Resplendent Files (No. 1)

A hero can't stand up for something without making enemies. Caution comes hand in hand with fear, and as long as these records exist, there will be enemies. Being cautious is a requirement when taking upon this duty. For fear is not known by God because he fears no one. So fear is a power of the Dark Prince; The one prowling around like a lion, ruling over a realm filled with fire and the gnashing of teeth.
Excerpt from Resplendent Files: Introduction
Being that I am breaking Catholic law by sharing what has been confessed to me and what has been confessed to earlier generations before me, please do not let it be on your mind when you whisper this down the lane. I take all blame for this obscenity against the statutes placed before me.
I cannot disclose much of information about myself, like my name, location, or workplace, but I will divulge into a bit about myself. I am a twenty-one year old intern at a Catholic church. As odd as it sounds, Catholic churches do need interns. To put my work into basic terms, I make calls and send letters to neighbouring churches and sometimes organize the archives.
I was actually forced into this job by my parents, they basically run my life. It's not like I want them to though, they just kinda keep me under close surveillance no matter where I go. They had arranged my marriage before I was born. Just another thing they control. Her name is... well I shouldn't exactly broadcast that over the internet either, so let's call her Carolyn.
Carolyn doesn't want anything to do with me. She even moved four states away from me just to show me how much she hates me. My parents won't allow me to find another bride, and her parents wont allow her to find another groom. So we are sort of stuck. I don't blame her though, for leaving. I've been an alcoholic for four and a half years and all I'm good at is writing. Trying to get a job being a writer is the hardest thing on this Earth. All people want to read is fantasy or crime novels.
I applied for a job at a newspaper once and they wanted me to write articles on sports. I'm not one to follow teams so when they said that's what I was to do, I quit. To be honest i have no idea what I want to write as a career. For now though, I believe my talents are being called upon to make something this important public. I'm not sure what is making me want to put this here, and here of all places I'm not sure, but something inside me says to do it, and so I will.
Now earlier you may have noticed I was breaking Catholic jurisdiction by announcing what has been confessed to me, and yet I am only an intern. Well let me start from the beginning. I was told to make one last call to a church and ask how they were doing and to see what to pray for. Now the Father who told me to do this didn't realize that I was quite wasted.
When I thought he was out of ear shot, I called the church and told them that underneath their church, was a shrine dedicated to Cthulhu and that if they didn't all start to perform rituals on dispelling any demons roaming inside their walls, terrible things might happen. This is when I when I heard yelling from the sanctuary, not a normal yell mind you, a yell that makes your body shutter and become paralyzed just like from a nightmare.
I told the man to hang up before any roaming entities noticed the phone line and squeezed their way through to the church I was in. I felt accomplished for a successful troll. Within the same second he hung up, I heard that awful yelling again, still coming from the auditorium but as the sound flew through that building, it felt like it was rushing into the room I was in. once the sound hit me, I felt paralyzed again.
Even if I could move I didn't want to. I felt like the slightest movement would alert whatever creature yelled that I was still here, and that it would tear through everything in its path to get at me. So I sat their for a good ten minutes or so. I never realized how many sounds ring throughout a building until that moment. With all the different pitches and tones bouncing off everything placed in a room, you could mistake a building for being a living, breathing thing.
I finally arose from my seat, grabbed my bag, and went out to the auditorium to find no one there. Sweat had formed its way into every pore of my skin, almost like a protective armour against everything and an adjunct to all of my abilities. Why I would think sweat has those capabilities, I'm not sure. Think of it this way though, when a man is in a desert and is dehydrated to the point of death, he will look for any substance to stand in for the role water has abandoned. His own piss is now his source of refreshment, my own sweat is my source of protection. Though just as piss didn't fully do the job for him, neither did my sweat. My knees clattered together, my head felt full of glass shattered by the bullet that was my thoughts of horror, and my car keys were left on the desk.
I felt turning back could only make me go even more down the drain with what had been going on. Before I headed back, I laid my stuff on one of the seats, and as soon as I turned to head for my desk, the yelling began. This time it didn't originate anywhere except from the center of my head. I began sprinting toward my desk. With each and every step I took their was a heavy sound of metal clanging against itself and it became louder and louder to the point my ears popped. The feeling of warm crimson poured from my ears down my neck, I was unable to hear anymore. More fear arose in me. How was I to know if something were behind me? My desk was now in sight. I began running faster, dove over it and hid in the only safe haven I could think of, underneath the desk.
