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poisonwaterlily3 · 6 months ago

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Started listening to The Magnus Archives earlier this summer. I am now halfway through season four and it is impossible to stifle the urge to write, especially horror, using this particular frame. And I also have no self control when it comes to not sharing things I've made so... (additionally, the particular institute and Archivist reading this and any future statements I write are unspecified)

A Humble Garden

Statement of Robert Mildew regarding the snakes around his home. Statement given on December 23rd, 2012.

I... okay maybe this is a weird place to start, but what do you know about the ouroboros? Well, it's a symbol in alchemy and in Egypt and a lot of other things. It has a lot of meanings depending on who, where, and when you ask. It can mean the harmony of the physical and spiritual or the passing of time or death and rebirth. I didn't used to think much of it but now... well I see it every time I blink.

I have this garden, right? Just a dainty little hobby I thought I'd take up when I moved back to the states here. Pretty modest thing and that's fine, I don't mind it. Yet modest as it may be, it seems that all of nature has become bent on making it as difficult for it to survive as possible. There's been floods, there's been droughts, one time an entire carrot just up and vanished. Yeah, I counted four carrots one day and then two the next! No hole where it could've gone missing or dig marks from a hungey animal or anything. I suppose something with more power than I has marked that poor four by four square for death, hah! The most recent attack er, well the second most recent now I guess, was an infestation of these terrible little mites that just tore things up. I feared I may have used too much pesticide, but after almost five months of those little buggers... well I had no choice but to empty the last third of the can in one day. It didn't seem to have any ill effect on the produce when it came time to eat, though I sure was worried it had I'll tell you that much!

But those events in particular aren't what brought me to your institute, not really. Not too long ago, I checked up on my garden and found a snake in it. Now of course that's nothing special on its own, it was just a measly garden snake after all I've found a dozen of them in my garden up until then but... it was autumn. Not just that, it was late autumn, practically winter. I was decked out in a rather warm outfit which meant I could continue checking up on my crops with no fear of being bitten but... well it's so odd right? A snake in early winter and it didn't appear dormant at all, just lively circling my garden. And it was then as soon as I realized truly how odd that this snake had appeared out of nowhere to slither laps around some vegetables that it stopped. And it stared at me.

Have you ever looked into the eyes of a snake? I doubt you have. It's weird you know, like you're looking dead into the eyes of another being just as intelligent and sentient as you who has intentionally, very deliberately chosen a life dedicated to killing. I stared into its eye for quite a minute, neither of us moving, until I realized that it did not have the eyes of a garden snake. No, those have always had those big round eyes that made me love when I received a visit from them. This one had the eyes of a rattlesnake. Something that meant me harm. I wanted to back away when I realized this, thinking I had misjudged, but it's gaze just petrified me, kept me planted there like the, well, plants in my garden.

Well while I had this brief staring contest, I ended up letting my mind wander until it itself happened upon an older snake-related memory. My father must have taken me to a sort of reptile showcase. It's a vague memory, really. Part of me wants to say it was a random stop during a long road trip but that doesn't really make any sense. Regardless, we park, hop out of the car, walk over and the next thing I remember was staring at this woman, the guide and maybe a snake handler. I don't remember much about her, though I'm certain that whether an 11 year old me thought she was pretty will surely be a hotly debated subject for your organization's top researchers.

Regardless, one thing that did stick in my mind was her rather fitting tattoo snake tattoo and this, I do believe, is what I stared at her for. The tattoo ended at a tail on her middle finger and crept up her arm with such a meandering pace that my eyes felt like they too slithered just following it. Does an image have a pace? Well, that one most certainly did, there is no other way to describe the delicate, foreshortened detail of it, though maybe that too is an inaccurate description. Still though, my eyes followed the tattoo up her arm, her shoulder, down under neck in a way that made it appear like a necklace before ascending back up her neck and eventually ending with an open, wide, fanged mouth ready to bite down on the corner of her jaw.

Looking at her tattoo filled me with this deep dread, like everything I knew would just vanish the moment I reached the end of it, but I just couldn't help myself. I found myself looking deep into the eye of the tattoo. Suddenly I was back in my garden, the snake now gone and the winter wind chilled my bundled body. I admit I was concerned that I had no idea where the snake had gone—I'm sure you know that feeling when you lose track of a spider—but I was all bundled up and despite that, felt cold and scared, so I decided my work was done for the day and headed inside. Winter crops have a way of enduring better anyway.

I returned to my garden the next day and would you believe it if I told you that same snake was there? A garden snake that had the eyes of a hostile rattler. Looking at it gave me that same sense of finality, of something that cannot be avoided anymore, something terrible that had slithered its way into my world. I did my work though, albeit with trembling hands, and made sure to leave it its personal space, all the while I tried not to trigger another staring contest. Then it was there the next day. And the next day after that. I felt a bit relieved that it had become somewhat routine in a way, just having a weird little hybrid snake friend in my garden. I named him Buddy.

The day after that there were two Buddys. They were identical, both of them circling the garden in perfect unison like yin and yang. Around and around, back and forth. It made my stomach drop. I stared at them on my porch for a little while, unsure of what to do about this, if there was anything to do at all. It was just two snakes. Two really weird snakes out in the middle of winter, but is that really all that big of a concern? In hindsight, yeah sure it is but when you're standing there, dumbfounded and with no idea of what's about to happen you just don't know. Regretfully, I found myself too much of a coward to do my usual garden work with them there so I ultimately turned back inside.

