Thud-Inn Frank took the last sip of his lukewarm beer. With a growl he put on his shabby leather jacket, tied his worn out shoes and left his one-room apartment in the basement of a big-city mansilo. He just couldn't forget his dark dreams of the last few weeks. He remembered blurredly a kind of shapeless monstrosity that tried to control everything and saw everything. He called this creature the Guardian With a Thousand Eyes. Sometimes it was as if we were falling asleep because we could no longer bear reality, and wake up because the dream was too much of a burden as well. And then the gazes of others, he feared them his whole life. To be observed alone caused such an unpleasant tension in him that it resembled a quiet torture. Every look seemed to rob him of his soul in another small piece. If he still had one. Or ever had. His mood was full of glumness, and the approximately 2.35 liters of beer he had soused in the last 23 minutes changed alarmingly little. Even the usual dose of speed didn't want to raise his spirits as expected. It was Saturday evening, his week was full of monotony and harassment. For the fifth time in a row he had to work overtime for the benefit of the firm - he worked in the warehouse of a globally operating company. He hated his job and probably would've quit years ago. However, his prospects were not particularly bright and he did not attach particular importance to being oppressed by the Central Authority for Labour Management and Employment Administration with any even more degrading and poorly paid work measures. Usually, a spectrum of uppers and downers provided him with at least a temporary balance, but not this autumn. It was colder, darker and somehow also foggier than the last few years at the same time. He left his apartment before dusk and did not enter it again until the sun had already given off its last gracious rays. He had long ago resigned himself to this life, and he had also resigned himself to his loneliness. During the week, the meaningless flickering of television gave him the feeling of at least a rudimentary social connection. But on the weekend he wanted to experience something. He provocatively raised the collar of his leather jacket to look a little more dangerous and daring than he already wanted to be. „You never know,“ he mumbled in his three-day beard, „maybe I'll meet the right one today or something else will happen somehow“, yet secretly he had already given up hope for more than 10 years. The deodorant, which was supposed to replace the shower, denied service after only a short time. A male draught from his hip flask comforted him over the burgeoning melancholy, the only fruit that grew in his social desert. He felt little, and the little he felt wasn't even very pleasant. With artificial nonchalance he lighted a cigarette and trotted his way to the nearby subway station. He greeted the beginning of a light drizzle with a snarling growl, the headlights of the passing cars drifting past his retina like through frosted windows. The fact that he walked less than five hundred meters past 23 high-tech video surveillance chambers, which recorded each and every of his movements in detail, did not normally affect him. This time, however, the cameras seemed to have a much more threatening presence, invading his personal sphere. It seemed to him as if they had been installed personally for him, it was a great nuisance to pass them by. The 15 minutes of waiting for the next subway was typical again. He counted the remaining cigarettes in the box with mockery. The minutes crawled past him like slow motion, seemed to stick to him and to stretch his lazy thoughts, wandering through past and future. „What future?“, he asked cynically. He noticed that no one was there to answer his question and acted as if he had never asked it. He stared into the void and tried not to think at all. The hissing of the rolling train tore him out of his trance. Robotically, he entered the vehicle and dropped his tired body onto a worn-through upholstery. To his amazement - and he was rarely amazed - he was completely alone here as well, he was the only passenger in the entire compartment. „Is today Sunday already?“, he asked himself in his mind and came to the conclusion „No“. In the end he was happy about it, the presence of other humanoid beings made him, as already mentioned, kind of nervous. After all, in today's world you never know exactly what shady characters are floating around in this area. In the media, which he only consumed by chance and casually, one heard terrible things all the time, especially the groups of young southern men frightened him. He would not necessarily call himself a right-wing, he had barely any actual political opinion if asked, apart from a few nutty conspiracy theories and ideology mismatches. Just like it's common these days. At some point he had come to the conclusion that all parties and groups were actually against him and had stopped thinking about it - not that his thoughts had penetrated to a deeper level of world affairs at some point, they always remained on the shallow babble that a talk show master could still expect of his disgruntled audience without the ratings dropping. His dull mind shruggingly accepted the empty compartment, and quickly lost itself again in the gloomy swamp of his internal decay. He thought back to the conversation he had had with his ex-girlfriend ages ago. They were sitting in a third-class restaurant, and she confronted him about their common future, which was the last non-business conversation he had had with a female representative of his species. When he repented remorsefully of being one disappointment, she commented, „Yes, that's you.