“BIRTH OF PHARAOH” CHAPTER 2

“WHITTNE FAX CONTINUES”

COPYRIGHT 2025. CORINNE DEVIN SULLIVAN. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

The thought inside my mind tonight, you want to know?

It is, simply put: “Life outside Northern Sky Territory is a happier one.”

I rest in my spacesuit. I look upwards only at the closed door near the top of a strange, hideous shaft I am pretty well captive inside. I am aware of how, outside this smelly place, the Hidden Wall is nearby. Beyond the wall is the planet I seek, and it should have a strange machine they named The Factory close to it.

Last night, I made it to the very last edge of Northern Sky Territory last night in a pod constructed for private design that shot straight across the sky with such speed as to impress us. We should have escaped the wall and been on our way to planet Po, whose location is said to be far on the other side. It was only myself and a handful of crew in a craft bestowed upon me.

The crew is dead. They’re already buried now, it seems. The last recollection I have is the pod careening away from me in this space suit. It stuck a side. Everyone perished.  

Instead of a happy voyage, this little spot upon this ugly, insignificant asteroid is as close to the Hidden Wall as anything gets. Between this place and the wall, there is no resting place. I don’t know why I understood this was a resting place to swing closely past. I am curious how I could be so stupid to risk any contact for creatures are scarce but they do often lay or hide in this very place, hoping for idiots like me for food.

For the past few days of space travels, I have remained happy after such a narrow escape from the newly-formed police force called Shine Reign (or something stupid) that now once again plagues the Major Universe (a new name they gave everything after the dust settled).

I wrote a poem, once, and it ended with, “Gravitational pull brings one down,” as sort of a joke.

I hate to tell you this, dear Listener, but the sight in front of me tonight is a grisly one. Would you agree with me on this, My Lady?

Close at hand, a hideous female Macrabre Illie Bo looks mindlessly towards me. Her four eyes are square. Her main mouth is a snouty strange thing, indeed. She is four times as tall. Hideous torso like a bear on Earth. Everything is dark and terrible. It’s quite a long tube of asteroid and metal with nothing for me to do but dangle from a chain that might be half a mile long. 

My Lady says she will never remember spacemen, never tell one from the next, and, yet, she is whispering now into my mind. Her telepathy is beautiful. With the power of her mind, she describes me in terrible words just the way she sees me: her morsel. She tells me that she never can assume what a space-boy or a space-girl might be made up of internally. She wishes I would stop haggling. Simply put, for her, I will be dead shortly after she starts to eat.

Now, Listener, she adds this: she will bite me in two.

“This is morbid gore, My Lady,” and I say it out loud to her, as you, Listener, hear in this recording. Now, I may address her directly for I have captured attention.

In return, My Lady laughs. She’s seated high above me. I am in a prison. I am caught, again, already.

I must explain, through telepathy with her, how I never am without my recording devices so I simply start making a long reminder to whomever finds this thing floating around, one day. Recordings as this one I make all day. In the good days, my journals would normally be embedded in my ship, the one I have lost and never recovered (I tried to locate that ship in the last days of the White Queen’s life but didn’t).

Without my travel vessel, I transmit this journal thing to a lot of other places—one mighty load of a lot of other places.

The Macrabre Illie Bo in my presence before me now sends over to me a thought filled with pain. I don’t even shudder because I know The Discipline.

There is no wind here, only chilled space outside the dome she is sheltered in. Her home is one elongated funnel made of core minerals. It doesn’t have any window. The only light is from the oozing ore below.

Hot fumes.

Death pends.

A telepathic droopy monster nuzzles within feet of my head (and that is you, My Lady)—nuzzles, of course, threads of meat that dangle from another arm twisted inside the wires and bars.

I wait inside a private wish-filled moment that some escape route exists that I can ponder. As of yet, there is not any. Best for me to finish making you, Listener, the big priority and turn my mind to my patron.

