All Must Travel

A gothic tale of angels and demons

I know not who might read this journal, and readily acknowledge that my story seems scarcely believable. But I swear on my soul that everything I shall record here is true.

My name is Doctor Nicholas Dalton, I am the nephew and heir of Professor Ephraim Dalton, esteemed Fellow of the Chemical Society of London, researcher, theologian, and renowned man of letters.

We were irregular correspondents, and I must admit I was too busy to notice when his missives ceased. Until one autumn afternoon a most unexpected telegram arrived, urging me to immediately visit him at his London home, without delay. I travelled the following evening, the last day of October 1873; an unseasonably vicious frost had frozen points and delayed my train, so it was late into the night by the time my cab deposited me at my final destination.

My knock at the front door of his home produced no answer, but it was unlocked, so I admitted myself. The household was oddly empty, its staff seemingly departed, and every light extinguished. I lit a lantern with a match, and trod carefully along the hallway, and down the stairs towards his basement laboratory.

The cavernous room was filled with a profound and unsettling darkness, as if it was a flooded pool of the blackest ink. I cast my beam about the vast space, searching for any signs of occupation, but only precarious stacks of glass apparatus glinted back at me. 

My heart pounding, I crept deeper into the awful sepulchral darkness. Each footstep accompanied by a sense of ever escalating dread.

And then, I must confess, I screamed.

There, inside a ring of snuffed candles on the floor, I found him. White and lifeless as if petrified, frozen stiff like a toppled statue. His vacant eyes gazed back pleadingly, a pair of bottomless black pits staring right through my soul.

I turned on my heels and ran, babbling with fright, scrambling up the stairs in terror. I rushed without pausing from his darkened home, hammering on the door of a neighbouring house to raise the alarm. 

A doctor was summoned, but he did not arrive until dawn’s weak light had begun to dribble through the morning fog. I knew in my heart there was no urgency, all the physician could do was perform the formalities of declaring my poor uncle deceased. The coroner’s verdict was to be misadventure, an unfortunate chemical accident resulting in suffocation. 

But the truth was infinitely worse.

---

* * 1 * * 

Should subsequent events go awry, I wish to record here that the late Professor Dalton has made a remarkable discovery. 

After decades of diligent investigation, the Professor has been able to prove that airborne chemicals exist, through which all animals communicate. Although their perception is subconscious, their effect on behaviour is demonstrably real. Sadly, he passed before he could publish his work. I suspect he was concerned that his unorthodox methodology might not be appreciated by the scientific establishment.

Inspired by Monsieur Fabre’s study of communication between insects, my uncle had hypothesised that volatile chemicals were emitted and sensed by every animal. He believed these might serve as more than just alarm signals. Their diffusion might be an ideal means of establishing the demarcation of territory, and if it were true that they were used for sexual competition, they might also be used for broadcasting sexual receptiveness too.

But my uncle found designing a suitable experiment challenging, after all, it was difficult to be certain of the true motivation of animal subjects. But then a flash of inspiration literally struck in the midst of his own bedchamber.

It may be embarrassing to his memory, but it is crucial to my explanations. Like many of good upbringing and refined taste, the Professor had a predilection for erotic chastisement, specifically the flogging of a female companion’s bare buttocks. And he had begun to wonder if there might be some other substance accompanying the sweet scent of feminine arousal. 

His diary records how one evening, prior to delivering a caning, he had knelt behind his partner to lower her undergarments, and inhaled a heady intoxicating scent from between her thighs. Later, he was to ponder whether this smell was the musky fragrance of submission. He thought back to Mr Darwin’s theory, and his proposal that we all inherit traits from our primitive animal ancestors. Sexual dominance has been reported in many primate species, without need for language. So my uncle wondered if other undiscovered channels of communication might exist, perhaps one that utilised the medium of smell.

His hypothesis was that a lady would possess a particular aroma after she had obediently submitted to a dominant lover, and began to contrive an experiment to investigate. Yet how could he have known, as he was kneeling to examine the stripes on her bare buttocks, that he would be sniffing the scent that would ultimately doom him.

---

My uncle began his rather esoteric research by recruiting a group of female acquaintances from his own social circle. His journal dryly noted that when he described the nature of his experiment, there was no shortage of volunteers. 

Each participant was tasked to wear a cotton pad against her vulva during the course of the day. Before retiring to bed each night the pad would be rolled up and deposited in one of the glass tubes supplied for the purpose. She would also record on a card if she had engaged in any sexual activity that day and, specifically, if she felt she had entered a state of erotic submissiveness through any act of discipline or domination by a partner. The card containing these secrets would then be sealed inside an envelope. 

The Professor’s team of experimental assistants would visit the home of each participant every morning, collecting both the tube and the sealed envelope, and leaving fresh supplies if necessary. The collected pads were delivered to the Professor’s office without delay. His palette had become attuned, like a master wine taster, and he would sniff each pad, and record whether or not he believed the donor had been dominated during the last 24 hours. 

