Metropolis Pt 2 – Decending

I settle on my meditation cushion. It’s pretty, red and yellow and it reminds me of the saffron color of a monk’s robe. That’s why I chose this one. Maybe having a ‘thing’ to focus on, to train my brain to automatically start to settle into calm just by seeing it, by touching it and settling it down just where I want it. It’s surprisingly easy to point your brain in the right direction, so many little tricks and cues you can give it so that it automatically starts to condition itself to better habits. I avoid this at all costs. I have yet to figure out why.

I have felt the inner power and calm that comes from dropping deeper inside with your eyes wide open. I have felt moments of bliss and the blue electric fire that runs sparking in circles around your spine before I had even heard that they call it kundalini. They were fleeting moments, my brain usually intruded itself, speaking aloud and naming the wonders and sending them smiling quietly back to their corners. Fleeting is fine, I don’t think I’m meant to be the beatific being, in a constant state of enlightenment. But I can’t even remember the feeling of opening up to the possibility that it was coming. You feel it, and you open to it, and there it is. I can’t feel the opening any more.

My weight drops down into the kidney shaped cushion. My knees open themselves towards the floor. My eyes won’t stay closed, eyelids fluttering, so I open them. The patio door again. Quiet and sunrise, the rest of my household asleep.
The inside corners of the index finger gently slide against the inside pads of the thumb. I will myself to feel the connection, the circle, anything.
My sleeping household, the ones that I love in such ridiculous amounts that I have literally felt my heart skip a beat. You know, it was just as much of a delight to learn that you really could feel your heart skip a beat at the sight of someone as it was to learn that a kiss could literally make you weak in the knees. Fleeting moments too, of course. I’m perfectly alright with that.
My eyelids have drifted shut of their own accord, and this time it’s comfortable and I smile, a little. Inhale slowly through the nose, tongue slightly pressed against the roof of my mouth, against the back of my teeth. Hold for beat. A little more forcefully, exhale through the nose. I feel my heart beat slow down, slightly, incrementally.
I think about the first time that ** made my knees go weak.
When he walked toward me and I realized he was about to kiss me, even though we had played plenty of kissyface before, I got stuck like a wild animal caught out by the light. I couldn’t have moved if you told me that the Star Trek Enterprise was waiting outside to beam me up. At the last second his hand came up to the side of my face and his lips were on mine, and I swear on everything, I swooned. One brief moment to laugh inside my head at the idea of being a swooner, and whoosh I don’t think I thought straight again until the next morning.
My inhales are slow and steady. I have fallen into my body’s rhythm. My shoulders relax, my chin dips towards my chest and I exhale heavily. There’s a slight sensation of falling; not like a panicky gasp of a fall, just a descent. I hear my inhalation as if from inside, setting up camp near the sinuses, listening to breath as if to wind. I exhale, and it goes on and on, it should feel unnatural but it’s not, and the feeling of descent…broadens. It doesn’t deepen, like you think that something descending would do, it just grows exponentially in an ever widening bubble, or maybe like an upside down mushroom. Picture that, it’s fun.

My eyelids are gone. Obviously they’re not, but since I am seeing things and haven’t opened my eyes the only logical explanation would be that they are gone. Next step in logical deduction is to admit the truth of what your senses are telling you, barring possibly if you are a schizophrenic or a paranoid delusional. Then I would maybe say question everything your senses are telling you. If a sane person by standard definition started to do this, would they then corrupt their brain into becoming delusional? Possibly.
But I am seeing things. Not like you normally see things behind your closed eyelids when you press too hard on them or the sun is creating shapes behind them. I see….I see a road in front of me. It is dark outside, and I am standing on a dirt road, paved unevenly with rough, cracked flagstones more suited to a patio than a road. Everything looks filmy, like there was a dust storm that I just missed and now there’s a haze. I’m not worried, about what’s behind me or what’s in front of me. I think that maybe there’s a layer of haze over my brain as well.

