disturbing. Ruggero's giant form looms closer to the girl.)
Ruggero: Resident, you will sit down, or -
Mariah: None of you understand. The only one who is receptive is Ephrain... my little lost sick boy...He's into it. He knows that the only way to guarantee immortality is to feed our lord pain. To feed them human misery.
The Truth. At last. Praise Moloch.
Mariah: You poke at their heads and pick out demons and claim that you're fixing them... but what you can't see is the sickness that infests this place, serious house on serious earth... will never go away. It is a cancer. It starts like a tumor, a tiny little cherry pit right there in your lobe, and it spreads... from organism to organism... from meat sack to meat sack... rotting them from the inside out. Only through releasing this cancer, only in cracking it open like an egg and letting it drip through can you live.
(The doctor's voice shakes, so perturbed is he at the ranting girl, spitting and pontificating across his desk.)
Shomron: Mariah, you can't possibly believe that...
Mariah: The world is broken, doctor Shomron... I know you like to think you can put the shells back together, but you're no shining hero... you are just another one that has the cancer growing inside of you...
Shomron: Mariah, I'm sorry, I feel like I've failed you a bit.
Mariah: You didn't fail me, doctor...
(She slithers onto the desk.)
Shomron: Mariah, Mariah, no!!
(She kisses him, although this part is concealed by the sudden shakiness of the camera, and then as it rights itself, the big brawn of the soldier-like body of orderly Ruggero is pulling her away.)
(She twists around in Ruggero's grasp, trying to push him off.)
Mariah: GET OFF ME!
Ruggero: You're getting a shot!!
(He fumbles for a binder with the needles and doses of tranks. He also struggles to keep her pinned down with one arm around her.)
(She grabs his body and pulls him down, taking a bite out of his neck with her teeth. Ruggero's throat immediately begins gushing blood.)
Shomron and Ruggero: (screaming)
(Video log ends, time stamp 03:42:09)
Dear diary:
This will be my last entry from this side. I'm going to an ethereal plane, reborn in blood and agony. My sweet babies, my good boys on the ward have let me pass in, and the commotion after Ruggerio's end will have them in an uproar. Perfect time for a riot. At my command they've begun flinging chairs and furniture, uprooting televisions, throwing games in the rec room. The staff can't contain them all.
Video tape, date stamp 5 of November, time stamp 04:00:01, tape # 08
(Camera shot from above, and slightly farther away down the hall. Mariah, her chin still dripping blood from Ruggerio's neck. Her hair sticking out on all sides in shocks. She looks eldritch, dark and dangerous, like a witch. She stops in front of residential room 309.)
Mariah: Ephrain. It's time.
(Video log ends, time stamp 04:00:03.)
Through dying, I will live forever. In blood, in pain. I'll give the weak, stick like body of Mariah Bamford over to Moloch as a bloodprice, an offering. Ephrain had the right idea with his wife and child all those years ago but he didn't have the energies to do it. By cutting me apart, and severing my connection to this world, he'll rebirth me into Moloch's realm. Where my body will be reconstituted with every passing bloodprice. With every ounce of pain. With every anguished, fevered cry. With every whimper for help, for release. With Ephrain, my Sick boy out there in the world, feeding Moloch, I grow stronger and stronger in Moloch's embrace, becoming immortal. The sewn together doll Ephrain keeps with him will be remade into my new, immortal, powerful body. I won't be weak anymore. I won't be the little girl who had no power, no agency anymore. The average teen, with the humdrum, expected traumas and pains of broken youth. I'll be a reborn avatar of pain and power walking the earth. I will be more than fleeting, broken, temporary. What Ephrain is giving me is the sweetest gift, that one moment when I was a girl that I fell in love with the sweet kiss of pain will be stretched out into an infinite moment, the sensation never ceasing, never dying. Bliss.
Video tape, date stamp 5 of November, time stamp 04:41:59, tape # 09
(Camera shot from overhead inside a small, cramped shed. They're in an equipment shed, out back of the facility, where the groundskeeper keeps assorted tools, including the lawnmower.)
(Mariah is laid in a pre-planned spot, a circle that has been painted with blood gushing from a bad gash on her arm. The blood has been painted into an ornate and disturbing circle of runes.)
(Ephrain has a long, flat blade in his hands, hesitating as he stands over her. It's the blade from the lawn mower, removed and held in one hand like a giant's madcap sword. However, it's not nearly as sharp.)
(It doesn't matter. From the stretched out, Christ-like position she's laid on the floor, Mariah looks up at Ephrain. She nods.)
(He brings the blade up in the beginning of an arc.)
Thank you for this gift, Moloch. The gift of forever.
(Video log ends, 04:42:03.)
I hate it here so, so fking much.
