I am you and you are me...

The solomn hypnotic

"Can you hear me?"

 I stood beneath the withered trees and the climbing castle towers, and I was here again to find him. Looking to my right, I saw a pathway winding through a thin cluster of trees. It was always a place that looked like madness. My soul gravitates toward darkened pathways, lonely sidewalks and avenues between churches and two-story southern homes left vacant and dusty. On the left, I saw the church and right beside it was the old two-story white house. The shadows between the two ran striped patterns across the grass.

 I was always here, moving between mimosas, oaks, and other spindly little trees. For, I have yet to leave my past behind and cannot grow old despite my age. I was hollow again, my heart ached as if I had lost something. Maybe I had lost something, a thing fairly tall and dark as everything around me. I could have been something that barely slipped across my fingertips and dropped away, or maybe I was just fantasizing. But I could not call out to the thing because I was terrified of the silence between us.

“I am imagining things again, aren’t I? It is lost but it doesn’t know it’s lost.”

I spoke to one who was holding my hand, the dark thing chirped and whirred like an insect. It was a culmination of all I had hoped for, the dark thing, she was. She was a compiled form that was taken away slowly, and with cold severance. But in quiet, while no one was looking, I whisked her away to myself.

 It was here, I thought. I looked at my hand again and it was gone. Turning my palm to my face, I saw nothing but remnants of black smoke gently gliding up into the navy blue sky. The tendrils of darkness danced between the withered fingers of the trees and then disappeared.

“Please.”

But I was too old for this. I was too old to play in the dark world that I had created. I brought her back to help me and she showed me that everything and everyone was gone now. She laughed despite my terror.

“You are there or you are here. There is no in-between, my dear.”

I rode the in-between like it was the firm stitch in the cloth of my ratted tattered gown. I was torn, torn as the hem of my gown. I wanted to lie in the crisp bright day, the sun warming my skin and the birds reminding me that I was smiling, but…

“You cannot ride the in-between.”

It was a revelation or sorts, but the same revelation heard over and over, years and decades before. Dare say I felt a few centuries in my soul.

“Shhhh, it’s a secret. Look between the church and white house. He waits there for you.”

A dark figure pronounced that my surroundings weren’t that dark at all, at least not as dark as he. I moved toward him but tripped falling to the pavement. An ebony bright puddle of water looked up at my me. But it was a cold white fabric face, stitched as well. I removed the mask and I saw her there.

“He doesn’t know who you are.”

I was pale, dark-eyed and framed with dark red hair. My face was my own, but it was hers as well. I had been crying and it marred thick bands of darkness around my eyes. I followed trails of blood to the corners of my mouth.  For a moment, I saw curtains of dark glitter fall all around my messy face.

“I have failed. I let the moment pass and now it was too late. Is he still there, dark one?”

I looked up from the puddle and the alley was bare. I saw movement in the trees and then figures weaving in and out from behind the church walls.

“Who are they.”

“They don’t know yet. They’re waiting for you to name them.”

“Stop this! Stop this madness! Help me!”

She reached pulling me from the road and from my shame. A distant bell sounded and I knew it was midnight. But midnight didn’t matter anymore and the moon was still large. All the things I had created were somewhere playing a role or waiting to exist again.

 I was standing between a school and a church glaring toward the soft grass by the old white house, and the castle loomed above it all. There were roads in all directions and the one I stood upon started to shift between gray and black.  Amidst the melancholy detail of my existence, I could almost see her form, solid. Flittering things made the air look blurry blue across her back. I could smell the rose scent coming from her skin.

“Why did you think I could help you? This is your doing. You are the one who cut it away. The fabrics of many colours-the coats, to be religious about it, you divided them, crumpled them and set them aflame!”

And I did. I was coarse, hard and unrelenting. The dark figure embraced me and I screamed until every shadow disappeared and the earth was heaven counterfeit. I watched the shadows move away, handsome in features, dark eyes, dark hair and a softness that cradled my heart. I couldn’t see it, nor could I feel it and so the complacency of it all gave way to false hope and comfort. Did I kill it? No, but surely there was no difference between death and this wretched agony.

“If only I could touch his fingertips-the one that surely waits within the trees.”

“No.”

“Please.”

Her dark figure was the only one before me. All around the little houses and the winding roads-they were silent.

“ Help me find him, please.”

She leaned close and wrapped her own filmy form around about me. She pulled my stitching tawt and wiped the dark blood from beneath my eyes. Her eyes were mine and mine were hers, as everything else about us. I cried again.

“Open your mouth.”

She bent forward as if to kiss me. I saw it, there in her mouth, a winged thing. It fluttered, passing from her lips to mine and I gasped. The dust from its wings coated my tongue and the roof of my mouth. She closed my mouth and pressed the palm of her hand against my lips. I felt the thing flitter and flop inside my mouth. I whimpered.

“Shhh”

She kissed my cheek and felt her smile against my skin as well.

“Now, close your eyes.”

Come in. Have a seat

Hello darlin'. Nice to see you. It's been a long time.

What I am thinking now August 1, 2016

My mind is a-swirl with some of the same things and yet, difference has made an appearance as well. As you may or may not know, I am medicated for the most part, but this is what I have done:

I have stopped taking the spirit killer because I couldn’t breathe. There was no motivation to leave the couch and there was no fire to fight with. I wanted to sleep most of the time and my chronic physical pain helped with that as well.

Oh this is so boring, so boring! Basically, I am holding tight reigns on her and it’s more difficult than you think. She burns within, bursting through every layer of my defenses. Somehow I manage to keep the outer gate closed.

How much more? How can it be so damning to yearn for release. I am so tired. So unbelievably tired of having no pasture for my fairy to run, no ocean to swim and no forests to frolick. I am in pain, literal pain. This restraint is breaking me in two.

Just my thoughts, I should sleep

If she lets me.

Natie and Jake, she's here now

He took several pictures of the outside wall while I stared into the mimosas. The blooms were gone now, and large pods covered the ground beneath the trees. As I stepped into the foliage, carcases of seed pods crackled and shifted with the weight of my feet. I was pulled away from my grief momentarily by the speech of their dry dead bodies. Dead, they were dead too, come and gone so fast and no one cared. Does anyone really care about anything after its dead for a while?

 “Natie look!”

 I turned toward Jake who stood directly in front of the back brick wall of my house. He was staring at the pictures he had taken just a moment ago. Something was obviously stealing his attention.

 “What is it, Jake?”

 He turned to me and smiled. His shaking hand revealed that he wasn’t altogether happy, part of him was terrified. “Look at this.”

 Jake pushed the camera toward. I took a look for myself. The picture was nothing special at first, just a brick wall with a high window. Then I saw what he was talking about. It was a face, or at least, it looked like a face.

 “It’s her, right?”

 I didn’t speak for a moment. I stared at the window with the image smeared onto the glass. It wasn’t that clear and so I handed the camera back to Jake.

 “I’m not sure. I cannot tell who that looks like, if it’s really a person at all. I think it’s possible that you could be grasping at things. My son could have pressed his face against the glass and made that impression, you know.”

