I did it…I met Bizarra. I always knew an interview with her would happen.
After a long drive, the night had come. By then, I needed to rest. Odd knocks outside my car jarred me awake. It was dark out, and only a handful of cars were parked in the dimly lit rest area I found myself in.
I jerked my head all around but spotted no one in the vicinity. I dozed off again, but I was abruptly met with another set of odds knocks.
Using my phone’s flashlight, I scanned the area. No one’s there. I decided to step out of my car to look around with tired eyes. I saw nothing but trees and the darkness that surrounded them.
Beyond a cluster of them, though, a light blossomed. It pierced the darkness before taking shape. At the edge of the forest stood a dim figure that was tall, feminine, and slim.
“I guess it’s time,” I said.
As I walked towards her, she descended into the forest. I followed her uphill. Twigs snapped wherever I stepped as bugs buzzed and chirped while I wandered through the dark, using only her light as a guide. The Bizarre drummed and caused malaise within me. I felt my stomach drop, but I carried on.
I found her gazing skyward in a dried grass clearing. The bottom of my shoes crackled as the soles burned to uncomfortable lengths. She then turned to face me. I held my tongue. While I’m unsure of how to proceed, I know that my journey has peaked here.
-——–
Title of Interview: Bizarra
Location: Unknown
Interview Setting: Unknown
Date: Unknown
Attendees: Joshua Angkitz (Interviewer) and Bizarra (Interviewee)
Affiliation with The Bizarre: The source
[So here I am standing in front of what may very well be a Goddess in the flesh. Although if I’m being honest, her flesh—despite looking similar to my own—has a certain shine to it that is unnaturally breathtaking. I believed that when I evidently would come face to face with her, I would drown in the overwhelming feeling of the Bizarre. However, that wasn’t the case. I was…I don’t know, balanced.
“It’s nice to meet you, o’great one,” I nervously chuckle, “I…I don’t know what to say. Hello.”
She doesn’t utter a word, not at first. Instead, she examines me, eyeing me up and down like a toy she’s eager to play with. When she smiles, I’m taken aback. White gleaming teeth pierced my vision. I averted my gaze as she spoke. With a voice so motherly pleasant yet overly enraptured.
“Hello, Joshua Angkitz,” she says.
I brought out the tape recorder and aimed it at her, unsure if this ethereal meeting could truly be documented.
“If I use this, will it capture you?” I say, “Your voice, that is.”
She nods, and I hit record.]
Joshua A: [Harsh winds screeched like eagles.] I have so many fucking questions to ask. [I hold back my tongue before rephrasing.] I have a lot of questions. [Nervous laugh.] Wha…What are you?
Bizarra: Something exceptionally primordial.
Joshua A: That doesn’t answer my question, that’s fine—I guess. What’s your name?
Bizarra: I don’t have one, but I’ve grown fond of the name you’ve given me. Bizarra.
Joshua A: Alright Bizarra. Are you the one causing all the weird shit to happen around me? I’m assuming you are, given that you—Y’know, you’re basically a Goddess and whatnot.
Bizarra: [Laughs.] I do cause things to happen. But the events that befall you, as mystifying as your journey through them was, had little to no actual involvement with me. Although, I have kept a watchful eye on you and kept you safe when necessary.
Joshua A: Journey? Mystifying? [A laugh escapes me, short and sarcastic.] That’s a crude way of labeling my interactions [Nervous laugh.] How long have you been spying on me? Since the alley? Am I…entertainment? Part of some big cosmic prank?
Bizarra: You…
[She inches closer to me, the ground crackles and pops. Regrettably, I back-step away from her. Her smile drops ever so slightly before it returns.]
Joshua A: I’m…
Bizarra: Afraid?
Joshua A: Well—
Bizarra: Fear is natural, Joshua, to all beings.
Joshua A: It’s not that…well it is, but [Sigh.] I’m just trying to understand this whole…thing we’re doing. It’s sublime. If you were to put anyone else in my place, they’d probably lose their shit. Guaranteed.
Why haven’t I?
Bizarra: You’re different. Special. You’re shielded by the madness, like all the others. You may not be as strong as your other counterparts, but maybe that’s what makes you different. [Laughs.] You’re an anomaly among anomalies.
[My head twirls a thousand times in a matter of seconds. My thoughts jumbled in a mushy sludge. I slump hunched over atop a stump. I struggled to make sense of what I heard.]
Joshua A: What the hell are you talking about?
[Her knowing smile irritates me.]
Joshua A: What the hell do you want from me?
