Missive the Sixty-Third
My Mind Nearly Died.
DATELINE: Wednesday, March 14, 2001, at 0315 hours CDT.
Conway, Arkansas, USA
By D. Ebenezer Baldwin Bowles
CornDancer & Company
An attack by innumerable chemical monsters pushed Cricket Song to the brink of destruction. I was close to falling into irreversible madness. That's why I missed a Missive that's why I'm interminably late that's why I'm saved, but where were you when I needed you? Fighting your own monsters I'm sure.
My true love was trapped in the throes of an assault by the cruel Banshees of Pyrrolidone, tiny legions of flyers, on the night of the full moon Tuesday last. She dredged up an archetype of fearsome power it leaped from her somnambular anguish onto my ego and seized me in a death clamp I almost fell for all time.
The monsters crept into our psyches on the trapped vapours of a winter night's enclosure, the shut windows and enraptured fumes, the sealed house like a tomb becoming.
"C3 H8 O2," the circumspective luminaries chanted, "C3 H8 O2," the chorus on stage left of the Attic tragedy sang, all these empty-eyed children, wronged and vengeful with pistols, bullets.
Blood-Shot Eyes on the Crumbly Bricks
Stared at Her.
I had traversed 'neath the sheets the expanse of the big bed to move beside her, the mistress of the hacienda, who lay sleeping, but under her slumber arose a fit, extreme fright as if as if the structure had stood there in the urban wastes forever, the structure she was trapped inside, grey and dank, she the pale Caucasian, holding a colored baby, the mulatto high yellow infant not like us half this, half that — on the high old walls there were azure eyes floating on the faces of the crumbly bricks, staring blood-shot, shouting: "You are not like us. You are not like us," and a second little one, half of the white woman from Lyon and half of the ebony man from Cameroon, skin like corn silk and caramel, a second child a baby just big enough to walk if he could only clutch her hand.
The auburn-haired white woman with two half-breeds, branded, saw the structure transform into a café, rundown and dirty with rain stains on the ceiling plaster and gouges on the peeling wallpaper and scum on the polyurethane surfaces of the tables.
The slovenly patrons, crypto anarchists and nostalgic socialists, slackers and geeks with thin necks, straining to not be obvious — the patrons of other races, other colors threw like daggers their feigned indifference toward the woman and her two babes. Their silence was sudden, their awareness couched. "I condemn thee for thy impurity. I damn thee for being different."
An Archetype of Terror Rends Me.
I Am Instantly, Desperately Mad.
The café walls dissolve. She appears in the wide hallway of a grand old school building, her heels clicking on the old-world tile of the floor, with the faintly orange glow of incandescent orbs reflecting off the tall polished oak of paneled walls, bannisters of maple, and doorknobs of smooth brass. She opens one, enters the classroom, and the gunboy, too.
I lay my right hand upon her, trying to still her wrangling — but her cry for help came as a shocking surprise. "Help me, help me!" she pleaded, and when I gripped her arm the archetype of her terror leaped upon me, and I shouted, O my God what have you done to me, why are you doing this? I flung off the sheets, rushed from the bed, stumbled to one of the bedroom doors, shouted, Bring it on, an acknowledgement of the fearsome archetype, which surged forward into my consciousness. I was instantly, desperately mad.
Instantly. Desperately. Mad.
Neurophysiological paranoia — that's it, purely an issue of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen molecules coming together in a bad mix — taunted me like a siren on the wine-dark sea. "There's a being in the next room, an intruder in the study," the hag whispered. "He's out to steal, plunder, destroy. Get your loud pistol and blow him away," but Buck the guard dawg was in a stupor and the luminaries were mocking me I knew it was a lie, were I to accept it and cross the threshold I would surely die, someone or anyone 'neath the invisible moon. Buck was not barking I knew his silence was the signal to avoid the illusion of physical threat and Holly the fine old slut loyal angel beast a hundred years old if a day lay knocked out and loaded with n-methyl immobile on the gross carpet beside her gnawed-on bone.
Torn and Broken and Desolated with Pain.
Have you ever survived the fever dream, the inoculant's antigens gone astray, meningitis or polio or scarlet fever? It was worse than any of those, as bad as the stunning blunt trauma that delivers you, wild and bleeding, to the hot asphalt the twisted wreckage, torn and broken and desolated with pain like the race car smashing through the television screen into your face.
"You think there's a couple people been shot?" the dispatcher asks. "I know you're afraid, really afraid, honey. There's people on the way."
C three H eight O two
Ba boom gash ba boom gash
Delirium tremens
Opens the soul tomb.
Carbon three ba boom fires
Zeernebooch's iron oven,
Chars the punk martyr.
H eight scours the fool,
Skin-grates scoop an inch deep
Ba boom bloody toe tips.
O two rues you ba boom
Purées your identity
to the raw bleeding quick.
The Woman of the Miscegenation
Announces Her Hatred.
My true love was snatched from her haven to the capricious evil of tilted spirits with guns, school shootings veiling the full moon, and rumors on the rampage the next day, the day of the nightmare's ride, rumors of gun-toting teenboys and E-mailed death threats whirling through the public education system like late winter tornadoes, and the woman of the miscegenation writing to announce her hatred of everyone and everything, her shattered complacency, the relentless reminders of race and color everywhere on the carpet, the walls, the dishes and silk screens, crashed cars and the shunning.