The only gift I have for you is friendship, My Lady, even though you took advantage of me, cracked me in the head, set me in this cage. I woke inside your lair, listened to your scrambling males, and, yet, I still retain composure enough to engage you in such a private conversation as this most would envy.

Here I dangle above a mess of hot lava.

The cage is sturdy but it was built to dip.

I see the pully and the line.

Admit it! You would have eaten me in a dirty way, the instant I brought my body into your control room, had we not been friends from long ago? Oh, but you cannot recall. I feel sadness alike to that oil well beneath me, how my heartache spills onto a mess of boiling ore, all over my past fails. The combination of old pain with this hour’s let-down steeps me in a steam that, at once, is slowly working my meat from the outside. It drives inward—both inside me and emotionally, too.

The female Macrabre Illie Bo coils. She will strike a death meal from me.

What skill can I use tonight?

My Lady, our friendship for so long was blue like the home skies you said you can’t wait to have once again, outside a window, in a home without broods and eggs and eggs and broods. Blue skies. I wear the scarf of blue, now, but you have refused to see my oldest hung color because you didn’t let me know you. You snatched me from air-contained spaces when I arrived in peace, and I never had time enough to splay the coat, show the blue, and float in the sky, on my own terms, while conversing like this with you as a friend.

“This is me,” I say now, again, with my hands moving in the sign of the Amashey, a planet with families I am born into often.

The female Macrabre Illie Bo will not answer.

No matter.

Lady, you are always in the right.

Lady, you are friend. That is why I head towards you in this manner, by moving in this way—only so many inches I may be permitted, within a three-foot-by-three-foot cage, dangling above the acre of molten steel you turn every hour, at the bottom of this, your kitchen!

I use the tiniest sleight of my hand to entrance you, along with a rhythm of my toes making a silent sound you know you enjoy.

I am not alarmed. Bones of saucers and craft were virtually everywhere outside. I remember the embrace of life you made in my mind, so many years and years ago. With that memory, I do not turn. I do not run away.

Your wretched scales shake along a spine three times as large as mine and five times as thick. You look like some scaly thing from the past, but with permanent fangs installed everywhere on the outside of rusted armor plates, and a small mouth that gnaws. You laugh with an horrific sound of a million teeth grating back and forth throughout the female throat you plan to swallow me whole with.

At least I have your presence.

You would have sent a guard if you didn’t remember me. That’s the hint you already showed me.

Notwithstanding your plan tonight to consume my body and accumulate my mind inside your skin, I know you once treasured my companionship not so very long ago—though it was an eternity to people who are still planet-bound. For me, it was like yesterday when we met in some other dimension. I feel I might have loved you, back then.

You pretend to speak a bit with sighs and growls, but for the most part the Macrabre Illie Bo are so telepathic that they permanently refuse to tell anything out loud. They are sneaky. They have a way to disappoint you, mentally.

My Lady, just relax, for I’m here.

Wants to know how I plan to leave here, and where I will go next. Sounds like she wants to see something. She’s been a lone guard posted in the nether-regions of space—a lost command relic of the Esentuaria for so long. I have never known such intimacy as this night’s talk!

Esentuaria was the friend-planet of the Amashey (once again, quite an old and distinguished actually family I have been born into many times). Esentuaria is from the oldest books, so this must have been just such a long time ago.

My lady, you cannot be seen. You have forgotten how much outsiders hate your unique ways.  Or, maybe, you are not notified of the seasons as they change amongst the hierarchy? No one permits Macrabre Illie Bo anyplace inward from here.

Your hisses!

I have no anger to you in any way. I was on my way to breach the Hidden Wall for this is something I alone, of all space travelers, know how to do at once. And I approached this particular spot without knowing something like you would be here living on this silly place for all eons! I thought creatures like you were long-since departed, one way or another!

How could I forget that you would still be here? No one far away from the usual travel routes ever knows of your kind’s presence or, of course, they wouldn’t be here, would they?

Presses my mind for the facts, claims my pod would not have gone much further for I would smack into the Hidden Wall and fry. Blocks her understanding of my voyage plans. Claims I should relax. Death with her means rebirth in her personal army. Feels like I’ve been with her before. And why should she fight off her hunger anymore?

