Have you ever heard the radio emissions that came from Saturn? I’m sure many of you have. It’s pretty common knowledge at this point.
Well if you don’t, feel free to find it on YouTube. Let’s just say you’ll be a bit disturbed by the sounds we have picked up. Because out of all things, you never would expect such a sound like a scream to come from some giant ball of gas in space millions upon millions of miles away. But yet that’s exactly what you hear from it. And not just one scream, but what sounds like several others. All crying out their agonies in unison.
So why is this relevant? It’s just a coincidence, right? I mean foxes scream very similar to humans in the dead of night. But of course, we’re now comparing an animal to a gas giant. Point is that we can find some pretty disturbing things in the most unlikely of places, and Saturn shows us that we can find that even in the deafening silence of space.
With that out of the way, let me now tell you my story. I had for most of my life suffered from severe anxiety and depression. I won’t bother you with my troubled childhood and all that but just know it wasn’t pleasant and it made my adult life just that more difficult. I’ve tried every medication known to man, I’ve gone to every therapist within and out of the state I live in. But none would have come close to fixing this problem that made it hard for me just to go take a shower. That would all change one day, when I met her.
We came across each other when I went into my favorite game store in my area. Tall, pretty, and probably that one out of 10 women that doesn’t let the local neckbeards stop her from enjoying her hobbies. Not that I blame the other 9. We talked like typical nerds would and then one thing just let to another with the next morning of me waking up in my bed with her next to me, already up. It was so surreal.
Out of all the things about her, it was her eyes that always stuck with me. There was really no other way to describe them other than alien or just otherworldly. Beautiful but something about them was just….jarring. Like I was staring up at the endless void itself with only the shining glimpse of distant stars to break up the darkness. Her personality reflected that too. She spoke with such intelligence and kindness, but the things she typically spoke about were things you’d never really think of, and when she does, you start to question why she brought it up and how she knows something like that.
“Humans are strange.” I remember one day she had said. “Humanity has reached a point where the ecosystem around them does not affect them anymore, nor is it relevant.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. She looked at me with those eyes.
“There is no need to hunt, no need to gather water, and no need to migrate. Instead of adapting, man has just created a comfortable environment for itself where it has to really do nothing other than the rules it has made for themselves. Humans have created their own ecosystem that is meant for them and them alone, isolating themselves from nature almost completely. Like cattle or sheep staying safe in their pens.”
“That’s an interesting observation, but why bring it up now? We’ve been just binging One Piece all day.”
She shrugged and smiled. “Just that. An observation. Nothing else, Love”
We dated for half the year of 2022 and in that time she introduced me to a lot of things. The girl was spiritual to say the least. She worshiped some obscure goddess named Shool and it was that along with the practice of some sorcery esc things that brings us to the topic of this tale. Astral projection. She knew about my mental issues, I didn’t even tell her for her to know it either. She just knew. She wanted to help and had an unconventional solution when modern medicine has failed.
She would first get me meditating, doing it daily for 30 minutes at first then eventually to an hour or two. It did somehow help a lot and I made massive improvements in a very short time. But…it only seemed to work when she was present. Which was always. As I went in and out of trance, she would speak to me in a soft, motherly tone. I practically became addicted to it and her. I won’t lie as I confess that she had me. She had me wrapped around her finger.
It wouldn’t be long before she introduced me to the rituals of her little obscure religion. I had always been a skeptic of such things but to my shock the stuff actually worked. With the strange alien words and abstract symbols of this particular magic, it did exactly as promised. This and her direction had improved my life drastically. I went from living in a shitty apartment to a 3 bedroom house in the beautiful countryside. From a minimum wage worker to a business owner. Even now I’m still in disbelief of how it was at all possible. Of course, nothing good ever lasts forever.
The last thing she taught me was Astral projection. Not the kind you see some wannabe witches on Tik Tok babble on about. This one actually made you leave your body on command and you could go pretty much anywhere on earth or beyond. By beyond I of course mean space.
With her guiding me, we had explored pretty much the entire solar system. From dancing in the acid rain of Venus to gliding across the rings of Jupiter. It was so much fun and I could never get enough of it, never experiencing it alone either as she was always there beside me. Watching.
