Appendix2 The Secret to the Riddle of the Universe

Appendix2 The Secret to the Riddle of the Universe

Introduction Chapter Won:TheMalkavians Chapter1o:Legendsof theMalkavians Chapter 3 Traditions of the Malkavians Chapter Fore!!k Malkavian Templates Liver1:Who'sWhoArnongMalkavians * * Appendix2 The Secret to the Riddle of the Universe Mad, adj. : Afiected with a high degree of intellectual independence; not conforming to the standards of thought, speech and action derived by the confments from study of themselves.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary “No, no, no!” the old crone screeched, her fangs flashing at Adam. “Again you make that same mistake! You’re doing it all wrong. Feel the Curse of Malkav shatter your mind, and make the walls you see around you crumble into shale.”

Adam staggered backward, reeling. “My head’s pounding,” he gasped. ‘‘I can’t stand it!”

“Then sit down, little fool,” she snapped. He stumbled backward into a chair, holding his throbbing head as if to prevent it from splitting open.

“How am I going to teach you to be a Malkavian when you won’t even learn to focus your powers. I must have been crazy to think you’d make agood Malkavian. I ought to return you to the loony bin and your miserable life as a scholar wasting away as a salesman. Well, I can’t, so you’re stuck with me!”

“Just give me a minute, “ he said. “It’s just . . . I can’t cope with this . . . this head rush!”

“Yes you CAN cope, you ninny. You’re trying to shut down the process just as it is starting to work.”

“Just give me a minute. I’m not shutting anything down.

Please!”

“Oh, now the student thinks he can teach the master, eh?” She cocked her enormous right eye at him as she squinted her glazed left eye. “Very well. I’ll give you five minutes of peace before we start again.”

He slumped forward in the chair, burying his face in his hands and kneading his weary eyes. He was grateful for the moment’s respite.

“Aaaaaaaargh!” she suddenly shrieked in his ear. He leaped to his feet, his entire body a jangle of electrified nerves.

“You said five . .. you said five minutes!” he protested.

“And you BELIEVED me!” she cackled with glee.

“Mistress LaVeel, please! I can’t cope!” he shouted. “My body doesn’t function right any more. My mind doesn’t work any more. I can’t remember things right. My head feels like a sieve, and my thoughts fall right through. I’m losing my . . . my THOUGHTS!”

“What you’re losing is your sanity. You’re becoming a Malkavian.”

“No! I’m sane!”

“Ah, you came unwrapped long before I even met you.” ‘‘I only had a nervous breakdown!”

“‘I only had a nervous breakdown,”’ she mimicked in a whiny, singsong voice. “I had only broke down my only nerves. My nerves only had to break me down. I only watched unfettered glory! FEH! You are loony as a jay bird.”

“NO!”

“Yes. So you better get used to the idea.”

“No! You did this to me!” breaking down your nervous system!”

“It hurts,” he moaned. “It’s painful.”

“Good,” she said with asneer. “You could USE a bit of pain, ye whining whelp. Now go away and arrange to get yourself a good thrashing. I want to stare into the middle distance for a little while seeking inspiration about what to do with you. Or about how to piddle onthenextBrujahrant.Nowgoon. Get out!”

Madame LaVeel pointed to the battered, reinforced door that led up the basement stairs. Her ghoul manservant Troy stepped past Adam, opened a combination lock, slid back the great bolt, and opened the door.

Adam felt a blast of fresh, cool air gust into the musty, smelly basement. Without further coaxing, he bolted from his sire’s haven and ran out into the night.

“Ah, that son of mine,” Madame LaVeel said with a sigh.

“Just like a callow youth to burst out so rudely,”Troy said, looking after Adam with a trace of envy. “Oh well, the night air will do him good.”

“Oh no,” Madame LaVeel said with a wicked smile. “It will do him BAD. It will do him VERY bad.”

Adam felt a merciful release as he raced through the rain-slicked streets. He pounded through deep puddles as he ran, tireless and strong, but dizzy, disoriented, and lost.

