Thirteen
By
Edmund Stone
It’s one o’clock, and I sit here conversing with the voices. They always have something to say. Since I checked into this hotel, though, they have become louder. The bartender told me it’s perfectly normal to hear things in this place, as the walls bleed with conversation.
He is an odd fellow with the demeanor of Lurch from The Addams Family. But he brings my drink on time and keeps them coming, even though I must slow down. If my thoughts are muddled, I’ll never complete my mission.
My brain is always moving, capturing ideas from places I cannot fathom.
Usually, dark corners are recesses of the human psyche.
The topics my therapist and I explore every time I see her on my computer.
She gives me medication to stop them, but I’m tired of it and finally decided to let my mind go free for a bit. It’s why I’m glad I’m here.
Since walking through these doors, my mind has never been clearer, and I’ll need the clarity if I’m to complete my experiment: a construct of time centering around the number 13.
It’s something I’ve been passionate about for a long time.
The ancient Aztecs believed the number meant finality and in Old English it was evil. But I think there is a deeper meaning.
I’ve studied it for years, believing I could someday transcend to another dimension with the proper amount of blood. Another contentious issue I’ve discussed with my therapist. She always wants to take me back to when I was young, trying to find connections to my way of thinking.
I can save her time if she listens. It all comes from my mother.
The woman had a way of destroying my resolve to follow my compulsions.
Mainly, my fascination with the number thirteen.
When I was ten years old, she held my head under water to keep me from talking about it, attempting to douse my obsessions.
Mother had no problem making my life a living hell, finding new tortures to keep me from my wild thoughts. My love of torturing animals and seeing blood among them, but those were childish things. Recently, I’ve discovered the clock to be the most fascinating thing I’ve ever seen.
Do you know if you add the numbers parallel to each other on the clock face, they add up to thirteen each time?
Why thirteen? I believe this hotel has the answers.
The walls speak to me and give me guidance.
I need blood and lots of it. Not animal blood but the human variety.
I’ve discovered sitting at this bar is a good way to find it.
It’s two o’clock. Another drink and I’m writing on a napkin.
A circle with a clock on it, the numbers perfectly designed.
A man sits beside me, watching me draw my picture.
He’s inebriated, and I think he has more on his mind than my artistic ability.
I feign ignorance, trying to spike his interest. He will hopefully prove useful tonight.
“Are you some kind of artist? A student, maybe?”
The last part has a tinge of disgust in it, as I feel he’s constructing a fantasy in his head.
He’s not too far off base, as my obsession at one time was to pursue risky sexual encounters.
My therapist helped me turn my attention to better outlets.
Now, I concentrate on time constructs. I stare at him, giving him a gaze, speaking to the possibilities if he plays his cards right.
He's slim, but not overly fit. Probably someone who works out on a treadmill but doesn’t use weights.
Not someone, I feel will give me much fight. He is useful to me, so I answer him.
“I’m no student, but I do find clocks interesting. How about yourself?”
“Never thought about it. I’m always trying to catch one, though it seems.”
He laughs at this, but I don’t find it funny.
“Did you know, if you add the numbers on the clock face, they come up to thirteen?”
He stares at me strangely, then shakes his head. “I don’t suppose I did.”
I circle first the twelve and one, then the eleven and two. “See, if you add them together, they come out to thirteen each time.”
“My name’s Lewis, by the way.”
I smile but see he has no concept of what I’m talking about. It's fine, because I see his simple mind is interested. More drinks are needed to get him where I want him, but we are well under way.
It’s three o’clock, and I’m bored, mostly with this man’s chatter. He’s a little older than me, maybe five years if I had to guess, but attractive even if he’s obnoxious, like the last twelve I entertained. He stares at my arms, noticing the scars there.
“What happened there?”
“I was in an accident when I was young. I have more, but those are the most obvious.”
I say this to coax him into exploring me more. Most men are easily swayed this way. My explanation of the scars isn’t a total lie. My mother cut me many times as a form of punishment or cleansing.
