The Chuthlu Crush

The Magpie’s Bird Room

There was once a woman born Abigail Frost who thought she saw a very strange creature when she was just a child. This fateful event put her on a path that would slowly cause her to become more and more dedicated to the task of proving the reality of what she thought she saw. This task became an obsession and this obsession would finally be satisfied, only the reward for her driven pursuit was not exactly what she was looking for. Abigail was transformed into a creature known as a Taurean and her immortal name became the Magpie. In the mythology of the Taureans and Saturnines the Magpie became a well known figure. Her fabled bird room housed countless species of bird or rumored to exist. This was her passion for decades until a chance introduction to a book about Lovecraft’s old gods caused her to make a sudden and sharp turn. Her crush on the old thing named Cthulhu found strange changes taking place in the Magpie…

A Taurean is a woman who has a burning need to find out the truth of something arcane. The Saturnine is her male counterpart. Each allow their quest for knowledge to consume them till the word obsession is a noun far from strong enough to describe them. When the quest is accomplished the individual’s manner of sight changes. Only those who experience this phenomenon can describe to you how this feels and what takes place. Those on the outside looking in notice the big changes. They witness the madness that comes over the person, they see the physical change in their eyes. And if you spend enough time with the person you see how time stops for them. A day is no longer a day, an hour is no longer sixty minutes. It all changes as if the person is pulled from the thread of time and set somewhere along side of it. Their eyes glow and are capable of seeing not just their own reality, but the reality of all plains that exist together at one time. They can see the Akashik Record, they can see the glowing strands of a person’s life line, they can see the dead and the spirits of the living not yet born. They become something not quite human and defiantly not mortal. They graduate to a new existence and can never go back to the lives they lived before they found the truth they sought in the arcane. This explanation sounds terribly simple when the more detailed and elaborate explanation is quite profound in a way I have no words for.

Very few know the nature of the Taureans and Saturnines, but those who do seek them out. These creatures are a living doorway to knowledge mortals are not meant to have. They are a bridge to real magic, to the plain of knowledge of all things, to death and life, and the most coveted of all things; the answers to the mysteries of the arcane. They are flukes of nature and there are any number of people and societies in this world who would do just about anything to be in possession of just one of these creatures. Think of it in terms of a great writer or artist who stumbles across a real live muse, like the ones spoken of in Greek mythology. Eight our of ten of such creative types would steal away that muse and strive to keep them under their control at all costs. Researchers of the arcane would do just the same to a Taurean or Saturnine.

In Etta’s research she was able to discover societies devoted to these creatures. She was able to single out individuals of great importance, she documented their names, their histories and created rough sketches of what they look like in their mortal form and their immortal form. She fleshed out the fairy tale and the actual facts of their nature. Etta managed to create the first written account of the Taurean and Saturnine, their history and their secrets. As the Taurean is a doorway to the arcane, Etta became a doorway to the Taurean. The book she created is hard to find, and though she is proud of her work and a trader of dry-goods, you won’t be able to buy the book from her. In researching these immortals and understanding the dangers of their obsessions, she was able to see and acknowledge her own. Etta has no desire to encourage this behavior in anyone else. The book is titled A Nocturne for My Saturnine and can be found if one knows where to look. The cost, however, is set at a rate few people can afford. Etta would charge you a riddle and the answer would be the proper payment. But there is the trick. The riddle she might ask has an answer only known by the dead. It takes a certain type of person to procure answers from the dead. Those types might be able to handle what the dead would tell them. * Bethalynne Bajema

A Nocturne for My Saturnine is my second Bajema’s Web collection and should be available fairly soon, the art gods be willing. This collection contains the complete collection of Nocturnes art and my mechanical insects, presented along side of a new Etta Diem story. Pop by here or my website time to time for more information.

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After much frustration and failure Professor Vogel came upon an invention that seemed to conduct itself perfectly. The rather large invention was a reading machine, a device that could be placed over a page of written words that were read and clearly reproduced aloud from a speaking apparatus at the top of the machine. The professor hoped such a machine would greatly aid the blind in finally having access to books without needing someone else to read them to them, or waiting for them to be translated into brail. The only mishaps the good professor kept encountering were that the words being read aloud often times were not the words to be found on the pages. He couldn’t quite tell if this was a simple matter of the reader not being able to translate what it was reading, or something along those lines. What troubled and vexed him was the fact that what was being spoken aloud, though not what was on the page, was still a well thought out and perfectly understandable speech. It almost sounded like the reading machine was reading its own stories in place of what it read on the pages of the book or paper its reading eye glass was moved over.

