(The Truth About Life and Death)

By Nathan Charles



I was struggling, climbing limbless through myriad wretched and decrepit faces swooping out of the surrounding darkness, some screaming, others laughing; all disclosing the universal countenance of decay. I could feel their bony, dry, flesh-shedding hands pawing at my torso as I continued to ascend. I was soon covered with the dust of them as their lips shed whispers across my face and the rest continued to scream and laugh, all voices babbling, dry and void of all articulation. Yet it seemed that there was meaning to this insane chorus and that was: Eternal Putrefaction. It was vertiginous in its fury of cacophonous inflections.

I screamed for the horror of it and as I did I felt their tongues oozing in and out of my mouth, exuding strange palpitating fluids spreading many smooth tendrils of their flesh down my throat, and quite verily I vomited rivulets of blood.

As it spattered these many corpses their otherwise soft and caved-in mouths became snouts displaying fangs, every face elongating, eyes sinking into blackness. Their screams became an opera of many strained and shuddering moans, these moans soon muffled as their mouths connected with each contour of my naked skin. The pain was immediate as I continued to rise and flesh was sucked away by these infernal, terrifying creatures of whatever hell it was in which I found myself. And as new blood was then exposed I felt the agony of flesh being torn and shredded in a blur of flailing claws and mouths and then quite suddenly the pain dispersed as did all creatures save myself, formless, penetrating darkness, all silent, all void; naught but consciousness of darkness in itself.

And then it seemed that I saw a pinpoint of white light and as I did it suddenly surrounded me as I descended through its many faceless forms, touching me in one continual caress, orgasm permeating all; and all was consciousness, all joined in one harmonious and dulcet chorus in a single inflection. And its meaning was: Perpetual Regeneration. As I plummeted in a quickening descent this boundless light began to fill me and my bliss continued to increase a thousand fold with each new heated draught of illumination. Then quite verily was I hurled into darkness and I exploded in a chaos of furiously burning life, the spiral force of which separated structure, flinging many colored lights beyond the scope of my perception. Still did I continue to burn and as the twirling slowed by gradual degrees each colored light began to pull back, then quite verily to pour back into me as I again accumulated bliss. And then all consciousness turned inward as I poured into myself in a separation of attention down many tubes of rippling blue light, some slow, some fast; others changing red, then green, yellow, all shimmering as consciousness reflected all, and then merged together in a vast whirling tube of multicolored light. As it quickened it became a blur of white, then straightened as I moved, flashing down its shaft, and I emerged in human form into darkness filled with thousands upon thousands of swirlings and roilings of many twinkling lights. I reached out my hand and cradled one of all the rest inside my palm. I then brought it close for further scrutiny and observed of its many variations of life as they changed in tiny, frenetic bursts within its predominant structure. I then pulled my gaze away and crushed it to the very smallest aggregation of its form; and as I let it go it flittered away and out into the unfathomable darkness beyond my breadth of vision.

Delighted, I then repeated such upon all others, crushing and watching as they flittered away in scintillating puffs of dust, until it was that I had ridded darkness of them all and nought was left but my own form and consciousness thereof. And a sense of longing began to accumulate until it was that the culmination of it surfaced in a catastrophic ecstasy and every form was created anew, and I again proceeded to crush them all and to watch as they disappeared into darkness.

Soon the aggregation of all became such that I could crush them all at once; the catastrophic ecstasy, this celestial orgasm of all form and consciousness, following immediately, until it was that it became but one, that one itself exploding out in all directions; and soon I knew. I knew as all perception of existence separated into infinite points of view and outlets of attention; I knew as infinite vantages of concentration and conscious observations were perceived in a single moment. I knew. I knew that all Existence was forever and that Life and Death are one.

www.pornographicsuicide.com

Follow Me in My Way

By Nathan Charles



Father Jacob O’Malley remembered him. This man on the television set those years and years ago, when Jacob was not more than a toddler. This evangelist; how grotesque he seemed now, even as he had appeared monolithic and near godlike then. Veins and beads of sweat upon his face seemingly perpetual. He could hear the fanatical screaming even now as he sat staring at the pews from the steps before the alter of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, the religious frenzy of factitious ideals: “We deny ourselves for the sake of goodness and purity! We must beware the temptation of beastly pleasures and carnal delights lest we be damned to life of filth and shame! We must not question that which is so clearly presented before us! We must restrain our primitive urges to seek that which is better left unsought lest we damn ourselves to walk with the savage beasts! And HELL!”

