The Devil's Little Helper and Other Fairy Tales

The Summer and the Courtyard

2010-10-25T02:45:00.000-07:00

Dennis Alan: Im a U.S. citizen! Think about that!
Dargent Peytraud: I dont see the Ambassador here, do you?

The Serpent and the Rainbow

It was by the waning light, just the end of summer, that we arrived.

Streetlights, guttered to life as they sped by past us one by one, and the air, though still heavy with the day's humidity, had begun to hint at a cooler night. I leaned back, my head tilted at the
bruised sky, and wondered how things were going to be... There were only four of us left. And, God knows, there may be no one by the time morning comes along.

Newspapers screamed that the world was ending; left and right, signs of the apocalypse were cited, both supernatural and scientific. Exclamation points and all caps became the rage.
Television was no better, though they tried to keep the hysteria from creeping into their voices, their backs held painfully straight while their smiles held back their panic. The world was ending and, in spite of our movies, no one knew what to do. Some wanted to wait it out, confident they'll be taken to a better place. They barricaded themselves in their cellars and counted the days out in campbells and uncooked microwave dinners. The religious went up mountains in order to be the first ones to go (the politicians suggested the moon). Some, not as sure about the destination they'll be ending up in, tried to find a way out. Usually, it involved the receiving end of a gun. We chose the other option. We ran away. Whether to it or from it is what we'll find out by the end of the story.

___________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

"Hey. Wake up."

When I opened my eyes, we were well deep into the town, and though the streets were lit, the areas outside it were pitch dark. The car was cruising at a steady pace and I could hear someone at the back whistling our graduation theme. Then it was quiet.

The air was too cold.

My eyes strained themselves, trying to take as much of everything in. While the car crawled, so did my eyes over walls and buildings and empty parking lots.

"Nicky."

I turned, and she was clutching my shoulder, my jacket bunching up in her fist. Her eyes were large and shiny.

"I don't wanna go. Please."

I patted her hand, "S'alright, Beth."

She didn't let go.

She didn't let go until the end.

Beth screamed while it dragged her away. We looked at our feet while it happened, our faces stony. She shook me like a ragdoll until it ripped her off her arm, blood arcing, splattering over
vinyl seats and plastic passengers. My ears rang from her screams and my heart thudded in my thin chest. I learned not to breathe past the 60 second mark (an achievement, what with my asthma). 60 seconds. That was all the time it took.

I tried not to pray to anyone or anything. Or even think. I just kept my eyes to my feet. And started counting from 60.

The Sandbar Mermaid

2007-05-17T15:38:00.000-07:00

Faith is found in a clutch of human flesh.

Staring into a flute of champagne, the color of mellow sunset skies, I raised my eyes, looking into hers where I found clouds beginning to form. Laughing, each syllable hitting me like rain , she pulls away, spinning on heels so high they made me dizzy (imagining looking down from such heights). The lights caught in her hair turned it to gold, and I could see how it was going to be, how the summer was going to be; one day melting into the next as another season fades away, leaving me memories of a girl who danced as if she could walk on ocean waves, and whose laugh still fills my heart with water.

I met her when I was 10, still laughing, yes, and still at me, on a day the sun was just about finished with its noonday course. I had built a sandcastle of such melancholic design, that even the turrets drooped, heavy with the weight of barely repressed tears. I was confounded with what I had come up with, searching deep what error in architecture brought it about, when I heard a giggle drop quietly behind me. I remember turning just as quietly, my eyes glancing across a sea of gold and topaz, before settling on a girl about my age, whose hair mutedly recalled to me the same metal and the same stone. She was looking at me fixedly, a smile dangling at the corner of her lips, drily clutching a coral in one hand, and my heart, beating fast (a frightened bird), in the other.

"Are you Thomas."

Taken aback, I wondered what sort of faerie-kin she must be, absently fishing my name out of the air, her voice, lilting, sounding low and deep (telling me to be still), when I realized she must be the landlady's granddaughter my mother had told me about. Had told me to look out for.

"Yes, y-yes, I am. Are you Heloise?"

"That's a pretty castle."

Her eyes, I could see, were the color of watery sunrises (sun-irises), played lightly with sarcasm and amusement, before amusement finally won out. I felt safe enough to trot out an answer by then:

"It was. In my head."

"Then your hands may have had a different idea."

