Black Blood:

I grew up with superstitious stories, witches, evil spirits and all sorts of things that wished ill and hate upon other people. I grew up learning about charms, amulets, talismans, magic stones, blood pacts, fetiches of all sorts.

 

My mother was a witch, she knew the bones and the stars. She could break fevers, induce childbirth, and protect our small village. She did it well, and people from faraway lands would come great distances to see her. She traded stories and potions with whoever she deemed safe enough to enter the village.

 

I was a small child when I saw her spit out black blood, she coughed it out and put it in a jar. She would point at it whenever I was disciplined and say “You are made from the same blood, do not make me open that jar.”

 

I feared her, everyone feared but her power over the world of the unseen was unquestionable. She died peacefully, and no one bore her ill will or malice, perhaps from fear of haunting. She died in her sleep and her body was burned by the shore under a starless sky. The rain couldn’t stop the pyre and the tide claimed her bones.

 

The village looked to me to replace her. I tried for a while, but it was clear my skill lacked the feverish power of my mother. I traded her potions to travelers and I traded stories, which I came to discover I could do with equal measure. I found that a dying man didn’t need potions as much as he need to know he was part of a greater story.

 

One day a stranger came to our shore by the ocean, he was begging for water. I had my apprehensions due to the past, a great thirst is a sign of sickness or madness. We took him in anyways, water was easy for us, as endless as the horizon. I added a pinch of crushed raccoon bone powder to clear the way within him.

 

He was a great help to our village once his thirst was quenched. He was stronger than 4 men, he was tireless and the women started to mumble about adding his blood to ours. The longer time went on the stronger he grew, drinking vast amounts of water daily. He drunk 10 times as much as he did when he arrived. He grew stronger and more eager to help each day.

 

The village grew frightened, rumors of demons and malice made their way to my ears. I traded into my reserves and denied any travelers until I could produce more potions and charms. I secretly feared they were correct, but spun stories like the finest spider.

 

I watched this stranger, I looked for malice and could find none. He wanted only to help, simply asking only for water. He helped make great tools, hunted at a heroic pace, and showed all the people in the village a great compassion. He wish no ill will on anyone. The villagers became divided.

 

Some feared him more each day and others began to love him. By the end of 3 moons he stood almost as tall as 2 grown men. His thirst and the consumption matched his strength. Those that feared him started murmurs of murder and death. They planned to kill him while he slept, they feared he would grow too large and his mind would turn against us.    

 

I had my reasons to agree, this was certainly the strangest person I had ever met. I felt a sense of obligation to warn him, he had done nothing wrong and had only helped us. I snuck into the wide tent by the shore and told him the story of frighten villagers.

 

His brow became deep cracks, he thanked me and asked to be left alone. I never saw him in our village after that. He was missing, he had left, disappeared.

 

Days and weeks passed, the story of the stranger already started to sound of legend. The people returned to their daily lives, daily concerns. It was almost a month before we started to notice. The tide was lowering. Not just a low tide, but a low tide that didn’t return to the water marks.  

 

Week after week the tide disappeared, faster and faster, each day it would more. The village began to panic. Soon the tide marks were almost a day’s walk to the end of the shore. Weeks after that the tide was 2 days travel away, and soon the water could not be seen by the old water marks.

 

I threw the bones, I asked the spirits, and I drank the potions and sought mysteries in fevered dreams. I was drawn back to the black jar of blood from my mother, sitting looking at me from the shelf of the hearth.  I could offer no plan to the village except that I began to suspect it was the stranger. He was the only spirit connected to the water and he may know the answer.

 

I did the necromancy my mother taught, I took a spoon of the black blood that she coughed up and swallowed it. I held her spirit in me for as long as I could, her angry mind entered into mine. She said “Seek the tide child, let me sleep, bother me no more.”

 

I honored her request and buried her black blood under a bed of ashes and salt. I told the village my story. I knew what it met and so did they, we must find the edge of the tide, a long journey on the floor of the ocean.

 

For days we prepared, I watched the crows and the spiders and helped the village find the heroes.  I left the village with 27 heroes. The journey had started for a great story.

 

Days turned into weeks, the ground was full of salt, and the rot was endless. Creatures of the deep now lay drying in the sun. We began to grow feverish with lack of shrinking supplies. We had no idea how long we would have to walk, how far had the ocean retreated.

 

Weeks now stretching the last of our water, it was clear we would not be returning. We would not be able to finish the story for the villagers that would never know our fate. We walked and walked until we saw a small hill in the horizon.

 

We discovered that it was no hill, it was the body of the stranger, and he had grown to a massive size, hundreds of people tall. He was laying there wheezing, barely could life be seen in him. Maggots and worms crawled out of his legs.