The groups are bland, puerile bullshit. I've been in and out of care for so long that I can recite every step of group, chapter and verse front to back. These people are weak. Already weak going into this, they fill them with narcotics and dope them to the gills until they can't even keep their thoughts coherent. Thus inhibited, these sheep are dressed in uniforms and paraded from room to room, shoved in front of supposedly educated healers who know how to clean out poisons eating into the human psyche. What they are doing is filling these drugged, docile cows into accepting the world as orderly and their intentions as helpful. I know how group works I mean mommy Bev sent me to "a little sleepaway camp" when I was nine. They have never given me the help I need. Not once in group have I ever felt orderly, or my strengths bolstered. It used to give me a thrill just playing along, "yes doctor no doctor" and pretending at least to buy into their drivel but now I can't even keep the mask of cooperative coquettishness in place. It burns in me to just speak out when I can, to rage against the stupidity.
Video tape, date stamp 11 of September, 2011, time stamp 15:17-15:35, tape # 01
(It is only three people in this group, plus the therapist. An elderly, slightly portly black man wearing a scholarly sportcoat and slacks, he sits at the top of the circle, looking on at his charges.)
(There's a skinny, teenaged boy in a skull cap and pants half to his ass that we know from the tapes before, itching at track marks on his arms and twitching his eyes around the room. There's a shrinking little man, goose egg bald with eyes wide as saucers, shivering.)
(And there's a waif of a girl, dressed in uniform yet modified to be provocative, with her bare legs cocked up on an empty chair. The legs are marred by ragged self harm scars that go the length of her exposed skin. She's calmly reading from a book, not paying attention to the group.)
Dr. Toney: Mariah, I asked you if you would contribute to the discussion. When you self harmed the first time, how did it make you feel?
When I self-harmed at first I was a twelve year old kid. It was a stupid impulse and I honestly found out about it through Tumblr. There are a million blogs that cater to depressed teens, as sad as it is to say, with images that promote mental illness as an attractive, beautiful, poetic black and white aesthetic, that advertise pain. It's done in just a way to make it feel cool. But that's just as much a lie as the doctor's poking is. The truth I won't let him in on? I was a confused kid. I realize that there are elements of my past that make others shake their heads, "Poor girl", the junkie mom dying and leaving her baby behind, the foster families, the foster dads that liked to touch six year old girls in their bathing suit areas, blah blah blah, lots of kids have pain in their pasts at that age. It wasn't the act of a twelve year old finding an edgy interest on the internet and participating that felt revelatory. It was when the scissor blade cut into my arm the first time and it traced a line of icefire across me. That was when I realized how sweet the kiss of pain is. But I'm not telling Doctor Ronald Toney that.
Mariah: It felt like when you fuck your mother.
(A giggle and chitter like hyenas comes from the boy in the stocking cap. The girl continues disinterestedly leafing through the pages of the library book.)
Dr. Toney: if you're not going to share with the group, then Ruggerio is going to escort you into the cool down room.
(The small group is being watched by a hulk of a man in a correctional officers uniform shirt, his hands folded over his broad chest. The girl looks up, the camera catching her beaming broadly and defiantly. A sheaf of hair hangs over her eye, dark raven locks.)
Mariah: I'm sorry, Doctor Toney... I meant to say, it felt like when you fuck your son.
(Another chitter from the twitchy, giggling druggie.)
(The giant orderly guard steps forward, ripping the book from the girl's hands.)
Ruggerio: That's it, resident, I'm dragging you down and giving you a shot. Nurse, the book.
Mariah: Get off of me!!
Dr. Toney: *Sighs* ...We'll try group again after dinner and recreational activities. Everyone to their rooms please.
(As Mariah is being hauled roughly by the stone faced, unsympathetic guard, her hair flies back from her face, leaving the eye underneath and the horrible, blistered burn scar exposed, as her mouth grits and contorts in rage.)
(Video log ends, time stamp 15:36:13)
That was kid stuff, though. Child playing. It was a sweet kiss, but it was like having one morsel of chocolate. One sweet taste on the tip of your tongue, that dissipated before you could ever have more. They don't know what I've given for even an ounce more of that feeling. To be honest... I'm not even sure I do. And that excites me.
Video tape, date stamp 12 of September, time stamp 23:47-00:01, tape # 2
(It's an overhead corner camera shot of a resident's room, put in there to monitor behavior. The resident of the room is standing at attention just in the far bottom corner of the shot, talking to someone through the door.)
Mariah: You brought the books?
Video tape, (alternate camera angle) date stamp 12 of September, time stamp 23:47-00:01 tape # 2
(Camera shot from above, and slightly farther away down the hall. Outside of the door of the same residential room, a young, athletic, well built young man, attractive, with tousled hair, wearing the same type of uniform denoting him as a guard, leaning in to a door, having pulled back the opening slot, and passing something through.)