The next day there were three. The two from the day prior continued their circling and I noticed some shifting out of the corner of my eye. There was another Buddy in one of my trees. At this point I hadn't even stepped foot outside, just looking out my kitchen window when I saw them. I decided not to tend my garden that day.

The days after that were worse. Four, five, six, nine, thirteen... it became harder and harder to count as time went on. Eventually I just gave up and decided that the elements had won; I was not going to reach my garden again this year. Every day, I'd just stand at my kitchen window and look out at all of them, the wriggly little things and... the worst part was how they all just stared at me. All of them except the ones which chose to circle my garden like an ant spiral. I never saw them move their heads though, so I can only guess that they all just spent their days staring directly at my window.

I think it was around this point that my devices started to go all wack. It started with my laptop for my job. I work online and thank goodness because my commute would just be too long for it. Side effect of living out in the woods I guess. That and snakes. Still though, once my laptop decided to stop working I had no choice but to email my boss and request an early Christmas. He's a good one as far as bosses go and let me off. I felt terribly bad for him, but I felt I had bigger things to worry about.

It was awful. I didn't know what to do, I didn't know how I'd even begin to describe all of this to a pest control or electronic repair person, much less how they'd actually help me. Those snakes all look like common garden snakes, but they can't be. Their eyes just don't belong. They look so hostile, so full of envy. Hate. I think I decided at some point that they Buddys just hated me for some reason. It was just the impression that I got from looking into their eyes, their tongues sticking out and retreating again in disgust. They knew I didn't have any power here.

Next were my televisions, then it was my oven. I wondered briefly what could possibly be responsible for the simultaneous supernatural failures of my technological devices. Another look out my window put that question to rest. I mean, it was a stretch to be sure but Christ, what else could it be? I went ahead and updated my calendar so that I knew what day it was my phone when that decided to fail on me suddenly. It was a good call since it was the next to go on December 18th.

More snakes showed up of course. Twenty, thirty, forty, at that point I couldn't bother counting and I just had to estimate. Fifty? Seventy? Dare I say a hundred? It was impossible to tell really. I only saw them in the backyard. At some point I closed the blinds and curtains to every other window, I did not want to know how many were outside those or if they were staring into my house at me there either. But I couldn't bring myself to blind myself to the kitchen window. I always spent a brief moment looking over my garden; it was still fine, even with fifteen snakes circling it for god knows what reason. What did I say earlier about the endurance of winter crops? Really though, I just couldn't look away from them. I wonder how many hours total I've spent just staring out that window... Not much else I could do with my time but look my impending doom in their eyes. Their hundreds of eyes...

I was running out of food by this point but there wasn't really much I could do. Every electronic in my home had given up on me so I couldn't contact anyone. Well, I guess my thermostat still worked but that wasn't useful for anything besides climate control. I suppose the reptiles didn't have it in their hearts to take the heat away from me. Small mercies? I would've tried getting in my car and leaving but one look out the front window told me that the snakes did surround my house and were looking into every window, blinded or not. I felt terrible just constantly. I could hardly sleep if not from my empty stomach than with the stomach churning knowledge that this was the end. These harmless snakes would be the death of me.

I woke up on December 21st, not really expecting anything different. There were plenty of doomsayers crying out about the end of the world on that day. "December 21st, 2012 will be the end! It was written by the Mayans! It'll be the end I tell you!" None of them knew what they were talking about and yet... they were right. I knew it from the moment I looked outside on the winter solstice.

There were no snakes in my backyard. None in my garden, none in my trees. I looked out the other windows and all the same. The snakes were gone. I took one hesitant step outside in a snug jacket and my old pal Buddy slithered up at miraculous speeds onto the railing of my back porch. I tried to run but could not, instead I found myself in another staring contest with this snake. I was so sure that this was the original snake, my Buddy. I'm still sure of it though I have no real reason to think that. All of them were were identical anyway.

Buddy then began to slither and twist and bend himself, coiling comfortably on the rail. I watched in disbelief as he began to eat his own tail.

I stared this garden snake eye-to-eye in awe and fear when suddenly I completely understood what this was.

It was the first, it multiplied into many, and it became one again. And now it is destroying itself with eyes full of hatred and jealousy and rage. Think on that. It is the little I can do to make you understand.

Because I understand. I understood.

But I cannot possibly tell you what it is I understood no matter how much I wish I could.

I do not have the words to make you understand what the phrase "We will not last forever" really means, the fact that we cannot last forever. You can know, sure, but you cannot understand. It takes a revealing of truth with such enormous gravity that simply cannot be repeated, cannot be expressed, cannot be place into another's head without them experiencing those days—those weeks of hour long gazes and restless nights and starving waking hours. You simply cannot understand.

I do understand.

And it is every moment that I wish I did not.

That is all.

End of statement.

To my knowledge, there are not many statements that regard snakes and even in those they only appear in minor roles. That is to say that their decidedly major appearance here is very curious. I'll be sure to have my assistants find any others that feature snakes and we'll look into any common themes.

As for right now, I will categorize this as an instance of KnowingUnwanted given the focus on how they stare, although the crisis the statement ends on also gives me cause to note it as perhaps Impermanence. It is not unreasonable that it could be both after all. Neither of them are particularly associated with technology though so... *sigh* what a headache this one is.

End of documentation.

#the magnus archive #fanfic #but only technically #no spoilers #no spoliers please #i havent finished it yet #written in a fugue state #as all the best art is #this is not the best art #oh no i am one of you people now #i am so tumblr #spooky snakes #i read some stephen king #not polished #writeblr

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