Electricity: A Homage to the Doktor

EDITOR'S NOTE

The following is an abridged chapter from a forthcoming collection of stories by Antonin Alexander of Zürvana, reprinted here with the permission of the author with much thanks and appreciation.

The story has been written to accompany an album by Zürvana entitled Electricity, the title track of which may be listened to at Zürvana's MySpace page. Both the story and the album were inspired by the work and thought of Dr. LaVey, Nikola Tesla, and Wilhelm Reich.

This story may not be reproduced, republished, duplicated, or distributed without the express permission of Antonin Alexander.

"All obtuse angles are magically harmful to those unaware of this property.
The same angles are beneficial, stimulating, and energizing to those
who are magically sensitive to them."
— Anton LaVey, Law of the Trapezoid

We live in a world of objectivity and reason. We see what we see with our naked eyes and accept what we see as real. We accept it as true, without question nor the slightest hint of hesitation. There is not even the tiniest glimmer of doubt in our minds that what we see may indeed be false. We do not consider for a second that there may very well be a truth behind the lie that presents itself before our eyes as the mirage of the real. And that is exactly what it is, what this thing, this illusion we believe and understand to be reality is. A mirage. But like any mirage, if you dare stare at it long enough, like the skeptic who studiously contemplates the magician pulling the proverbial rabbit out of his hat, you may well discover that there is much more to the mirage than meets the eye. So much more. Be careful, dear reader, before you choose to continue, for when you have finally pulled aside the velvet veils that shroud this world of secrecy and shadow, there can be no turning back. What I present to you is wisdom as real and raw as the blood that rushes forth through your veins, and the secret behind the diabolical power that possesses and sustains us, the secret behind all the magic and the mystery of miracles and the ultimate source of life itself. Electricity.

I first met the Doctor on a cold, foggy September night in San Francisco, one of those frigidly chilly nights that seemingly appear out of the blue after a blisteringly hot, dreary day of sunshine and sweat. While I had never met the Doctor before, I had sustained a long and fruitful correspondence with him over the course of several years, which first began during my second year of undergraduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. I had been pursuing a double major in Electrical Science and Engineering, but had found the atmosphere of undergraduate work unchallenging and dull. My professors knew and realized this all too well, as they were quick to acknowledge my prodigious talent, but the faculty was unwilling to allow me to progress at a more rapid pace. Thus, I spent much time pursuing my studies on my own outside of class, immersing myself in experiments of my own invention in the university laboratories after dark, which the night security guard was gracious enough to allow me access to, though not without significant recompense. But it was well worth it, for it was during one of my experimental forays into the arcane sciences of electromagnetism that I first discovered a most unusual phenomenon, and quite by accident.

One of the greatest discoveries in all of electrical science was the revelation by James Clerk Maxwell in 1873 that electricity and magnetism are not two separate forces, but a single, unified force. It is precisely this force which is behind every single physical interaction in the world, and thus was born the dynamic concept of electromagnetism. From the innocent days of my childhood, to even now in my long-lived adulthood, it has fascinated me to no end that behind every movement in the world, behind each and every cause and each and every effect, there is the biodynamic flow of electricity connecting and directing everything together. But that night in the laboratory I was to discover something even more fascinating, an electrical reaction which I could never have thought possible, not even in my most wild and torrential postulations.

I had been working for months upon a bioelectrical generator designed to measure and regulate the flow of electricity from the body and convert it into a usable form. In other words, what if the electricity generated by the human body could power something so simple as a light bulb? You may think this, dear reader, to be a ridiculous concept, particularly ridiculous in light of its apparent simplicity, but then you would be guilty of not having much at all of an imagination, for the possibilities in such an invention would literally be limitless. The body is an incredible conductor of electricity, and if we could understand that power and harness it, we might very well have the key to surviving well beyond our years, not to mention the many other numerous advances that could be had for the medical sciences, from more effective cancer treatments to curing mental illness without the need for drugs. That then was the intent, the original intent I should say, behind those early experiments of mine in bioelectromagnetism.