 

The 3 remaining heroes watched me approach his face, the cracks in the brow now deep trails of pain in his face. His eyes closed… murmuring words over and over “I wish no evil, I wish no evil…”

 

I knew what had to be done, but I waited. I told the 3 heroes that we must bear witness to this great giant’s death. We watched for 2 days, dying of thirst as the giant finally died.  I then burned the great mountain, coughed my last breath of black blood and lay down by the pyre.

 

The salt of the ocean, the ash and black blood laid that great thirst to rest.

Wind Speech: 

Madonna blasted overhead, an old comfortable song. La Isla Bonita, always made me feel like home, a faraway place without concern.  

My real life wasn’t magical, it was mundane, and I am typical. Ugghh, it pains me to say it but it’s the truth. I have never liked prevarication nor egoism. I don’t like pretending unless it’s La Isla Bonita. 

I sit on the bus bored and unthreatened by the regularity of the people around me. I stared out into the night time black passing me by. The dark seemed to pierce into all the worlds. The same dark would be in every bus rider’s mind, every watcher of the nighttime world. It connected us all, a dread longing, searching the black folds for some hidden door into that other connected world.  

I dozed off, dreaming of the dark interconnected watchers. I dreamed of marble high towers of Carcosa. This wide horizon greeted me every time I closed my eyes for too long.  

Years ago I had a fever, the kind of fever that lasts for a few days. The days and nights blend into a dream of vast valleys and high mountains. I was there, clad in a yellow dress. The dream was sharp and filled with a deep thud of each foot step as I climbed the high mountain. This was the forbidden land of Carcosa.  

Each step was romance, the kind that your heart speaks to when the light are dark and you question the darkness. This romance left long and stretched, the dream lasting days when my body lay in mere hours. I watched myself helplessly step after step, the wind carrying me to the summit.

 

Days passed and each foot fall focused my mind with certainty as the valley sank below the tree line and the green blended into the horizon. The summit turned to gray stone and the shadow shrieked with hunted failures, blame and shame cursed from the edges. I felt strange words begin to mutter under my breath, confidence echoed in the incantations I had never heard. My voice joined the wind and blew away the shadows. 

The summit lay atop an old precipice with a large stone slab. The rocky alter was the only instructions I needed. I lay in my yellow gown, murmuring words that I felt in fiery power. I began shouting them, shrieking them, wailing into the deep valley of wind.    

My unholy shouting drew 2 whirlwinds to the alter, great horrible turbulences of fever and chaos. They watched, blasting their hallelujah chorus to match my own. They touched down on the later, entering my yellow dress and screaming voice. We joined into one storm on that summit, a banshee wail from the edge of a fever and sweat.  I don’t know how long I screamed, but I awoke, soaked and growling a strange utterance.  

Since that day, no stranger touches that intensity, no fear can shake my core. Those whirlwinds have washed me clean, my fever has somehow made me a divine predator. No wolves growl at my door nor do shadows in the dark threaten me with shame. 

When I slip back into the half sleep, the half dream world like the dozing off of a bus rider, I return to the summit. Carcosa is the realm of the valley, the wind speech and the deep pools of whirlwinds. I have found no greater terror.

The Unspoken City:

 

There it was, a funny pile of rocks. It used to be a university, it used to be a place people gathered for a purpose, either learning, social connections, fantasies of jobs and a better life. This university was located somewhere special. 

The special place was in a town surrounded by artists and museums, a certain nexus of creative folks. That wasn’t the case now, now it was rubble, it was washed away by moral issues and industrial progress. 

I would say the name of the place, but the name itself has been scared, twisted and shaped into an arrow for some new war, some new intentional destruction of something else. The progress that continues to march on with each year must crush something under it, it needs the bricks and the stones. This march has little regard for what it crushes and big wounds can always be made small on a far horizon.  

So this funny pile of rocks is unrecognizable to the building or the ideas that once inhabited its wall.  There is no way to see the people that once lived here, they are long since dead. Their lives were only imprinted with this place and with the passing of their lives the imprint faded, and even if the place left some sort of blemish on them, only a fraction would ever be known. To be clear, the place had been erased, utterly removed from any effect on anyone that can see this pile of rubble.

 

I grabbed my purse, snapping out of the morose reflection of this pile of stones. I snapped a picture of two with my device, a story or two may be salvaged. Perhaps I could use words to stack those rocks back up together, resemble a crude building or tell a story that for a moment or two those ghosts would leap out of the words and into the minds of the reader.  

The pictures turned out great, a nicely textured, pleasantly shadowed and perfectly composed ruin.

 

I hung them on a way in my house, near some flowers and a vase from a friend. I found that nearly every moment I glanced the photograph out of the corner of my eye, my imagination drew me back to that moment of seeing that funny pile of stones.