Fine, soft dirt under my bare feet. I look down in surprise as I grind them in, amazed that the physical sensations are so specific. I am also surprised to see that my toenails are painted a pretty sparkly purple color. This obscure detail is what starts to quicken the delayed panic response inside me. I used to paint my toenails all the time. A small delight that would make me smile every time I happened to catch a glimpse of them. It’s been probably a little over two years since I have plied my pretty painted toenail trade.

The surprises continue, little sparks of confusion as my eyes run over my legs. They are tanned and conditioned, perfectly smooth. Gone are the little pockets of dimpled skin on the backs of my thighs, a physical sign of the laziness that has eaten at me, thin and shapely legs gifted by nature and marred by lack of discipline. Still, my scars remain on these pretty and tanned legs, but I have always loved my scars, even the ones that I put there on purpose.

I am wearing little blue stretchy shorts, midnight blue that deepens against my golden skin. My stomach is my flat and gorgeous stomach again, not the little bloated and fluffy pouch under the remainder of what used to be taut, gained with much hard work slouching and eating shitty comfort food covered in mayonnaise. And again, the flaw that remains is the flaw that I love, the little distended part at the top of my belly button from being pregnant.

My regular old boobs covered in an undershirt style tank top are the same, and my arms and whatnot, all the same, my good old self, my pieces that I haven’t wrecked yet by being an asshole.

Flutters and flickers of panic are now licking at the edges of my conscious thoughts, flashing Danger Danger signals that are supposed to mean something but I’m not there yet, not clear enough to see it. I gaze forward, down the road, startled all over again as I see lights popping up in the distance, coming towards me, like giant fireflies bursting into light one at a time, in a row, heading directly for me.

An involuntary step forward, they’re so beautiful, so bright and friendly, I feel literally compelled to move closer to them. My foot stills its own forward momentum. I realize what it is that has the ‘you should be freaking out now’ messages careening through my thoughts.

I am, at the edge of this road, in a place that does not exist, seeing things with my eyes closed, my perfectly realized self. When I visualize myself inside my head, this is the person that I see. She pirouettes through my inner workings, zings to the top of a pyramid to sit lotus style in a smartass way on the very tip as she attains enlightenment without me. She is the me that I see when I imagine what I would be were it not for the cracks and the wrong turnings and all the bullshit. And I am her. Right now.

‘What the FUCK?’

My eyelids open for real, I am on my monk colored meditation cushion staring straight out of my patio door. And my bare feet are covered in dirt.

The World of Games

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. His feet, wrapped only in the same tough black cloth that his pants were made of, sank and kicked up sand in rhythm with his staggering steps.
A bullet winged past his right side and he stumbled into a semblance of a zig zag pattern as it poofed up a cloud of sand about two feet in front of him.

His eyes wheeled, searching for a mound of sand that would indicate a Hole. There was nowhere to hide in the Desert World, nothing to brandish as a weapon. Black clothing stood out like a neon target in this monochromatic landscape, zig zag pattern or no.
As the sand sapped his strength and the sun scorched his uncovered head, the man in black finally spied what he was looking for. With renewed vigor he lurched forward, eyes on the prize, and another shot rang out. He stretched his arms out and dove for the hole in the earth just as a singeing pain on his left calf twanged his nerves and forced out an involuntary yelp.
“Water! Water!” he yelled in a voice made hoarse by exertion and dehydration. Sliding into the Hole, careening faster than he had expected, he grasped at the scree and stunted roots in the tunnel walls as he flew past. Sand got inbetween his lips, rough against his tongue and excruciating on any raw patches of flesh that were unfortunate enough to be uncovered. He closed his mouth and eyes tightly and hoped that his call for water had been heard in time.
An eternal moment later coolness kissed his face as he felt the angle of his descent deepen. His free fall began and the man in black sighed with relief. He landed with a whump on damper packed sand, quickly rolling to his feet and loping crookedly away from the Hole. His entire body wanted to revolt against the continued exertion but he knew that he was finally close to having a chance at winning this particular game.
Scanning the Island World in which he now found himself, his gaze fell upon a piece of driftwood conveniently formed into a club and his cracked lips smiled for the first time in days. He hefted it in his right hand, testing the weight and grip, no longer noticing the blood that dripped from his bullet grazed leg.
“So now the game really begins.”