In accordance with good experimental practice, the truth of the matter, as recorded on the concealed card, would remain unexamined until the end of the trial, when he would compare his assessments with reality. When finally collated, his predictions had proved remarkable, he had been able to correctly identify that a donor had been dominated 92% of the time. This was strong evidence indeed that those who had been disciplined did smell discernibly different from those who had not. 

Word quickly spread, as bedtime rumours often do, and more volunteers joined, all eager to have their bottoms spanked for science. 

Even the Head Girl at a nearby ladies’ college offered her assistance. She had a keen interest in the natural sciences, and was also responsible for disciplining those who transgressed school rules. Any young lady who was sent to her was asked to press a pad against herself, whether she left the Head Girl’s office with stripes on her bottom or not, and the prefect would record whether they were ultimately caned on the accompanying card.

As interest and the number of samples grew, a new experiment was started. The Professor wished to investigate whether others could achieve the same detection rate that he had achieved. So he assembled a panel of sniffers, each of whom would record their own assessment. This double-blind testing was able to reproduce the initial finding, the volunteers were indeed able to sniff out those who had been spanked with surprising accuracy.

During the course of these investigations, a quite unexpected confession was to change the course of my uncle’s life. One of his assistants, a young woman who had been one of his brightest students, had confided that sniffing the samples often provoked startlingly vivid and highly erotic daydreams. These visions had both surprised and delighted her, she had found herself imagining encounters that she had never experienced before, such as being captured and bound, stripped and degraded, and whipped and flogged. 

At once, an astounding new possibility suggested itself. Perhaps a smacked bottom might have more than just a distinctive smell, the scent itself might contain an active substance that affected the behaviour of those who inhaled it. Not just a chemical signal, but a subconsciously interpreted instruction. Could it be possible that a Scent of Submission might really exist?

By now the Professor and his team of assistants had accumulated thousands of samples, all carefully stowed in labelled boxes, packed tight on every shelf of the laboratory walls, staggered like brickwork to prevent toppling as the stacks rose towards the ceiling. From this treasure trove, he dissolved the known positive samples in solvents, and through a meticulous process of fractional distillation began to extract the constituent chemicals. Here, amongst the hundreds of distillates, an odourless perfume with truly remarkable properties was finally discovered. 

In tests, all who breathed this essence were immediately affected by it. In those of a dominant deposition, it inspired thrilling feelings of authority and power. It smelt of deference, vulnerability, and surrender. It was the scent of triumph and victory. It made the members of strict men hard, and the places of strict women seep.

Those of a submissive deposition who smelt this essence reported entering a euphoric, docile, trance-like state. To them the perfume smelt of kinship, reassurance and safety. It fired their erotic imaginations and their propensity for obedience, it quietened their minds, it made them feel they were cherished, and there was nothing at all to fear.

The discovery of this submissive essence should have been hailed as a magnificent discovery, proof at last of direct chemical signalling between human bodies. But the Professor felt unable to publish his findings, knowing the opprobrium his unconventional methodology would attract. Then something happened, and he was to begin a radically different line of investigation.

---

* * 2 * * 

In the months following his passing, the true fate of my uncle tormented me. 

Despite having few family members, his funeral was well-attended. A large group of past students gathered to pay their respects, joining a crowd of gentlemen from professional institutions, and a large group of women who kept their identities concealed behind black mourning veils. At the back of the congregation lurked a small cadre of men with a mysterious deportment, who interacted with no-one but themselves.

My uncle’s will bequeathed his home and everything within to me, including its laboratory, with an exhortation to continue his work. I took a sabbatical from Oxford, and moved to London - not just to put his affairs in order, but to endeavour to understand that mysterious period of silence in the years preceding his death.

I started by reading his journals, which I discovered in the safe in his study. He had documented the story of his intimate experiments and discoveries, which I have recounted previously. But there were also allusions to a greater secret, one that seemed even more taboo than his interest in spanking bare bottoms.

In his safe I found a curious journal that I was unable to read. It was handwritten, but obfuscated somehow, rows of unfamiliar squiggles that no-one in my institution’s Philology department could recognise as any known language. 

Motivated by curiosity, I enlisted the assistance of mathematicians. Through frequency analysis they were able to determine there were at least four substitution ciphers involved. Armed with this insight, we knew breaking the code would be possible with effort, but not knowing which cipher was used for any particular section would make the process of decoding it tiresome indeed. The samples my colleagues had managed to decipher had made no sense anyway, they resembled the crazed ramblings of a disturbed mind, so I put that book of gibberish to one side, and forgot all about it.

Months later, I happened to be sitting at my uncle’s grand old desk, my mind wandering. I had learned from my uncle’s journal that this was a favourite location for discipline, his partners would knock on his door like sorry schoolgirls, trembling with both trepidation and excitement for their visit to the headmaster. 

I admired the set of canes on the wall, each lying horizontally on little nails, neatly arranged one above the other. The lowest was also the thinnest, I expect that would have been used for minor misdemeanours, like talking in class. The thicker canes just above would be employed for more serious correction, such as neglecting homework, or being caught masturbating in the lavatory. The heaviest, the stout rigid rod at the top of the stack, would be reserved for those who asked especially to leave with a lingering memento of Sir’s strictness across their throbbing buttocks.