Bizarra: Do you want to hear my Bizarre tale, Joshua?
Joshua A: Of course, I do. Isn’t that why you brought me here?
Bizarra: Not exactly…Do you want to hear it? It’s baffling…some may even say Bizarre. [Giggles.]
Joshua A: [Heavy sigh.] Don’t leave anything out. When it comes to you, I’m pretty sure everything is important.
Bizarra: All is important in The Aggregate Tree.
[She sits down on a tree stump across from me while wood continues to crackle beneath her. Her unnatural glow dims. She looks palish now.]
Bizarra: You coined me as a Goddess, but that’s not what I am. I am something long-lived.
Joshua A: Older than time? Than concepts and whatnot?
Bizarra: [Giggles.] I lived in a place that shared those ideas, although they had not yet been fully understood.
Joshua A: An outerversal plane of existences beyond this one?
Bizarra: Before this one.
Joshua A: What are you if you’re not a Goddess?
Bizarra: A creation.
Joshua A: Creation? Whose?
Bizarra: Demiurge. He would be what you lesser call God. That is not what he is. He’s something more compelling.
Joshua A: What did he create you for?
Bizarra: I presume it was to live, to roam, to explore, to experience, and to feel. He crafted a world for all. His creations amazed me. But knowing that, I was only conceived because he thought of me had filled me with wonderment.
Joshua A: You admire him?
Bizarra: How could I not?
Joshua A: So, he created all of this…we’re all his creations. The good…the bad…It’s all because he thought of it.
Bizarra: The mind of a creator is furnished with legions of ideas. Everything Demiurge thought of in his overly captivated mind would bear life, even when he did not want them to. I remember playing when this tear opened all of a sudden. The fabric of reality unfolded, swallowing me into oblivion.
Death did not exist back then. Instead, there was a terrible substitution.
I languished for eons in… [Pauses. Wipes away tears before weakly smiling at me.] I prayed for release, knowing that it would never arrive.
I wasn’t alone, some of his other creations were trapped there as well. Their vociferous howls would make my ears bleed. They desire freedom. During one of my countless prayers, a light pierced through the dark in the shape of a hand. It freed me from that lightless abyss and brought me into a large room.
A door opened and there he was on the other side, greeting me with sadness. “Forgive me,” he said, “I have wronged you, abandoned you, but allow me to make it up to you. I know what I must do.” Something riddled within his voice, something I can’t explain. “My mind is a cluster of ideas, good and bad. Everything crumples back to the void, but I have figured out the solution to imperishability.”
He looked man-eyed, crazy, and overly excited. Approaching, he whispered, “I’ve been thinking of a new universe—universes to be exact. And I want nothing more than for you to be a part of it as the bedrock of my new design, an important element that must always exist no matter what.”
I asked with wide eyes. “I’m confused.”
“You don’t need to understand,” he sniped, “All you need to know is that you’re special.”
With a snap of his fingers, we were transported into a splendid garden filled with dazzling flowers shining like the stars above. [Glancing up before resuming her gaze at me.] With another snap, he wove four fabrications into being. “Who are they?” I asked.
“They are the bedrock on which the foundation will lay: Spiritual, Ratiocination, Sentience, and The Divinity Carapace.”
My eyes widened with zest as I took in their beauty. Demiurge then turned to me. “You have a role among them. You will be Chaos.”
“What is chaos?” I remember saying. My ears perked up with excitement as my body coiled. “Is it an important role?” I asked.
“Yes…”
After assigning me my role, he then led us to the middle of the garden. With a wave of his hand, a tree emerged from the ground, a tree so inconceivably extramundane that its only purpose is to house everything in this new creation of his. Each innumerable leaf stores a universe grander than the last.
Turning to Demiurge with my eyes wide, I asked, “What are we to do in this new creation of yours?”
“You Bedrocks will live in The Aggregate Tree. Traverse through its infinite boughs. I have waited a long time for this moment. Thanks to you, my vision will come to pass.”
I hugged him, a gesture I never once performed, and he reciprocated. He pulled me away and said, “Thank you.”
With a snap of his fingers, I was catapulted into this new creation of his.
I witnessed the rise of civilizations, viewed the birth of a being larger than I, and felt things I could never imagine. I yearned to meet them, all these new creations. I want to learn their wonders and hear their stories.
But I learned that chaos, my role, proves to be unrestrained and destructive.
Everywhere I seemed to venture, no matter how far I traveled and no matter what universe I left and entered, my arrival sprang chaos. Weird things would transpire.