 

It infected my evenings, I paused one morning while putting on lip stick, struck by the vision of saturation bombing, blankets of fire whipping clean the structures of beauty. It woke me up twice last week, a dull ringing in my ears, a wine of a high pitched siren, air raids.

 

Months went on, and everyone I told about it told me to try and stop thinking about it, stop dwelling on it, to relax. I tried, but the grumbled words of conversation could not shake the impression that something truly important was lost and no one was concerned.

 

In those months I researched into every scrap of information on the place. Every angle just lead me back to the same conclusion, the same terrifying observation.  If we had destroyed something truly important, we wouldn’t care.

Distractions: 

Frank Alberson #Reflection hour 23:53 

It’s always quite the same, the same intentions, the same faces. The same warm food, the same clothes in the same closest, smelling and feeling the same.  

 

The socks and the shoes are put on in the same way, the alarm clock sounds no different every morning. I made some breakfast, it was the same cereal and the same spoon and bowl. I walked out the door, locking it in the way I always do. I test it every time, even though it is predictably locked tight.  

I check my pockets and my devices. Everything is always in its place, the sky looks very familiar nothing is out of order. All my checklists, all my consideration, they all add up every day. I think the same dreams, I fantasize the same worlds, the same escape from work. I enjoy it in equal measure each time.  

I order the same food every time I go and get lunch. I go to the same restaurants at least a couple times a month. I prefer places that are consistent.

 

Frank Alberson #Reflection hour 23:17

 

The sky looked different today, I am not sure why. I watched it for 15 mins before work and missed my ride. I just stood there wide mouthed staring at the sky. I have never seen anything like it, I wish I could describe it better.

 

I was distracted all day today, the experience with the strange sky caused everything to not-be the same. I left work early since I was unable to get anything done. I stared at the sky from work for 30 mins. I got home far later than I wanted, I could feel the sky above even when the night came. It felt…different. 

Frank Alberson #Reflection hour 21:26 

This morning the sky was still different. I have thought of nothing else, the sky looks like coffee when you pour milk into it slowly. The turbulence is confusing.

 

I was late for work again. Being late didn’t feel like it did yesterday, the mystery of the sky seems to have intruded upon the sameness. I feel agitated, I snapped at my boss and left home early again.

 

I spent all night watching the clouds squirm overhead, I could see them even in the night. I could see the small eddies from the lager clouds fold in, curl out, spread and disappear into thin ribbons becoming part of new plumes of blackness.

 

Frank Alberson #Reflection hour 20:52

 

I haven’t slept in 4 days now. No one else seems to notice the black and brown sky twisting and churning overhead. I can think of nothing else except the beautiful dark storm. I know it sounds pedantic to dwell on the trivial motion of turbulence.

 

Sleep is only met with the browns and blacks swimming behind my eyelids, I watch for hours as the shapes and great crescendos well up and dissipate so perfectly in the darkness.

 

Frank Alberson #Reflection hour 19:32

 

This is my last entry, I don’t need my computer anymore. I don’t think I need food or sleep either, I am on day 17 without sleep.

 

 I tried vainly to show my neighbor yesterday the beauty that I see when my eyes are closed. I tried to show them that you don’t need eyes to see the same sky that I see.

 

Now at the end of words, I will pluck my sight from my eyes and see only the great dark sky.

The Paper Machine:

 

So he sat there, reading a small pamphlet, blankly staring at its contents. He was taking a presidential break in the beautiful bathroom. His flakey leg skin decorating the pleated blue gray pants around his ankles.  

Nothing happened, he tried but there was only a grumble from his artificial stomach. Nothing came out, nothing usually comes out of these new model implants. He was grateful for the advances in technology that saved him from his ulcers, sometimes he wished the new models stomachs would give him that sublime relief of a decent bowel movement, but that wasn’t happening today.

 

After dusting off his pants, strapping his belt he returned to his meeting with his advisors. Sports commentators would be a more accurate description, but he trusted them enough to keep him in the loop. He had his propagandists, his political technicians and his cybernetic health adviser (just in case, he was in his 70’s). They sat and mulled over new plans, new directions. 

Last night his orders were denied, some form wasn’t filled out with the right terminology, legal precedent had been invoked to prevent his course. Now the plan was to circumvent and conflate, something he was skilled at. Now was the beginning of the real conflict. The bureaucracy had always been his enemy, always with the NO and the NOT YET, one of the reasons he needed a cybernetic health advisor, this stress does some damage to your organs.  

How many orders could he make and pursue, how many angles could topics be spun? His technicians had some plans. They always had plans and always there seemed to be some predictive consequences and sometimes there were set backs. Either way today was a setback, set backs have opportunities to explore.  

