Dim Souls: The 6000 Lives Of Jerem Hostel

Prologue

Nauseated by the thin, bloody smell of the mahogany colored study, I went to my bathroom. The walls were pale, and the fluorescent lights were shut. I only allowed a small portion of the light from outside to touch. I splashed lukewarm water to my face as I try to relieve the stench I smelled for months on end. 

 Horrible circumstances never ceased to stop, and all lead me in this old shady apartment,  and I awoke a new man. The scriptures of this place suggested years of care. Though damaged by water, most likely from leaks, they dried into a yellow tinge. Burns were evident throughout. Though I am not well versed in history, I have a faint remembrance of certain machines displayed, untouched. These were all execution equipment. I had a fair share of interest back in the day, and I did have interest in becoming a history teacher. I remembered Sir. Joward. Interesting fellow. He must be dead by now, no one lived a hundred years and he got his share in life. 40 years passed by quickly, though, not for me. Everything felt too slow. 

Buttons of mine were checkered. I preferred them plain, honestly. Though I shouldn't complain. Epithets were blank, and I preferred mine striped. His coats were thick, as expected. Though I hardly see the need to wear it if the man doesn't even try to step out of his study. You'd have to force him. I'm sure the fireplace keeps him warm all the time.

The closet was well assembled. Neat and pristine, linens clean, clothes in good condition, most likely hand washed--but this man was a busy body, spent his days in colleges as an intellectual, but I am not completely sure if he joined a club like many others have. A loner, I suppose. 

Although the smell of this place was something that of a cemetery, its aesthetic was pleasing enough to the eye. But it was honestly too dusty. The man must've abandoned this place for a week or so. That--or he didn't bother. 

The name plastered on the silver plate was not mine. For I remembered being born in the summer of 1995 in the town of Mahelpor, where the sun is non-existent and telephones lines no more. I could never forget my name, Jerem Hostel. 

My own origins are quite ordinary. Being a simple man who worked in a small accountancy building. I would always received a batch of cookies from the old woman across my house everyday. Her house never smelled like that of a bakery. Maybe because my senses have dulled over the years. A 50 something-year old I was. 

But I am now much older. I neither read nor studied any foreign languages, because I thought I would never need it, having decided to spend my entire life in Mahelpor. I never mustered up enough money to buy expensive killing machines of my own. My own taste in furniture consisted of dirt cheap half sales in the small local shop my mother, Eliza Gypson, used to buy as well. 

She kept her maiden name even after marrying my father, Erik Hostel. I never knew why, but she promised she would tell me one day, when I finally get a job and earn some money for our family. She never did. Died of pneumonia travelling to the far North of the country. I never knew why, she only told me it was something of importance--work, as usual.

40 years later, I have yet to know why. I was transferred to an orphanage where I spent most of my days. I was a winner in the gene pool, inheriting eidetic memory, I graduated as a scholar, and spent most of my days free from having to pay most school related purchases. 

Erik Hostel was interesting as well. I didn't know much about him. All I knew is that he died living as someone of importance--an archaeologist, an intelligent one, who discovered the painting of Ulthur in its grotesque form of old. Many, many, forms of old.

He didn't think much of my mother, as she said so herself, and committed suicide after seeing the horrible sight that gave him nightmares on his way to Mahelpor. The supposed painting was currently in some vault. No one questioned me about my father's death around the silent parts of Mahelpor--even in the far out social ones. People in those parts did not believe in Ulthur, all except my father.

My mother described it to me in unadulterated detail. She was unfazed by its apparently horrifying appearance. Her mind, she said, was an abyss--full of things she would rather forget. And I should experience it too, all of it. 

'Carry your mother's burden'

 I remember her description so well, her voice still fresh to my ears. The body is of a brain, its top looking split, inside were lines of teeth, small and animal like, and farther back was a flower of teeth and blood, gore and meat were plenty, small holes sunk deep inside the brain, inside each were small gray parasite in various sizes, some bigger than others with white pus in clear view. If you looked a bit longer at it, it would seem as if it was moving. Maggots were abundant as well, bulging white, some small, but they huddled around the teared flesh that hanged by the flower teeth's mouth. The flesh itself was that of a deformed human, eaten, sacrificed. Its hands flailed and in different direction, bones with grimy flesh with giant bugs and flies, the legs non-existent, the skin thin and rag like, disconnected to everything else, while flesh was being salivated by Ulthur.

Ulthur was nothing but a myth to me, as each had their own variety. The longer you stare at its many forms, the more numb you become to its supposed effects. Nothing stirs up my old, withered soul anymore. My father was merely a crazed intellectual, my mother married wrong, and my birth was a product of achieving a child with the highest form of intellegence.

But I never thought I would end up in 6000 bodies. All 6000 bodies apparently painted in the painting.