 But I did notice the face and I didn’t remember my son pressing his face against the glass, yet I didn’t want to get too excited or frightened, not yet.

“Natie, that’s a face, and see…” Jake clicked through the images. “Here’s another one, but the face is gone. Oh Natie, that ghost is in there, and it wants to contact us.”

 I stared at the clear window in the photo. I was terrified by the fact that my aunt could be in that room, the room where my children sleep every night. The nightmare images flashed momentarily through my mind and I shivered. The thought of Franklin was completely gone now, only the thought of coming face to face with a dead thing prevailed.

 “Jake, do you think we should stop?”

 Jake put his undivided attention on my face, then my chest and then my face again. “I…I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

 I took the camera from Jake and looked at the images again. There in one image was a face, and in the next one, nothing at all, Just the edges of the curtain. “Take another one, Jake.”

 Jake took a couple more pictures of the window and then took pictures of the wall, the mimosas, and a few pictures of me.

 “Smile babe.”

 But I didn’t want to smile. I wanted to cry and go somewhere else, but I had nowhere else to go. “Let me see the pictures.”

 Jake chuckled softly and looked down at the camera. He clicked to the viewing screen and nodded. “You are beautiful in front of the Mimosas. The green of the leaves contrasts with your red hair…sexy.”

 “Jake, can you get on with it. Do you see anything?”

 Jake clicked and clicked until he stopped. I saw his face change, his smile dropped.

“What is it?”

 Jake looked at me and then back at the screen.

 “Is the face in the window?” But the face wasn’t in the window, and the face wasn’t looming within the mimosas.

 “Look, don’t freak out.”

 “Give me that!” I snatched the camera from the idiot who thought it was better to drag things out.

 Maybe a face wasn’t in any of the other pictures but there was a face in the image on the view screen. It was a picture of me standing by the wall, and there within the bricks were the contours of a face. Rounded surfaces pulled the hardness of the wall into a bulging image. It seemed to be scowling. Dark brick eyes were glaring at me. I didn’t mean to, but I dropped the camera. Thanks to the dead pods from the mimosa, Jake’s camera was cushioned and safe.

 “Jake?”

 “Yes Natie.”

 “Don’t leave. I’m scared.”

 “Okay, sure.”

 Later that night, as Jake and I sat at the dining room table, I retraced everything we had done. We tried phantom writing, we tried EVP, Pictures, and video and checked for temperature changes. We even kept a close check on the electromagnetic readings. I was exhausted and the hard chair was hurting my butt. I stood to give my tailbone a little relief, and my chair moved backward of its own volition.

 “Jake! Did you see that?”

 Jake’s mouth was hanging open so I assumed he saw it too. “Yeah, I saw that.”

 A soft tapping started somewhere near the refrigerator which was behind Jake and across the room. The tapping grew louder and then cereal boxes, and a cake plate flew from the top of the refrigerator and across the room. I screamed and tackled Jake in his chair. One hand was full of Jake’s leather jacket, gripping just as his shoulder, while the other hand hugged him for protection. He pulled me off him and stood to face the clutter.

 “wow. I think we’ve started something.”

Natie and Jake should take inventory and counsel

Even the cheap gadgets worked. Those little phone apps were more than I had bargained for. Now Jake was angry at me about Franklin, and I did sleep with Franklin. I just wish that Jake wasn’t right and I had to figure out a way to get his attention off the whole ordeal. Because I wasn’t cheating on him now and Franklin had been out of the picture for weeks.

 “Jake, stop being a jerk.”

 “I will stop being a jerk when you tell me it isn’t true. Tell me you’re not sleeping with my best friend.”

 I didn’t want to lie but I wanted to lie to Jake. How would I do it?

 “Listen, you know that app is full of crap, right? It’s ridiculous, Jake, please stop being so jealous. It’s just a name, it could have been any name, for that matter. Come on, I need you to help me contact my aunt.”

 Jake wasn’t convinced and I knew he would come back around to this topic sooner or later. I just wanted to buy some time and try to smooth things over. After all, Jake and I weren’t really together when I was seeing Franklin, so I didn’t understand why the app would say his name.

As I struggled to get a hold on my situation, I felt the goosebumps rise up on my arm. I realized it was cold in the living room.

 “Jake? Can we check the temperature readings now?”

 I didn’t know what he was thinking, but he stood and gathered his camera and EVP metre. Then he put them down again. He was confused, running his hands through his hair. He picked up his equipment once more than looked at me. Even an adulterous girlfriend couldn’t keep him away from his ghosts. Even I, as complicated as I was, could not drag Jake from his own reality. Jake wasn’t a jerk, he was magnificent. It’s just bad timing for us and I knew it wasn’t going to be pleasant as pie from here on out. But I was desperate. Jake looked at me and he could see the desperation and sadness in my face.

 “You really need this don’t you?”

 I was caught off guard by his words, but I caught on. “Yes, she died in there and going in the closet isn’t good enough.” I motioned toward the back bedroom. “ That corner has been dark ever since. I think she wants me to come to her, the cold place, you know.”

 “I got it. Let’s go. Grab the other camera. Oh and, bring your phone too. Make sure that ghost hunting app is still on.”

 “Are we going in there, in the room?”

 “No, I have an idea.”

 I never heard Franklin’s name again as we walked behind the house. I heard a few other strange words like ‘syringe’ and ‘number’, but no ‘Franklin.’ I guess the ghost was done being comical and devious. I guess it’s fun for the dead to watch the living squirm under pressure. They were the real jerks. Suddenly I felt bad for calling my aunt a jerk because my aunt was among that throng of the dead. I wondered if she was playing havoc with me and enjoying the torture.

 “What about here? Is it this window or the one on the other side?” Jake stopped and looked around the yard.

 I looked up at the high rectangular windows and shivered. “It’s these windows. Why are we outside the room, Jake?”

 “Because sometimes the spirits lurk outside the room they died in. They are scared of that room, almost as much as you are. She could be wandering anywhere outside these windows, even in the woods behind us.”

 I spun around and gazed into the darkened center of the woods. Vines and saplings invaded the yard and high limbs from trees tickled my head with dying leaves. I jumped back by a sudden scratch from above. “The woods are too close here, Jake.”

 “Why do you say that?”

 I leaned against the brick wall and whimpered. “I’m scared, Jake. What if she is still mad at me?”

 “What do you mean, mad at you?”

 I looked at him, pouring every fiber of sadness into the air between us. I wanted him to read my mind, but I forgot that he couldn’t do that. I wanted him to hold me then and I wanted him to forgive me about Franklin. Jake knew why I was scared. He kept telling me that it wasn’t my fault, but I knew better. It was my fault.

 She was coming for me, pushing through the fabric between purgatory and the living. She was already in my dreams, along with blood and exorcisms and screams. I saw knives cutting flesh and I saw a door opening. There behind the door was her face. There on the table, being rid of his demons, was my father, who was also dead. My aunt and my mother, both dead as well, were holding him down while my son took a knife to his throat. I instructed my son to kill him, and he did.

