The House and life after death

The haunted school is becoming more than its origin. It’s growing, encompassing the feelings, memories and tales of other dark houses. The more time I spend in there, the less frightening it becomes, the less apprehensive I become.

I was moving, I knew that much. Most of my things were packed and already in an automobile or Uhaul that someone else was operating for me. Was I moving from the haunted school, an apartment-dorm compilation my mind fashioned or The House? Unknown. The walls and rooms shifted. I just knew that the place felt old. It was at its best in autumn sun; cast in gold it appeared timeless and still, exuding strange warmth and comfort while maintaining its mystique and harrowing presence… the perfect poison apple.

There was a mix of activity, most of which eludes me now. I remember that I noticed I had left out some clothes at the house.  did not intend to leave them behind. Why are they here? I knew it was not mere forgetfulness; there was a reason they went unpacked.

The sun changed position in the sky, and it felt like eternal dusk.

I was outside then, walking. This time the presence of The House was unmistakable. The haunted school was one with The House; their souls and innards assimilating. Outside was a playground, rusted, old, burnt but completely functional. A group of young boys were playing. They all looked related: blonde, light eyes, sinewy but strong, brilliant and fae-like. A tall man that I took to be their father was pushing a 4-year old boy on a swing. At first glance, the scene was a negative image, reverse colors, and I saw symbols on their foreheads. As the colors flipped, the symbols were gone. A rottweiler zipped by ecstatically, tongue hanging out the side of his mouth, panting, legs barely touching the ground. He was running circles around The House.

I approached one of the boys about the age of six or seven sitting in the sandbox, listlessly drawing pictures in the sand. I noticed that as I knelt down to speak to him all the others immediately directed their attention to us. Their eyes were powerful but not hostile or suspicious. I felt a draw to each of them, as if I knew them to be some part of my family.

The 7-year old was a somewhat somber child. He smiled little, furrowed his brow at the sun and looked at the world with tired eyes. The only time he burst into a ball of light was when the rottweiler went running by.

“Is that your dog?”

The boy, still glowing, nodded.

“What’s his name?”

No answer. He retracted his light a little. Impasse. Both of our attention was focused on the dog lapping the house with incredible speed.

“Have you had him long?”

The boy directed his gaze to me and looked confused about how to answer. I turned toward him more. I felt his mind reach for mine. At this point, I knew it was only about asking the right question.

“How did you get him?”

This opened the flood gates of his memories and visions. Images rolled over me, toppling my ego and sense of self. I was lost in the wash and sudden flashes, reliving them as him. It was awful and beautiful, terrifying and oddly comforting. They all died. And they all had come back by some virtue of this place. Their deaths were a haze, some part that I was not allowed access to, and it was really of little importance. Their lives now were detached from their former ones. After their deaths they were buried around The House, usually by one of the other family members. It seemed the mother was left behind, last to die and consequently had no one to bury her body before the state got to it. There was a burial rite that included a specific symbol drawn on the forehead, in the position of the third eye. This specifically allowed them to keep their identity and increase their mental and psychic abilities. Part of the symbol indicated that they were to be “non-contagious.” I never found out what this actually meant; I could only guess that it related to aspects of death were not passed on to the currently living. The boys and father were bound to The House at birth of their second life, only able to travel to the village below without the onset of weakness and the beginning of decay.

Finally we got to the story of the dog. The boy had always wanted one. While in the village, they found the body. They immediately knew that it had died, in part, due to its own aggressive tendencies. The dog’s mind held memories of abuse and abandonment. They took him to The House and buried him in the playground area. During the rite, they erased his memory of the abuse and abandonment and lessened his anger and aggression. He was reborn a happier dog with a clear memory to be filled with his new family. Though the rebirth sometimes had unpredictable results. The dog had two heads, one right under the other like Zaphod Beeblerox. I looked around at the family and noticed some of their anomalies upon rising. They were hardly noticeable to untrained eyes since their amazing psychic capabilities kept imperfections hidden. One boy had small wings. The father was much taller and thinner than a normal man. The young boy in front of me had strange eyes, at times transparent, reflective black-metal pools or a myriad of small worlds harbored inside his irises.

The scene changed.

I was inside The House. Candles, incense, pillows, a small table and tea were set up on the living room floor in front of a wall of glass. There was very little furniture anywhere inside. No one person lived here. It seemed to be a communal space. Living in The House was for the temporarily homeless or outcast or for those who needed a particular space to either hide from the world, exorcise demons from themselves, kick habits or communicate with those of the other life. There was running water but no electricity. At night fall, the torches were lit. Most read from the wide selection in the library on restful nights. This was also the time that The House was most malleable. The House was not inherently terrifying or haunted; the inhabitants could make it so though… and some did. It was a place that could drive one mad if one wished it and allowed it. Most benefited from the responsiveness of The House. It was a place of trial and discovery, not for the faint hearted or weak willed.

