Thursday, Apr 30, 2020 • 21min
MAG 165 - Revolutions
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Case ########-5.
Ruminations on identity and the lack thereof.
Audio recording by the Archivist, in situ.
Thanks to this week's Patrons: Anna Stachia, SimonFeliks, Monica Quirk, doopliss, Tori, SelfAware, Mollie, AirmidCelt, Dian Syafeeqah, Ivy Piper, lilikoi, Maja Flink, Mei Parsons, Eddie Currant, Eli Lassiaille, Diana Read, Kieran, Harry Thompson, Erin Biddle, Becky N., Malraza, Jasper 'is The End looking for any sexy new avatars' Graham, Ley, Gene, Sharon V., DisasterNick, Amanda Nengel, Kiore Hernandez, Shannon O'Leary, Anika DuMont Arvanitis, Reagan Mellan, Jacob, Keelin Lawlor, Felix Nicoll, Jasmine Bloom, Brendan Abolivier, Lysimache, AaronBurrSir, Mandy, Zach Davis
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Edited this week by Annie Fitch, Elizabeth Moffatt, Brock Winstead & Alexander J Newall.
Written by Jonathan Sims and directed by Alexander J Newall.
Produced by Lowri Ann Davies.
Content warnings: - Loud / Discordant SFX - Mass Pain - Character Death - Body horror - Impostors - Dissociation
Performances: - "The Archivist" - Jonathan Sims - "Martin Blackwood" - Alexander J. Newall - "Not-Sasha" - Evelyn Hewitt
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Jonathan Sims
Alexander J. Newall
Evelyn Hewitt
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Jonathan Sims
02:22
Rusty Quill presents
The Magnus Archives
.Share
02:42
Episode 165: Revolutions.
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Alexander J. Newall
03:15
Wow.
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Jonathan Sims
03:17
I told you.
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Alexander J. Newall
03:18
I mean, yeah, but when you said big-
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Jonathan Sims
03:19
I meant big.
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Alexander J. Newall
03:21
Yeah, but I mean how big is it actually?
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Jonathan Sims
03:24
It doesn't really work like that.
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Alexander J. Newall
03:26
Yeah, figures.
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Jonathan Sims
03:27
If you tried to measure the diameter, probably only be a half mile or so. But the curve doesn't work quite right, and if you stayed at the same spot just hopped on a horse or let it carry you around, it might be days before you pass the same spot or-
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Alexander J. Newall
03:42
Or you might never see the same spot again?
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Jonathan Sims
03:45
Exactly.
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Alexander J. Newall
03:46
Yeah. I think I'm starting to get it.
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Jonathan Sims
03:50
Good.
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Alexander J. Newall
03:50
But you said we needed to go through these places. Is that even gonna work here?
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Jonathan Sims
03:58
We need to go through them metaphorically. Psychologically, we need to experience them.
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Alexander J. Newall
04:07
You think we could get that experience just walking along the edge? Because I really don't like the look of those riders.
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Jonathan Sims
04:17
Would you believe me if I said they were the victims?
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Alexander J. Newall
04:21
At this point, I'm not even surprised.
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Jonathan Sims
04:23
Either way, best not to actually climb onto the thing if we can help it.
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Alexander J. Newall
04:27
Fine by me. Never really like merry-go-rounds anyway.
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Jonathan Sims
04:31
No? You gone on any recently?
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Alexander J. Newall
04:35
What? No, I don't think so, not since I was a kid.
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Jonathan Sims
04:39
I actually- there's one at London Zoo, was one at London Zoo. Big old thing. Went quite fast, actually. Surprisingly thrilling. What?
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Alexander J. Newall
04:51
Seriously?
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Jonathan Sims
04:52
It was years back before the institute. I was in a weird place. Had a good time, though.
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Alexander J. Newall
04:58
Well.
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Jonathan Sims
04:59
I mean, obviously I wouldn't want to ride this one. We've got quite enough thrills already.
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Alexander J. Newall
05:03
You sure? I could speak to an attendant.
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Jonathan Sims
05:05
I would advise against doing that.
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Alexander J. Newall
05:09
So, you said the riders were the victims. Where's the monster?
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Jonathan Sims
05:15
I'm hoping if we're quick we can avoid her notice.
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Alexander J. Newall
05:20
Jon, please don't tell me there's an evil clown doll down there, because-
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Jonathan Sims
05:23
No. No, Nikola died with the Unknowing, it's a- an old friend.
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Alexander J. Newall
05:31
Oh.
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Jonathan Sims
05:32
Yeah. I'd really rather not deal with her if we can avoid it.
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Alexander J. Newall
05:35
Yeah, good call. In that case, do you want to do your thing now, then, before we start moving? Are we close enough?
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Jonathan Sims
05:44
Yes, yes, I think so. Good idea.
