Guiding the Prisoner of the Mi-go Brain Jar

The space between realms shimmers with otherworldly twilight, where the River of Souls flows like liquid starlight. From the shadows emerges HIM, his luminous form leading a confused and fragmentary spirit.
Emil’s essence flickers erratically—sometimes cohesive, sometimes dispersing like smoke. His spectral form retains the terrible emptiness where his eyes once were, black voids that drink in the ethereal light.

HIM: “Peace, troubled soul. Your suffering in the flesh has ended. Tell me—what name did you carry in life? Who were you before the darkness claimed you?”

Emil: “Name? I… Emil. Yes, Emil of the house with white stones. The Telkus… that was the name on the letters I carried. I served there—polished silver, carried messages. But the sand—the cursed dice—it ate my dreams first, then my sight, then my reason… it ate so much away. I was their man, wasn’t I? Before the dice, before the dreams went sour…”

HIM: “Emil faithful servant of the Telkus, let me guide you to the waters ahead which will restore what was stolen and wash away the stains of what was done to you.”

He raises spectral hands to where his eyes should be.

Emil: “I tore them out myself, you know. My own fingers, clawing, scraping. The eyes that saw too much—saw through the walls between waking and sleeping. Saw the Noc dancing in their realm of nightmares. The pain was mercy compared to the seeing.”

HIM: “Your actions were not madness, Emil. They were the desperate acts of a mind protecting itself from visions no mortal should bear.”

Emil: “They brought me to a place… the halls that smelled of old paper and stink of chemicals. The consortium … something… they called it. Said they were going to help me, cure the madness that came from the sand.”

His form flickers more rapidly, agitation rising with the memories.

Emil: “One there spoke in soft words to me and made promises of understanding. He said he would help—said I was perfect for his… his research.”

Emil: “He didn’t give me his name. I never saw his face—how could I? But his voice… curious, so curious. Like a child pulling wings from flies. He spoke of progress, of evolution, of unlocking the mind’s true potential. Then came the machines, the restraints, the needles…”

HIM: “The man who harmed you traded your suffering in the name of knowledge?

Emil: “The one who treated me—the doctor with the soft voice—he wasn’t there to heal. He poked and prodded, asked endless questions about the dreams I’d lost, about what I’d seen before I… before I took my sight. He wanted to know about the sand, always the sand.”

Emil: ‘Tell me about the dice,’ he’d say. ‘Describe the whispers you heard.’ He gave me more of it—tiny grains mixed in water, in food. Watched how it changed me, how it made the visions clearer even without eyes to see. He called it research, but I was just… just a specimen to him.”

Emil’s spectral hands claw at his face again, remembering.

Emil: “The experiments grew worse. Needles in my skull, wires attached to my scalp. He wanted to map how the sand touched the mind, how it opened doorways to… to other places. I begged him to stop, but he said the knowledge was too important. That my suffering would help others.”

HIM: “I have seen such men before who are convinced that your pain served a greater purpose.”

Emil: “Then came the others—the ones with no voices, only thoughts that pressed into my skull like cold fingers. They spoke… no, whispered directly to my mind. Mi-Go, they called themselves, or that’s how their alien thoughts translated to my understanding.”

His spectral form trembles at the memory.

Emil: “I could see their self image in their thoughts… they had no faces… the buzzing ones. Only wings and metal and eyes like black pearls. Their thoughts—so cold, so hungry, they hurt me. They thought of… of mapping… of roads through shadow and dream.”

HIM: “The Mi-Go took much from you, Emil. But they will not follow where we go now.”

Emil:” The doctor traded me to them like… like a bolt of cloth or a bag of grain to them. They said my mind was ‘touched by shadow’—that it could help them like an astrolabe.”

Emil: “The jar… the terrible jar with its copper coils and bubbling fluid… I was drowning in that jar, drowning in my own thoughts while they used me as their… But… in the jar, For the first time since the sand touched me, I could think clearly. I could remember who I had been and understand the horror of my situation.”

HIM: “Sometimes clarity comes in the darkest places, Emil. But that clarity need not be bound to suffering.”

They have reached the riverbank now, where the luminous waters flow with the memories and hopes of countless souls. The current carries whispers of release, of healing, of journeys to what lies beyond.

Emil: “Will it hurt? The water—will it burn like the sand and dice did? Will it tear at what’s left of me?”

HIM: “No, Emil. These waters heal. They will carry away the memory of the jar, of needles, and the sound of clicking mandibles. You will remember who you were—a man who deserved far better.”

Emil’s form steadies slightly, the flickering becoming less frantic.

Emil: “I… I can almost remember now. A garden with white roses. The sound of children laughing in halls above my quarters. The smell of bread from the kitchen in the morning. Was that… was that
real?”

HIM: “More real than anything that came after. Those memories are yours to keep, cleaned of shadow and pain.”

Emil nods slowly, then steps toward the water’s edge. As his spectral feet touch the luminous current, his form begins to solidify, becoming more human, more whole.

Emil: “Thank you… for helping me remember that I was more than just a specimen in a jar.”

HIM: “You were always more, Emil. Now go—let the river carry you to where peace waits.”

With a final nod, Emil steps into the River of Souls. The waters embrace him gently, washing away the fragments of madness, the phantom pain of absent eyes, the memory of copper coils. His form becomes light itself, flowing downstream toward realms where the Mi-Go cannot follow, where no dark sand can touch his dreams, and where clicking mandibles fade forever into blessed silence.