As the memory ceased to flourish Father O’Malley found himself laughing, bitterly so, at what a sham this evangelist had played. At what a sham they were all playing. “Another slave to feed the fire, another victim of the cross, and nothing but a victim for the victims,” he said as he tipped a wink from the bottle. Rot-gut whiskey. Alcohol was great for philosophy. “Weakness searches for a method of convenience.” But what of these thoughts? He pondered the significance of this.

It was near midnight in St. Paul’s Cathedral, downtown Manhattan. A single white candle burned by his side as Father O’Malley drank and thought of all the things he’d done. Stained glass Saints stared dully out at him. Accusing him. He laughed again. twenty-five years he’d been preaching. He’d been at St. Paul’s for about seventeen. He thought about St. Leo’s where he’d started out, just a “kid” of thirty-five. He thought of that girl, his first confession on the other side of the booth. What had her name been? Katie Matheson, daughter of Bill and Audrey Matheson. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen. Forgive me father, for I have sinned. Lewd thoughts about her father (sin). Father O’Malley had asked for details, and as she elaborated on such incestuous intimacies as “doing it with Daddy in front of Mother,” he couldn’t help but get an erection. No chastity belts for the modern priest. He’d been ashamed of course (Filth and Shame!). He didn’t believe there was a priest in the world who didn’t feel ashamed at one time or another. Or constantly. At least in the beginning that was. Bitter cynicism and lack of faith came later.

He still remembered her voice, like a silver bell, whispering, weeping, telling him she never meant to have such thoughts, but it was as if they were put there by someone else, and the more she fought the more vivid they became. He had told her, hating himself all the while, that she must tell everything, omitting nothing, or else God would not carry out her clemency and that the Devil would be allowed to fester, bringing stronger evils still to come. And she’d lain it all out for him, and as he listened he masturbated through the black cloth of his pants. He’d tried to contain himself as best he could as he ejaculated, but a shuddering sigh had surfaced nonetheless. “Father?” He’d absolved her with three Hail Mary’s and one Our Father’s. There had been others. Many others, some far worse sinners than Katie, but none excited him as did she. For Father O’Malley she became a veritable obsession. While praying he’d find that her face continually intruded, and the more he tried to extricate these sinful thoughts the more insistent they became.

He eventually found himself driving the streets of downtown San Francisco, searching for a prostitute. And he’d eventually found the one he was looking for. One as similar to Katie as he could find. Soft curls of long brown hair, large brown eyes. And she was young. The only difference in their appearance was that, where Katie worn a long plaid skirt to below her knees (the good Catholic school girl she was) the prostitute had replaced it with a pair of leopard print hot pants. Where Katie had worn a white button-up shirt (such a good Catholic girl) the prostitute wore a brown suede coat with fur-lined cuffs to keep out the cold of the San Francisco night. When she’d gotten into his old and beaten Ford station wagon Father O’Malley saw that her only other garment besides her spike heeled sandals was a black bikini top. Another difference had been the heavy eye shadow and scarlet lipstick as opposed to a clear and unblemished complexion. He’d still been wearing his priest’s uniform under his khaki jacket. “Bless me Father, for I have sinned,” the young prostitute said, (like a silver bell) giggling, and Father O’Malley almost slammed into the car in front of him, his heart hammering madly in his chest. That voice. “Katie?” he’d asked, sure it had to be her. “Whoever you want, Padre. Just don’t get us killed before we have a chance to get off, okay.” He glanced over at her as he drove. The feeling of unreality began to taper. This girl was a little thinner in the cheeks and her breasts were larger. “So how do you want to do this?”

They’d ended up in an alley, where this young hooker had given him his first blowjob, her head bobbing madly up and down. He’d given up the idea of sex (or so he’d thought) in his senior year of high school when he knew he was destined for the priesthood. This had been after seeing a freshman beaten to death in the hallway of Kingwood High, Omaha, Nebraska. The kid had died on his way to the hospital. Jacob never found out what happened to the kids who did it. He and his father had moved a few weeks later to San Francisco, California, where his father had gotten a job making phones at Conway Corporation. Perhaps “moved” isn’t exactly the right word. “Escaped” might be a better one. He never saw his mother after that strange night when his father had taken him away from her malevolent influence for good. He never missed her. But she always haunted his dreams. Dreams of that night and the fleeting glimpse of something terribly wrong…

All the while in seminary school he’d had no problems at all conforming to the ascetic demands of the priesthood, not thought about sex at all, save in his dreams. The confession booth had been his downfall and he knew it.



