Fermenting Terror
Sometimes I get remarks from people I know about how I haven’t grown much through the vicissitudes of pleasures, pains, and sneers.
“Some things change but Jairo, he’ll be the same for years”.
I laugh and give them the finger guns, make some clicking noises.
I’ll tell them I just know what I like. Because how could they ever fathom the truth of my foolish choices.
My secret is in plain sight. Sitting right there in the kitchen of my house.
Many moons ago I tampered with forces beyond my understanding, idiocy I did espouse.
I read the books. They were easy to find, most everything is nowadays.
Originally it was only out of curiosity, but as I read my pride erupted into a blaze.
“What do these people know that I do not?!”
“I can do this myself, I’ll put together the ingredients that time forgot.”
So I set about my errand, and had to gather the resources.
There was only one place I could go, the house of sorcerers who dispensed powerful forces.
Bearded men did greet me, and they had all manners of equipment, reagents, and insidious creatures.
I described to them my goal, and if they knew I was a fool, they did not show it on their features.
Happily they sold me the materials I required: dormant ravenous animals, the fluid extracted from living corpses, and grains of sin.
I left there with my hubris on full display, how could I help but grin.
That night was dark and brooding, a gift I thought.
Whether it was my inexperience, naivete, or ego I know not, but ne’er did I get the results I sought.
I spoke the words of power in a hurry, I did not care to keep in mind my quarry, and I haphazardly measured the components.
Worst of all I dropped the final piece into the concoction by accident. No matter I thought, as the liquid dripped from my clothes back into the cauldron. “I have all but bested this opponent”.
I stared into the pot and it bubbled and gurgled as if it was trying to tell me something of great importance in a language I did not understand.
My eyes gleamed with the reflection of my dark victory. But soon I would see the full breadth of what my blunder would command.
The first half of the ritual was over, and the second would take weeks before I could, in my delicious mixture, partake.
But I never would. Perhaps it was the pieces of my dead skin that the brew did take.
But I found myself robbed of my agency, despondent, and lethargic. A sorry state.
I should have opened the vessel soon thereafter, but dear reader, it’s been years since that day and I don’t remember laughter.
It sits in my kitchen still, collecting my worries, anxieties, and fears.
It has imparted on me something I could not foresee. My nails have stopped growing, my hair stays at the same length, even my bowels do not move.
Hunger is but a memory, thirst seems like an old dream. I have long ago decided this calamity I could not disprove.
The truth is I am trapped in this body, in this state, unable to move on, to realize my fate.
The potion that I tried to make took something from me on that night, I realized too late.
A piece of me, one of the most important. My soul, my humanity. It’s robbed me of living but gifted me an eternity.
And still, I dare not open the lid to that ethereal beverage. Will the years of pause suddenly come rushing to my unsuspecting body?
Sometimes, on sleepless nights I can hear a hum emanating from the receptacle and my dreams turn to waking nightmares as I feel the severance of heart and mind.
I have visions of what I think may be lurking inside, a horrible mixture of magicks, spirits, and flesh that I did enshrine.
To look upon it myself would be too much to bear, and so it sits in my kitchen, never to be drunk by mortal hands.
But instead it has imbibed mine own psyche. My body now is but a puppet and my true self swims in the golden dark depths of the beer I brewed then neglected due to life’s demands.