"Inquisition -- A Narrative"
Written by Nickolaus A. Pacione,
inspired by Clive Barker and Anne Rice

"I have so much to show you..." -- Clive Barker's Hellraiser

"inquisition fires are burning--fill one's mind full of bleach,
a preacher's lie turning into a sin, poisoned minds are preached."

-- original poem

March 20, 1999:

It is the thoughts that are conceived -- in a narrative which I sit down and begin to relate. That as it said by a one time doctor I've been seeing in Evanston almost four years ago and to a Philosophy professor, one should be writing in a journal -- according to a Christian woman, one as I -- should not be keeping a journal as this describing the thoughts within the dreams. The dreams that turn to nightmares as one falls in to a dark, lucid slumber. Invoked by what she had said -- the horrors that be reflect a period of inquisition, as what two people I know would describe the images in the nightmares. As I had started to dream, one would tell me that I am practicing the magick arts -- when this dark picture of a morbidly vivid nature stands alone in one's mind about the things I've read about the Salem Witch trials in my history class become as real as walking around in Cabrini Green at four o'clock in the morning, as when drive-by shootings are painting the blacktop red. Blood Red. In the dream, I am standing alone in a small, rural town -- the night was as clear as the water in the Great Lakes, and the skies were vast -- vast as the deserts in Southern Utah.

As I stood there, I'd been surrounded by individuals whom had been dressed fairly conservative as the Mormons whom would walk around in my neighborhood on the North End of Mason City. They were clad in a white shirt, dress pants and a tie -- looked like traveling salesmen. Tucked beneath their arm was a black, leather bound book -- a Holy Bible. I had been clad in a pair of black jeans, a black shirt, and a flannel that my fiancee had given me last Christmas. "What the fuck are they all coming from? A Benny-fucking-Hinn convention?--lovely, just one needs, a-mutha-fucking- holier-than-thou-messager-of-God." I joked to myself -- they looked at me as if I had sliced the throat of a religious leader, and laughedb as he bled as a swine that had been sacrificed in a satanic ritual. They had seen that I had a copy of Judas Priest's Jugulator in my backpack and a bootleg of an underground speed metal band a friend had made for me prior before I'd moved as well as a book by Clive Barker, a horror novella titled "The Hellbound Heart."

The images one describes are as frightening as what a friend of mine had posted on the net about a preacher trying ignite her into flames -- an old horror appearing in a twentieth century form, as in the late 1990s. That as I'd read this cryptic posting -- one cannot begin to relate the harrowing nightmare which the young woman described, but in the dream that I had -- it was as she had posted it in the chatroom -- and what they had said of me for listening to heavy metal and reading Gothic horror was an act of devil worship. That one -- who had read her post could not really begin to fathom the horror of being burned alive. The picture to the flames rising higher and higher as human flesh begins to melt off the bones as tapestry in a chapel. That as I began to dream last night, what I relate is of an unfathomable terror -- a terror that is without a shape or form, but what drives the thoughts of one who strives for a revival of an established religion. Of the one's I have known in Iowa, I could not really speak of such because I am relating in this narrative -- a nightmare that haunts about half my friends of the era known as the Burning Times. It is that I -- according to a rural youth pastor, one that isn't much older than I am, said the reasons that I am tormented by the nightmares are that I had stopped going to a church. One had said this once before -- after the day I had been assaulted from behind near my place of residence, and this had invoked reoccuring nightmares to this day. In his mind -- I am a witch because I kept the urban horrors written inside of mind, and the dark, unimaginable terror penned in a journal as a Book of Shadows for a witches coven, but instead as did Mary Shelly, a journal describing one's darkest nightmares mirroring one's reading patterns -- as what a friend of mine had kept while going to high school.

In one's mind as I would walk around in Wheaton, Illinois, or in Downtown Mason City, one could begin to a draw a darkly horrid picture -- a picture reflecting a 20th century inquisition as rural Christians burn books of Gothic horror and heavy metal casettes if they could not burn the dark philosophers at the stake as a witch in the 17th and 18th centuries.

As I had started to dream last night, I dreamed that I was walking around Mason City and Hampton -- it the night of Samhain Eve, when one had seen a pastor standing inside of the Bandshell of East Park. He was holding a Bible in his left hand and a cigarette lighter in the other. On the ground appeared to be a journal -- and as he started to light the pages ablaze, he quoted -- "I saw a former pass away, and a new earth to-day. I saw a former pass away. Thou shalt allowth a witche sufferth to live," He bellowed into the night -- invoking the crowd into cheering for his inquisition of one who thinks not of the same wavelength, "Now do you have any last requests -- do you receive Lord Jesus as your Lord and Savior, or should I just set your human flesh ablaze." The pastor thought as one from a small town, as the town of Chapin, Iowa, or another fucking religious zealot whom would be preaching that one should turn away from their ways of thinking. I'd been told not to conceive thoughts of a dark, urban picture in my mind because one would say that I am practicing witchcraft since I am writng of the nightmares that would haunt one as they fall asleep -- as a horror of the unfathomable appears as a spirit of the undead -- or a vampyre roaming in the night of a waning moon during the witching hour. Such a picture was conceived by a Wiccan whom I have known from high school during the time that I have lived near Lombard -- according to him, such thoughts are as writing a spell within a coven, or as telling a ghost tale on a camping trip -- as when I was with a boy scout troop, Troop 189, in Eagle Cave -- my imagination was overactive because of all the books I had been reading in the camper about vampires and other horrors of the unknown. In one's mind, invoked by all the ghost tales that were told and of all the preachings I have heard in a church -- one had said of this; it being a sin to write a journal as this, but as I am writing this, the nightmares I write of stand alone as reflection in a mirror. A reflection of the images spoken by my close friends -- of a horror being a prophecy of the 20th century inquisition, a second burning times.

©1996-1999 Writings From The Grave
artwork done by the author.