The End Times Explorer

By Jukka Tuisku

"WE'RE NOT GOING TO MAKE IT!" Are we? Is the human species fated for the dustbin, and is that dustbin what will be left of this once beautiful and thriving planet? These and other questions will be contemplated by the End Times Explorer, a shut-down, shut-away, but never shut-up, Rock n Roller schlepping around like a slime mould "beneath a ruined palace of yesteryears." Aided by those who've gone before, like H.P. Lovecraft, and the venerable ole William Blake, our meta-hero probes for meaning amid all this incredibly sad waste. "I used to be such a promising alchemist," he laments. Will he resurrect himself? Relight the flame? He's starting to suspect there are dark forces controlling the outcome, pitting us against each other, or is that just Hubris in his pocket? Come inside, allow yourself to be enfolded within this doomsday device and see what might be learned together. Before it's too late.…

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543959918

Book preview

The End Times Explorer

Jukka Tuisku

ISBN (eBook Edition): 978-1-54395-991-8

© 2019. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

...cruel works of many wheels I view…-William Blake, Jerusalem.

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age. -H.P. Lovecraft, ‘The Call of Cthulhu.’

Contents

Harbinger

You’re Never Alone in a Panic

The Beast in the Cave

The Alchemist

The Outsider

The Tomb

Old Bugs

The Hound

The Unknown

From Beyond

The Lurking Fear

The End

The Whisperer in Darkness

Azathoth

The Haunter of The Dark

Supernatural Horror….

The Horror In Clay

The Shadow Out of Time

Ibid

The Thing on the Doorstep

The Colour Out of Space

The Full Shape of Hubris

The Little Glass Bottle

The Terrible Old Man

The Horror in The Eyes

Little Sunshine

The Enchanted Circle

Wheels-Within-Wheels

Phenotype

The Deadly Light

Moving by Compulsion

The Unnameable

A Fling With an Old Flame

Harbinger

You could take the subway, Howard.

H.P. Lovecraft is on the phone— it’s one of those 1920’s kind you hold like a microphone— with the separate bakelite ear-piece? It’s a good system, especially for someone with such an enormous head— long and crescent-shaped, like Mac Tonight, really.* Sonia Lovecraft is calling— your future wife, future short-lived wife. Mother is dead. Your long-suffering mother has finally gone to her resting place— the mental hospital, and then, after a few more years, off that hard ledge to her death. I will only live to suffer, are Susie Lovecraft’s final, brave words to you, and off the ledge she goes. You meet this one at a writer’s conference. Sonia, Sonia Lovecraft as she will become known, albeit ever so briefly. Now here she is on the phone, brazenly inviting you to visit her in New York City. You could take the subway, Howard. It’s a brave new world.

* I narrate in his ear— my voice is tinny.

And there you now stand outside that subway entrance— on the sidewalk already, atop a grate, mouth agog, gaping up in ‘aesthetic exaltation’ at the sight of those ‘titan blocks and sky-flung monoliths’ of that ‘great Cyclopean city.’ You undergo ‘a violent, trancelike state’ of indeterminate length. Is it wonder—? How marvelous! Did you ever think you’d be gazing upon such an uplifting prospect? Feel the warm glow of possibility welling up inside you again? Ah, to do! To see! To love—! You are 32 years of age, H.P., and this is your first love. How long should we leave you there, in that ‘true delirium of ecstasy’? How long before it turns?

What got you out in the first place? From your quasi-internment, your crypt-sharing with your very own mummy— until she got sprung, and you began to feel even more entombed. A letter, wasn’t it? You’ve been hibernating half your life away in some semi-conscious state of near-fatal lethargy, some self-induced mental quagmire— partially paralyzed, painfully recoiled, away from all light. A letter—! You were drawn out of that wretched purgatory by a letter, then hundreds, thousands of convolutions followed. Letters. You will be ranked second only to Voltaire in prodigiousness, so they will say, and they will say. They will also say that you never left a letter unanswered.

Letters are one means by which you seek to entwine us, as you yourself will be entwined in this life. One day a letter is going to break your heart. Through letters you will eventually be damned. But for now it seems letters have turned in your favour. You are enrolled into a writing circle. You meet this one at a writers’ conference— Sonia. Now look at you! You’re out—! You got yourself out. You broke free. Broke out a window and fled. Dug yourself out of that hole. Popped the lid! Lifted yourself up! Spat out the dirt!

