Ghadhar (2025) by Irving Paul Pereira

GHADHAR

“The troubling thing about the city of GHADHAR is the absence of sunlight. The denizens that can afford it, traverse the dense concrete sprawl with night vision, Kevlar suits, artificial respiration machines. Those without means rely only on the black flowers.” - journal of aNightmer the III. Year 13 post-QIÏLŌPTH

-

(Only fragments of our entire expedition into GHADHAR are reproduced here with permission. No other comprehensive narrative will be issued beyond these selected paragraphs from my journal. This, the arch alchemaii , Cirqu explained, is to prevent the genius loci of the city from achieving a gestalt state of presence in the mind of the readers and thus taking over said bodies.

Day zero.

Even over the burning flesh of the black eel, cooking over the fire, I could smell the woman. The oil in her hair was the type I had used to prepare bodies for mind field osmosis back in the day. I refreshed the satellite stream but saw no new structures in the near to mid terrains where the city of GHADHARwas expected to manifest. The people from CYTOXCIS were early.

///

In the totem of draghua itself, that terrible tower in the gut of GHADHAR, the ape like humanoids were throwing down clay burning bowls from near the roof (some 36-42 stories above tar levels)

Scorched charcoal that burnt he black flowers streaked towards the underworlds terrains below, smoke trails smogging the thick dead air. Creatures were coughing in the dark. Judith was weeping, eyes stung. Cirqu upped the filter settings of his gas mask,

\\\

By the nth hour, on the fourth night of fasting, Judith ‘of the afternoon’ was seen heading out to the gravesite with her oil lamp. Her nightgown had aged considerably and I suspect the endless pressure from the noisier floors of the tower was turning her hair greyer

We had gone blind again because of the spores from the walls.
//.

It was hard to tell how much time had passed in the earliest stage of our expedition into black Ghadhar

The anthologeist mentioned how quickly we have aged while the count tried to keep track of time using his phone (that glitched considerably in the semi dark of the tunnels)

Hours or days passed.

We kept turning left at some point, then we were confused by the sudden presence of doors in the wall of dried grey clay. The oil lamp that the woman carried could only reveal certain markings on the doorposts. Some looked like blood slashes, others were hand prints or asemic letters. A few numbers emerged and the count believed only the odd numbers would get us through the appropriate portals. But where we were really going, I do not know.

We would have to change the navigation tech, from satellites to subterranean psycho active organisms if we were to find the right gates to enter ghadhar.

At which point we began heading upwards and into alleyways we could not say, only that it was slightly harder to breathe an d move, the higher we got, as if gravity began altering the agility of our flesh

////

During the breaks on our journey, when we ate dried eel flesh and drank tepid river water, purified (roughly) with electromagnetic guns, the count started reflecting out loud. I wasn’t sure who he was talking to until he eventually looked at me. ““There were too many patients from QIÏLŌPTH protocol that broke off trajectory and ended up lost in this city. It took us many months to figure out the quadrant. We streamlined as best as we could and sent out a psychic package detailing our concerns. To make contact, so we could investigate in person. Your ‘returned’ picked up on it.

The count shared with me a vivid mental image of my ‘returned’ . I was surprised how long my hair had grown, down the near waist. And even more surprised that the corpse paint survived the transmigration. But I was too gaunt, as I am now. Not entirely a good sign, but perhaps inevitable. At least until we reach the place they had come to research.

///

The tower was getting claustrophobic, the interior alleyways shrinking in width but expanding in height. Prison like. A kind of ritualistic music was intensifying, reaching fever pitch.

The concrete was turning too dark, trapping heat. Numbers appeared boldly. Stencil Spray painted. Industrial fonts.

117.

16

33

We’re they floors? Basements? Every door we entered brought us to new corridors or vast areas that appeared different in floor size. Everything concrete, except the muddied parts, with mounds, hives, holes, graves sporadically spread throughout the levels.

In my mind we were in a tower. The woman kept reminding us we were in a starved totem. Thin and long, the way our bodies looked to each other (though not in our own eyes)

****

The sound of noise ebbed and flowed. Static, pops, hisses, growls, guttural, menacing, scraping.

Sometimes we heard crying or manic birds, distorted voices speaking unknown languages. When the sounds grew further away , that meant the dissolutions were getting nearer. I could feel my body thinning with such sounds. Sometimes it felt like it was bloating.

There were periods when, I think, we were deaf to external sounds. Only the crackling and droning trapped in our heads remained.

////

Many patients were trying to keep the fires in the lift shafts burning, so that they could breathe but the supply of black flowers were dwindling

We were getting stressed with all the clanging, drilling, banging, and ritual fires and drums coming from far beneath us. What is being erected or sacrificed we don’t know. I asked cirqu if this was a rescue mission but it was the woman who replied cryptically.

“To put them to sleep. The diverging ones. It's the only way they can wake up again in CYTOXCIS. We have no means to carry bodies back. ”

We also don’t know if there’s running water or electricity.

——
A feverish mania was taking over

Stairwells that multiply or disappear, never at the same place. Doorways lead to other passages and corridors and more doorways, arches, hewn out gaps in the walls we could walk through, elevator shafts with no lifts. 40 storey drops , vertical tunnels. No light.

We ascend and descend meaninglessly amidst the noise, the sheer static, the blocks of post-ritual noise, concrete collapsing in the far distance, destruction in many directions

very far away

Yet

Somehow ‘localised,’ somehow trapped in this black mausoleum tower. Cirque, at one point philosophised that the building we were in is archetypal. “Of all the buildings across space and time, caught in the heart of some crisis or war or disaster, centralised Into a totemic singularity here in this city.

I’m starting to believe there is something purgatorial here, a samsara of brick and mortar.

ascending
descending

Turning blind corners without end, in dark GHADHAR.

Tracklist

1.	Irving Paul Pereira - Ghadhar (2025)	60:16

Credits

released June 12, 2025

License

CC BY-ND 3.0. See the Creative Commons website for details.