Joey: Yeah, but Mariah, this is really dark stuff, I mean... the store I had to get it from...
Mariah: It's harmless Wiccan stuff. Just energies and auras and karma.
(From the outside camera angle, Joey Yezierski looks unsure. He also looks very nervously up and down the hallway, aware the camera is on him, but not wanting to be seen talking to a resident like this after lights out, it would be considered inappropriate.)
Joey: No, listen, Mariah... this stuff... is not Wicca. I looked through the pages. It talks about really dark stuff in there. Rituals that need blood in them, cutting animals, cutting - skin... like.
(Inside the resident room, Mariah brings Joey's hand in, letting it play over her chin, forcing his fingers to caress her jaw and the nape of her neck and let his hand go soft under hers. She kisses his thumb, shushing him.)
Mariah: Baby, listen to me, it won't hurt anybody. I promise. Look, if I have to, I'll tell Doctor Toney that it's religious practices, he can't keep me from practicing my religion...
(From the outside camera angle, Joey jerks back as if bitten by a snake, slapping his hand to his temple.)
Joey: Jesus, Doctor Toney! If he saw you had a book like this on the ward, it would - It would be contraband, and you'd be in trouble - ...And then I'D be in trouble, because they'd check the tapes to see who brought it to you...
(Inside the resident room, Mariah pulls Joey's hand back, letting it touch her. She lets him touch the scarred side of her face. She kisses his fingers. She sucks on the ends of them. He moans, and it's clear to see that he's losing his will to resist.)
Joey (very weakly, from outside the door): Mariah, no...
Mariah: You are so sweet, Joey. Thank you for being so sweet to me always.
Joey (his voice barely a squeak): ...Mariah!...
Sex isn't even in the same diagram of sensation as the feeling of cutting deep is. As the feeling of burning is. It isn't even in the neighborhood. I know how to fake it, though. If I didn't learn to fake when I liked it, my third foster father would never leave my bedroom, he would creep in there and play with me until he felt me do what he wanted. So I had to learn to make it seem real, to give the illusion of sensation and pleasure. But for sensation, no, sex isn't even close to the same feeling. But it's useful to get what I wanted.
Video tape, date stamp 13 of September, time stamp 00:08:57 and running, tape # 2
(Camera shot from above, and slightly farther away down the hall. A weak, confused, disheveled Joey exits the room, putting his uniform shirt back on, covering a very visible gash on his chest. He cranes his head back to look at the room, muttering a prayer to himself. The look on his face is of someone horrified, not knowing what he's done. He stumbles away, unable to keep a straight line.)
(Video log ends, time stamp 00:09:41.)
Dear diary:
Joey really did get me the things I wanted. Sweet boy. I think he knows just how badly I've got him in a vice and he can't help it. He always came around, so supplicant, so helpful to the lone little girl on this ward of crazies. A kind boy. Not something I've met much of in my experience. But he isn't what I need, or frankly what I want. All I wanted from him was these books I've heard about. His shelf life is limited anyway, fragile and heart sick thing that he is he's probably a little conflicted about knocking boots with a crazy girl, feeling sick at taking advantage of someone who legally can't make her own decisions from his place of power. Power. If he hadn't gone along with what I wanted I could have had him in deep review with rape allegations. Power. It's the only sensation that beats like a song within my heart. The only thing I've craved since I was old enough to know I didn't have any of it, no power, no control, no agency over myself, just a frail little doll to be pushed around, moved to house, dressed and fussed with. No power, no agency. For too long. Maybe that was why it was such a song within me, a triumphant, joyful chorus to find things that gave me the gift of feeling myself. With my body in my hands, I could bring a flame to a piece of skin and darken it, feeling the rush of searing, grimacing pain. With an instrument in my hands, I could turn that pain on others. Like I did when I poured the scalding pot of water on my baby brother at foster family number five's house. I had power then. And I used it on baby. Power. It's all I've ever wanted, was more. And now, with the books Joey got for me, I have the answers in my grasp...
Video tape, date stamp 13th of September, time stamp 11:07-11:19 am, video #3
(The camera is in an overhead position pointing down at a conference room, or perhaps a classroom, since it has a whiteboard with eraser set up. Otherwise it's just a typical meeting room and the people sitting on one side of the table are a very serious looking group. They're typically whitehaired, older men, all wearing thick rimmed glasses. One has a lab coat. There's another man, off to the side, wearing a rumpled suit and a briefcase. This is a team of lead psychiatrists and doctors, with their lawyer and with Doctor Toney, the head counselor on Hall C. On the other side, alone, is orderly Joey Yezierski, looking cowed, afraid, and very lost.)
Dr. Toney: Joey, this is a very serious mark on your record. You are a good kid, Joey, and your supervisors give you high reviews for compassion and caring. But this is... beyond the pale.