This weeks Master Class offering came from the BlogBirthdayBoy, Eric at Sinistral Scribblings. In honor of his blog’s anniversary, he chose the first line from Stephen King’s “The Gunslinger” and let us have at it. This story was also inspired by Hole in the Earth, by the Deftones, which is what I was listening to as I drove through a bleak and monochromatic valley this morning and *poof* – I saw the man in the black running for his life. It also appears to be brought to you by the letter ‘S’ as it seems that there are an inordinate amount of those in here…maybe I should’ve worked a Scryer in as well…

Metropolis – The Beginning

The sun was shining. I prefer the heat of summertime, but for the visual of sunshine? Fall, all the way. Mid afternoon, unseasonably warm. Rays were sending out what amounted to a seemingly flawless amber tone to the sky, shining through the bare branches of the trees in the courtyard. I get so easily staggered any more, honestly. But lately, or lately for kind of a long time and I didn’t recognize it out loud to myself, it’s not the eager impromptu ‘Thank you!’ that I used to offer up to who knows whom when bowled over by the splendor in the mundane. I tear up. I don’t waddle around like a drain pipe or anything, but something is moving through me, taking advantage of my open moments to point out to me that I am sad. I am sad. Hmmm. That’s not right. I am fucking dead inside.
I’m so tired of myself.
It’s Saturday, it’s around 2. I’ve had a pot of coffee, watched some shows I had on DVR, made the kid cinnamon rolls from a cardboard tube. Now I’m standing in front of my patio door, feeling huge and weirdly conflicting emotions. For no easily discernible reason, as just standing watching my backyard shouldn’t make me feel like the world is about to drop off of the horizon.
One part is my nearly ever present awe for the easy beauty that is always right outside these walls; I truly believe that the world would slowly and probably in a small way become a better place if every person made sure to look up at the sky at least once a day. It’s amazing stuff, and probably the closest to magic that we’re going to get here. I don’t like to study science because I don’t want my pretty pictures explained. I don’t want to know all about refracting light, or clouds filled with bits of dirt. That’s fine, rational explanations don’t make me love them any less, but I feel a bit cheated at times by reality and so…let me stay in awe.
I love outside. I always have. No fear of heights or water or bug or scratchy plant has daunted me over the years, although I’ve been camping and freaked out at the thought of a bad person out there in the dark. Not nature though. Well, I’ve also never wandered where my survival depended upon the impeded olfactory sense of a bear or a wolf. I love slightly tame outside. No bears.
The other part? She’s my zombie. Not jumping on the genre bandwagon, although I am a huge fan of it. No purist, me; I like the old plodding and implacable brain eaters that slowly terrorized my younger self’s dreams and the preternaturally fast and bloodthirsty strikeforce of the modern parlance. But I wasn’t kidding when I said I was dead inside. Fucking dead inside, excuse me.
She is the me who stares at the world that is loved, and has no desire to be in it. She doesn’t pretend to agoraphobia, or shyness, although she will sometimes to illness – a headache, a vague malaise an ache a shiver. Who knows what the fuck goes on in that maggot ridden brain of hers. I don’t.
I’ve been telling myself since I woke up hours ago, feeling content and happy and surprisingly non-headachey, that today would be the day that I ‘got stuff done’. Today will be the day that, without the necessity of going to work, I will leave this apartment and go outside. To the valley to walk around and just be for a bit. To drop off all the kid’s outgrown clothes that have accumulated in the closet at an astounding rate as he shoots up taller than I am. Something. I don’t care what, really, just anything.

