From: ecsd@tfs.com (Eric C. S. Dynamic)
Subject: A story
Organization: The Great Beast 666
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 09:11:05 GMT

Copyright (C) 1992 - Eric C. S. Dynamic (14 October 1992)

Part I of "Various Diversions of ECSD"
--------------------------------------
What to do after the Sun goes down.

Oh nooooooooooo. Captain Spiff (promoted from Spaceman Spiff . . .)
in the Land of Oz.
{an official disclaimer is presented at intermission.}

& NOW, for your amusement, Ladies & Gentlemen . . .

A Walk Through the Pit, by Eric Dynamic

The Daring, The Recondite, The Totally Obscure
Guide to the Universe through the portal known as
ECSD

Long may he wave. (more-than-momentary pause, frames:)

& Lemme tellya story bouta man nam'd Jed
& Poor moun'tneer barely kept his fam'lys head . . .
{'&' denotes 'sung'. Gee - one reserved character so far.}

And then he was Born! A breech birth. Moon the Universe, that's me.
Yup. His first official act, to execute the rite of Uranus (birthing),
and I *fuck it up*. Prolly tryin'a see 'f'I c'd do it diff'rint.
Yeh - I *know* how it's'pose t'be - so try sump'in' *new*.
"Hey," they say. "Quit wastin' our time. We got better things t'do."

Then they do something to me down there that *hurts like shit*!
What the fuck is *that* all about.
Damn! I *hope* *that* doesn't happen again. *That was awful!*
*It hurt like Shit.*
Fuck this place! I knew this place was a pail of shit before I ever
came here! What'd the fuck I come here for! Piss it!

So a few childhood memories.

Shitting in my pants - age 4 or less - hard turds, as it turned out,
real easy solution - just turn my underwear out and dump the turds on
the ground. Gee - that worked. That was easy!. I'm glad I thought of that.
Will my parents find out? Dunno. Maybe. Maybe they won't know they're mine.
They probably won't see them, but with my Dad you never know.

Bitten by a spider - same general age, about 4. Probably after the turd-
dumping. I was near maybe even the same bush in the front yard. I got
close and paused momentarily, seeing the web, its symmetry, and the thing
in the middle I knew was a creature - of what sort, I didn't guess. I guess
I must have tried to pass between the bush and the web, but the web was
attached to the bush and STING! SHIT! FUCK this! GET IT OFF ME! I *knew*
instantaneously it was that Thing which did it. I *knew* I didn't know if
it was bad and I risked it anyway. *Damn!* That hurts. WHY? Ow, it Hurts.
{Morbid Fear of the Hurt} Shit! No Slack - I broke that web thing. Fuck,
I'll remember those things. *Vicious bastard!* Eight fuckin' legs -
a pattern I'll never forget.

Clairsentience. I was older - this was not long before we left for Guam.
I was lying on my bed in my bedroom. It seems the bed was pointing toward
the window. The window had yellow drapes {as I recall}, which were half
open admitting the Sun. I thought how cheery the whole image was - how
still, how peaceful - I became aware of the passage of time in the moment -
I became aware of my own perception - that I was doing the perceiving,
that I was a thing experiencing. Huh. Damn. That's pretty cool. My mind
raced a moment - hey, let's follow this up. Another moment, my attention
wandered. This is by far one of my fondest memories.

Yeah. Things taken up and put down just as suddenly.