“So how come we’ve never been to Saturn?” I asked her while we watched the stars from Pluto. “You always seem to make us avoid it.”
She did not answer right away, looking at me with her eldritch eyes. Usually I feel a calming aura from them, but I felt nothing but cold scorn. Like a mother silently scolding her child for something they should know was wrong. It eventually melted away and she returned to her smile.
“In time I will but not now, my love.” She answered softly.
“What’s so important over there?”
“You will understand soon.”
The time did come near the end of 2022. We had dinner, her making me and only me food while she just sat across the table, watching me closely. Looking at it now I don’t think I’ve ever seen her eat. For some reason too, she always liked watching me eat. No matter when or where. She always insisted on doing so. That night, she made my favorite dish. Beef Curry. It had always been great, but this particular patch was no less than perfect. The best meal I ever had. Again, she did not eat. She just watched me, her gaze never leaving me while I stuffed my face with the curry.
I guess that it just didn’t bother me with how used to it I was. So I didn’t suspect anything to be wrong. Not at first. It was when I finished eating that something started to feel off.
“We’re going to Saturn tonight.” She declared as she brought my dirty plate to the sink.
The news delighted me. “Finally!” I eagerly said. “Does that mean you’ll also tell me what’s so important there?”
She towered over me, stroking my hair. “You will learn the truth.”
Something felt different with her stare. She didn’t look at me like her lover. Not even really as a human being. She looked down at me like some animal, old and at the end of its life. It sent a small chill down my spine.
“Truth of what?”
“Your purpose.”
She said nothing beyond that, no matter what else I asked. She wouldn’t utter another word to me until we got to Saturn. We would stand on Saturn’s rings and for the first and only time, I would see the yellow gas giant. Beautiful felt like such a weak word for it. The feeling alone while looking at the gasses inside of it swirl around was beyond any words. And at first, like all planets we visited, we heard no sound other than our own voices. We were of course in the vacuum of space and couldn’t hear anything by normal means. Normal means.
“My love,” she started, “it is time.”
I reached for her hands, feeling a wave of sadness over her. She would pull her hands back and place them instead on my shoulders, leaning down to me and placing a soft kiss on my forehead. Her grip was gentle but firm. Her lips soft but ice cold. Instead of soothing me, it only sent a small hint of panic through my body.
“What are you talking about?” I asked nervously. She leaned into my ear.
“Listen.” She whispered.
I did as commanded, but I did not hear anything. The sound she was referring to slowly faded into my ears. Starting off as some quiet droning but then– then it turned its true form. It was Saturn’s radio emissions. The cosmic symphony of hell itself, and unlike the recordings from Voyager 1, this was much clearer and unbearably loud. As I would look in the direction of this horrible sound, I saw it. The swirling gasses. With a new clarity, it showed its true self. The melted, wispy faces of pain and suffering. The souls trapped within the cosmic prison, suffering their eternal hell together as one.
I would look back at her, that same somber gaze meeting my eyes.
“I have watched you grow, my love. I enjoyed seeing you blossom.” Her voice was different, disembodied and booming with an accent that was anything but human. “But like all creatures, your time come. This will be your fate. When your body withers away, when the very vessel is a rotting husk. You will join them. For now you are mine.”
The next thing I remember was waking up. Back in my bed, back in my shitty apartment. Alone. The shock of it all was so overwhelming that I just cried and did so for hours. I don’t think I even left my mattress for days. The reality I have succumbed to was just so much.
Which now brings me here. Even now I still can’t be sure of what I experienced was all some elaborate dream or me going insane. Maybe both. All I know is that my life is back to rock bottom. Rock bottom and without her.
I want her. I miss her. Even though I am nothing but a sacrificial lamb to this god from Saturn. Shool is all I know. Shool is all I desire. I love her and I know she loves me! I call out to her, I use what she had taught me, but I’m given nothing but the same deafening silence in the void of space. I know she hears me. I know she sees me. But she will do nothing but wait until the promised day.
My mind is so conflicted. Her power over me makes me desire her, but I still hold some of my sanity. I know what lies after death for me. My fate is sealed. But while mine is, I can at least warn others of this danger. Of this– thing that preys upon the desperate and lonely. Stay away. Do not give into her. For only the Symphony of Saturn that awaits you.