Incorruptible

He turns and faces me as he bends over and lights a decrepit oil lantern. The rising flame within illuminates his expressionless eyes like distant stars you would only see where it is most dark, secluded, and wild - where there is no influence of men.

" So, are you ready to see her?" He asks with a slight grin. His gold tooth flickering ominously from somewhere deep within the shadowy folds of his leathery face.

" I... I suppose I am." I squeak, suddenly losing my voice as well as my nerve.

" Are you sure about this?" He presses, revealing annoyance.

I check my pocket watch, fumble with the buttons on my vest, and then mutter something under my breath about wasting time. I bravely take a step toward the door, which is crafted of dark, polished oak and accented in what appears to be gold-leaf. I fold my arms and defiantly turn and face him.

" Well, what are we waiting for?" I hiss, motioning toward the door.

" Very well."

Sweat trickles down my sides and my hands begin to uncontrollably shake as I watch him slide the topmost surface bolt... then the two on the bottom.... then another closer to the top. The vacant room is completely silent except for a series of sharp clicks and metallic scrapes as he unlatches the mess of bolts and various locking mechanisms in what seems to be a very specific order known only unto him - some of which appear to be modern in design and others, ancient and queer in make. I stand behind him remaining quiet and not asking any questions fearful of distracting him from the task at hand.

My eyes nervously dart to the bottom of the door. Bright light streams in through the crack, almost struggling to escape. For a second I wonder if this door leads to the outside but then I quickly remember it is almost two o'clock in the morn and this is all but impossible. But for a moment, I truly believe this door, which lies in the deepest recesses of this labrynthian cathedral, does in fact lead to the outside world and that the entire night had come and went. I attribute this mistaken sense of surety, my ardent belief in this delusional fabrication, to my delirious state. Perhaps a result of lack of sleep, but far more probable, a dangerous mixture of opium, fatigue, and gut-wrenching anticipation. The imagination can play strange tricks when you are in such an altered, distressed state of mind.

My eyes travel up to his turned back. At last I see his gnarled hand reach for the handle. I feel my pupils dilate as a hot wave washes over my body. My lips begins to tremble. I silently count to myself... 1, 2, 3, 4... I must remain strong. I have waited for this moment much too long and I mustn't fail. I've travelled preposterous distances and endured unimaginable hardship to finally arrive to this "arcane sanctuary" - this pandemonium fortress which lies deep within an uncharted Eastern European forest only gypsies dare to claim.

I suddenly realize that this is undoubtedly my own personal moment of reckoning, and here I stand, precariously perched on the very edge of sanity itself. Here I stand, mere yards away from a relic that has remained hidden from the eyes of men, unaltered and undefiled, for almost a millenia... the only barrier now separating us an old door and a crooked contemptible man. And I realize, I will soon taste her sweet lips and lie down next to her, in a bed of white satin immersed in her flowery scent.

I also realize it is time to act, no words, as I slowly unbutton my vest and reach for my derringer.

Chernobyl Autumn

The days grow shorter and the nights longer. It is coat weather now. Dead leaves blanket the ground and chill winds pierce my soul like a dagger sliding between a heavy set of ribs. Once upon a time I loved all of this, these changes, as I loved to breathe. As I loved to live. As I loved you. We’d spend these cool nights together hand in hand exploring the streets admiring the myriad of warm hues painstakingly brushed on every "happy" tree. You'd tell me stories from when you were a little girl growing up in Moscow. And I'd listen savoring every word as though each word were some chocolate-coated delicacy. Those same trees have now lost their brilliant luster, color, and feeling. Now autumn is nothing more to me than a series of monotonous months spent alone in quiet contemplation and solitude; in hibernation. I walk the streets alone now in the vain hope I may somehow clear my head, but it grows intolerably cold and everywhere I turn I see you. I keep catching glimpses in my peripheral vision of you playfully tossing leaves at me resplendent in your mittens and matching stocking cap. I can see my breath and in my breath I see your crooked smile. And if I pause and carefully watch, the inevitable march of approaching frost.

I need a drink – a momentary fix. I duck into a dive bar, any dive bar… a hole in the wall corner joint where “everybody knows your name.” The place is dark and empty and the jukebox belts out a sad tune. I pull up a stool and instruct the barkeep to bring me whiskey and keep it coming. I lose track of time and space as I sit and drink. I crawl into my memories; a dank fox-hole buried six feet down in freezing ground. I need this, the drink, so I may dream. Because it is when we dream, we may sojourn with the dead. When I sleep, everything remains somehow unchanged and homeostatic between us and you’re clean, fuck, we both are, so young and full of life. See, the reason I shoot up or hit the bottle is so I may remain forever in this dream… in this deep, deep sleep, even while I am awake. And maybe I’m a fucking coward for choosing to do this, too afraid to deal with life or play the shitty hand fate has dealt me, but it is what it is and I am who I am.

