Knowledge of Oneself

I offer my condolences to anyone who may be reading this.

I am not the man you came here for, for I am but a loyal caretaker to His misgivings. His efforts, while unobtrusive to myself, leave much to be distinguished; as I cannot see the results of His work. I can only record that which has happened up unto that point — the results of His Chosen are beyond me.

The man you came here for is one Jason Miles, an behavioral analyst for the Metropolitan Police Department, of St. Louis. Regarded by colleagues as a hot-head, yet capable of his work with dizzying and uncanny proficiency.

It was this same prodigious insight that led him into His gaze, an act which sealed his fate regardless of his efforts thereafter. To become the eyes and ears of His will.

The ear-deafening cycle of a helicopter's rotors always did wonders to the man's psyche- if the pilot's habit of trying to overwhelm the noise with the cliche crackling of Creedence's 'Fortunate Son', or Flogging Molly's 'Devil's Dance Floor' wasn't problematic enough.

At least the man couldn't blame the pilot for his erratic taste, the guy was a damn mad-man and a monster with the stick.

The notion of the day was a multiple-homicide. Normally the boys would just drive up like normal folk, but the catch of the case was that it happened in the middle of the bay; on some kinda spooky corral reef that popped up. Boats couldn't get close to it without getting shredded, and going for a mile-and-a-half swim wasn't exactly at the top of the man's to-do list; so helicopter ride it was.

The metal machine slowly lowered itself down just above the cracked, uneven surface, refusing to land down as a nylon and twine ladder was tossed out and left to hang idly; awaiting whoever wanted to step up -or down as the case might be- to the plate.

Luckily the man didn't have to bolster his confidence all that much as another man, someone recognized as his Captain, Leonard Marcus, grasped onto the handholds the metal machine provided, and began his descent onto the unnatural structure. The two CSI analysts, an older woman named Rachel Jeans, and a young boy far too young to be at a scene like this, named Dirk Young; followed behind Captain Marcus.

The man was the last one to make the trek, and the feeling of the 'ground' splintering and cracking under his feet did little to aid his already doubtful mind, but what followed after would make even the most grizzled and veteran detectives hold back a bubbling brew in their stomach.

The staunch flow of blood had long since stopped spilling, instead caking the surface of the crystalline reef like a disease. The tiniest crack showed the scene frozen in time was little more than an illusion, red liquid, eerie and enticing continuing to stream below the surface of the coagulated life-water-

"Young! Watch where you're stepping, dammit! Your job is to record and preserve the crime scene, not fuck it up!" exclaimed Captain Marcus, dragging the man and his co-workers from their momentary lapse in judgement. A lapse so strong, they'd hardly noticed the most horrific sight on this alien scene.

Or perhaps the man's mind was just trying to protect itself.

What followed next was the man's breakfast; or at least it would've been if he'd had the instinct to eat. The man's senses were flooded all at once as he came to realize just what they were all looking at.

Bodies —twelve of them— mutilated horrifically and beyond measure. Entrails were stacked neatly upon emptied sacks of vaguely human-shaped skin; muscle and sinew turned into shirts, pants, and shoes for the unfortunate victims. Eyes were arranged in a circle in the center of the massacre with the bones tied by ligaments and veins into a circular pattern around the scene.

The first to break was Dirk Young, who immediately turned tail and got as far away from the scene as he could before evicting his breakfast. Rachel Jeans was more composed, more professional; and merely gave way to clasping her hands and giving the poor, unnamed souls a prayer. Captain Marcus took a breath; longer than the ones he'd take with cigarette smoke invading his lunges; and turned his eyes towards the man.

"Miles. What do you make of this? What— Who could've done this?" he asked, voice shaky and begging for answers.

Miles- That was the man's name. Jason Miles. Did he forget? No matter.

"I'm not entirely sure—" Jason started, shaking his head and clamoring onto the scene. Deftly avoiding the subtle pools of blood and covering his nose as he looked over the scene from up close. Personal. "—but something doesn't seem right, if that wasn't obvious enough."

Jason removed a pair of gloves from his back pocket, rubber and nylon, and adorned them over shaky hands, and removed a white, filtration mask from the other one; placing it haphazardly over his face as he crouched down to investigate one of the bodies.

His work was one that consisted of various 'whys.' Unlike a detective who searched for the 'who,' a crime scene analyst who searched for the 'how,' or a coroner who hunted down the 'when,' his work was abstract. It required searching through the psyche of these mad-men, these monsters, who engaged in pleasures of the flesh of a far more violent origin. A verisimilitude of the most extreme scale.

