Item: Fragment from "Hero, The Story of the Woman Who Wore a Mask To Reveal Her True Identity", memoir of Caroline “Dragonfly” King, 2017

. . . In those days, I was less of a recluse; which is to say that I spoke to somebody besides myself more than every once in a while. In fact, if I may beat a dead metaphor, I was something of a social butterfly – lighting upon the pretty flower of friendship, sipping the sweet nectar of romance. Always, however, in the service of what I used to call, with a straight face mind you, my civic duty.

Back then, of course, it was difficult to separate the civic and the social. At least, if one’s civic duty was fighting crime. The early nineties, being the days in question here, saw the formation of “adventure clubs” – on both sides of and often completely outside, the law - in numbers not seen since the heyday of the superhero and villain groups of the late sixties and early seventies. Between 1990 and 1995, I was affiliated with three such groups: Otto Standish’s Team 13, Heroes International (San Diego Chapter), and the unfortunately titled Defiant Five.

The fact that I was involved in three of these groups at one time might seem compelling evidence to some that I was overextending myself, precipitating what the press so charitably termed my breakdown in the spring of 1996. I certainly didn’t feel overextended at the time. When one is young and superhuman, the concept of overextending one’s physical or mental energies is simply not present. But hindsight, as they say, is 20/20.

- Transcribed by Richard Cody -

Item: Automatic writing attributed to a spirit entity identifying itself only as Ur. Transcribed by continental clairvoyant, Patrice Nunez, 4/7/07.

We filled buckets with the blood of our enemies! Red and black and green – for all who came before us were enemies, and all who came before us fell before the wrath of our terrible faces!

And all who beheld our wrathful aspect and fell before it were honored to offer the blood of their lives to the great and most terrible Shub i’ Rath!

He who dwells within the earth and deeper still inside we who were honored to partake of his body and serve his will most terrible and great. He who came from beyond the stars when the world was new. The Black Jelly! Shub i’ Rath!

He who grew inside our bodies and minds, beneath the fields, the crawling caverns! Shub i’ Rath! M ‘ylo hartep, Shub i’ Rath, ia! Hungry now and searching the reaches of time and space for you!

Transcribed by Richard Cody, 2005

Item: elemental sprite

spindrift

gossamer

glossy, flossy thing

whirling, aery

translucent

luminous wing

aglow a moment

in the sun

the very next

come

undone




Transcribed by Richard Cody, 2005

Item: a broken heart

Alice stepped into the room, filling the small space with her presence. Her eyes danced blue and beautiful, like waves crashing on a beach. She was vibrant, vivacious, barely contained energy rippling beneath almost luminous skin.

“I will never love you again,” she whispered, soft as gently falling rain. “I will never love you. . .”

I moved toward her, confusion gripping my mind, my blood, replaced by cold fear, pumping through a heart withering toward oblivion. I needed to touch her, to feel the soft warmth that was Alice. It was too late, I knew. She was gone, forever.

The air burned my skin, my eyes, with horrible realization. My heart collapsed in upon itself, forming a black hole of infinite density deep within the middle of me.

“I will always love you,” I muttered, the light of the room beginning to bend toward me. “Always.”

Alice stepped out of the room, leaving it completely empty.

- Transcribed by Richard Cody, 2005 -