228: Horrors Beyond Borders

PUBLIC: 1 colored artwork
DISCIPLES and higher: 3 colored artworks + 1 shaded work in progress + 3 black & white inks/sketches

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Dear Patrons.

This update is quite ambitious on my part as I expand on the story I title "THE CALIPHATE" touched briefly in Carte du Jour #212 and along with that, the universe of the "Tales of the Vanished" and the group of mysterious cannibals while spanning the globe. For why should these hedonistic pleasures be confined only within the American-European sphere. We have touched based in Central and South America, this time, we point our lens towards Darkest Africa and the Middle East. The truth is revealed to one such victim, and the delicious horrors are almost too unimaginable to conceive.

Bon appétit!

I. MONOLOGUE FROM THE CALIPHATE LEADER TO HIS CAPTIVE

The public think what they see in the news is terrible? Wars, genocide, injustices, outrages over trivial first world problems? They think that they exaggerated the events? Let me tell them. That's the understandable horror. But peel back the onion layers and dive deep into the depravity of the human soul, they'll barely even scratch the surface of the darkness man could ever imagine.

Genocide? Murder? Rape? The pursuit of wealth and power? How unimaginative these concepts are. These are the animalistic depravities of the primitive. No, no, we humans are much more creative than that. My men and I, we are a little bit different from the usual rebel fighters or as your people would like to call us, extremists. Under my guidance, my Caliphate has cultivated an environment of... creative hedonism of which that is the reward which my men fight for. After witnessing death upon death... there is a malaise that comes after, and a deeper darkness settles in. Why not enjoy our depravities to the Seventh level of Jahannam, embellish it a little?

For instance, right now, I am thinking of many different ways of your disassembly. Oh, the possibilities. How shall we do it? Remove your head and limbs and bake your torso? Split you dow the middle? Quartered? Gutting you alive or once I remove your head? Or how about roasting you whole? Oh, to choose one is to forego the other! I think about this all the time before slaughter and it pleasures me and my men to run such thoughts over and over again through my mind. This is the matter that fuels the flame to their meaning of life and why they fight for me. To fight, to fuck, to slaughter, and to grow hungry over the anticipation of the feast?

They can enjoy their feel-good stories about brave female soldiers picking up arms against the evil terrorist invaders. Oh, and you, my dear, are that prime example. All the better. You are but lambs to the slaughter and your Western government feeds us with that narrative. Look at the brave soldiers fighting for feminine ideals that your brave missing journalist has pushed in the media. That's a sign, don't you think that your powerful nations have edged to the brink of spoiled complacency that plagued the latter day rulers of ancient Rome and Persia before the fall.

You don't even see that within your own back yard, these horrors are also being performed under your very noses, hidden under the facade of "civility". Within the halls of power, men in suits and glass skyscrapers, composers of beautiful music, sculptures and other works of inspiring art, there are depravities to be found no different than what you see here. Look at your Hollywood and the skeletons within its closet. Look at your politicians and crimes conveniently ignored. Your people collectively chose to sleep for they could not bear the horrors of reality because it is like staring at the face of the Lovecraftian monster who turned the academic scholar mad.

And speaking of which, what was it whom Lovecraft wrote about, the one whose books sparked the pursuit of the cosmic evil? The Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. I for one, should be offended, but I am not. The casual reader may be a little misguided for it is easy to brand a foreigner from a strange land the villain. That is human nature. But if one aims to be a little more philosophical in tone and delve deeper about the message, perhaps he is more complimentary in tone to Abdul Alhazred. The Necronomicon had been written by this scholar who perhaps went mad in his pursuit of knowledge and the truth. Which meant, that the Arab he called "mad" had at once represented the enlightenened. The civilized. The pursuer of knowledge. The paragon that was once represented in the Golden Age of Islam during the middle-ages of scientists, scholars and authors of fantastic literature, or in more recent history, the Iranian Enlightenment which had been erased no thanks to your Western colonialists. Why does the casual Lovecraftian reader regard the Mad Arab as some sort of heathen savage? Why does the word "mad" connote such negativity? It is easy to call an Arab mad, for we are foreign. But Lovecraft did stumble upon this excellent point, whether accidentally or not. Who would you rather be? The sleeping chattel or the deranged truth-seeker?

Look at me, prattle on here. Sadly, your journalist lady didn't share such artistic pursuits such as you or I. She was a little too serious for my taste... excuse the pun. I've read your dossier that your bosses had given to me. You've lived an interesting life. Perhaps in another universe, we would've made interesting bedfellows. An Arab and a Zionist, in casual conversation over tales of fiction and fancy, a world without corrupting forces pulling invisible strings.

Do not think that I do not notice your judgmental glare. Just because your people live in luxury behind the protection of your Iron Dome while your allies glue themselves to the television preoccupied over celebrity scandals and sports think you're the better people than us. Behind the scenes, our shadow governments are both more in bed than you think. Fuel the outrage of easy villains. Make everything easily digestible in black and white. Create the chaos and the power vacuums so that the masters will insert their own puppet rulers. The European colonists empowered the dictator in Congo in exchange for diamonds paid to look the other way while the people are consumed either by labor or literally with their flesh themselves. To bring them down brings the whole business operation. How would your opulent fashion industry cope without the import of diamonds and gold?

I am here because your government wills it so. Some secrets should be left unsaid, even to the doomed such as you. But I can reveal this as much. Who did you think sent you here to me? Who did you think empowered me to build my own little private fiefdom with my own rules and depravities? I am currently but a humble tool to my secret masters' grand designs, but soon, I will ascend to the rank of their Inner Circle. Your missing journalist also found out about the truth a little too late and the feast had been much more rewarding than one could imagine. The revenge was almost as sweet as her flesh itself. To dine on the sweet privileged American who thinks we are the barbarians. You should've been there. The irony. If you had been a better spy, And now, because you have seen more of the truth and how your own government had set you up, to shut you up. Imagine the joy I will have, nourishing myself on your flesh and your soul. Your mana will feed me and my men to fight your successors.

And this is the circle of life. Call it unfair it matters not to me, but the Pyramids cannot be built without slaves. The railroads and Golden Bridges in America are built upon the backs of fallen laborers. You of all people should know, the rocket program that sends humanity to the moon comes at the cost of The Third Reich's genocide. Every luxury comes with some expense.

Remember the myth of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth? Fourteen young virgins sacrificed so that King Aegeus' kingdom will continue to exist in peace? Sate the hunger of the beast so that they won't come and raze your village? That is a parable more accurate than one thinks, just change the actors to that of modern day examples. It is a tale as old as time and you, my dear lamb, as magnificent as you are, and as you realize this too late, are one of the sacrificial virgins that have been given up by your very own king Aegeus. This is how true industry and progress are fueled. In secret, behind closed doors!

And your flesh, my beautiful lamb, will fuel our progress! For that I say, thank you!

-- to be continued? --

BONUS WORKS IN PROGRESS & SKETCHES

Here lies an assortment of sketches and works of future projects.