It’s what happens when you stare into the thick branches, because they’re in there looking back at you. I took a step back and squashed a slug under my sneaker. There shouldn’t be a slug there. I know. It’s half body moves for a second, the rest of it flattened goo. Damn them. They’re out tonight and they want you to know it. Not everyone. I told my sleeping girlfriend and she told me to shut up. Not because she hated me but because she felt it too. She just wanted to sleep but she was too hot. Too hot on this cold night. I pulled the blankets back and ran my fingers gently over her naked body, telling her that the heat was leaving, telling her the tingling feeling my gentle fingertips gave were like ice, that she could sleep. I went outside to connect. My body shivering for no reason, my eyes confused about what I was seeing, nothing. The edge of something, the darkness between the gaps, looking over my shoulder at the edge of a hedge, waiting for them to come out. They followed behind and back in, I closed doors but they are just metal or wood doors. Even now I’m waiting and feeling them behind me. I don’t want to look, I’ll tell you what it is like to be tormented by these things. They are perched or are curiously watching over my shoulder, I used to think they informed my writing or feelings but it is really just a morbid fear respect thing I have (and the continued ignorance (read: ignore-ance) keeps me going).
They found me again, I was lost for a while, in my own bubble. The confusing voices and sounds all came back in an avalanche. Every house a home to those chaotic witches we pretend don’t exist. They’re in the trees tonight, perched as such things do. I imagine they have crows feet or bare feet with thick nails. Sick vomit breath, they like to vomit, it reminds them they are human. I read today: we are not humans having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a human experience. Yeah, I get it.
Ha, yeah, a full moon. My mother always told me about how she felt during a full moon and I used to pretend I didn’t feel the same. When all the water in the world is most strongly pulled, or settled. Not pulled. That could be worse, as in not connected to the Earth, suspended, our bodies floating like at that moment when you’re at the top of a swing. That’s the power of the full moon, you are not grounded, you are at that stage where that feeling in your gut says ‘fuck! I could die I am at the mercy of NATURE’. And then the spells work and when they vomited blood and your semen and other things you don’t know about into their cauldron (yes they have cauldrons) it is only now that it begins to work, that the thing witches have designed for you, can work their magic.
I remember now, she sat next to me on a bus. Eighty or older she was and she leaned down, slowly, decrepit, to sit there and I moved what couldn’t have been more than a centimetre and she thanked me right in my face and I was made to breathe in her essence (breath) which immediately threw up images of decay and death and rotting flesh and I wasn’t too ashamed to cross myself and expel any demons this old witch was trying to seed in me. We sat together pleasantly enough for the rest of the ride and I thought ‘did she notice my response/protection ritual?’ Did she care? Was she trying to take a portion of my youthfulness or was trying to destroy a small part of it enough of a challenge for her? She did not prolong her own death through me that day.
What a target I am. Why? Because I am both saint and sinner. I have this ethos whereby I let others choose their actions. I have been called the devil so many times it’s not funny. And what is further funnier is that I see myself as an angel. I have NEVER forced anyone to make a decision. It has been their choice under the beautiful construct that is free will[1].
THE GOAL OF THE DARK
This is very simple and easily researchable. It is: the ability to influence/control others through your own will. Further, the idea that YOU are the centre of the universe.
THE GOAL OF THE LIGHT
This is very simple and easily researchable. It is: the ability to help others regardless of your own self. Further, the idea that we are all ONE.
I give my heart and they look at it like it’s a nice shiny thing. Chanel thing. Another thing. They don’t know what it is because it’s not real to them. This is magic.
They’re on my shoulders. I have to hunch and chew at my own cheek. I am spurred on as they send a coldness down my spine and I do prayer type things to keep them away form the beautiful girl sleeping nearby. She’ll hopefully have only nightmares. What has she let into her home but a succulent vessel that fends off attacks from little devils? My two radiant strong guardian angels are the best things created. Two of them! Left and Right. Soldiers who know who I am. We all laugh together when people call me the devil. Everyone who has ever met me has called me the devil. And I have NEVER done ANYTNING that would hurt or harm anyone. This is the strange battle I live within. Alone. With my two beautiful guardian angels. I feel like crying right now. There is a light, and I can feel it. I can feel it and I can keep going.
Two stories:
(1) ‘Come on Christopher we’re late for church!’
The boy struggles, pulling on a shirt and feeling uncomfortable.
The family (Husband, Wife and Christopher) get there, take their seats on the hard wood. The room is filled with all the mixed perfume of the middle aged woman. Christopher feels sick. He sits there listening to the same things he hears every week, looks up high at his parents’ blank faces who are singing something about god. Then the smell of their collective breath mixed with that perfume. A rotten mouth smell that is thick, sour and sweet. The adults leave the children in the pews to line up for the bread. They come back. His mother holds his hands while they shake hands with those near them saying “peace be with you” and smiling. They sing again, this time their breath has the sick smell of the weird bread they eat. It’s a long time before they go home he knows at this stage of the ritual.
(2) He put down a large mounted poster from the Lord of the Rings he took from his parents room (they said he could have it). The intricate designs and depictions of strange characters were enough for him to dream and imagine and in his own head make up a far stranger and richer reality than could be told through the actual book series itself. But still he used it as a lock. Behind the ‘lock’ he had a girlfriend. The most beautiful and perfect girl in the world (he thought). He at once worshipped her yet defiled her through his sexual extravaganza. He loved her so much but his outlet became the verbose human dirt sex thing that usually happens to the bored middle aged. He had no constraint, he had nothing to compare restraint to. These urges to give love fully and want lustfully were everything. His way of worshipping was through being naked and loving. His spirituality manifested in carnality. He was an animal. He was a god.
[1] I understand that by saying ‘construct’ I sound like a little imp, but, I really don’t want to change that word because (a) I like the way it sounds, I mean, it’s kind of insulting on quite a few levels and also (b) I cannot be scientifically sure that free will really does exist, okay? That’s in no way a scapegoat answer…if you do any scientific reading you’ll notice that consciousness and free will are the number one top priority MAJOR concept in psychology, philosophy, neurology etc etc. And of course you can understand why (i.e. religious, spiritual and paranormal implications et al). SIDE NOTE: the chief scientific advisor to the pope would baptise an alien if (quote) “it asked to be”.