Whoever, whatever did this, was obsessive, and clean. Not a single stroke of the blade out of place, and each and every aspect of the 'pattern' this perpetrator displayed perfectly executed without a single mote of hesitation. Yet, something seemed off. This particular corpse had everything there except for its heart. Its very source of life, stripped away.

Jason stood up from the sight and wandered to one of the other victims, crouching down and repeating the same blaring process- a gloved hand moving the scene by centimeters as the sound of cameras shuttering and rotary blades spinning fogged the senses; but this one too was missing a heart. He hardly had to check the others to know they'd be the same.

Why did this monster remove all of the organs and display them in such a manner, why were twelve humans out on a undiscovered reef —or were they brought postmortem— and why did whoever did this take the hearts and nothing else?

He stood up and looked over the scene, and then at the surrounding environment- and found himself turned around, walking towards a distant spire of crystalline, organic 'something.' Hands dug into the spire and carried him upwards, the distant, almost inaudible sound of Captain Marcus's questioning being lost to him. Slowly, but ever surely like a cog in the machine, he reached the top and stood; turning to face the scene.

He understood immediately what was going on now. The bones, formed into a daunting, ankle-height cage for the corpses formed a ring, and other shapes. Shapes that were indistinguishable and unknowable, and seemingly done at random- unlike the masterful, efficient manner in which the victims were slaughtered.

"It was a ritual."

Jason woke up in his bed, a twin-size that was hardly remarkable; save for a flowery, pink and white blanket as a gift from his late wife. Being only twenty-three, calling her 'late' was hardly fitting, but that wasn't a train of thought he wanted to dwell on. The sound of an alarm blaring into his ears.

He groaned, tossing and turning for a few, bleary moments before convincing himself to fully wake- sitting off the side of his bed and forcing himself to stand, turning off the device that woke him. Only a few short paces away was what he could call a kitchen, and clothed in little more than a t-shirt and boxers; he began making breakfast. Nothing more filling than one-too-many cups of coffee and a strip of bacon.

Dressing himself was of little concern, and a shower he could hardly afford to heat offered no discomfort to easing the wounds old memories inflicted on him. Nightmares, new and old alike, stretched across his consciousness and burned into the back of his eyes, promising little to no relief. Even medication that was purported to stop dreaming did little to help.

When he'd first had that particular dream, he'd scattered into the local department asking for updates on the case- and handing in case files he'd never remembered writing down to the chief. He was treated like a madman, being assured nothing of that gruesome scale had happened at all, not the day before, and not since the department's founding- a gruesome tragedy not seen since the 1978 Jonestown incident.

The memory of the looks his coworkers gave engraved itself into his mind that day, and he hadn't lived it off yet- two years later.

Jason downed the mug of coffee in a single swig, the burning, grainy flavor coating his throat as he finished buttoning his shirt, and unlocked the two layers of protection to his apartment; a deadbolt, and a knob that could be removed if one pulled hard enough. There was a sanguine pulchritude to it all however, nobody bothered stealing from a man who had nothing.

He stepped out of his apartment, hands stuffed into his leather jacket's pockets as he shut the door behind him and turned to jog down the stairway into the parking garage. What awaited him was a Mercedes AMG 63S Wagon. A car far, far more expensive than anything he could normally afford, but was paid for by his work as long as he didn't scratch it.

He pulled the keys out from his pocket and clicked the central button, the chime of the automobile recognizing his signal ringing out. He stepped over to the back of the vehicle and opened up the trunk to see if he'd been stolen from again- immediately shocked by what he saw.

Twelve hearts, still beating, still lively, piled atop a throne of Ears that still seemed to move despite the lack of any means to. Jason roiled, falling straight on his back as his breath escaped him; the throbbing of his own heart piercing his mind as he struggled to get up- moving to grab his phone to gather evidence, however arbitrary.

Despite his best efforts, however, the scene he'd experienced ceased to exist. Missing from reality, and gone from the world. With shaky breath and watery eyes, the trunk was forced shut as he lay against the automobile, gathering what he could of his composure.

Minutes passed before he stumbled to the driver's side of his car, seating himself and pressing his skull against the headrest of his vehicle. He savored the safety the tool provided him before shutting the door, and activating the ignition. The metal machine had life breathed into it, and woke with a start- lights shining forward into the concrete wall as he put the car into reverse, pulling out of his assigned spot, and driving forward towards the exit.