Joey: I know, sir, and I - I don't know why, I just wanted to check on her, and it -
Dr Toney: You did more than check on Mariah, Joey. We have everything on tape.
(Joey holds his head in his hands, visibly distraught.)
Joey: Doctor Toney, Doctor Furman, if you'll just let me explain - I didn't try to, she has this hold over me. I can't explain why, but she, she is in my mind. She made me touch her skin and suddenly it was like my brain was in a fog, I - please, don't -
(Doctor Furman, harumphing as he adjusts his heavy glasses, glares across the conference table at him.)
Dr. Furman: Joey, that isn't what we're tracking. Mariah is telling us that you forced yourself on her.
Joey: Wh-what?!
Dr. Toney: Bring her in, Ruggerio.
(The camera shows as the burly, hulk-sized orderly, taking the slim young girl by the elbow, maneuvers her into the room. The camera quickly catches a look as sly as a fox, before her expression settles on Joey and she becomes terrified, shrinking into the corner, folding in to herself.)
Mariah: No, no, keep him away! He turned into a demon! He ripped my clothes off my body! He caressed me with his forked tongue and asked me to open my room door, I was helpless to obey. Please, please don't cut me anymore, Lord!
Joey: Mariah, what- what are you talking about?! I never did that to you. I never would have...
Mariah: His face changed, his eyes became burning coals, Lord, he revealed himself to me as a demon...
(There's a babble momentarily among the doctor team and the lawyer, as clearly this poor girl is in an altered mental state, and agitated, but her story of being victimized clearly has evidence on the cameras.)
Dr. Furman: Toney I don't think we can accept her word for it, she appears to be off her meds.
Dr. Toney: Mariah was lucid in group the last two days. Combative, but lucid. She was stable. This... transgression, however it happened, has triggered her delusions. She may be reliving past traumas triggered by the touch, heightened and warped by her perception of her abusers as demons. I think we have all that we need.
(The lawyer steps up, handing a sheaf of paper to Joey, who looks so crushed and hopeless. Mariah, milking it, continues to cringe and shy from him, as Ruggerio physically pulls her up and shields her, turning her away. Joey looks after her plaintively.)
Joey: Mariah, wait... please tell them...
Sorry, Joey... you were the goodest boy, a suitable mule to bring me what I wanted, but you and I are quits now, baby doll.
(Video log ends, time stamp 11:20:01)
Video tape, date stamp September 15, time stamp 02:29-02:50, tape #4
(The overhead, corner shot of the resident's room, the bed against the wall in the corner, the girl sitting crosslegged, her stick thin limbs crossed in a way that doesn't seem human, a black bound book laying on the ground in front of her.)
The book is giving me the answers I need. About how to connect the only two loves of my life, the rush and sweet kiss of excruciating pain with the swelling triumph of power. In the book's thesis, the two are one and the same. Pain gives strength. Rising through torment gives purpose. Life is meaningless if it is dull, if it is painless, if there is no struggle, no blood. The author makes so much sense - ! This is the answer I've looked for all along. It finally validates everything I went through as a kid. All of that stupid, senseless trauma was inflicted on me to bring me closer to my immortal form, to my strongest self.
(The camera sees the girl reach under her bed and pull out an item. In the cold, flat whites and greys of the camera, it can clearly be seen to be clay pottery, a crudely made ceramic statue.)
(The girl smashes the ceramic against the wall, shattering it into fragments.)
(The girl plucks a fragment off the floor, a jagged, pointing spear. She digs it into her arm, which begins flowing heavily.)
Video tape, (alternate camera angle), date stamp September 15, time stamp 02:29-02:50, tape #4
(Camera shot from above, and slightly farther away down the hall. A surreptitious figure comes creeping up the hall. Not clad in a uniform anymore, his hair matted, and as his eyes briefly look on the side with the camera they are wide and unseeing, ensorcelled almost.)
(He creeps up to the resident's door. He opens the sliding slot to push meds in.)
Joey: Mariah, I... I had to see you... you have a hold over me... I can't -
Mariah (from inside the room): Ohhhh, Joey baby... I'm sorry about what I said to the doctors today, I didn't mean to get you in trouble. Come to the door and give little girl a kiss?
Joey: ...Mariah, your arm is bleeding...
Mariah: Joey, come here.
(Suddenly, a loud voice cuts through the feed.)
Dr. Toney: That's far enough, Yezierski. Don't you touch that girl again.
Joey: No, Doc, you got it wrong, I heard her, she called me in her head...
Dr. Toney: What I have right is that you are about to enter the room of a mentally compromised resident of Springdale's room and touch her inappropriately. That is poor boundaries, and it was the reason for your dismissal. Ruggerio, can you escort mister Yezierski off the premises while I tend to the resident?
(Burly orderly hustles in, roughly gripping the arm of the pleading, terrified boy, dwarfing him.)