How many ladies must have been bent over this very desk, standing on tiptoes as their bottoms were bared? I looked down, to where their hands would have grasped the edge of the table, curious to see if the varnish bore the tiny scratches of clenching fingernails. As I did, my eye was drawn to his paperweight, a polished lead glass pyramid about four inches in height, with the all-seeing Eye of Providence etched into each side, just below its apex. 

It was a sunny day, and a stream of dazzling sunbeams was flooding through the study window. I doubt I had ever touched this weird object, but now as it glowed in the sunlight I noticed how it was covered with the greasy smears of fingerprints. I could not help but wonder: why would this lump of crystal glass have been so frequently handled? Then, unbidden, the term frequency analysis popped into my mind, and I remembered the code.

Pure whimsy made me pick up the pyramid, and place it onto the page where I was writing. I noticed how by its base, my letters were now distorted by its facets into strange, unrecognisable shapes. I began doodling, not looking at what I was drawing, but at the refracted image, trying to create something that resembled my own name. Eventually I managed it, and my own name was visible through the crystal, but an illegible scrawl on the page itself. 

Intrigued, I rotated the pyramid, so a different side was facing me, and now, the image appeared corrupted again. I redrew my name, and by the time it was visible again, I could see what I had inscribed on my page were two distinctly different sets of squiggles. I recalled that Leonardo had written his own journals in mirror-writing, and realised my uncle must also have practised writing his own most candid thoughts this way, so they could only be read back after being properly refracted.

Filled with a surge of excitement at my own cleverness, I snatched the unreadable tome from the study shelves. I opened its first page, and set the crystal pyramid above the first unintelligible line. It remained unreadable, so I rotated the pyramid again, and again, until I finally flipped it onto its side, and looked into its base. Now, where once were meaningless scrawls, now I could see my uncle’s elegant cursive writing.

It read: 

The Testimony of Professor Ephraim Dalton, of the Society of Riveners

And beneath: 

ALL MUST TRAVEL

I moved the crystal down the page, beginning to read my uncle’s secret story. After every few sentences, the writing would once again become unreadable, so I had to rotate the pyramid again until I found the side with the right corrective optical distortions to decipher it. After only a few pages, I not only understood why this journal had been encrypted, but realised I hardly knew the man I called my uncle. 

My late relative had always professed an interest in theology, but now I learned he was fixated by the nature of the Fallen Angels. Admittedly, an esoteric subject, but not sinister in itself. Many good Christian men had been fascinated by the rebellion of Satan, and the prophesied War in Heaven at the End of Days. But my uncle’s obsession was startlingly different: he not only claimed to have seen these dark angels, but to have actually visited their realm. 

I sat in the warm glorious sunshine, captivated as I read my late uncle’s words, all elucidated in his familiar elegant hand, until I could hear his clipped meticulous manner lecturing in my ears. I was shocked to hear him describe ceremonies that verged on the occult, experiments that owed more to alchemy than science, and spiritualist creeds that dared close to heresy.

I know what I am about to record is unbelievable, and I acknowledge I have no unequivocal proof I can commit to a page. I can only chronicle my personal experiences, and leave whoever might read this in years to come to make their own investigations with an open mind.

---

My mysterious uncle belonged to a secret society of interdimensional travellers, who called themselves The Riveners.

We are all familiar with three physical dimensions of existence: left and right, forward and backward, and up and down. These are the degrees of freedom in which we move. 

The Riveners had discovered an additional unseen dimension. It was like up and down, but radically orthogonal to it, and beyond human perception. Along this dimension, worlds other than our own existed, each no more than a finger’s distance away, side-by-side like a stack of cards. They lurk beyond our awareness, and almost everyone who has ever lived has been completely oblivious to their existence.

The founders of the Society had discovered that the thin barriers that separated all hidden worlds could be temporarily breached, through a ceremony called Rivening. This required no mechanical machinery, save the harnessing of our own minds, the most sophisticated artefact humanity possessed.

Once the Riveners began creating rifts to other worlds, they also started to visit them. They had discovered that neighbouring our world, in the direction they called charmwards, was a beautiful realm of order and justice. For hundreds of millennia our species had been visited by emissaries from this world, who had sought to encourage, develop, and guide us, we had come to call these beings Gods and Angels.

A finger’s distance away in the other direction, which the Riveners called strangewards, was a stormy realm of chaos and darkness. Their emissaries had visited our world too, seeking to corrupt and overthrow our suffocating institutions and regimented laws; they were agents of rebelliousness and individualism. We were taught to call them Demons and Devils.

When I first read my uncle’s revelations, I was dumbstruck. His testimony did not merely suggest such realms existed, he was sincerely testifying that he had personally visited both Heaven and Hell. These were not the destinations of dead human souls foretold in folklore, but homes to sophisticated civilizations of fantastical beings. 

I must confess I thought his writings deranged, yet he continued to lucidly describe page after page of astonishing attestations. It soon became clear that if his testimony was genuinely true, what I was reading would have world-changing consequences. My disbelief changed to scepticism, as I wondered how such an epic secret could possibly remain concealed. The answer, alas, was all too depressingly believable.

