Late one evening, as I sipped from a warm cup sitting in my evening chair,
A scratch, or knocking. Like branches and claws upon my back door.
Long crimson drapes guarded the glass, from all observation,
So I listened to the sound, sceptical of its origins and purpose.
The sounds did not abate, but moved outside in my yard. Circling.
At each window in turn, and louder each time, wild and persistent.
My cup had grown cold, and still I sat and listened.
I imagined what kind of aberrant beast it could be, species of terror.
At the back door, a second time, it stopped and I waited...
Silence hung in the air like a heavy damp cloth, and I waited.
In complete silence I stood, and crossed my sitting room to the door,
The curtain pulled aside ever so slightly, I gazed outside holding my breath.
The landing outside held no great dragon, but a terrifying chimarae.
A creature of the size of a hound, with a crimson coat of shining fur.
Like a hare, with great ears and rear legs, and shining black eyes,
Great horns, like twisted oak branches, grew from its head.
It regarded me indifferently, devouring a portion of my wicker chair,
Torn pieces of it were scattered across the balcony, the remnants.
As I watched, it took notice of me and slowly got onto all fours.
One large foot rapped the patio once, and the glass door shattered.
I leaped back, falling onto my chair and spilling my table and drink,
The creature entered the room in a flash of red to stand in front of me.
Cold intelligence gleamed in his eyes, as he assessed my startled self.
Then he greeted me, using the dead tongue of the Annukai.
He called me a scribe and lauded me for my previous works of fiction,
Appraising my bookshelves, stacks of manuscript and curiosities.
He bid me to take comfort, and to take up the pen and paper of my trade,
To drink my hot tea and sit back in my chair and listen to his tales.
His manner was that of a nobleman of bygone era, filled with wisdom,
So I did as he bid, and wrote for him, of the things the hare said.
He asked to be called Zoloft, and I gave him my name in return,
And he began his story, with the end of a world greater than mine.
He came from Yzederrodex, once the greatest of all cities, home of a god.
The capital of the First, of a scale and grandeur impossible to record.
The One God resided here and it was the centre of the Dominions,
The shining twin of Ra'lygh thought to be immortal and impervious.
But the clock of Armageddon struck noon for the great city,
And a son was to return to the father and bring death and annihilation.
He told of this world, next in turn for that terrible clock, of our end.
He spoke of beauty like the glorious, and hidden, Shield of Oceans,
Origins of terrible fetishes like the Corpus Occulli, the zombie's eye,
Of the shaded paths to Anhkor, and the sunken city of Dagon.
Each of the clock's symbols I wrote into the growing tome, each ending.
Mapped the sacred design of the nexus grid and sites of the ancients,
From Khufu's Tomb to the lost cities, I wrote what the hare told me.
Into the early morning he spoke of myth, artifice and the gods who watch.
And as pages were filled, and the story passed from Aramaic to Greek,
Into Sylvan, Draconic, Atalantean, and those I do not have name for,
I felt my self slip away like pages in a breeze and I start to worry.
Each page wrote itself faster, each tale more intriguing than the last.
Less I could remember, my memory slipping into the void faster,
The Codex forms hundreds of pages, each a slice of the scribe who writes,
Each a maddened mystery, the Rapture, the secrets of the apocalypse.
He tells the scribe of the fall of the Great Veil, when magic returns
The scribe shudders as the hare describes the rupture of society.
The scribe wrote of the Great War, and of the long death of Earth.
He soothed his nerves with words of the rebirth of the Fifth, of survival.
But the scribe was not disturbed, nor agitated, by the hare's tales,
Not a single piece of self was left and the dream began to fade to grey.
The Codex Psychosia was upon the scribe's desk, bathed in the light of Ra.
And the scribe sat unable to think, or to do, or to be, clear as glass.
The tome would travel with fate, or it could be consigned to flame,
It is Pandora's shadow, knows of Lilith's Kiss, and steals life.
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