After (Katie) the prostitute wiped what little come she hadn’t swallowed from her lips and redid her lipstick in his rear-view mirror he paid her the twenty dollars and dropped her off a block away from her usual beat, which hadn’t been far. Then he bought a pint of Old Crow and got smashed, passing out on the floor beneath the desk in his office just off the pulpit of Saint Leo’s. When he woke up to find an empty bottle cradled in his arms he’d gotten up, disposed of the empty pint, driven home, and wept at the kitchen table of his small, somewhat dilapidated apartment. He had failed. Not enough faith, not enough self-control. He had failed God. When the tears subsided, he’d gotten up, popped three aspirin with a glass of water at the kitchen sink, and went to his bedroom to pray to the wooden crucifix above his bed, thoughts of Katie (the prostitute) intruding inexorably all the while.

He’d done better for a while. Even managed to get through Katie’s (the prostitute’s) confessions without so much as a twitch or throb from his penis. And then the dreams had started. It was Katie. She was standing at the foot of his bed, illuminated by the light from the stove in his kitchen, wearing black suede hot pants and nothing else. The barrettes she normally wore were gone, her hair free and flowing. Her eyes were shaded a dark blue and her lips were scarlet. She whimpered down at her small breasts as she pinched and kneaded her little pink nipples. Then she looked up at Father O’Malley. “Bless me Father.” Her voice, a silver bell.

“Katie,” he said, and could say no more. She giggled, putting a hand to her mouth, as if to say, I know something you don’t know. Then she stopped, looking down on him solemnly from the foot of his bed. She reached down to the front of her hot pants and he could hear the slow progress of her zipper as she pulled it down. And then it was the soft rustle of suede rubbing skin as she pulled them down around her ankles and stepped out toward the side of his twin bed in all her naked, youthful beauty. He could see a thin sprinkling of pubic fuzz between her milky thighs. He moved to the left as she slid beneath the covers with him, his priest’s uniform still on. She pressed her body against his and rubbed his cock, which had been stiff from the moment she appeared at the foot of the bed. “Won’t you bless me, Father?” she’d whispered. And then the dream would jump ahead and he was on top of her, pants around his ankles, fucking her. “Fuck me Father, fuck me!” And then laughter, faces surrounding his bed, accusing him with laughter, nameless faces laughing, and then one of all the rest, the evangelist of his childhood, his face where Father O’Malley’s wooden crucifix should have been. “Filth and shame! Filth and shame! Filth and shame!” Soon all voices joined the chant, a veritable congregation of them. “Filth and shame! Filth and shame! Filth and shame!” “Rape me Father, rape me!” Katie would cry out beneath him, blood pouring from her eye-sockets. At that point he would roll off of her, beating at his face and weeping as their faces closed in, his pants still tangled around his ankles. “Filth and shame, filth and shame, filth and shame!” “Rape me father, rape me!” “Filth and shame filth and shame!” “Rape me father rape me!” “Filth and shame me father rape me! Filth and SHAME!” And the demon would close in, its jagged fangs sizzling foam, red eyes glowering beneath the breadth of its horns and Father O’Malley would wake up screaming in his bed, sweat matting his thick tufts of bright red chest hair, light glowing a dull yellow from the bulb above his kitchen stove, another dull yellow from the street to his window. No prostitute at the foot of his bed. No Katie. No demon. No one.

After a week of these dreams he’d try the bottle. But not even that sufficed, for after a while he had the dreams anyway. So he’d ended up back out on the streets of the San Francisco night, searching for (Katie) the prostitute to take her back to his apartment. After she became a regular on Sunday nights (Sunday being the day for confession) he’d eventually gotten enough courage to ask her to wear a plaid skirt and white button-up shirt, which she would wear for him while indulging his every fantasy. Also on demand was that she wear no makeup.

He’d found he had a predilection for fellatio and after indulging him in every other to the full, screaming all the while, “fuck me Father, fuck me!” she’d always finish him there. When she left he’d drink himself stupid and pass out.

That had eventually ended when the Bishop in charge of his parish wondered where all of the money from the Church plate kept going. He’d followed Father O’Malley one Sunday night and found out everything. But he hadn’t been ostracized. He had simply been moved to another parish on the other side of the continent. It had been hell from then on out. The dreams had returned and again he had tried the drink, but as before the dreams eventually came anyway. “Fuck me Father, rape me! Filth and shame!” Only the face of the demon had then become that of his mother, skin crinkled with age, gumming the words, “blesh me Fadder, come give mommy a kish.”



His mother. An ornery old woman who had treated him and his father like trash. Sinful trash. Between the two of them she didn’t much care who she slapped around. One day when Jacob had been about twelve she’d found him in front of the television watching a commercial advertising Budweiser beer. Girls in bikinis shaking their little bottoms and drinking cold bottles of Bud with their stud boyfriends. She’d grabbed young Jacob by the hair, thrown him on the ground and commenced to kick him in the stomach, screaming, “don’t you ever, EVER! don’t you ever, EVER!” over and over. And his father had left the room with that same old rueful, apologetic look Jacob had come to know so well in those early years. After that he had been forced to watch that show with the screaming evangelist every morning at 5 AM. He couldn’t for the life of him remember the name of the evangelist, in spite of the fact that he’d watched his show religiously (ha-ha) for years. To his dying day he still woke up every morning at 5 no matter how late he’d gone to bed the night before.