“ and pulled away without looking at him again. The calmness and coldness with which she manoeuvred her beautifully shaped body through the restaurant door had then burned itself into his mind like a crown of thorns. A picture that would probably plague him until the end of his days, it was the first thing he used to think about after waking up. The subway stopped abruptly in the tunnel. A penetrating loudspeaker sound brought him back to the reality of consensus. „Dear passengers, due to ongoing construction work, we cannot continue along the usual route, but have to take a detour, we ask for your understanding and wish you an eventful night.“ The word „eventfully“ echoed for a few seconds through the neural network in Frank's skull. It all seemed strange to him somehow. A ride through the darkness of the subway shafts followed, and Frank noticed the rank smell of his worn sports shoes. He only had this one pair, but he was still embarrassed when he noticed it. Some time later they reached the final station. Frank got out of the train, he couldn't see a soul at the train station either. Not even a stray dove, a couple of rats fighting for a discarded piece of pizza, or a homeless person who had set up their dreary night camp were to be seen. And where was the security staff? A little worried, Frank crept to the top of the train. The driver had disappeared as well. Frank was forsaken at a subway station completely unknown to him. He could not find a station name anywhere either, which made him a little surprised despite his character-related apathy. What part of town was he in anyway? He wasn't sure. Apart from the buzzing of a low-pressure fluorescent tube, which underlined his nervous discomfort with arrhythmic blinking, it was silent. Too quiet for Frank's taste. To calm his nerves, Frank grabbed the cigarette box in his left pocket. It calmed him down as his groping fingers touched the small cardboard box. He pulled out the pack and fished out a cig. Indifference overcame him, or was it the long-forgotten flame of rebellion that led him to lead the cigarette to his mouth and light it, despite the ban on smoking? He inhaled deeply, which at least calmed him down for a moment. He had never been here before and he had no idea where he was. Carefully, in order not to break the eerie silence, he hurried to the nearest escalator, which of course once again refused to serve. Frank's mood tipped from one second to the next, and he stomped grumblingly towards the surface, ignoring any caution. „You wonder where you are“ was the wording of a graffiti he ran past. It was true, and he started to feel uncomfortable again, it didn't want to appear to him as coincidental as the rest of his rational mind would have liked to evaluate it. Arriving at the top, he noticed that the streets were deserted as well, and there was something in the air that was drilling through his phlegm like a spear of diamond, although he could neither locate nor name it. This was an area like any other, only more empty, neglected. The same houses and streets as anywhere in the city, in any area. Except this wasn't an area he knew. An electric tingling overflowed him. There, another damn security camera. Did it just move? It stared at him, had him focused. He felt a movement in his plumbing. He had read once that death row candidates were often getting an erection out of fear. His cock was hard as a rock, but his knees felt like jelly. He resisted the urge to just run. He began to walk in some direction, his steps were followed by the camera. He thought he heard the buzzing of the electronics. Here and there, the penetrating light of a neon sign was shining, the sun had disappeared behind the horizon, people were still not visible. Or audible. Not even a car passed him. No birds. Nothing but the echo of his own steps. He observed his painstakingly opressed panic, although he was astonished by the irrationality of his flight reflex. Was it a horror trip that was triggered by his permanent pep consumption? Classic paranoia? To answer this question, his adrenal gland released an additional surge of adrenaline into the bloodstream. His bio-survival circuit was instantly activated, which made its presense felt in his consciousness through the thought of just driving home and spending the evening on a cheap action film with the most authentic and abundant representation of violence possible. He probably would have done this even