The Devil's Dealing [Yaksha/Masakaki/Kaala]

Our wisdom flows so sweet. Taste and see.

TRANSMIT- Initiate Monadic Signal- RECIEVE- Initiate Rakshasha Frequency - 42 FLAVORS, PLUS 624- Initiate Encroachment Protocol - WITNESS- Typhus

A tragedy befell the world. It began as many did; with love. You mortals call it love, yes? Love is beyond us. Or we are beyond love. It can be so hard to tell sometimes. The moaning, moist sounds of organics engaged in the highest act of intimacy possible. We see all, but we are not vouyeurs; we spare you the most intimate parts. They are unimportant. Know only that she loved him, thought he was the salvation she had sought for so long. She raked her nails down his back, proclaimed her undying devotion.

He told her that her money was on the dresser. Love may be beyond us, but it was beneath this one; he was seeking a higher form of devotion entirely. And so it was that he turned loose the first of many more into the world. It was an old story, one that many knew. She left that place burning, carrying with her the seed of great, incredible, hideous potential. She left that place with a glow about her, some indescribable feeling. Even being rejected hadn't abated her feelings. She had left her mark on him, and he on her. There would be time to really impress upon him the depths of her devotion. She rubbed her belly, where the abominable parasite grew, even then.

You think that jape too unsavory, Dear Reader? We apologize. Such jokes were unfamiliar to us. We know all, but we forget what it is like to think in meatspace with meat minds, sometimes. There is no joke here, black or otherwise. This matter is one of absolute sobriety; a matter we are determined to catalog comprehensively. The woman is irrelevant; another faceless convert. We will call her Jane. Jane is a common name for women, we're told. The parasite is called Juin. That one is a much less common name.

And the man, the very sterile man whose seed carried only a single horrible force along with it, was called Yaksha Dokuja. It is his story we will follow today. Yaksha Dokuja was riding a high of unimaginable depths as he dressed himself once more, and fondled each furrow in his back. Masochism is a natural defense mechanism when every moment is pain. You think masochism madness? Madness is the base state of the universe. Yaksha Dokuja was not mad, any more than God may be called mad. Yaksha Dokuja was not a man, whatever previous sources may have indicated. Yaksha Dokuja was a very peculiar type of monster. His pale skin, exceptionally low core temperature, and incredible lack of object constancy wasn't a clear enough hint?

Look beyond. Look beneath. See the whitesnake jism, coiled beneath the inorganic. See the ophidian mien? See the eyes, slitted in a way no human's ever could? See the body, hardly even worthy of being called flesh? The hole, ever so perfectly circular, situated just so? Yaksha Dokuja was a Hollow One, and a particularly unpleasant one at that. He had taken to humanity like a fish to water, reminding himself of all of the human features his kin had forgotten.

You think this a mercy? You imagine that an animal, given humanity for the first time, would undoubtedly improve? Consider the course of history. Intellect has always been correlated with unmatched cruelty. Survival merely breeds dull, drab necessity; those beasts which struggle inevitably progress. It is entirely automatic, and often difficult to track. Necessity brings about innovation. Innovation brings about stability. Stability brings about prosperity.

Prosperity? That is a term for those without imagination. We apologize. Such a word has no place for humans; humans prospered long ago, and have moved beyond such a concept. No longer are humans fruitful, or mutiplicative. Much like the Drosophila melanogaster, they have become exponential. No longer were humans content with mere prosperity. Humans demanded more. Handed a world of nearly infinite possibility, humans were not satisfied. And so they reached to the stars.

Comfort. That is the word we sought. Comfort is for those of the evolved. Only in a species that has so thoroughly dominated its environment could one hope to transform the world to meet its desires, rather than the other way around. Only humans could develop the arrogance to believe they could change their environment more easily than themselves. Or perhaps, until recently. Even an old dog may learn new tricks, after all.

Centralized air. Such a perfection of technology was the marvel of Yaksha's attention today. The notion he could simply crank the thermostat to wherever he wished, and be confident in the notion that within mere moments he'd be bombarded by the very elements? Nearly hypnotic, to one who had spent so many centuries trying to perfect the notion of sunbathing for just barely long enough.

We call him Yaksha Dokuja Monevarius. This is what is known as a name; we don't yet know what goes into one. Even to us, the Names are something evasive, ever-changing. Everybody has one. No one hands them away freely. No one who wishes to survive, at least. But names are not always sufficient. No one in the world remembers Mrs. Mallon. Perhaps Mrs. Brown is more easy to recall? No? Mary Mary, Quite Contrary. What is in a Name? Snips and snails and puppy dog tails? No. That would be silly.

Mary Mallon is the name. Names are all too often insufficient. Names burn like wildfires, gone in a scant few decades. Never to be seen again. But there are those which may yet become candles, guttering and flickering against the winds of the universe. Battered, wounded, ever-changing. Stuck in a foundation so very malleable that a hero may become a villain in the course of a single Naming. We apologize. Waxing poetic is normally unlike us.

Was that what you mortals call a pun, or play on words? We suppose so.

The Names are the important part. Didn't you know that, Dear Reader? It's only ever about the Names. Name rolls off the tongue so nicely, so easily. Yaksha Dokuja Monevarius. Mary Mallon. They have no need to be showy, or memorable, or to strike fears into the hearts of mortals. They are what they are. To make them something else is simply folly. What is the word you mortals coined? Such a clunky one. Hardly worth remembering for any period of time.

Soubriquets. So very like Names, and yet so insufficient. Like a photograph of a man is not the man. No one remembers the Name, after a time. But the soubriquet burns and smolders gently. Mary Mary, Quite Contrary. How many was it you killed before you were caught? How was it you hid for so long? Not from the world; that is no mystery. From yourself. How is it any one person could so thoroughly fail to understand themselves?

The analogy is more than a mere distraction, Dear Reader. Did we not make that clear enough? We apologize. It's so rare we find one so willing to listen for so long. The last who tried plucked out his own jellied eyeballs and bled out from the shock. We miss him so. Mary Mary, Quite Contrary. How does your garden grow? With pots and pans and filthy hands. And so many corpses in a row.

Typhus was the legendary beast, birthed from the Earth itself in response to the atrocities of the gods. Typhus was vengeance made manifest. Typhus was the father of monsters. So many countless atrocities counted their lineage back to the Typhus. Did Mary Mary, Quite Contrary? We know.

Did you think it was a coincidence they called it Typhoid?

Names, Dear Reader. They're what it's all about. Mary Mallon is the Typhoid. She merely took on the features of her namesake.

Does it matter that Typhus came so many centuries later? What is time to us? We exist outside time. This time, the infection was going to be so very much worse.