If he couldn’t release the brown drivel into the presidential toilet, he would try one of the social media feeds, get some fools to lap it up with hateful tongues. It was always good to know that someone hated him, it relived his stress median interturgic pressure a bit. So while the meeting went on and plans set in motion, the President let loose steamy half thoughts into the world. 

On the way home, his guards in tow, he stopped by the animal shelter to pick up a gift for his niece. Puppies and small children fit together nicely in his brain, like a lumpy puzzle piece that squeezed a sense of order into him. 

In the parking lot, wide eyed onlookers watched as he was ushered into the small building. A terrified clerk greeted the guards as small animals mewed and barked in the background.  He wanted a little puppy, a little picture perfect photo-op creature. The clerk was obviously confused and shaken, the monstrous presence of such an authority. 

A small black dew eyed Labrador was chosen. The clerk handed the president his application papers for the “Forever Home” application. After 20 mins of scribbling, a grumbling started in his bowels. The last requirement was a new form a vK9.45 for animals that required the owner be in adequate health and mental state of mind. This was because the owner would now be responsible for the creature’s entire life.

 

Frustrated with the document requirements the President tried his usual route of intimidation, appeals to authority and otherwise bullying the poor animal shelter clerk. The clerk was speechless, reminding him that the application must be completed due to the new bureaucratic process to prevent animals from being harvested for their organs.

 

Unable to complete the form without the documents his health adviser usually carries he asked for the toilet as calmly as his red faced frustration would allow. A small closet bathroom with a flickering light was all they had. Grumbling and nervously tapping his fingers he tried again to relieve his turbulent guts.  

After 45 mins, now more frustrated than ever he left, empty handed. No application, no documents, no puppy. He thought that he should probably hire a document technician, which would mean filling out paperwork for at least 2 weeks. Those technicians make you bleed.

 

Impotent and irritated he decided the best recourse would be to spread a little hate on his favorite social media feed. Maybe tomorrow he thought, but of course that thought had no puzzle piece to fit into and quickly dissolved into nothingness.

Trash:

 

I found the pamphlet on my door step when I came home from work. The drive was exhausting, my patience thin and my nerves heavy. It doesn’t matter what I do, I have had four different jobs in the last year. All promises for upward career momentum. The truth is that most firms need some entry level wide eyed hopeful to run mundane tasks. This firm was no different and they had mandatory overtime.  

So this pamphlet on my door looked like a Watchtower kind of thing, I picked it up and was 2 seconds away from throwing it in the burn pile. I liked burning my paper trash, and the one thing that working in the rat races gets you, it’s a nice little ½ acre to have a fire pit.  

The pamphlet was not your typical religious propaganda or the “Vote Now” flyers I see all the time. It was titled:   FALL INTO THE VOID- EXPLORE NIHILISM TODAY 

The title and style looked like typical junkmail, but the words weren’t printed, they were stained. This wasn’t a copy or a mass printed thing, someone had stained the lettering with some brownish ink.  

I examined the pamphlet completely, my curiosity was peeked. The first section was on anxiety, a cartoon person carrying a large burden of ideas, big bold faced words stained in brownish ink. It said that we carry ideas around like stones, bashing our brains out with the stones any chance we get. It showed a cartoon stick figure struggling with burdens like: FAMILY, GOALS, TASKS, PURPOSE, VISION, FEARS and a couple of other general ideas. 

This touched something in me, I too had felt the weight of endless tasking. I felt the anxieties in this little stained pamphlet. I read on, more curious. 

The second topic was: THE VOID. It had a nice little cartoon spiral. It was described as the opaque absence of ideas. It said that your mind is just like a puzzle, you need most of the pieces to see the picture. If you scrambled the pieces up the picture was lost. The relief from the stones and anxieties of life could be avoided by scrambling the idea of yourself to the degree that no particular distinction on who is carrying the burdens can ever be made. 

To me that sounded quite silly, this sounded like transcendent LSD type stuff.   

The last part was interesting, it was called: RITUAL.  It stated that to dissolve yourself you needed a symbol of yourself, a symbol that could be destroyed. You then simply destroyed the symbol as a way to scramble yourself. It had a quote from Kierkegaard with some fluffy philosophical mumbo jumbo.

I indulged in the fantasy while I gathered my trash, mail and some coffee cups to burn in my fire pit. It sounded very alluring to slip into the void as the pamphlet put it, an uncaring dissolved human being. 

As I finished the last of the trash burning I threw the pamphlet in the fire watch the stained ink bubble a little, and dissolve into a gray ash. I watched the embers give up the last of their light.  I realized that if I was to have a symbol that truly represented me, I suppose it would be junk mail, paper trash. 

Since that day I have never looked at trash burning the same, and every time the fire turns the words of paper printed ideas into ash I let my burdens go with them.  I guess there are plenty of roads into the abyss.