 “I am not your father. You cannot kill me.”

 “Hey! Natie, are you okay? What do you mean? Why would your aunt’s spirit be mad at you?”

 I couldn’t speak. I kept seeing her face coming back to me. She kept coming back.

 “Natie, why would she be mad at you? What did you do?”

 “I killed her, remember? I killed them all.”

Jake and Natie, sleep will never come

He left me in the closet with a pen and piece of paper. It was an exercise, he said. It was a way that she might choose to come through for me. All I had to do was close the door and be silent. It was dark and I could not see the pen nor the paper, and this was how Jake wanted it. I was to place the pen against the paper and wait for her to write for me.

“How long does this take, Jake.”

“Be quiet, Natie. I don’t know but I’m sure it’s not going to work if you are talking.”

I waited. I tried not to will my hand to move or not to move and it was weird. It was no different than the Quiji board, no different than holding that little plastic thing together with everyone else’s shaking fingers. In the closet, all I could do was listen to my breath and forget that my fingers even existed.

“Jake, I don’t like this.”

Jake ignored me. He refused to carry on a conversation during the serious exercise, well, he thought it was serious. I was growing weary of all the tricks and exercises and I wanted something real. I wanted to get out of the dark closet and sit in the living room. I just wanted to use the recorder or take pictures. This phantom writing stuff was crap.

“Jake please….”

He opened the door. It was obvious that he was peeved at me from the look on his face. His dark hair was disheveled and his forehead was creased. Jake reached in and took the piece of paper from my hands. He froze.

“Did you do this? Did you write this?”

Jake held the paper in front of me as I climbed from the closet. There was a word scribbled at the top of the page. I looked at him and then back to the page.

“I didn’t write anything, Jake.”

Jake pushed the paper into my face.

“What’s this then?”

At the top of the page was the name ‘Franklin’.

“Whose Franklin, Natie?”

“I…I don’t know, Jake. I didn’t write that.”

Jake’s eyes grew wide and he smiled. “Natie, do you know what this means? If you didn’t write this, then someone else did and you were in that closet alone…but you weren’t really alone. Do you see?”

I realized that I was never alone in that closet and so I jumped away from the closet door immediately. I looked back inside only seeing my clothes and shoes. There was nothing or no one else.

“Jake, I was alone.”

“No Natie, you were in there with a ghost, babe. It was her! I just don’t understand who Franklin is. She never talked about anyone named Franklin.”

“How do you know it was her, Jake?”

Jake was silent. We both walked back into the living room and sat down. He picked up his phone, which was set on the Halloween ghost meter app.

“Jake”

The ghost meter spoke Jake’s name and immediately got his attention. Jake stared at the screen watching the radar needle spin around and around. He looked at me and smiled.

“How’d you like that, Natie. It said my name.”

The ghost detector spoke again. “Franklin”. And again, “secret”.

Jake put his phone on the couch and turned to me. His eyes traveled from my eyes to my hands. He noticed how I wrung my hands and scratched at my jeans because I did. He looked back into my face and silently wondered who Franklin was, silent until he asked me again. And he should ask me because I do know a Franklin, a few of them actually. What he wanted to know was why did my aunt want to talk about a guy named Franklin. I don’t even know if this was her or not. It could be a demon, they say that demons masquerade as loved ones to draw us into their trickery. This could be a demon, yes, a demon. But I did know a Franklin and he was going to ask me, I just know it and ….

“Whose Franklin?”

What I'm thinking- July 7, 2016

The aftermath is never filled with writing fodder. Honestly, I don’t know why I came here at all. I guess this is the last frontier. I saw the beauty of Jupiter and I wanted to go. It’s creamy milk clouds swirled with dark brown storms and winds making its moon stand out in detailed glory. Lo and behold the splendor of the artist’s rendition of the Great Red Spot. Excuse me while I capitalize whatever I please.

So I sit there, growing fatter by the hour because of some strange sleep hormone and all the posted signs. I hate this torture, this caged bird mentality that my sleep holds me sway. Tomorrow, I shall try again to put one foot in front of the other in a neighborhood safari, but the forest still calls-oh God! The agony is too great and call me ungrateful if you wish. Say that I am spoiled because I have everything that I want! Say it!

So the aftermath of all this death is still not affording me something to talk about. I do feel another one coming on, another premonition of some great legend dying and some injustice waiting in the wings. But it’s just like always, from the time of my birth until now and it will never change. It’s like the calm face of the woman whose husband was gunned down in front of her, it’s life and life to me is this.

I will take two steps to your one but I will never know where I am going.

Do you understand?

What I'm thinking--June 25, 2016

I came across my anger, as if I had never seen it before. It was alien and unstoppable. All around the room, their faces made me mad. It was the inconsistencies, the lies and the ignorance which set my mood aflame. I wanted to say “I will not suffer fools”, but that would be too cruel. I love them, all of them, I do. It’s just that sometimes I have to be hard to stand my ground. They tell me to express my inconveniences and my issues, but do it in a civil manner. Whenever I try to be civil, I am met with this arrogant threat. It is hypocrisy

It’s all a myth. When you disagree, you cannot be civil. No matter how calm you are, to some, they will never be able to accept that you disagree with them and that you wish to tell them no. I wish to tell them no, all the time, just for the fun of it and just to make it even with my decades of yes’s. I want to say no and with that no, stand straight and tall in my convictions.

Some of them want to instill fear as a means of control and then say that you are trying to control them. IT’s a form of manipulation, old really, and when first introduced with this manipulation, it can be startling to the senses. Once you encounter this trick, you can conquer the symptoms of fear. Fear, fear fear, they love to use the tool of fright to deny they have an allegiance with fear at all.

I came across my anger and at first I was ashamed by it. I prayed against it and I held it down with all my might and 200 stacks of books that I read week to week.

“Be kind”, “Don’t make assumptions” and “Control your temper.”

These are supposed to be sage words. These words are supposed to remind you that you are not a slave of fear and anger any more.

So, why, when I finally get angry, do I feel like I’m finding my worth? It’s confusing at times, it’s hard to not get angry at ignorance and evil. And yes, there is pure evil out there, it’s the pride of mankind.

I came across my anger and I was reminded of my savior in the temple, driving out the vile. To anger is not to sin.

There is a time and palace and my anger is mine. I am not a slave to my anger, nor anyone else.

The only name I remember

To know a name is to command power. I wonder about this sometimes and the wondering leads me back to sleep. How can a name entrap a human being and force this human being to bend?

“I call your name and you must do as I say.”

This doesn’t always work, you know, so how shall this work on demons? You’ve seen the movies, the exorcism flicks and horror based movies. In the story, the name of these spirits holds dominion. Once you know the demon’s name, you can cast it back to hell.

“In the name of Jesus, I bind you and cast you out!”

Yes, that works in the movies. It works in reality as well, as long as one condition is met.

Faith.

