Bajemas Scriptorium

Story sample from The Black Ibis: Baptista

The day is a Sunday. The placement of the day where things are slowly slipping into night mode. When the sky appears to bleed a little bit like a woman in cycle. You should know, I compare most things to a woman, it’s just my way. I could say it’s because of the way my mother spoke as she raised me, but I think it’s just one of my many habits. And I am a woman of many habits. Like smoking, like finding myself getting vulgar when I talk around men, like the way I sometimes forget myself to a situation while I never forget my manners. I know I’m influenced greatly by my Russian birth and heritage, but I can’t discount my life of travel from place to place, even as a child. As for introductions, Baptista is the name given to myself, not the name given to me. It is the only name you will ever really need know me by. This is a random start to my random story.

It’s evening now, in some hotel where the snow outside is keeping us in, and keeping those already inside from going out. As a result, my room is still being cleaned from the previous occupant, who only ten minutes ago finally decided to brave the weather. As I wait, one of my prized possessions sits next to me, breathing heavy enough I might accuse her of snoring. My frostrós doesn’t snore though.

Her name is Yukiko, though I’m not sure if the name was properly used in a traditional fashion by her parents. However, she’s always been my Minka. We are all about names, her and I, and there are a dozen names between us. A woman should have a special name for each person special to her, and she them. Just as I am my lover Sill’s Devotchka, and I am my father’s Greta, to Minka I will always be Dimitra, the name my mother gave me but which I never let her call me. Only Minka whispers this name, and only when we’re alone, close to one another.

I met Minka when I first came to the West from Canada. I was trying to adjust to the warmth of the weather after having been in the cold of a deep frost. I was pale, paler still because I had dyed my naturally red hair the very whitest of blondes. My goal had been to look as though I bathed in bleach. I wore glosses instead of true colors, and dabbed glitter at the corners of my pale eyebrows. The only true color I wore was a berry shade which looked like a wine stain, on my eyelids and the middle of my bottom lip. Minka thought I looked like a snow imp, but it took a long detailed conversation from her to come to this one little statement. A history of dead Nordic ideology and masochistic literature, all to simply say -you look like a snow imp and I like that. I fell in love with her immediately. My new friend then, friend forever.

I would run into her often when I was down by the library. Most of my things at that time were scattered in lock boxes in places of public transit. I had no place for myself, however, so I stuck near the library. There were always students about, people to eavesdrop on, so I could sort of learn my way around the city as I tried to get myself settled. It was also close to the peepshow I worked at four nights out of the week.

I remember when I told Minka this the first time. She had asked how I was making my money. I told her I put on some barbie doll make-up, used a wig, and made pouty faces in a room with four other women as these little windows would open and close. No contact, and in most cases you couldn’t even see the person’s face. It was like making an erotic show for your bedroom mirror, something I was practiced at by the age of thirteen.

She wasn’t shocked, just fascinated in her odd little way. She asked if I liked it and all I could tell her was it was like a cake job at a store. It wasn’t a lot of effort, it gave me a nice check, but I didn’t exactly enjoy going to work and often I was bored. The other women made it entertaining. I liked watching the other women dance and Minka liked that answer. It led into one of our many conversations about how women are natural around one another in every way, how no type of affection really seems out of the ordinary. After that conversation, she offered me a night in a warm bed. If anyone else had offered me such, I would have thought it a hand out, or suddenly been struck by how pathetic my situation was. I mean, I was homeless, the ultimate sign of poverty in America, right? But I felt neither pathetic or impoverished. I always likened it to simply being a gypsy. I made do with what I had, I moved as I wished. Leases and man-made structures gave me no sense of security. Only the knowledge that I could go where I pleased, when I pleased, gave me comfort. This too she understood, even though she didn’t practice such ideas.

This was ten years ago I think. In that time, I have never known a more unique woman than my Minka. Sometimes she’s like my personal geisha, sometimes a porcelain doll crafted by an eccentric’s hands. She’s worldly, blessed with her own erratic way of thinking. And sometimes she’s just a flustered young woman happily at odds with the world she resides in.

I once had a dream where Minka, who looks faintly Asian from her father, was pale like the color of buttermilk. At her eyes, her lips, her cheeks was the most delicate of ice blue coloring, like an artist set to her make-up. Her black hair was woven with silk strands the shades of winter. And she wore this beautifully elaborate prom dress, or wedding dress, also made of winter hues. Atop it all she wore a small tierra of ice as she was the princess of snow.

In this dream she was walking across a river made of snow, and her crystal slippers made no mark no matter how hard she stepped. She was walking towards a field where cold, large, war weary deities were clunking one another over the heads again and again. There were no ice giants, they were long dead. The Valkyries above the battle were nothing more than harpies with wings, so they couldn’t even sway Minka’s attention. She passed through the dropping hammers and battle cries, leaving them all behind because the world was white in front of her. A white palate painted with all those subtle winter colors. She kept walking till her whole form simply became one with the ice. Somewhere on the other side of this ice a child found a doll in the frost. A little Yukiko made of porcelain and silks, a small hint of a smile playing at the edges of her painted lips.

Sometimes when I want to describe Minka to people, I want to try and make them visualize this dream of mine. Of course they wouldn’t be able to understand it, or see it as I saw it while sleeping. They wouldn’t be able to understand why this dream so perfectly represents her. Why a collection of vivid and cold imagery, which makes no sense, even though there was some really profound truth in it, so aptly described her. Pity I’m no good with words. I believe the name Yukiko means Snow Child in Japanese. Perhaps that says it better.

Currently Minka is turning a bit in her shallow sleep. She came awake long enough to see we were still in the lobby, registered this fact, before letting herself drift back to sleep. Right now I want nothing more than to be cuddling up to this young woman in a warm bed. Especially one of these warm beds which are outfitted in good soft sheets and comforters of down. Kicking off a hundred dollars from our night’s tab was a good gesture for our budget, but it didn’t help with my want. My need for sleep, comfort, and the warm –almost soft snoring sounds– of the woman at my side. Another thirty minutes pass before a bellhop comes to show us to our room.

The Dreaming, Bethalynne Down the Well
From: When Jupiter Sighs

How is this, that the moon should have to temper the rage of the sun? The goddess of the night, like a full halo that hangs above the heated Earth… she doesn’t get the compliments deserving of her beauty. But then the scholars, the ones that think they know, know the truth, would place this brilliant body in the heavens as nothing more then a chunk of rock. The moon is made of cheese, I think with a laugh. I would tell the ones that know, know that truth, that they should look beyond the obvious. Straight towards the moon, step to the side and peer past the glow… there you’ll see the beauty wrapped in her velvet gown spun from the night’s sky. And the stars? They are the milk that split from the night’s breast and dotted the heavens, atleast that is what my grandmother always said. I like the idea of it though, I can always think of that poor lady midnight as my mother, my true mother.

The sun is holding a grudge. He thinks when he sets over the horizon, when his back is turned, that his lady steps to the advances of another celestial body. Maybe the massive man of Jupiter asks her for a dance… maybe Saturn slips a ring upon her finger before placing his lips to her palm. I can hear her soft giggle, like a winter sigh, as she enjoys the attention. After all, she only has the company of her mate, truly his attention, when the night touches the day, at dusk and at dawn. The time when morning’s colors of rose and yellow come bleeding through onto the black curtain of night. Maybe this is why that time is so odd, so foreboding. Maybe we can all feel the tension between the ancient lovers in the sky. I would tell him to step back, step away, no Sun could match the love Jupiter could offer… he would be my prince if it were my choice.