My uncle’s account stated the first rift was opened by unnamed Sufi mystics in the year 1006 AD. My own subsequent research revealed a new daytime star was seen in the skies that year, but the journal makes no mention of a connection. Religious sensitivities subsequently conspired to suppress news of the discovery, aided by the fact the travellers brought back no evidence, only stories. But it seems to have been an open secret amongst the learned, one only needs to look at the art of the time, and how the iconography of winged demons and angels suddenly emerges.

The study of rift-making and exploratory voyages into the worlds beyond was centred in Baghdad, until the city was devastated by the Mongols in 1258. The Riveners fled west to Byzantium, and then onward to the great mercantile city states of the Mediterranean. This was to bring them to the attention of the western Church, at a time of bloody power struggles and religious extremism. Rivening was declared the darkest heresy, and its practitioners were hunted down and ruthlessly executed.

The Riveners were forced to hide themselves from the assassins of the Holy Inquisition, fleeing the cities into Europe’s wild blank spaces. They were still hiding when the scourge of the Black Death ravaged the continent. When the pestilence had finally passed, the Riveners had become masters of obscurity, content to be considered a fable, a fanciful long-forgotten legend.

Knowledge of Rivening was lethally dangerous. It challenged every dogma the institutional churches were founded upon. It revealed that God was not a single being, but an entire civilisation, that its intentions were benign, but it did not seek worship. And that occasionally it reached out to our world to share its wisdom and munificence.

Perhaps the Church’s suppression of the discovery of other worlds was born out of pragmatism. A defence of human sovereignty, and a desire to conserve faith and mystery. Without those fundamental foundational beliefs, society itself might topple into anarchy. It was so much simpler to believe in one God, one credo, one mortal realm, and an unknowable afterlife for those who obeyed the rules.

Yet it was difficult to ignore the suspicion of a more sinister, ulterior motive. The Church had grown powerful by claiming to be the sole channel to God. The Riveners had impudently challenged that monopoly, and for that sin, they had been mercilessly persecuted. The adjoining worlds had been discovered by those who would come to call themselves scientists. To open a rift one did not require faith, merely understanding, and chemistry.

The act of Rivening was a transition across the hidden dimension that separated neighbouring worlds. It involved no movement in our three familiar physical dimensions, one could not merely walk through a rift, as our legs only provided locomotion in physical space. To enter a rift, one had to think oneself through it. 

Projecting one’s consciousness into an adjoining universe demanded a fundamental change of perception, and this necessitated an extremely rare fungus with hallucinatory properties. Variously referred to as Blood Truffle, Bloodrake, or Brainwort, this tumorous-looking saprophyte was uniquely nourished by spilled human brain matter. It could only be found in the fetid graves of those whose skulls had been violently shattered. The vast battlefield burial pits of Europe’s savage past provided no shortage of rich seams for agents of the Riveners to discreetly mine.

The revolting Blood Truffle was prepared using a recipe of ancient alchemy that my uncle did not detail in his journal. Suffice to say the final refined product was a black oily treacle containing the vital mind-altering essence, which dimensional travellers called Ichor. 

I read through these astounding revelations in one sitting. The sun was setting by the time I had finished reading. I found myself cloaked in deep shadow, my mind feverish, my stomach growling, my bladder aching. I was profoundly shocked, unsettled by the thought that everything I believed I knew about reality might be wrong.

---

* * 3 * * 

There was another book in the safe, smaller than the journal, like a pocket diary. It was encrypted using the same refracted writing, and contained even more shocking revelations. On its pages my uncle had allowed his mind to wander, and written freely about his darkest fantasies. 

He appeared obsessed by an ancient legend, that centuries ago a master alchemist had brewed some kind of love potion, and used it to tame a summoned succubus. These were reputed to be an exceptionally dangerous kind of demoness, faster than a flash of lightning, and stronger than the mightiest man. Their gaze could seduce in an instant, and their kiss could halt a beating heart. They had a voracious appetite for human souls, which they would extract from their willing victims at the very moment of ejaculation.

My uncle seemed convinced his own distilled essence of sexual submission was the love philtre of Rivener lore. Pages of his journal were filled with his own erotic fantasies, imagining how he might summon a succubus himself, and be the one to seduce her. In meticulous detail he described his desire to dominate her, to spank her, and to ravish her nether holes. I present this information without judgement.

His private diary also recorded the Society meetings he had attended, and provided clues to the identities of several Riveners in London. One was a professor at a prestigious university department, though I will say no more out of respect for his privacy. I dispatched a letter, asking him to meet me by my uncle’s grave at midday one week hence. I did not provide the cemetery or the location of his grave, my reasoning being if he was who I thought he was, he would be well aware of my relative’s final resting place.

