wolven7 | Music and Stories.

Madness - [This Is Where] Followed by Jarboe - [Edward Life (w/ Edward Ka-Spel)], which starts with the words "This is life, real life."

Listen to the two together, and you get a freaky conjunction.

Now, I could spent tonight telling you about the shit storm that was my thesis meeting, today, but I don't think I'll do that. Instead, I think i'll show you a story that I finished about tw years ago. Maybe three. It's old, so it's not quite as good as my more recent works which are, themselves, not quite as good. As what? *Shrug* Here's this.

Enjoy.

Corners Without Light

. . . As one of them sank to the ground, the other made a furtive scramble, hands and knees, in hopes that he might escape the blade. His efforts were rewarded with an eight-inch dagger, plunged through his calf, into the concrete below. The first body had not yet begun to cool, and the gaping hole, where once had rested the throat, larynx, and trachea, was still warm to the touch. His compatriot securely fastened to the grime-covered alleyway, there was time to admire his life’s blood, flowing to the dank pavement, the way it slicked and slipped between the fingers. The still-living comrade made a few weak attempts to extricate himself from the ground, but all to no avail. Moving in, fully taking the sight of this life in fading motion, I gave a brief thought to the nature of contempt.

I am called nothing. It is not my name, nor is it some childish attempt to portray myself as part of a “formless void, to which we all return.” I am called nothing, because I was never called anything.

A monastery is no place for a child; more-so when the only monk, there, is a deaf mute, who, while meaning well, used as a first, last, and only recourse for education, the library of his peculiar order. Perhaps this is what he wanted of me; perhaps this is some obscure legacy which he dared not openly communicate, for fear of my seeking escape. Who is to say? I only know my path is not any easy one, from any perspective, and I truly cannot say if I would wish it on any other.

In my early childhood, I can recall seeing other children run and play, outside and free, while I remained locked away behind doors, silent and almost alone. Nothing to do, save reading in the library and playing various games with the rats of the manor, that I may find some small measure of amusement. At the start, I was more sickened than I was amused, yet I continued. A monastery is no place for a child. Children need to run free, to vent their aggressions. For, if they do not, they may end up like those before me, now: a cruel, cold thing, with no measure of the worth of a life. No real understanding of what beauty, of what light is. Children who are not given an outlet may spend the entirety of their latter days, locked in the open bright. They may begin tormenting others, in their search. And they are searching for refuge; searching for solace. They are searching, eternally, for corners without light. Let me explain.

There were not many windows in the monastery, and what few there were let in a harsh, glaring light that threw deep shadows in the corners. It made one fear the light, in the manner that most children feared the dark. I grew to fear and hate the sun, and there were no artificial lights in the house, itself, save a few soft-burning candles. I would often communicate to my caretaker how it hurt me, seeing the others playing so freely in the day, oblivious to the pain it gave. He would merely shrug and walk away, as if to say, “You will understand, in time.” And I came to despise those children, as well, for being happy; for having no fear of the light and Names by which they could call each other; for friendship and freedom. For this, for their happiness, I hated them.

In the brief times when I could stand against the harsh light and look upon the outside world, I saw trees and grasses, and small animals, and they amazed me. I was taught to read by the old caretaker who, because of his inability to speak, had to show me pictures, or act in allegory to the words on the page. This developed in me a very visual style of understanding, and I searched the entire library, finding as many books as I could with pictures in them. These pictures of things in the world beyond the monastery held me entranced, and, even against the hated sun, I vowed I would see them move, as often as I could. I promised myself I would know the outside world.

My caretaker spent many years, “reading” me stories, showing me certain monastic practices, and, in the length of time, and after I had reached a certain maturity, my old caretaker died. It happened, at breakfast; he looked at me, appraisingly, nodded, and fell forward, onto the table. And I was left alone in the monastery.

Long before he died, he taught me of the burial rites, of his order, and explained what needed to be done. When it was finished, I scattered his ashes into a rather large pile of similar-looking dust, in the basement. As I have said, there were not artificial lights, within the house, and one would assume that a task such as this would require a light. Well, the monk had explained that, aside from the light of the pyre-- against which I was forced to shield my eyes, the pain was so great-- the ceremony was to be conducted in total darkness. I said my farewells, and my thanks to him for all that he had done for me, I spread his ashes on the pile, and wound my way back to my room, in the silence and darkness of night.