So I sit, trying to ignore the two quarrelling just outside of my shades. You don’t want to hear them but how can they be ignored? So I slip my fingers over the polished keys of the radio, rummaging through the little slim box covers till once temps my fancy. A pleasant face looks back at me, a red cloud about her head, no make-up shading her features. A simple beauty belonging to a voice and the words that have always caused me to think. Think very deeply upon the dreams that swirl through my mind. I put on Tori…

It is easy to reflect upon the things that she has to say. Why do we hurt ourselves when it is just a waste? Why do we impose upon ourselves the ideas and demands of others? Not that I do… not that I care to worry about those who do not impact my life. Such things only cause the crows feet that make us look old, worried, haggard. I would rather have those lines map something more important in my life, the worries that come to a mother’s brow. My angels, Eva Catherine, catherine the name of many saints - Roan Brendan, brendan the Gaelic word for little raven or brave and bold. Those furrows around my eyes… this line was when my beautiful baby girl Eva Catherine slipped off the step, and this new worry mark is where my precious boy Roan Brendan got hit with a puck in practice. Those things would mean something, those marks would remind the aged mother in me that I had love for the children I ushered into this world. Those phantom faces, those angels, are only wishes right now and I would not have some stranger’s comments worry me into those lines meant for my angels. But this is mere ramble…

The melody helps me hide from the music. I need to find something. My head turns to look at the fountain of dried flowers that sits upon my tiled floor. With a nudge and a grunt I try to draw the little man’s attention. He doesn’t want to hear me. “Get to it will you. Or else I shall have to paint you some vivid and horrid color that clashes with your tranquility.” The little fellow returns a grunt but he gets up. I can hear moving behind the dried flower bush. Two small jade colored hands part through the tangled web of flowers, pushing them back so I can see his large belly peeking through. The plaster made Buddha steps through and looks up at me. “Get to it fella.” I say to him, a smirk playing at the corners of my mouth “Let me be away before the night’s husband as full reign.”

The Buddha steps out, taking but a moment to stretch his tiny body. He looks about my floor till his eyes fall upon the thing he is looking for. A black shirt, made of a fine fabric named peach skin, lies there, carelessly thrown down. Slowly he steps towards it, his eyes looking towards the two cats that lay sleeping in there patchwork quilt. The sleek black one, with the silver mane, opens one honey colored eye. Her name is Jezebella and she is the world’s best mouser. Though she had never had a taste for small Buddha statues. The other furry babe, just a mere kitten though his body had already grown, was KitKat. A white feline, dotted with patches of gold, buff and black, his eyes were soft green. Hard to believe the mistress Jezebella was his mother. He took no notice, his purrs kept him wrapped in sleep. With the felines resting, the small jade hand grabbed the black shirt and pulled it to the middle of the floor.

Below his feet he placed the shirt, smoothing it out with his toes till it was a misshapen circle on the floor. Simple as it was, his work was done. He slipped away, moving back behind the dried flowers were he enjoyed hiding. He knelt back down, regaining his peaceful pose that so many worshipped far and wide.

I slip from my bed allowing my feet and hands to touch the floor. Such a primal feeling, to crawl over the cool surface that was mostly only known to my feet. Slipping around, I come to sit on my rear. I let a toe slip into the black hole in my floor. Swirl the water around, the dream seems a bit heated tonight. Maybe a lover’s touch awaits me, the kiss of a phantom, the taunting of a ghost. Maybe an evil awaited me down there. The face of the haggard wench that once lived in my Aunt’s closet. She would have her scissors in one hand and her green and white striped socks pulled up and over her knees. Or maybe, to my disappointment, simple meaninglessness waited me down there like so many random dreams offered.

With one flowing movement I let myself slip into the hole of sleep’s waters and let myself wade into the dream…

In a girlish fashion I plug my nose as those warped waters close over my head. Beneath me the strong undertow nips at my toes, trying to get a purchase on my foot. When it finally did secure it’s hold it quickly tugged me one way before whipping me the other. Spinning me and shoving me as it had a destination in mind for me. Off to my left a ribbon of light cuts through the murk. The riff of brilliant colors swirls upon itself, like some dizzy acrobat. Undertow or not, I force myself towards the riff.

Beyond the colorful tear in the waters is a landscape not so odd for the dream. A green field that seemed endless, dropping off in the far horizon. Every now and then a weeping willow broke up the endless green. A voice was huffing and fussing behind me. Looking over my shoulder I see the well dressed rabbit standing there, eyeing his watch, worrying over the time. “I am late!” he says through worried pants. The scene is not intriguing though, so I look away. From behind the rabbit continues to plead his case “But I am late!” Once more I glance over my shoulder to give him the advice he seems to want from me “Late is late. Why bother going at all?” and turn away.

There was nothing here but there had to be something here. My foot went out before me, expecting to find the green field below, instead there was nothing but the open space above the well. My balance slips and I fall down the hole, like Alice moving through her looking glass. With a thump the ground below quickly stops the fall. The world below here was still enjoying the night, with the moon high above. This wasn’t my lady though, the one I knew in my world. I didn’t trust this celestial body so I looked away.

“Now where did you come from my lady?”

I knew that voice even though I did not know that person. I saw him every evening as I watched my sport, worshipped my television. I can look at him but I cannot find it in myself to utter his name. Like the idea of god in his heavens… Did you know the myth says God created three woman in all for Adam. The first woman Adam fell sick at the sight for he saw the matter below the skin forming as God raised her from dust and rib. Eve was the third and one we all call mother and temptress. Lilith was the second woman God created in the garden to be kept for a mate to the man. She spoke aloud the name of her creator and she disappeared from the garden but not from history. Eventually she would find herself as the demon of night for one old religion. What of this man? No god, to be sure, but quite heavenly in my mind. What might happen to Bethalynne in the garden if she spoke his name? Best to still the tongue.

I turn to look at him. He smiles that smile that is a touch of humor and a bit of a smirk. A man’s face is meant to be described as handsome, but the only word that comes to mind is beautiful. This man was so much more beautiful then I would ever be. “Something troubles you?” he asks. My response is to shake my head slowly and sigh “I never have the time to tell you the things I want to say. The words I would say to impress you, the things I would point out to show you how much alike we are.” The moonlight catches his eyes, making them twinkle. Such is my reaction that I know, were I to write this down, my words would turn into romance novel drivel. Ah hell… those authors are the millionaires…

“If you had the time you needed, what would you say?” he asks. Ah! The right question for an absurd answer. “If I had the time then my mouth would fail me. My tongue would become twisted or my mind would go blank. You can’t know, because you are a figment of my mind that begins at this spot each night that I sleep, but this dream runs the same course. It’s the irony of my situation. The one place where anything my mind wants to happen can. A shame I can not control what my mind will have me see.”

This man steps forward, placing his palm to my cheek and whispers “You have all the time in the world, so say it.” So I do say it “I need you… if only there were something between us.”. At the same time, as always, there is the noise of a group of chattering people coming towards us. The massive table is there though I hadn’t noticed it before. The crimson covered cloth covers it and the table top is covered with the pieces of our tea party. The pastel colored cakes, the bowl of dates, the tea cups and small plates. The man’s attention is briefly stolen by all the commotion, he doesn’t hear me. I cannot bring myself to say it again. There seemed to be something shameful about needing someone you didn’t know. Before he can speak to me I just step away, looking towards the crowd.

“My sister, my sister!” a deep female voice calls out. It is Lianessa looking towards me. The character I gave life to but the person Brittany breathed a spirit into. Lianessa was the essence of that woman I knew in the waking world. A truer version of that woman then herself. Her Lianessa had no hang ups of the body or the family tugging on her heart strings. Lianessa was a vamp with evil in her heart but enough compassion within her to keep her from being cruel. I loved Lianessa as much as her counter part in life.

Lianessa stepped out from her crowd of admirers. Her torso was bound by a tight vinyl corset, the front of it giving no outlet for her breasts. Her anatomy was forced to conform to the tight fit. The affect was her breasts pressed so closely to her chest that they formed two perfect circles peeking out of the corset top. Acres of plum velvet spilled down from her equally tight cinched waist. Her hand reached up to push away the blonde ringlets that fell across her eyes. I knew the man at my side never saw those blue eyes of hers for his own eyes could not rise above the corset top. I had to laugh softly to myself… it seemed even in dreams some males could be so predictable. But I would not blame him. Some beauties were dangerous, that was my Lianessa. How could he not stare?

She turned her cool blue eyes on me, that familiar smirk on her lips. “Am I interrupting something?” she questioned, her eyes crawling over the man at my side. “Or is there room for another?” a low laugh rolled out and over her tongue.

“You’re not interrupting a thing sister. Maybe we should start this tea party.” came my answer.