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Alexander J. Newall
05:48
Thanks.
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Jonathan Sims
05:51
You might want to take a bit of a walk. This feels like a strange one.
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Alexander J. Newall
05:55
What does strange mean, with something like this?
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Jonathan Sims
05:59
Don't think you want to know.
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Alexander J. Newall
06:01
Good point. Okay, well, good luck. I'll be over there.
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Jonathan Sims
06:14
Right.
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06:19
Your face is not your face is not your face around the curling carousel it twists in place to take from you and all the tattered stolen souls whose sense of me is swollen and distended into nothing. Round and round and round it goes, and when it comes to stop, who you might be you cannot know, so touch and feel the skin atop your skull to test the limits and extremities of where this canvas comes to rest, in robbed identities and peeling names that you could swear whenever yours.
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06:53
The music swells through you. The music vomits from you. The music calls a name that through the tears of half-grasped memories seems almost and eternally familiar. So dance. Dance to the beat of the thump of the chase of the still and plastic horse hooves which cannot break from where they are secured by bolts and glue and eggshell-thin reality that paints a visage of sense almost enough to tell you that the nausea that swells and pushes at the limits of your mind is incorrect.
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07:29
There's nothing wrong. The world in which the carousel will twirl is not the hollow hell you fear, it is the world. Just the world. A world where if you'd wished to have a name it must be stolen, carved and pulled full-bloody from the frame of others who would wish in vain to hold their selfishness close. You want a face? Take it. There are so many here, and those who cannot hold them well, whoever chose to give them such a gift must take the blame knowing they could never keep it in a world of so much thieving strangeness.
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08:05
And soon enough, they will forget they ever even had one, rest assured, it's best to step the dance and keep your face secured as much as you are able. Just keep running. Your feet, or are they just the shoes with emptiness within? Will pound upon the creaking, wood of carousel-top, or perhaps the only ground there's ever been, so struggle not to look behind, though, can you trust your eyes to tell you quite what it might be that dogs your steps and see the poor procession of those gory, faceless wretches who have lost possession now of all their treasured wants, identities to those who are now them?
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08:43
Like you. You tire of the chase of course, the fire and all-relentless pace of competition reaching for a name, identity, and face has long since worn through all reserves of hard enduring vigour in you. Yet still you only stay a self while willing on your aching legs that feel like breaking just to keep you forward of the frenzied fray of hazy clawed who are yous. So run. Just run, and listen to the music of your panicked flight from those who long to take what you have stole from those no longer worth a name.
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09:17
Ever-onwards-forward on the curling path of merry-go-round that's twisted, wound, and spinning in its harrowing sound of organ-piping-circus-tunes that merrily hound the steps of your escape. Could you turn a thought and burn your lead on your pursuers, an ankle change a charge now perpendicular to your intended line of best retreat, and stake it all on one last hope, your bruised feet pounding to the edge? The boundary. Don't stop the ride, but you still want to get off.
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09:44
But no, for all the dreams of bounding, leaping off into the great unknown, you see the ring of broken mewling wretches who have shown the sting that comes with such rejection of the truth, so seldom spoken yet inside you all, that there is no way off the merry-go-round.
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10:02
And so perhaps the twirling round that pushes all who passenger the carousel might help you stay ahead, and so you seize the rough and peeling pole of ancient wooden horse, ignore the sloughing, screaming wood that comes away in clumps and grip the saddle hard, in hands that should be clean but now I have never seen a day they were not caked in glue and slaked with blood of all the robberies existence deems the only way to live. Ride away. Just ride away. Up it goes. Down it comes.
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10:37
Hold fast to the joy of the rise, despise all thoughts you might descend. And in the end, protest against that fall back down to painted wooden spinning earth, with all the tear-streaked grasping of the massive, gasping, still unnamed oppressed. Cry to the horse, "Go higher! Faster!" Offer painted apples that you think perhaps it might desire, but the frozen face is still the same, the simple cast of equine terror framed and caught in wood and plastic bulging eyes of fear. Its pace remaining as it ever was. It does not care for coming pains as you are torn.
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11:15
Doesn't it know who you are? No. And soon, neither will you. Although to call it "all is lost" is more dramatic, yes, than has been earned. For those upon this carousel who have not been you already, perhaps they know without a memory how good it is to have a face and name, it's not the same as what you had when first you climb the brightly painted stairs, but not the worst who you have been. And as the horse drops through the air into the crowd of eager waiting thieves, you are unbowed, and yes, afraid, but still the music plays and turns the world upon its gaudy axis. You will be someone again, someday.
