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ARCHIVIST
Statement of Radomir Rak, regarding a series of dreams he had and paintings he created. Original statement given June 3rd, 2015. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.
Statement begins.
ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)
I have been having dreams, they aren't really something one tells your institute. It's against your policy to include any “out-of-body experiences, visions, hallucinations or dreams.” It would've been nice if this were nothing more than dreams.
It's funny really, I don't even live in London, or the UK in general, I am here only because I decided to study here for some godforsaken reason. I don't like Britain as a whole, I was supposed to study in Cyprus! I lived there for a decade and planned to stay and study there, I had no reason to leave. It's like I was just pushed bit by bit into this direction, getting ads about UK universities, having random people, with faces I can't for the life of me place, talk about your institute. Sometimes it was as though I was no more but a puppet on strings, or perhaps a rat in a maze, but instead of a maze, it’s just a hallway with locked doors on the sides.
Honestly, it's not like I don't believe in the paranormal, I've grown up with it, I alone could probably supply you with at least thirty statements. You would like that, wouldn't you? Sitting there at your desk, I can see you run your fingers through your hair. Your fingers expect a longer way to go, did you cut your hair recently? Your eyes so, so hungry for the information on the paper before you.
I apologise for getting off topic, it's just… You Archiv-... Archivist… you have that feel about you, similar to the paintings I make.
I apologise for the rambling, my brain hasn’t been fully focused on much but these dreams and things related. You see, Archivist, my family, every woman on my mother's side, we all have some ‘gift’ . My mother dreams of when people die, my grandmother could just Know things, my older sister has dolls that follow her made of skin and wax, my younger one always saw more in the dark than people should. I thought maybe it skipped me because I was trans, I never really Saw, or had dreams of people’s deaths. Sure, I still saw and met the watchful figures in the windows of locked houses and the people whose voices made you question every single thing about you. But I never had anything of my own, not really.
That is, of course, until a couple of months ago, I'd say it was the end of February, perhaps the beginning of March - can't be sure.
I dreamt of death, not my own but everyone's. It was slow and ignored by all, the world was flooding and I was the only one who could live like a fish. It sounds so funny doesn't it? Pathetic even. It was so vivid and detailed, I painted it. I painted it on a canvas I did not know I had, i don't know how I painted it. I remember getting my paint out and then it was the next morning and I was starving and thirsty, but the painting was done. It depicted all that was my dream and more. Eyes and strings were drawn thinly as if with an eyelash for a brush but only seen at a closer look.
These dreams did not stop. It has been months. And every few days, I dream of the end of the world where I am the sole survivor and then went to paint all the pain and destruction filled with eyes and strings no matter how starved I was. I saw the end come through climate change, aliens, experimentation, zombies, atomic destruction and more. But I never felt fear, panic or dread at everything coming to an end, maybe some anxiety, sure, but never for myself. No matter what I dream, it is vivid, and there is always the need to paint it all. I have around thirty paintings, I think at least, I swear I saw some turn to ash.
But as is human nature, one gets used to things, adapts. I ate extra before sleeping and tried to right after I woke up, that way I would be less famished snapping back. But two weeks ago it was different. I awoke to an already apocalyptic world with the words I could not understand playing loudly in my mind on repeat. There were eyes on me, when I looked up I saw a tower with an eye. It reminded me of that tower of Sauron, except more refined and more green. As well as the fact that the eye Watching was sewn open with thread. It looked like webs that spread everywhere, puppeteering all that there was and holding all that was not.
When I awoke, I had no time to do anything. I barely sat up before it was four days later, with my hands bleeding, lightheadedness and the painting done. I think the red in it was my blood. I think this is the first time I properly felt fear from this, I can feel it eating at my chest and bones. I think I was painting with my own blood instead of water. It is what pushed me to talk to someone about it. Because this is fucking insane. This has to mean something, but what? How was I supposed to explain it to someone who never dreamt? I haven't had a different dream since then, it was just the one of eyes and webs on repeat every night.
I decided to show it to a girl from class. We weren't really close, but we were still friends and I knew she would not call me insane. I invited her over under the pretence of showing a series of paintings I was working on, I mean… It's not like I lied . Her name was Amelia Jones, she did not fear much or at least not in the way I could see. I swear I saw a video of her tackling a cop before and then acting as though nothing out of the ordinary happened.
The moment she laid her eyes on the first painting of floods, her demeanour changed. It was like a switch flipped; gone was her calmness and playful smirk. She was twitching in panic, her eyes focused and unfocused at the same time. Looking nowhere but at the painting. I could taste her fear. It was sweet like gasoline and blood.
It was intoxicating and I kept. fucking. showing her. The paintings. Her twitching and mumbling intensified with each one she saw. And I did not stop. I swear I could see her brother's face in the crowds of the dead. It scared her even more. The more she feared, the more I came to realise how hungry I had been, a non-stop hunger that ate away at the walls of my stomach and through my soft flesh. The more she was afraid, the more satiated I felt.
When Lee saw the last one, the one of eyes and spiders, she just stood frozen. All her shakes gone, and her eyes fully focused. I think she stared at it while I at her, for half an hour before she excused herself and actually ran out of my apartment.
Two days ago, her brother, the one in the painting, called me to say Lee killed herself. Apparently, she locked herself in her dorm and spiralled a bit, a guy I dated a while back would've found that nice… the spiralling part, not the suicide… probably. But it was the smell of rot and a small pool of blood trickling from underneath her door that led to someone opening her door. Only to find her corpse in the early stages of decomposition, covered in blood that pooled from her wrists, and a bloody notebook held tight in her rigour mortis affected fingers.
I am trying to convince Amelia’s brother to come by and say whatever was in the notebook, I think your institute would like it. I could get you that painting if you would like, the eye in the sky looked so much like yours after all Archivist. But the rest of the paintings, I will be showing off in an art exhibition, there is an invitation included here if you want to… See them.
ARCHIVIST
Statement ends.
I… I don't know how Radomir Rak found out what I look like. To my knowledge, he was nowhere close to my office at the time of his statement being taken, most of all nowhere close to where he could have seen my… eyes.
I got the statement too late to go to his art exhibition, but according to two of the staff from HR who attended the exhibition, Cheryll and Bobby Kerings, they could see their loved ones' faces in the paintings and have reported feeling unusual paranoia about the end of the world that they did not experience before.
We were unable to get in contact with Radomir Rak due to him passing away in a fire, which took his entire apartment building and presumably the painting of ‘eyes and spiders’. It befuddles me that his corpse was discovered without a single burn or a sign of smoke inhalation, which could have caused his death. The morgue was unable to properly discern the cause of his death.
What worries me even further is the report of his corpse going missing.
I can only hope he did not Become.
End recording.
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