The small gathering of people dispensed, moving around the table to find their seats. There was a small quarrel over who might find themselves next to the lady Lianessa. To calm the tempers Lia simply grabbed the man most to her liking and sat him down before taking her seat upon his lap.

To my right my own gentleman took his seat, making sure to move his chair an inch so that our elbows bumped when we sat down. We fell into idol chit chat, conversations of no importance except to keep the party moving on. To my surprise, as I lent my opinion to the state of refereeing in my sport - to a man who had never heard of sports, I felt the touch of something warm. A hand, so much larger then the knee it came to rest on, finding my leg under the table. The last word caught in my throat, causing me to sound like a parrot screeching out a misshapen word. The smile was still there on the man’s lips as if he didn’t know what caused me to stutter.

I could feel the blush heating my cheeks. The blush that started underneath the man’s hand and worked it’s way up my leg, over my spine before spreading across my face. Could I ever be the woman who had the most perfect poker face? Could I ever hide the things that swirled around in my head? The crimson color of my face suggested no. To worsen things another degree the butterflies were now awakened from their long slumber. They beat their wings against the insides of my belly like little dragon beasts below. So violent and anxious they were to get out that I feared a painted moth might dart out should I open my mouth.

“Don’t you know it’s rude to start a party without your host? But then what can I expect of Americans anyway. Such a low class bunch of souls.” a deeply French accented voice said to the table. There stood the tall form of the man who was the same here as he was in life, Monsieur Dominique. His eyes moved from person to person, briefly pausing on me to offer a smile, then moving on to find the lady Lianessa. The madam smiled her wicked smile “We Americans are about as much a transplanted mutt race as you Canadians are I would think. Look at me, with the Scottish in me and countless other races running through my blood. And look to our mutual friend over there, with her fiery Irish blood mixing with the much tamer blood of the Dutch in her family. It is such an arrogant thing to suggest any of us are of lower class then anyone else. After all, we’ve all stolen the land from the people who once owned it… of course they were a much better race to know you could not own the land that belonged to nature.”

The monsieur scowled and waved a hand at Lianessa, as if to cast her off “Don’t you have some little man you should be beating Lianessa?” In much the same manner Lia waved back and snapped “Don’t you have some Queen’s ass you should be kissing, my fraudulent Frenchman?!” And so the mating dance of the sadistic couple began.

The exchange was just another example that each breed had it’s own mating ritual. To the beautiful and evil, this ritual was almost cruel but the attraction was there. My only criticism was that we all had to be witness to it. It was all very distracting. Especially when my butterflies had done good to morph into small dragonflies that now blew their little flames in my tummy. All the while I was trying to find the catchy thing to say that might keep the attention of my suitor on me. My moments with him, truly with him, like this, where few and far between. Somewhere he most likely had some lady to adore him. A fine female creature who had long ago moved beyond being a woman child. Somehow I could now quite let go of the girlish thing in me that caused great difficulty in referring to myself as a woman. Always feeling I needed to be just a bit older to truly understand the world around me.

As the insults flew between the madam and the monsieur, the man lost his interest. His gaze moved back to look at me, to offer another smile. He leaned close to my ear as his hand pressed closer to my inner thigh. He whispered, and I could feel his breath on my ear. He spoke soft and low “Come walk with me.” At that moment I coughed up a butterfly wing in my excitement.

I stood up so fast that the chair beneath my legs fell backwards with a clatter. But no one noticed. The quarreling couple were inches from one another, firing back and forth like their words were some demented tennis ball. Neither of them wanted to lose the match. The crowd around the table was caught up in the spectacle. The two of us walked away without so much as an eye finding us gone.

“Why do you think I wouldn’t need you?” he asks.

I look at him sharply and feel the blush returning. The daisies below my feet taunt me, telling me in their little whispers that such a rose color was quite stunning on my cheeks. The butterflies still themselves for a moment, they’ve got to hear what I’m going to say. I don’t want to disappoint them but truthfully I hadn’t thought he had heard me. And now that he put the question to me I felt rather foolish. Infact I wished that I could be a simple creature… the kind of sleeping mind that simply dreamed of being naked in public. But no, I had to be more creative and now I suffered the effects, as I tried to put into words the things I wanted him to know. “Well… it’s hard to explain. You see I can understand it because it is one of the thoughts that swirls around my own head. But to put into words is a different thing…”

He smiled, a small smile, to show he thought my situation quite humorous. But of course, he was the phantom. I took his hand “You see, it is not so much that I need you, but someone much like you. The humor that is in your voice, the attraction I have to your appearance, what girl wouldn’t want her ideal?”

I paused, looking up at him and wondered how so much light could come out of such black eyes. They almost reminded me of my mother’s eyes, as black as bits of mica. I sighed, realizing I was letting myself fall into the rhythm of a dreary, love spent woman. I did not want him to think this of me because that was not true. I was only confused and I needed to explain this confusion to someone, even it was only to myself in a dream.

“When I see you in this place I realize, with your humor and your man like actions that these are the things that I need because it’s been lacking in my life.

But then I wonder… could any of you understand the idea of having a cloud on your tongue or eating ginger daisies till you were sick… Why would someone like you ever need me? This is what I think of most people… maybe because so seldom have I ever needed anyone or has anyone ever needed me. It’s confusing when I try to sort it out in my brain. This would all be so much easier if you were simply the object of a wet dream. But unfortunately…. there’s not enough symbolizing in it for me. And it’s not like this is so important, or so unique to me. The world over suffers the same as I do. I just have the luxury of expressing it somewhat more poetically then them.” the blush subsided.

The man gave my hand a light tug and I looked up. He smiled and I smiled and for a moment I didn’t feel so foolish for being so childish at times. My butterflies were starting to rise themselves once more.

His smile increased and he leaned very close to me “Maybe those things, the things that you mentioned, are the very things that make me need you quite badly. After all, how many men can say they love a woman who eats clouds like cotton candy?” The butterflies, having heard enough, decided the stomach would not suit their purpose. So they flew farther south to tickle my pelvic bone and cause me great discomfort. But the man was drawing closer, to place his hand behind my head, to draw me near….

“My name is pronounced Dom-ee-nick!” the monsieur cried from behind me. Lianessa answered him just as loudly “Alright Dom-ee-neek! Maybe your mother should have blessed you with a man name if you wish me to call you by a man name. But then you do remind me of a little girl… always pouting!” Then the crash of the madam being lifted and thrown upon the table. The tea cups and plates flew in every direction. The guests each rushed away, each disappointed that they had not won the attentions of the lady. The lady’s back fell flat against the wood table top, her nails finding the man’s neck. The monsieur’s response was to tear away the acres of plum velvet so that he mind find the long pale legs hidden below. At that point, I knew enough to look away, but not before seeing the small smile playing at the corner of the lady’s lips.

I turned my attentions back to the man who was but inches from my face. But… he was not there. “Damn!” I cried in my rage. “Always! Always you disappear before the good stuff can happen. Why can’t I just have a normal beginning and ending for once, just once!” and then, with a sudden movement, I ducked. At the same moment the Queen’s staff flew over my head. I had almost forgot were I was. I looked over to the side to see little Alice holding her pink flamingo, taking a swipe at the small painted ball. I should have known it was the Queen of hearts who’s come to jump on mine a few times.

The Queen swiveled round in a circle as she missed her target. She regained her composure, straightening her golden crown and standing up straight. She pointed a red painted nail at me and screamed “Off with her head!” In response I only shook my head and laughed “Go ahead, lob it off! Lot of good it has done me so far. Maybe atleast the butterflies will be able to be free. I can’t see them enjoying their home in my tummy anyway!” The Queen smiled and motioned for her axe. But my interest had left me, I was about done with this dream. I turned my back to her and began walking away. The Queen hissed and cursed behind me to which I replied in kind. Soon, the whole scene had faded altogether.

I found my resting place, found my dead friend. He smiled at me “Another tough night for you my dear? Ah, but listen to that, I am getting the hang of this modern English!”

“Yes you are my friend, yes you are.”