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11:59
The hands and fingers reach and breach the gentle veiled complacency and respite that had just been yours upon your mount's ascent, and now the wood is bent and bowed as faceless things who long to be a who pull splinters from the rot of screaming saddle and of rider. You, who feels a mask of sharp and hard identity begin its gentle fracture into jagged shards of names that you once were. "I'm still Hannah!" You tried to scream, but are you? No. Perhaps there's some Veronica as fragments there, or Julian, or Anya, but no.
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12:35
You feel the last of names and who you might have been be torn away and borne towards new bodies. New pages, blank, determined to be people. The rotten, ragged rush of fetid fingernails that dig and push and reach around the edges of your face until they scrape against the bone in such a rough, scratched tone that rocks and echoes through the space that was your mind, and when they peel it from you, like the skin of an orange, the skin of an apple, the skin of a pig, the skin of a child, the skin of a you, then comes the briefest flash that surely now it's done so much, perhaps the pain will be somewhat lessened.
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13:18
There's no way it could hurt as much as you remember. But it does, and so, of course, you scream and scream and curses foul, obscene will tumble garbled over where there once sat other people's lips or yours now gone and teeth had once shone yellowed ivory a crimson in the flowing sanguine flood. And as you lie in agonies and fading dreams of personhood, of knowing who you were and what that might have meant, you hear the bitter whisper of recriminating seekers who have found the treasure of their eager dreams but see, it seems there's not enough. For all.
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13:56
And so they fall to frantic terror and conflict, just as vicious as it was when it was bearing down on you. You lie there in the fugue of vivid pain and feel that gentle rain from violence overhead, as some fall dead, or close as this place lets you lie, for truly thus to die would be too eager an escape, and listen to the ebb and swell of slow melodic wail that well you know conducts the flowing rhythm laced into this endless, faceless dance.
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14:24
At last, a victor breaks away in clinging heartfelt terror of his former comrades, sprinting bold and holding to his skull the severed face that was once yours. Willing it to stick as those who notice try to pick themselves back up and give pursuit to close the gap. Perhaps you should arise and follow on the things that once you would despise but now have joined. You are, of course, a faceless thing as well, and so should quickly march the pace of those who chase the self-same prey.
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14:51
But now it is too late, they've gone. Their chase will not abate until their former friend is ripped apart in turn. And you have learned to wait. For there are many faces out upon the carousel and many names that you might be. So bide your time awhile and wait for the coming of another one whose fate and face might sit upon your grinning carmine skull. So turn with the turn of the merry-go-round and dance to its jolly old song. Who will you be, with the name or three, and a stranger's face worn wrong?
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15:36
End recording.
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Alexander J. Newall
15:43
You're joking!
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Jonathan Sims
15:44
I'm not.
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Alexander J. Newall
15:46
So was it any good?
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Jonathan Sims
15:48
What do you mean?
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Alexander J. Newall
15:49
Was it a good poem?
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Jonathan Sims
15:50
I don't know. No? You're the poetry expert, Martin, not me.
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Alexander J. Newall
15:55
Well, did it stir any feeling in you?
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Jonathan Sims
15:57
Yes, nausea! Because of the horrible things in it.
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Alexander J. Newall
16:00
That's not quite what I meant.
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Jonathan Sims
16:02
Then I don't know what you mean, Martin. I'm not a poetry person, I don't get it. I never have.
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Alexander J. Newall
16:08
That's fine, I understand.
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Jonathan Sims
16:11
Look, I'm better than I was. I used to think all poetry was bad.
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Alexander J. Newall
16:16
Sorry, what?
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Jonathan Sims
16:18
I mean, I just thought of- I sort of thought it was pointless. Just write some prose and stop wasting everyone's time.
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Alexander J. Newall
16:26
What changed?
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Jonathan Sims
16:27
I don't know, I just mellowed on it, I suppose.
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Alexander J. Newall
16:30
That's kind of weird.
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Jonathan Sims
16:32
In my defence, there is a lot of bad poetry out there.
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Alexander J. Newall
16:39
I guess? I kind of want to hear that tape now, see how artistic the Stranger actually is.
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Jonathan Sims
16:43
Or just look up, see it for yourself.
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Alexander J. Newall
16:47
No, no thanks. I'm trying to avoid thinking about it. actually.
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Jonathan Sims
16:53
Of course. Sorry.
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Alexander J. Newall
16:55
How much further?
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Jonathan Sims
16:57
I think we're past the worst of-
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Alexander J. Newall
16:60
What?
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Jonathan Sims
17:01
She's here.
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Alexander J. Newall
17:01
Oh, no.
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Evelyn Hewitt
17:03
My dearest colleagues.
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Alexander J. Newall
17:05
Just get back!
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Evelyn Hewitt
17:06
I can't believe you decide to pass through my neighbourhood and not say hello to dear, old Sasha.
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Jonathan Sims
17:14
Just ignore it, Martin.
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Evelyn Hewitt
17:15
Oh, you wound me, Archivist. And we used to be so close.