You’re actually going to take another shot at it aren’t you? As a writer, as a human being, here in this New Olympus, the first true modern metropolis of a fearless New Century— if you discount Chicago. Torchbearer for all of humanity. Her Brand-New Colossus blazing away with a 500-candle-power gas-filled electric Lamp of Liberty. Bringer of Enlightenment to a whole planet now. To the one and the many. Seems only yesterday you were rotting away like a fish, like a corpse inside a box. Now here you are erect in broad daylight, spidery frame all jacked. Beholding the majestic wonder of a present-day Jerusalem stretching out before you. You have a small case, and an even smaller one— it contains a typewriter. She wants to see you write. She wants to hear you recount details of your life, but you can hardly recall your past. You are barely aware of the sound of the last train departing, and the sound of the next one arrive. From beneath you now come wafts of warm, stale air— up between your legs, and you gain a momentary appreciation of just how suspended you are atop that subway grate. You are 32 years of age, H.P., and this is your first relationship; of course it’s going to fail. Of course it will. But how long should we leave you there— how long before it turns?

Howard, if you go outside today you will surely frighten the neighbours. Who’s voice—? Did she really say that to you? Your own mother? Convince a boy with an already ‘sensitive disposition’ that he was a menace to society, was so hideously malformed that he might be of another species entirely? Like a bug— She points up at your head from down in her chair. Shame on her—! For wanting to protect you, H.P.. Remember finding that measuring tape at your bedside table? What was that for? I guess it was a different time. People were into phrenology back then— that was considered a science. But is that what she meant about ‘scaring the neighbours’— just your big-boy noggin? Or was it that you had the ‘look’ upon you on those days? Still, you were only a child. A child is not yet ‘disturbed.’ A child is not yet ‘haunted.’ A child is only ‘delicate’ or ‘impressionable.’ Prancing about in your velvet shorts like a young Eddie Munster. It had started that year. You were seven, eight—? Sent home early from school. It had so unnerved the teacher— that look of ‘puzzled distaste.’ She wrote home about it to your mother, all about your ‘overwhelming sense of awe that so disturbs the other children.’ Ma reads the notes with her shaky hand and crumples them away, disappears them all away. Too much! You were a spooky child, okay? Enough! Mornings when you appeared before your loving mother with that look. Enough! Horror itself to her, Howard. Horror! Remember what happened to your father—! Like a bug. She barely lifts a finger anymore.

Excuse me— There is a woman sharing your subway grate. She holds the hand of a little urchin who is drying his wet pants in the draft. Is that when you feel them—? Fleetingly at first, just the touch of them against the back of your knee. Is it the coarseness of their fabric? Brushing past you now against the fine weave of your trouser leg. Those pants are dusty, H.P.. You should have had them cleaned. Is it the acrid stench of them—? Circulating in your nostrils. Piss and cabbage. Shit, too, I bet— Was it the squat, ugly shape of them? Pushing past you now, pouring out all around you like loosened vermin, like driven vermin from out of that subway entrance—!

You’d forgotten— you put it out of your mind. Put it back in another car, where another erudite gentleman from another stuffy century experiences the same confinement, the same jumbled decent into Hades, the same banshee screeches, the maniacal flashing. The cessation of breath; of your own, and ostensibly of the whole terrestrial sphere! Was it their grubby faces—? Swollen, dirty faces. What colour are they? Too many—! Where had they come from? Mumbling. Portuguese. Italian— Iranon! Azathoth! Their harsh chirps. Their terse complaints. The single long moan of them. Spewing out now! Disgorging themselves from out of that subway entrance! Whilst you remain steadfast, the proverbial stick in the mud. Like a pinwheel, with your great bug-head suspended. Like some string bean left on a vine. Run—! Move—! But you can’t. You are completely frozen. And they must part around you— they use you like a turnstile, and look back at you with their accusing eyes. What do they want—? Dull eyes full of tired hopes and tawdry dreams! Of a ‘world where a life is but a variety of death. True materialism—!’ I should have taken you by the hand. I should have lead you away. Found a spot somewhere out from the hoards, up against a wall maybe— where you could have sheltered for a sec, breathed for a sec! I should have gotten you an ice cream, H.P.!May I call you H.P.—?

Who are you talking to down there—?

Puff, puff…. The sound of a dryer— buttons strike. At first there was darkness, then from above the distinct crack of a door.