Drifting and dreaming, my body growing weary, as I was slipping too deeply into dream’s depths. The sounds of the dream slowly disappeared, lost to the dull sound of waves. My friend was there to keep me from my isolation. As I let myself lay upon the feather soft floor, I looked towards my only companion. “Please, take my mind off of these things that trouble me. I find myself speaking in rhythm with some unwritten melody, some song that keeps playing itself over and over in my head. I just want to find some peaceful waters.” I say as my voice slips into a whisper…

My companion nods and opens a book, to a page, to a verse that I had always enjoyed. “Even as a flattering dream or worthless fancy…” he began “Then take him up and manage well the jest…” such thoughts, such thoughts. Please go on. “Carry him gently to my fairest chamber…”

As my mind slips away, falling back to waking in much the same manner it falls into sleeping, the sound of his accented voices fades away. I often wonder, as I sit on the edge of consciousness, if the shrew was ever tamed…

And then I am awake.

The sun is shining brightly through my window. Effectively turning the backs of my eyelids into white sheets of light. Perhaps this is the Sun’s punishment for siding with his lover.

Something warm and fuzzy stretches across my chest. It occurs to me, as I have to struggle to breath, that it might be wise to put Jezebella, the world’s best mouser, on a diet. And so begins the day…

And that…

Is another story.

In dreaming we can be at peace with our environments.

I lay here, trapped within fog. Conscious thought surrounds me and fills the air with movements and color coated dust. I can barely see through the thickness of it all. It smells like the place behind my eyes. Dark, bloody, image ridden, and so profound. A place to trap the ideas, a place to stockpile the memories. A stock room. But that room was empty here. There was nothing in here but the sensation of pumping blood. I saw in the blood briefly a face and the touches belonging to it. My mind ached.

“Mesa?” I asked softly.

Soft hands wrapped themselves around mine, lifting my hands up into the air till I felt the heat of skin close to them. Gentle lips pressed against my fingers, kissing them, pulling them against the cheek. I felt breath warming them. A figure leaned over and gently put those lips to the thin skin along side of my eyes and kissed me so softly. Like my face was made of wet paper that might tear. Such a sweet sensation after being kept from touch for so long.

My head was so quiet as I felt these things, so wonderfully devoid of static and commotion. It was just me and me, my thought, my inner voice —and my inner voice was being respectfully quiet as my outer senses came back to me.

Those lips moved along side of my ear, and the softest of voices, the most familiar of voices whispered “I’m right here Mirabye. I’ll always be right here.” I felt my body release it’s air. To push out the dust sticking to my lungs from the mortar, to bring back in the particle free breath of real air.

There he was, my safety blanket, the patchwork quilt I wrapped around myself to keep me safe from myself, from what thoughts of the world made me wish I could do. There was no protection needed any longer. There were no more mechanical demons for Mesa to chase off, no suited men in the streets to shield me from. Just me, just him, and I realized for once I could just love him. And that’s what I felt. Simple love for someone who was closer to me than my own conscious, without ever knowing it. He was my second skin. It was time for me to become his second skin. His love. The dreaming was over. I won. It was time to start living.

Then the world outside of me shakes with the vibrations of metal pushed to extremes, as a bomb ends its existence with a whisper of death. The apartment comes alive, and so do I. To the simple reality that my second skin no longer lives. At least he no longer lives in a way I could know him. The morning and its petty realities catch up to me and reluctantly I opened my eyes to receive it.

Industrial: Automatic Flower
story sample: copyright Bethalynne Bajema, All Rights Reserved

William briefly thought of his first wife. He still had picture of her on his desk from a vacation taken many years ago. She was already in her late thirties but she didn’t look a day past twenty-five. She didn’t even look as though she’d had one son who’d lived and one son who’d died. She was beautiful, trapped in such beauty as though it were a net cast across her whole being.

He looked over at the photo a moment. His wife’s beautiful dark eyes looked back at him, taunting him from that distant place she’d left him for. In the corner of her framed image was a smaller image. It was the only real photo he had of Saravoe —she’d sent it to him in a regular mail letter once. She looked young, perhaps in her late teens in the photo. Her eyes were also dark. They found him as well, but didn’t seem to carry the crippling weight the stare his wife’s captured eyes did.

On impulse he reached over and turned the picture over so neither stare was looking back at him. He went about finishing up his work for the day so he could get home sooner. A few hours passed and he imagined what was taking place with Saravoe till he couldn’t stand being in the office any longer. He opted to leave early, figuring no one would say too much considering it was somewhat of a special circumstance. It was only as he was sitting on the freeway on the way home that he thought he should have called his son and told him. The thought came and went without importance as he cursed the heavy traffic.

Industrial: Static Blue
story sample: copyright Bethalynne Bajema, All Rights Reserved

It was the nomad’s turn to smile at me, at my misconceptions. “You have found a grand city. Just not a city as you’ve become used to. Such a city would offer no protection from our enemies. Such a place would allow us no protection from ourselves. If we could fool ourselves into believing we still lived in our old world, would we not become complacent? Subdued? We would forget what we’re fighting for.”

“And what are we fighting for, if not our old world?”

“We’re fighting for the freedom to live as we choose. The freedom to have our memories, to breath the air. Do you know that there are places in the world where they’re poisoning the air so they can sell breathable air to their people? Places where the water has already been dragged from the rivers and put into wells in the ground. The atmosphere is already feeling the effects of this type of control, this warfare against our species.

“What do we care about the old cities? What? Cable television, radio with it’s inane music and commercials? How can we begin to care about such trivial pursuits if we are denied the very basic principles of this world? The freedom to live. The freedom to think. The freedom to remember! To care, to love.”

My mind pondered this. Of course it was all true. My first instinct was to believe this was simply another group who would try to force their beliefs on those weary travelers who found them at the end of their quest. That they may not be the Ministry, but perhaps instead the Nomads? Same line of thought, just different methods, different goals. One fought to scare us, bully us out of our freedom. Perhaps the other simply did the opposite. Removed us from our freedoms by promising us freedom was to be had again through them.

I realized these things must have been very nakedly passing over my face as I thought them. The nomad in front of me looked distressed, and I could tell he was trying to find more words, a better explanation. Those words didn’t come from him though. They came from the black haired woman who moved away from the small crowd to come towards me.

She smiled at me, sweetly and sincerely. “We are creating a cult of memory.” she said simply.

“Saravoe! No! Not yet!” the nomad snapped.

The woman looked at him as if he were little more than a silly man and she’d had her fill of waiting for silly men to make everything understood. She waved him off and came closer to me.

I, of course, knew the name. The very mention of it made my heart swell and my eyes become red. I thought of Miss Blue. I thought of the words from the renegade ghost. I thought of my own collection of thoughts kept in the sewer, some still back there in that sewer. I thought of my father with hope. But I still clung to my suspicions, just to be safe.

“Give me a memory then.” I challenged her, as weak a challenge as it might be to offer something as simple as a memory. But such times were making this an exercise in fear.

She pulled something from the small pouch she wore at her waist. She held up two photos for me to see. Both photos were fading, cracked, looking as though they’d seen better days. I could tell such damage had been done from them being handled too often, by fingers depositing their oils on them. One photo seemed to be little more than a color copy, judging by the paper. It was just a young woman with brightly dyed hair, cut in a modern version of an exaggerated bob. She was cute and happy looking. The other photo was of a woman who had plain features, but was very pretty. This one looked more handled than the other.

“This photo” she held up the color copy “is one I stole from the son of the man who owned me by the Ministry’s permission. I don’t know who she is, or even her real name. He called her Moulon. I took this photo and all the letters from her the son saved. I read them daily so that no one will forget her. This photo” she held up the image of the pretty woman. The mere act brought tears to the woman’s eyes “this is a photo of the woman who died for me. She was my lover for one night, but she means more to me than any person I’ve shared my time with. She saved me from a bomb, and she… she saved me from myself.” the last statement seemed to bring her a mix of pain and shame.

The woman put the photos back into her pouch to save them from the wind, which had kicked up in the last few moments. She closed the pouch tightly, turning her reddened black eyes on me.

“The woman’s name was Mirabye. One day, should you decide to stay, I will tell you her whole story and let you listen to the tapes she left me. If you want, you can help me keep her memory alive. The ghost you spoke of, this Sivil, she belonged to Mirabye. She is the reason I originally decided to meet with the woman. She is the new incarnation of a dead woman, one of the first taken by the ghost catchers. But she has been one of the loudest voices in what we do, what we’re trying to keep alive.