When I was a kid, my mother found ways to distract me from my obsessions by giving me mountains of chores to do.
I had no choice but to do them and hated every minute.
When she found me drawing on my clock face, and not doing my work, I would receive a cut for every job not finished. I had many lacerations on my skin.
“Thirteen is the number of wickedness, and is unclean. I will drain the evil from you child.” She would say, then fall to her knees and pray, making an unusual sound, she called talking in tongues.
The actual term for it is glossolalia. Many ancient cultures practiced it, and it makes perfect sense for my mother, as she worshipped an unseen deity.
It made her feel she was connecting in some way.
I’ve done it myself, and felt a presence drawing me in.
If I talk to it in the way my mother taught, it answers me with revelations I never thought possible.
The voices speak and I answer with, rakaband-ba-sheba-de, and then go into a revelry of half spoken phrases of whatever comes from my mouth.
There is also dancing involved. I must move around as the blood soaks my skin.
It's a bathing ritual, cleansing me for a higher purpose.
To transcend when the clock reaches thirteen.
My mother did this too, after cutting me and letting me bleed on the floor.
She rubbed my blood on her face and arms, then told me the blood was important to shed, as I had unclean thoughts.
She felt the need to help rid me of them.
She stared at me with her blood stained face and said, “No doctor can make you pure. Only the spirit. Do you accept it?”
I did, but not the one she wanted. This one was much more sinister and fun. An entity that understands me. The one to tame the voices. My mother unwittingly helped me understand the connection between blood and how it can be used in sacrifices.
Particularly, how to prod the thirteenth hour on the clock to appear.
I found some information online alluding to the fact that if blood is involved, then the thirteenth hour will appear.
I wasn’t sure how at first, but once I came to this hotel, it started to line up for me, but not completely.
I must understand the correlation between the two.
The voices talk to me, and I answer them, but in closed quarters.
The time is near, tonight, I will know the true meaning of what I seek. This is the final hour.
Three o’clock, then four o’clock, the idea is always right there, but I can’t put my finger on it. I try to narrow my concentration but lose it when I perceive my mother screaming in my ear as she sits me in the corner.
I remember those times vividly. I’m naked except for the straps holding me to the chair I’m attached to. I piss myself, defecate repeatedly, but she will not relent or let me go. In her way of thinking, the blood sacrifices she performed were not enough.
This torture started when she caught me with a boy who snuck in my room at night. I was enamored with him too much, I suppose and he ended up spending the night. My mother grabbed her shotgun when she discovered him in my bed. She nearly shot him, as he stumbled through the window
“The wickedness you hold inside I will purge from you. For the fool thinks there is no God, but you will see differently, child. The beast is in you, and you will see Hell if I don’t stop you.
For the dragon will rise and sweep the wicked from the earth.
It will reign fire upon the whole of humanity! ”
She often quoted from the bible, especially when she wanted to tell me how sinful I had become. There was something in me; it only needed an outlet.
Five o’clock and I’m listening to this drunk man tell some vile jokes. Things laced with sexual undercurrents. I know what he has in mind, and he may get it if it serves my purpose. But if he gets too drunk, it may be all for nought. I must coax him along and get everything I can from him.
It’s six o’clock, and I use the time to circle the numbers again. They add up the same, but I have no clarity on the reason. Words come from somewhere nearby. I can’t find the source, but they ooze into my mind calmly like they were sticking to the wall, waiting to land on me.
Spill the blood of the fool and open your eyes to the possibilities. I’ve heard this before, but never this clear, so I listen. Take out this fool! My mission, as before, is clear.
Seven o’clock, then eight o’clock. Four hours until prime time.
I circle the numbers again and find the same; they add up to thirteen.
This is boredom and it serves no purpose, but it’s reassuring to know.
It’s the idea of spilling blood that intrigues me even more than the correlation of the numbers.
It’s the tie binding it all together, taking me to the next level.