This time, she smiled, taking the sting out of words I knew she had not meant unkindly. It slowly broke through her lips, and began to rearrange the lines in her face into even more agreeable patterns. All this time, we both stood still, as if afraid to disturb the silence that lay like settling pigeons across the sand.

The Secret Medusa, Prologue:

2006-02-23T14:33:00.000-08:00

The sylvan rush of green, the sun a catching flute of stars. The wind was like water, the road a stream, and the car cut through it all like a knife. Destination stood in the distance, like our very own northern star-- a compass tracing the leylines on a map.

Words lost their meaning; expectation was a breath caught in our throats, and our hearts tried to be still but couldn't. We knew she was waiting and that thought shone for us like a Pharos and illuminated the grey sea road.

"We're getting there..." Tobias sang, driving with both hands on the wheel, hunched as if on horseback, as if in a race. And maybe we were.

All four of us nodded in assent.

The End of Innocents

2006-02-22T14:48:00.000-08:00

Man's character is his fate.

Heraclitus

Though there must be Choice in the world, there are those, their Life Lines engraved in stoic concrete, people whose courses have been so deeply etched that the waters of Life can have but little choice but to rush in that same direction.

Should one pity or envy? The loss of decision, is that freedom or bondage? To slave under what current thought or to rebel at what one must have as one's predilection?

Whatever the case may be, Everything turns circumspect.

The Treacle Well

2006-02-22T14:32:00.000-08:00

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.

George Eliot

That bright red monkey screams and I remember. My vision turns a shade darker, my heart drums a slow angry beat. My fingers twitch, imagining a throat, and my mouth twitches at the pictures in my head. What dark thread, running through the seams of my mind, has begun to unravel? And under that benighted skin, I see:

(twisting, shining)

Your face.

Solo Sport

2006-02-22T14:08:00.000-08:00

But when the self speaks to the self, who is speaking? - the entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in, in to the central catacomb; the self that took the veil and left the world - a coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful, as it flits with its lantern restlessly up and down the dark corridors.

Virginia Woolf

Desire is a rat in my belly. It scampers up my throat, cutting off air. Lying down, looking up, I hear its chitinous feet clicking in my head, dislodging a memory or two, digging up the odd recollection or so. My eyes travel the cracks in the ceiling while it begins to move farther South. I feel it nibble, a glancing pain-- a darting twisting presence in my lower belly. It takes a bite and I feel a pain, pins stuck to my chest. I see a mouth run red, a throbbing hiccuping thing in its hands.

It is then that I realize, that It has my heart in its mouth.

The Augur of Water

2005-10-28T23:48:00.000-07:00

The night is stained a darker black, the stars having hidden themselves behind their hair, refusing to look at what I have done. The ground swells before my deed, placing her at an elevated plane: within reach, within eyesight.

But Forget's a wily slippery thing-- coming up when you least expect it. Yet shieing away when you reach for it in need. So I close my eyes and play its game, biding my time (and feeling its centipede feet run across my face)...

A Random Thought

2005-10-22T09:22:00.000-07:00

Apparently with no surprise
To any happy Flower
The Frost beheads it at its play --
In accidental power --
The blonde Assassin passes on --
The Sun proceeds unmoved
To measure off another Day
For an Approving God.

Emily Dickinson
Apparently with No Surprise

Redemption, or to seek it, must be an invention fit for the House of Atreus. If not Comedy.

High Noon

2005-10-22T06:56:00.000-07:00

If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!”

Thomas Hardy
Hap

A bird flies overhead and its raven wing throws a shadow across your face; a pattern of maculate geometry, a puzzle I longed to figure out. I put the pieces in my head and find a picture: Memory blurs the edges of what must be, and instead paints another-- what it longs you to be. A picture caught in shifting physics, of light and shade, and its colours running to form another question. You stare at me, mouthing sentences. I stare back and place my mouth firmly against yours, swallowing all your words.

The Foundry

2005-10-02T04:38:00.000-07:00

They wondered why the fruit had been forbidden:
It taught them nothing new. They hid their pride,
But did not listen much when they were chidden:
They knew exactly what to do outside.

Wystan Hugh Auden
They Wondered Why The Fruit Had Been Forbidden...

Alcohol ignites my tongue, unfetters what propriety and moral code would hold back, and sets lips to claim what truth that lie within reach. My heart flutters against the cage of my breast, and find myself caught against the bars.

