dark am i, yet lovely, a lily among thorns, majestic as stars in procession

dark am i, yet lovely, a lily among thorns, majestic as stars in procession
WHY DESTROY YOURSELF? WHY DIE BEFORE YOUR TIME? THE KEEPERS OF THE HOUSE TREMBLE. DESIRE IS NO LONGER STIRRED. DO NOT CONFORM ANY LONGER TO THE PATTERN OF THIS WORLD.

Monday, 31 October 2016

3 Years



I was exiting the carpark of the Panino Sistino restaurant when I first heard the voice. I’d been eating alone as usual. It was rare that anyone paid any attention to me – not when they weren’t slurring me with insults back in the U.K, anyway. The voice said, “Hey, you, halt.” It stopped me in my tracks. I spun around. There was no one close to me. It was a disembodied voice. “Over here,” I heard. It seemed to be coming from the lamppost. I edged closer, baffled and curious. “Hello?” I queried. “Hello!” the lamppost replied. I spun around again, this time looking for assistance, but I was on my own. So, a talking lamppost. How did one approach this situation? It didn’t cross my mind to ignore it, and carry on my way. The voice was soft and gentle, almost a plea. It wasn’t threatening at all. I felt inclined to attend to it. “Who’s there?” I asked, and the outline of a form appeared, flickering into focus like a mirage, inking itself into the shape of an alien woman, a holographic drawing developing before my very eyes. In a matter of seconds, a real and concrete figure had established itself out of nothingness into the sultry autumn air; tall, lean, blue, crouched – like something from that Avatar movie.

“My name is Tearlag,” the alien woman said, “don’t be afraid.” She motioned for me to inch closer. “I need your help.” I was shocked and fascinated, but not fearful. I had a long but hurried conversation with this entity named Tearlag. She said that she was from the planet Kronos, which our race knew as Kepler-186f. She said that her kind had interacted with our older civilisations throughout the ages: the Incas, the Mayans, the Persians, and the Aztecs. Apparently, for reasons she didn’t go into, she had become stranded between worlds, getting herself lost at interstellar roundabouts, all at sea in a quantum foam, and she now relied on me to get back home. I swore that I’d do everything in my power. There was a godly honesty about her that was angelic. My life, suddenly, had a second purpose.

Tearlag was very interested in my experience on Earth. I introduced myself as Raffy and spilled my soul out to her. She understood the depths of my pain as if she had already studied some prepared notes beforehand. As a man in his thirties, my whole existence had hinged on an eight-year-old girl called Chloe. I’d rescued her from abuse at the hands of Jimmy Saville at an institution for seriously-ill children, entitled Stoke Mandeville, in England. I’d confronted Saville personally, hired lawyers, gone through the stringent processes of adoption, and won her away from the hands of monsters. I’d clothed and fed her. I’d bought her a microscope, a dictionary, and a keyboard. These simple three objects gave us both much pleasure and many happy memories. I took to her as my own. She was a child of light. She was my first purpose.Then The Vatican had stepped in. They acquitted Saville and framed me, stealing my child back into the hands of even bigger monsters overseas and driving me out of my own country. I moved to Italy for two reasons: to follow Chloe and to flee the vigilante persecution brought about by the British press. When you get slandered and isolated as a molester, your life becomes unliveable. More importantly, I often have awful nightmares of Chloe in grave danger, and had become half-convinced that I would never see her little sweet soul ever again. I’ve recced The Vatican frequently since my arrival, and had grown to know its sole weakness regarding security – its keeper of keys. Gaining entry was not a problem, the issue was what to do once I was inside. No weapon would suffice against such stalwart corruption.

“I will help you, then you can help me,” Tearlag said. “A deal.” She formulated a plan, and listed her demands should I be successful. “In my lands, we have never tolerated evil. Whenever you come across it, bellow my name thrice to them, and they shall all be dropped by the music of Kronos.” “You will still be here?” I asked. “Take back what is rightfully yours,” she replied, “and then return here with the items I have requested.”I illegally infiltrated the great Vatican until I was confronted by a close-knit circle of black-robed priests in its very secretive heart. They were uttering a mantra by candlelight. Through a gap, I saw my Chloe lying unclad on a red satin-draped altar in the centre of a pentagram. She looked drugged. I barged my way through the huddle of priests and swept her up in my arms. The circle tightened around us both. No more gaps. No escape. All the priests reached into their pockets at the same time, each extracting something tiny which glinted silver in the orange luminosity. Razor blades. The circle tightened some more, a black wall, a net, around us.

I held Chloe like a broken doll, concealing her nakedness from them. She appeared to be waking up from her slumber, a hint of recognition in her sleepy eyes. “Raffy?” she asked, confused. “Yeah, it’s Raffy,” I said. “It’s Raffy. Raffy’s taking you home. I got you back, sweetheart. I told you I’d get you back.” Quickly, I dropped her to the floor and removed my jacket. This I draped over her and told her to fasten up. Then I clenched my fists and run at the bastards, shouting: “Tearlag! TEARLAG! TEARLAG!” All we heard was heavenly music, although heavenly is not strong enough a word. It was simply beautiful. Otherworldly.The priests didn’t engage with me, instead falling to the ground and clenching their temples. All their razors tinkled on marble. Chloe rushed up to me and held my hand. We walked out of there. I acquired the items Tearlag had requested: A mobile phone, a mirror, and a bowl of water. She materialised out of thin air as we approached the lamppost. “You must be Chloe.” She bowed at my child. Chloe bowed back. Then Tearlag got to work on her ‘generator’, putting the mirror into the water and tapping hundreds of digits superfast into the phone. It started ringing in dozens of different dial-tones at once. She spun her finger in the water, creating a vortex swirl. Chloe asked me what she was doing. “I’m creating a technological doorway,” Tearlag told her softly. “A magical gateway. A cosmic highway.”