You’re Never Alone in a Panic

Consider the lowly slime mold, I remember saying. We’re in the kitchen. The door to the basement is open. She’s reaching out as if to block off any other escape. I can feel the suck of cold air from the cellar already on my skin. For some reason we are both breathing heavily, though I seem to be the one doing all the work—

He’s a singular fella, living a solitary existence in the dank places of the forest floor— of course he doesn’t have his ex-wife upstairs.There he is, our brave little explorer of the necrotic, his glutinous body— if you could call it that, lumping along like a tiny, translucent sleeping bag. I could take up bicycling again— least I got my hair. My shirt is wet, as in fouled, as in soup— minestrone.

You’d think he’d be pale living down there, but he is actually tinged with an iridescent violet, or a shimmering lime green most of the time. He goes by names like Fonticula or Dog Vomit. He should be a punk band— cause he just doesn’t give a shit! He’s a self-gratifying, self-satisfying, bottom-feeding low-life, scrounging around on the putrid products of decay, sucking life from the already-dead, when suddenly—

Her Angry Birds pen goes into my face. Enough—! Christ woman, watch my eyes!

Why’s now the time to interrupt—? Suddenly means there’s a turn coming Could be a pleasant upswing, no? Suddenly, there’s perfume— She does get thrown. No, no, no—! Her Angry Birds pen just goes into her mouth momentarily— substitutions are certainly a start. A chemical beacon permeates the underbrush, like a husband’s work-a-day musk. ‘Calling all slime molds! Calling all slime molds—! Our slime mold goes bolt upright. I curl my arm, I cock my fist, leaving my other hand loose and at the back— that’s my action hand.All the slime molds go bolt upright— I bring it in. I raise both fists. I rotate them in little circles, then start to pump them rhythmically.

They start to undulate. Like a bunch of idiots in a stadium doing the wave. Like a stone thrown into a pond, or a nuclear bomb pulsing out on some atoll— if you were standing over that, you’d see it, right—? Wouldn’t you? These once free-living amoebae all begin to quiver. Their bodies in total sway now— like a hundred Robert Palmer Girls, they begin to converge on one another. Seeking out their mutual, sticky core. Piling on top of one another. Aglommerating. Flesh merging in an orgy of ultimate consequences!

I’m getting shooed downstairs now— I guess it’s gotten too sexy for her. I back down a few steps— she holds the door to a crack. It’s these sort of compromises that make a marriage.

A viscous pancake lies before you, and before you even have time to adjust your prejudice, it’s this gelatinous flapjack that begins to crawl along your greenie duff. I mean, who are you even rooting for anymore, huh—? Where is that independent, self-sufficient slime mold you used to know? Remember? Scooting along by himself? Where is that opaque little guy—? There’s just a sliver of her left. Behind her eye. Down her cheek. A slice of her neck— The creeping does finally stop, you know. Time runs out for the pancake too. It settles someplace high and dry. So that the final transfiguration can begin. From gooey crepe to fleshy, circus-cannon-like erection, that before you can say ‘Golgotha’—! blows a load of spores all over your perfect, fucking jungle—!

You need to get out—

She’s going to close the door in my face. But what she doesn’t know is that it’s already too late— I’ve made my move. When she wasn’t looking, I snatched that Angry Bird pen right out of her hand. I got her all sentimental for a sec, and that’s when I did it— Slam—!

You might not think there is something there— but you should be careful! You’re a mother. All my life I have made it my bread and butter to make something out of nothing. You’ve eaten at that table. The both of you have. Don’t I get a little extra credit—? Like maybe I might have some sort of heightened awareness of ‘nothing?’ A ‘nothing sense?’ Wouldn’t that make sense? Nothing comes from nothing— that’s just math. There’s all sorts of things in that Nought space you choose to ignore. That’s where everything is. That’s what I should have said to her—

Least I got my hair—! Oh, cheap-shot. Didn’t get through though— put the seal on that door myself, and it’s pretty total. I can barely hear the lock sliding into place, and now all I can do is wait, here in the dark at the top of the basement stairs. The light switch is on her side. You got Stress issues, that’s all, honey—! No wonder, to get stuck living with such a person inside her head. We all do! Come on now—!

Does she even notice her Angry Birds pen is missing? That’s something I used to do for her. Steal things from her. Get her all worked up about something, then pinch the glasses off her face, take the fork off of her plate; yes, even get her clothes off. But no light ever comes on for me, and I guess I wait here a little while longer than a normal person would, in the dark, at the top of the basement stairs. I don’t bang, I don’t shout. It’s no mean feat to turn myself around, but I do it— turn myself around, and slink back down to where I do what I do best. I am an End Times Explorer living in the basement of my ex-wife’s house.