Dear Lady asks me through my thoughts, “Where did I think I would get to?”

My flesh is still on fire or, at least, it feels terrible right now.

She thinks my crash outside is only a hoax! Tells me I’ll leave her here, that I may come and go. Doesn’t believe I am her friend. She blathers, but I know this creation at the out-go, and how she drew me in by hiding not only herself but hordes of filth at her command as well.

My Lady, I won’t be played or forget myself to you. You are a good liar and since you control your mind you think you own the entire galaxy. Macrabre Illie Bo are so sneaky in the mind so I take planned steps. I talk aloud in soundwaves, otherwise you will know everything. I must tell you out loud to hide the repercussion. You and I both understand how to avoid dangers in telepathy.

Use my mind and not my mouth?  

Fire from the constant rush of steam drives upwards off the oil and ore. Inside a strange dipsy-dangle, I still discover that a little portal on the outside of the helmet works. It was meant to service as a voice speaker for its wearer, and in every temperature, I’m guessing.

My Lady, the real downer, of course, is the condition of Pharaoh kept inside one of the Lost Gardens. These places are far outside the Hidden Wall but identical to the old White Queen’s (rest her soul, please) Sky Garden. This new development of horticulture (Pharaoh) inside something like a garden cage is the enemy’s next diversion. Pharaoh and its Creators are the winning team, so to speak. I must reach the Creator, whoever it will possibly be. I have no name, but know indeed it functions from a Factory located close to the planet upon which the Pharaoh grow up. I can only predict Pharaoh will one day lead a takeover, be the arm of their Creator, and so I must meet them all.

Answer me, please: who is the Creator I am seeking?

The female seems shocked. She is silent, says she won’t look at her own history again. She won’t see herself, anymore. She can’t see herself as anything other than a monster now. She is riddled with self-imposed hate, and I have heard from other Macrabre Illie Bo who say this very same thing about hating themselves, or an experience similar enough.

My Lady, stop. If you plan to die and be reborn through this new factory which you seem happy to know about, then this make you fully a future foe to me because I seek the Pharaoh to bring them and their factory to a complete end.

She creeps to me, bares her soul and says, “Die, evil little space crawler.”

My lady, you are only safe where you are loved. Stay here in conversation for some time longer.

She backs and again hovers along the spine, rests her feet up against the wall.

I promise, I will call on another day when it’s a good time. You are bound here until death and afterwards, because you cannot travel soulwise, and that’s sad to know.

You spit! You say friends gone wild all year round?

My Lady, considering that the Pharaoh would be an obvious escape, remember that I, like you, feel all the Pharaoh and their factory, and their silliness, has never, ever, ever been suited to my taste—or, rather, to the family of witches’ taste—yes, I mean taste literally—and I laugh only because there was a man who called himself Slave, and he is said to be at arms against the witches, but it was a joke! It was said to me less than one week ago by the newly formed police chief. His name is Shamus.

Shamus seems to believe the very thing that inhabited a person known as The Slave from my past is a new cauldron leader, but information about the Slave is something I never should think about anymore (except I do). This certain Slae is from my ancient past as well as a more recent encounter, shortly before I lost my ship. In both of our interactions, he died.

Yet, this Shamus sensed The Slave in my eyes less than one week ago. I had to affirm all his men that the Slave is gone.

The Slave, he stays in my head, so you would most likely be as fooled by his lies as I once was. He flips things. I have caught him many times and, in those incursions, he has eaten me! For that Slave had  joked in every conversation we endured with each otheer about eating my mind. And that’s the risk I knew him to be. The Slave is silly as the Pharaoh and their forsaken Creator ought to be, but never you!

It's the Slave who comes and goes inside my mind tonight.

My Lady, behave. If you disregard any thoughts I still share about the Slave and listen to the sounds I speak through this microphone pressed to your ear as you nibble close to my body, I would be more than happy.

