Shomoe-is Naer

Shomoe-is Naer 

In the year 1900, I went to Ali Abbas’s apartment located on Third Street, Manhattan, New York. He was my colleague at the university. His fascination with the mystical journeys of Orka from Assyria and the explorations of Battuta were the main reasons I sought him out.

His apartment wasn't very large, simple, but rather cramped with various gold-leafed skins hanging from the ceiling, which were made from red stars. Don't ask for more details, because I never saw them clearly, and he didn’t want to explain them to me; when I inquired, he evaded the question.

In the afternoon, around one o'clock, after we had studied and deliberated to analyze the signs in Orka's mystical journey from Assyria, I again steered the conversation toward those stars—because I wasn’t satisfied with just speculating, so I had to be bold—and after I posed my question:

“If those stars bring you joy, then they must mean something? Is something being prepared by them?”

Ali allowed himself a small smile as his fingers typed on the typewriter. Then he paused, looked up at me, and responded to my question with a poetic answer I didn’t understand: “You’ve never found what’s meaningful behind it; you’ve seen it, very clearly, but you’ve never understood what it is!”

At 2 p.m., we decided to take a short break. I took off my coat and hung it on the back of the chair where I had been sitting, leaned back, and gazed at the gold-leafed skins of the red stars hanging there... they were truly beautiful, reflecting the light that entered through the window. As the wind blew, they twirled, and in an instant, I was lost in a tense daydream where I woke up and floated in outer space. No, don’t think I had just taken opium or morphine, because I avoid those drugs and powders!

For a moment, I imagined—or maybe I truly felt—that when I touched the stars in that dark sky, they instantly burst like bubbles. I moved my arms and legs like a frog to shift to several points, every movement felt strange and tingled my nerves—I found floating metal ornaments, sea mammals swimming while coated in red dust like a tide, glittering near Aldebaran with two distant ratios—if only some interregnum storms were clearly visible before me, I might have touched them and made them pop like bubbles...

I wasn’t there long—I couldn’t be sure if they broke at the end—a flash of light, about 20 light years away, left me stunned and transfixed; setting aside its beauty with oil on a color palette, my heart trembled and immediately shuddered. I heard it in the second minute: its volume like the thunderous roar of a tremendous explosion above my head, though it was far away, my hair stood on end with caution, and my eyes widened with an inexplicable pain!

“My God! My God! Help me!” I screamed, “I see it! I see it! Forgive me!” But the madness had already crept in, It was coming—very close!

“The Void, Both of them see me!” I cried—the pain surpassing my sorrow—

But I was lucky, for if Ali hadn’t quickly chanted his incantations to wake me on the chair, oh—I couldn’t possibly have escaped that dreadful place.

When I awoke, I realized my body was drenched, my eyes slightly bloodied, and I was utterly exhausted...

Ali, realizing he had successfully pulled me from the abyss, quickly stood and placed his book on the table. He saw me at my limit, in weak and pitiful lethargy, only able to move my lips and produce sound... Ali inspected the parts he thought might be problematic; checking my lips, eyes, nose, the joints in my arms and legs, and even inside my mouth.

Then, after examining those areas, I summoned the courage...

With what little strength I had, I asked, “How many?” while trying to steady my breath.

Ali, with a regretful tone, replied, “About six people... you’re the seventh!” he stammered.

He pulled up a chair and sat beside me.

“That’s why,” he added, “I didn’t answer all your questions about those stars, except for the last one... My point was not to arouse your curiosity any further. I thought I made myself clear!”

All this time, I hadn’t looked at the gold-leafed skins on the ceiling, and I wouldn’t look at them, out of fear and horror.

“What did you see?” Ali demanded, as he inspected my arm.

“I don’t know,” I replied shortly, shuddering even more while imagining the dark, dim shadows of the void and the shapeless madness.

I glanced at his face, truly an understanding expression, but he noticed my gaze and explained to me while massaging some areas below my joints.

“It, Crawls, no one knows what it is except those who know and truly understand what it is. But, it, it remains nameless—even though some people give it a nickname or name, it remains nameless. An entity that we should never encounter, or even see in a dream, except for the face of a strange man!

“And from time to time, I try to rid myself of it. But it already lives and crawls in my head, these gold-leafed skins are proof of it, and I hang them from the ceiling like beautiful trinkets,” Ali smiled slightly but grimaced, “that was my biggest mistake! And I don’t understand why it entered Irits, Boligya, Miss Derthi, Mr. Ponfie, Josephine, Guillermo, and you, Louis.”

Now, I felt very strange, I didn’t know them, but their faces immediately came to mind when Ali mentioned their names... and, after that brief image, Ali asked me to rest for a while, I nodded, and then he helped me to lie down in his room.

“What if I dream of that chaos in the morning?” I demanded hesitantly.

“You won’t... it doesn’t come twice...”

He said, then left me with the door open...

But as soon as I closed my eyes, the rumbling returned.

I lost control.

My heart pounded.

And when the vision of stars, cosmos, and extraordinary matter reappeared, settled, and danced in my head, I realized; it had returned to visit me.

[The body of Richard Louise was found in the pigsty of Hugo Krauser's farm.]