Alcohol burns my throat in its headlong course to set fire to my heart, it leaves a wake resonant with the memory of heat. A trajectory though ponderous moves with unassailable Certainty, an accuracy borne only to the Reckless.

But what of consummation, what of destination? The expanse of flesh travelled, the truths woven to secure what flailing quarry, spoor and spur?

The Crucifix

2005-08-02T07:05:00.000-07:00

"Weep for the lives your wishes never led."

Wystan Hugh Auden

And it falls, the weight crushing, the catch of air whistling an abbreviated tune. Night falls from the sky and a blackness covers the stars. My eyes swim, seeing fancies. My hands clutch at themselves and my heart finds itself caught between my ears. A great ocean moves in me; the susurrus of the waves lapping at one another lulls me to the deep. And in the absence of air, I discover breath.

En Ego, O Bone Et Dulcissime Iesu

2005-07-10T23:10:00.000-07:00

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Anais Nin

Flashes of skin, sticking lightly to my fingertips. Sweat and the scent of your hair catching in the air. The space between us is warm with certainty. And the space above hangs, suspending its breath. Worry has left your face; Sleep patting your forehead smooth, sweeping Care from your brow. Beloved, if I were to stay by your side forever, I would gaze and never have my fill. The geography of bone and flesh I would forever traverse, mapping the continents, palm line after palm line, the boundaries etched in erring clay. I would but forsake the Future if I could just fain plead the Present to stay. But already I see it whither, I see it fade to to yesterday. You turn, troubled by my thoughts but Sleep holds you fast. I turn too, away, away... And force myself to leave.

Feathered Creatures

2005-07-10T03:57:00.000-07:00

Appetite, with an opinion of attaining, is called hope; the same, without such opinion, despair.

Thomas Hobbes

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

Woody Allen

Hope indeed must have feathers-- for like Its Cousins, It sharpens Its beak against Its breast, staining a wing with a brightly colured streak (of red?). Prometheus knew It all too well. He who gave us Fire out of Hope for our survival against the Night:
Hope tears away at what one would have for a heart. Harden yourself then. Let Its claws scrabble against marble. Its beak strike against eyes made of granite. My heart is stone upon stone-- a cairn within a cairn.

Comfort

2005-06-29T01:57:00.000-07:00

I SING what was lost and dread what was won,
I walk in a battle fought over again,
My king a lost king, and lost soldiers my men;
Feet to the Rising and Setting may run,
They always beat on the same small stone.

William Butler Yeats
What Was Lost

A question was asked of me, if Loneliness was company I kept constantly. I replied nay. For I was not Lonesome, nor do I desire company (should they belong to fools). What I was was merely Lost. Home I used to be but now cannot find the path that wound its way to that familiar hearth. I hear a voice frame my name and I turn my head to catch what welcome friend but find myself staring at a stranger's face. The Familiar is what we search for, to dull the edges of sharp Truth, to form semblance from compounding Reality. A piece of a puzzle to form what cannot be recognized in close scrutiny but forms an agreeable image should we allow our selves take that Known step back. In the midst of what is not Known, we strain to catch each deliberate facet, hoping to strain recognition-- For the Unfamiliar is a stark image, each detail sprung to life.

The Ferule Employed

2005-06-27T01:48:00.000-07:00

Remorse is cureless, -- the disease
Not even God can heal;
For 't is his institution, --
The complement of hell.

Emily Dickinson
Remorse

Rage is a monkey with a bright red Heart. It shakes its cage of bone and strains to catch what erring wind might carry: it does not matter should it be Truth or should random sound, random noise, bring a recognizance only found in its imaginings. For a drowning man clutches best-- should it be Fortune's log or tragic arm... always remember, a drowning man clutches best (for a drowned man clutches less!).

Cradle this warm heart of brightly spun crimson-- O Rage is a monkey with a bright red Heart.

Hollow

2005-06-25T07:44:00.000-07:00

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

T. S. Eliot
The Hollow Men

People die every day, all over the world, for no reason at all (seemingly). And to at least have one (a reason or two) to define your demise puts you in a frame of such ridiculous proportion that the contrast it seems is ennobling. But then, Ignorance, more often than not, grants us the comfort of assuming that Death is simply the end of "it". Living is terribly different. There are too many reasons (or so we are told) to go on, of such shape, size, and variety, that we end up with something we did not bargain for or, as in most cases, with simply nothing at all.

