The Necronomicon audiobook
Comedy ·I was inspired by this reddit prompt
“I want to make an audio book of the Necronomicon,” he said while slipping his arms through the sleeves of his trenchcoat.
That might be the most ridiculous project Professor Armitage has ever proposed to me. And I should know, I have been his graduate student for 8 years. I know, I know, you probably think I should have finished my PhD in the Library Sciences of the Dark Arts by now. I assure you, he hasn’t stopped me from graduating because he is some evil professor who enslaves his PhD students. In fact, Professor Armitage is the gentlest person I have ever encountered at the University. Well I guess that’s not that difficult with the number of egocentric self-proclaimed geniuses roaming the halls looking for their next big break. Either way, he is definitely the sweetest soul around, but also the nuttiest.
Over the last 8 years, we have accidentally summoned demons together for a tea party and lived to tell the tale. We have turned lab assistants into a sandwich platter and back to humans again before someone accidentally ate them. We even managed to turn the exterior of the library into a giant pumpkin last Halloween. The ideas this sweet but going senile man are extravagant yet every time we have managed to make it work. But this idea, this one, is irresponsibly dangerous.
“You want to WHAT?,” I exclaimed.
“You shall help me record a reading of the Necronomicon.”
“Professor Armitage, with all due respect, that would be complete nonsense.”
“No no, the Necronomicon is a perfectly readable text.”
“I mean turning it into an audio book. It’s the most insane and dangerous thing I’ve ever heard of”
“Well why should the contents of the most foul text in the world be kept under lock and key. It’s a tragedy! A calamity!”
“Hum, it would produce a calamity. Several even. Reading the thing will probably kill you. You told me that on my first day in your office. Eight years later, I can think of several ways it might kill you even! You might plunge the world into darkness, bring a thousand plagues into the world, turn all animals into giant insects, I mean… who knows!”
“Which is precisely why we don’t publish the pages. But you do bring up a good point.” He paused in the middle of slipping on his left rain boot.
“We would have to read it in such a way that we don’t summon unwanted creatures and supernatural effects. Hmmm.” He said as he shifted his weight to the other leg to put on his right boot.
I knew this would be tricky for him while his mind was preoccupied. I took a step forward and extended my arm just in time for him to lose balance and grab it for stability. He continued his thought process out loud.
“I see a few ways around this but I’ll have to think about the best course of action.” He turned to me as if for the first time acknowledging my presence. “Please reserve the recording studio at the central library and clear your schedule tomorrow. I’ll meet you there at dawn.”
He didn’t wait for a reply and strolled down the hall, forgetting his umbrella as he often did when deep in thought. I knew he would be back to get it in about 85 seconds so I hastily left his office. I had some thoughts of my own to reconcile.
-
“With cream and sugar?”
The professor’s voice startled me and I almost dropped the tea mugs I had in each hand. I must have fallen asleep waiting at the door of the recording studio.
“Hmm yes, just how you like it. I figured it might be a long day,” I said.
We entered the square rooms with walls covered in felted wool to absorb the sounds.
“What a perfect place to cast a fire spell and burn alive,” I thought while placing the mugs on the round table in the center of the room. Why would you have a round table in a square room? Oh well, it might give us more space to run around if we summon something that wants to chase us.
Luckily I was too sleepy to be afraid. “Let’s do this” I heard myself saying. The professor paid no attention to the lack of conviction in my voice.
“I have determined the optimal method for recording the Necronomicon”, he announced while unwrapping the leather satchel he kept it in.
“Without dying?”
“Yes. Most probably. It is quite an astute work around if I may say so myself”
“I don’t get it. Any sentence, incantation, or spell will bring doom upon us if read outloud. How will we record anything without reading out loud.”
“Ah but you made one flawed assumption!” He said while waving his finger towards the wool covered ceiling triumphantly. The last time he had done this motion we had cleaned the contaminated water supply by turning it into wine. The town mayor wasn’t happy about that particular work around.
I sighed. It was time to give in. “What’s the genius idea this time?”
“Simple, we read the first word of every page. Then the second. And so forth. We will have many short recordings of one word each. Then we will hire a lab assistant to put it back together over the summer”.
Whenever he said hire a lab assistant, he really meant “put an ad for an assistant, get zero applicants and then de facto add the project to my long to do list”. This was going to be a long morning indeed and a horrible summer, though not as horrible as creating the apocalypse while recording an audiobook no one would ever want to hear.
Nethertheless, it was a good idea and it worked marvelously. I read ahead to make sure that reading the first word of every page wouldn’t coincidentally match a known incantation and Professor Armitage recorded the words in his deep soothing though arguably crackling voice. Of course I wasn’t going to tell him that for fear he would make me say the words in his place.
I read ahead: “Scintillam, page 123. Flamma, page 124. Ignis, page 125.”I stopped and looked over at the professor: he was enthralled with his practice of the next word he was going to record and hadn’t noticed my excitement.
The first word of the next three pages would be my salvation: Scintillam, Flamma, Ignis. It roughly translates to “spark, flame, ignite” and is a simple phrase to produce a flame at the tip of your finger. I scribbled the words and passed them to him while slowly grabbing my mug and trying to keep my arm from shaking.
Professor Armitage grabbed the paper with his right hand, cleared his throat, and uttered those three blissful words. Light exploded from his index finger and the paper immediately caught flame. Armitage jerked backwards, nearly falling out of his chair and frantically waved his arm to get rid of the burning paper. As soon as it hit the wooly walls I splashed the contents of my mug on the Professor’s finger, grabbed his arm in one hand, the Necronomicon in the other (it was unfortunately, the most precious book in the library and had to be saved), and dragged him out of the studio.
“Stupid stupid stupid! Have you forgotten your incantation principles class! I knew I should have made you retake it until you got an A! The university will never agree to continuing this project now.”
I tried to appear stunned to hide my relief. Professor Armitage was fuming as much as the studio was ablaze.
“Forget your summer projects. You will retake all incantation classes until you get an A!” He yelled as he stormed off while library staff hurried over to extinguish the fire.
Sure, taking a bunch of first level summer classes wasn’t going to be my idea of a productive summer, but at least the horrid monsters and unspeakable curses of the Necronomicon would be safe for another day.