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Jonathan Sims
17:19
I have nothing to say to you.
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Evelyn Hewitt
17:21
Nothing to say! Well, you crush me, bury me in the foundations of your little temple for a year, and now you have nothing to say?
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Jonathan Sims
17:31
Leitner did that. And Peter released you. All I've done to you is to not die.
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Evelyn Hewitt
17:37
Oh, and I would say that is quite rude enough.
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Jonathan Sims
17:39
Leave us alone, I won't warn you again.
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Evelyn Hewitt
17:42
And what if I let you choose this time? Which one of you would I wear next? Martin Looks very comfortable, positively roomy. Oh, wouldn't you agree, Archivist?
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Alexander J. Newall
17:52
Jon, do we need to run?
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Evelyn Hewitt
17:55
Oh, yes, Martin. You very much do. I'll even give you a head start!
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Alexander J. Newall
18:02
Jon?
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Jonathan Sims
18:03
You're bold, I'll give you that.
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Evelyn Hewitt
18:06
Last chance.
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Jonathan Sims
18:08
Desperate for one last morsel of terror from us? A final sip, and then we're gone? Somehow, we managed to keep just ahead of you and get away. God forbid you actually catch us. Doesn't bear thinking about.
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Alexander J. Newall
18:23
Jon, What are you talking about?
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Jonathan Sims
18:24
She can't touch us. We're so far beyond her now. She's just like everything else here, ruled by the Eye. She hates it.
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Evelyn Hewitt
18:35
Well, of course you want to wallow in my shame like your voyeur master. Do you know how it feels to be anonymous? And yet known to have all the sweetest dread I can create tainted by them relentless gaze of that damned Eye. I've suffered enough!
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Jonathan Sims
18:54
Pathetic. Martin, let's go.
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Evelyn Hewitt
18:57
Not as pathetic as your little friend when I ate her life.
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Jonathan Sims
19:03
What did you say?
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Evelyn Hewitt
19:07
I'm sorry.
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Alexander J. Newall
19:08
Jon?
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Jonathan Sims
19:09
You were wrong, you know. There is more suffering than you can ever experience, so much more. The horror of your victims, their constant senseless agony. Feel it now. Understand it. You have drawn out so much despair and now finally it's your turn. Ceaseless Watcher, turn your gaze upon this wretched thing.
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Evelyn Hewitt
19:37
No! No, please, no!
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Alexander J. Newall
19:46
Whoa! What was that?!
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Jonathan Sims
19:51
I destroyed it. Killed her.
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Alexander J. Newall
19:53
Are you kidding me? You obliterated her, you smoked her!
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Jonathan Sims
19:58
We should go.
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Alexander J. Newall
19:59
What about the merry-go-round? With her gone, is it still-
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Jonathan Sims
20:02
I don't know!
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Alexander J. Newall
20:02
Yes, you do!
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Jonathan Sims
20:03
I don't want to know. We need to go, please.
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Alexander J. Newall
20:06
Oh, okay, all right, all right, lead on.
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Jonathan Sims
20:20
The Magnus Archives
is a podcast distributed by Rusty Quill and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Today's episode was written by Jonathan Sims, produced by Lowri Ann Davies, and directed by Alexander J. Newall. It featured Alexander J. Newall as Martin Blackwood, Jonathan Sims as The Archivist, and Evelyn Hewitt as Not-Sasha.Share
20:46
To subscribe, buy merchandise, or join our Patreon visit rustyquill. com. Rate and review us online, tweet us at TheRustyQuill, visit us on Facebook, or email us via mail@rustyquill. com. Join our community on Discord via the website or on Reddit, at r/TheMagnusArchives. Thanks for listening.
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Alexander J. Newall
21:18
Hi everyone Alex here. I'd just like to take a moment to thank some of our patrons. Anna Stachia, SimonFeliks, Monica Quirk, doopliss, Tori, SelfAware, Mollie, AirmidCelt, Dian Syafeeqah, Ivy Piper, lilikoi, Maja Flink, Mei Parsons, Eddie Currant, Eli Lassiaille, Diana Read, Kieran, Harry Thompson, Erin Biddle, Malraza, Jasper'is The End looking for any sexy new avatars' Graham, Ley, Gene, Sharon V., DisasterNick.
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21:51
Amanda Nengel, Kiore Hernandez, Shannon O'Leary, Anika DuMont Arvanitis, Reagan Mellan, Jacob, Keelin Lawlor, Felix Nicoll, Jasmine Bloom, Brendan Abolivier, Lysimache, AaronBurrSir, Mandy, Zach Davis, Becky N. Thank you all. We really appreciate your support. If you'd like to join them, go to www. patreon. com/rustyquill and take a look at our rewards.
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Jonathan Sims
Alexander J. Newall
Evelyn Hewitt