The Slave would take whatever he could grab. He would steal from me. He would do that still, to you, if he and you were ever introduced.

Yes, My Lady, he may be on the very planet the Pharaoh are manufactured for today. He might manufacture them in the Factory, then grow them freely—aye, as in free people—upon the planet which is named, I think, Po. Yes, it may be the reborn Slave is the Creator I am seeking.

No, this Slave will not arrive to your lair! He is not following. He is not taunting you from the past! It’s just his ugly memory that comes sailing into you through my mind. I must escape this torture!

The Slave is gone! I escaped him. I would not find him again in my hair, especially here, where you have toasted me slowly for many hours now. Please hear my words! Never ambush his memories from my mind. There is nothing more.

My Lady, say you what? You know this Slave I speak of? It isn’t true. You know only the image of that presence inside my mind. He just is a terror in my head. Look around here at the millions of eggs and cocoons hidden in the walls, and figurines perched here and there to help you devour me. It is fine.

My Lady, I have changed my mind. Once more and then it’s the last: Shamus relayed that the planet is thought to be called Po, but I don’t believe that’s its real name. Do you?

No, you refuse to be nice to you though I’ll continue to pay you with kind words and every piece of data.

In return, I owe you a debt so that, My Lady, you move much too slowly now. You are sleeping but awake in a dream state. Feel it everywhere tonight with me.

With my last words, I bare before you everything I have. Every golden hint should be stated to you, and here I go: I swear to you, I am confessing everything I know of the routes and ships heading here and there. I want to let you know everything I’ve been told.

With the confessions I have made to you, I cannot be a prisoner nor can you ever lead me.

Now, I ask for my safe exit plus a lift. That station ship left outside this place, with the man’s torso still in the driver’s seat, should do me justice and well.

Yes, I can only be devoured, says you. Then, what will you have? Me to contend with, in your bedroom! You blush. Don’t be coy. You know it’s lovely there.

Lady, think on my aims. Think about my truthful and pure quest to undue the Pharaoh state. Help me, please, because, like you, Pharaoh are all in such a terrible situation. Their woe used to ensnare me, too. Endlessly, my mind was focused only on the Creator of the Pharaoh and it will happen to you, too, if you listen anymore to good news.

I admit how I, too, believed Pharaoh would help end the wars that beset everything inside the Hidden Wall, plus all the terrible monsters and third rate creatures who are at risk outside. Pharaoh are divinity. These perfectly groomed meat vessels are a manufactured human version of life that has been constructed from the manipulation of perfect meat that is painfully synthesized into, using electrical means and forces, the beaten, tricked and lied-to souls of the Not-Wanteds. The Pharaoh become reborn terror. With them, something new and beautiful arises. This wonderful vision has been sold to the new regime inside the Major Universe as the next great thing: all gutsy and strong as metal.

The White Queen herself shared all the intel about Pharaoh. She had a specific idea about where it would all go so I learned from her the terrible problematic future the Pharaoh present everyone for these newly born people reveal such a terrible hatred towards any human beings that they seek to erase humanity forever from eternity. They have no sense of kinsmen ship, is what I’m getting at.

But Pharaoh were manufactured without the White Queen’s guidance, I guess. Now, she is dead.

I predict complete failure. Pharaoh have been attempted throughout eternity many times before.

Luck has been with me because, as of now, I am back to my own mind, in fine form. And when the boys (or the girls) expound the virtues of Pharaoh I don’t take heed. If anyone hopes to place me into the Pharaoh role, I roll back my head, and roll back my eyes, and hope any Listener far away (here, in space, or upon some planet) will envision this reaction that happens on my body, but without plan on my part, to any mention of the Creator of Pharaoh. This outlandish and overblown physical reaction I have to mention of Pharaoh is evidence how I do not like them, nor the Pharaoh’s Creator whoever it is.  

Profound forever, I am genuine.

Your snarl is audible. Thoughts are filled with my blood on your mouth oozing in every direction. It’s everything on your mind. As your friend, in this moment, it’s the only thing on my mind now, too, and that is my whole problem. You’re just hungry as Wonderman flies into the pit!