“If you have doubts, there is little we can say to persuade you. You won’t find a utopia here to save you from the dystopia you’re running from. All you will find are survivors who cling to their memories. Each of us has become a part of the process of keeping our memories so the Ministry doesn’t have a chance to wipe clean the human collective of memories. All you need to help us is to simply hold on to your memories and what’s in your heart. And to listen to the rest of us. To help us when we forget.”

She said these things with such elegance and candor, but weariness was in her voice. It was obvious in her voice alone the road she must have traveled to have gotten to this point. She wasn’t going to waste much breath to convince me of things I should have known before coming here.

The woman Saravoe turned away from me and began moving back to the invisible door they’d all come from. The wind was getting unruly, kicking up the sand and dirt. I watched as she moved away from me, the way her hair blew and waved in the wind, the same as the loose material of her dress. She walked with her head up, letting the wind and sand lash at her face, as if to say she was afraid of nothing, would bow down to nothing. It was that walk of hers which convinced me. She walked away from me not caring if I ran away threatening to tell someone of what I’d found. What did she care? She’d continue to remember. She wouldn’t be afraid anymore or seek protection she couldn‘t provide herself with. I might have been reading too much into her words and movements, but it gave me a feeling of strength either way. I moved to follow her.

I jogged through the group of people, catching up to the woman. I walked along side of her, digging into my own bag. I withdrew a photo and handed it to her. My photo wasn’t in much better shape than hers. She took it from me, staring at it as we walked.

“This is my father. His name was Roger. Will you remember his face?” I asked her.

She smiled, studying the photo before handing it back to me. “I’ll remember him.” she said softly as she slipped her arm around my shoulders. I heard the people following behind us.

I walked along side of her, slipping my arm around her waist. I hadn’t realized how badly I missed the simple sensation of touching another person. Her warmth, her comfort, it seeped from her into me and for the first time in many months I found my eyes welling up with tears. There were a lot of things I wanted to be rid of which I had kept tightly held within myself so I didn’t give my grief and fears away. They were coming out now. She held me a little tighter as the tears came. For a moment I was allowed to be a sad twelve year old girl again.

We moved towards the place they’d come from. It was a door in the ground which could only be seen when we were almost on top of it. Saravoe started down and I quickly followed after, not allowing myself to give a look back to all those things I’d left behind me.

Beginning

If I could a the place where the machines ran softly, I think I would pitch my tent and proclaim it my own. I’d spread my bed out over the ground and call it a home. In this place the sun would burn violet and the raindrops would run indigo. Pain wouldn’t live here. The clubs would never close. Anyone willing to say hello could be a friend. No one would ever know the hollow of lose. Or the stab of mistrust. In this place where the machines ran softly.

Violet stars and indigo rain, there is my daydreaming. I thought I was awake, but I must have let myself drift again. I thought I was alive, but I must have been playing pretend. A bi-polar has fewer mood swings than me it would seem. But who am I kidding? It doesn’t need a name, I still take the same drugs, same mood fillers. All in some feeble attempt to mask the pain, to overlook the shortcomings in my own brain. For some reason I can’t make myself see the world as those around me do. Why I should spend my time feeling the weight of invisible things overhead, feel it bear me down into the ground. Everyday I wake and hope for something new. Everyday I wake to the same old sensations. It’s all just the same. And sometimes just the same is crushing. Crushing me into the dirt of yet another unfulfilled month to the next wasted year.

Another moment is just another experience to tuck away deep inside my brain. To tuck away into my collection of mental fodder that offers me some resemblance of a personal history. Even if it seems like just a string of happy occasions weaving between all the mundane events and mediocrity. Is it so much to hope that one day I’d get it right? Is it so bloody wrong to think one day I’d feel alright? These are the questions I go to bed with every night as I wish for my ink like rain and warm orbs fallen to ultraviolet rays.

Hazy

I woke this morning feeling somewhat alright. My body didn’t feel like lead for a change. Always a plus. I had another thought for a story I’d probably never write. Which is a shame, because it really sounds like a good story in my head. But the task of putting it to paper requires discipline I seem to be lacking more and more these days, so I’ll probably save myself the feeling of being defeated when I don’t finish it. I’ll simply not start it at all. Snub my nose at all my brains good creative intentions.

:: May 10

I am taste, and then I am nothing.

I feel the words building me back to something that is whole. Then I feel the same functions disassemble till there is nothing left of me.

The whole, without substance. The inner without senses. The outer without it’s beauty. Till all this becomes nothing but false words, spoken in hopes of seeing myself become something real.

It is nonsense, and double talk, and more of the same to confuse me. And I can’t make it go away. I can’t make the noises in my head stop. It bites upon my nerves till all I can do is hold myself tightly and try to keep myself numb from the pain. In the end there is no removing it, fleeing from it, or hope of reprieve. For how do you control the one thing that you hear so loudly? My own inner voice… that has turned on me.

Kristoph is lying close to me. I can hear him breathing softly, feel the gentle rising of his chest as it moves the sheet that lay over us. The room is dark with the exception of a soft glow. Like the moon is watching over us. But in truth it is nothing more then a street lamp that sits outside my studio window. An electric watt bulb shining in like false moon light.

The light catches Kristoph’s face, highlighting the curves of his cheek and chin, hiding away in shadows the slope of his closed eyes and mouth. He looks like a woman. He always had, ever since I knew him as a child. Too thin, to straight. He had his father’s severe and narrow features placed on his mother’s slim and feminine face. Lush lips and soft skin. Manly hands and an adam’s apple. His body grew taller but never seemed to mature past that of a twelve year old boy.

Sexless, without a clan.

I used to tease him when we were younger. During those short Fall days when I used to dress up in my gauze costumes and run around our adjoining backyards. I would be Venus and Patrick the boy across the street would come play Mars. And we would tease Kristoph that he didn’t belong to either one of us. So I called him Eros, because the goddess’ son forever looked like the little boy that just might be a little girl a moment later.

He hated me then. Not so much because of the taunting, but because I was growing up, into something he would never be. I have nightmares of those times, like my late childhood was some scary place that I didn’t grow out of, but survived through.

I rolled over and slid my arm around Kristoph’s slim waist. I rested my lips against his bare back. He moved slowly, making night time mumbling noises as he slowly surfaced from his dreams a moment. He rolled over to face me, whispering “Are you having bad dreams again tonight Mira?” I answered back by pulling him close to me. He fell asleep moments later.

But not before he softly told me to chase my demons away. “Chase them away Mira, chase them away.” Like an incantation, or a soft prayer. He’d said that to me since I was six. Up until three months ago, it had always worked.

It had always worked.

:: May 12
Lost for you

Sleep is becoming hard for me. Almost unbearable at times. I spend much of the night awake in bed. Sometimes with Kristoph at my side, other times alone. Those times are the worst, when I know that Kristoph is away at the clubs, offering his charms and whispers to some other woman. It’s not jealousy that pains me though, it’s the idea of being without my security blanket.

No one knew me the way that he did. Even if he didn’t understand me, the security of the familiarity between us was priceless. I didn’t need to speak to him of my pains, or explain them, it was enough that my mood changed. He would be there to put his lips to my forehead and let me have his fragrance close to my nose. Sometimes I felt like I might suffocate without his fragrance. It was like air.

And he would tell me that I just needed to rest.

And I thought to myself, I would like that. A long rest. Quiet and undisturbed, without voices or noise, without demons or dreams. Just a state of being nothing at all. Not like death, more like the time before you’re born. A quiet time…

Then I hear a pathetic little whine in my ear. Somewhat like the dull whine left in your ears after a loud concert. Except that my whine was a laugh. A ghost in my head having a chuckle at my expense.

“Mirabella wants to rest. Mirabella wants to sleep. Mirabella aches to dream. Mirabella aches to scream!” The ghost chants, over and over. Till I have my hands pressed firmly against my ears to block out the sound. But no matter how tightly I press my hands into my head it doesn’t dull the noise.

And they all laugh. A chorus of little voices, speaking and laughing, each sitting on a rung of my spine. Each takes a finger and presses it against my spinal cord, each takes their other finger and plucks at a nerve.