On a chill spring day, just as the morning’s smoky haze had begun to lift, I paid my respects to my late uncle in a quiet corner of Brompton cemetery. A gentleman, who I will not describe, discreetly joined me. He removed his top hat respectfully, and we began to converse guardedly, both uncertain as to whom we were really addressing. I volunteered some of what I knew, starting with my knowledge of the Riveners, and the existence of other worlds. He simply nodded, and asked my intentions, I replied that I intended to honour my uncle’s memory, and continue his work.

Something about the way he regarded my answer made me wonder if he knew what my uncle had admitted in his secret diaries. Embarrassment seized me, afraid he might think my goal was also to subjugate a demoness. To avoid awkward misunderstandings, I boldly stated my desire to join the Society, and to travel myself.

The sound of birdsong and distant urban bustle filled the awkward silence, as we both appraised the granite headstone, and the etched dates measuring a lifespan truncated so tragically short. Beneath, I noticed narcissi and primroses were beginning to sprout. When he spoke again it was to tell me he could make no promises, but he would vouch for me as a favour to an old friend, and make an introduction. 

Several weeks later, I received an anonymous letter inviting me to a spa in Wiesbaden. This was to be the first in a chain of meetings, as I was meticulously vetted by a series of individuals remarkable for both their intelligence and the intensity of their suspiciousness. Ultimately, my travels took me to Moravia, where I was to finally learn the true meaning behind the Riveners’ cryptic credo.

“All Must Travel'' is the greeting exchanged when two Riveners meet. It is an affirmation of a shared life-changing event. All admitted to the Society are required to experience the transformative epiphany of transition. It was insufficient to rely on faith alone, to merely imagine what travelling into the beyond might be like, or what might exist in the other realms. 

Mere faith would open the way for unfounded opinions, ideologies and dissenting views, and ultimately schisms - and the Society would become a new church in all but name. The Society was a brotherhood united by the profundity of a shared experience. No words could adequately describe what lay on the other side, All Must Travel and see it for themselves.

In my mind it was also an affirmation that life itself is an act of travelling, and that we are only truly alive when we are in motion. Perhaps the credo was an intimation of our shared mortality too, that ultimately all must travel beyond this mortal realm, to a fate that none of us can ever know.

---

A year after I made contact with the Society, I was taken deep into the wilds of central Europe, across a range of nameless mountains. Our destination was a stubby ramshackle tower overlooking an unspoilt alpine valley. It loomed like a lighthouse above a sea of rippling wildflowers, caressed by the breeze into vast undulating waves. The high midsummer sun blazed down upon us, the cloudless sky a glorious blue dome fringed by a jagged horizon.

I was accompanied by two fellow Riveners, a venerable master rift-opener, and his apprentice - a man of similar age to myself. I know now the fatal rift my uncle had opened in suburban London had flouted the Society’s conventions, which dictated that Rivening should be only conducted in uninhabited places - lest anything go wrong, and something horrible was inadvertently brought into our world.

As part of my induction, I had been taught that any entity brought through a rift feels an increasingly strong tug back to its native reality. Hence I would not have to open a rift on the far side to return, I would linger for as long as I could retain my concentration, until the grasp of my own world overwhelmed me and snapped me back, like I had been anchored here by an elastic rope. 

But rift-opening is not without its risks. Accidents had happened. But by conducting our ceremony in these remote mountains, any interloper slipping through our rift would eventually be snapped back to its world of origin before it had a chance to run amok in ours. Should this mishap occur, only we would pay with our lives.

On arriving we left our packs in our sleeping quarters, then ascended a winding staircase to the tower’s flat roof. We sheltered in the shade of the ramparts, eagerly consuming a lunch we hoped would not be our last.

Later that afternoon, once we were rested and mentally ready, my two companions and I sat cross-legged on the warm flagstones, facing each other in a triangle. I saw a serenity in the eyes of the older man, trepidation in those of his apprentice.

The Master extracted a palm-sized wooden puzzle box from inside his jacket, manipulating its sliding panels until a small bone was ejected. It was about the same length as my own metacarpal fingerbone, but much thinner, with a round hole bored into its knobbled top. The bleached white bone was hollow, and contained the precious Ichor, dried into the finest powder. We were each given one, I cradled mine like the most brittle and precious treasure.

Refined Ichor was likely the scarcest and most valuable substance on our planet. It was utterly priceless, and would make anyone who carried it a target for assassins and thieves. The devious tamper-proof transit boxes were designed to subtly taint the drug with cyanide if opened incorrectly. Something a thief would only briefly realise once they had ingested it, moments before they choked on their final breath. 

Ichor was taken like snuff: snorted rapidly into the nasal cavity. It was believed to bind with the olfactory nerve, and henceforth rapidly travel onwards to the brain. I had practised with small amounts of it before, getting used to how it bent my senses and subverted my mind, but not enough to transit. This ceremony was to be my first voyage to another world.

The Master began by inducting us into a meditative trance, preparing our minds to be receptive to the drug. He told us to visualise looking down from the glorious blue sky, and to see ourselves as we really were - tiny ants on a flat surface, unaware of the vast volumes of space above us. His words encouraged us to expand our perception, to see new aspects of reality unfold in our imaginations.