After his death, I spent much time simply standing outside of my caretaker’s room. It felt heavily of him, and was his place, to be remembered. As I lay on my bed, outlining the shapes of the furniture in the dark, I thought of the light, of the children outside, and of the sounds of happiness and joy. In the night, I made myself a new promise. I resolved that never again would I let these things torture me. Never again would those laughing children or that accursed light drive me to the library, or leave me cowering in a sunless corner. I fell into a confident sleep, and I dreamed of far-reaching darkness and quiet houses.

The next morning, I went about boarding up all of the abhorrently bright windows, and sound-proofing the house with carpets. The process was long and taxing, for I kept thinking of my caretaker. At one point, I was interrupted by the coming of the grocery delivery servant. Our contract with the grocer was still enforced, even with the demise of my caretaker, for he had had provisions made to have it transferred over to me, in just such an event. I stayed in the darkened foyer, while allowing the servant to enter. I gave him sign of thanks and was about to head back into the house proper, but, as he turned, I noticed a familiarity in his profile. The line of his jaw and the curve of his neck rang a chord in my memory. Here, grown to adolescence, was one of the children I saw so frequently, out of the taunting, pain-giving windows. I tapped him on the shoulder, lightly, and, as he turned, I made motion for him to follow me. At first he seemed put off, but I gave sign that I merely wanted him to see something.

I led him upstairs, to my second story bedroom-- one of the last windows to remain unboarded. There was an air of sentimentality to it, as I kept remembering childhood hours spent wishing, out this very window. I stood to the right of the window and waved him over to where I would stand and look, many a day. He came and stood next to me, looking out, across the street and seeing the park of his youth. He got a fairly wide-eyed expression and, as I made to leave the room, he said, in a voice that grated on my ears like broken glass on slate, “So you were that weird kid we always saw in the window! We used to wonder what you did up here all day, just you and that old man. Heh, some of them thought you two were, like, queer for each other, or something.”

His voice screeched on like that, for minutes, making “chit-chat.” But the defilement and sullying of the name and memory of the only person to ever show me love or kindness was too much. I still had in my hand the screwdriver I had been using to put up the boards and carpeting, and my fist was now clenched around it, and shaking. The boy was still looking out of the window, and as I grabbed him by the shoulder, turned him around and drove the screwdriver into his chest, he croaked out, “Yeah, but I mainly wondered-- Hrrk!--- why... you didn’t... come... outside...”

As he slid to the floor, I dipped my finger in his blood and wrote, shakily, on the floor, tears streaming from my eyes as I saw them well in his, “Why didn’t you come in?” He was unable to respond, as his life had faded while I was writing.

I sat there crying, for a few hours more, remembering his smile, his laughter, all those years before. I felt sadness, and anger, and pain, and contempt, both for the boy and for myself. As night fell, in fullness, I composed myself, as much as was possible, and tried to discern a course of action. I could not go to the police. Murder would be punished by life in prison, and that was far too bright a place, for me. I decided to take the boy out, through back alleys, and leave him, cleaned of my fingerprints, on his route for work. For all intents and purposes, he had been murdered, en route to the grocer. The fact that this was basically true did little to comfort me, as I was still heavily shaken, by the whole experience. I made my way back to the house and numbly resumed the process of boarding up the windows . . .

She reads a little further, and comes to a stop.

“That’s as far as I’ve gotten,” he says. As she puts down the paper, he searches her face, for some sign of approval, knowing that she will only break his heart with the Truth. “So,” he ventures. “What do you think?”

She looks at the paper, for awhile, and then looks up at him. “You started off with a really beautiful thing, here, and it’s a great concept, that I can see...”

“‘But...’?” he helps her to continue.

“But you don’t show everyone else what the concept is, Jackson. You give them the barest hint of what might be going on, and then you move into something so seemingly unrelated that it moves the reader away from what you’re trying to say. If I wasn’t so used to following your train-wrecks of thought, I’d be hopelessly lost, in this story. And it has the potential to be good. Really good.” She stops, then, and looks at him. “Look, I’m sorry to be harsh, but you’re missing something, here. You don’t have a cohesive story, or a driving-force plot. It seems like you found something, some phrase in your head, and you wanted to make something great out of it. You loved the things it did to you, inside, and you wanted to make other people feel it.

