Join My Cult - Original Falcon Press

Chapter 13, Grid 1
The Downward Spiral
Life changing events are burglars. They steal into your house, turn
everything upside down, and it’s only in looking back and realizing the
change that the thief, for better or worse, is realized for what he really
is. — Aleonis De Gabrael
Alexi was standing nervously at the base of the staircase in his apartment.
He had been in his room, reading and preparing for sleep, when he
felt a presence—that presence—from upstairs. When it was followed a
moment later by the sounds of footsteps, slowly creaking from one floorboard
to the next, he was forced to put down his book and inspect.
So now he stood, absolutely terrified, looking up into the shadows of
the foyer and dark hallways beyond. Suddenly, he felt like a small child,
hiding from that ever-present monster under the bed. Trying to write it
off as a product of his overactive imagination, he slowly ascended the
steps, the hair on the back of his neck prickling and adrenaline coursing
through his veins. In fact, he could feel the blood pounding through
every single capillary, pounding with a horrible, monotonous and steady
rhythm. He felt he would find something, something absolutely unimaginably
bizarre and terrifying at the top of those steps. The impression was
so strong that he was resigned to a long and painful death by the time he
reached the top. He reminded himself of the dangers of believing in
absurd possibilities too easily. Occam’s Razor—demons, or pressure
changes?
His sheepishness was intensified two-fold when he found absolutely
nothing. His senses continued to tell him that he was being watched, but
he found nothing, no bloody corpses, no Cthonic squid-like creatures
from Beyond. Pounding down the staircase now, he brought his mind
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