My friend had arrived. He was to help me move. I looked at my things still at The House. I wanted to stay a bit longer, but I realized that it was time for me to go, for now at least.

A pile of jeans distracted my friend. “Were these worn here?” he asked.

“Yes, there is still dirt and sand on them from the playground,” I answered.

A hungry look passed across his face. “You know you could sell these. You’d make a fortune,” he stopped and re-evaluated for a second. “Keep one for yourself by all means, one that fits. But you should really consider selling them. People would give an arm and a leg for the organic material of this place.”

It felt wrong. The House responded to the challenge by allowing me to see his perspective, feel his desire for wealth. I tried some of them on again, acting as if I agreed with him, but the whole time my mind was tugging at me.

“No.” I said after I tried the last pair on. Many of them did not fit me; I knew they were not mine. I had lost weight since coming to The House, and the one that used to fit me no longer did. “They belong here,” I said “with The House. Nothing gets sold from this place.”

End.

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Cyborg Kitty and Sex Details

When asked what kind of form I would take, given a cybernetic, robotic carte blanche, the answer was effortless:

A large (as in over 10ft) , rainbow technicolor kitty that can modify its size, breathe clouds, bathe its brain in selected substances and form an instantaneous atmosphere of choice.

Duh.

*******

My partner is allowed to divulge details of or sex life…

like…

the latitude/longitude

the ambient room temperature

the colors of the walls.

It’s just more comical that way.

the harmless question

Stepping outside, the light looks different these days, like my eyes are a part of it all.

The phone cracks in my hand as the sounds of helicopters overhead cover the sky in static.

He likes dry heat and noise; the stuff that weighs on humans.

The sky is empty-blue; the vastness thankfully disrupts my sobriety. It’s been a few days in the company of the Lotus and Damiana. “Damiana” sounds beautiful to me, like a name of a goddess or a Muse.

I have visions of unloading upon unsuspecting clinicians and professors walking the balance beam tentatively. To see the effects of an assault of another’s reality… it’s almost worth it.

“What have you been up to?”

A harmless question bound to small talk.

Fashioning fire elementals in make-believe stories of the explorations of childhood. Watching my eyes turn blue from outside my body. Dressing in rainbow mirrors while reciting lines from my favorite characters. Oh, and critiquing comments, compiling information from the past seventy years on one topic, taking socially acceptable drugs in the office, deciding what to prove and how, coping with the vengeful billing companies and vampiric systems that cast themselves as angels of opportunity.

“Same old, y’know.”

The nod. Oh, how I love the nod and all its applications.

My mind floats over to a helical landscape; different lives, one shape. One would never suspect… I wear a plush toy as a bracelet for kicks as well as to honor certain forces of gravity in my world. My stories are songs for them.

Though the sun is out at this time of day,

Night is in my mind,

the moon behind my irises.

The reversed images seen in the dark are recorded on thin paper stained with tea and bleeding ink.

Soft colors hum in and out.

I phase to the background, enveloped in spirals of smoke.

The play of characters moves on,

each half-asleep to their silent remote control.

We watch adaptations of our own stories unfold, unconscious to the button-pressing we do with our left hand.

just that simple

Paper crumbled.

Minor adjustment of alignment.

A photo burned.

Resume submitted.

Sleep instead of party.

Unanswered phone calls.

A new route taken to work.

Choosing the salad… again.

Forgetting a birthday.

Hiding the sweets.

Checking the tires.

Staying later than expected.

Accepting.

Refusing.

Remaining silent.

Waking up in time.

Simple actions can have profound impact.

l-i-v-i-n

Risk.

Change.

Growth.

Pain.

These are inherent to the Living.

If these things are missing, perhaps some difficult questioning is warranted.

The hunted and the white-red room

I was walking along the perimeter of the white-burgundy room. The width of the perimeter was about 6 ft before the endless drop into the strange abyss from which the burgundy sheen emanated; the length of the perimeter was unknowable. The transparent blood streams and stark natural daylight filtering through gateways warped the angles and breadth of the room. The velvet cushions and whimsical beds closest to the wall on separate shelves elevated 3 ft higher seduced the serotonin. The spicy floral fragrances drew oe to the comfort provided. The room had no perceivable ceiling or ground, only the bedding perimeter followed by the walking perimeter with unpredictable open rectangular gateways to the outside. I knew not what the meaning of this place was. I observed the structural inconsistencies while feeling its pull on me to stop, to sleep, to lounge. Every inch was white textures to seduce the senses, from the walking perimeter floor to the endless walls stretching upward to an unknown space.

Reaching a gateway, I knew if I wanted to leave in a timely manner, I should take the oppurtunity. One could never trust one’s perceptions in such a place. Oppurtunities were blessings.