I shut my eyes but I could still see, I tried to hold my breath in fear of something hearing me breathing but I couldn't stop panting. I began to feel claustrophobic and my body began to shut down. A little bit of light shone through under the bottom of the desk and my eyes picked it up. Two shadows appeared and began to move, I expected the legs of a person, though my mind said otherwise. I continued to remain still. I then heard my name called. My whole body staggered back into itself and my eyes registered as shut. I bumped my head getting out from underneath my desk, though I was cautious as I moved. I answered the Father, I recognized his voice.
Here is what I remember from my conversation with him. (To better follow my conversation with the Father, we shall call him Father Jeremiah)
"What are you doing under there?" Father Jeremiah asked bewildered.
"Oh sorry, I was just trying to reach for my pencil." I answered as I began standing up.
"Alright then, how did the conversation with Father [name removed] go?" He picked up some papers knocked onto the floor. It must have fallen off when I hopped the desk.
"He said to pray that his affair wont become public, and that you should pay him back his twenty dollars." I was still wasted. Father Jeremiah laughed quite a bit and then asked if I had anything to confess. Every time I joke around with him he asks me that. I looked him in the eye and told him, "If I had anything to confess to you, it would be about you."
He met my gaze with a stare that cannot be described other then villainous. It was full, and messy at the same time. My heart sank when he said to follow him. I walked with him to the confession box and he walked into the side where usually someone who needs to confess walks into. I was sort of confused at first, then I realized he wanted to confess something to me. I guess he thought there wasn't another way for me to listen to him unless it was in the confines of these cubes. So i walked into the opposing box and got comfortable. I sat their for fifteen minutes waiting for him to say something to me. I began nodding off. The alcohol was putting me to sleep.
"You're a unique person, you know that?" I became somewhat alert now but still very much dazed. "You have the talent to put the pen on the paper and convince people of things unreal. You can take someone's mind and make them believe up is down, left is right, the moon is a star. That's quite the talent my boy."
My eyes were now half open, I was in a trance still, blankly staring at the darkest corner of the room. "I used to write like you. I wouldn't even have to think about a story to write it, the pen seemed to free float and just spew out words of a world only some could imagine, but only I could explain." I heard him situate. "One day though I couldn't write anymore, I had lost it completely. My pens didn't spew out stories, only words. Words that meant nothing to me or those around me."
I now was intrigued and was listening intently. He continued. "The only words I could write were words about how I hated my words. The words I wrote about hatred I hated more then the words I hated! I hate them, and I hate it!" He was now heavily breathing by this point, and he seemed to be stuttering every word he said. I was slightly on edge now, his tone of voice didn't seem that of a Father or the Church, and neither did his words.
"I wrote one last thing though," He said after quite a while, calm now. "I don't hate this piece. Honestly, I love it more then I love myself. It has reached the point where it can no longer become greater because it is already to great." He paused. "But to find that greatness, I had to create something awful. Something gruesome, horrendous, disgusting, abominable, hideous." He lost me at this point. Isn't it possible to create beauty without pain? I thought. I soon found out what he meant though."
Father Jeremiah situated again and then resumed. "You ever notice the Bible is a love letter? A love letter from God to his chosen people? And yet within that love letter, we find horrific stories strewn throughout the book of Judges. Brother killed brother, people abandoned others. At one point, a man chops up his concubine and sends her parts to the other tribes of Israel. If it wasn't bad enough that he had a concubine, he had to then tear her body apart and spread the sections to everyone" I didn't really catch his point yet, but he wasn't finished.
He sighed, "I probably lost you here. Let me get to my point. The Bible is pure and perfect, but just as it tells of pure goodness, it tells of also what is awful in our world. I took this and applied it to my lack of writing and thought, if I want to write something great, I need to write something awful as well." He stopped, we sat there for another fifteen minute wait. I was determined not to nod off. I was absorbed into his story, still awaiting the confession.
"What I have written," He paused to take a deep breath, "Is of my life."
Yup, I died a little inside, I thought it was gonna be something like, "..." actually as I typed this in I had no idea what it would have been, but I knew It shouldn't be so anti-climatic.
