The Holder of Absurdity
In any city, in any country, go to any mental institution or halfway house you can get yourself to. When you reach the front desk, ask to visit an individual who calls himself “The Holder of Absurdity”. If the attendant begins to seize, fall to the floor and mimic her, for the carnivore that has awoken knows to devour those not within the state it recognizes as its worship. Do not stop until the attendant has passed, and then run until the sinew in your legs snap like tired guitar strings. Kiss the ground you meet, for you have survived an encounter with the devil itself. Do not attempt this again.
If instead, the attendant sinks her chin into her neck and fits a cock-eyed smile onto her face, smile back. This will initiate a trial; you must respond to her moments and gestures of insanity with ones of your own and with increasing exaggeration and theatrics. Do not be overcome with embarrassment; those in the facility will notice and not understand. If you do not maintain focus and drown out their mockery, the attendant will sheepishly return to her duties. You will be ignored by her while being the object of an unflattering viral video. If you have kept up with the attendant sufficiently, the onlookers will suddenly forget you exist, and she will resume her calm beauty. She will then ask you to kindly follow her.
The attendant will guide you down innumerable concrete steps, but you will notice the level number increasing. As you descend, your breath will grow short, and your chest will grow hot. You will feel your heart beating in a desperate arrythmia, but you must not slow your pace. You must not stop, return, or even glance down. Muffle the shrieking of your burning lungs, for if she notices your dyspnea, she will stop for you out of concern. The eternity you both will then be stuck in will see you be her lover numerous times, but also starved, and devoured cannibalistically while only half dead.
Finally, at one landing, she will turn and sprint down the stairs, leaving you behind. Your breath will return to you, your heart stilled.
At that moment, and only at that moment, turn around. The staircases behind you will have filled with an undifferentiated mass of human tissues — eyes, arms, fingernails, teeth, lips— that now creeps around the top of the steps you stand upon. If you see a mouth immediately before you, shout “The shadows would not be so without the walls and ground that bind them!” If the mouth opens, take a deep breath; it will be your last. If it smiles, smile back. If you see another body part, hold out your hand with your thumb pinched onto your middle finger, shake your index finger side-to-side, as if saying “no no”.
Once an eye is before you, whether initially or eventually, shield your face. If done correctly, a spread of layered voices from the toddler to the elderly will introduce itself as The Holder of Absurdity. You may then show your face. You will witness a middle-aged man in the nude standing before you in exquisite physical condition. This man will not respond to any question aside from one: “What does it all mean?”
He will tell you of every fumbled lie, every meaningless death, each and every contradiction given by humanity since the dawn of time. At first, you will scoff; then you will laugh; then collapse; then weep; finally you will plead. When the fluid from your eyes, nose, and mouth have all mixed together and fallen the half-meter that separates your face and the concrete that your forearms press against, you will notice through the liquid sheen upon your eyes an armyworm, dancing, standing up and waving itself from side to side within the storm of your secretory precipitation.
This worm is the Object of the Holder of Absurdity. If you choose to squash it, any hope of returning to the world sane will be killed along with it. Pocket it, secret it away, show it to others covertly in quiet moments of confidentiality, and encourage them to speak with it. You can choose to release it into the wild, but not if you are to give any hope to the world and help it avoid its impending fate.