This is where my wondering stops, right before I fall from the cusp of sleep. I drift into another place, filled with impossibilities and communions with the dead. I follow a path to a land where names mean nothing and faith is like the blood in my veins. Here I have faith but no name and there I had names with no faith. My quest, within the dream, was to fuse the two together so that I could fight my demons.

The darkness said no, but I kept trying to remember names when I awoke.

One morning I remember a solitary name and with it, faith of a mustard seed. I called to the father with the name on the tip of my tongue. My faith was burning like a grain of hot sand.

“In the name of Jesus, I bind you and cast you out!”

I spoke sternly, with one name on my tongue. It was a name I could never misplace.

It was my own.

“I cast you back to hell.”

Jake and Natie....I cannot sleep

“I know you want to see her, hear her or whatever, but it takes time.”

“Do you think we will get something tonight?”

“Maybe”

Jake had new equipment. He explained it to me but I have already forgotten what it was. Seems like he called it a spectrovolumizer or something like that. These devices are special made to detect things like cold spots and electromagnetic fields or whatnot. I guess I’m mutilating the names and processes of this equipment, but I wish to learn more. I want to do what Jake does. Jake talks to the dead.

“Jake, did you say that was a voice extramologer?”

Jake laughed way down in his belly. His smile was huge. He would have been cute if he wasn’t making fun of me.

He could barely speak through his guffawing. “It could be a prestidigitator working through the flabnoid erupter.”

I wasn’t impressed. Our neighbor had already said those ludicrous words while banging on his alternator with a screwdriver. I wasn’t the only one who was clueless. Heck, the world was infested with ignorance.

“Jake, I’m sorry. I can’t pronounce those words and I forget all the time. I just want to talk to her.”

He took my hand and lead me over to the couch. There, lined up against the edge of the rug was three devices. One was large and the other two no smaller than a cellphone. He was making a list of what he needed for the trip. Apparently, these were his ‘prime babies’ as he called them.

“You see this?” Jake picked up something that looked like a calculator. “This is my portable ‘spirit box’. You wouldn’t believe how important this thing is.”

Jake took the little electronic and sat down on the couch, pulling me down with him.

“So, how does this work? Is it complicated?”

“Okay, when we get there, we will first use the infrared thermometer to detect cold spots. You see, where there’s a ghost, the air will turn icy. The temperature will drop so suddenly that chill bumps will appear on your skin. It’s true. Then, we use the other devices in unison-EMF meters, ion detectors and cameras. You know you want the good old fashion photos as well, huh…”

“Wait, slow down, Jake. What is an ion detector?”

“Natie, you wouldn’t understand if I told you.”

I hated it when he assumed that I was an idiot. A good hard frog on the arm would fix that. I punched him and punched him hard.

“Ouch! Okay, look. An Ion detector is another way to detect a form of energy. Except this one detects radiation or static electricity.”

“Oh, so why does a ghost make static electricity.”

“It doesn’t. Let me explain something to you. When a person dies, they do not go away. Nope, never, they simply transform. I know you’ve heard bunches of people talk about this before. It’s not new. Anyway, we are energy, plain and simple and when we die, our energy persists. It weakens but it does not cease to exist. We no longer have a body and therefore, we cannot speak, see, hear or anything of that nature. Are you following me so far?”

“Yes Jake. Clear as mud…I mean a bell.”

I take this opportunity to roll my eyes because I grow weary of waiting.

“Okay, so imagine your loved ones who have passed into this different state of being. They may be trapped here or simple have no interest in going somewhere else. Don’t ask me about God or anything because I want to approach this from a secular viewpoint for now. So, you’re dead, bear with me and pretend a moment, Natie. You’re dead and you wish to talk to someone who is alive. What can you do? If you cannot talk because of lack of vocal cords, then how do you get the message across?”

“I don’t know. I would have to do something or just wither away in desperation-if withering of anything was even possible.”

Jake smiled. “If you were dead, you would take that energy you had left, which was you, and you would push that energy toward the object of your communication. That is what you would do.”

“But you said the energy was weakened by death, right?”

“Right, but think of all the electronic devices! This is what they do. I have no idea how these entities learned to do this, but they did. Whatever is left of you could have a consciousness, somehow, maybe an electric powered soul or some sort which was so thin that it was vapor. I have to stop before I get to a place I am unfamiliar with and get lost trying to show you the way. Listen Natie, all this stuff serves an important role in what we are going to do. If you want to talk to her, just you wait.

“Do you think it will happen, Jake? Do you think she can come through to us?”

Jake brushed my hair from my eyes and kissed my forehead.

“I hope so. I cannot stand to see you suffer so.”

Ghosts down by the Volcano

I visit here often. It’s a barren flat land riddled with zig zagging cracks. The sky is dark, of course it is, because only in the dark do secret things congregate.

There is fire, lava and dark rock at the bottom of a pit. I sit by the edge and think about those who’s love I cannot shake. I sit there watching fire blaze up over the boiling lava, and I close my eyes to see it more clearly. Sight, as I have learned is only partial to being able to see. Sight, in honesty, works its magic from somewhere deeper within as well.

I’m not always alone here. I call them to me. Most of the time I remember how many there are. Let’s see, I will have to think a minute…Maybe there are 12 or 13 of them. I watch the ones that I can remember as they shuffle from behind a large outcrop of black rock. They are bewildered because they do not know how they got here or why. They cannot understand the possibility of this place. Then they see me. A wave of recognition makes them whisper questions one to another. I surmise they want to know why they are together and I am there waiting on the edge of the chasm. They are unsure, but they start to gather that they are all connected to me. Some of them know this immediately, while others are strangers which gather the information through exchanged glances.

 I beckon them to come sit with me. So we talk. It’s not laboured or uncomfortable at all. I want them to know that despite the world we live in, they have to fade. There are some that will not go, will not move into the darkness and away. When at last, I feel alone, all that were before me are gone away, I breathe in remorse and content. It is a strange potion.

The night is silent, save for a few crackling sounds from the churning heat below.

“You can come out now.”

I hear the flutter of wings from behind me. I reach back holding out my hand. Talons wrap around my finger and squeeze.

“Non dimenticherò mai l'uccello nero.”

Reclaiming home

Traveling to the west, only a few hundred miles, is akin to traveling to another country, well in a way. I cross the river into the central lands and there are different words, dialects and postures. I knew it would have some variables, but when I find the truth of it, I find it preposterous. Within a finger's joint on the face of my map, I can be completely misread. So be it.

It's lovely to be home again. Although it's changed, I know I prefer it. It's still dark, cold and wet, for the most part, but it's home. You know how home can be hell, but it's your hell? Yes, you see. Even if you return in a mortal coil unknown, you return regardless.

There are too many places to go, you see, because there are too many portions of me. Hundreds more miles south of here, I will visit another home to me. When I close my eyes, I will be there, upon the banks of another river. Music will heighten senses and smells will reignite nostalgia. Bustling crowds and the sound of bells awaken my memories now.

Again, it will be different. Only a few hundred, many three, and the dialect will change, the mood will deepen and I will have to tap into something else. Within a finger's joint, I will travel to another world, a modern world, one that is foreign, in all aspects, to the world from before. Just as in distance, in time...I will be completely misread. So be it.

