« on: January 12, 2016, 08:48:29 PM »
It was upon the eve of the twelfth of January that I first suspected that a vile miasma had settled over my estate. I had just come home from a meeting at the Lodge of Distinguished Scientists, where we had discussed a most fascinating essay on the anatomy of neanderthal man, when I noticed a parcel perched upon the landing. I secreted it inside, fearful that the neighboring lords would see me with a package and accuse me of racketeering or other deeds of ill repute.
The package was plain, wrapped in the paper of a butcher's shop and secured with the style of adhesive bandages which had come into fashion among postal couriers. Immediately I knew the package was tainted with a derelict spirit, and that it contained something unspeakable. I glanced at the return address, clearly scrawled by a madman, and noticed that it had come by way of Cape Town, Constantinople, Hong Kong and Minneapolis. It was scrawled on and stamped in uncountable languages and symbols, but that was not what had caught my eye.
It was from a Dr. Richard Burg and his wife, a pair of art aficionados who specialized in the dealing and trading of a rare form of middle american folk art which detailed a sort of half-man half-beast in wild and unnatural colors. They marketed these "Anthropomorphine" works to the upper crust youths of Manhattan and Quebec, who could not get enough of these bizarre works.
Just as I tucked the package away in the cellar, to avoid rousing the suspicions of the madame of the house, I felt what could only be the kick of an infant from a paper board womb. Only, how could the innocence of a child be contained in this hellish vessel? Surely it was more akin the the spawn of rosemary, a cursed being to only roil in torment, trapped eternally in a cage of postal nightmares. I tore into it, savaged the box until it was ragged and torn at every extremity. What I found inside was a cornucopia harvested from the garden of the devil himself.
Dear reader, know that if you are reading this, it is too late for me. I have stared into the void and it has consumed me. I feel a gnawing at the back of my head that compels, nay, demands that I catalogue the contents of this wicked vessel of filth. May future generations recognize it and cast it into the hottest steel foundry they can travel to by steam engine, lest it seize them and unwind their very being, as it has to me.
The following is an account of the items unleashed from the package which has ruined me so: