Story About the Occult [724]

Please tell me if the narrator, situation, and ending feel original or not. Tell me if there are any conflicting tones in the text. Tell me if the text seems to have any meaning to it.

One day, one horrid day, a mysterious people emigrated from what I assume is Hell and built their temple beside my ancestral lands. I could have told you all about me, my ancestors, and my millennia old temples, but I had practically forgotten all of it because of these fiends. These taciturn, cloaked demons dominated my mind. While my peers talk about local politics, harvest, family, or marriage, the only thing that can come to mind is their odious humming during their marching trains — their ritual marches where they trot in a single-file line through trails in the woods to their temple. They don't have homes, I have never seen their village, or any evidence of their existence other than their marching trains and their temple. Their cloaks are a deep purple, with gold decorations. Their hoods obscure their faces entirely. On each cloak there was a golden symbol specific to each individual cloak, located on their stomachs. What do these symbols mean? Probably nothing, and only work as pagan decorations. Paradoxically, these pointless symbols that are mere sketches offend me the most. They have some type of hypnotizing quality to them that dominates my thinking. Just like one's vision would be marked with a black dot after staring at the sun, my dreams are marked with those disgusting, contemptible symbols. Those symbols sicken me so much that they make me, on occasions, physically ill and weak. When my emotions ran the highest I thought those symbols would literally kill me with the hatred they inspired in my mind. My life has been ruined by these people.

"Vengeance is imminent", I thought!

I spent all of my energy, all of my life force, for this bold and foolproof plan. I would infiltrate that temple of evil. I will infiltrate it, with my handmade cloak. I scoured my nation for any purple cloth and sheet of gold that could emulate their cloaks. When I did, I worked for months just to afford them. Now, after meticulously tailoring my false cloak, I have developed a cloak that could at least blend in with my enemies' (my enemies' judgement was, as I deduced, very dull). Now that I had my weapon, I would infiltrate that temple and exact my revenge.

As always, they came trotting in their line through the woods. I jumped from the bushes and followed the tail end of the line. I had successfully blended in, but I was not expecting their sinister dark magic to influence me. I had known these people for a long time, but just now did I learn of their weird voodoo magic that could force out from me strangely sincere humming. I was amazed, and horrified. Then I noticed my feet, my feet that were completely out of my control, were marching in the same rhythm as the rest of the line. I immediately wanted to abort my mission but I could not, I was being dragged away, kidnapped. This evil people was taking me away for God knows what.

I was dragged humming merrily through the imposing, crude stone doors of the temple. It was dark in there, so dark. In spite of the darkness, there was fluid swarming of what I somehow knew was more cloaked enemies. This ability, to see my enemies in the dark, was so supernatural, that I could have only assumed I acquired it when I was influenced by that magic in the line. Then I started singing, with great zeal. I was shouting, along with the rest of the dark swarm, passionate lyrics in a language that I had never learned but could sing flawlessly. Then the swarm stopped, and a green fire in the center of the swarm started to blaze. I looked into it, and saw those evil symbols, the ones that were etched onto those purple cloaks. After all of this singing and humming and trotting and dancing I knew, I finally knew that those symbols were no vapid decorations, but logograms. Each logogram communicated to me a thought or concept so inhuman, so supernatural, so transcending, that it broke me, physically and mentally. Those logograms, though I did experience their meaning well, were like the fire in a home oven that burned too hot and set the house ablaze. I never left that temple.