Walking into the daylight, my eyes burned from the glare. As I adjusted to the light levels, what I saw in front of me was far from what I had expected. A dark, narrow hallway greeted me; a dark hallway MADE of doors, endless closed doors.Every space that comprised the “walls” were some part of a door; it was as if they were attached at the hinges. Lights and sounds stirred within them, and yes, of course, I was curious of what was inside of each one of them. However, I knew that I had to press on to the end of the hallway.

I emerged somehow. I standing at the edge of an apartment complex that looked very similar to the one of which I was a resident. This complex was stretched to the size of a desert. The added space and confused arrangement of the buildings made it such that it could be said to resemble a labyrinth of sorts. The winds that rolled through felt alien and distraught, as if oscillating between urgency and stagnation. I saw people hiding inside apartments, huddled against eac hother in terror or splayed out in a drug-induced euphoric haze. Others ran frantically down sparsely populated streets, toting guns and infected with frenzy. What was happening? In what world was I delivered?

I spotted two figures strolling casually down a sidewalk. They were both men that fit into a that other-worldly “ageless” category. They appeared to be somwhere between 25 and 50, an optimal age range to shift between. The both wore dusty blue jeans and leather boots, and they both had the aire and build of an ex-military man. The “older man” had crew-cut dark brown hair, blue-gray steely eyes, and a broader chest that a muted blue t shirt covered. The “younger man” was a shade taller and thinner with longer, well-styled dirty blonde hair. He sported a plain white t shirt rolled up at the sleeves to hold his cigarette pack and shining silver sunglasses. He reminded me of the “man with no eyes” from Cool Hand Luke or Neil Gaiman’s Corinthian. I could smell their soullessness for miles and miles. Before I witnessed them take out a dozen people, half inside one apartment and the other half street runners, I knew they were beyond dangerous. They were near-perfect marksman.

Shift

Somehow I happen upon them. I’m immediately scared and confused. They are staring at me through glass doors of a hospital. I know their game now. They like to hunt. Their favorite prey are the strong-willed, the ones with survival instincts on ovedrive, the fight-or-flighters. They hunted those. The others that holed up in their homes waiting for their deaths were more brutally slaughtered. At least the ones hunted died quick. Maybe that was a reward for a life on the run, a life without peace or sleep, a life dependent upon adrenaline and good evasive choices… or dumb-fuckin’ luck. They got everyone in the end though, regardless of who you were or how hard you ran or fought.

So here they are, looking right at me. Corinthian is grinning ear-to-ear while Steel remains more reserved. It is Corinthian that speaks first. He tells me that I’m playing. I say that I won’t. We have a discussion in which they both point out that I really don’t have a choice in the matter. If I don’t play, I die now. I am still a bit surprised that don’t shoot me on the spot with my protesting, but I guess they see me as good game.

Corinthian tosses me a loaded revolver. “Those are all the bullets you get,” he says, “use them wisely.”

Steel begin to explain to me “the rules,” as if I listening. Though I understand that my next action may be perceived as cheating (and who knows the penalty for that?), I follow through with my plan regardless, shooting Steel right in the chest as he talks. He stops talking upon impact of the bullet. Ripples run through his chest like water. He shakes his head a bit, but is still standing in perfect health. He looks at me with a chilly smile. “It’s Game On then.” They both laugh and relocate both them and me. It has to start as a hunt. Relocation is a random process.

I am in the middle of the complex with one less bullet, no plan, no maps and no idea where my hunters are (and “in reality” how many copies of them exist simultaneously). They are all and all are them.

I run.

and run.

and run.

I look around.

I reassess.

and I run.

Run.

Run.

It seems to go on forever. It feels that with every step, the humanity in me is slowly beaten out.I miss my loved ones so I go to the ones I know are left, this time deciding to huddle in with them instead of run.

We are on a third story apartment somewhere toward one edge of the complex. We took the first empty one we found. The musty smell, gaudy tiffany lamps and numerous quilts made it obvious that it was previously inhabited by an older couple. We stayed there, one person on guard every night. Our movements and noise levels were often kept to a minimum so to not attract attention. The paranoia was different on the inside; it ate away at a person all the same, but with different teeth.

One day I spotted the men heading down our street. They glanced over as I was looking out the window; there was no use hiding now. They were coming. With more than 2/3 the complex dead, there were only so many places left that they had not ventured. Here they came. I felt them right outside the door.

I would have panicked if I had not lost myself then.