I’ve got some serious rewiring to do.

* * *

A darkened drum kit. A single cymbal set apart. A hairy leg reaches over to find the kick and produces a low, steady thump, thump. Eyes glint upwards, as the shirtless drummer keeps it to a bare minimum on this a ‘school night.’

I ain’t the only one who’s into groups— that’s got a problem with them. There’s nothing as terrifying as a group. We spend most of our energy now stopping them from forming, keeping them at bay. Libertarians— give me a break! Like it or not, we are mired in group dynamics. Admit it or not, the ‘body politic’ is very real— as real as a slime mold. Even dissension eventually comes to its head. Whether we see it or not, the group is always up to something. Believe it or not, it catches us up, no matter how hard we try to hide ourselves away, separate ourselves, or how deeply we immerse. We are natural participators, born that way, left purposefully open, waiting for— a single chemical, a beacon?

We deny groups, but we need them. Or we begin to feel detached, hollow, soulless, adrift. Until we begin to feel nothing at all— and lose any sense of purpose we have left. Until we stop seeing ourselves as human beings, stop relating to the suffering of others, and grow a really hard exterior. As a former rock musician I can tell you, there is nothing as invigorating as being part of a group, at one with an audience, inside of a vibe. Sometimes it’s a raucous, jumping good time, and sometimes it’s something darker— like the communal sobs of death-metal; the lament of the forest for the naked ape who must leave the natural world behind for one of his own making, who must walk the streets alone now, and find comfort where he can, around the water-cooler, at the dinner table, in the hearth of the home, and in his houses of worship, in the ale houses and shooting galleries.

Sometimes a group will turn on you. Decide that you are in the way— taking up valuable space, speaking out of turn. Or just cause they feel like it— cause an amplitude has been met, a frequency set, an absolute limit and you are way over. Cause the ‘devil gets in!’ Cause ‘there’s a killing to do!’ And sometimes it only feels that way— that you have been the one selected. The one who will have to be sacrificed for the common good. Cause that’s the thing with a group, you never really know what they’re going to do—

The Beast in the Cave

Only moments previous:

The basement is pitch-black. There’s a wooden cylinder rolling around under one of my ratty sneakers. I feel my way over to my workbench— making needless sounds as I do. I pop on the fluorescents. With a responding buzz, a flashing, of boxes, of bedding— a spider seeks out modesty in a corner— the basement comes to life. In the same psychedelic flicker I witness the edges of my notes crinkling, curling back on themselves then releasing, seemingly alive for a sec. There’s a tonal change from the light ballast. A citron glow has settled about to a now-constant hum.

I whip her Angry Birds pen at the tin on my workbench that holds several more— pens, straws, hairbands, her hair brush, as well as grocery lists, appointment cards… Who even uses pens anymore—! Surprisingly, or perhaps not, the pen lands in the tin en pointe.

From beneath a piece of feminine laundry I extract my errant drum-stick. Not broken, I am fucking glad— for everybody’s sake! Before me, on a square of orange carpeting, gleams my own particular apparatus of divination: the cherry-red drum kit I’ve had since high school— a Keith Moon Original. I settle on the stool, stick flipping— once, twice— then at the ready. But I’m not going to make a racket— it’s a ‘school night,’ and I promised. I’m only going to use the one cymbal I set apart yesterday to facilitate this very process, the punctuation of my otherwise rambling thoughts—!Tsh-shaa—!*

* my 18-inch Zildjian Crash.

Nausea! Diarrhea—! Think surges of it. Waves. Think birth pangs! Heartbeats! Diaphragmatic spasms—! I bang them out. Think breathing! Think thoughts! Tsh-shaa—! Thump, thump— I throw in a soft kick.

That chemical beacon delivering bodily annihilation to our individual slime mold is just feedback.* It’s biological, but is it exactly—? It’s a disembodied phenomenon, or an embodiment of one—? It has no body, no head, and yet there it is building one— you can watch it doing so, in fast-motion, on YouTube for chrissake! This ‘dissipative structure’ emerges ex nihilo when one single slime mold just happens to be thinking the same thing as another— chemically speaking. I’m running out of the putrid products of decay—! I’m sucking life from the already dead and getting nuttin—! It’s this cluster of jonesin, as little as two individual slime molds emitting the same Stress indicators, that ignites a beacon of meadow-wide, gully-high biological ‘panic.’ As the ‘deadly light’ dawns, spontaneously, new ‘vistas of reality’ open up! Irrevocably, we cross thresholds of mind and body. Of species and genus. Of ‘me’ and ‘we.’ On that forest floor, all categories are instantaneously obliterated—!