I get to feel her take over, which is always fun. The chutzpah that my self wakes up with, the smiles and silliness, fade into nothing. I can’t leave, like this apartment is a fucking drug. Stuck stuck stuck. What the fuck is happening to me?
I feel like there’s this tiny me inside, she’s all happy and healthy and strong. She doesn’t smoke and she’s blown away by everything, and she’s hilarious and has crazy energy shooting out of her fingertips. If she was big and real I would want to be her best friend, this tiny little me on the inside. And she’s stuck, running in circles around this obelisk prison, just stuck running in these itty bitty circles banging on the walls and hollering to be let out.
I’ve tried to break down her walls and let her out, I have! Or, possibly, I totally have not. I have made half hearted attempts, poking a finger into a crack in the mortar here, scuffing at a broken brick with my toe. I have yet to lower my head like the Juggernaut and smash those shitty stupid walls to dust. Because of my zombie. My zombie doesn’t say anything or make a move to stop me. She just stares until everything in me freezes except for the possibly slightly psychotic-in-a-good-way princess running around in those little circles.
I need to make friends with my zombie. I need to stop calling her my zombie. I need to make friends with me. Because it is me that is fucking dead inside and it is me that is screaming to be let out and it is me that has lost it all. It’s all me.
Knowing is half the battle.
I don’t think I will make it out today.

It screamed and screamed…

The doctor woke up afraid and was aggravated by it. The woman, Talia, he thought, was sitting cross legged on the floor a few feet away, cloaked in a smirk and a palpable aura of anger. Self righteous little twit, he thought.

Her eyes lit with a ferocious delight as she saw his fluttering open. “Well well, hi there!” she said, brittle and bright. She unwound her long limbs and stretched upwards to shake out some of the stiffness. The stark room didn’t boast amenities like chairs, or anything even remotely resembling comfort. This was a room for bad business and nothing more.

As she came forward the doctor instinctively shrank backwards even though he had already felt the restraints clamped around his wrists and ankles. Her once fiery beauty now held a touch of madness; her smile had a feral edge, and as the doctor noticed the flecks of silvery-white in her green irises his fear ran to terror that dampened him with sweat from his lips to his toes.

“Noticed something, have you?” A sweet smile, gone sour. “What’s the matter?”

“You…you’ve been touched!” he stammered. “But, how are you…how did you…what in the hell are you?” His words ended on a wail.

“What, this?” she asked, all nonchalance as she rolled up her shirtsleeve. “I was touched by your Roiling, Doctor, that’s all.”

Her forearm was brown and smooth, ropey with somehow feminine muscles. Except for one long jagged strip that ran up the meaty inner flesh. Sunken in a full half inch, like she had been burned, except that the grey and waxy looking skin had a pearlesence to it that glowed. Looking the Doctor in his panic stricken eyes, she pressed a short clean fingernail directly into it. He watched a myriad of emotions play across her face, pain and confusion, elation.

Talia leaned even further over, pressed the tip of her nose directly to Doctor Faisel’s cheek so he could detect a fever smell pumping from her. “Do you know what it did, Doctor, when we caught the little bastard and pulled it out of me? When we yanked it by the tail and threw it on the ground along with my blood, my gore? Do you know what it did?”

The Doctor’s mind dithered, close to shutting down and he muttered something unintelligible.

Talia shoved her ear against his mouth as her voice went up an octave. “What was that Doctor? What was that?”

“It screamed…”

“That’s right!” Talia threw her arms up and down. “Right before we smashed it into a pulpy mess of shit on a dirty floor, your creature screamed and screamed. “The really funny thing about it though, was that it screamed just like a human woman.”

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this weeks Master Class prompt was brought to us by the talented SAM at My Write Side, who chose to use The Witching Hour by Anne Rice: The doctor woke up afraid.
As always I am delighted to be a part of this and I would prolly keep typing more but my computer is acting squirelly as all get out and i would just like to make sure that this gets posted…