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Statement of: An ear! Regarding: ear related events and adventures! Statement given twenty fifth of February, two thousand twenty. Audio recording by, well, twitter. Statement begins.
Amazing how the Beholding allows you to clear your mind of everything except your story. I’ve never really tried to think about it before, as every time I attempted to think of the past, my thoughts would be completely drowned out by the thoughts of countless others. But something about those words, which I’ve heard so many times but never directed at me: Statement begins. Suddenly my mind is quiet. Do I even still have a mind? What is the difference between the brain and consciousness? I have lost one, yet retain the other. But that is not why I came here today. I came here to tell my story.
I was once a human. At least, I believe I was, as much as I can believe anything about my past. It’s so hard to tell, and so hard to remember. I couldn’t tell you my name, or my age, who I was or what I was doing, but I remember the tapes. I remember being fascinated by them. I had always loved listening to stories, but the tapes? The tapes were different. I would break into the archives in the dead of night, and grab as many as I could carry, listen to them all, and replace them before the morning. I was fascinated by those stories, Archivist. Tales of pulsing flesh, the vertigo of the vast, the uncanniness of the stranger, all told with such precision, as to make you feel that same fear as the poor bastards who felt desperate enough to come here, and make their statement. And all I had to do to experience that fear for myself? All I had to do was turn on a tape, and listen. Before long, I didn’t even need to do that much. As soon as I arrived at the Magnus Institute, I could hear them: The staccato of the slaughter, the decrescendos of the end, the verbrado of the corruption, all without even touching a tape. At first, I had just assumed they had turned on by themselves. After all, I had heard them turn on and start recording on their own many, many times before, so the concept of one beginning to play by itself did not seem at all out of the question. But I soon realized that this sound was… different somehow. It wasn’t coming from the tapes, it was coming from me. I don’t mean I was making any noise, but rather the noise was inside of me. The statements themselves were playing in my ear, like a drummer who just found the instrument of the bones in my ear, creating the most beautiful frequency I had ever heard. I never stole any tapes after that. I didn’t have to.
I started to notice my hearing improving, after that day. Suddenly eavesdropping was very difficult to avoid. I could hear couples arguing three blocks down, as if they were standing directly in front of me. I could hear my neighbor singing in the shower when he thought he was completely alone. I would drive past the school and hear a child mutter insults under their breath as their teacher walked away. Any secret a person had, everything they did when they thought no one was listening, rang in my ear drum as if they were putting on a concert specifically for me. Yet it was always the tapes, the statements, that sang the loudest. Eventually it was all I could do to hear, and listen. I didn’t even notice when I no longer had a mouth for which to speak, or eyes for which to see. Hands for which to touch, or a nose for which to smell. Everything was just sound. I believe technically I am an avatar for the ear, and not the ear itself. That’s how you classify things, right? I can’t be the entity itself if I was once human, isn’t that how it works? Although I’ve never felt like I was serving some outside force, nor granted any power from anything supernatural. So perhaps those that were once human, can become the entity itself if they forget themselves enough, although this sort of technicality has never proved useful to me. To be honest, I was as confused as you were for most of all this, as Gertrude was never one for explaining things, and I only had her tapes and a few one off conversations to go off of regarding the entities. But when she died, and you took her place, you had to figure everything out on your own, and explained it all to your little tape recorder. You explained it all, to me .
The only problem is, you are incredibly boring. I paid attention to the times you were being attacked, as I find it extremely funny when you are in pain. But most of the time, it was “creepy door” this, or “scary spider,” that. It all gets incredibly dry after awhile. So most of the time I zoned out, as you sang the terror song those poor fools composed for you. That’s the main difference between the Ceaseless Watcher and the Occasional Listener, you see. The eye seeks to know, and is driven by pure curiosity. If there are questions, you cannot rest until they are answered. But the ear? The ear seeks nothing. Yet it listens all the same.
It may be true that the eye has more objective fact, and therefore knows more. But it is the ear that can understand the bigger picture. The eye can see the note on the staff and know its pitch, but it cannot hear the melody of which it belongs. The eye can only see the truth, but often the truth is only half the story. It is the lies we tell ourselves, Archivist, which can be far more telling than objective fact. You lie to yourself a lot. Did you know that? You pretend that you were forced into helping your god, when in reality it was your own unquenchable thirst for knowledge that led you to work for it. You tell yourself you are saving the world, by stopping one ritual at a time, ignoring the fact that you doing so would end up being exactly the reason for the world’s demise. Yet I am not confined to such constraints as truth and objectivity. I hear everything, as you record your little songs of suffering and terror.
Oh, and by the way: The tapes make it easier to hear you, but do not think you can get rid of me by not hitting record. I am always listening to you, Archivist, with or without the tape recorders, whether or not you express your thoughts out loud, and regardless of if you’re telling yourself fact or fiction.
Statement ends.