But on that fateful night, the discovery I made was of such a magnitude that it startled me to no end, shattering my sense of objective reality and forcing me to ask questions I had never dared ask before. For after I had made some arbitrary modifications to the generator, and I stress that they were indeed arbitrary for I had simply wanted to test to see if things were working as efficiently as they should be, I placed my hands upon the twin steel conductors and as I felt the flow of electricity rush throughout me and into the Tesla coil to which the generator was connected, the charge gradually grew to such an intensity that the coil raged forth purple sparks of electricity more powerful than I had ever witnessed before, and it was at that very moment, for whatever reason — and I cannot for the life of me relate to you why exactly this thought occured, but it did — the thought popped into my mind that I would like to see a line of electricity attach itself to a nearby metal chair and no sooner had that thought entered into my mind that a spark of electricity exploded out from the coil into a jagged line that grabbed hold of the chair and electrified it and as I gazed upon this sight in disbelief, my concentration upon the chair growing more and more intense, that within an instant the chair had obliterated itself into a floating mass of visible atoms, the reaction of which with the electricity sent a massive charge back to the coil, through the generator and into me. At that point, dear reader, my hands literally blew off the conductors of their own accord in a shockwave of magnetic heat and I was sent reeling down to the floor, my head slamming against the cold, hard surface and my vision dissipating into a miasmata of unconsciousness and dream.

When I next awoke, I found myself lying in a hospital bed with a doctor and nurse hovering above me, the doctor flashing a light into my eyes and asking me how I felt. I felt fine, I told them, and in fact, I felt finer than fine. I felt like I was more alive than I had ever felt before, to which the doctor and nurse glanced at each other a number of times, which for some reason I found appallingly stupid. I had posed the question, something along the lines of, “Why are you looking at each other like that and then at me?” and their response was that my body had shown signs of having been thunderstruck. “What? Excuse me?” was my initial reaction. Not only had I been thunderstruck, according to the doctor, but I had suffered a lightning strike of such a degree and extent that had never been recorded or witnessed in all the lofty annals of medicine. In fact, the doctor shared with me, I should be dead and burnt to a crisp. And not only that, not only had I suffered this magnificent lightning strike of diabolical precision and intensity, and here is the anomaly, the doctor had said, and he placed a great amount of stress upon the word “anomaly,” I had not been found outdoors, nor had there been any lightning reported the night I had been discovered by the campus security guard. No, I had been found lying unconscious in one of the university labs, half of the room a smoldering mess and the room so charged with electricity that anyone entering could feel an acute tingling all over their skin. Furthermore, all the equipment in the room, including my precious generator, was left ruined beyond repair. Suffice it to say, the university went to great lengths to ban me from ever utilizing those laboratories ever again. Fortunately, they had decided not to expel me for my unauthorized experimentations, but not without a generous “donation” from my family in order to “set things right,” according to the university dean. It should be of no surprise to you, dear reader, that my parents themselves were displeased with my endeavors to no end and were severely adamant in their demands that I cease and desist any future experiments. My father, himself an electrical engineer and physicist of the highest caliber, had sternly advised me not to tamper with the delicate fabric of the electromagnetic field. Alas, all good things must to come to an end and like so many others before me, I was punished for the sin of discovery through curiosity.

But, this is only the very beginning of our story. While I could no longer conduct my radical experiments into the mysterious realms of bioelectricity, nor did I wish to push things any farther than I had already pushed them, and even if I had wanted to push those sensitive boundaries any farther than I already had, I was unable to for the very simple fact that I had no money and even worse, no laboratory willing to grant me the freedom to pursue my experiments. But I was determined not to abandon hope, and to continue my theoretical research unhindered and unabated by these medieval minds of mediocrity. And it was in those many countless hours of research in the library, poring over vast tomes and bibliographies of articles and research papers, attempting to find some shred of evidence that what I had experienced was more real than real, that it was not all my imagination but fully real phenomena that could be replicated in the most rigorous scientific processes, that I came across the work of the Doctor. Doctor Anton Lavius, to be exact. "The Doctor," as he wished to be called, a fact I was to discover through our lengthy and illuminative correspondence, had penned a research paper that had proven most controversial amongst his peers, entitled “The Occultic Manifestations of Bioelectric Manipulation.” In this paper, the good Doctor had detailed the results of the practical applications of his theory concerning the relation of bioelectric manipulation of subatomic particles to supranormal phenomenon. To put it in layman’s terms, the Doctor had claimed to discover that the secret behind all manner of paranormal phenomena lay in the secret behind the source of all life energy. Again, as before, electricity.