“Jackson, you need to understand what it was that it did to you, before you can make it do that to other people. Do you understand what I’m telling you? Your main character seems to be searching for the same thing, himself. What does the phrase ‘Corners Without Light’ do to you, inside?” She stops and sighs, running her hands over her eyes, through her hair. “Look, Jackson, I love these little two a.m. calls, but I need to go. I have some work to do, at the lab, you know?”

“Yeah.” He looks at the floor. “Yeah. Sorry to bother you, like this.”

“It was good seeing you, Jackson. You’re doing really well for yourself.” She rests her hand on the back of his neck and squeezes. He shivers. Her voice grows distant, in his ears. “You should turn up the heat, in here,” she says to him. “You look cold.”

“Yeah. The heat. It was good seeing you, Marriane.” He looks her in the eye, as he says it, to show that he means it. And he does.

“Yeah. You too, Jackson. Bye.”

He closes the door, perhaps a bit too curtly. Time was he would have watched her drive off, until he couldn’t see her, anymore. Time was. But these days, something like that got you classified in either the “stalker,” or “obsessive ex-boyfriend” categories. Either way, that would be bad. Also time was, he’d have told her how much her help meant to him. How she was the only one who could give him criticism and not have it grate against his hindbrain with that territorial mine-mine-mine buzzing he got, back in writing class. She knew he hated when people made him feel like that. But that’s all for the Time Was. The Now deals with him getting this story finished, before it eats away at the insides of his skull.

She had a point. He had forgotten what the title had done for him, at the start. Now all he has to do is get it back. Easy, right? Yeah.

The rest of what he showed to Marriane:

But I couldn’t bring myself to forget the boy’s words. There were far too many things that I had done, in the name of silence, darkness, hiding. Why had it come to this? Why couldn’t I have taken this offer of interest and friendship for what it was, and left this wretched place, forever?! Exactly what it was that kept me here, what it was that caused me to end this life, rather than cherishing it, I had to find out.

There had been, in me, from as long as I could remember, a pain at the sight of anything living in the light. Birds saddened me, children revolted me, and watching animals play made my stomach turn. These things I knew of myself, but, as to my past, where I came from, there was nothing. No clue, nor memory. It made a certain kind of sense, to me, that there should be records. I had read stories, where the protagonist had kept records of their illicit origins, and I thought that my benefactor might have, perhaps, done the same. I needed to find these records, if I was to find any comfort. But where to start?

Jackson calls Marriane four times, in the next three days, clumsily using the contact as a way of avoiding his own work. “Checking up on progress,” he calls it. The stories of her lab work have done wonderful things for his imagination, over the years. If only he could finish this story, to use any of it. He cannot help but think on how long he’s been working on this story. It’s been four years now, since he started it. A year and half of this has transpired since The Ending. Again, that was bad, and still for the Time Was. He pushes the thoughts of that night away, and focuses on the Now. In the Now, he feels that this story has been taunting him; that it has been dragging him along by the wrists, to some unseen goal of self-satisfaction.

He has a theory about writing: Jackson feels that writing is along the same line as satisfying Obsessive Compulsive tendencies. The writer can either take the writing and go with it, or he can ignore it, and pray that the pain will stop, eventually. But, like OCD, if a writer ignores the writing for too long, he may lose it. It may stop. That is the secret wish and public terror of the writer; that they will wake up one day, and the stories will have stopped. That is what Jackson Beüssy fears the most. He has lost everything else that was ever of any worth. Marriane couldn’t deal with his constant writing, and she left, to escape it. He barely speaks to his parents anymore, and his brothers and sisters-- well, what brothers and sisters? Since childhood, writing has been his only constant friend, and now he fears that he may have lost it. All because he didn’t listen to what it was telling him.

He goes to the liquor cabinet, for the third time that night, and has the same debate with himself, also for the third time. His brain betrays him, for the millionth time that night, and he begins to think about The Night—the Ending. As punishment—or reward—for this betrayal, he picks up the bottle of scotch and a large glass. He has a long night of self-flagellation and abasement ahead; he had better get started.