I recall witnessing a planet filled with beings that similarly resembled humans, one of these beings was in the process of powering up a device capable of traveling between worlds. I thought that only we Bedrocks could traverse the leaves. Drawing close—
[While her skin reddened, she angled her face away in sorrow as opaque tears fell to the ground with a hiss.]
The device…malfunctioned. It opened up a gateway that brought in hordes of creatures that spared none.
I am a living tempest, sowing havoc into existence.
Even now as I sit before you, at a fraction of my power, this world is experiencing a slow destabilization. The odds of bad, unexplainable things happening have risen by 34%. It will only continue to rise at a steady pace.
Joshua A: Jesus
[The wind picks up as leaves begin to unexpectedly scorch around us.]
Bizarra: I want nothing more than to fix what I have inadvertently caused. But I can’t. No matter how much I try, some things can’t be altered, can’t be fixed.
I grew disdainful of what I am and wished for nothing more than to leave The Aggregate Tree.
As I exited from all of existence, I floated towards the unknown. Distant lights emitted an unpleasant hum. I saw the branches, the midribs of the leaves, the petioles, and their pointy tips…but as I reached for them, I was flung back. An unseen force prevented me from leaving. No matter how hard I tried to penetrate the unseen barrier, I was flung back again and again.
And so chaos remained, wandering through endless worlds that withered in my wake…
[Sadness fills Bizarra’s eyes. I move to comfort her, but she flinches, terror flashing in her eyes as she wipes away tears.]
Bizarra: Touching me may not be a good idea.
Joshua A: Maybe. But it looks like you can use a hug.
Bizarra: [Smiles.] Kindness is a gesture I have not seen in a long time, Joshua Angkitz. That’s what makes you special: your heart. You listen and you desire to understand. You aren’t like the others.
Joshua A: Are you referring to other Lusus Naturae?
Bizarra: Yes and no.
Five years ago, I stumbled upon you, an alternate version of you, one who was older and consumed by anger and lust. He had a twisted understanding of the Bizarre.
Just like you, he had experienced the surreal. All of you have every single version. Some want to control it, others want to get rid of it, and a select few want to use it to conquer everything in sight.
But you…
You, Joshua Angkitz, are the first who wants to understand it.
Joshua A: How many versions did it take you before you finally got to me?
Bizarra: Thousands.
Joshua A: All those times I wanted to veer away from the path and abandon this mission of mine. You brought me back, you guided me with an invisible hand so that I would…what? Come here…meet you?
Bizarra: The interviews you conducted were necessary, some more pivotal than others, but each made you incrementally more attuned to chaos.
Joshua A: So, what now? You found me…I’m talking to you. What is it you want from me?
Bizarra: I want to give you a proposal. But first, you must bear witness to the atrocities I see. Only then can you choose contempt or tolerance.
[Bizarra extended her hands out towards me. A spectral light shined from within her palms, small and enchanting.
In the blink of an eye, that small light bloomed outwardly and engulfed me. My skin flaked, my hair rose, and my mind reeled. Suddenly, I was rocketing past the star and into a fathomless darkness.
In the middle of this perpetual darkness was a light source that outlined my existence. As I floated towards it, I reached for the light and touched its radiance.
It burst, bathing me in light before receding. A cosmic tree with shimmering leaves and thick pulsating branches appeared before me.
Approaching the tree, I floated to one of the many leaves. The urge to touch just one becomes overbearing. When I did, I was immediately propelled forward, traveling faster than anything imaginable, faster than thought, than light, than speed itself.
I hovered above a cliffside home on the brink of collapse, weeping came from inside. As I entered, I was taken aback.
A yellowish fog was muzzled tightly in a corner where a man wept. His skin hung loosely off his bones as he begged for death.
“What in the hell”’ I remember thinking before I was flung towards another universe. This one was different. I stood in a town with a mountain on one side and a dense forest on the other. Something about the forest unnerved me.
Reaching for one of the trees unveiled a domineering hatred. Something truly evil lurked beyond the thicket of trees. However, a pinprick of life remained, and it called to me.
Each leaf revealed suffering and chaos. But was there hope to be found? I steeled myself as the cosmic tree catapulted me again into the unknown…
In one universe, a humanoid with crystalline fangs smiled widely as someone passed through me.
“Oh this,” said the man, oblivious to my presence, “I’ve been brewing this potion just for you.”
I rocketed through endless realities, each more chaotic than the last. There’s a world where the sun caused a mutation in the human gene, another where heroes and villains exist, and another where I was a drug-addicted man trying desperately to stop the surrounding chaos.