Das ist meine kamph

Does it make sense to continue when the pain is so ripe? It is so vicious that an emptiness is left in its wake. I think of different ways to do it, every night. I fantasize about shooting myself in the head, taking too many pills and even walking in front of a truck. I think about other ways as well. It does get that bad, you know. It’s almost unbearable at times, and no one understands just how difficult living is. It’s hell, as if hell was a hollow place stuck in repetition. So, does it make sense? What meaning comes from this endless misery? Mein Kamph…

I know you wonder why it hurts too much. I have no simple answers and that only makes it more painful. There are too many words and too many images inside my head. I have a thirst for too many things, to boot. There is definitely a stimulus overload, an attack upon my senses. At any moment, someone could walk through my bedroom door and ask me what I was doing. I couldn’t tell them because I have forgotten what this story as supposed to be about.

Last year, I thought I was Cinderella. I lost my shoe in the midst of monstrous machines, grinding and molding steel all around me. A blue-eyed prince pretended to save me and in the process cut off my head for the queen. I was no longer Cinderella, but Alice. In the looking glass, I saw the truth. My face was not mine, but another. At midnight, when I was still on the verge of turning from Cinderella mindset, I turned to the prince in order to tell him my secrets. It was a time when I knew what I wanted and felt like human. It was betrayal, the night before he killed me. I knew it was too deep and he might drown without my unwilling sacrifice.

That was a year ago, wait, maybe two, or no, it was three. Time has passed, I have disentigrated and something happened to my muse. I cannot saw the darkness is gone, because it coaxes me to end it all. The darkness is different, and I think it doesn’t grow in the same vessels as before.

In times such as this, my words do not make sense. I think it is because the filing cabinet was tipped over, spilling the contents across the floor. Cinderella and the prince came waltzing in,  scattering files all across the room. They didn’t care how messy they were or how their actions would bring devious consequences. The wind blew twice, no thrice and the paper flew into the winds of time, scattered among the grasses in the field, between the pines and deep within the dark corners where the fairy hides.

I want to end it all, I do. I am in so much pain. Every day, full of sunshine and glorious blue skies, I see darkness. I hear despair, my chest is hollow in a dull thudding ache. I want to die, die as they died, all of them. All the humans die and it is over. Whether there be heaven or hell, nothing or nothing, I want to die. There is no point in fighting this war. I have no solution. I have no plans.

I have no art to spare. There is nothing left here.

But, of course, that’s how I feel tonight. Tomorrow, on the other hand, I could right as rain and bright as the sunshine’s smile.

I am unpredictable and utterly confused. There are few constants for me, they are dark, they are sordid and they are Godlike.

Till morrow then…

1817 Bromley

1817 Bromley

Father didn’t come home as he promised. It’s been days since he was to make an appearance. There were men, come calling, I heard them tell father to travel into town. Father was strange after that, but he promised he wouldn’t be long away.

I watch by the window because my heart is heavy for him. Although he is hard with me, I cannot stop feeling guilt for how I displease him, how I failed to be a lady. Even my book of poems fails to bring me peace-Rosetti, this one is dark and tragic. I cannot remember the name, as my book in on the floor.

There is a knock. I know it’s Erzebetha but I do not wish to see her or talk to her. I do not want to hear her breathe. I hate the way she looks at me with pity. I see it… I know something is not right.

“Mistress, you should get some rest.”

She tries the door but I have locked it against her. I pick up my book and sit back down at the window. I can feel the winter chill creep through the cracks around the glass. There's a raven, on the branch of a tree by the garden. He turns to look at me and I feel the darkness twist and churn within my chest. The black bird flies away and it deepens my despair.

“Leave me be.”

 The dark comes outside my reading, and with it more hopes dashed and tears welling.

“Father, please come home. I think I heard mother wailing from her earthen bed and the night birds sing a song that turns my blood to ice.” I whisper into the corners of the room, hoping some lonely insect might hear me.

 Father…

I close my eyes and I remember a face. It was a brown face with almond eyes and full lips. Yes, it was a native, I am sure of it. Of all things now and then, I remember that face, and yet I was just a child.  There is an image dancing, the bellowing deep throat calls ringing through a scorching night. I remember the fire, fire everywhere and the smell of death. Yes, I can remember this, just as I remember the ocean, the smell of musty salt water sloshing beneath the hull of the ship. I remember the great storms and the men who pulled me down into a darkness of the ship.

 I saw London and I see Bromley, a cold place, my home. There are so many memories rushing through my head now. I want to keep my mind occupied, I want to stop the horrors that my imagination creates and I have to stay awake. I know, if I fall asleep, I will wake with a new dread, an empty digging feeling because father has yet to come home.

I cannot stay awake. It’s useless. I feel it pulling me under, the arms of sleep. It pulls me beneath those crashing waves, those deep green, foam-crowned waves and it takes me back to that strange place. It’s not working. I wish to return home but I keep waking up on the red banks of the savage land. I see her, she is brown with long black hair and piercing eyes. She carries an infant in a satchel on her chest. There are others with her, Europeans maybe, three of them. Their voices converse in kindness and not condescending as the others. They stare down at me and frown. The brown lady speaks in a language that comforts me. I lift a hand to my face and gasp. My hands are brown, brown as the brown skinned lady towering above me. I feel my face and I imagine that I would look like the natives too.

Waking from sleep, I whimper. Images flood my mind as fast as I can catch my breath. My breathing is labored, just as my mind is fighting too. I push off the cotton sheets from my bed and rush to the window. The sky is overcast, hung with clouds. I turn toward my door and call to him.

“Father, are you here?”

There is nothing. I can hear creaks and moans because my home is silent but for the snores of the servants. I am no lady. My dress is stained, and I hold the hem of my skirt in clenched fists. In the looking glass, I see no signs of my salvation. I see her face. It is not my face, it is not the face of my father. I see something peculiar, something alien in that image. She looks back at me and shakes her head.

I trace the lines of my prominent nose, my lips and my almond eyes, all with the tip of my brown finger. I will never be what father wanted. Even the light from the window cannot illuminate my dark skin.

Father…

I remember the dead, in piles around me. I hear voices, angry voices sounding across the masses of savages. They are coming. I see them walking amongst the bodies, they are pale, different and I am frightened. I weep as pale hands lift me from dark dead hands.

Father…

My reflection whispers back to me.

"Wake up, spirit."

Forceful writing

They say one of the best times to write is when you feel horrible inside. It’s then that your words can have depth unimaginable. In ways, this is true. In ways, however, I feel empty. I fantacize aoout death because I want to stop hurting, and death would eliminate the hurt. I can write about that, but there isn’t much more I can elaborate on, at the moment.