He described how worlds were stacked on top of other worlds, in a dimension our minds could explore but our bodies could not. Just like the vertiginous reality beyond an ant’s comprehension. He encouraged us to separate our consciousness from our physical shells, to permit our minds to transition into a new phase, like steam rising from boiling water.

And then in unison, we raised the bone straws to our nostrils, and snorted the sooty contents deep into our heads.

It smelt like nectar and sand. The driest sun-scorched desert sand. It smelt like an ancient fairytale. A scabrous glittering stardust. It tasted like beginnings and ends. Like a virgin’s first lick of a glistening cunt. Like the bitter steel tip of a lethal piercing arrow. It tasted of dreams and liberty.

I stared upwards into the high blue expanse as it began to fracture, riven with dozens of dark hairline cracks, like the sky had become an immense stained glass window. The facets scintillated at random, patches of azure sky suddenly flashing red and green and yellow, as if momentarily lit from behind by a furnace immeasurably brighter than our sun. The lines proliferated, zigzagging across my vision, until the whole sky had degenerated into a mosaic comprised of tiny irregularly shaped tiles.

I looked downwards at the floor, its stones encrusted with lichens and mosses, now also criss-crossed with fine cracks, as if struck by a titanic hammer. The floor seemed to be receding from me, and it was not long before I felt I was looking down from a height of several miles. I fixed my attention on a bumpy cushion of moss far below, its lush green fronds now resembling the canopy of a sprawling forest, its diameter shrinking as my viewpoint rose inexorably higher, escalating in speed, like I was being carried away by a runaway balloon. 

From my God’s eye view I surveyed the peculiar world beneath me. It now felt abstract, no longer a place, just a seething tessellation of vivid colourful speckles, punctuated by pulses of dazzling intensity. I raised my hands to shield my eyes, and then realised: I no longer had any.

And then, I suddenly dropped. 

I plummeted towards the stone floor like a cannonball released from a hundred miles high, hurtling unstoppably towards the surface, and the inevitable shattering impact. 

But somehow, when I hit, I plunged into one of the black hairline cracks, and between the very minerals of the ancient stone floor. There was nothing to stop me, so I kept falling, tumbling into the depths of the abyss in which atoms float. I felt suddenly desperate, terrified that my fate would be to plunge into this bottomless pit for all eternity. 

And then I fell through the barrier that separates worlds. 

---

* * 4 * * 

Time passed. I know not how long. Eventually my shattered consciousness slowly coalesced and became aware of itself again. I felt I was inside a photographic negative, watching with anxious foreboding as my eerie surroundings began to emerge from the nothingness. 

I was floating amid a gargantuan void of frightening darkness, where clouds of turbulent ink billowed in a velvet firmament. Around me, huge sinister silhouettes loomed into view, terrifying shadows jutting out from the viscous murky mist. My mind, scrabbling to make sense of it, pictured a mariner being sucked inexorably towards the deadly black chasms of a wrecking reef.

I became aware of monumental mountaintops, thrusting upwards through the clouds. Surreal upside-down mountains also descended from high above through the storm-wracked sky, each a colossal fang of rock. The tips of the rocky teeth dripped and dribbled like a salivating monster, forming a cavernous maw as wide as a city.

A feeble faraway light suffused the gloom, tinting the obsidian crags with a rubescent lustre. I floated above a landscape of jagged peaks and treacherous precipices, punctuated with fissures from where streams of molten rock seeped and smoked.

The strange peaks were not frosted with snow and ice, but encrusted with the silvery sheen of solidified metals. The terrain was barren and lifeless, without any sign of vegetation or running water, nor any habitation or civilization. Just an undulating expanse of tumbledown rubble, shrouded by steaming vapours, flayed by ceaseless blizzards of ferocious power.

I realised I had no body here, no lungs to suck in its noxious airs, or even skin to feel the lashing gales. Only my awareness, gradually becoming keener. I began to hear the wind shrieking through my mind. Then, through gaps in the swirling clouds, I glimpsed points of light, each twinkling like distant stars.

One light grew brighter, and I knew at once it was alive - and now aware of me. In my mind I began to hear it howl as it hurtled towards me. The scream grew louder, screeching like an approaching hurricane. But I had no means of movement, I was merely a projection of my own consciousness buffeted within a tempestuous storm. A primal fear flooded me, a realisation I had become the prey of a remorseless predator, that something had become fixated on me, and was now intent on hunting me down.

The light sped towards me like an approaching comet, resolving into a being seemingly cast from lustrous silver. The figure was feminine, with a face of ravishing beauty and a naked torso as perfectly proportioned as any sculpted masterpiece. Her light green eyes gleamed like peridot gems. On her shoulders were a pair of wings that hummed in a blur of scintillating light. She was, in every sense of the word, an angel.

The screaming that once filled my mind had ceased, now transformed into a sweet and lyrical song. I knew at once it was her voice, this silvery siren telling me how long she had been waiting for me, how much she wanted me, how much she craved and needed me. She floated around me, scrutinising me with genuine curiosity, her wings beating powerfully, impervious to the storm raging around her. 

