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CHAPTER THE FIRST
I wish either Mercymorn (lemon-sucker) or Augustine (marble-faced simp) or really both of them, as they both should have been paying attention, during the not one but two geriatric sexual trios that had been involved in my conception, had minded what they were about before I had been born; had they really considered how much depended upon what they were then doing; that not only the production of a weapon to end God was going to happen, but that possibly she would fail to die, perhaps she would become an indentured servant and pick up an insufferable bone-witch for a nemesis; and, for all they knew, even the cursed events of Canaan House and attempted Lyctorhood might take a turn for the worse; look, what I’m trying to say is, had they taken half a second to consider the fact that their plan might have been a wretched one, and given up entirely, I am quite fucking certain that this story would be an entirely different one from the one that you, my dear reader, now see in front of you.
Believe you me, folks, the care that should have been taken is more of a thing than a lot of you might think;—you have all, I’m sure, heard of the Locked Tomb; the locked tomb made especially to contain Alecto, Alecto’s locked tomb, &c. &c. — and a great deal of all that nonsense: — Well, you may take my word, that nine times out of ten, when you take the time and care to set up a narrative wherein there is a tomb as established, and a character as me who has the ability to unlock it, once you set her and her motley gang of associated idiots going, whether it’s right or wrong - away the story goes like the world’s worst merry-go-round, and by retreading the narratives their ancestors set in motion, it presently becomes clear all the themes and inevitable ends these characters must come to, which, once they get started, John himself shall not be able to stop it.
CHAPTER THE SECOND
Then let us start at the beginning so to speak — the beginning meaning anything that can in retrospect be considered as causally complicit in the circumstances surrounding my birth — which happened about 19 years ago upon the planet which holds the worst and most disheartening House in all of God’s empire; that House, being called the Ninth House for reasons that I swear will become clear at some point hence in this story, the house known also as Drearburh, also known as hell itself, is the House in which I was, well, not actually born — my apologies for the earlier shorthand in which I spoke if it now causes you any pain and confusion (both of which reside in the Ninth House in abundance, might I add) — but it is the place where I landed as a small infant and was promptly and wholly chained; that House was indeed the closest to what you could call my birthplace, the story of said birth being at least somewhat still a mystery to me in terms of exact location in space and time.
That place — that damned place! If I go off topic I am sorry; I have become distracted by the thought of that heinous palace in which another girl around my age, having no other recourse to vent the existential horror of her own existence, took it upon herself to torture me without relief for the large majority of my living years: however, in contemplating the linear chain of events leading to my first drawing breath, the Ninth House, though prominent in my tale of woe is not the first link but nearly the last; that event of honor can be given to the moment, if I had to trace it all backwards, the very beginning of the world as we know it being created; also known as the First Resurrection, when God the Father - and I mean father here quite literally in that sense- took it upon himself to jumpstart a new era of the human race, and in doing so, (although by saying the following I may be accused of making unnecessarily dramatic statements) probably pretty much fucked over the entire universe.
Let there be light— quoth my father. And his companion said, God — making no attempt to moderate her voice whatsoever — Did ever man, in the creation of the world, interrupt a woman with such a stupid joke?
What was that?
Nothing, John.