Joey: No - Doctor Toney- you have to listen - she can get inside your head, Doctor Toney - Please! Listen! Don't let her touch you! Don't let -
Video tape, date stamp September 15, time stamp 02:29-02:50, tape #4
(Doctor Toney, wearing a lab coat over his sweater and tie, enters the room, to find Mariah's alarming pool of blood on the floor, and symbols streaked in blood. She is naked, and symbols are painted on her skin, daubed in blood.)
Doctor Toney: Mariah, you - Did YOU do this?! This is a mark in your treatment book, young lady, you aren't supposed to have... supposed to...
(He falters, his doughy cheeks going slack. Mariah comes up to him, her hard stomach churning and heaving, her face alight with the madness of a fanatical grin, as she daubs blood on his forehead. He stands like a statue, frozen stiff.)
Mariah: Doctor, you've been very unkind to me in group, poking at my head and trying to get me to play with your word puzzles. But what made me mad...
(Her face contorts on the camera feed, which jumps, as if frightened into a hiccup, as her teeth bare back in a lupine, inhuman snarl, pulling back from her teeth.)
Mariah: What made - ME - FURIOUS, is that you took my books away. Those books had gotten me interested, and gave me a name I was looking for. Moloch.
Dr. Toney: Muuuuuuurrrrr....
Mariah: But you annoyed me, and you had my book taken, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to punish you for it.
(If Doctor Toney hears her, he just stands at attention, not giving a sign, helpless.)
Dr Toney: Mmmmmssorrrryyyy...
Blood is pain, pain is power. This the books have been teaching me.
(Mariah holds Doctor Toney's hand out, palm up, like she's tenderly reading the lifeline in the center as in the old carnival trick. Then her mouth flashes downward and she bites into it like a predator, and he snaps out of his paralysis. He lets out a piercing shriek. Mariah lets his hand drop. He screams, holding his hand in front of him as if it's burning.)
(He touches her shoulder, and the handprint of blood stays on her shoulder. Doctor Toney continues to scream, his voice growing thick with agony as his hand is gushing blood. Mariah points out the door.)
Mariah: Go. Go and be punished.
(As he turns, still holding a horribly, impossibly mangled hand, the camera sees the doctor's face, frozen forever in a frame that will be analyzed for a long time to come. His eyes are swelling, bulging out of his head, and his neck is strained, cords rising as he shrieks in pain. Ronald Toney exits the resident's room, and off camera it can be heard that the noise has drawn more orderlies.)
Ruggerio: Doc? Doc?! What are you doing?! Doc, put that down, don't make me have to - Doc!!
(There's a loud sound of shouting, and of struggle, and lots of confused and angry yelling for the next few minutes.)
(Video log ends, time stamp 02:50:47.)
Dear diary,
The last few weeks since Doctor Toney's, oh, let's call it a dismissal from Springdale have felt in transit, like a montage of effort moving pieces around. My privileges got taken, no sharp objects, extra watch at night. No touching allowed with orderlies. Armed orderlies like Ruggerio bring me food and meds at regular shifts and I am to have nothing sharp, not even a pen. So I'm just composing this in my head. I've found it helped to adhere to the rituals, even the ones introduced in wasted groups and useless therapy sessions. Diaries are talismans of power. If not for someone transcribing their process long ago in leather bound skin, I never would have found the name I am indebted to. The name of Moloch. So I keep this account as a testament, a sacred text in it's own way. It will be written by some faithful boy for me when I find a worthwhile replacement for Joey.
Video tape, date stamp 27 of September, time stamp 22:45-23:01, tape # 01
(This is footage we've seen before. It's a group of six people, all seated in scholastic desks, and a medium built Jewish man facing them.)
Shomron: Ladies and gentlemen boys and goils of Springdale Hall C, I am Doctor Daniel Shomron, and I'll be your emcee this evening.
(He chuckles, amused highly at himself, this young, optimistic doctor.)
Shomron: So, who wants to tell the group what they hope to achieve here?
This one isn't like Toney. He isn't fat, indulgent, clinical. He has a buzz of some idealistic young blade, out to rid the world of evil. Out to cure the bad people of their illnesses. He speaks to the one with the addiction to poisons and he coddles him, babies him worse than Toney ever did. Toney, the clinical ass, would have just blustered him. This babe spoon feeds Lester, tells him that his ills are the fault of society for being so hard on him, for giving him an addiction and feeding off his pain. Men like that are made to be sucked dry. They are made to be used up by the world, because they are weak, and they crave sensation but they crave numbness, temporary death, burning out quickly. That is not for me. I've been reading every night, cover to cover. The hidden text of Moloch. The sacred thesis, of immortality, of power. It isn't a quick end chasing a fleeting, empty buzz. It is a glorious forever. But Doctor Dan's drivel about victims is just annoying enough to cut into my fantasies. And so I let him know it...
