The Holder of Lust

In any city, in any country, go to any bathhouse or spa and ask to see "The Holder of Lust". The clerk at the front desk may ask you if you want to see another person "for your needs". You must be firm and repeat your request, even if she threatens to call the police or an eviler force. If you keep repeating yourself, she will eventually guide you down the hall to an elaborate door. It will be covered in velvet cloth, framed with gold, and studded with the most precious of stones.

When the receptionist opens the doors and looks in, do not look yourself; instead, you must carefully study her expression. If she seems bored, you are free to go in, but it will be an ordinary spa room, and you will have to try again. If a look of childlike wonder crosses her face, she will immediately rush in. If she does, quickly close the door after her. Do not open it again for 15 minutes, even if you hear terrible screams and begging for help. Should you do so before exactly 15 minutes have passed, you will share the same fate.

Then, you will enter. The room will be warm with lovely, sensual odors that will make your skin crawl with anticipation, both coated in masculine and feminine aura. The room will be draped with jeweled red velvet and silks, and the floor will be thick and silken beneath your feet, and the walls will drip with gold and gems. Make sure you show no expression, no emotions, keep your face even and unmoved, despite the lovely scents and shimmering wealth. Walk on as if you see nothing, or the room will swallow you and suffocate you endlessly beneath the layers of the very fur you walk, which is still cocooning hundreds of bodies of those before you, writhing and screaming mutely.

Soon, you see radiant, beautiful men and women dancing and spinning around you, with only scarves of blood-red cloth garbing their nude forms. They will stroke your skin and whisper tantalizing promises in your ears, but you must ignore it all. Show no emotion. If you should give in, they will drain your lifeblood away in dance, peel your skin and rip out clots of hair, shred your mind until you will lose yourself, and be enslaved to their horrendous bondage.

Soon, you will meet a woman, wearing a pure white satin gown with sleeves that graze the carpet, and a mask of a lovely doll's face. She will be perfectly still, watching you with painted button eyes. You must speak in monotone: "What happens beyond the veil?" Her mask will twist into an unnatural smile. She will sweep you away and explain the wonders of compassion and pleasure, comparing it to the desolate and broken existence you have, and it very likely will depress you into such loneliness that you will be but a husk of life, deprived of any real happiness in life. But if you can stand her words, she will give you an apple, and it will be perfect and unmarred, and glisten with ripeness. You will find yourself starving for it, but you must hand it back to her, and refuse any help. She will smile once again, and crush the apple. This will depress you. But then, in a pulpy, wet mass, she will pull out the seeds and give them to you.

These seeds are Object 278 of 2538. Do not plant them unless all other hope for salvation is gone.