The metal gate to the garage's exit slowly shuttered open, giving way to a bright, starstruck sky silhouetted by the metropolitan horizon. Jason was unnerved by this, checking the clock on his vehicle- confirming that he'd awoken at 9:00AM, as he was supposed to.

Why were the stars out?

He drove forward onto the streets of the city who's every alleyway, crooked cranny, and untoward vista he'd had the displeasure of visiting on one or more occasions, and turned to the intersection he'd waited to turn at every day for the last two years, but one thing was made blatantly clear to him.

The intersection lacked vehicles with which to use it, save for his; and it lacked lights with which to function. There was no blinking, no pedestrian walkway, no green, yellow, or red- the machine was truly and properly dead to the world. He was left to look from side to side, searching for any risk to his safety, before turning to make his way toward the police station with which he was employed.

There was little to stop him, no men or women or children who waved or cursed. The light of the town was gone with the exception of the ones his mighty steed shot forward; and it was no wonder the stars were so visible in a city as polluted with luminescence as this one.

With haste that couldn't be promised nor accomplished with the traffic he was used to, he reached his place of work- parking his vehicle near the front entrance and stepping into the building he, too, knew every inch of; and found it wanting.

Nothing, no-one, not a single insect, rat, bird, or man in sight. He checked every office, every stall in both bathrooms, the evidence locker, the chief's office, the janitor's hole, everywhere; and found nothing, no-one.

He sat in the lunch room, digging his nails into the wood table anxiously. Had he awoken from one nightmare into another, or was the first one reality, and this was all a fabrication? The opposite being true wasn't something he wanted to consider, given the implications.

He looked up and stared at the mirror across the room, and at his own reflection- ironically reflecting on his predicament. A man, looking for more aged than he truly was, with muddied brown hair tied messily into a bun; round, circular glasses fragmenting his stubbled face. He was a sorry mess right now- probably best that he wasn't surrounded by others, which was a dim light in an otherwise currently bleak reality.

With a breath, Jason stood from his seating, and began to make way towards the entrance to the building; collecting himself with every step. If nothing else, he'd make his way home to try sleeping himself back to the world he knew, but what came of exiting the department was not what he'd expected.

He opened the door to the building and instinctively stepped out- onto a grayscaled precipice which dropped into the ocean, stones and rubble dropping into the pitch-black liquid and turning into balls of white starlight. He stared in shock at what he'd walked into, and carefully turned to go back to where he came from; only to find the structure had disappeared and gave way to an empty canvas of stone and grass tufts, a single, additional man now in view.

At first, Jason was happy to see another human being; but quickly realized his happiness was misplaced. Something off, something horrific, something inexplicable wafted from this 'man' in waves, a cracked; nigh broken mask covering the creature's face with otherwise opulent coats and scarves covering their body. A single step was taken forward by this... thing, and a single step was taken back by him.

He could hear words, but could not understand their meaning. He could see things around this entity, but could not make out their shape. He was trapped against this cliffside leading down into a starstruck void as the entity approached. Slowly, gently, ambitiously and without hesitation. Perfectly, and without pause.

He could feel a breath at his neck, and yet this creature did not breathe. He stared into an empty mask, devoid of eyes or features, and hardly twitched as a hand was pressed to his chest- but that quickly turned to desperation and fear as this thing began pushing him closer to the edge, closer to the abyss, closer to The End. He grasped at its arms, at its face, at anything at all; and yet he could not touch it, despite it doing so to him.

...Jason screamed, and yet no noise followed his fleeting resistance, and with a single push, he was drawn and quartered; flung into the dark. He could only watch as the entity became distant, and the gray stone became a vertical walkway that he could not traverse; and suddenly, he was surrounded by darkness, and almost as immediately, he was surrounded by stars.

In all directions, dots of white, like eyes staring into his soul. He could not move, yet he was not drowning. Floating, yet immovable, in an inescapable unreality.

He was given little time to rest, however, and an invisible force yanked him from his stillness- and those white dots passed him and were replaced by others faster than he could process. A booming, intangible voice echoed in his skull and engraved itself in his psyche yet he could not understand a single word.

Soon, the stars were gone, and there was nothing but black. Soon, there was nothing but a distant, but visible dot of blues and greens, coming ever closer. Soon, there was once more nothing but black; and raising his arms to his face revealed nothing at all.

Soon, there was nothing but a voice. Grating, but silky, a language he could hear and know. He woke to violet eyes and sky blue fur, the most beautiful colors he'd ever seen.

"Answer Trixie! Are you alive, ape?"