My name is Laktash. And that's my name. It's mine. As is the soul. However, it would be a lie about the body if I said that. It is not called so. Laktash is me. The body is Tiberius. It was. Then I took it from him. And I don't know where Tiberius is. I especially want you to understand that I don't care about even the tiniest idea, the tiniest hint of where he is. He was just a resident of this world and I needed his body. Like a ship in the midst of the sea, where I shelter and hide from the storms. To go on a journey and it takes me to new places and new feelings. When you take away someone's body, you never know what happened to their soul. I do not know either. I do not want to.
I was born Laktash. And it was in Beyond. In Nothingness I was conceived and there I appeared. No body. And for a long time I stood there, and the world from here was but a shadow. Like in a foggy mirror. Lights and outlines, darkness and vague ideas. But something was bothering me. Silent anger in my aimless wandering through the Nothingness of my home. No one can get even the faintest idea of what the soul that soars Beyond experiences. It's like you're freezing, but death never comes. And nothing corporeal should be familiar to you. You won't understand me. More importantly, hatred seeps like mold on the surface of all your thoughts. Not the one with ardor and fervor, with tension. But long and cold like winter and eternal ice.
I had decided to get to the World. And I was lurking in the darkness, where reality breaks and a gate to Nothingness opens. In an dead end alley that ends with a wall. And on the wall wises a grotesque image, beyond which I was waiting. And there came Tiberius in the evening that was unfortunate for him. He stood and looked... and I went through the portal. Oh, how the body writhes when it feels the icy fingers of death. And how the lips curse and wail. Sometimes bitterly, sometimes with the inner fire of an accuser against this abomination so unjust. And the eyes of Tiberius - there was nothing left of the warmth of the green in them. Now they are blue-grey. Like me. I was thirsty and tried all the feelings you are capable of. I have deceived the senses of the body with all the temptations of the flesh. There's one thing I haven't been able to try, and it eats me the most. And it causes severe envy and my hatred becomes a hundredfold. I couldn't see what the "warmth in the heart" was. You have poets and writers, artists and musicians. And they keep singing about this "love". A warm feeling. The only warm feeling I had was when I put my hand on a hot stone in a bonefire, and I think it was terrible. If love really warms the soul so much more - then I don't want to know that thrill.
And now it's time to punish you. For every moment I spent in Nothingness. To make you repent one by one, because you feel things that are foreign to me. First I streched that wretched body to tower over yours that it casted a shadow over at least five. And I endowed it with wings, in which I wove all the impenetrable darkness of the Beyond. I wrapped it in fuzzy outlines and called it "Horror". Now I was not alike of Tiberius. And you called me with the single word "Demon". "From where I come, there are many like me, and poor be you all, for the cold of my hatred will consume you all and send you into Nothingness." That's what I thought at first when I started building temples in my honor and making you bow down before me, then encased you in ice in a horrible sacrificial ritual. I had become Laktash the One. All-powerful and all-absorbing. And many of you I have erased. I changed and changed, turned everything into the forms known to me. I was tearing down, then building a perverted new forms. And so, until I stopped calm and looked at myself - for me a moment passed, for you an epoch.
Now the world is almost deserted, and people move like vague shadows. They don't even remember who they are or where they are from. And the darkness is so thick that it has become impenetrable. And everything seems to resemble the Beyond. And it was as if I was looking again into the mirror that I hate. The prison of my soul from which I so desperately wanted to escape. And here I am again in front of it.
Hieronymus Bosch - A Violent Forcing Of The Frog
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