The Doctor had performed these grand experiments in a vast laboratory he had set up in New Mexico, originally for the purpose of capturing and manipulating lightning during electrical storms. Much of his research had been funded by the government and the results of which appeared to have been so staggering that when he dared go public as he did with the discoveries he had originally laid out in his paper, the authorities quickly took action, sparing no expense in their efforts, confiscating his laboratory and all of his equipment and any and all evidence of his results. They had condemned him as an eccentric, a mad scientist run amok, and he returned quietly to his home in San Francisco. Reading the story of his life, I could not help but identify so closely with a man whose genius had been so ignored and maligned by the popular press and having been forced to suffer the indignations of a public so infinitely stupid that all they could do was mock and ridicule him. Most assuredly this was a man so far advanced in his knowledge and so far beyond his years in intellect that I have no doubt he is a prophet in the strictest definition of the word.

I wasted no time in writing to him and in my first letter, lengthy as it was, I described for him my experiments and the results thereof, and to my elated surprise, he responded just as quickly as I had written him. I had very much wished to meet him in person, but of course due to my scholastic commitments I was unable to, not to mention the fact that I literally had no money of my own and my parents would never have sanctioned such a trip to visit a man whom my father had derisively termed “the eccentric of the century.”

The Doctor had demonstrated great interest in my experiment and had even heard of the resulting incident from an old and trustworthy colleague in Boston, and had I not contacted him first, he informed me, he most certainly would have initiated correspondence himself, for there were so few out there in the world who had shared such an active interest in the field of bioelectric mechanics. In those early letters he had strongly advised me to keep my interests hidden and to study and work in secret, and most especially to keep my association with him to myself, for to pursue such work publicly and to be openly connected with him would certainly bring upon myself the collective wrath of the self-appointed demagogues of the scientific community. When the time was right, he wrote me, then would we be able to work together and finish what he had begun so many years before.

And so, over the next few years as I completed my undergraduate studies and transitioned into graduate work, the Doctor and I continued our correspondence, sharing with each other ideas and theories and concepts beyond the limitations of what was being pursued in academia, and upon earning my Masters of Science and gaining increased respect and recognition for both my mainstream research and my work as a teacher, I entered my doctoral phase with such a wide latitude of freedom that for the first time since those early clandestine experiments of my undergraduate term, I was able to put into practice a number of the theories that the Doctor and myself had been formulating over the course of many years, and the results so far exceeded our expectations that not only did I achieve my doctorate with shatteringly resounding success, but I also was able to secure a lucrative position as a senior research scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

At first learning of this news, the Doctor sent me a proudly beaming letter of congratulations and lauded my achievements, for I had, unbeknownst to the world at large, proven many of the Doctor’s most controversial theories to be true, though full vindication of his name had still yet to be attained, such was the stubbornness of the establishment in admitting their error. But the Doctor, ever the cynical optimist, had long since risen above the mundane cares of society, nor did he crave the slightest bit of acknowledgement from those who had wronged him. Their days were numbered, he told me, and in time they would be remembered by no one, for they have achieved nothing of lasting value, while his name would be preserved and cherished by generations to come, those children of the future who would live to appreciate the technologies that would come to exist due to his work.

As the barriers to our silent partnership had long since become obsolete, the Doctor had cordially invited me to visit him at his residence in San Francisco prior to beginning my commitment at Los Alamos, and it was with great excitement and anticipation that I duly accepted. Upon first exiting the taxi cab outside his residence in the Richmond District on that cold September evening, what struck me immediately was the house, a black edifice of sinister design recalling the architecture of a long lost and forgotten era, which stood in stark contrast to the surrounding homes, all of which were painted in light, pleasantly comfortable hues and sterile by comparison. The Black House, as it was known, evoked a strange impression of forbidden hedonism and mystery, as if the building were an organism unto itself, alive and breathing, unmasking the feigned sterility and cleanliness surrounding it, revealing the corruption that lay just beneath the shiny veneer of modernity.

As an interesting aside, the cab driver had been reluctant to let me out, inquiring with more than a hint of caution if this was really where I had wanted to come. When I queried him as to his concern, he told me in no uncertain terms that the Black House had a notorious reputation as a sordid den of iniquity, which for San Francisco was saying a lot. He had heard horrible rumors of devil worship and human sacrifices and all other manner of atrocities conducted in the name of the Dark Lord. I assured him that this was all quite silly and ridiculous, as the house was home to one of the most brilliant scientific minds of the twentieth century, and I had carefully advised him to not give such absurd rumors any more weight than they deserved, which of course, was none. His response was that I should accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and that he would be more than happy to return me to my hotel. At that, I bade him goodnight and promptly exited as he began shouting to me that he would pray to Jesus to protect me and keep me from sin, but I shut the door before he could finish.