I fall to the ground, with hand pressed to my head and my other hand pressed against my back. I can feel the tears and my mouth shaping the words that might come out as pleas, but I can’t hear anything but that whine of laughter as it ricochets through my skull.

“Mira? Mirabella are you okay?!”

Soft hands grab me and try to pull me up to my feet. There is Kristoph. I tell him that I don’t feel so well and he helps me to the bathroom. He runs some water in the bath as I sit on the floor, leaning against the toliet. All I wish is that it was a sickness that I could elevate by cramming my finger down my throat and throwing it up. But I know I can’t… I don’t even know what kind of sickness it is. Only that it’s there, it’s getting worse and it frightens me….

May 19
The introduction of the Rhapsodist

My name is Mirabella.
And I have been dead for most of my life.
I have whispers that plague me.
And secret societies within my own head.
And whispers… and the whisperers.

. . . Datura, Part One, 2
May 27… miss me bog

I’ve lived a series of extremes, with the pendulum that swings from side to side. Experiences that leave me wondering where is my happy medium, where are those areas of gray that so many people walk through. it just leaves me wishing I could find the balance in life that so many others take for granted.

I remember back to a spring time when I was in my late teens. I had some direction in my life, even if I couldn’t seem to get my thoughts together. Something is better then nothing in my opinion. Back then I had something.

I remember an evening at my friend’s house. She was my world back then. The first person outside of Kristoph that knew me better then I seemed to know myself. I looked up to her more then any other human I’d ever known. She was the style I emulated, the thoughts I wish I’d come up with myself, and she possessed the ability to speak her mind to the world. She didn’t act like a mouse when voices got loud and tensions got high. She was simply herself, for good or bad. I envied that about her.

She touched me once when we were young. I laughed nervously. She looked at me with nothing more then a slight smile on her lips, like the Cheshire cat teasing Alice with his drug-like talk. We were laying on her bed next to one another, the same as we’d done since we were thirteen. We talked about life, ideas, and school on that wine colored bedspread of hers. We went over our many what ifs” involving men we’d never meet, adults we’d never know what to do with even if we did meet them. And on that night, as we lay on her bed, we spoke of what it would be like the first time we touched a boy, or let one of them touch us. I told her in my soft voice that I couldn’t imagine the touch of a man, someone who was not Kristoph.

So she leaned over and put her hand on the front of my night shirt. I jumped to feel her touch in the dark but I said nothing. She took her slim fingers and gently slipped the first shirt button from it’s loop. She pushed her hand under the material and rested it on my chest.

I remember the sound of crickets chirping in the yard. I remember the slim bit of light that chased across the dark wall and ran across her eyes so I could just see her gaze. Her hand grew warm as it rested there. Even in that warmth my skin became rigid in the ways that cold had only caused it to become erect before. I wanted her to move her hand, or to do something more, to make the sensation more. But I didn’t have any words for her, I didn’t have any words to tell myself to stop being ashamed.

Gently I moved myself on the bed, turning just slightly so I could look at her. I looked into her eyes that were lit up by that wedge of light in the room. The laughing subsided and I just stared at her, a smile on my lips. She undid the rest of the buttons on my top and pushed the material back over my shoulder. She traced circles around my chest, my nipples, the same half smile on her mouth. The bed moved a little as she rolled a little closer to me. She eased me back with one hand till I was lying on my flat. Then she sat up, leaning over me. The light left her eyes to cross back over the wall and I couldn’t see her expression anymore. I could only make out the outline of her there as she looked down at me.

I felt her moving, felt her breath on my skin before I felt the wetness of her mouth opening to my breast. My body tensed and my hands folded into little fists, pulling the sheets up into them. She put her hand on my stomach and moved her lips and tongue over my chest. And when her mouth moved up my neck, when I could feel her lips on my chin moving close to my lips, I sat up abruptly and pushed her away. I hurriedly pulled my shirt closed and buttoned it to the top.

I remember the catch in her voice as she spoke to me then.

“I’m sorry Mira. I just wanted to show you what it felt like. I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

I didn’t say anything to her. I never said anything to her about that time. Nor do I believe I knew the right words to string together a paragraph that might explain what I was thinking then. I don’t think I even knew. She was my dearest friend, the closest female I’d ever known. I didn’t want her to be like Kristoph. I didn’t want the guilt I had with him after we were alone together. I didn’t want her hand to move past my stomach and touch me below. Didn’t want to feel those things. Not with her. I wanted things to stay the way they were.

They never do though. There is no force in the planets and beyond to keep our little worlds intact. There are no ways to make things fail safe.

No matter what my inner voice would have me believe with it’s whispers, things didn’t change between her and I because of her tongue on my skin. They changed because we were growing up and apart. The things she did to me that night she would do to a man very soon after, and he would do the same to her. New dimensions in our little lives.

Sometimes I miss my friend.

Sometimes I miss her touch… or just the sound of her voice.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve been thrown into the miss me bog.

:: June 19
Bury my lovely

I remember a time that I lay in the grass. A field, vast and green, stretching off into the distance where the trees grew up to cut it off. It was just the beginning of spring, one of the few warm days we’d had in some time. Kristoph and I were in the car driving, and driving, till this field came up along the side of us and I made him pull over. We were playful for awhile, playful gave way to caution as we looked around to see just how alone we were.

Nothing was ever soft with Kristoph, it never had been. He took my arms and pulled me down with him to the grass. A few minutes of fumbling and rolling around in the grass left us sans cloths and mildly marked by the dirt beneath the green carpet. He lay there on his back and I sat perched above him. Taking in the outline of his face, wondering what it would be like the day I couldn’t look at him like that again. He allowed me my moment to stare at him… stare at him like I often did when we lay together like that. Till I finally conceded to the whim of that moment and rolled over, letting him lay over me. He was quick to move in on me, and sometimes rough. I never did mind. I enjoyed the sensation, I enjoyed his need. It gave me a small show of proof that he needed me in some way for some period of time.

I only wished he needed me in the same manner I needed him.

Afterwards I lay bare in that grass for a little while. The air was warm but the ground was just starting to heat up. It still gave off a bit of the coldness that got under it’s soil skin over the winter. The coldness felt good though. Like a bit of torture that I could easily make go away. It chilled me, made my limbs heavy from the cold and my fingers numb after awhile. But as I lay there suffering this mild discomfort I knew that at any time I could get up and shake it off. I could put my jeans back on and slide my sweater over my head and let it warm me up. I could slide my arms around Kristoph and rob him of a bit of his warmth. I could make the discomfort go away.

Some people might find that ridiculous, or the hint of a masochist hiding underneath. For me it was therapy. It gave me control over my environment when it seemed like I was so out of control. Now I lay on the cold linoleum in the bathroom. Kristoph was off working with a new group. Figuring out what type of theme their photographs would be. I was alone in the studio we shared and the shadows were whispering to me. Better they be voices coming from outside then within. Better the dust bunnies be teasing me with their dirty, lint ridden mouths then a chorus of taunters inside my own head.

Still, they frightened me in a way that was deep and unfounded. The hair on my arms was standing up and my limbs were so tensed they were starting to grow sore. It was as if I was waiting for something to lash out at me the moment I looked the wrong way. Something was wrong there. So wrong that the societies in my psyche were being unnaturally quiet, so as not to draw attention to themselves.

I’d come into the bathroom and removed my clothes down to a small slip that barely came between my skin and the air. I’d laid myself down on that cold floor and spread my limbs out. I lay my palms flat against the tile and felt the coldness of the cement floor below push through the decorative cover. It spread through my fingers and into the front of my arms and legs. The coldness found my tummy and thighs, it made my nipples become rigid to the point of pain. I let it sink in as far as it would go.

I can make the pain go away by turning on the warm water in the bath and getting in. I can make the pain go away by slipping the down comforter from my bed around me. I am in control of the sensation. I am the deliverer and I am the sender. It’s just a matter of changing my perception.

