Inspired by the posts over at Throne of Salt and Archons March On. Big Bandwagon Energy.
1. Vilnius
Microfiche contained inside heavy briefcase found in bomb
shelter in Ukraine.
Written primarily in Lithuanian, the text of the microfiche is
the personal diary of an unnamed c.18th century officer in the
Lithuanian Armed Forces. It chronicles, with crude illustrations, his journey
across eastern Europe in pursuit of a creature he describes as ‘the mouth’.
The officer eventually tracks the mouth to outside Poltava,
where he is eaten by it. The next eight pages describe his experience of the
space inside the mouth. After the eighth page, seventeen are left blank. New handwriting
picks up in the last few pages of the book, writing from the officer’s point of
view about how different the 1950s are. The book ends with a six-page rant,
with no punctuation, on the horrors of Mutually Assured Destruction before
scrawling off into incomprehensibility.
2. Owls
Fifteen-minute-long videotape. The opening six minutes are
an elderly woman calmly discussing what she likes about owls. She is sitting
inside a screened porch, at night, with only a small white-light lamp. She
begins with discussing their ‘cute faces’ and ‘beautiful wings’, but gradually
moves into describing their ‘heaving bulk’ and ‘wise piousness’.
At six minutes and fifteen seconds, an indistinct, horse-sized
object moves past the screen behind the woman’s head, making no noise.
A minute later, she finishes talking, begins to cry, stands
up and exits the porch, and does not return.
3. Bronze
Age Collapse
Two clay tablets written in Babylonic Cuneiform. Each has
been carbon dated to c.3000 years old. Each is a poem.
The first poem describes a way to make bronze fragile
involving ‘the sea-woman’s blessing.’ The second describes a phrase that, if
read aloud, will inspire homicidal rage in listeners. The final word of the
second poem is the word in question.
The tablets were found in the office of the former Professor
of Archaeology at the University of Manchester in 1983. He had been beaten to
death by four PhD students, all of whom are still currently in prison.
4. The Rhine
Chronicle
A long, winding chronicle written in Latin, presumably
around the reign of Charlemagne’s son Louis the Pious. It was allegedly written
by Wala of Corbie, judging by commentary from later documents found with the
chronicle.
It discusses at length the appearance of a ‘white knight’
with a ‘glass face’ on the banks of the Rhine in the third year of Louis’
reign. The figure is described as being bulky, moving slowly, and carrying an
unknown banner with red and white stripes and many white stars.
5. Cats
A forum thread on AlternativeMedicineTalkspace, written by
forum user ‘88Cats’, who has apparently been raised in the same household as 88
cats. Their parents are cat-breeders, although account suggest they also appear
to be involved in community organising and various poorly described religious
movements.
After one of the cats is killed when it is hit by a car, 88Cats
comes to the forum to ask for a way to ‘help it’. Another forum user, ‘OpalCarnelian’,
sends a detailed series of posts totalling around 50000 words, which describe a
variety of rituals involving blood, gasoline, bones, invoking the name of
various underworld gods and the disclaimer that the cat will not have the same
personality when it returns.
One day later, 88Cats responds with ‘worked :)’ and closes
the thread.
6. Mona Lisa 1999
A semi-accurate forgery of the Mona Lisa, excepting the fact
she is depicted with a cut throat. Collected from a large collection of
paintings, some reproductions of older paintings, alongside a few original
works depicting contemporaneous celebrities. All have gruesome wounds.
All living people depicted died within 3 years, usually in
violent or tragic circumstance.
7. Neon Genesis
Evangelion REDUX
A DVD supposedly produced some time around 1998. Depicts a
heavily rewritten version of the cult anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion
in which a number of primary characters are cannibals. The plot spirals into
incoherence far earlier than in the original work, and characters often eat the
large monsters felled during the episodes. The original audio appears to be in Portuguese,
and the animation quality varies wildly.
The characters themselves don’t react to the internal incidences
of cannibalism, and many are written as being happier or more stable than in
the original series.
8. 17 Ways to
Improve Your Life!
A VHS tape presumably intended as a self-help product, although
produced by an amateur single-person team, as noted on the box. The primary
speaker of the VHS is a woman with a south English accent. Identification is
inconclusive due to the large rabbit mask she wears throughout the VHS. Each ‘episode’
covers a ‘method’ with which to improve one’s life.
They begin innocuously, as you may expect by now, with various
tips about public speaking, comedic timing, and ways to make friends more
easily. Episode 4 features the first instance of a monochromatic, featureless
humanoid figure standing in the apartment.
As each episode passes, the speaker’s apartment becomes more
dishevelled, the rabbit mask grimier and more threadbare, and the speaker
herself more visibly emaciated. More and more figures begin to appear in the
back of the shot, never moving or doing anything.
Around Episode 10, the host is lying prone on the couch,
rabbit mask sideways on her head to look straight into the camera. She goes on
a muffled rant about killing everyone who has wronged you and taking their
things. Nineteen figures crowd around the couch.
Episode 11 is made up of ‘guest speakers’, that is to say, strung
together clips of other self-help media.
Episode 12 appears to be filmed from a hospital bed. The host
is visibly healthier, has a new rabbit mask, and a ‘co-host’, a young woman
with a north English accent and a cat mask.
The remaining five episodes have a far lighter tone. No
further figures appear in the woman’s apartment. The episodes move away from
the self-help framing device into long, podcast-format discussions of how lying
to yourself leads you down a dark path, and asking for help is crucial to improving your situation.
The final episode is filmed by both co-hosts in a new apartment.
It’s mostly devoted to their new cat, Mr. Snuffles, and the positive qualities
of the new apartment.
9. Minutemen
Meeting 2005
A six hour long .mov file recording a meeting in a small
function hall. The file was recovered from FrontierJustice, an obscure forum
that mostly contains amateur recordings of violent acts.
A flag on the wall suggests the meeting takes place somewhere
in Arizona, although the primary speaker has an accent more consistent with
Florida. The primary speaker remains unidentified. There are around fourteen
subjects sitting in plastic chairs in the field of view, with at least six more
off-screen.
The primary speaker gives a rambling, incoherent speech,
mostly made up of castle doctrine ideology, anti-immigration rhetoric, racist dog
whistles, nationalist quips and border patrol slogans strung together with
little grammatical sense. The attendees clap enthusiastically whenever he
pauses.
At 00:14:17, the primary speaker reaches behind him to a
black violin case and produces an object. What the object appears to be changes
on a frame by frame basis between a Smith and Wesson revolver, a flute, a
matte-black crowbar and a square graphic imprinted directly onto the speaker’s
hand.
At irregular intervals, never more than 5 minutes, the
speaker says ‘how about a demonstration?’ and ‘shoots’ one of the subjects. The
subject’s place on the screen is immediately replaced by extensive visual disruptions
that render viewing the subject an impossibility.
The first six shots are accompanied by raucous applause, the
last fourteen are met with silence, although the applause continues whenever
the speaker pauses. At the end of the speech, the speaker walks into the visual
distortions. The empty stage is all that is visible for the last hour and sixteen
minutes of the video.