Mariah: -- Addiction to chemicals is weakness. You traded it in out there, to come in here and get more chemicals. All of these sheep here... on chemicals. You'll find no help here, mister meth man... Heh... you'll just be pumped full of more chemicals and it won't give you no answers to what you're really missing out of your life... which is a purpose.
Shomron: Mariah is it? ... Mariah, please, Lester was sharing... when it's your turn to share, you can tell us why you're here and what you want to accomplish...
Mariah: I know why I'm here..... I was sent here on a mission... a holy one, to me... I'm an avatar, and I came to spread my word...
I am bold in my proclamation, because this feels like my coming out party. Since Doctor Toney left out of here, Lester, Vinnie, Roger, they all have kept a wide berth of my room. They've kept to the admonitions not to touch me. They whisper the rumors that I'm a witch, that I ensorcelled Toney and got him shot down like a dog on the steps to the outside with mind control, with brujeria. But I've never said it out loud. I've never said the words that outted me. Until now. I own it. I am an avatar, here on earth. I am thoroughly convinced that I am what Moloch desired.
Mariah: My Lord came to me and began caressing me... He pulled my top off and began running his forked tongue alllll over my body... telling me over and over again my purpose, to go forth and do his work here... Heh...
He blushes, this good boy. This handsome hero doctor. He's embarrassed by me, and embarrassed for me. My frank discussion of sexuality puts him off. And I know that he's scared by what he sees, my first group under him, and I'm putting on this show. It must be what a cat batting around a mouse must feel like.
Mariah: Hey, these sheep want to live blind, that's fine with my lord... It isn't my fault that you reject what he's offering. What he gave to me with thrusts of iron and lashes of barbed wire... it isn't my fault that you deny what he can do for you...
Doctor Daniel squirms, but I can see him writing me off as someone he can fix through a lot of talk therapy. With just a pinprick of blood, and a touch I could turn him into my puppet, just as I did Joey Yezierski.
Shomron: Mariah, we are going to have an extensive talk in therapy about the inappropriate sharing. Some of the people in our company have triggers to sexual abuse and I urge you to be kind and think of the impact of your words on your fellow residents. That's all.
(A voice off to the side of the group speaks up, so faintly that the audio on the tape registers it as a scratchy barely-there syllable, but it catches everyone in the shot by such surprise that they all look in the direction of the giant man sitting slumped, staring straight ahead, who has spoken for the first time in all of this...)
Ephrain: ...My lord...
It is then that for the first time in my recounting of this, I paused, to see a man, a beautiful man, built together out of scar tissue, fat and sinew. A mountain of a man, whose worn face spoke of a lifetime of pain and suffering... but his eyes brightened with an interest. He spoke, and his eyes fastened on me as if I were the most beautiful sight he'd ever seen, a beautiful oasis after an ocean of desert. And I looked at him, and I saw... so, so much potential.
Mariah: Well, hello, handsome...
(Video log ends, time stamp 23:02:43)
Dear diary,
Since I'm out, I'm out in the open now. Springdale hums to my growing power, giving me what I want as my influence strengthens. The puppy boys like Vinnie and others cringe like whipped animals from me as I walk but they goddamn well do what I say. They all are weak. Except my beautiful boy Ephrain.
Video tape, date stamp 24 of October, time stamp 09:31-09:36, tape # 01
(Camera shot from on top of a brick wall overlooking a rec area. Basically a basketball court blacktop with bleachers, room for other games, a smoking area for residents with a habit, and residents from all the halls milling about in the sun after breakfast. The camera is focused in on two figures, sitting side by side on the bleachers. A young girl, bound in a heavy, puffy jacket and a giant who appears to be immune to the temperature at all.)
Getting him to open up was the hard part. That took weeks of prying. His mind is closed to my influence, immune to my touch and yet he craves it, craves the feel of my warm skin. He obsessively touches my burns. When he first met me, when he was all but mute, he brushed the hair away from my face and touched the skin where I met my flesh to the oven's pilot light, it held him entranced. He then touched my fingers to the burns on his back, and had muttered two words, "The same." We are the same. I've found a kindred spirit in my pursuits. And I know that he will hear me when it is time to tell him of my ultimate goal, the ultimate path to immortality.
Mariah: Ephrain, tell my about the burns, will you please? Tell me how you lost your family?
Ephrain: Accident. Accident. They. Burned so brightly. Before I knew it, the house was burning. Bright. Didn't mean to. Didn't mean to make it bright. I couldn't help. Help.
Mariah: You couldn't help them?
Ephrain: I couldn't help myself. Wanted to make it bright. Bright. Colors. Did you know, the colors of the Superman ice cream flavor are typically made with a lemon, cherry or raspberry, and blueberry swirl.