If I tried I could make the dust bunnies go away and the shadows shut up. I could make all the noises of the studio not seem so loud. I can…

I can make things better…

It was growing dark outside, there were no lights on in the studio. Only the bathroom’s red night light was on and that wouldn’t illuminate the room much. I pulled myself from the cold floor and moved back into the room shivering. The sky outside was only a mild shade of dark blue but the main room was as black as a moonless midnight. The room seemed dead. One step, two step, just four more till I could reach the light switch and take the gloom away. But the closer I came to my destination the more the hair on my arms stood up. The more the coldness in my limbs seemed to deepen. And the silence was painful to my ears. I pushed myself the one last step and flew the light switch up and cast the room into a pale yellow light.

Now the coldness would go away….

Someone laughed.

A soft rippling sound that grew in volume as it flowed up from the throat. It wasn’t Kristoph, but the sound of it was as familiar as his voice, or that of my mother. It was the sound of someone I knew.

Someone I never liked.

Slowly I turned around and looked over the years. Needing to confront my demons, but not wanting to put my eyes to the task of seeing them. There was nothing. The room was empty and warm, brightly lit up and safe. There was no reason to be afraid. But the voice laughed on.

“Hey Mira!”

I jumped as though someone had struck me in the back. The voice first came from the right, and then from the left. Like a delayed stereo, or an echo back and forth. I was calm though. I told myself Kristoph would be home soon. These things always went away when Kristoph was here, I could be normal when he was here.

“You can’t hide behind him forever Mira. Forever and a day sweet Kristoph can not give you. You should be happy you’ve had such time. From childhood till today. But it is no matter. He was there for you when we first met. He never kept you safe. He never kept me at bay. He never kept us apart.”

The voice talked on. The deep familiar voice. As a child the sound of his voice seemed impossibly adult like, an alien tone to my young ears. Even now, after so many years it hadn’t change a note and my ears received it the same as it did then. The sound entered my ears and shot straight down to my tummy to make me sick. It was flowing backwards to touch my spine and then vibrate up my vertebrae till it came to rest in the back of my head like an ache.

My head already ached. “I promised you forever and a day. My favorite among favorites. My little girl who has always heard voices.” I looked around to find him but could not see him, and he talked on. “You should have never talked back if you didn’t want us to converse. Did you think the conversation would simply end when you tired of hearing yourself speak? The most intelligent ones are always the most naive, the most unknowing.”

“Think of me, think of me.” he whispered.

No, I didn’t want to think of him. I wanted to be against the linoleum again, back in the grass with the cold dirt pressing into my chest. I didn’t want my mind to wander as it was doing to memories that were best left unused.

They were there though. In them a small image of a doll. It really wasn’t much of anything really. Just some horrid little thing fashioned in my weekly art class in elementary school. The teachers cut out shapes from unbleached muslin that smelled faintly of mold. Each child was given a large, dulled ended needle and a spool of colorful thread. Buttons, swatches of printed materials and craft items were tossed onto a table. Each child was allowed to go through the pile and pick out the things that caught their eye. We were each sat down to a craft table and shown how to put these muslin pieces together. How to fashion the material swatches into cloths, how to make facial features with the buttons and yarn. And from this all the children fashioned crude dolls. Each child was given a bag of pebbles, the same foamy shapes stuffed into bean bags, to fill these dolls up with.

I was one of those children. And when I put the stuffing into my doll I added my own stuff as well. The stuff of me. I took my dull little safety scissors and worked at the end of my hair and stuffed it into the doll’s body. I took a rock from outside, and a card young Kristoph had made for me during the rainy recess spent indoors that day, each of which I crammed into the pebble filled thing. I don’t know why honestly. It was the way my little brain worked at the time. A brain that took in scary movies and odd television my mother should have kept from me. I wanted to do the same as the people I saw in those movies did. I wanted to create something more then the other children. I wanted to be special.

I kept that doll at home, and dragged it with me everywhere. It began to smell after awhile. It smelled like the dirt it lay in outdoors as I play and like the many things spilt on it because of my childish clumsiness. I still slept with it though. Happy to have a talisman made by my own small hands. At least until my nightmares started.

Years ago I convinced myself my nightmares were the first symptom of a sickness in my brain. A kind of sickness I was too ashamed to tell my mother about. To afraid to let anyone see.

In that time I grew to hate that doll. I hid it away in a closet. I cried the day my mother took it from the closet and told me to put it in my room. I cried long and hard and begged her to leave it in the closet. She was confused but left it in the closet. She put it in a bag though, to shield the coats and umbrellas from the growing smell of the sickly looking thing.

My little talisman of muslin and scraps became a smelly thing that frightened me. I held my breath when I walked by that closet, so it wouldn’t hear me near by. And during those rare times I had to be alone in the house I pushed a kitchen chair up to that closet door to keep that thing in there.

There came a day when I went into the backyard and picked a spot off in the corner. I dug a hole. As deep as I could make it with my mother’s garden spade. I snuck into the house and moved towards that closet. I hadn’t allowed my mother to put a coat or a pair of shoes in there since it became the home to the little monster. I hadn’t even opened the door up once. Now I stood there with a towel in hand and holding my breath. I inhaled deeply and flung the door open, I rushed in and threw the towel over the bagged doll and scooped it up. I ran through the house out the back door to the hole in the ground. I put the towel and doll into the ground and buried it.

“All I smell it dirt Mira. Dirt and feel worms. How would you like that?”

I became afraid of it because of a figure in my nightmares that convinced me they were one and the same. He was the doll and at night he was able to live and breath in my mind because of all the ingredients I made the doll with. I wanted neither of them in my life. I wanted them to go away. It took little more then a thinking about it to frighten me to the point of panic.

“I got out though.” he said, slow and overly pronounced each word.

The voice was near-by now. The memories were turning my stomach. It was all fake, surely it was all just my brain. I was either still lying on the floor in the bathroom dreaming, or else I was causing myself this fear. The doctors had always told me it was my own paranoia that caused me these images. Nothing more.

“Here I am.” I turned around and looked across the room at the mirror. There in the glass stood a tall pale figure, with lanky portions not right for a human. Long hair that look more like silk thread woven into it’s scalp then actual hair. His face looked like it was made from a mold and all his features painted on, except that they moved. His body was wrapped in gauze and wires.

This was Mourning. Something I dreamed up as a child. Something I couldn’t ever make go away. No one ever understood. No one ever tried to help me or told me he was just a dream. A boogey man, not real. Reality is as real as a child’s mind makes it. Air can talk, bathtubs can become bottomless, and dolls can become bogeymen. These are the laws of childhood physics.

“Never could cover up your madness could you? Not to me anyway. Do you remember back then? Coming up the hallway… just a figure in the light. Coming to play with you. Touch you. Treat you like a rag doll.”

I stared at him as he stared back at me. Part of my head calmly told me that this wasn’t real. It was just a shadow of my imagination coming to spook me. Just a piece of my childhood that would not let go. Another part of my head whispered sadly to me… it said, what does it matter if this is but smoke and shadows? It scares you enough to cause you to shake, your eyes can see it and your ears can hear it. Isn’t that what makes it real? It becomes your reality whether you like it or not. Perhaps no one else can see it, but what does that matter? No one else has to live this scene but you.

So smart this whisper, the only familiar voice I knew that spoke the truth no matter how sad. It was my own voice. Weak and quiet, but still there, hiding beneath all the others. And then I began to cry. Cry for the truth of the matter. It was like a bad dream you know to be a bad dream, you know to be something that will end when you wake up. But as surely as you know this, you also know you must suffer the torment of the dream as though it were real till that moment you wake up. I could never make those doctors realize this.

He smiled and it was as if I were a child again, laying in my bed feeling him breathing on my neck. I could feel his hands as they lay on my stomach and pressed in on me. I could feel his body close to mine.

The door of the studio opened as Kristoph finally came home. I looked over at him and saw the waking moment of the dream. I fell backwards onto the floor and cried out, pointing towards the mirror.

“Oh god cover the mirror Kristoph! I don’t want to see it!”

He looked at me with a mixture of shock and perhaps caution. Without question, he moved across the room, grabbing a sheet from the floor and lifted it over the mirror, covering it in the draping purple material. The reflective glass became a blank image of colored cotton. All the while I drew myself closer into myself, as tightly as my limbs would allow me into the fetal position.

“What the hell was that all about Mira? Are you alright?” Am I alright… am I alright. Was the sky violet twenty-four hours a day? Did the sun revolve around the earth? Did children ever really outgrow their demons? These truths were as true as the fact that I was alright.

