August’s Wednesday afternoon exorcism
Date: 2025-06-18 13:57
(August’s Wednesday afternoon exorcism)
[Wed Jun 18 2025]
Cotton Mill Memorial Ground/span
It is noon, about 75F(23C) degrees, and the sky is covered by dark grey clouds. The mist is heaviest At Mayflower and Madison/span
The slate pathways of Cotton Mill Memorial Ground stretch before Obadiah and August, their dark surfaces still warm despite the overcast sky. The familiar industrial hum from the nearby factories seems different today – more rhythmic, almost musical in its steady four-four beat. Obadiah’s pulse quickens slightly as he notices his heartbeat beginning to match the mechanical rhythm drifting across the cemetery grounds.
Fresh flowers scattered beside several headstones catch August’s attention, their random placement suddenly feeling wrong, inefficient. His fingers twitch with an inexplicable urge to arrange them into neat rows. The carved angels atop the Victorian monuments seem to watch with disapproving stone eyes, as if judging every wasted motion.
Near the cemetery’s center, an ornate mausoleum rises above the other graves, its brass pipes gleaming despite the thin coating of volcanic ash. The pipes appear longer than they should be, extending in thin metallic veins toward neighboring headstones. Where the brass touches granite, something shifts – letters rearranging themselves with soft scraping sounds.
The air carries that familiar metallic scent, but stronger now, mixed with an odd electrical charge that makes the hair on their arms stand on end. A grandfather clock visible through the mausoleum’s iron grating ticks at an unnaturally rapid pace, while August’s pocket watch seems to drag behind, creating a disorienting sense of temporal discord.
Even in the afternoon sun, the graveyard doesn’t seem to be the most appetizing of places here. August’s eyes skip from noe headstone to the next in a slow pan, unti lhe comes to a stop not too far within the central area. A look over his shoulder at Obadiah, and he draws his shotgun forward. “Thanks, I like your suit. Let’s make sure it’s not ruined, yeah?” August jests, but his eyes are inadvertantly drawn around. Something to the eyes of those statues makes the Pierce pull his sawn-off closer, click it open and fumble his pockets for a couple slugs to fill it. “This is just in case. Insurance.”
Obadiah slips his own weapon from his bag, following August’s lead on the issue, but is soon distracted by the clock in the mausoleum. “That is very considerate of you,” he murmurs to August as he feels his heart moving more and more in time with the ticking. “Very considerate indeed.”
87%” on one marker, while another’s dates transform into “ACTIVE SERVICE: 14,847 HOURS.”
August’s movements as he loads his shotgun become unnaturally precise, each motion economical and measured. His hands move in perfect synchronization with the factory rhythm, shells sliding into chambers with mechanical precision. The scattered flowers near his feet seem to mock him with their chaotic arrangement.
Obadiah finds his breathing automatically adjusting to match the accelerated ticking from within the mausoleum. The grandfather clock’s hands spin faster now, while his own pocket watch crawls at half-speed, creating a nauseating temporal vertigo. Through the iron grating, he can glimpse brass machinery within – pipes, gauges, and clockwork mechanisms that definitely weren’t part of any standard burial preparation.
The carved angels on nearby monuments have begun to turn their stone heads, following the men’s movements with grinding sounds of shifting granite. Their expressions remain serene, but their eyes now hold an unsettling focus on efficiency and purpose. One angel’s carved scroll has rewritten itself to read “OPTIMIZE ALL FUNCTIONS.”
A thin stream of brass-colored liquid begins seeping from the mausoleum’s foundation, pooling around the base before flowing in perfectly straight lines toward other graves.
Obadiah was not aware he had a pocket watch but will be getting one soon, now that it is cannon. He puts his hand out to steady himself against August when the vertigo sets in, taking deep breaths to calm himself and focus on getting back to normal. “Oh something isn’t right here. Something, mechanical… Demon perhaps?”
“Shit.” August, fluent in latin, naturally, picks up the oldest of the letters even as they rearrange. Easier done when they become plain English for their comfort. From the carved scroll, up to the angel, August stares for what may be too many seconds – interrupted by the clack of his shotgun locked in, and the pump of it drawn with another, louder clunk. “I think we might’ve bitten more than we can chew with this one, Obie.” A glance, and yet, the edge of August’s mouth holds that wan and waning smile, brows knit in an expression wrought with subtle amusement in spite of it all. “This anomaly might settle with us in it if we let it fester. Demonic, Deific, all the same.” And how does one fight the tide of order imposed on reality? August’s shotgun is leveled one-handed just as Obadiah takes support from his shoulder, then turned up. “This’ll ease the vertigo, don’t worry, I’m a doctor.” He’s not, not yet, but he pulls the trigger straight up at the head of an angel statue to blast it into smithereens.
“WASTEFUL DISCHARGE – PRODUCTIVITY DECREASED 12%.”
From within the mausoleum comes a new sound – the hiss and clank of pneumatic machinery awakening. Steam begins venting from the brass pipes, and the metallic veins spread faster, reaching toward the men’s position with predatory intent.