As I opened the entrance gate and slowly walked up the steps to the porch, taking my time to savor the feeling that I was gradually crossing a threshold into a different time and place, the front door opened and standing there before me was a woman, smiling brightly in her charm, tall and blonde and voluptuously curvaceous, dressed to the nines like a femme fatale from the most exquisitely decadent film noir. I was caught practically speechless, returning her smile but taken aback by her presence which I had not been expecting and even further astounded by her beauty, which at once radiated subdued eroticism and unabashed lust, and my eyes could not help but wander towards her immaculately shaped thighs, shrouded in nylon and garters, which did nothing to help dissuade my wandering gaze. At the sight of my blatantly leering eyes, her smile only brightened even further and she stretched out her hand, which I shook, and introduced herself as Belladonna, assistant to the Doctor and his lifelong companion. She invited me inside and led me down a dark, narrow corridor lit only by candlelight and then into a vast, opulent windowless room which I assumed to be the living quarters, the walls painted entirely purple. The atmosphere was thick and rife with the spirit of memories of a past that continued to thrive in the present.

Belladonna beckoned me to sit down on the sofa and as I did so, she said that the Doctor would appear shortly and she politely excused herself. Soon afterwards the bookshelf on the wall opposite the sofa slowly revolved open, catching me off-guard, and out of the shadows the Doctor gradually made his presence known, smiling a fiendishly devious smile, obviously relishing the sight of my startled reaction.

“I suppose you weren’t expecting that, were you?” the Doctor asked me in sardonic jest.

“No, I definitely wasn’t expecting that, sir,” I responded with laughter. It was clear to me then, as it had been through his letters, that this was not a man who lived his life in dour seriousness, but a man whose appearance and behavior belied his advanced age. He was tall, an inch or two taller than myself, and with his shaved head and goatee he projected what I can only describe as a Mephistophelean appearance. For some inexplicable reason, I was reminded of the character Ming the Merciless from those old Flash Gordon comics.

“What’s this ‘sir’ business? We’ll have none of that. As you know, everyone just calls me ‘Doctor,’ so if you have to call me something, that’ll do. In the old days, they used to call me ‘Tony,’ if you can believe that. But not anymore. Would you like a drink?” he asked me.

“Sure. What are you drinking?” I responded, unsure of what I felt like drinking and still trying to adjust myself to the unusual atmosphere of the house. The outside world felt like a million miles away.

“I’m drinking bourbon.”

“Well, I’m drinking what you’re drinking.”

“God bless you," he responded with an ironic tone. "You’re certainly one of the Devil’s own. Follow me,” he said as he made his way back towards the hidden doorway behind the bookshelf.

I followed him down a long spiraling staircase which led into a room in the basement that had been converted into a seedy bar and lounge, and again there was the sense of evocation, being transported to a different time and place, something out of Los Angeles sometime during the 1940s, when that wicked metropolis was haunted by the restless spirits of those who dreamt such grand dreams, only to have had them stolen and broken, leaving them with nothing but the bitter memories of what could have been, but never would be. The stuff that tragedies are made of.

The Doctor motioned for me to sit down in a lush leather chair off in a shady corner as he went behind the bar and returned with a bottle of bourbon and two glasses, which he promptly filled as he took a seat opposite mine. We raised our glasses in a toast to our mutual success and vindication, and after taking a long, luxurious sip, the Doctor sat back in his chair with his glass clasped firmly in both hands, and his gaze firmly centered upon mine, as if in contemplation.

“At long last we meet. It has, as I’m sure you’ll agree, been far, far too long,” the Doctor began, speaking slowly, and it must be stressed that when he spoke, his voice carried with it a peculiar quality, a level of heaviness, a tone of timelessness, that I suppose can only be experienced in order to be understood. “But, as the old saying goes, all good things come to those who wait, and such a wait has been to our mutual benefit.”

“Yes, Doctor, I cannot but wholeheartedly agree. I would’ve loved, of course, to have met you in person years ago, but as you yourself wisely suggested, it could’ve been detrimental to my academic career. I still cannot believe that would’ve been so, but considering reactions towards your work … well, it doesn’t make any sense.”