"The things I wrote are filed away in the archives of our church. They are titled the Resplendent File. I wrote them 15 years ago, and I want you to read them. I want you to criticize them and tell me what they are like. I want to know what you think of my thoughts and my life and tell me I did something right."
He stepped up, brushed off his pants, and walked out. I sat there thinking to myself, what? I didn't feel like moving, to be honest, I was quite comfortable. I slept their for about an hour before some Spanish cleaning lady began throwing foreign curses at me to get out.
I remembered about the files Father Jeremiah asked me to read, and so I went to grab my bag and head to the archives. To my surprise, the files were sitting on my bag already. I picked them up and put them in my bag, hoisted the bag over my shoulders. It was at this moment I remembered something, I still don't have my keys. I practically crawled to my desk. Thankfully nothing happened. I grabbed them and began to drive home.
On the ride home there was almost no traffic, it was about 11PM and the lights of the passing cars began to give me a migraine. I took a quick stop at a gas station and filled my tank up. When it finished I went into the mini-mart and decided to grab a candy bar for some energy. When I grabbed the bar I felt needles pierce my hand and I dropped the bar on the ground, it broke, and my hand was now stained with blood. I went to the counter to ask for something to cover my hand and the teenage boy at the cash register asked why.
I shoved my hand in his face and yelled to him that's why! He confessed to me he had no idea what I was talking about, all while my hand was just pouring out onto his face. I couldn't believe my eyes and I just covered them with my arms and stood at the counter for about a minute. I could hear the uneasy breaths of the boy. I uncovered my eyes and nothing was there. Blood was not covering his face and my hand had no evidence of ever being pierced.
I asked the kid where the nearest bar was and he told me to go about three miles down the road and I'd hit one. I walked out the store and went to my car. While sitting in the drivers seat I checked my mirrors to make sure I wasn't going to hit anyone. Looking through my rear-view mirror I saw someone in my back seat. A man with his ears missing, fluids and brain matter leaked through the gaping holes and he started to beg me to take him to a doctor. I couldn't look away or do anything for that matter, my body rejected all commands. as he spoke he began to deteriorate.
I heard a knocking on my window and turned and saw someone giving me the finger and telling me to move. I looked back through the rear-view and no one was there. That armour of sweat came back, and I was so ready to waste away. I pulled out of the gas station and drove to my destination of salvation. Once there I can't say what happened because I don't remember.
Now I'm sitting at a public cafe, hiding my vodka in one of those coffee Thermoses and typing this up. What I've read so far has not been very great like Father Jeremiah stated. I posted the introduction because that seemed to be the only enticing and well written thing so far. I do not feel like typing up the whole first article, but I will provide a concise edition.
Resplendent Files: Article 1 (concise edition)
Years 1-25
Father Jeremiah - Born August 3rd, 1947
His father came home from being in WWII and died in 1950 due to a wound from his service. His mother never re-married. She died in 1964.
Father Jeremiah apparently was an excellent student with consistent high grades even though he seemed to be bullied his entire school life. Says that his grades dropped dramatically in his junior year in High School, probably due to his mothers death. This prevented him from being accepted to high end college's.
Between the ages of nineteen and twenty-three he joined and soon became the leader of a cult named Resplendent, whose worship was still of the God of Abraham, but their belief in how to be redeemed was that of pure fear under God.
When he turned twenty-four, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, ending his reign as the leader of the cult Resplendent. He has had to take pills and have monthly check up since then and it says he has had to increase his dosage since then. It is now 6x the original amount prescribed to him.
End Article 1 (concise edition)
A Father of the church who originally was a cult leader. Guess he couldn't leave the robes and worship behind. Still, his schizophrenia problem is quite interesting, I wonder if he 'sees' people who left the church years ago still at Mass. Either way, there is a lot to read here, and I don't have enough vodka to keep me thinking straight. Next time I find anything of importance or new I will type something up and inform those who are still interested. Remember it shouldn't stay on your mind if you hear about this. I am the one breaking the rule, not you.
And those horrific things I've been seeing, I can't get them out of my head, even as I type this I sometimes see blood leaving my fingers onto the keys of my laptop. Its probably just because of this drink, or maybe I don't have enough of it.
-Nameless
9/30/2011
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Next Entry
Resplendent Files (No. 2)
Category:Reality
Category:Items/Objects
Category:Mental Illness