Lucid dreams. In 1972, I was 16. Freshman at the University of Florida.
First Quarter roomed with a real lively Southern Christian guy named
Harold, as I recall. Quarter ends, and I was spaced out enough - Harold
had taken his things and gone, so I thought. I'm sleeping in the foreroom,
with the door to the outside.
In my dream, I was a figure in a surreal space - flat earth tones, just a
flat plane and an infinitely tall wall ahead - but the wall had a corner
to the right, where you could walk around, and that was in my attention.
In front of me was a bridge, made of the same flat-plane stuff as the floor -
this was like a huge playing card, bowed, forming a bridge - it was laid
'on the floor', evidently there was no reason to use it, except underneath
it was dark (there seemed to be some source of light from slightly behind
me and far above) and it was a few steps in front of me as the sequence
started {there was some dissonance, as I recall, as to why was it there} -
so I began to walk over it. As I got to the center, I stopped - me in the
dream did a sort of double-take on where he was and said - "This is a dream.
I'm dreaming." - in that moment I - dream-me - realized - "I can go
anywhere - do anything that I remember out of my conscious memory of my
dreams - {jeez, places I've been - some spooky places.}" Dream-me had maybe
3, 4, 5 seconds of this thought - then

Knock Knock Knock Knock Knock Knock

Suddenly there was a *different* awareness in the consciousness of *dream-me*.
Suddenly there were two - higher-me and dream-me and dream-me *knew it* -
"*groan* Shit! Oh no! Make them go away!" he said to higher-me.
Higher-me said, "don't worry, I'll take care of it." and his attention
shifted to the door as an Eagle would do. Tick, tick, tick, tick, no sound -
dream-me was slowing down and solidifying . . . higher-me times out,
biding, says "think it'll be okay . . ." - dream-me started to resume, and

Knock Knock Knock Knock Knock Knock

"Fuck it!" - higher me screamed inside, dream-me went *poof*. "Who the fuck
is it?" I thought. "Who Is It?" I said sternly. "Heyee Eric. 's'Harold.
Just wanted to say goodbye!" - God Fuckit Harold. Jeeeeeesus. Damn.
Boy was I pissed. - "Hey Harold, thanks - man, you got me out of the best
dream I've *ever* had, Sheeit." - "Aw Sorry. Jist came by to say Goodbah."
Shook his hand - thought kindly of him - godspeed. "Yeah, Harold - good luck.
Take care . . ." - closed the door - fumed - went back to bed. Zip.
It never happened again. This is one of my most frustrating memories, but
also most promising - 'cause I'm gonna Do It Again. SCARY.

Voices From Nowhere. So it's 1984, in Waltham, in that creepy three-story
house on the East side. Figure the upstairs (third floor) is haunted sorta.
Gives me the tear-eye creeps - spooky. Nuthin' ever happened, but I never
hung around too long. I invaded the place with telephone jacks as
extensions of my 2nd floor jacks, two numbers - one for the computer.
So that's in my context - I ignore the stairwell mostly (a kinda halfway
deal - I won't impress myself upstairs through the stairwell if you up there
don't impress yourself down. So I ignored it consciously, mostly.
Not a big fear.
So I'm in my 'flat', and just bought a whole bunch of leathercraft stuff -
a new belt blank, dye, tools. A thing about AIDS was on TV - brought Charles
back to memory, his conjecture that it came from Africa through Pygmies
fucking swine of some kind.
So I walk from the front room into the workroom where the TV is on, and
just as I pass the doorway I hear my name called clear as day - softly -
about two feet behind me to my right - 'Eric' - and I know no-one can be
there so the prickles get me bad, I pass into the room and still-up and
turn around expecting to see - what? An apparition? - I'm half-scared
shitless, but braced - and there's - nothing there. That's *worse*!
Whoa! Am I imagining it? Am I hearing voices in my head so loud I got it
mixed up? {because my internal voices sounded like outward speech} - tick.
Tick. I don't think so - I don't think so - No. It's gone, whatever it
was {and the hairs on the nape of my neck did *bad* goosebumps} - tick.
Tick. Nope - it's gone. But I was half-spooked for half the day after.
I was sorta sorry - I would've liked to've maybe messed around - hey -
figure who knows? Who was it? I tried to figure out. Sounded friendly
enough. Maybe they'll come back . . .