if his gaze hadn't suddenly been attracted by a red glowing sign with the inscription „Thud-Inn“, almost hypnotically. He heard noises coming from within, and suddenly this place seemed to promise life. Or at least something like normality. He didn't know the store, but his desire to finally have company, even from silent strangers, and his desire to take a seat somewhere and fight his lousy mood with plenty of ethanol, outweighed. „They're probably going to pour beer there,“ he said to himself and entered the pub. He let his gaze wander through the locality, except for him and the bartender, there were only a handful of people here. None of the faces he could see in the dim light of twilight seemed familiar to him. But the thick clouds of smoke that hung in the air did not show much, anyway. The plumes of haze were a very good sign, however, as it signalled to him that he had caught one of the few venues where smoking was still allowed. He didn't put any value on going outside on this strange evening. Apart from that, the ambience was rather dull. A long and worn bar counter with a few worn-out bar stools in front of it. The wall behind it was covered with smudged mirrors, in front of which, in a dusty glass shelf, a collection of hard but not necessarily costly liquors was built up. There were six to seven more tables and a corner with dark and mucky leather sofas, over which a 55 inch flat screen was mounted. Some soccer game was broadcast, an overweight man hung in one of the armchairs and followed the events on the screen as if he was hypnotized, while he dumped liters of beer into himself and swallowed handwise potato chips. In front of the entrance to the toilet stood two men, one of them wore a long faux leather coat and, despite the sparse light conditions, sunglasses. He rummaged around his pocket, the man facing Frank looked at him in a mixture of nervousness and tension. Frank knew that he could fill up his amphetamine stockpile at this place without any major problems if necessary - and this would presumably occur quickly. The other people present seemed just as apathetic and ordinary as he was. Even the rubber fig standing in a tub in the corner and probably not having seen water for at least five weeks could hardly cheer up the desolate atmosphere. Anyway, Frank was among people providing background noise again. In the back of the corner there were some old-fashioned gaming machines, which gave the impression that they should have been shelved years ago. But apparently they still worked well enough to be able to pull the hard-earned money out of the pockets of customers. In the end, however, he wasn't very interested in all this. His only interest was the quickest possible consumption of hard liquor, in whose arms he wanted to forget this lousy evening, crowning an equally lousy week. With a determination that was unusual for his natural disposition, he approached the bar and dropped onto one of the stools. His gaze fell on a detail that he had apparently missed. In midst of the bottles of liquor there was the strange logo saying „Thud-Inn“ again, a truly peculiar name with which he simply could not understand anything. The bartender, who was still preoccupied with the symbolic rather than effective cleansing of some glasses, looked up to him and glanced at him from cloudy eyes: „Yes? „A double Barcadi-Cola with no ice,“ Frank grumbled back. When he finally held the glass in his hands, a slight relaxation finally set in. Two drinks later he even forgot about his discontent and the strange journey. He enjoyed the effect of alcohol, which paralyzed all the higher functions of his nervous system, smoked one cigarrette after the other and listened thoughtlessly to the music. From the moderately qualitative sound system, „Knocking on Heaven's Door“ in the version of Guns and Roses, one of his favourite songs, resounded. „Do you have a light for me?“ A gentle and at the same time miraculously haunting female voice tore him out of his intoxication. He had never heard such a voice before - of course, women always made Frank nervous, but it seemed to make every cell of his body, even every single atom, dance. Pure ecstasy flashed through his entire being. He needed what felt like an eternity until his language centre was able to produce rudimentary sentences again. It took about the same subjective period of time to send the corresponding signals to his articulating apparatus and convert them into sounds. „Hey, you got a light?“, the woman's voice sounded again. This time she seemed to come straight from the center of his skull. „Have I finally lost my mind now?“ Frank was paralyzed, under great effort he managed to turn his head to the left, grabbing his scratched fuel lighter out of the pocket of his jeans and to respond with a simple „Yes, here!