I was experiencing a moment of what the ancients knew as eros. A spark of primal life energy between two sentient beings. I felt a transcendent force entangling our minds, and a sudden soaring spiritual appreciation of the glory of life.

Show me your world, her voice pleaded. Intense random memories flooded my mind. The last meal I ate. A moment of calm beneath a blue summer sky. A view from a moving train. The hustle and bustle of a busy London street. The joviality of a hearty dinner with friends. The musty serenity of a library. She witnessed the very first time I shyly made love.

I was completely captivated by her. She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. Absolutely perfect in every way. I could feel her encountering my anxieties, yet understanding them, caressing my mind like a soothing balm. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to take her outstretched hand and spend the rest of my existence in her perpetual embrace. 

Then I felt my reality shift, like an earthquake in my mind. 

Suddenly, I was no longer floating, but falling. I looked upwards to see her expression, concerned and increasingly horrified, as she desperately plummeted after me, her outstretched hands flailing, powerless to save me from my terminal plunge. But I fell too fast, my last glimpse was her beautiful heartbroken face disappearing from view as I sank through the clouds.

I love you! she yelled over the roar of the wind that screeched through my mind. 

But I had no voice to shout back how much I loved her too. 

My disembodied consciousness hurtled towards the ground, smashing into the blasted black basalt. I plunged between the grains of its sooty rocks, accelerating as I tumbled through the endless loneliness of the void, until I was lost in the space betwixt something and nothing.

---

When I was aware of myself again, I realised that I was howling. 

I was sprawled on the warm lichen-spotted stones at the top of the tower, under a perfectly blue and cloudless sky. I had seen such wonders, but all I could think about was the beautiful soulmate I had found, and then devastatingly lost. I sobbed bitterly, exhausted and bereft. 

My companions did their best to console me, passing me a hip flask of throat-scorching schnapps. They reassured me, telling me that the first transition could be overwhelming for many. Habituation and preconceptions dull our sense of wonder, but I had experienced an astonishing new reality, raw and unfiltered, for the first time since I had learnt to crawl. I wept until my tears ran dry, until I had no more sorrow to gasp from my lungs.

Later that evening, as we ate around the campfire, we solemnly discussed what each had seen, and the profundity of our transition. My companions described witnessing dreadful depravities. I simply told them I had seen something wonderful. Had we even travelled to the same world? Who could say?

Later, I asked the Master Rivener if what I had seen was a drug-induced hallucination. How could I be sure what I had experienced was really real? He paused, and looked upwards in contemplation, as if the solution was written in the heavens as a hieroglyphic constellation, hidden amongst the twinkling stars. When he eventually spoke, he told me that to truly answer my question, I would first have to understand what reality really means. 

---

* * 5 * *

I returned to London, still haunted by visions of my lost silver angel. I would fall asleep bereft, and wake fatigued with yearning. Until one joyous night, when she miraculously found me. Through some inexplicable bond that transcends reality and distance, we are connected again. Now, as I sleep she visits my dreams, whispering to me. I have learnt so much from her. 

Once, she explained the nature of death and existence to me, but I lacked the mental capacity to understand her revelations. The astonishing level of her sentience makes me feel like a pet in her presence.

Yet she has instilled a passion in me I thought I had lost forever, and given my life direction again. She understands me, and there is no greater intimacy than being understood.

I know the allies of Heaven would call her a demon, but that is a crude and prejudiced slur, propagated by institutions who seek to advance their agenda by controlling our language. Even the name Hell has become synonymous with depravity and evil, but I have visited that world, and found neither. It is no sin to be alien and strange. And on my fleeting voyage, fate connected me to a curious and beautiful mind. 

My angel has told me things, that there are many beings across the known realities who do not believe in Heaven’s professed benevolence. They consider Heaven to be a paternalistic superpower, engaged in metaphysical imperialism in every realm its emissaries encounter. She has warned me that the agenda of Heaven is to homogenise the universe, through a soft-fisted tyranny that demands its subjects conform and behave, all in the name of order and predictability.  

The inhabitants of Hell have their own cultural crusade too, of course - to topple tired old establishments and repressive autocracies. They see themselves as a purging fire that clears virgin ground for bold new ideas. They agitate for a universe that is messy, unregulated, and inherently surprising. 

A quirk of interdimensional topology has meant our world is sandwiched between these two competing powers. We have become a proxy battleground for their agents, each side attempting to influence the direction our own civilization will take. 

It would be too simplistic to reduce this conflict to a clash of good against evil. At stake is not the exploitation and obliteration of the weak, but whether the fate of all realms is to be knowable or unknowable. It is a contest between order and interestingness. One that will decide whether the future is reassuringly predictable or dramatically uncertain. Humanity shall have to choose a side: to be obedient or to rebel.

Do not think me a heretic, but my sympathies lie with the iconoclasts of Hell. I do not wish my life to be governed by an unseen dictatorship, however softly-spoken and allegedly well-intentioned. I want to live in an unpredictable universe, one full of surprises. I want to travel freely across the borders between worlds, without needing permission from some celestial bureaucracy. I know if Heaven’s rules prevailed, I would never have been permitted to encounter my radiant angel, because our meeting would have been far too disruptive. 