He dreams of The Argument, again; archetypal, and world-devouring. He didn’t understand why she was upset at him, and she didn’t feel like going into the details. Shit, he thinks in his sleep, how did we ever expect to get anything accomplished?

The Argument, as always, started with him complaining about his latest bit of writer’s block, but of course he refused to call it that. No, with him, it was always “lack of inspiration,” like that somehow made him seem like less of a failure than simple writer’s block.

The Argument, as always, was fuelled by her complaining that he spent more time with his damn writing programs than he did, with her. While that may have been true, she knew he was a writer. What did she expect him to do? Not even try? That would be admitting defeat, and if there was one thing Jackson didn’t do, it was admit defeat, when it came to his writing.

He felt he was justified in not wanting to call it “writer’s block.” It wasn’t really a block, so much as a dam. The ideas were all still there, and they were flowing, after a fashion, but it was more that they were flowing in a circle, occasionally crashing into one another, and creating new swells of plot device.

Jackson dreams in a Lecture Hall format. When he is asleep, he views the events of his life, as if on a screen, and presents the key points to himself, as if he were his own audience. It helps him cope.

Jackson Beüssy has had a good deal of trouble, in his creative and romantic lives, and has relegated the majority of his thinking on the subjects to drunken binges and late night writing sessions. Here, in his dreams, he can see his life from the outside, “objectively.” When he observes, from over his own creative little shoulder, he knows the taint of his perceptions, in his waking hours. The bits of story... well, those are his saving grace. Without his stories, he will never understand himself, or his motivations. He knows, on some level, that it sounds trite, melodramatic, and overestimated, but, on that same level, he knows it’s all true. Jackson is going to have to come to grips with some things, if he is ever to be satisfied with himself, or his work, again.

He sees, in his dreams, that Marriane keeps trying to give him the key, and knows that all he needs to do is find the door.

He is waking up...

And Jackson wakes, yawning to the cold light of—he checks his watch—12.30 p.m., and, mid-yawn, decides to make a run for the bathroom, instead of throwing up on the floor. He makes it to the toilet, and has enough time to slam the lid up, before losing three fourths of a bottle of scotch, down the drain. With the advent of his new “Eu de Vomíte” perfume, he decides that a shower is probably a good idea.

He stands before the mirror, waiting for the water in the shower to heat up. He tries to recall his dreams, but, as usual, the after-effects of far too much alcohol have rendered them inaccessible. He remembers something about Marriane, something about a car, but dismisses it as memory from last night’s conversation. He puts the thoughts out of his head, as he steps into the shower. The hot water hits him, and his skin starts to prickle, reminding him of exactly how long it’s been, since he last showered. As if the smell weren’t enough. He honestly didn’t know how Marriane could stand to be around him, without spraying him down with Lysol. The treacherous voice at the back of his head speaks: I guess that’s why they call it love, and he viciously attacks his hair with the shampoo, in retribution.

He stands there, lathering his hair, wishing he had brought the CD player in the bathroom, with him. It always feels so lonely, there, when he showers alone, without music. The only thing to keep him company is the sound of water on tile, and the reminder of the high potential for alcoholism, in his family. “...and afterwards,/ if you really want to forget,/ all that can be left/ is the echo of the blood,/ pounding through you--/ the stain on your shirt,/ and the bed.” Who had written that? He wonders this as he rinses his hair, and wipes the shampoo foam out of his eyes. He steps out of the shower, and goes to get dressed. These aimless motions of wandering around his house, in the mid-afternoon, have become status quo, nowadays. There is nothing that he wants to do and no where that he wants to be. Maybe if I had some real friends, I wouldn’t be such a loser. He chuckles darkly at himself, remembering the last time he tried to meet new people. Lesson learned from that experience? Don’t start talking about your life, at a bar, to anyone but the bartender. Or the bottle in front of you. He had spent the rest of the evening trying to explain that he didn’t praise the Marquis de Sade; that was one of his characters. Of course, nothing you say, to someone who thinks you’re in denial, will change their minds.

