– So, ho’s the new player?
– Nice! it’s a jolly good fellow. I like him. but….
– But what?
– Very hard to deal with. I can’t read his face!
***
– Alors ? T’en penses quoi du nouveau ?
– Sympa ! J’l’aime bien ce bougre. Mais…
– Mais quoi ?
– J’arrive à jouer contre lui, impossible de lire son visage !
Hidden in the hearth of the red light district, Mycena is a one of the kind establishment. They don’t like to be called a brothel, they don’t offers sex in exchange for money here. No, no no. They sell pure dreams, unhinged phantasm. You have to be co-opted to be admitted in this very private club, and even then, you have to prove you’re worthy and share your most intimates desires. They judge you and if they deems you’re worthy, only then you’re allowed into the nacreous room, the inner sanctum full of changeling, capable of shifting their appearance to the wildest of your dreams.
After that, you’ll never desire anyone else. You’ll do anything to return to them. Anything.
***
Au coeur du quartier chaud, Mycena est un établissement à part. La direction n’aime pas être qualifiée de bordel ou de maison de passe. Ils n’aiment pas non plus parler de passe, de sexe ou de prostitution. Non, la direction vends ici du pur Désir, les plus débridés des fantasmes. Il est nécessaire d’être coopté pour pouvoir prétendre à un examen d’admission. Ensuite, il vous faudra partager vos désirs les plus intimes, que vous-même n’osez vous avouer. Ils vous jugerons, et si vous être digne à leur yeux, alors seulement ils vous octroierons accès à la chambre nacrée où se trouvent les Changelins, métamorphes capables de prendre l’apparence de vos rêves les plus fous.
Après ça, vous ne voudrez plus de personne d’autre. Vous ferez n’importe quoi pour recommencer. N’importe quoi…
Ink brush on A6 sketchbook / Encre de chine sur carnet A6
“Most called them ‘sea devils’ but one tribe chose to treat with them, and worship them. It was from the sea devils the tribe learned of the god Dagon, and during the abhorrent rites to this god, the tribe would couple with the sea devils.”
– Capt. Abner Ezekiel Hoag, 1734.
***
“La plupart les appelaient ‘Diables de mer’. Seule une tribu choisi de traiter avec eux et de les vénérer. C’est auprès d’eux que la tribu a appris à vénérer le dieu Dagon, et lors des rites odieux qui lui étaient dévolus, la tribu s’associait aux diables de mer.”
– Capt. Abner Ezekiel Hoag, 1734.
What would be the most horrifying?
To see this horror creeping toward you, losing your sanity at each of its grotesque transformations?
Or been blinded by the rays of unholy light it emits, thus avoiding its hideous appearance but unable to locate the thing?
***
Qu’est-ce qui serait le plus horrible selon vous ?
Voir cette horreur ramper dans votre direction et perdre votre santé mentale à chacune de ses grotesques contorsions ?
Ou être aveugle par ses rayons de lumière malsaine, protégé de son hideuse apparence mais incapable de savoir où elle se trouve?
Frankly my dear, that is the last time I let Mr Whateley drank from our well!
***
Franchement ma chère, c’est bien la dernière fois que je laisse Mr.Whateley se sustanter à notre puit !
It started as a little scab, a round yellowish growth on the pear tree.
Mr Thompson tried to remove it but it was so sturdy that the knife ripped and he cut his hand, spilling blood everywhere. Martha had to take him to the doctor to get stitches, and once they get back, the thing has tripled in size.
The day after, Mr Thompson went to see and it was the size of a melon, translucent and faintly glowing. He tried to poke it with a broom, but it was hard as a rock and won’t bulge an inch.
This was last week. The thing is now huge and massive, it hangs in the pear tree in violation of all natural laws, defying gravity and common sense. At night, it glows vividly, and you ca see things moving inside. Mr Thompson is scared. He’s finally agreed to call on someone but I’m afraid it is too late.
***
C’était au début une petite gale ronde sur le tronc du vieux poirier.
Mr Thompson essaya de l’enlever mais la lame de son canif glissa sur la petite sphère ambré et lui entailla profondément la main. Il y avait du sang partout, Martha a du l’emmener chez le toubib qui lui mit des points. A leur retour, la gale avait triplée de volume.
Le lendemain, Mr. Thompson retourna dans le verger pour constater qu’elle avait atteint la taille d’un melon durant la nuit. Il essaya de la déloger à coups de balai, mais elle resta inamovible, aussi solide qu’un roc.
C’était la semaine dernière. L’abomination a maintenant atteint une taille si gigantesque, si énorme qu’elle défie toutes les lois de la gravité et du sens commun. Cette immense sphère ambrée brille la nuit. En plissant les yeux, on peux voir des choses bouger en dedans. Mr Thompson s’est enfin décidé à appeler de l’aide, mais j’ai peur qu’il soit trop tard.
“It was not any mere artist’s interpretation that we saw; it was pandemonium itself, crystal clear in stark objectivity. That was it, by heaven! The man was not a fantaisiste or romanticist at all—he did not even try to give us the churning, prismatic ephemera of dreams, but coldly and sardonically reflected some stable, mechanistic, and well-established horror-world which he saw fully, brilliantly, squarely, and unfalteringly. God knows what that world can have been, or where he ever glimpsed the blasphemous shapes that loped and trotted and crawled through it; but whatever the baffling source of his images, one thing was plain. Pickman was in every sense—in conception and in execution—a thorough, painstaking, and almost scientific realist.”
– Pickman’s Model, H.P.Lovecraft
Pencil doodle on A6 sketchbook / Commission for Paul Baldowski
The flutist has played for eons
To calm the Sultan of Demons
Or so it seems, no time here,
No place either, so crowded
So when came the feeble call
from a teeny tiny blue ball
It came and eat profusely
And now wanders aimlessly
Ink brush on A6 sketchbook
Lurking inside and waiting patiently, the little lump started to grow, started to feel.
Soon it took over its host, making its own thoughts, nerves and organs.
And then, one day, it shed up the useless skin and rearranged the bones.
Strong enough, hungry, ready to assimilate more. It hunts.
Ink brush on A6 sketchbook
“Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in Dim Carcosa.”
– “Cassilda’s Song” from the King in Yellow, Act 1, Scene 2
Pencil doodle on A6 sketchbook from my Great Old Ones & Their Kin series for an upcoming Elder Gods Tarot project.