The last universe I saw was truly story-ending. A towering figure, surrounded by corpses, loomed towards a lone warrior. “Failure brought you back to me. Let death be your reward.”
So many fucking worlds. All the disorder and all the chaos unfurled from Bizarra’s existence. No mind could withstand such turmoil. But mine did.
I was then yanked back, reeling. The full scale of the disorder she wrought became crushing.]
Joshua A: Wha…what the fuck was that?
Bizarra: The chaos I unintentionally unleashed across realities.
Joshua A: Is that how you live? Jumping from some shitty disasters and onto another? Why not prevent it?
Bizarra: One can’t stop a tree from falling with no one there to witness its fall.
Joshua A: But you’re there—you’re everywhere.
Bizarra: Even so, preventing chaos is tricky. More harm can come than good.
Joshua A: Then what the fuck is the point? If chaos is everything that encompasses you, what’s the point in living if all that will amount to is a mournful existence? This Demiurge created you to serve the purpose of absolute destruction. Why reach out to me? What can I even do?
Bizarra: The other visions of you aren’t anything like you, which is why I sought you out. I want to give you my essence. I want you to be chaos incarnate.
Joshua A: I…
Bizarra: I understand this proposal is jarring to gaze at, but I shall give you time to decide. I don’t want to burden you. After all, you’ve now seen what I see constantly. It is a reality from which you cannot wake from.
Joshua A: If I accept, what happens to you?
Bizarra: I go to where dead things go.
Joshua A: And where is that?
Bizarra: It depends.
Joshua A: On what?
Bizarra: What does something as old as I have faith in?
Joshua A: [Sigh.] I’m going to need a moment, probably years. [Nervous chuckle.] I’ll have to think about it.
-——–
I’ve been thinking of everything that happened so far. I looked back at how far I’ve traveled and what I’ve heard and seen. I thought meeting Bizarra was the end of the road. As it turns out, it only keeps going. To what end, I wonder.
Her proposal is…stringent. And lonely.
The Bizarre has always lingered in my presence. I want to understand it and unveil its secrets. But how does one make sense of chaos? It’s something arguably inconsistent, and yet it’s a Bedrock of creation.
I would be inadvertently causing all the awful shit to happen. Then again, haven’t I always been the catalyst?
My life is always going to be fucking Bizarre. Bad things are always going to happen when I’m near. I don’t say this as much as I should, but the Bizarre is a frightening thing.
I’m signing up for something far beyond my understanding. I felt the pain in her voice, felt her loneliness, and felt the burden layered beneath her inhuman skin.
Strength is something I have little of. But this is more than just being strong, it’s about heart, something I have plenty of. Bizarra has lived a long life. I think she’s earned her rest.
After all, once you fully understand something terrifying, it’s not as scary anymore.
I exited my car which was now parked at the side of the road. The cold air blew on my face as I began to mouth something underneath my breath. I paused for a moment thinking it over one final time. The cold air continued to pelt my face. Looking towards the sky, I noticed the shimmering stars above. I smiled
“I accept.”
A blazing light eclipsed the stars. Bizarra descended with a smile and a brief embrace.
“Hello, Joshua Angkitz,” she said, “Are you certain you want this?”
“Not really,” I admitted, “I’ll miss you.”
“Same with you,” Bizarra said sadly. Her hands formed a prayer, coalescing into a shining orb that blanketed me in blinding radiance.
I was unable to see anything but light. I heard her one last time as a last farewell. When the light receded, I was alone.
I felt chaos thrumming through me in a low hum that vibrated my body. As I rested my hand on the car, it exploded. I was unharmed.
Adrift in my new role, I remained fixated on the Bizarre. I know I’m the literal reason for its existence. But this thought has been squirming inside my head for a while now. Why chaos?
It just doesn’t make sense to me.
I’m undoubtedly going to be seeing a lot of weird and crazy shit. I know Bizarra said that preventing chaos from happening leads to more harm than good. It’s got me thinking. What if she’s wrong? She likely isn’t, but the urge to intervene is strong.
This is likely to be my last interaction. I’m not sure when any of you will hear from me again. Honestly, I’m not sure if any of you truly believed what you’ve read. But, like I said in the beginning, I don’t give an ounce of a single fuck.
I do want all of you guys to know that the Bizarre is everywhere, causing trouble where there doesn’t need to be. If something fucked up and unexplainable happens in your life, all I can say is sorry in advance.