In my dreams, she beseeches me, asking me when we might be together again. But in my heart I know that there is only one way that can ever be possible. 

After several centuries, we Riveners are still only beginning to explore the art of projecting our minds to the other worlds. Our visits are untargeted, as we have no maps of our destinations, and no way to establish our positions. In my subsequent rift transits I have arrived in random locations, into soulless voids and empty wildernesses, with my precious angel nowhere in sight.

The Riveners know the inhabitants of the other realms have been voyaging for aeons, and have mastered the ability to physically travel between worlds. Whereas we can only send our ephemeral consciousness to the other side, they can transfer their corporeal bodies. But they can not choose where they emerge. Hence I know to be truly reunited with my beloved angel, only one option remains: I must summon her into my own world. 

I have spent the last year mastering the process of Summoning, convincing my suspicious Society brethren to share what they know of this illicit knowledge. 

Summoning is effectively the application of Rifting in reverse. It involves reaching out to a sentience in another realm, and drawing it towards us through a rift of our own creation. Those who know of it have tried to dissuade my enquiries, warning me where I tread is exceptionally perilous. Plucking inhabitants of other worlds involuntarily means they will arrive in a state of furious rage. To these beings we are little more than pests, to be swatted away like annoying flies. 

A series of tragedies has taught those who dare meddle in this dark art that the supernatural strength of summoned beings can not be contained by any cage. But some brothers had told my uncle of a murky legend, of an alchemist centuries ago, whose universal controlling essence was capable of calming any being - not just men, but angels and demons too. Alas, his life and his formulation were lost long ago, destroyed in an act of zealous violence.

Thereafter the notion of a controlling essence had laid dormant, becoming a folk story passed down the generations. Even the Society’s cherished uniformity of belief was divided, there were some who believed the old legend, and others who dismissed it as fanciful thinking. Until a few years ago, when whispers of my uncle’s discovery had come to the attention of the story’s believers. Feeling unable to share his discovery with the scientific community, the followers of the old alchemist had offered my uncle a mission that appealed to his deepest convictions. 

When I visited him as a boy, I vividly remember how my uncle would mutter under his breath: Hell is empty. It was like a mantra to him, solemnly growled whenever there was news of a horrible murder or a terrible disaster. For years I thought he was quoting Shakespeare, until I read his secret diary.

Hell is empty and all the devils are here - that was what my uncle believed. That for millennia, agents of the infernal realm had skulked amongst us, corrupting humanity and stunting its progress. I often wondered what inspired his fervour. I want to think it was the fetid streets of his own city, the filthy faces of the wretched and haggard, starving in their squalid slums, choking on the smoky effluent of our own arrogant industry. A world full of devils indeed, prospering whilst the forsaken suffer.

Sadly my uncle’s actions were more likely motivated by self-righteousness. His journal describes his scientific discovery as an act of providence. A breakthrough inspired by the Grace of God that would enable humanity to re-establish its purity, and tame the insidious demonic forces. Just as the invention of electric light promised a future where man would finally conquer the night.

He saw his essence of submission as a weapon of might. One that would help our species pacify our neighbours, and earn Mankind the right to speak as equals. We would begin to learn how to send our own bodies across the void. We could uncover the secret of opening multiple rifts, and so jump further than our neighbouring worlds, to explore what lay beyond both Heaven and Hell. Humanity could become a new imperial power, sending pioneers into the new frontier, to colonise new worlds and secure their riches.

My uncle believed in empires, and the manifest destiny of the Human Race. On that conviction he gambled his life. The evidence is clear, his summoning succeeded, but his precautions failed. The essence of submission he had so painstakingly extracted utterly failed. He was unable to contain the demon he conjured. He was attacked, and fatally drained of his own life-force.

Sometimes, when I am alone in the lab at night, I can almost sense his ghostly presence, as if the teetering stacks of glass apparatus were being rattled by his unquiet spirit. I often wonder if he was trying to tap out a message, and - if I could even understand it - would he be sending me instructions, or a warning?

For years, I endeavoured to identify his fatal mistake. I have travelled widely, and consulted the world’s foremost experts on subjects ranging from distillation and biochemical signalling to erotic demonology. I now believe I know where he went wrong. A chemist sees everything as chemistry. His hypothesis was fatally flawed. The essence of submission was never a chemical vapour - it is love.

My uncle was an old fool. He placed his trust in fairytales, arcane runes, and the scent of wet cunts. But I have no need for such archaic alchemy. I have an eternal connection to my silver angel. I know I shall be protected by the universal power of love.

At midnight on Halloween, when the barrier between worlds is at its thinnest, I shall perform the rifting incantations, and finally be reunited with my beautiful spirit. I have made innovations, and developed my own methodology for locating and retrieving her, which this margin is too narrow to contain.

---

The bells will soon begin to toll, so I shall cease writing now. 

I pray I will live to write another entry, to record love’s triumph over ignorance, and that none should find this journal unfinished beside my own lifeless corpse.

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@spankingtheatre 2024