I was back in the white-burgundy room. There seemed to be a thick smoke, more erratic lightig and stronger fragrance. The lights and sounds were no longer a underlying lullaby; they were an unabashed assault on the body and mind. Space eluded us all. People quickly became hysterical and crippled with fear or confusion. Most clamored for the elevated perimeter, not being able to lift themselves. Some fell into the abyss, while others clung to the wall in a fetal position. I wandered as straight as I could with a heavy, spinning head. I struggled to keep my eyes open and my goal in mind. Get to a gate. But most were closed up or nearly impossible to perceive. People had given up on finding them. They were blind to real light. I walked on, unwilling to give up.

I walked.

and walked.

and walked.

The pace was so slow, and my body ached. But I walked.

and walked.

Eventually, my efforts were rewarded with a dim gate. I entered, shielding my eyes this time. The hall of doors appeared in fron of me again, but they were angry now. The doors shook violently, as if everything inside each wanted out. The discordia pulled at me for attention. The chaos was maddening and equally intriguing. But I made it to the end once again. And I walked out.

When I came to, I saw their faces right in front of me. I had opened the door wildly and ruched forward, disregarding their guns. I knocked both to the ground and nailed each one of my knees in each man’s chest. I hit both clean in the face with my fist. My ears were greeted with the sound of breaking glass. It took a second for the situation to register, but when it did, I was unstoppable. Their heads were as fragile as glass. That was the reason they preferred the gun hunt and never one-on-one physical combat. Eventually, all the people would run out of bullets, resign themselves to their death or else fumble with their shots to the men. No one ever dared get close enough to them to administer a blow… when that was all they needed to do. I laughed and salivated as I smashed each of their faces into unrecognizable blood-glass-pulp.

The hunt was over. We were alive.

holes

Submit to or conquer the disorientation.

I feel the pressure in my ear canal. One side is a tighter seal than the other,  and I know that the neon orange silicon putty is attempting a morning escape.

Utter half-coherent sentences while trying to establish or maintain balance on groggy footing.

Whimsical thoughts seduce me as my eyes pass over desired DOings. Bed = more dreaming (Recall the pieces… fragmented, disjointed, evading chronology. ) Ooh water. (Damn, I missed them… almost had it.) Sink = initiation of renewal. Mirror = encountering the ever-so-persuasive 2D. (Hello, Me. And how are we today?) This can go a number of ways: 1. fog-screen of persistent disorientation, 2. initiation of critical mind-chatter, 3. ignition of observational mode, 4. begining of a nondescript “Day,” 5. just acceptance, 6. unjust acceptance, 7. untitled acceptance, 8. indifference, 9. amusement or fear of potential indentity crisis, 10. care-free enstatement of pretend.

Shower = renewal ritual, detox, reset, comfort, Water Mother

12-20 ounces of caffeine-delivering warm beverage while going 60 mph as my mind whisks by the trees and green. (How much longer will these species survive, and how many are non-indigenous, invasive species? Is that how they describe us?)

“I’m fixing a hole where the rain gets in

and stops my mind from wandering

where it will go…”

A tone more ethereal than the original, dub cuts the reins.

Falling out a hole in the sky, I land with eyelids half-drawn under fluorescent lights and biosafety hoods. These are my hands in latex working with small life forms, hated because they are cancer. They are not like us; they don’t choose what they are. They are not like us; they don’t have a conscience. Motions are mechanical, and the sequence of events is routine enough to allow a piece of myself to float among the clouds.

A seemingly barren landscape of tile, biohazardous waste, machines and incubators is the quiet of the morning, hidden away from the hot thick of a sun’s revenge. Metal and concrete bang and mingle loudly outside my window as I sit in the ever-familiar, pink, broken chair. I don’t twirl anymore; it makes me sick.

The inbox has been sleeping recently, thankfully. It relinquishes my attention to scour websites and distract myself from not-so-imperative tasks for not-so-close deadlines. I am already bargaining with myself for afternoon freedom and dreaming of projects that afford me repose, hope and continual creative stimulation.

Bargain time spent in less-than-desirable environments to do important, analytical, detached work with justification for eloping to comfortable environments to do as my whim dictates.

Life is a series of rooms. Once I heard it, I saw it. I prefer the room in which to work to be uncrowded and uncluttered, more full of ideas and discussion than it is people. The room is constantly changing, moving as the inhabitants do. When I see it expand so that we are smashed up against opposing walls though still feeling cornered, yeah, I fucking opt out til reconstruction is agreed upon. When our rooms are seemingly effortlessly portable, fluid and forever-present, yeah, I’m in. There are still gonna be holes in the skies and minds. Such is life. Tunnels out and in, zippered pouches of space-time, blebbing and introduced bubbles… we make peace with our surroundings as they make peace with us (or not)… we change the environment; we change ourselves; we change others (or not)… we DO or we ARE (or ARE NOT).

There is so much.

Locate food source. Refuel. Flip switches to move on.

}

We remember where we came from… despite what some may say. We just chose to depart from it -again and again- as we chose to forever stay.