Jackson brushes his teeth, turns the brush sideways and shaves his tongue, and rinses, with mouth wash. He contemplates swallowing the burning stuff, to start the day, but, as some of it trickles down his throat, and his stomach does some cartwheels, he thinks better of it. He spits into the sink, and looks at himself in the mirror, once more. Yet again, he barely recognises the man he sees, there. Yet again, he wonders how he got so far gone. There is a brief feeling of Dejá Vù, and an image of a burning car. It is gone. But he’s got it, now. He knows where to go with the story! And, for once, it’s only mid-afternoon. Jackson starts writing, again, and after a few hours he forgets to call Marriane.

I stood before the entrance to the library, trying to convince myself to take the first step inside. I knew that if I wanted to find any record of my life, before this place, I would have to search here. But what would I find? Some tale of a shadowy, stormy night, and a woman leaving a cradle on a doorstep? My caretaker, perhaps, going to an adoption centre; pointing, wordlessly, at a child? Somehow I doubted it, greatly. I didn’t know what I would find, and so I was hesitant. I forced myself forward. Breathing deeply, I stepped across the threshold.

Inside was dark, as ever, and I began searching for one of the soft candles, hidden about the place. When I found them, they were right next to a shelf I’d never yet seen, in all my explorations. It was in a deep corner of the library, and made of light pine, with darkening whorls, and splotches, as if someone had spilled wood stain on it. I pulled a chair over, that I might reach the top shelf, and I pulled down the first book. The things I found, there, told me nothing of who I was. The book spoke of history, and starlight; good deeds done, through the ages, and the contemplation of order, in the universe. The book spoke of balance and of the all pervading ideals of light. There were discourses concerning the historical equation of light with The Good, and darkness with Evil. I was amazed to find that there were studies of people to whom light gave pain, and to whom the day brought terror. No, here I was not to find my history; I was to find the meanings of my future.

I spent many days in the library, after that, reading what I could only assume were the records of this monastic order. They seemed devoted to the understanding of the general preference of Light, over Darkness, by the majority of the human race. It was something that had crossed my mind, before, and I began writing on the subject. I wondered why we thought of Darkness as Evil, when we start out our lives in darkness and the first touch of the light harms and shocks us. How then was darkness the evil, of the two?

It was a question, I realized, of balance. As I had learned to hate and love the children, outside, humanity was to be made aware of all the benefits and dangers of both darkness and light. There, I saw, was the point of this order. In the weeks that followed, I began cross referencing the tales, in the books, with other stories, in the library; tales of Grendel and Beowulf, of monsters and men, and the harshness of those who feared the dark. There must be something, then, to redefine that fear; to make it invalid. Some piece of the darkness, of their world, would have to show them the balance, possible, in fearing the light. And I was to be shown the way.

I began to find brief allusions, in the books, to some embodiment of Darkness, acting in the world of men. There was the idea of there being an actual thing that made the dark. And all of the things it represented. This tale could be modified for a human role, I thought. If people could be made to realize the comfort and security in the dark, then they would fear it, no more than the light; and if they could see that the fear of the Light could cause harm and pain, then it would drive them to understand their own darkness, more. If the world remained light-centred, there would always be imbalance, and I would always be without peer, or companion; a fate I had no wish to experience. I was to be their source of Fear. Their Grendel, to teach them of the monstrosities of the Self, and the sheer awfulness of the light. I am not proud, of my beginnings, but we must all start somewhere.

It was grabbings, in the dark of alleys, at the first; waiting, in the early evening, in the shadowed halls of the city. I would take them, as they passed, in ones, those who slowed, those who remained in the back of their herd. I was, at that time, no more than an animal, picking off the weak. There was no challenge, no lesson, here. I began to wonder if, perhaps, there was more to be done. And then I noticed the cat.

Reading accounts of hunts, and actually seeing an animal take its prey are two entirely different things. As the cat waited, there, its tail twitching, back and forth, its muscles tensed, I knew what had to be done. I heard its leap, chase, and the subsequent crunch of musculature. I was already working my way down the alleys and home. I must hunt, not grab. There must be wonder, and fear, not thuggish tactics and snatches. And there was much that I must do to train.

Jackson writes, for days straight, detailing the lessons his character teaches the people. The struggles, escapes, and twisting mazes of traps, and pitfalls, in nothing more or less than the alleys of a city. The town gives itself to the character; seeming to bend, of itself, to his will, even as Jackson, himself, is more removed. He crawls into his own head, rarely leaving the house. He hasn’t called Marriane in days, and he hasn’t noticed. The bottles in the cabinet remain untouched, since his last binge a week and a half ago, and his refrigerator is nearly empty. He has dry goods—cereals, and the like—but little else. When he thinks about it, he wonders if it’s healthy to subsist on pasta, and cheeses.

