H. P. Lovecraft's Cave

Oh, that I may never have taken that option that I might have remained comfortable in my naïveté - only thinking that I knew anything when in fact knew nothing. Oh to not know now what I didn't know before.

I was content with my daily life. I was doing fine watching shadows on the wall. But some wise man unlocked the shackles that bound me. He told me that this world of appearances was a meager reflection of a more real and more perfect world, bathed in more pure and illuminating light. He seemed strange and queer - in fact, dangerous. I saw no reason to doubt the reality of my world, but he said that was only because I grew up bound to this world and simply knew of no other possibility. I decided that if it was possible there was greater truth to be found it was worth the risk.

So I stood up from my chains and saw that the world that appeared to me was indeed nothing but shadows reflecting on the wall of a cave. I was disoriented but turned around to find another area of the cave where the light came from. But as I examined this area, I discovered that there was nothing but a random hedge if briars and that the light of a fire was passing through it and casting the shadow from it on the wall. But the fire was but a dying glow from mere residual embers and there was no definite shape to the briars. The random flickering and crackling of glow created mere blots of shadow and the illusion of noise that I took to be animals and people and their voices speaking to me. But there were no other people here besides myself and no rhyme or reason to what was going on.

I noticed that behind the embers was indeed an exit from the cave. It was rough and meandering. But I went out looking forward to a more perfect world that I longed for even more. It was indeed a torturous journey but I pressed forward taking my perplexity as as a measure of the lack if understanding that would yet be more than overcome by that brighter light of reality. But it was just the darkness that ever increased as I moved further and further away from the weak light of the embers back behind me.

I had discovered that I had already exited the cave for a while before I realized it. I had wandered randomly and tripped at the edge of a lake. But the surface had frozen over and some silt had been mixed in with the ice. I saw nothing but an empty cipher when I tried to look at my reflection on the surface. There was nothing to see. All the lines on the ice were not natural to it but had been scratched into it by what must have been giant claws scratching across it over time.

As I looked up, I could see that the only light was from distant stars that defied being formed in any constellation. The empty spaces of the cosmos were underlined by the fading paleness of the eternal twilight. There was no sun, no moon.

In the pale cold darklight all I could see were obtuse formations of grey rock and crystal. There was nothing of any particular shape. All I heard was the mechanical drone of static from the icy wind blowing hollowly through rocks like so much feedback.

Suddenly, I realized that I had been deceived. Worse, that I allowed myself to be deceived. I turned, hoping to find my way back to the cave before it was too late, - and then I saw the Ancient One. And I knew that I would never go back to any semblance of sanity.

I could not look away from the Great Perversity, even though my mind was slipping away. I was despairing of any illusion of dignity and meaning, I was absolutely terrified and denial could not keep up with the fresh stinging realizations that this was the real world I was told about. Yet I was laughing, laughing hysterically in the midst of tears that drained my ducts dry. I had lost my mind.

Then I saw that there were others like me, all attached to the Thing, with several of It's tentacles and antennas piercing there bodies brains. I saw tubules from It penetrating them draining their blood and body fluids and infusing them with disgusting phlegms of It's own. There faces grimaced into awful grins, reflecting a gnosis other than what the must actually possess.

Then I saw the wise man who released me in my cave, tubes going in and out of his head and belly. "See him, master, I have brought him to you", he gurgled. "Bring them," they all began screaming, "Bring to the master all bodies, all brains, all blood!"

I bolted, but too late. It was upon me instantly, and I was suddenly swallowed in terror as the tubes went into me. I was overwhelmed with an orgy if pain as the last bit of my sense of humanity faded into ubiquitous flesh.

But now here I am going back to my cave and to my fellow cave citizens. But thus time I come with an alien host that has taken me over like a marionette. I want to warn you not to believe anything without evidence and do not act on mere theoretical hopes like I did. I want you to go with your natural instinct. I must sound crazy. Please lock me up. For your own sake and mine, PLEASE KILL ME!

But what will I say? "Don't you think that we will be better people if we assume a brighter world even if we cannot find it, then becoming lax and give up inquiring?"