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    My Babylon: Book Two: Rose
    My Babylon: Book Two: Rose
    My Babylon: Book Two: Rose
    Ebook85 pages1 hour

    My Babylon: Book Two: Rose

    By James L. Wilber

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    About this ebook

    My Babylon

    My Story

    An obsessed magician will do anything it takes to satiate his perverse needs.

    My Myth

    He turns to forbidden arts to manifest his will.

    My Revelation

    In doing so, he will bring about the end of everything.

    My Babylon

    A serial novel about the paranormal and dark desires. The story of a cursed young man who has an intimate view of the end of the world as we know it. My Babylon weaves elements of urban fantasy, erotic horror, and real-world occult practices, to form a unique personal tale that thrills, terrifies, and even enlightens.

    The magus, consumed with longing, seeks to create a replacement for his lost love using a grisly ritual that requires the theft of a body. Through her creation, he learns that he has a much bigger role to play, and that she may be a form of salvation not only for him but for others.

    In book two the magus reveals the source of his longing and depths to which he has fallen. Both his strength and his weakness come from a girl named Rose.

    Book Three: Risen is coming August 24th.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJames L. Wilber
    Release dateAug 9, 2013
    ISBN9781301387199
    My Babylon: Book Two: Rose
    Author

    James L. Wilber

    James L. Wilber describes himself as Anne Rice and Chuck Palahniuk’s bastard love child. He’s a pretentious prick who claims to pen, “literary genre fiction.” Which means he writes smarmy shit about wizards and vampires doing a poor job at hiding his symbolism and metaphor. He’s turned to self-publishing on the correct assumption his stories are just too fucking weird for mass consumption.He has contributed to numerous books for roleplaying games from companies such as: Wizards of the Coast, Paizo Publishing, White Wolf Studios, Bastion Press, and Atlas Games. He was also a writer on the Origins Award nominated, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Roleplaying Game by Eden Studios.Mr. Wilber also assumes the roles of husband, ceremonial magician, podcast host, and owner of a 100-lb Alaskan Malamute.He lives in Indianapolis, a dreary place built by masons obsessed with circles.Along with Stephan Loy and Dick Thomas, James is a member of Mid-World Arts, a collective of indie writers dedicated to helping each other produce quality works. Find out more at midworldarts.com.You can read his thoughts on politics, culture, and what he calls pagan chaos magick at scrollofthoth.com.He only uses social media that he enjoys, which means tumblr. Get to know him at scrollofthoth.tumblr.com, jameslwilber.tumblr.com, and geeksoutafterdark.tumblr.com.You can hear him on the podcasts Scroll of Thoth, and Geeks Out After Dark.Get more of his writing at jameslwilber.com.

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      Book preview

      My Babylon - James L. Wilber

      MY BABYLON

      A NOVEL IN FIVE PARTS

      BOOK TWO: ROSE

      BY JAMES L. WILBER

      Copyright © 2013 by James L. Wilber. All rights reserved.

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

      Mid-World Arts

      James L. Wilber is a part of the Mid-World Arts Studio, a group of independent artists helping to promote each other in order to challenge traditional media. If you liked this story, please visit Mid-World Arts to find other quality publications.

      The author greatly appreciates you taking the time to read this work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought this book and telling others about it.

      Published by James L. Wilber at Smashwords

      Dedication

      In his book, On Writing, Stephen King says the only thing a writer must do is tell the truth. I've done that so far, in the way that only fiction authors can. I'm not going to stop now, even though this dedication will get me in trouble someday. This is for Karen.

      We create no myths.

      There will be no new holy books written. There will be no new great revelations.

      We only have stories.

      We are jaded by excess. The great sea of information, capable of connecting us all, only serves to divide us by faith, culture, counterculture, and ideology. It makes us incapable of seeing the great works around us. At least for now.

      I have done my best to be honest. To reveal these events as they happened, to put myself in the same mind as when they occurred.

      I am the magus Ego Sum Legio. This is:

      My story,

      My myth,

      My revelation,

      Liber 589 – The Book of Eschaton

      My Babylon

      I could give you a dozen fresh, cut, pink, or red, or white. I wonder if they knew what they would grow to become?

      - Marilyn Manson, Born Villain

      Chapter 1

      I believe in the power of symbols. I used to think that meditation, yoga, memorizing chants--all those things that build self-discipline--were the most important parts of magick. The ability to focus one's will separates the true magus from kiddie witches reading spells out of a book like a recipe. Don't believe for a second that if you rub a red candle with marjoram and say a rhyme three times the next person to text you will be your true love. But there's something to be said about ingredients.

      When you can't just nip down to the corner store and pick up what you need, when you can't just order it online from a retailer in exotic goods, when even after spending hours upon hours crafting that wand, or altar, or pentacle, you need something more, then you're on to something. When the item you require, the symbol on which you focus your will, can only be had by risking your future and throwing away your humanity, then you have a powerful symbol.

      Like for instance, a human body.

      Mine sat chilling right where I left it: resting in a plastic bin, ice starting to melt. After liberating it from the hospital morgue the night before, I went through a check-list of the other necessary items for the ritual. This included the usual incense and herbs, as well as some others that proved difficult, but none so much as the body. Candles made from lamb's tallow could not be purchased. These required finding a halal butcher to obtain fat for rendering. The smell of cooking fat permeated my place for days, and I thanked all the gods that Morgan, my landlady who lives downstairs, never complained. To my surprise, the ritual also required an entire gallon of semen collected during certain lunar cycles, only on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, whilst meditating on demonic sigils. It was the first time I had seen the use of sexual fluids as a component pre-Victorian era. I wondered what the necromancer Stoyan had to deal with at the end of his harvesting. At least I had the benefit of refrigeration. Always ask the magus before raiding his fridge, even if you just want a glass of milk.

      The ritual would take dozens of hours spread over three days. Despite my giddy eagerness I didn't start the night I brought her home. Sheep's lard and bags of ice do not come free. I needed to work the next day, so I locked up the bin and did my best to sleep.

      I normally sleep days, not rising until late afternoon. The day after the heist I rolled around in my bed until twelve before giving up on REM and hitting the shower. After breakfast, I put on my work clothes: black t-shirt, jeans, sturdy water-proof non-slip shoes, and headed down to the basement. Popping the lid and pulling up my rusted metal folding chair, I sat and stared at my catch. Part of the trick to magick is to think of yourself as a colonial being. Develop the different levels of your psyche into distinct and powerful personalities, and you can do anything. Every person contains every archetype to a greater or lesser degree. Deep in each of us dwells a trickster, a warrior, a mother, and a saint. They each wanted to say their piece about the corpse. Part of me couldn't believe we had done it. Part of me reveled in our cleverness. I spent hours watching her, or it--the body became one or the other fluidly in my thoughts.

      In the space of those hours, I went from burning lust towards the thing I would create, to weeping uncontrollably over the pain I caused her family by my need. Several personalities voiced their revulsion over the thing we had done. Others, the rational voices, the ones that were always the strongest in me, won the argument. This is just a body, a hunk of dead flesh. You are not a pervert because you will not be having pleasure with this corpse. You are not a monster. Even though you have hurt those people, they will get over it.

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