His dreams are fevered, and more elaborate, now. People made of twisted metal, and broken whiskey bottles give him messages that he cannot understand, and he smiles, and thanks them. When he wakes, he spends the majority of the day at his computer. His phone does not ring. No friends and no family to notice his absence, he slips into free-fall, unnoticed. He, too, fails to observe the inevitable bottom, rising to meet him, now. The crash, at the end of his new climb.

One morning, he wonders where Marriane is. He falls, slowly, into tears—a whitehot stinging, behind his eyes, and he doesn’t know why. Visions of his mother float to mind, and he considers calling her. The remembrance of her causes more pain, and he reaches for the liquor cabinet. When he gets there, he finds that it is empty. Someone has come, in the night, and stolen his booze. He frantically searches the house, for thirty minutes, checking for other things stolen. When he passes the bathroom, and sees the bottles, next to the tub and toilet, his stomach falls. Some cartoonish strand of hope gives him an image of a bathtub full of alcohol, but he knows that this is not the case. The bathroom reeks of liquor, and bleach. He slumps against the wall, as he remembers, vaguely, dumping it all out, last night, in between sessions of writing. Something else comes to mind, and he runs to the kitchen.

The fridge is full. He remembers these trips, as if he had been sleepwalking; the only bright, live part of the evening, being when he was at the computer, typing. He chuckles to himself, and says, “I have no recollection of the events of which you have spoken…” He goes to the cabinet and gets a plate, and a knife. He goes to the fridge, again, and pulls out some meat, and some condiments, and makes a sandwich. He takes the whole thing to the computer, and sits down, again, to write. One more exploit, he thinks, one more episode of chasing through labyrinthine alleys, and Einsteinian sewers. Then we can end this. The thought stops him, as he’s opening the file. There, in front of him, is the suggestion that this thing may, soon, be at an end. That he could move on. It has become such a facet of his daily life that it hadn’t consciously occurred to him, until now, that it could ever stop. But, now, he realises, it must. It is nearly at its end. And Jackson still retains no clear idea of what that ending will be.

He opens the file, and he begins to type. This tale will be the Final tale; the character’s final catalysing interaction with the outside world. It will be his lessons, bestowed upon the world, and the world realising a need for the ancient dark, and that the bright young things can also kill. Because the character had not simply been taking lives, in these past segments and hunting in shadow, no. He had been walking in the darkness, where no one cared to look. Hiding himself, there, in their least loved, most needed places. And he listened, and he watched. He took the world in, as it presented itself, and he put it back out, as it really was. He exposed the darkness, in the brightest of the day creatures. There are some things that people have, presented to them, all the time, but still refuse to believe; things that shape their worlds, and their minds. This would be his triumph. At least, that’s what Jackson hopes. He began with a hunt, and he will end with that hunt.

When you met me, I was killing two men. I am killing them still. The understanding of my motivations, here, is key, or you will never take my lesson seriously. You will have written me off as some psychopath, and my words, to you will have been forever lost. I lied, before, when I said that I gave a brief thought to contempt. This entire narrative is nothing but an exposition on contempt. The contempt of that which is denied you, that which taunts you. The contempt of the values of a world that you don’t know or understand. Contempt of the self. Nothing but contempt.

I’ve been here, for hours, watching the last one die. Why haven’t I been caught? Why hasn’t he screamed? He Has. He has done nothing but scream, for the past three hours. I’ve not been caught, because you are afraid. You are afraid to face yourselves, and realise that I offer answers. Well… no. Not answers. I offer…Balance. You don’t want to see these two. You think that they are undeserving, that they are filth, as you think of me. But I’ve killed only your brightest. I’ve killed those which shine, outwardly, like the sun itself. But I have culminated their lives in a place that reflects their true nature. You are correct, though. They are not worth your pity, or your care.