I can try, and here goes. I wanted to read a book, a book about fairies. IN fact, the book is called ‘faireies’. I looked through the first couple pages, gazing at the illustrations and reading a little bit about the Cornish beliefs. The boundaries kept by the fairy folk, elf folk alike fascinated me. It was just past the boundaries of human properties that you would find the fairies and elves. There, you could be tricked by all sorts of fancies-intelligent vegetation, living and material tunes, even whispers and you could even be fooled by another human. Of course, it wasn’t a real human in origin.

I like this book. I think I will continue reading for a while, It reminds me of the past, when I would wander through the forests listening to music, reading poetry and turning into something else. I miss the forests, and I wonder now, if that is why I think about committing suicide. I cannot go home. Home, in so many ways, does not exist.

I want to write and yet, I want to stop writing. This feeling is so complex that I couldn’t be explained in its entirety.

I feel horrible inside, but I think I will try to sleep. Sometimes, sleep is how I stay alive.

The Morbid Ghost, Shared Interests

“I’m going to tell you what the sun feels like to a dead man. “

I spoke to nothing because nothing was all that was left when the end didn’t come. It’s like the universe in a bottle, confined with no end. The sun would be merciful if only I could fly that far.

 The sun is a ball of fire, when far away from humans, it burns the top layer of their skin. I was human once, and I can vaguely remember strolling along the Sicilian coast basking in the sunlight. I think that happened, just as I think I remember the taste of fresh bread and fruit. These things are distant, but the sun to a dead man is something I can relate to. At the moment, the sun is digging its fingers into my flesh and sending tingling sensations from top to bottom. My head hurts, it’s filled with thousands of buzzing insects throbbing beneath my scalp and my fingers, they are growing, stretching outward expanding the bed of my nails. The vast network of my circulatory system is alive with burning blood. I feel it and it’s as if I am human, but not quite. My objective is to let the sun finish burning me. I have high hopes, although I’ve lost count of my suicidal attempts.

So why will it work this time? It won’t.

I open my eyes and they are alive with fire as well. My left eyelid sticks open, but I peel it free. There is little moisture and it is pink with my damned blood. I wipe the pale red splotches from beneath my eyes.

“It hurts. Good.”

“Why is it good for you to hurt?”

The voice is smooth and sweet, and It encases me in its loveliness. It sounds like a woman, and because I love to look at women so much, I have to see this one as well.  I turn to see something moving against the backdrop of the treeline.  It is thin, a momentary smudge in the green landscape. I watch the thing grow bigger, painting a gray smudge against my surroundings. This is no ordinary woman, this one is a phantom.

“Hi there.”

The gray soup boils in the air. It turns and swirls creating knots of solid looking pieces. The pieces meld together and pull into portions. Two portions form hands and one large ball of smoke forms a mass high and center. A head and face, surrounded by red billowy hair frames the image making an expression. It smiles.

“hi”

She was beautiful, or rather her own memory of herself was comely. I know a bit about phantoms and that’s how it works. When you see a ghost, you are only seeing an image of how the dead saw themselves in life. Of course, they could be projecting the most attractive rendering of themselves to date, but either way, a ghost was only a memory incarnate. I’ve seen only a few ghosts before. My brother was a phantom, he came to me long after his death. His apparition was the only one I had encountered until I moved to the New World. Here, I saw things that weren’t ghosts, they were something else.

“Seems as though you’re deep in thought, sir.”

“yes, I was thinking of…phantoms, to be exact, demons rather. Are you friend or foe?”

She looked confused by my question. The features contorted sending tendrils of gray spinning away from her face.

“Friend or foe? I came to say hi. It’s not that serious, you know.”

I saw a scowl form on her lips and even though she was dead, she was adorable. I thought she might enjoy a little teasing.

“Well, I believe you’ve come for me soul. I am damned and God has sent you to fetch me, right?”

Her scowl deepened. “I guess you are going to be a pain in the arse. This was a mistake.”

The beautiful girl’s form began to fade. Her face faded back into the gray mist that birthed her. I immediately felt regret.

“Wait, I’m sorry. Won’t you please come back and speak with me.”

“No”

But that phantom lady lied. She swirled around me and hovered just above my head. I looked up to see her pretty face. She gasped and pulled back into the cloud.

“I saw you there.” I pointed while looking up.  “So Come out and speak with me. I promise I will behave this time.”

It was silent. The sun of high noon was dampened somehow, and all around me, the air grew cold.

“Is that better?”

Her voice was sweet and filled with pain.

“Is what better, my dear?”

“The sun was hurting you, burning your eyes. I thought about shielding you and there you have it. It worked.”

I laughed, for I realized what she had done. IF heaven had come down to protect me, it would be something like this. Too bad I didn’t want protecting. She seemed amused by her feat, I heard her tinkling laughter on the wind.

“I did good, right?”

“Not really. Why do you think a vampire is out in the noonday sun? Why do you think I’m not burnt to a crisp?”

She gasped. “So, you are a vampire then. Wow, how do you stay alive? Is the sunlight thing just a fantasy story?”

“Well, partially. Besides, I’ve been coming out here for quite some time now.”

“Why? Do you like the sunlight, then?”

“I have no preference. The sunlight brings back memories, no doubt, but I am angered by the sun.”

“Then why do you come out here?”

I wasn’t sure of the reason myself. I only wished she could read my mind and be done with it. How could I explain the complexities of the whole thing?

Her face formed right in front of mine. She was grieved by what I was saying.

“Yes?”

“Would you like to read a book which never ended?”

She didn’t speak. Her gray mist didn’t attempt to help her form words this time, at least not for a moment. I saw something in her face, something familiar. Her countanence hardened then and I knew she was about to lay on me, what Jim always referred to as, “a revelation.” She wasn’t just a spectator here.

“You understand, don’t you?”

Her expression softened and melancholy took the place of her anger.

“I know how it feels to never have an ending.”

“How can you know what it feels like to never die? You’re dead.”

Her face changed somehow, the mist grew darker around her eyes. She laughed, and as she did, birds erupted from the pines on the border of the field. Her laughter was human and it sounded throughout the forest, making echoes. The silence and the creaking trees replaced her maddening laughter.

I felt a tickling sensation near my right ear. Words, silken and sad pressed into my ear. Although there were no biological mechanics in which she could form speech, and there were no fleshly lips in which to utter the words, she spoke regardless.

“Who says death is the end? You can stay out here until your flesh crisps to nothing and your bones dissolve, but…it doesn’t always end.”

I stood still letting her words move their way down into my being. I understood what she meant.

“So, why are you here? Why did you choose to speak to me? You cannot move on, can you? You’re trapped.”

She was gone, just as suddenly as she appeared. It wasn’t enough. I wanted to know why she was here in this time and this place.

“Why did you speak to me?”

But it was too late. She was gone, melted into the shadows that formed at the edge of the field. The sun dropped behind the clouds and drops of rain pelted my face.

Another day was ending but my end was nowhere in sight.

Corvus

Piscis Austrinus

More

It's all about doors, and if Jim were here, he would tell you about them and how they work. This is something I cannot describe, myself.

He waited until it was time and then he went through, you know. He transferred his spirit into another realm, metamorphosized into a new state of being. He's here, ya know. I feel him in the curl of my tongue against the roof of my mouth. That tingling sensation takes me back into his book of poetry and how I was too young to understand.