“No, it does not. But then again, I’ve long since ceased to be surprised by the irrationality of human beings, even those who deign themselves to be so rational and reasoned, such as our good friends in the scientific community. Atheists in name, but their actions reveal them to be as blindly zealous as the most ignorant Christian.”

“Why are they so afraid of you and your work? I never could understand that.”

“It’s simple, really. They fear what they cannot understand, and it is a fear as strong as the fear a religious man might have towards the fear of the darkness, both within himself and without. Why does the Christian fear the Devil? Is it that the Devil is evil, or is it that the Devil represents all that the Christian has been conditioned to fear, the carnality of the flesh, the sin of temptation and even worse, giving into those temptations. But all of this is academic. The simple fact is that they are afraid. Let me elucidate further. Take the two of us here, sitting across from each other in this room, enjoying a glass of bourbon and engaged in pleasant conversation. Do you agree that this true, that we are right here, right now sitting across from each other in this room?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Really? Are you sure about that?”

And at that moment I realized that the Doctor was not, in fact, sitting across from me. His chair was empty. This was disconcerting to me not so much because he was longer there, but because it suddenly came over me that I was now unsure if he had been sitting there to begin with. I felt a tap on my shoulder and I turned around, nearly jumping out of my seat and spilling a bit of my drink.

“My apologies, dear friend, for startling you so. The Devil is after all a prankster of the highest order,” he said apologetically, as he once again took a seat across from me.

“I don’t understand. What on earth just happened?”

“Exactly! You don’t understand, and you are afraid precisely because you do not understand what had just occurred. You asked yourself, at the very instant I no longer appeared before you, if I had even been sitting there to begin with, yes?”

“Yes, I … well … right,” I said, with some bit of resignation. To say that I was confused would have been an understatement.

“Ah, you see there, my friend, that you have already begun to give up, that you allow yourself so quickly to sigh in surrender. It’s an unconscious reaction, a result of the conditioning we have all been subjected to from the time we were children. But that is exactly the reaction of the scientists who fear what they cannot possibly comprehend. Unlike yourself, however, they are unwilling to take the time to allow themselves to open their minds up to the possibilities that may very well be revealed before their eyes.”

“What exactly did happen? You weren’t sitting there at all, were you?”

This elicited some bit of laughter on his part. “You already know the answer to that question, even if you don’t realize it just quite yet. Let me ask you something. Do you feel any differently in this room than you did when we were upstairs, or even better yet, do you feel any differently here than you did before you entered this house?”

“Well, yes, definitely.”

“What is it that makes you feel different?”

“I’m not sure. But when I stepped inside the house, I could feel a thickness in the air, and down here, it’s even thicker. I don’t know if that makes sense.”

“It makes perfect sense, and you are absolutely correct. Indeed, I believe it is high time I reveal to you what you have been waiting to witness all these years, the final piece of the puzzle that will bring all the work you have been conducting full circle. The enigma of electricity. So, if you are ready, follow me once more and let us see what there is to see.”

At that he got up and I followed him, this time to the other end of the room, opening a red door which revealed yet another staircase, this one in stone. We descended down the stairs for what felt like forever, the thickness in the air becoming more and more apparent, as if it were an entity unto itself, surrounding and ensnaring us. It was very dark, the only light emanating forth from a couple of candles that were at the very bottom. When we finally reached the end, we were presented with a massive slab of an iron door which the Doctor opened without any effort whatsoever. At this point my heart was beating at a rapid pace and my breath was erratic. I had no idea what I was expecting, but nothing could’ve prepared me for what I was about to encounter on the other side.

The Doctor asked me to wait a moment at the doorway and he stepped into complete and utter darkness and I quickly lost sight of him. And then, a few moments later, I heard the sound of a very loud switch and almost simultaneously a number of massive area lights flashed on, all of them arranged in a circular fashion, revealing an ominous chamber of cavernous proportions. In the center was illuminated the most bizarre contraption I had ever seen. It was in the shape of a trapezoidal pyramid, tall and imposing, and made of a very shiny metal alloy. The Doctor informed me that it was an electromagnetic generator of his invention, but the design, the shape and the form of the thing was such that it conjured images of something from an alien world. Even though it was metal, there was nothing to indicate that it was a machine, and all along the side were strange, arcane symbols that had been etched into it. They looked like they could be letters, but not from any human alphabet that I had knowledge of.