The science that speaks to this miracle of transmogrification at all— the fringe sciences of Dynamic Systems Theory and Chaos Theory— call this a ‘convergent’ or ‘emergent’ event— like a tornado, or a dripping tap, or a swarm of tree swallows, or an orgasm. But what it really is— this cycle of the one and the many, this dialectic of public and private interest, this organized labour, this glorious revolution of the flesh— is a Zeitgeist! What it really is, is a fucking Apocalypse! And it’s on YouTube—!

That’s what I should have said to her. Stead I am left gripping my one stick impotently, staring out from the grimy, basement window at the porch light shining down on the withering bush that hides her ashtray—

Tsh-shaa—! Thump, thump—

* Because of the Unseen body of feedback, exponential growth becomes possible.— amplification, explosion. As well as form and stability. More later….

I’ve got two heaters angled in. Cranked. It’s terrifically wasteful— I know and don’t care. I’ve pulled off my shirt and tossed it in a ball on top of the freezer. Something’s missing. Something’s still not right. I survey my surroundings— I’m wearing pants.

* * *

The basement has chiaroscuro lighting— it’s a sadly domestic noir. I am drilling my own head.

It’s organic and holistic—!

What is—? She looks tired— but maybe of what’s to come?

This—! I indicate my bleak surroundings. "All around! At any time! This Apocalypse Now—!" The blood left her face.

Seriously, good God, you—? You can’t afford that—!

‘Some day the piecing together of disassociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality and our frightful position therein, that we will either go mad from the revelation, or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age—’

What’s that supposed to mean—?

I drill my own head with a finger. ‘The piecing together of disassociated knowledge!’ You’re the one who’s always talking about ‘holistic’ and ‘organic.’ ‘Is it organic?’, ‘It’s holistic!’ Well, what do you think that means—?

I don’t sound like that—!

You do too! You’re always spouting off! All your questions are loaded! Organic and holistic means from within and of a whole. My hands form an exemplary donut. A ‘piecing together’ or ‘correlation of contents,’ yeah? Well, what about this? This giant fuck-up that has sprouted before your eyes? This veritable vortex. Where did it come from? This sucking, detaching anomaly that surely has a life of its own by now. Isn’t it organic and holistic too? Doesn’t it have a form? —repetitive, returning.

In this Modern Age without a clue no one is looking for forms anymore. And so nothing has any form. And we are adrift in a formless terror to which we live our lives in reckless counterpoint. I’m staring at her blouse. It has an appealing, silky aspect, highlighted by a slight shiver— by turns garish-tangerine, then silver, like the syncopic disturbances that precede unconsciousness.

It’s you—! She does startle me. You’ve done this to yourself—!

I’m not talking about me—

Aren’t you—!

I go all Master and Commander— pop my hands on my hips, stick out my prow. There’s only one question you need to be asking yourself, lady. Do you settle for the ‘New Dark Age,’ or will you choose to let in the ‘Deadly Light?’

Is that a threat—? She feigns a bored expression— but has already backed up a few steps.

I thought so, I say dismissively.

Of course that’s not enough for her— I know that she will get in her final digs before she leaves me, shut away down here again, but I’m ready, and sure enough.Where are your pants—?

You’re wearing them now, aren’t-cha? Badum-tish!*

* an actual drum sound— look it up!

I celebrate like an Ecstatic. I totally smelt that coming— you saw! I receive a crystal vision of black pants sliding down a man’s wooly legs to the accompanying sound of static. That’s what I mean about these magical times we live in. In this much ‘formlessness’ things can form—!

They can go south on you just as easily. Be taken out of park while you are not looking. Accelerated down the block when you are otherwise occupied—I only took my eyes off for a sec! Too long—! Too late—! Life delivers its smack. Recurrently, the knee of irony hikes up into your groin. Process does not necessarily get defined at the time— only later does it get a name. After-the-fact— when they finally get around to levelling the charges. When it’s been written down for you, and entered into the public record. When you’ve already been tried, and convicted. When you’ve already been executed, and are looking down