Where was it that I left her last, the auburn-haired white woman of the lowlands? Yes, in the classroom behind the windowed door, the tall panes, where she was looking for her man when the gunman leaps from the ether, shoots shoots shoots shoots students tumbling to the polished hardwood screams screaming ba boom ba boom one of the two little ones she holds his hand is blown away she clutches hard to the other one escapes the gunboy's gaze when he stoops to place his pistol to another mother's son's head, and she flies through the door races through darkened halls with the one remaining baby in her arms the blood of the other splashed upon her, but the exit? exit? where? — there, the stairwell, step over bodies, the thousand downward descending steps, the screaming and gunfire behind her now. She spies a narrow slide like a playground slide like an airplane emergency chute and leaps upon it twists and tumbles to the café, and into her man's strong arms.
An Archetype
Doesn't Belong in the Light of Consciousness.
At that instant she awoke, my mistress of the hacienda, the very moment when she released her archetype into my unprepared consciousness -- and fell back asleep and released.
Revolving disks, poppings of opposing polarities, cordite choking my nostrils, bullets racing in orbits about my head like a legion of toxic and swift little daughters of Nyx, and gnarled gargoyles whipping my back with ripe destroying angels, poisons mingling with the flow of the A-positives.
The struggle was, the life fight was to break the hallucination's grip, if it was one, an hallucination, or maybe the dealated moment of the final falling into schizophrenia.
The vision is not real in the objective sense neurons excited beyond reason they have been wrenched off their tracks instantly I have no path. I have no path. I am not caught in the vortex, but rather rooted amid venomous thorns, vegetative and snakelike, while the detritus of all fears swirls unevenly in waving rays around 'n round my wide open stinging eyes my identity is loosened from its moorings it is flying off into eternal whirlwinds. When I seek to catch my self, save me, lash the leaving line to the cavil, end the drift, a man looking much like me CH3 CH2 CH2 OH aims the big gun with a hard springy clip of nine .45 shells at my cranium and threatens to blow me away.
Sworn to Defend
Against the Slayer, the Misbegotten.
How could I have known that the archetype she would toss off her sleeping self, expel from her nightmarish dreamland, would turn out to be one of the gawddam Doubles? Her moaning shudda been warning enough but I'd no choice in the matter I am sworn to protect her die if necessary in her defense from the slayer, the misbegotten.
She was smooth asleep she was safe she had given it up to me, ignited my destiny to slay or be slain. I stumbled back into the bed amidst the silence of all else to fight 'till a victor emerged.
The Double was speaking voices, stolen words from the dead, mayhap the eighteenth past generation, the command: "Submit." From one of the mouths the Hag of the Dribble flapped her tongue, it banged my gyri like a flapping raven's wing, banged on the battered shield. She cried, "A a a ui ui Anni," and the circumspective luminaries from the rafters echoed the cries "ui Anni ui Anni." The Double was gnawing on my myelin sheath, the tendrils were exposed like carrion, gnawing with the sharp trillion teeth of the devourer.
A drunken houri was flung through the room by forces unknown to us and she railed against me, accused me of terminal circumlocution, and fought to staunch the arousal of my Will. In this rapid turning, rising from the rich soil of Saint Vitus the Dancer, the spiritual intelligence of the savior began to manifest, growing like a life vine. "The tendency of the spiritual force is to act spirally, rhythmically," Sir Oksob whispered.
Having Planned for the Last Stand,
I Took It.
The Life Wave of my Will it emanated from a primal junction of the Logos it began to flow from my conscious centre, outward toward the madness, toward the destruction of the Incuba. The sudden, violent attack had destroyed in an instant the outer wall of my defenses, but in my swiftness I managed my retreat to the reservoir, the planned venue of the last stand it was well stocked for the moment now fierce and relentless upon me because the sprites of the madness had raced hot upon my heels. It would be either the wikid wight or my identity, the battle no holds barred but it was easy... easy... easy once the vine emerged to succor my Will, once the Master taught me again how to dance upon the level shore, once the seven-foot angel of mercy sang his ballad to the measured clanging of the spheres, and pushed my vessel into the rhythmic waters of restoration and equilibrium.
I lay in my death struggle in the cool of the night air, the balm riding smooth on the easterly and flowing through the open window at the bed's head. As my good luck and the Great Protector would have it and deem it and make it so, the friendly easterly blew strong through and upon me — and breathing, breathing, breathing, I slowly quieted the beasts ... and the water of life rushed o'er me and through me and upon me, and the kind spirits of the grandfathers and grandmothers of twenty-four generations took me to the bosom of their resting place, and there on the soothing curve we began the reconstruction of the right order of my logic, the liberation of reason from rampant chatter, and the second baptism into conscious harmony. The archetype fell back into its secret place. A half hour before the dawn, I fell asleep. I fell sane. I won. This time I won.
WATCH FOR MISSIVE THE SIXTY-FOURTH
on Friday, March 16, 2001.
That's the plan.
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