The fever gripped him, and the street started doing it again. Twisting. Wrapping itself around itself again, until he didn’t know which street would take him home again. Or ifhe had a home. Streets aren’t supposed to do that, he thought plaintively. There was a time when streets behaved properly. When they stayed ip neat, ordered rows. When they went where you were going.

But now the pressure in his temples and the fear in his throat and the welling tears in his eyes were too much for him, and twisted his thoughts into a tight, taut Gordian knot.

He stomped frenziedly into a dark allev.

The pressure built and built in his head until he could contain it no longer. He screamed a piercing, bloodcurdling scream and slammed his head into a brick wall. He slammed it again and again and again, until the scream worked its way out of his body. He slumped back, oblivious to the precious blood that poured down his face.

“Oh good. Very good. Scream. That’s good.”

He whirled around, shocked by the delicate female voice anymore, so stop TRYING! You can only think curved. But curved is so much bed-dur than straight,” she added in a sexy, pouty voice, wiggling slowly and seductively. “Think curved.

Think bent. Get WAY bent!”

A beautiful, sensuous, barefoot woman lay reclining in a that hovered behind him. low-hanging fire escape. Her diaphanous white spring dress draped her body like silken spider web. Her pale blonde hair cascaded around her head in gentle curls. Her full red lips parted, and she said “That’s a good start.

Very good start. But is that all you think there is to being a Malkavian?

Screaming and banging your head?”

Adam felt a stirring of far-off emotions that had laindormant since he became a vampire. “Who are you?” he asked, enraptured.

“Why, I’m your guardian angel,” she said with a laugh like tinkling bells. “Your conscience! Your Jimminny-Jesus-Christ-Cricket ! The better angel of your nature! Your psychopompous Karen the Boatman on this Lethal river Styx. Hey, did you like them? I’m partial to bad 70s rock, myself.”

“No, I ... I ... You’re my ... what? Are you an hallucination?”

She sat up on the fire escape.

“Who isn’t? We’re all hallucinations on this bus. One big hallucination that we all share, more or less. Except some people stay at home in their hallucinatory homes, andsome greedy people range over all hallucinatory terror-tory. Those people are called Malkavians and, guess what? You’re one of them.”

“I ... what?” ‘‘I Malkavian. You Jane. No, you Malkavian too, so me must be Jane.

Crazy Jane. No, wait, me Malkavian too, so I am me as you are we and ye need ta pull yerself together. Come together! Right now-ow-ow. Over me. Bah-ba-bum-ba-ba bop!”

“That’s it!” he said, clinging to the thought like a drowning man.

“THAT’S what I need. I need to pull myself together! I ... I can’t think straight!”

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ! ” she shrieked, leaping to her feet. He fell backwards, startled, and landed in a deep puddle of stagnant water.

M i ‘That’s just it,” he gasped desperately, kneeling in the muddy water. ‘‘I can’t think straight or bent!”

“Oh, you can think, all right,” she said, sinuously slipping down off the fire escape. “You just can’t think all RIGHT. You can just think WRONG.”

“That’sright !” he said eagerly, glad toconnect a thought. ‘‘I DO think wrong. My thoughts feel like a big jumble. Every time I try to follow a thread of thought to unravel it, it leads me to another thought, but one that’s not connected to the other one at all! Or shouldn’t be connected. I can’t think right anymore. I think wrong.”

“Yes,” she said with a smile. “You can think, just not the way you used to.” He said nothing.

She walked over to him, oblivious to the mud under her bare feet. “You see, your brain used to be a homebody. And you used to be a stick in the mud of the mire of your gray matter. Your thoughts used to get up in the morning, shit, shower and shave, drive to work, take a lunch break, lust over the babe in marketing, drive home, whack off, and fall asleep.

Well, guess what? No more! Your brain just leaped a track!