The words were so delicious and I might have uttered them aloud if not for kids from school that hated me.

He's coming again. I hear his black shroud whisper against the concrete of the city sidewalks. He's coming again. I can hear the leaves crackle beneath the bones of his feet. He's coming again. The waters slap the shore beneath a star filled sky. The moon sees him too.

I hear the earth move under my feet.
I'm on the outside, I'm looking in.

Every step you take, I hear you.

You have so much more to teach me.

I will go get Jim.

Just a story

Yuo remind me of my grandfather.

There are worse things than death, believe me. Sometimes, during moments of nothing,

He barked Monday, and I crept around the corner at the end of the hallway-nothing. On Wednesday, he was barking, standing at the foot of the bed with hair on end. I thought he might have heard something that time, and so I grabbed the gun and crept down the hallway once more.  He walked in front, occasionally looking back to see if I was following the edge of the living room door, he paused. He started growling as if something truly horrible was just beyond that doorway, and this turned my body to ice. I was afraid, again. I had to make a move and so I swung into the opening and stuck out the gun. There was nobody there, only my cat.

“Oh for christ’s sake, Chip, there’s no one in there but Prissy.”

My work makes me jumpy. It makes me believe that maybe, just maybe, there is something at the end of that hallway.

I’m a writer. Like the starving artist, I work hard for very little. From sun up till sun down, I browse the markets and update my blogs. Life outside my home is alien to me. I hardly ever leave, and so gradually, I think the world is disappearing entirely. Someday, it may just fade away. I don’t think I’ll miss it, because I am a writer. I write from sun up till sun down. I work hard for very little.

I had a story somewhere in my head. In the back where the files are kept. It was a horrifying story that will keep you up at night. I started to write, creating the characters and building the personalities, but then I stopped. A wall shot up in my mind and blocked the rest of what I needed to know.

I got tired of trying after several hours. The sun sank into the horizon and nightfall told me it was time to rest. Many times, I ignored that moment and kept writing into the night. Thing is, I couldn’t do it. My fingers hovered over the keyboard and nothing came out. I was frozen.

“Shit!”

I retired to my room and turned off the light. Because my mind was so empty, in moments I was asleep

Then, like the other nights before, he was barking and that’s what woke me. Unlike my previous routine, I lay back down and went to sleep.

This time, I wasn’t going to bother. It was just Prissy jumping on things or trees scraping against the window. There was nothing to be afraid of. I turned over and stared at the wall. Unfortunately, I couldn’t go to sleep. Chip stopped barking and growled for good measure.

“Would you please shut up!”

When I turned to yell at him, I was something else in the room A figure stood in the doorway-tall and thick. I saw no details, just the outline of its shape. My first reaction was shock, then I fumbled between the mattress and wall, searching with my fingers to find my gun. I heard my heart in my ears, sweat erupted on my chest and my breath came in sudden gasps. When my hand curled around the gun, I turned toward the figure. It was gone. I released my grip on the Judge’s handle.

Chip sat on the edge of the bed and whimpered. In a moment, he crawled over to me and lay down. I couldn’t sleep, he may have been soothed by the simple fact that the intruder was gone, but I wasn’t satisfied. I held the gun and waited. After an unknown length of time, I woke to morning light filtering through the windows. Chip was not in bed.

“Chip, come here boy!”

I sat at the computer for an hour before I could find any words. The assignment was vague and that’s the worse kind. Write a short story, he says. Make is fun and yet horrifying. The words didn’t come and that seemed horrifying enough to me. My mind was blank. I had written every short story you could think of. I thought about demon coffee cups that made you drink coffee until you were filled with the spirit, the dark spirit of the porcelain king. I stared at my cup and realized that I still hadn’t poured a cup of coffee yet. I was lost, and so I decided to sit down and start putting words onto the screen. Maybe the story would create itself, If I tried.

I poured the hot coffee into my cup and thought about the demons that could be living in the coffee beans. After all, coffee was addictive, it had to be created in hell.

I walked back to the computer, rubbed Chip between the ears, and started to write. It was lunch before I realized I had filled five pages of something. It was disjointed and mad, but somehow the story grew larger. I toyed with the hallucination from the night before and decided not to include the villain. As suddenly as the idea erupted in my head, I was frightened. AT my feet, Chip started to growl.

“Hey, it’s okay, buddy. We’re safe.”

My words were confident but my thoughts were iffy. I was still not convinced that the intruder was a sleepy halucinations. Those who doubt my tale about the intruder would probably call him a lump of clothes piled atop a chair, or a trick of the light. I knew better. I didn’t leave piles on clothes in chairs and I didn’t sleep with the light on. Rubbish!

I sleep well most of the night, until Chip began to back again. He was insistent, just as before, staring at the open doorway to my bedroom. His hair stood on end and his lips curled  over his canines. He was angry. It was hatred which fueled his discontent. Immediately I reached between the mattress and the wall. This time, I would shoot it. I didn’t care what it was, it was trespassing and I had every right to protect myself. I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to steady my nerves. When I opened my eyes, it was there. The same dark outline from the night before, but this time, it spoke.

“Let me help you.”

I didn’t understand what the words meant, but I thought I heard the voice correctly.

“Don’t come any closer, or I will put a hole in you!”

“Let me in…”

It spoke again, but it didn’t come closer. In fact, it didn’t even waver. Chip growled softly perched on the matress.

“Who are you?”

Then the figure moved forward, and the light of the moon, filtering through my window, shone the truth of the thing. It was a man. For a while, I didn’t recognize him. He wore a uniform with symbols I recognized all too well. His hair was dark and a square bit of hair sat atop his upper lip. I guess you could have called the thing a mustache. He was pale with the bluest eyes and I knew who he was. Shivers passed through my body when realization hit me.

“How is this possible? How are you in my room? Of all people on the face of this earth, why you and why me?”

“I’m an artist and so are you. I admire your work and would love for you to join me.”

“Join you where?”

“Oh, just a place where the muse never leaves. I always have inspiration there, and my roses have never looked better.”

All the while the figure stood before me, it didn’t move its’ lips. I heard the sound from deep within the thing, reverberating and smothering out the low growls from my dog.

“ Why me?”

For a moment, there was no sound and then the voice spoke softly.

“You are an artist, just like me. I knew at the moment of your birth that you would have the talent to create things, things so vivid that it was if life was in your work and fantasy was the world you perceive outside your window. I knew you, and you knew nothing of me.”

I was confused. “What do you mean?”

“Your mother didn’t have it, but you do.”

“Have what?”

He smiled, the figure smiled. I saw the capsule between his teeth. He reached and took the little pill, placing it in his other hand.

“You see this?”

“Yes, what is it.”

“A gift.’

Forever

In forests
In dreams
Drifting upon the ocean
Reading poetry
Writing poetry
Tearing words apart
Far away
But not so far
Raven

Spirit's in the sky
Stars n other worlds

I will not let her sleep
She will not let me sleep

The Morbid Ghost, pain and mortality

“Sit down, my friend. Have a drink?” Jerry held the vodka bottle poised over the card table. 

