Welcome to the Atrocissimus

Sometimes, you just need to take an old idea -- like that of the fable -- and twist it around into something new...and, given the way my mind works, invariably wicked. So, please enjoy the first installment of Twisted Fables from my dark mind! The Boy and the Bee Once upon a time, there was a boy hard at work in the blacksmith shop to which he was apprenticed. It was a hot summer day dripping with humidity and between the warmth of the day and the hellish heat pouring out of the furnace, the poor boy was drowning in his own sweat. His muscles ached from swinging the heavy hammer for hour after hour, and he was bone tired. The apprenticeship would last another five years, and he often felt trapped by it. During their noonday break, the blacksmith told the boy to remain in the shop while he relaxed inside. As the boy leaned against the anvil drinking great draughts of water, he noticed a bee bouncing against the window, trying to get back outside. The boy's kind heart felt for the be...

I've said previously I'm not a poet, and I don't write much poetry at all. The only poems I have posted here are dark ones about death and the bubonic plague, which is consistent with my overall writing. However, occasionally something will reach my otherwise morbid mind and allow in a bright ray of sunshine, so now I present you with a true rarity: a poem about late winter bird song. Enjoy! The Birds Know Something We Do Not   The birds know something we do not, With their winter-wreathed sung symphony. The birds know something we forgot: Winter’s aged now to its morbid maturity.   Though frosty still the morns may be, The birds sing as like a spring day bright, Weaving songs of warm weather harmony, Though frigid still will be the night.   From where this wisdom comes I do not know, Yet heartened by their songs my spirits are. Their spring songs say even in a driving snow: “Winter’s warming death be not now afar.” 

"And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:13)." Love truly is deathless. Love is the most potent force in the universe, one that transcends time and distance and, yes, even death. It has moved mountains and carved out nations, it has motivated and demonstrated. It has been a great, raging firestorm and it has also been a lone candle flickering in the uttermost dark. It has always been and it always will be. But what does love have to do with a plane of existence as dark and foul as the Atrocissimus? Quite a lot, actually.  There can be no horror without love because these two things are diametrically opposed. Horror is based upon torture, torment, killing, it is predicated on all nature of evil, depraved things. None of these things would be horrifying, though, if there weren't someone whose love of another was being challenged, and it is love that will allow a person to sacrifice themselves for the good of the...

I've said before that I'm no poet, but lately, I've been attracted to the idea of writing sonnets about dark subjects, like death, madness, and the Black Death. Because...well, why not? Poems about love are so cliche, don't you think? So I now present you with a somewhat less than originally titled poem about the arrival of the Plague to Europe and the horror of dying all alone... Death Sonnet One When merchants came to harbor on this day, You never knew you quickly would meet Death, You didn’t know you swiftly would drift away, And, gagging, choke a bloody last pained breath,   For below in the belly of the boat, The famished Black Death arrived to break fast, It escaped to stalk, killing all it smote,   You, alone, in your city living to the last,   In dying pain and torment in your bed, You, coughing blood, with unheard groans of pain, Lay praying for the final cold touch, said: “Let torture end and anguish stop its gain,   Let mercy be swift, blessing me once mor...

They laugh at you.  The elites of the world hold themselves to very different standards, different rules, different expectations. They make those rules and, shockingly, always seem to craft them so they enrich themselves from the rules, and in so doing, steal even more of what is yours. Your money, your time, your freedom.  They'll tell you they care, tell you everything they do is motivated by nothing but a sincere desire to serve and improve the lives of the many -- and they lie every time. They lie looking right into your eyes and never once flinch they've become so good at it. They don't care about you any more than they do an insect they might smash without another thought. They hold you in the uttermost contempt as they steal from you and laugh. They laugh at your suffering, your poverty of choices, your powerlessness. They laugh that they provide everything you need and can restrict those needs on a whim. They laugh because they have you in the palm of their hands an...

  You have been lied to about your very existence. You have been lied to your entire life. Not just your life, but the lives of your parents, your grandparents, great-grandparents, all the way back for hundreds of generations. You and everyone you know have been lied to, and everything you think is sure in the world, every piece of firm ground upon which you have built your understanding of reality is nothing but shifting sands. The world you think you live in, the world you assume to be so predictable and obvious, so mundane and average, is nothing but a thin veneer covering a much deeper, darker, dangerous world. The world you think you live in is a lie. By and large, this lie was not perpetrated upon you and your forebearers deliberately. As time went on, the knowledge of things once well-known were forgotten, and then the memory of those things became mere myth and legend. Things became shrouded in the mist, and as so often happens, were lost. You will note, however, my De...

To fully understand and appreciate the destructive path of the Atrocissimus it's vitally important to realize one important fact of human history: It's all wrong. Humans have trod upon the earth for eons longer than historians know, and human civilizations likewise arose far earlier than is believed. There was organized human civilization hundreds of thousands of years ago, ones with trade and commerce and urban centers we would recognize as ones similar, though smaller, to what the world has today. These earliest civilizations -- which withered away over time due to climatic changes, or were destroyed by invaders, or were simply assimilated by others -- had well-developed religions based upon the worship of the demons. Of course, the people didn't know these were foul creatures bent on their own torment and destruction, but since the demons had walked with the earliest humans for millennia, these civilizations accepted without question their divinity.  If the demons cum g...