I stood there before it, gazing at it in awe, hundreds of questions swirling about in my mind, not least of which was how exactly had this thing been built, how had he even brought it down here? As I moved in for a closer inspection I could not even detect any hint that it had been constructed. Aside from the etched symbols, there were no detectable lines whatsoever, as if the thing were simply a solid block of metal. As I had been pacing around the machine, it soon dawned on me, focusing my gaze to the physical area, that the entire chamber itself had been fashioned in the shape of a pentagon. Trapezoids and pentagons, shapes and forms, lights and shadow. I was bewildered. I suddenly realized that the Doctor had been observing me this whole time, and he was clearly amused by my astonishment. I wanted to ask him a multitude of questions, but I would not have even known where to begin, and it was clear that he recognized this fact.

The Doctor then asked me to stand next to him inside a trapezoid that had been carved into the stone floor, which directly faced the machine. He smiled and asked if I was ready to begin, and I nodded nervously, still speechless and for the first time I felt myself gripped by a stiflingly irrational terror that I couldn’t place, but the Doctor placed his hand on my shoulder and told me not to fret and that everything would be fine. “There is nothing to fear, my friend. Face the Darkness, face it face-to-face, and I assure you, the Dark will reveal itself to be a most friendly place,” he had said. I will never forget those words, as to this very day they continue to haunt me in how right he had been.

He then turned his eyes towards the machine in almost solemn contemplation, his hands clasped. He closed his eyes, and then after a moment, he opened them and stepped forward to the very tip of the trapezoidal symbol we were standing in. It was then that he began what I soon realized, to my unraveling horror at that time, a ritual of a very infernal nature. With his arms outstretched, his voice bellowed forth, echoing throughout the chamber, creating an effect that sent chills down my spine. I literally could not believe my ears nor my eyes, that I was standing here witness to this greatest of scientific minds, engaged in arcane rites of diabolism!

“In the Name of Satan, Prince of the Earth, Lord of the Light and the Air, God of the World, the Uncreated Creator, the Immovable Mover, I invoke thee! In your Name do I command the forces of Darkness to bestow upon me all the raging might of their Infernal Power! I invoke thee, Satan, Angel of Fire, Master of the Secrets of the Bornless Flame! I invoke thee, in your Name do I command the Opening of the Nine Gates of Hell! Arise from your eternal abode in the Infinite Abyss to greet me as your Brother and fellow Companion of the Flame! Come forth and manifest! Answer to your Infernal Names!”

With each invocation one after another reverberating throughout the chamber, I began to feel an overwhelming sense of dread, that something was beginning to make its presence known. As much as I wanted not to believe it, the infernal machine that stood before us seemed to turn on, the sound of gears slowly shifting and turbines gently setting forth into motion.

“Oh hear the Names! Abaddon! Arimanes! Asmodeus! Azazel! Azrael! Beelzebub! Behemoth! Belial! Dagon! Demogorgan! Diabolus! Dracul! Hecate! Iblis! Leviathan! Lilith! Lucifer! Mammon! Malak Taus! Moloch! Samael! Set! Shaitan! Typhon! I summon thee forth, Satan! Arise forth from the depthless oceans of infinity! Arise!”

At this last command a massive bolt of lightning struck the tip of the trapezoidal machine and caused an explosion that filled the chamber with a sudden flash of light. The machine literally roared to ignition with a thunderous cacophony of noise and the light quickly dissipated before our eyes to reveal at the tip of the machine what I can only describe as a roiling ball of sparkling electricity. It was at this moment that I realized that at each of the four corners of the machine were four towers of electrical conductors that I had not noticed before. Lines of electricity sparked forth from the ball to each of the four towers, connecting them all together in the most intense display of light and shock that I had ever stood witness to. At this point my heart was pounding faster than I could think and the Doctor himself seemed to have become possessed by a force of an order of magnitude greater than anything I could have imagined possible. Standing there in front of me, he seemed to have become a purple shadow, illuminated and given life through the emanating light of the electricity.

“The Spirits of the Fourth Angle are Nine, mighty in the Trapezoid, whom the First hath formed, a torment to the wretched and a garland to the wicked, giving unto them fiery darts to separate the earth, and Nine continual workmen whose courses comfort the Earth, and are in command and continuance as the Second and Third. Therefore, harken unto my voice! I have spoken of you, and I have moved you in power and presence, whose works shall be a song of honor, and the praise of your God in your Creation!”