He knew vampires couldn’t drink vodka. He knew and yet he offered it to me anyway. No matter what I said to him, he persisted in giving me things I could not have.

“Why do you do this, Jerry?”

Jerry seemed amused. He leaned back in his tattered armchair and chuckled. He looked a mess, as most dead heads did. He looked both confident and defeated.

“I watch you. Maybe I watch you as much as you watch me because I know you watch me. Isn’t that what vampires do? You watch your prey, sometimes for years, even decades, and then you eat them for lunch. Oh man, I wonder how long you will watch me before I become a snack.”

I was irritated by his rambling. “What does that have to do with anything? Not that I’m partaking of such nonsense. What are you yapping about, Jerry?”

Jerry smiled. He wasn’t afraid of me, regardless of how much he talked about vampire moods, vampire tendencies and vampire characteristics. Jerry was fond of me and then he was curious as well. I know this because I can live in his brain. All meat things are easy for brain picking.

“I offer you things because I know you wish to be human. I know you wish to die. So, the worst thing that could happen, if you drink this, would be to die. Isn’t that what you want, awesome creature of the night?”

Jerry waved his hands in the air as if he could see a rainbow. Then again, maybe he could.

“I don’t know what I want, Jerry. No, I do know what I want. It’s simple and there are two choices. Either I want to die or I want to live beneath your basement.”

“Why? That makes no sense, man.”

I rose from my chair, the other tattered chair opposite from Jerry. All around me were stacks of comics, records and magazines. Perched upon each stack were brightly coloured bongs of all shapes and sizes. Thrown into the valley between those towers were piles of clothing that either Jerry had worn or were straight from the dryer, unfolded and neglected. Most anyone would wonder why I wanted to live beneath this rubble.

I walked around the room. I surveyed the posters which covered almost every space on Jerry’s lime green walls. I wanted to be here and I had no idea why.

“In all honesty, Jerry, to you, I have an unbelievable reason to be here. Months ago, right before I met you at that dilapidated white house, you know the one with the shattered window and putrid smell? Yes, right before then, before I walked the streets looking for the perfect place, the perfect person to help me feel human. I looked Jerry, I looked and I thought about so many things that my mind should have exploded. But vampire minds don’t break, they never break. No matter how much you try, were are fairly resilient. As I was saying, when I woke up from my slumber, I searched for someone like you and some place such as this. I woke in the earth, beneath the sands and I yearned to be human. I wanted to be a true human, not some wealthy ingrate with the belief that he would live forever. I wanted to be mortal, feel mortal and die like all of you. I wanted to live in filth, human-made filth that I could smell and I could detest, only as humans hated things. I didn’t want to observe from a distance like some mortals do. I wanted to live within the dampest hole beneath the home of a small person. Jerry, I insult you, this I know, but I would never be anything but honest with you.”

“Wow Stephen, that was both insulting and exhausting. You should write a book, man.”

“As I said, I’m sorry to have insulted you. I want to feel what you feel, Jerry.”

Jerry furrowed his brow. “I have one question. If you wanted to live in poverty, why not live in some village in a third world country?”

This angered me. Jerry had no idea how long I wandered the earth and he was getting under my skin. Every word, which fell from his lips was ignorant to me. It hurt my brain and yet, intrigued me all the same.

“What makes you think I haven’t experienced that sort of existence? I have lived in places you could never imagine. It’s just…well…”

“What, Stephen?”

“I lived in villages, I watched the natives fashion weaponry with little pieces of stone-chert, I believe. I watched the women and children playing in the earth, letting dirty water stream down their brown bodies. You should have seen it, Jerry! They were some of the first people here, in this land. I watched them for a long time, but then I scared them. I started wars among the tribes. You see, they believed I was a spirit sent from the enemy, and so I had to leave. I ran to the mountains where I slept in a cave. There, I was alone with my fire for years-absolutely alone. No animals wandered near me. In the distance I heard the wolf call and I traced its yearning. When I grew hungry, I hunted them, the wolves, but I was still filled with loneliness. Then, for still many more years, I lived on farms, in barns and beneath fields. Once, when I crawled from beneath the earth, I came face to face with a dead meat thing. I sat for hours watching the meat man, dead and neglected in the middle of that field…and Jerry, I wished it was me.”

“Wow man, you’ve been everywhere.”

Those are just places on this land. I have been to darker places than that on land across the waters. But I want to be here. I don’t want to live eternally alone, Jerry. I would be anyone but me. I would be you, Jerry.”

Jerry turned as if thinking of mortality, his human condition. His thoughts would have been interesting if I hadn’t heard it all before. Jerry turned and looked down between the chair and the small table beside him. He reached scrambling for a remote control. Jerry wanted me to hear a song and so he picked up the remote and pointed it toward a speaker in the corner.

“You want to be human but you’ve no idea what humanity is now. What you were and what we are is different, even when you breathed the air of meat men you were different than us. Here, I want you to listen to this, Steve, ole buddy. And I’m not pissed or anything. I’ve been insulted much worse than that. Listen.”

Jerry pressed the button and the emptiness filled the room. Inside the emptiness, a tinkling began. After a moment, music filled the room. I listened, and as the song progressed my mind absorbed the lyrics. It wasn’t altogether distasteful-it was like most music in the present era.

“What is this?”

“Doesn’t matter what it is, Stephen. All that matters is how it makes you feel. Listen close, maybe it’s your destiny. Maybe you are the king…the king of pain, my brother. Maybe you should keep living and truly understanding how devastating it is and how lonely it is. Keep watching us die, Stephen! Here, have a hit off this.”

Jerry pushed the joint toward me and nodded his head. I looked away.

“I don’t want that, Jerry. It will do nothing for me. In all this time, I have never touched those things, those vices of the human being.”

“Well, maybe you should. Hey, when “your meat men” are in pain, we like to numb the situation, know what I mean?”

 “Give me that!”

I snatched the joint dropping it onto the floor. My left Armani shoe crushed the marijuana cigarette.

Hey man! What you do that for?”

I stood and walked around the card table that separated us. Grabbing Jerry by the collar, I lifted him out of his chair.

“What is wrong with you? You should feel privileged to feel every moment of this.”

Jerry gasped. “Every moment of what?”

“Your impending death! You make me sick. You are so ungrateful for this gift.”

Jerry couldn’t understand and I could barely stand to look at him. It was plain and simple, I hate how spoiled the meat men are. When offered the greatest gift of all, they try to avoid it.

“Put me down! I thought you were my friend, man. Chill out!” Who doesn’t want to live forever?”

I slammed Jerry into his old recliner and walked toward the speaker in the corner. His infernal music was pushing him on. I lifted the speaker and broke it into pieces. No more king of pain, the music died in a whine and smoke curled up into the air. As Jerry yelled obscenities, I left the basement slamming the door behind me.

It was daytime and I would try again to end it all.