“Right,” Obadiah says gathering his thoughts and standing upright, shouldering the carbine at the grandfather clock and hissing pipes. “How do you mess with reality? Mess with the strands of fate binding all the world together.” He squints and pops off two rounds at the clock and the pressure gauges, hoping to disrupt something. “I didn’t know you were a doctor? I thought you were a struggling arteest.” He puts the accent on the word artist then flashes the man a broad, mischievous grin.
“You were a wasteful discharge in your mom,” August mouths off against the letters drawn over stone upon that other angel statue, but his attention is quick to fall on the approaching metallic veins on the ground. He must be too used to such things, because he’s sliding Obadiah’s hand off of his shoulder without worry, giving the man a reaffirming, encouraging pat on his own back, then stepping ahead. “I’m a medical student, and I don’t struggle, especially when it comes to this.” While Obadiah starts to shoot, add to the mayhem that stalls the rise of imposed order, August bites the of his thumb. Draws the red of his blood over a chalk he pulls out of his pocket, and in a forward motion, ducks to draw a circle around them. “Keep shooting from inside, blow off steam,” While he adds jagged lines and etchings in quick chickenscratch. The end result is a thrum of power beneath their feet when August steps into the circle. A ten meter diameter around them, the earth is reinforced, the opposing arcane stifled; a shoddy, impromptu ward made to give them some time to breathe before the assault. “The ward won’t hold for too long, but it’ll be enough to ruin this place to the ground.”
Obadiah’s shots ring out across the cemetery, shattering the grandfather clock’s face in a spray of glass and gears. The pneumatic gauges explode in bursts of steam and brass fragments. For a moment, the oppressive rhythm falters – the factory hum stutters, and the approaching metallic veins pause their advance.
August’s hastily drawn ward flares to life with crimson light, creating a barrier of chaotic energy that repels the geometric perfection trying to impose itself on the space. Within the circle, the men’s movements become their own again, no longer synchronized to the mechanical beat. The carved angels strain against invisible bonds, their stone faces contorting with frustration as they’re unable to complete their turning motions.
But the mausoleum itself pulses with renewed vigor. Steam vents from every brass fitting as backup systems engage. Through the damaged iron grating, they can see a massive pneumatic apparatus – pipes, cylinders, and clockwork mechanisms surrounding what appears to be a preserved corpse in a glass chamber. The body’s eyes snap open, glowing with brass-colored light.
“INEFFICIENCY DETECTED. INITIATING CORRECTIVE PROTOCOLS,” echoes from within the tomb in a voice like grinding gears. The metallic veins begin flowing around the ward’s perimeter, seeking weak points, while new brass pipes burst from the mausoleum’s walls, extending toward other sections of the cemetery.
The ward’s crimson glow flickers as the opposing force tests its boundaries.
Obadiah starts to laugh loudly at August. “Jesus Christ, Pierce!” he declares at what may be the perfect your mom joke of the day. After a moment catching his breath he nods, “Well, let me know if you need me to reinforce the ward. I am mostly an anarchist not a fighter.” And with that, he continues to lob brass into brass, hoping to stop whatever impending doom fate has for them.
“InEfFicEncY DeTeCted,” August makes a mockery of the echo, then bites the edge of his chalk to free his hand. In a full-mouthed drawl, August delegates the destruction all to Obadiah. “Just keep shooting at everything. You got this, king.” And in that lazy nonchalance, draws his dagger, replaces his shotgun with it. In a slice of his hand, his blood wells up in the palm of his hand, and August kneels on the floor- starts to etch upon the cobbled stone more intricate lines before the hastily drawn, initial ward can falter. “You don’t need to be good at it, you just need to blow off steam to slow it down.” Deific, Demonic, it seems it doesn’t matter to August when he pulls out the most intricate, blood-drawn sigilwork upon the soil that mixes sigillum dei and corrupts the connotations with inverted symbols of the satanic. The mark at the center denotes it, professes it to Leviathan, should one be able to tell. His next words are in latin, knelt on the side of that sigil – murmuring an incantation.
Obadiah’s continued barrage tears through more brass fittings, each shot sending sprays of superheated steam across the mausoleum’s facade. The mechanical voice from within grows more distorted with each impact, its proclamations of efficiency becoming garbled static mixed with the screech of damaged machinery.
August’s blood-drawn sigil pulses with darker power as his Latin incantation fills the air. The ward’s crimson glow deepens to burgundy, and the geometric perfection pressing against their sanctuary begins to warp and buckle. Where the brass veins touch the enhanced barrier, they recoil with hissing sounds, their perfect straight lines becoming jagged and chaotic.
The preserved corpse in the glass chamber thrashes against its containment, brass-colored fluid leaking from its eyes and mouth. “CHAOS… INEFFICIENT… MUST… OPTIMIZE…” it rasps, its voice now crackling like a broken radio. The pneumatic systems around it spark and malfunction, pressure gauges spinning wildly as the delicate balance of Blackwood’s nightmare-logic begins to collapse.