So Deep It Didn't Even Bleed

2005-06-19T01:44:00.000-07:00

I see her again, I hear her, and I could bite my hands at the agony of not being able to describe it.

Henri Alban Fourier
The Wanderer

My heart-- It's broken... And I keep cutting myself every time I try picking up the pieces. It must be made of glass: to be so fragile as to break at the drop of a word. The way a word resounds, glancing off its sides, reverberating and shaking it to pieces. Although the music it makes is splendid, enough to raise the hairs on my arm, to curl my toes, what risk it must be-- to play for echoes at the price of tragedy.

Gravity

2005-06-18T07:52:00.000-07:00

Flee from me, away from trouble;
take the path of safety, far from this danger.

Rumi

Rather I spit at the eye of whose fell clutch I'm in... than this enduring blankness. Living has taken its toll (what a price to pay!) and the weight of existence grows heaver by the minute. It crushes me to my bed, in spite of the clock's shrill persistent shrieks-- the clarion call of dawn. I cannot, I tell myself, continue like this. Sisyphus with his Eternal boulder, Tantalus and his lake of Desire. I push, I lunge, grab at straws, and find myself still tied to this coil. The gears continue to move, while the wheel continues to threaten to crush. The sheets cling to me, they wrap themselves about my legs, telling me to stay. You know you're in a darker place when blankets begin to take the wisdom of Wise men. And I cannot fight them. They are stronger-- or perhaps, I just cannot bring myself to. For it is only a fool who contests the weight of Wisdom. So then I let myself go, sink into these sheets, full with the scent of sleep, that embrace of oblivion, the still mark of the womb.

The Sentimentalist's Equation

2005-06-15T00:03:00.000-07:00

Those who are faithless know the pleasures of love; it is the faithful who know love's tragedies.

Oscar Wilde

The heart is a terrible thing. It is a thing with teeth and all the voracity of a shrew. It knows not satiation-- only the idea (its sole driving purpose). It has no eyes to see what glory it inspires in foolish men, only a nose to point it where there is food; And a mouth with no tongue for savouring... Only teeth.

The heart is a most terrible thing. It turns cannibal once denied.

Travelling Between the Spaces

2005-06-14T01:40:00.000-07:00

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it - it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares

And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less-
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars - on stars where no human race is
I have it in me so much nearer to home
To scare myself with my own desert places

Robert Frost
Desert Places

I remember last night-- a fleet of buildings going past, mired yet pitching, caught in their stone sea. I remembered how Forget had painted a human face on each one, each line deeper than the last, etched in granite skin. This must be how it is to be forgotten... to be remembered by but a precious dwindling few. In its failing, Memory turns catalyst, a crust of sepia and dirt begins to settle. It is like rust in the temporal plane. I imagine that, here in this dead sea, with its grimy windows and stained walls, dust would cling a little more stubbornly to its corners and its cobwebs made of sterner steel. Lethe, though with sluggish feet, overtakes us in the end and makes for us this coccoon, I wondered.
I bid them fare well, although in its futility may they find some degree of comfort (no matter how borrowed from what prevailing Sentiment, from what maudlin thought).

The Question Posed by Grey

2005-06-14T01:18:00.000-07:00

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, sayI missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total darkness sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

Wystan Hugh Auden
The More Loving One

...when I was a child I remembered agonizing on the fact of my existence. I was but ten but looked older (weary even) as the nights found me again and again, awake with the gears of my mind running. Sleep provided me neither refuge or balm. And the days held nothing but exhaustive thought while the night its terror. For what I saw (or thought I "saw") was nothing but the cage afforded by my senses. Nothing was real as far as what is thought of as real- held suspect but decided by its consuming essence. I feared closing my eyes, dreaded slipping through the cracks and into nothingness. Oblivion offered a release, a freedom I dared not take. It was absolute. The utter totalness would be too much for a limited frame of clay. For clay starts to run at the thought of Tears, and turns to cracks under the sun of Wrath. For dust is dust and clay nothing more than dust with ambition.

The Element of Blank

2005-06-09T15:47:00.000-07:00

Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.
It has no future but itself,
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.

Emily Dickinson
Pain Has An Element Of Blank

... And so a blog begins. With reluctance and much pain. The way only a blank paper and a big ego can afford.