BOWLESIAN! – Dr. Julianus Techt’s Five Easy Steps to Building a Better You

Dr. Julianus Techt’s Five Easy Steps to Building a Better You

by Jeff Bowles

You are an absolute horror show. You are a wreck and ruin of a human being. I can’t even stand the sight of you anymore. You’re weak. Feeble. Go on and do it. Go on and rid the universe of your wretchedness once and for all.
Sound familiar?
Hi, friends. Dr. Julianus Techt here. Life got you down? No friends? No significant love interests? No point in living one more excruciating, soul-crushing day? Believe me, I know the feeling.
Congratulations on your purchase of Dr. Julianus Techt’s 5 Easy Steps to Building a Better You. This book, and the accompanying materials and spells companion crate, are each designed with the lowlife in mind. Contained within these pages, friends, are the answers you are looking for. Not happy with the man/woman you have become? Why not simply build a better you? The methods, magics, and matriculations I am about to divulge are time-tested and fool-proofed.
I know exactly what it’s like. I was once in your shoes. My PhD is in world-class suffering. I earned my doctorate at the school of hard knocks. Now I am a new man entirely. Come along with me and discover the secrets to self-love, self-respect, and self-actualization. Your glorious, resplendent days in the sun are just 5 Easy Steps away….

Easy Step 1: Back to Basics

Why is it you hate yourself so much? Why is it you’re so despairingly, disconsolately desperate to become a better human being? Is it because, like me, you’ve let down every last friend, family member, and lover who’s ever cared about you? Or do you, like me, simply find life painful, disappointing, a series of valleys–each deeper and darker than the last–without even a passing glimpse of a single peak or shred of hope?
Ha ha. Well, you were sharp enough to buy this book. So at least you’ve got that going for you.
I want you to imagine what the better you will look like.
Now I want you to open your materials and spells companion crate and make it happen.
Inside the crate you will find,
One (1) man-sized sheet of multi-colored construction paper
Five (5) century-aged cherry wood logs, each weighing approximately twenty-five (25) lbs.
One hundred seventy-five (175) lbs. of premium oil-based plastilina modeling clay.
One (1) ancient scroll of Black Soul-Shard enchantments.
And last, but not least,
One (1) complimentary Pizza Barn coupon, buy 1 slice, get the second half-off.
Arrange your materials and spells in whatever manner that best allows for ease-of-access and attenuation with the life-force powers of the universe and the forsaken black domain of the damnation/animation god, Frülik.
Ready to begin?
Good. I was hoping you’d say that.

Note: Dr. Julianus Techt’s 5 Easy Steps to Building a Better You is, if nothing else, a trial-and-error process. Steps 2-4 will enable you to produce 3 different soul-shard versions of yourself. If at any time you become satisfied with a soul brother or sister, please feel free to skip to step 5, There, isn’t That Better? Similarly, if at any time you feel threatened or are attacked by your soul brothers or sisters, please discontinue use, flee your house or place of residence, and immediately cash in your complimentary Pizza Barn coupon as you await police/emergency medical technician intervention.

Easy Step 2: Frülik

From your kitchen, retrieve one (1) large knife, serrated; one (1) cereal bowl; one and one-half (1 1/2) teaspoons of iodized table salt; one (1) sticky bandage, extra-large; and one (1) lb. of leftover meat to offer as supplication to Frülik, the damnation/animation god.
Retrieve your ancient Black Soul-Shard scroll and refer to enchantment #12 as you perform the following:
Sit down on the floor with your legs crossed. Pour the salt into the bowl and set it in your lap so that it can catch the copious amounts of blood about to gush from the palm of your hand.
This next part may sting a little.
Slice open your hand and hold it over the bowl. As you howl in agony, notice that your blood runs red. This will change as you begin to recite the enchantment, the one which begins,
“Oh mighty Frülik! I offer you my blood and meat! Cleave my astral self in twain! Take from me now that which you desire most!”
Notice that three things occur. The first is that your blood turns black. Don’t be alarmed. This is simply an indication you have just sold your soul for something far purer than you can possibly imagine. Notice, too, that the air around you has suddenly grown approximately 50° cooler. Your breath puffs frost. You snort in the cold like a castrated bull. You should probably be aware that the damnation/animation god, who will be arriving shortly, cannot abide warmth. It reminds him the living still thrive in the world beyond his forsaken realm, and that for him, all hope for love, passion, and earthly pleasures are lost, lost, lost.
Anyway, the last thing you will notice is that a 10-foot tall, bone-armored, entrail-covered, cloven-footed demon god will scratch and claw his way from the cereal bowl filled with salt and your precious blood.
Once he’s standing over you, with the edge of his massive Broadsword of Deepest Lacerations resting precipitously against your neck, he will squeal like a cancerous boar. He will then say something to the effect of,
“Woe unto you! Woe! Your soul is damned to the bleakest pits of horror and suffering! Pestilence! Rotten, fetid, malodorous flesh! I shall feast on your severed scrotum each mealtime for a thousand lives of men!”*

*Please note that based on your gender, Frülik may or may not in fact use the word “scrotum.”