Kristoph kneeled down and put his arms around me, holding me tightly.

As always I stole his warmth to take the coldness out of my body.

And I wondered…

Wondered what it must be like for Kristoph to deal with me during these times. Had he ever wondered just how insane I truly was? And if he did, why did he stay with me? Or… why didn’t he try to help me?

[unedited]

It started quite suddenly…
The dreams.

I was plagued by Mourning in my sleep, and tormented by his image in the mirror. But there is only so long that you can jump in surprise, or cringe away in fear, before your body becomes numb to the horror of it all. There simply comes a point where you don’t so much embrace your demons as you become indifferent to them. And this is what I had done to Mourning, made of him nothing. If I’d set my mind to making him go away I wouldn’t have been able to. Some actions came without thought, and it’s those actions that eventually sent him away.

I still saw a pale shadow of him in the mirror, or lurking around the corners of my dreams. Not enough to make me acknowledge him though. It was almost sad in a way, to see him fade away. He was of course a piece of me, for good or bad, and in that sense I had lost yet another bit of me. How much more of me could I strip away before there was nothing left to take off? How long before the body mirabella became little more then the shell mirabella?

With one thing flies away with wasted breath, another thing flutters down to steal my air.

My dreams began to change tone. It was subtle at first, and very slow. Just my ordinary course of night time images, except I was feeling something being slipped into them. Like my dreams were a glass of water, and someone had dropped a blue pill in to bleed and color the waters. I wasn’t being infected with blue though, my dreams had turned to sepia. The lips of the antique looking faces I saw were painted in wine colored rouge, the eyes lined in deep burgandies. My dreams became the colors of sand and dried blood.

So in this gradual procession of changing dreams I realized I was no longer dreaming. When I laid my head down and closed my eyes, my weary condition was allowing me to fall too deeply into sleep. I was falling into the dream and seeing those vague images, but there was a hand pulling back the images and whispering to me.

And it said “There are places to go and there are places to go.” and she motioned me forward.

What had to come? That I soon followed of course.

And what is it that I had to see? It was the place of all the others like me. It was all those little places that are stolen out of time and set in some hidden room to rot. It was a collection of delicate souls, but where I could not see the collector. I was to start seeing the sirens, the vamps, the goddesses who’d fallen into decay. I was to be introduced to all the beaten down broken women of myth. I was being guided towards what I was going to be.

What it was inevitable I was to become.

The journey was gradual though. I had to take it step by step, moment to moment. It would be something built up from dream to dream, till there came a point where I need not shut my eyes and fall asleep to see it. Because the dream would already be there, overshadowing my everyday reality.

But on this night, it was just the whisper from behind a dream’s veil. I followed it, pushing back the images which felt like cloth material, and crawling through. On the other side was just a white room.

The room was large and glowing, but not empty because the light made it feel very full. The walls seemed square but I could tell there was a slight slope to them, a slight curve. The surface of these walls appeared to be light itself, but cool light, because the room itself was very neutral of warmth or coldness. It was neither place, neither too much, neither too little, yet at the same time not enough of anything. It was the suggestion of perfection that the skin could just not feel.

I crawled into this room on my hands and feet, feeling me dream self slip away until I felt very real. I got to my feet and moved slowly, taking in my surroundings. The walls I thought were made of light proved to be made of paper. Like very fine white rice paper with lights hidden behind them. Not only light, but figures. When I leaned in to take a closer look at the walls I saw the shadows move behind them. Hands falling against the back of the paper and pushing out towards me. Sometimes so sudden that I jumped back. For as delicate as the walls seemed, they held sturdy and kept the figures hidden away from me.

The room seemed a dead end though. It went round and round in the warped square with no seams in the bends or openings. In fact, the more I turned, I realized I couldn’t see the place I entered. I was trapped within the square. No exit, no point to move on further.

Then a small voice spoke to me. It said “Do you see me?”

Such a small voice, like the sound of a little bell ringing. It had no substance it was so small and young sounding, but it carried nonetheless. I turned around in circles, telling the voice softly that no, I could not see it.

“Look past the light. I’m right here.”

I closed my eyes and let my ears follow the small voice. I stopped facing a wall and opened my eyes. And I saw nothing but a wall. So I looked harder, so hard that my eyes started to hurt from the strain. There was a reward for the effort though, because very slowly I began to see a figure sitting there. The wall itself seemed to change dimensions. The center of the wall sunk in to show me there was a stairwell made of the same glowing material. On that stairwell sat a little girl.

“You see me now?” she asked innocently.

I stepped towards her and passed through the light of the wall onto the stairwell. I knelt down in front of her, taking her in. She was not painted in color, but a breathing picture of antiquity. Her skin a very faded shade of off white, her lips faded wine, the color of her eyes dusty gold. Her hair was so blonde and silky it looked like white, the white of a spider’s web being spun from her scalp. She was precious, maybe the age of five, though she felt like a creature as old as time.

As she looked up at me I pushed the web strands of hair away from her face. “Yes, I see you. Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

She shrugged her shoulders “Just sitting here. One of the Whispers stole my doll and I didn’t want to go behind the light to get it back. So I’m just sitting here waiting for them to through it back.”

I looked down at the room I’d just come from. Maybe it was her suggestion put into my head, but I did hear the raspy sound of whispers. The same sound that started up in the back of my head before the Whisperers came to pay me a visit. The thought brought a chill to my skin.

“The Whisperers? My Whisperers?”

She nodded her little head. “Uh huh. Everything here is yours. I only hear them talk when you’re in the room.”

I shook my head slowly. “No, that can’t be. I haven’t ever been here before. This is all new to me. When I hear the Whisperers I’m awake.”

“Maybe you are. But your little self isn’t. She sits in the middle of that room and cries whenever the Whisperers are here. You can almost see them through the light when she’s in there.”

I didn’t know what she was talking about so I decided to just let it go. Instead I turned my attentions towards the small black metal looking beads that sat on the step next to the girl. I reached down and picked one up, at the same instance I felt a thousand small pin pricks into my fingertips. I dropped the metal ball and let out a small sound of shock. I was going to pick a different one up but the little girl’s hand stopped me.

“I wouldn’t do that. You don’t know how to play, you might get the poison one.”

“Game?” I questioned.

“Yes. You pick up each ball, looking for the one that doesn’t cut you. When you’ve found that ball you’ve one.” she held up her small fingers to show me all the small cuts and places of dried blood. “I haven’t found it yet. There’s also one poison one that will end the game. The poison will end everything.”

Poison? Who creates games for children with poisoned pieces? Pieces that cut. I asked her as much as I stared at the numerous little metallic balls lying there.

“Little Hpotsirk gave them to me. And there has to be a poisoned piece.”

“But why?”

She looked at me like it should have been obvious. “Because if there wasn’t a person would play forever trying to find the right ball. And they constantly move so you can’t cheat by testing them all. I have nothing better to do unless they give me my doll back.” her gaze turned more sad, more urgent. “But you could stay with me. Keep me company.”

I could do that, yes I could. And I though perhaps I would like to do that. To sit here and take this small child in my lap and cuddle her to me. Hold her in the way I’d wished so often for someone to hold me. I smiled at her and made a motion to do just that but a figure at the top of the stairs was calling my attention.

I felt myself standing and a slim dark figure came into the light. I couldn’t see the figure’s face but I assumed it to be a man. The little girl’s bloody fingers told hold of my wrist as she asked me to please not go. I had to see was up there though, I could always come back down the stairs to sit with her. So I pulled away from her and moved up the stairwell.

The light seemed to part into a mist and the figure became more solid. Till I came so close I could feel the heat of the arms reaching out for me. Feel them as they slid around me and pulled me close. Till I was looking into a face that slowly came into view. “Always with your head in the clouds” a familiar voice said. “Time to stop floating and wake up Mirabella. Wake up Mira!”

My eyes snapped open with a start. The face in my dream was the same one that stood here staring at me. Paige looked on at me, happy to have been the one to drag me out of my unreality. I pushed him away “Get out of my face Paige.”

“But I love being in your face Mira. Now come on and get up. When Kris gets back we’re going on a road trip.”