Between possession and will

He visited them only very rarely, and usually only when he needed to recharge mentally. It wasn’t a matter of give and take… strictly speaking, he took, and in return offered the involuntary gifts of others. A calculation unleashed by the evil within him and he hadn’t acquired it.. it was his birthright. The devil’s child is he who plots evil and scorns good, but it wasn’t that simple, for Beelzebub was merely a footnote to him, an indirect companion with whom he occasionally smoked a cigar and who provided him with information about the locals. As distant as many mythologies were, in the end they were closely intertwined. The living, the magical, the cursed, the manic, the confused, the lost, and the dead.. all were drawn together when one tried to separate good from evil or imagined standing on only one side of the obligatory edge of the plate. There was never just one side, there was something evil in every good, and something good in every evil... and in any case, one could never be quite sure which side one was truly loyal to.

The elevator took him to the basement level of the over-the-top building complex, only he had the code to open the door to the building’s archives. He hadn’t planned to set up such a place for himself.. otherwise, he would surely have sought out a detached, secluded little cottage. But he loved his habits, which was why he accepted the circumstances and created a small kingdom of his own. The basement area was still a shell.. cold, battered, damp walls, dim, faint light. No one would willingly spend much time in this environment. The musty smell was omnipresent and often triggered a wave of nausea even in him, but that was exactly how he wanted it, that was precisely the design he had envisioned for them. He ventured deeper and deeper underground, opened a hidden trapdoor, and descended a rickety spiral staircase. 

A horror scenario at its finest, but not bloody or dilapidated.. rather, mystical and beautiful in a morbid way. It had been a long time since he’d offered them a sacrifice, which was why his little oasis was accompanied by a cacophony of chaotic sounds. He cast a scrutinizing glance at the glass protective walls and gently, almost lovingly, touched the ice-cold glass, into which barely visible runes had been engraved. There were 26 lost souls he had added to his collection, he gathered them, analyzed and observed them and their torment, that was his contribution. Every time he succumbed to a possession, he captured another being from beyond, and that very being was punished for the attacker’s thirst for vengeance. Give and take, isn’t it? In this regard, Caspar was, in the broadest sense albeit in a very perfidious way.. fair. 

With his eyes closed, he let the unease wash over him, but made sure it didn’t drain too much of his energy, he took a seat on a copper chair and surrendered to a relaxed lethargy. He saw the shadowy silhouettes of endless pain, perceived the pleading and begging of those he deliberately scourged, and his sadism soothed him with a strange sense of calm. Perhaps an imprint like this could still have been averted, but in the shadow of despair, he once asked the dark creator for assistance and received it for a rather small price, which, however, steered his life in bizarre directions. To feel the most terrible pain just once.. that had been his deepest desire. To succumb to fear just once and writhe in despair. That was exactly what he had received, had been allowed to experience once, and since then he had been left with only a faint trace of remorse and compassion within him. 

After his last session with his psychologist, he had to accept that he lacked the power to elevate his human existence, but that very realization gave him the conviction to devote himself once more to his dark machinations. In this atmosphere, which was soothing to him, he sent his notes from the past few weeks on their way, and for every being, every person he had encountered, he wrote a summary, secretly offering them up to those who shared his tastes. 

And that was precisely why one should avoid him at all costs... but those around him would soon realize all of this.