A futuristic bobsleigh appeared above the water. “Thank you,” Tearlag said. “Can we come with you?” Chloe asked, eyes sparkling. I laughed incredulously, but then the idea took root in my mind. I still vividly recalled the music of Kronos and it spoke of societies with no suffering. There was nothing left for either of us here in the rotten house of ill-repute that Earth had evolved into. “Yes!” I agreed. “Can we?” We both stared expectantly at Tearlag the alien woman. Tearlag’s expressions were very human-like; she seemed humbled at our response, but sad as well. She indicated her tiny vessel. “I only have two seats,” she answered finally. “Can you come back for us?” Chloe asked, hardly able to hide her disappointment, but excited and hopeful at the same time. Tearlag thought about it, then nodded. “Three years,” she said. “I’ll come back for you in three years. I promise.” She got into her bobsleigh, her vessel. It took off into the sky. She waved at us from it as it got higher and higher. Then it accelerated out of the atmosphere, leaving a glowing whoosh in its trail.

Chloe held onto my arm, watching the trail slowly disappear. When it had evaporated, we skipped home together. I was sure the time would…well…fly.

© Witchlovingwarlock™ productions

Wednesday, 26 October 2016

Once The Door Is Opened...



Ruth heavily overdosed on a cocktail of street drugs, and the tangible area of her room broadened drastically. She was swept into an alternate dimension. Whatever she talked about after this life-changing episode seemed mad. Everything out of her gob seemed crazy and unbelievable. She was never the same again. She was never my same Ruth. But I stuck with her, I did, because that’s what love does to people; it makes them stick by each other no matter what.Did I love my Ruth? I guess I wouldn’t be so devastated by her mental demise if I didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather this not have happened, but there did still remain a lucid side to her, and the little sensible portion left shone brighter than ever. The thing is, she wanted to end it between us. She didn’t want her torment to get in the way. She didn’t wish for me to see her suffer. More importantly, she didn’t wish for me to suffer too.



She always spoke of this ‘other room’. I longed to enter it with her, to share her grief, to support her properly. “You don’t want to be here with me,” she said. “I don’t want you to be here with me.” But it was this I craved most. “What can be so bad about it?” I asked her. “There are governments in here,” she answered, “there are governments and ghosts and aliens and the devil. There’re all here, and they’re all as evil as evil can be.” So let me get this right: governments, ghosts, aliens, and the devil. All in one room beyond my current perception, but in a room my Ruth could no longer shut the door to, a room my beloved Ruth could not escape. “What,” I said, “there’s no God at all? Nothing good?” She simply shook her head. She’d been in there for so long that she said the cuts were not so deep anymore, the cuts were not so sore. (Mental cuts, she was talking about, psychological scars.) As if she had felt so much pain that she could no longer feel any pain any more. Why the hell did she have to take that concoction of drugs? I asked myself desperately. How could my very own angel break my very own heart?



Almost angrily, I allocated a handful of drugs myself. She tried her darndest to stop me. “I’m coming in,” I told her. “I’m coming in to be with you.” “But once the door is opened,” she replied, “it can’t be closed.” I didn’t care. Well, I did, I was afraid, but the fear of the evil unknown could not rival the heartbreak of not being with her. So I swallowed the lot with a scoop of Jack Daniels, struggling to keep it down. I threw up in my mouth but swallowed it again. There was now nothing stopping me from being with my Ruth. This was the special soul who I wanted to remain with for the rest of time. Her intrinsic spirit was practically glowing.The door to our room creaked open on its own, and the chilliest breeze of cold air drafted in. It was a wind without hope, a zephyr lest of faith. What lay beyond spoke of ownership and possession, maltreatment and slavery, fiendishness and perversity. And power…a power so ancient it had no contestants. My very bones trembled at the beckoning shadows. I shivered to my very core, and my very core shivered back in return.



“Don’t wait for them to come and get us,” Ruth said. “Let’s go in and face them together.” She appeared particularly worried for me, and the care written on her cute little features galvanised my gumption that I’d done the right thing. It was the governments and ghosts I was scared of most, because they were or were once human. Whatever the nature of aliens or the devil, they surely could not be somean as the deviant intricacies of the dark human heart.



The wind howled now, as we tiptoed to the precipice, and we clasped hands. We were going in to meet them head on, As One. I looked at my partner’s face, gaining strength from it. Their power meant nothing to her; she’d walked this lonely road countless times. She could take their corruption and taste justice; she could take their foulness and smell roses. Many-many voices rushed at us, speaking in tongues, and amorphous barbarities skulked at the edges of the room’s recalibrating proportions. The governments trained their masers on us, orchestrated by the aliens and the ghosts, as the devil sniggered.



We entered.

It was horrible.

But at least she wasn’t alone.
© witchlovingwarlock™ productions 2016