As he grew increasingly frustrated with a device that seemed to be working perfectly and yet was not, he found himself one night spilling his woes to his sister Belle over several glasses of brandy and sinful truffles. His sister suggested he leave the reading machine with her and see what she could make of it. She was just as bright as her older brother, just as capable at construction and invention, and in this case she would be a pair of fresh eyes taking an equally fresh look at the machine. Vogel agreed and left his reading machine with Belle.

Professor Vogel did not hear from his sister for a week after giving over the reading machine to her. He made several stops to her flat but found her not answering her door bell on each occasion. Finally, more worried than anything else, he forced his way into her small flat to make sure all was well. What he found was Belle huddled in a corner, her arms wrapped tightly around her legs as she rocked back and forth. Her eyes were wide open and her lips mumbling silently. He could not rouse her from this state. It was only when he moved over to the reading machine, that sat perched above an array of scattered books, that Belle suddenly came around. She jumped up and violently pushed her brother away from the machine. “Don’t let it speak Semper! Don’t let it!” she cried out.

Belle never recovered from this state and no one knows why or how she came to be in this way. The only thing doctors could draw from her was mad jibberish about how it spoke for them. The it and them in question she never gave a name for. Though Professor Vogel was not one to buy into foolishness, he could not ignore a few facts regarding his sister. She had been fine until he left her alone with his reading machine. The reading machine that spoke stories but not stories found in the books given to it to read. He didn’t want to draw strange conclusions, but his sister had been driven mad in a matter of days with only the reading machine being the new addition to her environment. Feeling somehow responsible for the state of his sister, Professor Vogel placed his reading machine in a crate and had it stored away in his basement, never to look at it again.

Decades later after the professor’s death, the contents of his house became the property of the university that he had taught at. Much of his belongings were auctioned off and the proceeds given over to the student charity fund. Some of these items were purchased by a group representing the Miskatonic Archive. Professor Vogel’s reading machine came into possession of the Archive.

Though study of the reading machine has only just begun, a few things were noticed right off by its new owners. The reading machine when put into use did indeed translate the written word into a spoken word. But what it was reading was not coming from the books laid out in front of it. The reading eye glass of this invention was able to see something those around it could not, and it was this unseen thing that the machine read aloud. The tone of this content seemed to depend greatly upon who was handling the machine and what type of environment surrounded it. In the brightly lit glass walled office of Babel Jean Tea-Hymn the machine told enchanting fairy tales never before read. When the reading machine was in the gloomy and neglected rooms of the Archive’s old storage facility the tales it told were dark and so ominous that those listening to it quickly covered their ears and rushed to shut the machine off.

A team of two Archive professors and a handful of interns have taken on the duty of properly studying Professor Vogel’s reading machine. The notes of Professor Vogel’s that once explained how he crafted the device have sadly been lost. But the researchers hope to carefully take the machine apart and put it back together again and try and understand how this device’s strange abilities came to be…

The artwork accompanying this story is copyright 2009 Bethalynne Bajema, All Rights Reserved. This print is currently available as a limited edition signed metallic print. For ordering info/options please follow this link.

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The more eccentric tellers of origin tales claim Miss Von Swank was really discovered in 1893 at roughly 80 to 90 feet of digging in the notorious Oak Island Money Pit. These tales claim a stone box with a variety of strange engraved markings was found and brought to the surface. Upon opening the box nothing but emptiness was discovered, however the box was cleaned off and set aside so researchers could take their time studying the strange markings. The excavationer’s went to sleep and come sunrise were shocked to hear the gurgling of baby coos from inside the box. There sat the nude form of a baby happily playing with a very small and strange sliding wooden box camera. Explanations for how this child came to be here were wild and varied, even including a strange theory not unlike Schrödinger’s cat. When all was said and done the origins of the little girl were never discovered, but her gift for capturing the bizarre through the eye of her camera and the alluring and macabre nature of her craft cause most people to not really care if Von Swank is the product of blood raining from the moon or two uber-nerds getting jiggy with it.

Miss Von Swank can be found in the lovely and warm state of California bettering her photographic craft and working on specialized portraits or music videos. Miss Von Swank welcomes inquiries to work with her but cautions all to treat her well during these interactions or she might be forced to set her personal protection on you, which are rather vicious, hidden pokey-stick packin’ mechanical scarabs.

Please take a moment to visit Miss Von Swank at her portfolio: VonSwank.com
Photographs in this entry are copyright Robyn Von Swank, All Rights Reserved. They are reposted here with permission from Robyn. Many thanks to her!

