Petrichor

The following report about The MOLLUSC Department was gathered/compiled/found/prophesized by The Malum Institute and, as all things of/about/by The MOLLUSC Department do, this report found its way back home.

The Malum Institute

◇◇Till Death Is Swallowed Up In Victory◇◇

The PETRICHOR Report 

Petrichor. That was what she missed. Formative memories and sense associations that occupied her mind were brutally excavated and replaced with thoughts of mnemonic visualizations of wandering departments, iron clad protocols for memory suppression, and hasty procedures for memory extraction. As a temp working in the (it was described to her as ‘hostile and ravenous’) wings of The Miskatonic Occult Literature Library and Unusually Special Collections Department, her supervisors assured Lorelei that this was standard procedure for all prospective employees.

Her job was simple: head further into the depths and take inventory of all the tomes still available on the shelves.

Armed with nary a clipboard and an echo of her humanity it didn't bother Lorelei that her sense of self was temporarily suspended. The department assured her that all inutile cognitive loads will be restored come the end of her shift each day. A necessary evil to skirt around the gnawing hunger of the books.

Books are scheming little things and none so more than these. They only need a shred of a person to cast their spell and then they've got their jaws around the jugular. The staccato footsteps of her heels on the wooden floor broke the silence alongside the scribbling on her pad. Silence and solitude were her only companions. She knew vaguely that there were other temps operating along with her on the account of the multiple lanyards littered throughout the halls. The department insisted that they be returned to the front desk post-haste on their retrieval. Not one effect is to leave the halls of The MOLLUSC Department. Doing so will result in a swift termination. Lorelei read them clear as crystal. Nothing stuck to her person after the post-shift decontamination wash.

She wished that were the case for the musty smell of the forgotten wings though. It penetrated her clothes and skin to the point where it lingered well on her way back home, fully whole yet with the unwanted passenger of ancient stink and funk. She hated how it clawed up her nostrils and nested at the edge of her mind. Whilst climbing up the ladder to catalog one of the tomes shelved in a precarious position, the smell hit her like a ton of bricks. Why couldn't old books smell nice, she thought. She couldn't remember much of anything whilst on the job. It was as if a literal fog of war descended upon her mental palace. The only thing she knew was to write down what she saw and clock out. A veritable automoton.

But something about the smell of the pages was so visceral and rotting that she wished for anything else to take her mind off of it. Any other smell than the one she was smelling. Like petrichor. She liked that smell. Mostly because it sounded so fancy for something so mundane. She liked the smell of the rain on grass.

As a kid, she used to open up the window after mowing the backyard during the hot summers. After a storm would roll in she would lay on the windowsill and admire her work, the heady scent of petrichor wafting in the living room. With a cool glass of lemonade in her hand she felt like a queen. Like she just completed one of the wonders of the world. Like she could drift off into a well deserved slumber. Like she could rest for an eternity. Like something unearthed from a decaying Cyclopean sarcophagus, wishing, hissing to lure in the daring fools to their demise. When the coffin opens and their eyes bleed black from peaking, shrieking, fleeing but with no where to go no sense to know no sense to know nowhere no stare no w-
Lorelei was jostled back after her foot caught a loose stone. She quickly spun around to assess her surroundings. The cobblestone beneath her feet indicated she was further in the depths of the department. The lamps had given way to torches glowing a low dull blue. Coffins were stacked on the side of the shelves. A cold sweat crept down her brow. She didn’t recognize this place. Lorelei hurriedly flipped through the pages of her clipboard. She could hear giggling in the darkness. There. The employee safety page.

'In the event of wandering in the forbidden areas of the department via a sudden onset of fugue state: stay calm and visualize the nearest exit sign. It is best to visualize it with bold letters and bright red colors to hasten its materialization. Once firmly locked in your mind, briskly walk in any manner you see fit until a door appears. DO NOT GO TOWARDS THE LAUGHTER.'

She ran. Ran as fast as she could, turning every corner with an image of the exit at the forefront of her brain. Sweat pooled under her arms. Her lungs burned with every breath from her nose. The stench didn't leave her. It was in her mind, the stench of fear and paranoia and old hateful spells and a deep ancient ugliness older than life itself. All of that were in those books. The chuckling grew and grew from around every turn and zig zag. The exit. Think of the exit!

She ducked away from an outstretched arm jutting out from one of the bookshelves. She narrowly avoided being crushed by a stack of coffins overturned suddenly by an invisible force. She desperately clawed at a shawl sticking and melding itself to her face until both it and her face were marred in cuts, unwittingly tearing off her lanyard in the process. She circumnavigated the wandering shelves that closed and blocked her passage, until finally, in the periphery of her eyes she found a clear unobstructed pathway.

A straight shot to a doorway, above it burning with bright red lettering. The exit! The primal combination of fear and elation broke down the cerebral blockade The MOLLUSC Department kept in place. She missed the smell of petrichor. She missed the taste of lemonade. She missed soft beds and midnight snacks while watching movies. Movies! Lorelei hated books! How could she have forgotten that! all the torches blew out. Lorelei ran. Ran towards the hope of an exit, the hope of another tomorrow.

Her hand stretched out to the doorknob nearly willing her arm to lengthen with sheer intent alone. The door was nearly in her reach. It was in her reach! She was there! She was home free! As soon as her palms clasped around the cool metal bar, as soon as she threw her body against the door with all her might, as soon as the wretched smell of the library left her nose, Lorelei felt the ground give way and was engulfed in darkness. The laughter was deafening.