---proud demons sailing the heavens in great ships of glass, or, what happened to the lives that were once aboard the found derelict marie celeste---

…..”so, look; we can count them, they cannot count us’” the one spoke to the others, “have an independence in reflection and let us confound them with our game...” the chorus agreed to one accord far above the tiny ship bouncing upon the oceans wave. Twas the almost 2000 barrels of raw alcohol ’lowed the ease of appearing thus in the skies. And wagers were constantly being made between each judges, in or against the favor of the humans whimsies when presented with ageless entities coming nameless from another deeper dimension.

…..no one aboard the Marie Celeste, save the baby, could find their breath. They stood in a cluster on the deck, straining and swaying, bodies slack and pressed together, the closeness of other human bodies checking the flurries felt within them. The most they could articulate were the jabbers and moans that swept thru them in time to the waves rocking the boat upon the water. The child was quiet while the adults were wailing. One of the seamen fell to the deck, eyes popping off the lunging jaws of his face, curled up into himself unable to comprehend what his senses were screaming. Some of the people were trying to scream, as if opening their mouths as wide as they could, they might be able to encompass the experience splitting the sky above them. Motor reflexes so benumbed by circumstance, they could only twitch vapors and jitter as they tried to express themselves one to another.

…..”so, look now, there on the bob of the waves, lost physical are they,” spoke the one to the others as they spread out 9 false suns throughout the sky and revolved in a bilious cloud, pushing out the light away, striking the eyes hapless aboard the ship with interchanging silver and indigo.

…..the one and the others gloated salivating, obnoxious and present, having used the spirits on board to fruit themselves from the hole dug into the atmosphere, appearing at the portal, always ready to feast upon the mortal where no holy man held court. Pulled from the dulled heads of the shipmates, whose foggy brains were awash in the fumes from the raw alcohol they were transporting.

…..the one and the others bloomed metallic scabs in the sky what revolved around their peeping portal, and the sight of these masses wrung groans from from the shabby party aboard the marie celeste. The others massed the am about with the rancorous buzzing of a million malfunctioning dragonflies. “start the game, commence the wagers, now list,” the one wanted to wait another bit of a moment which to the humans below locked in the sea would seem an eternity in pondering the unknowable. And the one whom the others fed and manifested, encompassed and were casting miraculous pinwheels for the humans fogged vehicles. Manifesting consternation, confusion and awe, theyone burst asunder under the thin strands holding the string of human reality together as a mass them swayed and danced dissolving a flock out wavy and reappearing freshly boil-burning in a tumult of cloud. Onethey paused, pulsed and pulsed.

…..those humans swept along with this calamity forgot who they were named, excavated precious memories and disabled altogether, knowing not one limb from the next they fell senseless and jabbering to the deck. Groans rebounded from the boats wood from the tightened throats of all back to the base expressiveness of the flat ocean lull. The baby was squalling belowdecks, the woman jolted around on boards for a moment as she tried to reconnect her nervous system as the horde buzzed overhead 10,000 clacks a second, and the captain prone spasmed his boots around as his eyes bulged with the effort.

…..These struggles giggled up Theyone no end, the contortions of these plastic vessels is one reason Theyone ignited these affairs. It was beyond ludicrous and beyond pathetic to fixate upon the wrench of their flesh, such a burden yet carried so proudly by these humankind. Theyone aimed to stupefy and needed no other force to accomplish the means. Only appear Onethey came thus and no exertion, a twitch and the human vessel is rocked and short circuited, tongues blue and protruding and all rolling eyes and roiling visions, numbfounded floppy and the only comprehension to such sight as comes to them is a feeling of too much inversed and bombastic, and no grip of any sense on anything is felt but a too much whirl and catapult even as the body drums the foredeck, fathoms away from what the soul is trying to grasp, the human flat out and conscious of they know not what, the baby overcome by alcohol fumes, the proud demons one wink floors all element.

…..the humans flopping nerveless upon the heaving deck fell to the displacement of disbelief. The sights allowed into their eyes was haphazard and flitting as their numbed out necks lolled their skulls about over the pitch and yaw of the Marie Celeste. And their bodies cradled their souls sick with fear, rocking in the recognition of the divinities cartwheeling thru the sky, and soul fought against the constraints of the flesh, squirrels in a cage the tumult and storm a soul brings to the body for release reflected in the anguished faces of the boat crew and the other humans there gasping upon the deck. A school of flying fish rose and skipped from the waves, gliding and dipping again in the swells. They disappeared quickly and were not ever seen by those that were sick on the deck.

