The Black Friday

There are few choices for those presented with a possible future. They either embrace it, and step willingly into what it could bring, or they fight against it. Autogenic Alchemy has decided to at least try and change. As such we will likely be giving up our Penzance store, hoping to find another in Caledon. Products will still be released there until we leave, but I do recommend updating your bookmarks to the Black Sands store as soon as you can.

The future however, will still be there tomorrow, it is always forward marching like that. So instead let us turn our eyes to the darkened pages of one Howard Phillips, whose diary I have so recently been lucky enough to study.

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Have you heard of Black Friday? The twisted celebration of chaos that drives us all mad...Have you heard the tales, the stories, the truth, the fiction? I can guess you have not, for I do not sense the fear that it so properly deserves. The Noche Obscura, the dark day when sanity is lost, and the veil parts.

I sought not to learn the truth of the Black Friday. I had never truly been the curious sort. I know now that it was never a choice I had to make. Life thrust the reality of itself upon me. And once one has seen it, there is no escaping the memory. It remains vivid and fresh, to the point where I wonder if the life I live now is but a dream I am having as I experience insanity.

I had been walking home that day, counting the cracks on the sidewalk. I did not particularly need to, I had counted them more times then I care to recount now. It was simply something to do, and one never knows when a new crack could form. And as such I walked on, pulling my jacket closer that cold Autumn Friday, cursing the ever closer Winter. I walked until I fell sideways, into a crack I had missed upon the sidewalk.

There was the rustle of fabric across my ears, and I was rather sure the sidewalk had collapsed beneath me. I was so sure in fact I found myself surprised when I realized I was not moving. The revelation of which promptly caused me to trip and see beyond the edge I found myself on.

Deep beneath me, lay a city, or what had once been. Stone ruins that formed an intricate pattern I dare not describe. And at the center was life, a creature I had never before seen. It pulsated in time with the beat of the world, for I noticed now that the horizon was not still. It too moved, breathed one could say, dancing across the ground merrily. It was a twisted vision, that was only smothered by the creature's visual attraction.

I do not mean to say it was attractive, but only that it was a draw. My eyes were torn towards it as I saw it give birth. Eggs lifted from deeper in the creature's form and slid out, rolling across the pulsating flesh to where they lay in a ring around it. I watched in horrid fascination, feeling a curiosity that was surely not my own. This ritual continued and I watched with rapt attention, until I saw the creature's eye. It had fallen upon me, it had seen me. And I could feel myself falling into it, as the Iris continued to fall inwards towards the black pupil.

I scrambled backwards away from the eye, pulling myself up though I had not remembered falling so deep. Reality no longer made sense and dark rock gave way to the ground and sidewalk I had so recently been walking. I laid there breathing, feeling my heart beating against my chest. It was my first brush with what laid beyond the veil, and even as I drew in breath after fevered breath, I knew it would not be my last. For my heart no longer beat as it did, it beat in time with the rhythm of that world I had seen, that fateful Black Friday.

~ Howard Phillips

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And as our own Black Friday draws to an end, Autogenic has managed to find these delightful eggs and raised them to an age where they can be properly be taken care of by the public. I do wish you the best this Black Friday, and do keep care for any cracks in the veil.