But the entity makes one final desperate gambit. Every remaining brass pipe in the cemetery suddenly extends upward like grasping fingers, then curves down toward the ward from above, seeking to penetrate their defenses from multiple angles. The air fills with the shriek of bending metal and escaping steam.
The ward flickers more violently now, caught between August’s chaotic power and the mechanical perfection’s last assault.
“Yeah fuck you,” Obadiah says to th brass moving around before throwing a small glass bead into the air, “Come on Calypso.” With the his minion called for Obadiah goes back to unloading the clip in his carbine at whatever shinny brass thing shows up. After a few minutes he adds, “Missed you at the party Auggie. I am glad we are doing this together though. You’re funny.”
Undeterred, August continues his murmured incantation. If only paused in it to give Obadiah a sly wink – but his work demands focus. Closed eyes, and hands pulled forth not in prayer but held aloft the central sigil, he doesn’t even note the approaching brass veins from all sides. “By the tide that thrashes, by the maw that rends – Leviathan, serpent, where the deep world bends.” He invokes chaos, and upon the first word the ground ripples. It isn’t from the machination that demands perfection – but water that begins to pour out of the cracks on the cobbled path in erratic bursts. “Unbind the dark from ocean’s womb, let chaos ride, be order’s tomb.” When his eyes open again, that energy is directed aside, held outward towards the crypt that holds the corpse.
Calypso materializes in a shimmer of otherworldly light – a graceful spirit form that immediately begins darting between the descending brass pipes, her ethereal touch causing them to corrode and snap where she passes. Obadiah’s shots find their marks with renewed precision, each bullet guided by his minion’s supernatural awareness of weak points in the mechanical assault.
August’s invocation reaches its crescendo as dark water erupts from the cemetery grounds in chaotic geysers. The orderly slate pathways crack and buckle as primordial forces surge upward, carrying the salt-tang of deep ocean trenches. Where the chaotic waters touch the brass veins, they dissolve into brackish foam, the metal unable to maintain its perfect geometry against such primal disorder.
The preserved corpse in the mausoleum screams – a sound like grinding gears mixed with human agony. Its glass chamber begins to crack as the chaotic energies penetrate the tomb’s defenses. “NO… PERFECT… SYSTEM… FAILING…” it wails, brass fluid now pouring freely from every orifice.
The pneumatic apparatus around Blackwood’s remains sparks and explodes in a cascade of failures. Steam vents wildly in all directions as pressure systems rupture. The mechanical heartbeat that had synchronized with their pulses becomes erratic, then stops entirely.
Throughout the cemetery, headstones begin reverting to their original inscriptions, the carved angels freeze mid-turn, and the oppressive sense of imposed order starts to crumble like rust.
But the entity isn’t finished yet – it makes one final, desperate surge.
As the octopus darts around, Obadiah yells out encouragingly. “There’s my girl,” he praises his minion as he takes a moment to reload before resuming his barrage with August continues his ritual. He doesn’t say much at the moment, the damage mostly done at this point, but the surge catches him off guard. “Hurry up,” he murmurs to August. “Its about to get wetter than your mom’s panties in here.”
Just as the entity is not over, neither is August. His hand held out towards it begins to curl inward in continuation of his ritual; “Be cracked and swallowed, surge and wail..” As soon as every finger closes to make a fist, all that contained energy willed of the demon Leviathan cracks into one, all the water spills in a tide, directed to consume and flood the crypt, the glass encasing the corpse. “I conjure ruin through scale and chaos.” Even if he also smiles at the corner of his mouth with Obadiah’s snide remark. It doesn’t touch his eyes, that Pierce glare, intent to dominate, lay to waste.
August’s final invocation unleashes a torrential flood that crashes into the mausoleum with the force of a tidal wave. The chaotic waters surge through the damaged iron grating, filling the chamber in seconds. Blackwood’s glass prison shatters completely under the pressure, and the preserved corpse is swept up in the churning deluge.
“SYSTEM… FAILURE… CANNOT… COMPUTE…” the entity’s voice dissolves into static as the brackish waters short-circuit its pneumatic life support. The brass pipes throughout the cemetery collapse inward like deflating lungs, their metallic veins retracting and crumbling to rust-colored dust.
Calypso performs a graceful aerial dance as the last of the mechanical apparatus explodes in showers of sparks and steam. The oppressive factory rhythm dies completely, replaced by the natural sounds of wind through leaves and distant thunder from the grey clouds above.
The preserved corpse of Blackwood floats face-down in the flooded mausoleum, finally at rest. His nightmare of perfect efficiency dissolves like morning mist, taking with it the geometric perfection that had threatened to mechanize the living world.
Throughout Cotton Mill Memorial Ground, the headstones display their proper inscriptions once more. The carved angels return to their peaceful vigil, and the scattered flowers remain beautifully, chaotically human in their random placement.
August’s ward flickers and fades as the supernatural threat dissipates, leaving only the lingering scent of salt water and the satisfaction of chaos triumphant over tyrannical order.