Thu, 19 May 2005

bone rattle
The devil appeared to me with your face wrapped across his skull. His voice was calm, and quiet, and told me not to worry. His hands were warm to the touch, but not burning, and as the burning of his body heated the room I felt myself slow, thinking less, everything fuzzy and bright and just a bit out of focus. The devil told me he had paid me this visit in order to clarify certain issues which he felt I did not understand, and I told him I did not want to listen to him, he is the king of lies and cannot be trusted, but I wavered in my objection, and the devil took this gap as an open door. He spoke of distance as illusion, of an infinite series of points between any two points, of the true meaning of consubstantiality. I listened, and was not rude, but in my secret heart I felt a rage begin to rise, that these words would poison me, and so after listening to his speech I told the devil that I had considered what he had to say, but could not abide his intentions, and then ripped your face from his skull, at which point the devil began to scream like a thousand broken cats, and if just to still his voice I tore the devil into twenty pieces, and swallowed each in its turn, and thought myself done with the devil, but I was, as I always am, mistaken.

In time I digested and forgot all about the devil, and while my mind remained unclouded by his speech, the pitch and tone of my voice began to mimic his, the way too many days in Texas will give you a drawl. First it was the peripheral people, those who intersect with me only in an official capability, who took offense, as my nearest and dearest thought I was taken with yet another affectation and tried to wait it out, as when I was given to tremble, or refused to use the telephone. In time even those I loved could not endure the whine and scrape of my every syllable, and found reason to keep from me, until I found myself alone without even the companionship of phone sex operators, whose technology forced disconnect at the modemesque whirrs of my vowels. In this new silence I vowed not to speak, and to find company among those who sought a similar relief, but now my skin began to burn, and my nethers to emit the most foul of odor, a rotten egg fight in a sulfur mine. I could not even bear my own company! My attempts to apologise to neighbors who thought I was cooking methamphetamine led only to hands over ears and a visit from the county sheriff, who could not arrest me but only threaten at a distance. I could not stay, and drove into the desert, where no living thing would approach. There in the desert I vomited up the devil, who stared at me from the pool of my sick with a countenance which could not be endured. I draped your face (all I have left of you) over the puddle and the devil pulled himself into its form and began to speak in your voice, and asked if I would hear his statements again. I agreed; oh anything to be rid of the sound and the smell of this new person I was fast to become! The devil spoke again, languidly, taking great pleasure in his every point, and by the time he finished I would have believed anything he had to say, but his words all seemed true to me, or almost, or enough. I agreed that he was in the right on the issues of the day, and the underlying axioms by which this world is spun, and he thanked me for my kindness and candor and I awoke in my room.

I have been newly blessed with secret wisdom so that young women rabid for the stink of power and money drive for days just to sleep on my doorstep, so that the hidden masters of this world step from the corners and offer me council, and it is now the case that I cannot do wrong in the eyes of the people around me. Born into kingship, I have perfected the grace by which things can be done without notice, so as to seem blessed with the second sight. Yet I know the crooked road by which I have crawled to this place, and I have left more than blood behind me, for at night the stink and screech of my former self approaches in dream, and as foul as the sense of these things may be, they at least resolve in my mind, at least have a nature, unlike the person I now am, a ghost only visible to other ghosts, a trick of the light, a thing which one cannot remember.
(12:23.05.19.2005) [/scrytch] #