Flying Saucers. Toward the end of my time in Cambridge, I hung out with
the dark a lot. I went to Crane's Beach a few times in the dead of night.
Ah - another quintessential EERIE dream homologue - where I go to get in
a Strange highly-keyed, sharply-aware state - spooky, spooky recollections,
nobody there but me but I sense habitance from humans there in the day,
the suggestions . . . a lot of Power Vestment ritual locked into doing
these things - I'm brave enough to be there, walking through many, many
things that cue old, old dreams, talking to the ocean, the sky - beings
greater than I, yet I am alone unto myself. They bide . . . mysteries.
One night {this was in a star-gazing phase} I had my binoculars with me -
I just scanned the sky and scanned the sky, the surrounding shores with
lights in the distance - and watched, quietly. Moving things - some planes -
twinkling stars. And then I saw a moving orange speck far, far in the
distance - it was moving very fast across the horizon, but seemed to be so
far away - and it was making so much arc in unit time my gaze fixed on it
and I puzzled - I watched it through the binoculars, it still seemed so
far away, just clipping along - and then it changed course, abruptly -
it seemed too abrupt for any craft I'd seen, with the guess I made about
its distance and speed. So I mused, and mused - and stored it.

Late into Winter - early January 1988. Dead of night about 3AM. I still
haven't put down my storm windows and it's Cold As Shit, so I go to the
back window to the SouthWest in the kitchen, and lean out on impulse to
feel the outdoors - how still everything is, with a thick coating of snow -
dead of morning, no sound, not even the distant sound that trucks make.
Flat still. Then my awareness is affected - something out of place - the
split-second first take is embers from a fireplace, things in the sky
glowing - I lock on it to look - and now the things are huge, they're not
embers - and - they're *arranged* and - ?? there were eight of them, in
the outline of a horseshoe crab - this sticks in mind because the things
themselves had that shape, longer in their direction of motion - and they
were *gliding* *noiselessly* not quickly or slowly - I craned my head and
neck out to watch and there was another one - a ninth, but this one was
doing *crazy* things, jumping around in quantum ways at all angles in a
region off to the left of the others - nothing, I had never seen an object
move like that - I couldn't tell how high up they were, I guessed between
about 100, 200 feet thereabouts - luminescent salmon orange, with slightly
different shades, there seemed to be an annulus around a center, but I
couldn't see the top of them. They've passed overhead, so I futz with the
window, cursing it, trying to get it closed (since it's wide open) -
seconds pass & I get it closed, and run to the front where I think their
path will take them. Nothing. No sign. What? They have to be somewhere
in my field of view! So musta curved away from the house, and I lean out
the side to look at the sky there - no sign. They have to have crossed
back at a 45 degree angle on their own path, or gone straight up, and
I look up, no sign. Vanished. The chill notion comes - *nobody's about
but me.* Not one person is stirring - all the lights are out in surrounding
houses, or just porch lights, or where the lights are on in houses,
nobody's there. Dead Still. And I thought - I wonder if they detected my
presence? -*? I wonder if I got irradiated? -*? No, don't feel anything -
spooked. I wonder if I'll see them again . . . I recalled the orange speck
at Crane's beach, and decided if it were the same as these that would
explain it, especially if it were that side-runner thing that did the
quantum moves. The two incidents mere weeks apart. *Eerie.*

The Exorcism. Next Up - in Part II of "Various Diversions of ECSD"

{Intermission.}

{disclaimer.}

I live in what used to be the Thelema Lodge of the O.T.O. The house is
now known as "Oz House", home of the "Oz Institute", a place where Magickal
and related things are taught and worked with.

My residence at Oz House is incidental to my story, until much later on,
so there shall be no taint on me or the house through our association with
each other. No other at the house vouches for this material or is
answerable to it in any regard. Nor am I an integral member of the Oz
Institute. I am always just me - The Uranian.

The house has a long history in O.T.O. tradition and I feel privileged to
live there still. The Oz people (of the house) are on the lunatic fringe
of the O.T.O. itself, if you can fancy that. Die-Hard Radicals All.
Nicest group of folks you could hope to meet in one place, and all
characters through and through. Naw, I'm waxing poetic - we're just -
ordinary folks like you and everyone. (Roars With Laughter)