What you do not see, when you hear of these disappearances, is that they are found, here, in the darkest parts of the city. And, near them, is a list of their misdeeds. The child-molesters, the casual rapists, the torturers, and the abusers; they are all here. Men and women, alike, brought to their home, in a final attempt to show them the true nature of their darkness. And they couldn’t understand. I hope that you can. They were locked in the bright. They were trapped, in your world of brightness, and “joy,” and “happiness,” and they were told that that was what must be. But, whatever their trigger, there was something more, there. There was something, within them, that called to the darkness. And they left it locked. Left it caged and it grew ravenous, and deranged. This is what the light can do. What anything can do… when you don’t understand it.

I know, now, that I was not meant to abhor the light. That was a side-effect of the caretaker’s way of life. I was meant to understand it, and show it for what it was. It is what it fears the most: The driving and creative force behind all of the pain, in the world. There can be no shadows, without light to cast them, and the more brightly the light is shone, the darker those shadowed corners will be.

The nature of contempt is this: You begin, as with all things, with yourself, but the reaction to that is so fast, that it is pushed away, and something Else comes in and takes its place. The opposite of you is an easy vessel for your contempt. You hate it, and it is obviously the cause of all of your ills. You go about denying and hurting that opposite, holding it down, and, in turn, causing it to have contempt of itself, and then you. You can either remain in blissful ignorance of the start of the chain, or you can stop, and look honestly at the self, and everything that is offered, there.

In the end, it all comes down to you

Jackson stops writing. Too many thoughts to count go through his head, at once. The prevalent one is, “It takes so little, sometimes,” and he is crying again. The tears are streaming down his face, and his mind fills with sounds. A crash, a wrenching sound—burning metal—the patter of dirt, on antique-finished wood. And the front door opening. That is in the Now. He turns and sees her standing there, the door closed and still locked, behind her. She looks shy, and tired, and exactly as she did on the day of The Ending. He watches her, and realises that he is crying. He wipes the tears from his eyes, quickly, child-like embarrassment at having been seen, like this. He realises it, as she says it:

“I’ve seen you much worse than crying, Jackson.”

“I know,” he says, “but that doesn’t mean I want you to see it.” She smells of earth, and warm water; almost swamp-like, but more pleasant. He wants to hold her, so bad.

“I understand… You… haven’t called in awhile. I was getting worried, about you.” She stares at the floor, as she speaks, dragging her right foot in a slow arc, back and forth.

He watches her foot. “Were you? I’ve been writing. I think… I think I’ve finished the story. And I think… that I remember why I started writing it, in the first place.” He walks toward her, and stands in front of her, his shoes in her line of vision.

She looks up at him, and there seem to be dirty tears in her eyes. “Oh?” She chokes it out, trying to prevent herself from sobbing. “And what was the reason?”

He stands there, forever, staring into her eyes, and it all plays back to him. The drive to New Orleans, where they had The Argument, for the last time, the screaming, the threat of the break-up, all there. And suddenly, the world spun, and there was a crunch, and an explosion. Laying beside the distorted, burning wreckage, bleeding, Jackson tried to remember why they were arguing. He couldn’t remember. He had thought it was about his writing, and him doing it, too much. But that wasn’t it… He knew, now, that it was about his not believing in himself… and not believing in her.

“I love you, Marriane.” He cries, openly, now, and closes his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

She leans in, and her lips brush his. The smell of earth deepens; more clear in his nose, and he hears, “Love you, too.” The room is cold, then very warm. He hears the door close, and opens his eyes. She is gone, and the door is still locked. He sits down on the couch, and cries, thinking, “I picked the wrong day to quit drinking.” He laughs, and he cries

At Marriane’s grave, there are flowers and scientific notes; an inside joke, with the people who knew her, saying she’d take her work, with her to the grave. Jackson traces his hand across the dates, there, and allows himself to remember, again. There is no need, now, to hold on to the story. Everything was only waiting for him to come to this end, of his own accord. And when he did, it was a release.

He always knew the day would come when he would have to let her go. He just hoped that that would be about 5 seconds before he joined her. His dreams are calmer, now—as calm as the dreams of a writer can be. They are no longer of the torn flaming shell, nor are they of the car crash. Simple writer’s dreams. And he no longer fears the end of the flow, any more than normal, because he knows, now. He knows that, if it does stop, then it’s his choice. He’s let her go, and he’s freed himself.

In the end, now, it all comes down to him