Busted out! Run away from home, and you can’t go back again! Your thoughts are still trying to drive their old route, but that path don’t exist no more. Neither do your lusty thoughts for the hot babe in marketing. The pain in your brain falls mainly from your feigning humanity. You’re putting your brain through the agony of hell trying to think the old, mortal thoughts that are long gone from you. (They didn’t work so good for you when you were a mortal either, but we won’t bring up your messy mental state.) “But when you became a vampire, your spiritual landscape was hit by an earthquake that busted up your old roads and caused the tornado that picked up your house that landed you in Oz that dropped you on the witch that lay in the house that Jack built! And guess what? You’re not in the flat, dry, sterile Kansas wheat field of your mind anymore! Quit tryin’ to go that way! You’ll only cause yourself trouble ‘n’ pain! Oh ... oh for mah trouble an pain! You’re on new roads now, roads less traveled, dusty roads, dry, bare, sandy roads, filled with ends of wyrms! So whatcha gonna do, Red Ryder on the storms of the sea of madness?” ‘‘I ... I don’t know,” he said weakly, exhausted from following her tortuous turns of association. The constriction in his brain was worse than ever, as he struggled to recall her words. “You said you’re my conscience. What should I do?”

“You should listen better.”

“I . . . what?”

“You Malkavian. Me not your conscience.”

“Ok, ok, my angel. You said you were my angel, right?My guardian angel, right? I remember that right, right? What should I do instead?”

“You should be wrong. Right?”

“Please!” he implored. “My mind is in a KNOT! HELP me!”

Clanbook Malkavian “Come, come, my precious scholar,” she said, putting soothing hands on his shoulders. “You filled your poor pia mater with so much book learning, so many ordered words, that surely you can recall a historical precedent for knot answers.”

He looked at her meekly, confused. “Not answers?”

“KNOT answers!” she said emphatically. “A bad old, sticky old knot that has your poor mind all constricted, so your brain can’t breathe. You can use Alexander’s final solution to his famous knot.”

“Alexander?” he said. “The knot, the Gordian Knot?”

She nodded.

In a flash it came to him. Cut right through it! Undo the impossible knot by slashing it into a thousand ribbons! In his mind’s eye he summoned a vision of his brain as a great knot of gray matter, pulsing black where it was constricted and tied in a giant knot. As he unfolded the vision, he picked up a huge, gleaming sword, and slashed right through the brain!

Black blood splattered as gray matter split in two halves! The twisting ridges of his brain slithered away like snakes, leaving a shining star in its place.

He toppled over, breathless and relieved. The pressure in his head was gone.

Then he sat up, alarmed. “Oh no,” he thought. “Without a brain, how am I going to think?” Then he cackled a long, chortling laugh. “Bwah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!” he screamed hysterically.

The old crone, Madame LaVeel, ran to him. “Adam!” she said with concern. “Are you all right?”

“I’m not all right!” he shrieked. “I’m all wrong! I’m completely wrong! I’ve never been so wrong in my life!

Everything I know is wrong! And I’m so HAPPY! No, wait, I’m not happy, I’m sad. No, wait. I’m not sad. I’m mad. I’m MAD! I’m REAL mad! Very! Mad! Am! I! Ha ha ha ha ha!

Hey, I never cackled before! That felt great! I see why you enjoy it.”

“Adam, you have done it! You crossed the threshold!

But how?”

“I had a visit from Crazy Jane, my own Karen the Boatman. Oh, what a babe!”

“Crazy Jane? She’s was destroyed 300 years ago!”

“Then my MIND was playing TRICKS on me! Ha HA!

He HEE!”

“What?”

“She was my sub-conscience. My Jimminny Christ on a Crutch! My port in the stormy sea of my psyche. Heh, heh.

That’s a good one. She’d like that . . .”

“I don’t understand . . .” LaVeel protested.

“No, you don’t. You can’t! Face it, the pupil will now have to teach the master! Now, look at me and YOU make the world around you crumble into shale!”