And we are what we always were, frozen in time. So blissfully happy and in love…

You know, when I was young I remember I’d stand in the bathroom with the lights out in the blacker than black, staring intently into the mirror waiting… waiting for a face to materialize, a ghost perhaps, or bloody Mary queen of Scots. As I sit in this quiet bar, twenty years later, blankly staring at flashing neon, wrapped in my darkness, I still patiently wait, but now I wait for your face only so I may reach out and caress your black hair just once…

I slam shot after shot of whiskey. Every shot leads me one step closer to oblivion. I hear a voice beckon me across the expansive ocean of time… a feint whisper behind a crumbling wall somewhere in far-off Elysium. I drift ever closer. And I feel the wheat briskly brush against my thigh... closer. And underneath my tongue lies a coin of copper so I may pay Charon his fare.

Fables

It is said, when you walk the line separating the land of the living and the land of the dead, it will bring you closer to both. Soldiers, in war, for example, will tell you that proximity to death brings with it a corresponding proximity to life. After a hairy firefight, when the earth is calm and still and soiled with blood, the hills come alive. The trees whisper and sing along with the wind. The senses are heightened. More acute. And at the same time they are numb. Deadened. Dulled.

Junkies will tell you a similar tale. After you od... after the adrenaline shot has run it's course through your veins into your heart... after you've been yanked back away from the light... in the static calm aftermath as you're lying in your bed, you notice things you normally wouldn't. The smell of hospital food as the cart passes your room. The squeaky wheel in need of oiling. Quiet conversation. Conversation you can almost see as well as hear... like peering at a cloud of smoke billowing in under the door - or perhaps this cloud is death letting himself out.

I often ask myself why I choose to leave my thoughts here... why I continuously return to this barren field and piss on this same skeletal tree over and over again. Why I choose to live and relive and relive these emotions I, at the same time, so ardently try so hard to lock away. I don't tell stories, it is what it is. It is what actually happened. My version. My blurred reality. A love story. A tragedy. A specific series of events that now, as my memories fade and dusk approaches and ominous shadows fill in the fathomless gaps that remain where hope and optimism once dwelled, distance me from what I once was and tether me to what I have become. And what's the point?

Often a true love story has no point. Or else the point doesn't hit you until years later, in your sleep, and you wake up, turn on your computer, and write it all out. Put it all out on the line, every nuance, every minute detail, jotting it all down like a dream journal except these are broken dreams. And when you get to the end you sit for a long time staring at the blinking cursor on the white screen. You close your eyes and when you open them up again you find you've forgotten. Love is dead. And you wonder to yourself: Christ, what IS the point? No point, but what you said needed to be said so you press save, undress, and return to bed. You lay in bed and hear the breeze rustle the wind chime and cars creep by with crackling tires and the faint thump of music and you realize the moral of the story lies therein. It is buried within the silence of the night, or the white-noise hum deep underground where the dead slumber.

It is discovered... or perhaps discovers us... when we choose to walk the line that separates the two realms.

Kraken

A single echo resonates through the canyons of my memories like a slow-motion cloud of thick debris - a latter day angel of death lurching through gray still-life Manhattan streets - a beast, marked with a six. I grasp at these echoes, these memories... dry memories of you, as a dying old man sifts through faded black and white photographs – still images of long-dead faces. Beautiful moments frozen in time, Pompeii statues on the verge of dust, perpetually re-enacted for a one-man audience to see. However, as the days, years, and decades slip by; as actors forget their lines, stages fall apart, and paint peels away - so does the performance transform into a perverted hollow mockery of itself.

Thus is the story of my love. Thus is the fate of joy.

I call out to you again and again and again and my voice grows hoarse. I just don’t know how much longer I can sustain. It’s so cold. And my lifeboat is cruelly tossed about the reckless waves. However, if I pause and listen carefully, above the perpetual torrent of cascading rains, I can hear it… the tremendous rumble, the ragged breathing, of the beast that lives beneath. I hear him stirring - after several millennia, he has awakened from his fitful sleep.

“ And if I said I want you back I’d be a liar.
There’s nothing left of us to long for anymore.
But inside the ashes burn in endless fire.
And I can’t help reaching out forever more.”