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There are many things to be found in Etta Diem’s eccentric attic shop. I remember visiting once where I spent nearly an hour sorting through a shelf full of beautifully crafted bottles — often called Egyptian Tear Catchers. Each of these small and elegantly spun bottles held a small tag that offered a name of the bottle and the properties of the fluids kept inside. One of the most tall and narrow of these bottles, painted an incredibly pearl like black and crimson and extremely beautiful, claimed to contain the tears of a mythical dragon of very old legends. When Etta’s back was turned I did a rude thing on impulse and removed the stopper of the bottle and lifted it to my noise. The smell alone caused my noise to recoil in pain and my eyes instantly watered. Nervously I tipped the bottle a pinch and watched a droplet fall from the bottle and hit the wooden floor with an evil hiss of burning. That one droplet burned clear through the floor, and then through the items that lie in the basement below. I quickly put the bottle back and excused myself from Etta’s shop. So it didn’t even cause me to pause or doubt the strange shopkeep when she showed me her collection of antique and very special scissors. Each elaborately crafted tool that she finds I take up to the Archive and do my best to study and document its cursed or enchanted properties. I drew up the diagram of the individual sheers that Ms Diem currently has in her shop. And below this image I have summed up the things claimed of each sheer. Please admire their eerie beauty, however… I don’t recommend you touch any of them, even for a second…

The Blue Pearl Tick Wick Slip Sheers – The Tick Wick sheers infect through the skin of the user and turn their blood into a pearl-like blue substance. The infected’s blood begins to smell like water lotus and the body becomes numb. When the whites of the eyes become a deep blue the effects of the infection are irreversible.

The Bog Moth Argonaut Cutters – The Bog Moth cutters cause any materials they cut to turn into golden fleece. They’ve been prized for centuries because of this rumor of wealth. However, skin cut by the cutters also become infected and turn into gold while keeping the afflicted alive.

The Brass Gears Scarab Clock Tenders – The Brass Gears Scarab sheers can cut through any metal known to man. Legend also states they can cut through the unbreakable silk webbing of the mythical Snow Spider.

The Elegant Whip-tail Scorpion Blossom Clippers – The Blossom clippers are imbibed with the Elegant Whip-tail’s venom and their cut turns the touched material into the soft fleshy texture of a flower blossom. Infamous female killers through the ages have used these clippers as their means of soft feminine harm.

The Baptista Imp Paper-doll Sheers – The Baptista Imp sheers were designed by a child and cursed by the same child when she reached maturity. Anyone who uses the scissors will fall into a trance where they exert all energy into creating paper-dolls. The curse brings the paper creatures to life. The dolls steal their life energy from their scissor holding creator. The doll creation and energy stealing lasts until the user dies, drained of all life force.

The Slim Despot Slice – The nature of the Slim Despot is unknown. Anyone who has actually handled these sheers ceases the ability to communicate in any fashion. Even collectors refuse to handle the cursed sheers.

The Tinkerbot Butterfly – The Tinkerbot Butterfly enchants the person who handles it. The enchantment is strong and all consuming, the victim rarely ever loses the obsessive desire to hold the sheers and touch the delicate metal detailing of the wings.

The Sakura Cave Spider Slashing Sheers – The Sakura Sheers smell of cherry blossoms and are always cool to the touch. They infect the user with the desire to slash any surfaces that are smooth and unmarked. The materials or persons who are cut by these sheers find the smell of the cherry blossoms infect the wounds and can never be washed away.

The Wasp Masquerader Cog Fly Nips – The Cog Fly nippers inspire a strange and demented type of lunacy upon those that handle them. A malicious sense of dark humor comes over them and causes them to act out cruel jokes that are often harmful, but the nip inflicted jokester never realizes.

The Silver Wisp – The Silver Wisp is a tool of healing. The sheers painlessly move through skin and are able to snip away disease. They were prized in Medieval times for their curing ways, though most doctors found in possession of them were put to death on the suspicion of turning to dark forces to bring about their healing magic.

To order this image as a print, stop by our Etta Diem shop. Limited edition 16 by 20 inch metallic prints available for a short time.

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“There aren’t any castles in the suburbs of Delaware and there aren’t any haunted mansions with gloomy mansard roofs, either, and because that fact was nearly too tragic for me to bear as a child, Winona Cookie came to comfort me.

“Appearing in a shower of cookie crumbs one rainy thunderstruck afternoon, she has been my lifetime antidote to boredom. While I trudged through graduate schools and internships, Winona has followed her own path, leaving a trail of fanciful stories, watercolors, ink drawings, collages and jewelry in her wake. She favors the darkest faeries, legendary women, arcane subject matter and inventors that never were. She is currently obsessed with the steampunk genre and is running me ragged with collages and stories. They are frankly beginning to pile up! We live in San Diego where I practice psychotherapy and try to find a place for my ill-tempered cat to sit in my studio.”

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