That was the other biggest hurdle, his damn tic. To encourage him into talking, he sometimes slipped into nonsequiturial talk about the flavors of ice cream. But as he did that, a change in his demeanor came over him, and he felt more... aware.
Mariah: Yes, Ephrain. Did your family eat Superman ice cream? Did you take the wife and kids to Baskin Robbins sometimes before they died in the fire?
Ephrain: Ya know, the exact origin is thought to have been in the Midwest, where Blue Moon ice cream is prevalent over blueberry. But what most people don't know with ice cream is, flavor and color are entirely separate. Color is just food dye, it can be made in any color. Add a few drops of food coloring gel. The more you add, the more intense the color. Mix until the ice cream is colored and the gel is fully incorporated. Colors... Col- Colors... Colors like blood red, like the blood pooling in the back of the garage after braining that STUPID FUCKING BITCH WITH THE 22 INCH CLAW HAMMER. Like the blood red DRIPPING FROM THE HONED WOOD AXE AFTER I CHOPPED HER APART. Luh- Like... Like...
(He falters.)
Mariah: The fire didn't burn your family at all, Ephrain... that's why you went to the asylum back then... Oh, Ephrain...
Ephrain: I tuh-tried sewing her back together. I tried sewing them all back together. They came apart, and then they won't stop, they won't go back together.
Mariah: What if I told you there was a way to put someone back together, Ephrain?
Ephrain: Together?
Mariah: Ephrain... have you ever heard of what a Tulpa is?
(The camera overhead watches as the two, the young, small girl and the giant, lean their heads in together on the bleachers, close enough for a whisper, close enough for a kiss.)
My beautiful boy. I've found the key. Now you are mine. And Moloch's. And mine.
(Video log ends, time stamp 09:36:07.)
Dear diary on this day November 2 2011 I'm about to lose writing on paper privileges again so I shall make this brief, I did it. I used my power without touching. Lester was weak, so I made him overdose. It was simple. I just talked to him. Thirty minutes of low, quiet conversation in our outside time, and I had him so thoroughly under my power that I didn't need to touch him once. He went where I said. And he proved himself just as weak as I always said. Moloch's power sings within me. I know what I have to do. What Ephrain has to do. We spread pain. We spread madness. With just a whisper in the right ears, and the power of Moloch coursing through our veins, we become a spreading cancer of human misery, feeding pain in to our Lord. The more pain we give to him, the stronger he makes us. The stronger he makes us, the more his influence on this world grows, the more he manifests into the world. Praise Him! Praise Moloch!!
Video tape, date stamp 5 of November, time stamp 02:55:18, tape # 06
(Camera shot from above, and slightly farther away down the hall. Mariah walks calmly, confidently down the hall, nude, her slim shoulders back, striding long and purposefully as a queen. Her scarred body is covered in blood. She stops at the door to a residential room.)
Mariah: It's almost time. I won't be at Springdale too much longer. After tomorrow, I'll be under the most lockdown they can put me under. After that...
(Ephrain comes to the door, and the camera just picks up his eyes peeking out of the sliding slot.)
Ephrain (through the door): Are you sure that we can get to the spot on the grounds?
Mariah: Positive. I have influence over the groundskeeper, he gave me the key to the shed. When we get there...
Ephrain: I know. Quick, clean. Painful.
(She reaches into the slot, her hand caressing his ginormous head.)
Mariah: It's the only way, my love. It won't be like your family. It will be the only way that we live together. Me first, and then, one day, you.
Ephrain: I know, it's just -
Mariah: I know, love. But I'll still be with you. Sewn in place. Remember, always. Our hearts are sewn together, too.
Ephrain: I love you so much.
(There's a loud commotion as orderlies come charging down the hall, from each side.)
Orderly: How the hell does she keep getting out?!
Video tape, date stamp 5th of November, time stamp 03:28-03:41, file # 7:
(The camera is set on a tripod, recording from the point of view from behind the therapist's desk. There's a small figure sat across the table from him, so slight of build you might think she was a wisp. Over half of her face is covered by a lock of hair, and to cover her naked body she's been given a hoodie and pair of scrubs that are both too many sizes too big, the hoodie slipped down over one shoulder, exposing scarred and burned flesh with the third-degree burns in the shape of what seem to be human handprints. The handprints burned in place are on the same spot Ronald Toney touched her.)
Shomron: Mariah? ...are you lucid enough to talk?
Mariah: Mariah is just a house where I'm living, man...
(She isn't looking up, at the camera, she sits still, but slumped, and her head is down as if she's almost asleep. She has been given enough trank to knock out an elephant. A stern torso stands behind her, only the top half up to the shoulders and the arms folded business-wise across the chest are visible behind her.)
Mariah: You want me to be a good little sheep. Put me right out so I can jump the fence like all of your little group lambie-lambs. Baa, baa, baa...