“ His gaze fell on a graceful lady with flowing red hair, which seemed to move gently and as if by magic. She wore a white peplos with a golden border lined with swirls reminiscent of galaxies. Around her neck a golden amulet in the form of an apple hung on an equally golden necklace. Her facial features were as immaculate as an elf's, and her whole body seemed to be surrounded by an aura of flickering energy in all the colours of the rainbow. On her upper arm there was a tattoo in the form of an eight-pointed star, which seemed to glow of its own accord. The flow of time ran dry, and around Frank and the lady everything seemed to be frozen. Before Frank looked the mysterious lady in the eye, he lit her cigarette with the mindless assurance of a robot. „Thank you, Frank,“ said the voice. Then their eyes met and he looked directly into hers. It seemed to him as if his spirit was racing at superluminal speed through a myriad of universes at the same time. The space-time continuum disintegrated into an endless vortex of fractals in psychedelic colours. This intensity was just too much for him. He didn't hold her gaze any longer and looked down. He did not know what kind of creature he was facing, it definitely wasn't a human being, and he did not believe in fairies, angels or even gods. He had to collect himself, needed some distance - jerkily and wordlessly, he jolted up, and while behind him the bar stool fell over, he searched feverishly for the toilet to snort a line of speed. But actually he wanted to hide from himself and the world once again. The eyes of the others, that was hell. His personal hell. He scurried down the hallway to the toilet and locked himself in the cabin. With shaky hand he picked up his bag and prepared a line on the edge of the lid with his credit card. It was way too big. Whatever. He rolled a five-euro bill and pulled the filthy stuff into his nose with a single powerful snort. The intensity of the high dose caused him to bang his back of the head against the toilet door. His cabin neighbor came across a loud „Hey!“, Frank mumbled an apology and staggered out into the open air. He found his way back to the bar, but the beauty had disappeared as suddenly as she had emerged. In front of the bar stool, which was still tilted over, there was a pair of sunglasses with orange lenses shimmering in purple, next to it was a handwritten note: „FNORD“. Frank turned it around. That's all it said. What was that supposed to mean? The waiter grumbled, „Your drink's been paid for.“ Frank let his gaze wander through the locality, it was still the same crowd here. The impression of unfamiliarity didn't want to give way when he put on his glasses. But this was such an understatement that it was a lie. Because the truth hit like a blow. The creatures he saw in the pub were not human beings. He tore his glasses off his head, and everything was back to normal. He put them back on and he could see them again. The demons. There are known knowns. For instance I know what my name is. There are known unknowns. For instance Frank knows that he doesn't know the day he dies. And there are unknown unknowns. For instance these demons which Frank saw through those glasses. He didn't know that he didn't know anything about demons, before he put the glasses on the first time. And: There are unknown knowns. These are our subconciousness, storing information we don't know we can access. Looking at those demons, suddenly it felt like he actually knew them in contradiction to the previous claim they are unknown unknowns! The fat guy in front of the TV was now fused with the beer bottle and the remote control - yes, the whole armchair seemed to belong to his body, the backrest stretched under breath and the armchair feet moved! On his fine rib breast, crisp crumbs seemed to grow. He called the being „Bobat“, Demon of Sloth. Even more gruesome was the figure on television, a hybrid of model, mouse, hyena and something that wasn't from this world. The forearms had a bizarre structure, protruding down to the ground in spite of the errect posture of the humanoid being, and being tapered like spears. He called the creature „Ickybatch“, Demon of Media-induced Stupidity. Bobat and Ickybatch seemed to be united in a more sinister symbiosis, and Frank did not think it could get any worse when he noticed that there was a kind of puddle in the room that seemed to come from the toilet. It was a disgusting, slimy and amorphous heap, spiked with countless injections filled with various drugs, also burning cigarettes and crack pipes. With his seven mouths he ate everything he got into his greasy tentacles, whether it was cigarette butts, glass splinters, leftovers of food or other rubbish lying at the bottom of the pub. With his seven nostrils, he continuously snorted any powdery drug known and unknown to man, inhaling nasal snuffles and solvents. But he was not as lethargic as Bobat, because in his eyes the sick and possessed fire of a junkie was burning, and he moved purposefully to the place where Frank was sitting. His only instinct seemed to be „More, more, more, more and more“, his body was covered with ulcers and spots reminiscent of dollar, yen and euro signs. He wore a wedding ring on each of the seven tentacles except one. Frank suddenly knew:„The one who is taken into possession of Depenthanos, also called Maw, is an absolute slave driven by the pressure of addiction and willing to do anything to stop it. Depenthanos is extremely dangerous and leads his victims sometimes slower, sometimes faster, but ultimately very singlemindedly to the afterlife, as he is almost insatiable.