You cackle! A mischievous plan flies through the air! This is why I have hopes, but not any fear!

On this dayless night, on the very edge of the world I know, swinging in your cage, set within your lair, on this dumb rock, I must lament how my life returns—backwards—to the starting point, regardless of every step forward I make. Or, it’s just that I run back and forth, in circles, around a conclusion that I must pass between the layers of the Hidden Wall, and then soar through the sky to Po. But before I reached the planet today, as was my hope, I wound up before you, one more time.

This rocking will not do! Send them all back to the edge of the cage where they were just a moment before you gave the signal. Otherwise, I simply react and use your own people as both tool and food for a new plan in my mind!

I am leaving soon! Alas, it will be twice you have failed with your plan to suffocate my ambition with fear. Should you also disgorge me, I shall not be very happy about that!

Ah! Suddenly, you are sleeping and that was a snore. Everyone around us drops like a stone without a whimper into the gooey ore below me. You cannot see them falling all around you and dying in strange silence for you are also so very sound asleep. And I, in my fake solitude, leave a shadow which is like a cloak of challenge upon the ground, for I know the Macabre IIlie Bo never truly sleep in all their eyes but one eyeball always sees a mirage, while the others are gone.

I wait to be sure.

I coo to you to soothe any last nerves because I know you and I already ask you to forgive this.

My mind is over! I reel backwards! My suit is half gone, so I am slipping against the bars and the wires start to pierce through. But this is less of a worry than how I felt you call to the Slave, and ask for him to save you tonight before we die together!

With my mind alone, I feel death reaching for us both. Still, I command the same Slave, wherever it may be, in order to stop such a force completely—barricade it from my present, plus stop it from entering my future.

You see the Pharaoh as an aim, and I seek the Creator to bring the show to a complete end. And in this, the Slave leaps to life inside my head where he hasn’t been in years!

You sleep soundly, now, so snore on, you venomous feminine of urine and egg. You are death, itself. You seem to kill me as I kill you.

Now, you dream, and I speak softly, wordless, so as to kill you with my song.

Under a pine tree with the White Queen, I waited for a revenge against the children of the Houses that went mad with rage, or greed (some of them), when the Order was destroyed. She looked skyward at The Rainbow if it appeared to ask a question, to learn her future from. And with the Rainbow came a song she would sing. And from there she would go about her day, aimlessly. For me, instead of wondering what The Rainbow did or did not advise, I looked upon my own fortitude. And I always looked forwards, to my future, to my careful plan to regain my ship, as I had hoped for so fondly. I only needed my ship back! I never learned where it went to!

A single eye shudders. She knows I should be on a throne.

When I mope, I will think about your fate, Lady. You are a friend from a long since dead time. Beautiful before but now, for thousands of years, you still reside in that terrible carcass, unable to stop yourself from terrible things you do every hour if you pluck space travelers and disembowel them, fry them and eat them standing here in this cage.  

My Lady, it’s hot. My bones are warming. Maybe the plans this evening include eating me, after all, but you are fast asleep and this tells me in a nice way how you have no worry about my leaving.

Lady, snooze on.

Why wonder?

My Lady, in your dreams, you claim I am threatening you. I’m sorry to hear you believe this. Once, you told me how much I meant to you. That was when together we were amongst the skies beyond the galaxy, where life is a song and the days are light and merry. Now, you fall, like a great pendulum swung much too far to one side and you have slipped in a lovely arc off the nub that your chain of life has moved upon for years. Fall you down into the molten ore.

My Lady, it’s time for you to go into the ore now. Soothed with fire and oil, you shall be reborn into something you can finally be joyous about, and will eventually speak to me of in fair and softer terms than you ever did tonight, the next time I stop over to say hello.

TO CONTINUE THE ADVENTURE CLICK ON CHAPTER THREE: “PLANET PO — DAY’S LOG ENTRY” FROM THE RENEYT HOMEPAGE!