(Mariah raises out of the seat with such a boneless, fluid motion that it's disturbing. Ruggero's giant form looms closer to the girl.)
Ruggero: Resident, you will sit down, or -
Mariah: None of you understand. The only one who is receptive is Ephrain... my little lost sick boy...He's into it. He knows that the only way to guarantee immortality is to feed our lord pain. To feed them human misery.
The Truth. At last. Praise Moloch.
Mariah: You poke at their heads and pick out demons and claim that you're fixing them... but what you can't see is the sickness that infests this place, serious house on serious earth... will never go away. It is a cancer. It starts like a tumor, a tiny little cherry pit right there in your lobe, and it spreads... from organism to organism... from meat sack to meat sack... rotting them from the inside out. Only through releasing this cancer, only in cracking it open like an egg and letting it drip through can you live.
(The doctor's voice shakes, so perturbed is he at the ranting girl, spitting and pontificating across his desk.)
Shomron: Mariah, you can't possibly believe that...
Mariah: The world is broken, doctor Shomron... I know you like to think you can put the shells back together, but you're no shining hero... you are just another one that has the cancer growing inside of you...
Shomron: Mariah, I'm sorry, I feel like I've failed you a bit.
Mariah: You didn't fail me, doctor...
(She slithers onto the desk.)
Shomron: Mariah, Mariah, no!!
(She kisses him, although this part is concealed by the sudden shakiness of the camera, and then as it rights itself, the big brawn of the soldier-like body of orderly Ruggero is pulling her away.)
(She twists around in Ruggero's grasp, trying to push him off.)
Mariah: GET OFF ME!
Ruggero: You're getting a shot!!
(He fumbles for a binder with the needles and doses of tranks. He also struggles to keep her pinned down with one arm around her.)
(She grabs his body and pulls him down, taking a bite out of his neck with her teeth. Ruggero's throat immediately begins gushing blood.)
Shomron and Ruggero: (screaming)
(Video log ends, time stamp 03:42:09)
Dear diary:
This will be my last entry from this side. I'm going to an ethereal plane, reborn in blood and agony. My sweet babies, my good boys on the ward have let me pass in, and the commotion after Ruggerio's end will have them in an uproar. Perfect time for a riot. At my command they've begun flinging chairs and furniture, uprooting televisions, throwing games in the rec room. The staff can't contain them all.
Video tape, date stamp 5 of November, time stamp 04:00:01, tape # 08
(Camera shot from above, and slightly farther away down the hall. Mariah, her chin still dripping blood from Ruggerio's neck. Her hair sticking out on all sides in shocks. She looks eldritch, dark and dangerous, like a witch. She stops in front of residential room 309.)
Mariah: Ephrain. It's time.
(Video log ends, time stamp 04:00:03.)
Through dying, I will live forever. In blood, in pain. I'll give the weak, stick like body of Mariah Bamford over to Moloch as a bloodprice, an offering. Ephrain had the right idea with his wife and child all those years ago but he didn't have the energies to do it. By cutting me apart, and severing my connection to this world, he'll rebirth me into Moloch's realm. Where my body will be reconstituted with every passing bloodprice. With every ounce of pain. With every anguished, fevered cry. With every whimper for help, for release. With Ephrain, my Sick boy out there in the world, feeding Moloch, I grow stronger and stronger in Moloch's embrace, becoming immortal. The sewn together doll Ephrain keeps with him will be remade into my new, immortal, powerful body. I won't be weak anymore. I won't be the little girl who had no power, no agency anymore. The average teen, with the humdrum, expected traumas and pains of broken youth. I'll be a reborn avatar of pain and power walking the earth. I will be more than fleeting, broken, temporary. What Ephrain is giving me is the sweetest gift, that one moment when I was a girl that I fell in love with the sweet kiss of pain will be stretched out into an infinite moment, the sensation never ceasing, never dying. Bliss.
Video tape, date stamp 5 of November, time stamp 04:41:59, tape # 09
(Camera shot from overhead inside a small, cramped shed. They're in an equipment shed, out back of the facility, where the groundskeeper keeps assorted tools, including the lawnmower.)
(Mariah is laid in a pre-planned spot, a circle that has been painted with blood gushing from a bad gash on her arm. The blood has been painted into an ornate and disturbing circle of runes.)
(Ephrain has a long, flat blade in his hands, hesitating as he stands over her. It's the blade from the lawn mower, removed and held in one hand like a giant's madcap sword. However, it's not nearly as sharp.)
(It doesn't matter. From the stretched out, Christ-like position she's laid on the floor, Mariah looks up at Ephrain. She nods.)
(He brings the blade up in the beginning of an arc.)
Thank you for this gift, Moloch. The gift of forever.
(Video log ends, 04:42:03.)