The damnation/animation god will now use his broadsword to cleave your head from your shoulders. Do not be alarmed, this is simply an astral projection of your head and nothing more. Unfortunately, the pain you feel is entirely real and will no doubt haunt you for years to come.
Frülik is consumed by his own lust for spiritual power. He will snort and stomp and pull exactly three (3) individual shards of your soul out through your neck. His desire, of course, is to eat them and thereby enslave you for all time as his personal Concubine of Nightly Anguish.
It is now appropriate to offer him the one (1) lb. of supplication meat.
“Meager vittles!” he will bellow, but he will nevertheless proceed to stuff the meat into his face and forget all about the severed pieces of your spiritual essence hanging from your throat.
Please refer to enchantment #16 on your ancient scroll. Recite and repeat until the damnation/animation god is banished, moaning and cursing your name, back to his profane realm.
“Mighty Frülik!,” you will say. “Return to blackness! Mighty Frülik! A caelo usque ad centrum!”
Once Frülik is gone, and his howls of abject agony and rage have finally subsided, you will feel the urge to pass out and slip into the Sleep of Ages. This is completely normal, a side-effect of doing business with a demon god, and I must tell you, feels rather nice after a nightcap of chamomile tea and vodka.
Before you sleep, pull the three soul shards from the astral wound in your neck and lay them out, as best you can, with the rest of the materials from your companion crate.
When you awaken in exactly twelve (12) days and nights, we will finally create your soul brothers/sisters. Won’t that be fun?

Easy Step 3: The Better You Emerges

Twelve (12) days and nights have now passed. Are we back in the land of the living? Excellent.
Quick, what is fragile, tenuous, rough around the edges, and excruciatingly, mind-numbingly easy to reduce to cinder? No, it’s not Dr. Julianus Techt’s four failed marriages. It’s paper, friends. Simple, well-crafted, infinitely pliable commercial paper.
Your next task is to create a soul brother/sister from the man-sized sheet of multi colored construction paper you’ve retrieved from the materials and spells companiontjngsopjojgs kijipsgmijijithinign ijisrjomoejoig Frülik fhsko
sohoihionofihisniohi Frülik shinjpspsom Frülik shions
Frülik loves Techt
Frülik loves Techt
Frülik luvs Techt
Frülik has Techt
Frülik has Techtmpr
Say goodbye, Techt
Say goodbye, Techgtnikjigjopop

Managing Editor’s Note: And this is the last thing he wrote for the project, people. The police entered his home last week to find the place torn to pieces but otherwise empty. They found on his workstation a single Tupperware dish containing a full pound of rotting meat.
Due to the highly volatile and disturbed nature of this manuscript–and of course, in light of Dr. Julianus Techt’s mysterious disappearance–One-Hill Prairie Publishing hereby suspends all production plans for Five Easy Steps to Building a Better You until further notice. We have also mandated the immediate destruction of all mockup materials and spells companion crates. Our number one priority is to keep the particulars of this project from reaching the public. Can you imagine what’d happen if some poor fool actually attempted any of this?

Post-Script: We realize that working with Dr. Techt these past weeks and months has been trying, and at times, freakishly horrifying. Free mental health screenings and complimentary Pizza Barn coupons to all who apply.

END

Jeff Bowles is a science fiction and horror writer from the mountains of Colorado. The best of his outrageous and imaginative work can be found in God’s Body: Book One – The Fall, Godling and Other Paint Stories, Fear and Loathing in Las Cruces, and Brave New Multiverse. He has published work in magazines and anthologies like PodCastle, Tales from the Canyons of the Damned, the Threepenny Review, and Dark Moon Digest. Jeff earned his Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing at Western State Colorado University. He currently lives in the high-altitude Pikes Peak region, where he dreams strange dreams and spends far too much time under the stars. Jeff’s new novel, Love/Madness/Demon, is available on Amazon now!

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