…..the proud demons reveled in the contortions, the unconscious groveling and subordination, the gyrations of the matter that encloses the spirit frenzies these energies to distraction. The humans eyes were riveted to this beauteous danger wheeling the heavens before them. The baby in the bunk echoed the squall zigging thru the warbling marbled sky, a hissing zapped low inside the ears of those humans present, a clue towards the vibratory nation and naturals of these elements dazing them. The connection between instinct and action had been severed and the will was weak among them to such a state of shock there was no thing other than the stun of the hypnosis cast by the proud demons skywheeling theyone.

…..what chance do one-dimensioneds have caught the amber of theatre time against the purest sentient pulses that ride the grids and interlocking spheres of gravity and light? And so the crew and passengers of the Marie Celeste involuntarily relaxed, as it were, and were in the meat-accepting-way held in sway and confronted this immediate death in the very faces Onethey presented them with all there countless one after another fiery images of brassy still and lights which were never to be seen such patterns as can blink away the logic and rhythms in a sweep amongst the clouds.

…..the humans aboard the Marie Celeste found the ability to blink, or recover the use of their limbs to articulate a name, turn a head, lift a finger so accustomed to the spectacle Theyone, the demon horde, furiously shone upon them. The missus turned over on her belly, breaking off her stare from the proud demons shattering thru waves of sky and she found she could crawl towards her babies voice. She was hallucinating the perspiration hammering upon her skin to be the ocean and for many moments she tried to crawl thru her own forearm, believing this to be the path to take to reach her infant, crying in need of a kind human mother face, and the tiny being despaired of ever seeing another again.

…..the ship carried the listless humans clot on the waves gentle as a cork chip. Swells and wills cradled the Marie Celeste as she bobbed the slopping waves. The true sun landed upon the waters reflecting to all the power of the heated cosmos to bear in the chemical waters, salt as environment to every life under and above the waves. The crew, the captain and his family lay helpless and enthralled at the combustion and congestion Theyone injected the sky with every warp beared directly upon the very vibrational souls of all those present. The trickery of the proud demons to mollify and stagnate the humans perception by unveiling a part of themselves thru the curtain of the eye, for a moment and the shape of that brief instant is enough to trigger the flesh into resonating with the unearthly tremor and enlarging the frequency and scope. One inch of Theyones ether is enough to paralyze the planet, but flashing here and there as quickly as what ensures a confusion. The people on board the Marie Celeste had not a chance in hell.

…..the alcohol fumed into them from the improperly sealed containers stored below the decks of the Marie Celeste. Every person felt impacted not only by this but also by the enormity of the delusion perpetrated by the proud demons whirling in the sky above the endless ocean swells. To comprehend Theyone is and was an impossibility. The peoples minds were ruptured, logics burst, the easy capability of understanding everyday phenomena disappeared in the jogging swirling jab show presented to the Marie Celeste by Theyone. The tiny boat bobbed and slipped over the waves, nudged by the wind and the motion, the boat was a propulsion, the people upon it dizzyingly incapacitated, the ocean itself seethed, foamed and lapped, tapping one wave with another and theyone staggered effects across the canvas of sky. Terrible abandon Onethey wreathed all light sources, including reflections, twisting to barbs incomprehensible to the human animal, casting contortions around, impaling psyches with impossibilities and mayhem in the nerve clusters. Humans feeling the puddles theyd become Theyone loomed and domed over the Marie Celeste corralling matter with light and their elementals releasing vapors and stunning fogs, presenting mountains and cities hung in the sky, bearing down a swarm of buzzing clicking intelligent light, condescending to roast parts of mens brains out.

...No one was found aboard the drifting vessel Marie Celeste when Captain Morehouse of the Dei Gratia stepped aboard her decks. No one know quite what had happened to the crew of the ship, or why, until now.

... I know, because the questions I had answered for me by Theyone, who has become a dangerous familiar to me. For some reason, Onethey finds this story to be one of great amusement receives endless pleasure at retelling it to me everytime i conjure them, Onethey chortles at the bets they made one with another at how fast they could confuse and infuse the confounded humans with hallucinations and despair, the nine suns spread throughout the sky, and so on. I do not directly remember actually writing this account I give to you. I woke up with it in my inkstained hands, after a drunken revel in which I recall having been rather forcefully adamant with my companions that night about being able to summon a horde of demons at will. It seems I was successful, and that my friends were horrified and offput by such a display, except Jessup, who prints The Guardian and who has never been frightened or offput by anything that I can recall in our long and tempestuous relationship. And you, dear lucky reader, are the beneficiary of that courage, for you are allowed, thru the offices of Jessup, my very own sorcery, and the braggadacio of a swelter of demons, to read a firsthand account of what happened aboard the Marie Celeste. Any inquiries one may have regarding this matter may be addressed to The Guardian Offices of Mr. Jessup, who will pass them along to me. I will peruse these missives carefully, shred them, and feed them to the mongrel dog that has taken up residence outside my garden wall. Thank You.