The roar of the machine grew to such an intensity that the floor began to tremor and the ball of electricity in the space of a few moments grew to an even larger circumference. I looked down to the floor and saw, to my ever mounting horror that the trapezoidal symbol etched upon the floor was glowing a deep, pulsating red. There was another explosion of electricity from the ball and suddenly, for the first time, a gigantic inverse pentagram on the opposite end of the chamber wall was now clearly discernible, and it too began to slowly pulsate the deepest, most demonic shade of crimson.

“The Bornless Fire provides, and the thoughts within prevail! Unveil the Portals of Darkness, O Great Opener of the Way! Step forth into this cycle! Blast thou forth through the Ninth Gate of the Shining Trapezohedron, for We stand here before thee! Our blood has been offered, our sin the highest of sacraments! Appear among Men and be driven back no longer! The Great Illusion must be lifted and the Face of the Serpent revealed! Thus do I lift the veil of the Serpent and cast it forth among Men! Hear me! The Serpent lives, wild and free in the world! Unseen They walk amongst Us, and as We join Them, so We stalk the Night unseen as well, for only through the angles might We be seen, and those without see not, for their eyes are blinded by the Light of Annihilation! They are the guardians of the cycles, lurking at the threshold of Time! They take the form of Man, wearing the Mask that deceives the deceitful! Enter now, enter through the blazing Gate of the Trapezoid! Enter into the world of lies and make real the Mask of Illusion! The Twilight is come! The Twilight of the Idols! We have set the world on Fire, and through Fire shall the world be set free! Grant us the Power of Illusion! Grant us the Power of Creation! Step forth from the chasm and Become! Hail, Satan!”

The machine thundered once again and sent a shockwave so powerful that it caused my knees to buckle, but I did not allow myself to fall because I was so mesmerized by this spectacle that even though I feared what was becoming clear to me was the climax, I could not look away. The Doctor turned around towards me for the first time, his eyes red as fire, and commanded me in an ominously hollow voice to conjure my inmost desire, that which I desired more than anything else in the world. An image flashed into my mind and at that very instant, a burst of lightning exploded forth from the ball to the center of the inverse pentagram on the chamber wall and another cacophonous roar emanated forth from the infernal machine and then there was a burst of the most brilliant light, a light that was not blinding, but like that of a light that sparks all Creation.

And then there was darkness. After this entire orchestra of cacophony and noise, my ears had trouble adjusting to the fact that there was also silence. The machine had stopped doing whatever it had been doing. The gears had stopped shifting and the turbines had slowed to a halt. A thick smoke filled the air and I had not noticed it, but during the entire proceedings the artificial area lights had been off, and once again, they now came back on. The Doctor stood before me, more energized and youthful than he had appeared before, and his smile beaming with devilish delight. He said nothing.

“What … what exactly just happened?” I asked him, my voice exasperated and exhausted. There were many more pertinent and perhaps more articulate questions I could have asked, but at this point, I felt like I had just stepped out of a tsunami.

“Why don’t you take a look up there and see for yourself?” he responded, his eyes directing me to the tip of the trapezoidal machine.

I waded through the dissipating smoke and the closer I got to the machine the more I could discern a shape at the very top. But there was still too much smoke. I queried the Doctor as to what it was, and he instructed me to go to the side of the trapezoid, where I would now find a set of steps to reach the very top. To say that I was hesitant to do so would be putting it lightly. Throughout all this, I had trusted that the Doctor knew what he was doing, but after undergoing invocations of Satan and evocations of unspeakable blasphemies, I was not sure whether to assent to this request. The Doctor sensed my apprehension and reminded me once more, “Face the Darkness, face it face-to-face, and I assure you, as one friend to another, the Dark will reveal itself to be a most friendly place.”

And so I climbed those steps to the very top and what I found there caused my heart to skip a beat and my stomach sank so far down below that I thought I would pass out. For lying there on top of that infernal trapezoid, was the image I had conjured in my mind when the Doctor had demanded me to evoke my inmost desire. The desire made flesh, and she was more beautiful than I had ever dreamed. The most sublimely perfect woman I could have ever wanted or needed, and as real as real could be. I kneeled down next to her, her chest moving up and down slowly to the rhythm of her breath, and I could sense her heart beating.

“Kiss her, and she is yours, to do with as you will. Forever and ever and ever,” the Doctor had told me. And so I did.

It was at that very moment that for the first time, I had to give the Devil his due. I had faced the Darkness, faced it face-to-face, and true to his words, the Darkness had turned out to be a very, very friendly place.

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