Let me tell you about my life... Or... That's not exactly right... Let me try this again.
Let me tell you about a girl named Marilyn Susanna...
Marilyn lived in a strange land, far, far away from our own. A land without creatures like Unicorns and Dragons, where there were no great sorcerers and wizards, no monsters or mystical wonders, where most believed magic simply to not exist. Marilyn was the precocious daughter of a working class family, who loved reading from a young age, especially stories about the magic and adventure which was considered a work of fantasy in her world. Marilyn wanted to believe in magic though, she wanted it to be real so hard, but alas, it seemed the doomed fantasy of a child...
Marilyn was smart though. She could read long before her peers, and excelled in math and the sciences. She graduated high school a whole grade ahead, and was given a full scholarship to a prestigious University. She minored in Mathematics and majored in something which is called "[i]kahm'pewtuhr proweghrahmn'mingh[/i]", which does not yet have a name in your language.
It was here that she became involved in the occult.
The Society was supposed to be secret, but I suppose it wouldn't hurt to tell you, seeing as you're unlikely to come across it. They called themselves the Midnight Society, and would hold late night meetings in libraries, coffee shops, and apartments. The Midnighters discussed cutting edge science, speculative history, philosophy, metaphysics, religion, the paranormal, cryptozoology, conspiracy theories, and magic, topics which Marilyn wasn't sure she really believed in, until one day, the group managed to summon a terrifying entity! The rough translation of the entity's name in her language would be "Deep One". It was a literally nightmarish creature of the deepest depths of the collective unconscious, and it did not have any interest in cooperation with the creatures who had opened the doorway. Far from it... This being of incredible power hated them for every crime humanity had ever committed.
One of Marilyn's fellow Midnighters died at the creature's terrible claws before the others could push it back beneath the veil of nightmares. Shaken by the reality of what had come to pass, most of her group abandoned the study of the paranormal altogether...
...But Marilyn became [i]obsessed[/i]. The supernatural was [i]real[/i]. It had happened [i]right in front of her[/i]. And now, she [i]knew[/i] that its power could be [i]harnessed[/i]...
Marilyn managed to complete her bachelors degree in only four years, impressing her professors with her sharp, analytical mind. By night, however, she had moonlighted as a sorceress, influencing people through their dreams, incepting ideas within their minds which would later play out in reality. Marilyn quickly gained favors she had never earned, was given jobs she would never have been considered for, had access to secrets whose owners had never told a soul... Marilyn had power. Power that began to terrify even her... People wouldn't just do her harmless favors, she realized... She had the power to cause men and women to leave their spouses for her, to empty their bank accounts and become destitute for her... to kill for her. Worse, she knew there were entities out there who had gotten wind of what she was doing.
Marilyn had amassed quite a savings account at this point, most of it gained by rigging the odds. She decided it was time to get out while she still could: she quit her job and left the city and moved to the outer suburbs, nearly swearing off her Sorcery altogether, only using it from that point forward for spiritual enlightenment and her own protection. Secluded, she was safe to live out her life in peace, away from the temptations of human society.
The few friends she'd made in college noticed that she came around less and less, and tried to get her to come back out of her shell, unaware of the exploits which she'd been drawn into. One day, they invited her to a comic book convention. She had plenty of money, and it would be fun they said... Lonely from her self-imposed isolation, she agreed: what would it hurt to relax for a few days?
Soon, Marilyn found herself enjoying one of the biggest comic book conventions in her country, dressed in a costume she'd thrown together of one of her favourite cartoon characters from her childhood, looking bright-eyed at all the childish pleasures there. On the last day of the convention, she wandered into a very peculiar stall... The goods here were of remarkable quality, some looking almost as if they were the real thing. It was here that she saw the most adorable plush toy, and decided that she should buy it. She exchanged pleasantries with the vendor, a tall, handsome, middle aged man with an odd glint in his eye, but something was off about him... As if there was something... hollow...
...Magic?
No. That was impossible. She laughed it off as she walked out of the stall: of course there was no magic here. That would be silly, right? She didn't even see the hole that had been torn in reality before she was already careening through. The spellwork had bared down on her before she had any time to throw up a ward. In a last fit of desperation, she clawed out with her mind, working to unravel the spell before it literally tore her body apart...
[center]And that, at the far-too-young age of twenty seven, is where her story comes to an unfortunate end...[/center]
[center][i]...And where MY story begins.[/i][/center]