“ Frank jumped up from the bar stool again. Begging, fleeing or fighting, what should he do? Another figure stood next to him, who seemed not to change, whether Frank looked through the glasses or not. A middle-aged man, whose eyes seemed to be shining with silent wisdom, smoked his pipe with relish. He didn't seem to be concerned about any of this. He was wrapped in dense smoke and Mary Jane's sweet scent was in the air. He was wearing a kind of naval uniform embroidered with the name „Cpt. Bucky Saia“ in big letters. He turned to Frank and looked at him him for a moment warningly. From the strange iron mask that covered the lower half of his face, reminiscent of bare human jaws, the words, „If I were you, I'd run, bub.“ Then he began to laugh. This idea immediately made sense to Frank, he ran off, ran as fast as he had never run before in his life. But Depenthanos had noticed him and resolutely pursued him. Frank tore open the door in full swing - and pissed his pants without even stopping to run. In front of the pub, there was a huge monstrosity facing him, the Guardian With a Thousand Eyes, the very same beast that had soaked him in cold sweat for the past few weeks, costing him several hours of sleep and probably days of his life as well. It was the very same beast as in his dreams, littered with eyes and cameras and things that were both. Eyeballs, facet eyes, lenses and sensors stared at him and every look was as sharp and penetrating as a dagger. He would almost have been frozen in the run out of fear, but other, similarly primeval instincts drove him on and tried to save him. In deepest distress, Frank launched into a flying role, which he had learned in his youth in Judo classes and, surprisingly, still seemed to master. He slipped almost elegantly between the Guardian's spindly legs, closely followed by Depenthanos, who plunged blindly into rage at the massive body of the Guardian. The struggle released energies that distorted space-time. A powerful, screeching silence that he had never heard before almost shattered his eardrum as well as what remained of his conscious mind. The earth trembled, it was simultaneously hot and cold and a deep black light, or whatever it was, illuminated the event while Frank cast a glaringly bright shadow. Frank broke away from the grotesque spectacle with greates effort and ran through the dark streets until his lungs burned, glowing needles seemed to stab him in the side, and he was on the verge of collapse. He didn't know how much time had passed, and he didn't dare to turn around even once during his escape. But now he took a look. He couldn't see anything threatening. The only things he heard were his own heartbeat and the rushing sound of blood in his ears. For a moment he stared into the dark of the night, stunned: „What the hell was that?“ the voice of his reason sounded in his mind. „The cameras, that thing can probably still see me!“ his survival instinct was yelling. His bio-computer reactivated the flight system. He had to hide somewhere - he was too exhausted to run away. He looked around for a short while and luckily found what he was looking for. There are few situations where a public toilet seems like a safe harbour, this was one of them! He entered the tiled room and made sure that he had locked the door behind him. The pungent smell of old urine rose into his nose, but he should be protected from digital observers after all. At least he hoped so. He headed for the sink, took off his glasses and threw some hands of the cold tap water into his face. He paused for a moment. Then he looked up, greasy mirrors. „FNORD“ was written there. His knees became as soft as pudding again, but still he put his glasses back on and looked directly into the eyes of his reflection. But there was no reflection. He only saw the sunglasses. No body, no toilet, just these fucking sunglasses and the reflection of a reflection of a reflection. A mirror that looked at itself in another mirror? An infinite loop? The separation between Frank and his environment collapsed apruptly, if it had ever really existed. He was the demons - the demons were him. Frank reacted like any even barely conscious, semi-intelligent creature in such a situation would - with an uncontrolled attack of cosmic laughter. His laughter merged orgiastically with the laughter of the mysterious Lady from the pub. The laughter of Eris. Shortly afterwards he attained enlightenment. —- With Discordian greetings from Aktion 23 Written by Brother Kr!S-the-highly-elevated-strongly-illuminated-and-slightly-fogged, and fehlgeleitet With some lectorate and correction by His Quasaric Sphericity the Lord Bwana Honolulu, Janitor of Aktion 23 Based on demonological research by Cpt. Bucky Stardancer „Saia“ Hail Eris!! All hail Discordia!!!