Finally, one sunny April day when Jacob was sixteen his father had finally had enough. Jacob had been walking home from school day with one of the only girls he’d actually had the guts to talk to (miracle of miracles, ha-ha) when his mother and father came driving up. His mother got out of the car and crowed, “is that your girlfriend Jakey? Not likely. Why don’t you leave my son alone, you little whore? He doesn’t need trash like you following him around.” The girl had hurried off without a word and Jacob had stood there trembling, tears rolling down his cheeks. And his mother had started to laugh. “Look at the little baby. Nothing but a girl just like your worthless father. I’m going to have to take care of you both for the rest of my life, tell you what.” His father sat still in the passenger seat of the Ford automobile (the automobile he’d bought himself as a matter of fact, ha-ha). Jacob still vividly remembered his downcast and sorrowful eyes. “Get in the car you baby-girl,” his mother sneered. And he did as he was told so as not to incur a few hundred slaps and back hands when he got home. But later that night his father had come into his room, turning on the light, telling Jacob that it was time to pack, and be quick about it. Jacob stared with turgid and terrified eyes. “Where’s mom,” he’d asked.

“Don’t you worry about her, son. I’m getting you out of here. You’ll never have to worry about her again.”

“Please Dad, don’t. She’ll be so mad.”

“Son!” he’d snapped, the only time he’d ever seen his dad snap at anyone or anything. Then his face softened. “Trust me, son. Everything’s going to be all right. Do you trust me?”

He’d looked at his father for a long moment, trying in his adolescent mind to grasp the ramifications of such an unexpected turn of events. His father had never been adamant about anything as long as Jacob had known him. Finally, tears streaming down his cheeks, he’d said, “yes.” Not much more than a whisper. But somehow that confirmed everything. He knew that she would not interfere, as much as that went against all that he had been taught from the very first of his intrinsic memories. She would not stop them this night. Not ever again.

He’d quickly packed his bags and all his possessions which held any sentimental value whatsoever. Then him and his father had gone out, and (this memory would continually elude him ever after, always coming to the fore in his continually insistent dreams) as they passed his mother and father’s room he’d seen his mother laying in the sleepy yellow glow of her reading lamp. Her head was turned away from him, but he could see that there was something wrong with her face. Something about her face. But it was nought more than a glimpse and they were out of the house and packing their suitcases and bags in the trunk of the car. His father told him to get in and sit tight for a minute. “I have to take care of something,” he’d said.

“Dad!”

“Son.” His father put a hand to his shoulder and opened the passenger side door, nudging him gently into the seat. “Trust me, son.” Jacob watched as his father ran up the steps to the front door and went inside. He’d been not more than fifteen minutes and then they were gone down the road, Jacob soon falling back to sleep, waking later to their new life as father and son…



Yes, it had been hell from the very first day Father O’Malley set foot in New York. He’d wept every night in a drunken stupor over Katie (the prostitute) and he knew that he’d fallen in love with her. He hated himself for being so weak. So wrong. Such a failure. An utter failure. A failure to God. He was destined to damnation. He knew that now.

And it suddenly occurred to him as he sat drinking and thinking that his father had killed his mother. It didn’t come as a shock, no revelatory flash of realization. Just something he’d really known all along, but never bothered to consider with a conscious eye. Had never even cared. He’d hated his mother, it was as simple as that. And she was gone. Just as his father was gone. Died years ago from a heart attack. Nothing spectacular. Just dead. Dead like the world. Dead like everything. No meaning to the endless tide of life.

Father O’Malley walked down the aisle, bottle in hand, feeling the eyes of the stained-glass saints burning into his flesh. He went into his office and sat in the chair behind his desk. He’d never gotten another prostitute after that first. He’d been too scared of being caught again. And so she had haunted his dreams every night thereafter. He honestly didn’t know how he’d survived as long as he had, save by brute force of will. He had his moments of weakness, oh of course. Masturbation in the confession booth was a frequent pastime on Sundays (although he was far too old and decrepit for such sinful pleasures now). Afterward he’d drink himself into his usual stupor and dream the dreams anyway (Filth and shame me father rape me!) After twenty-five years of this Father O’Malley looked to be more like ninety than 59. His face was a map of wrinkles and his liver-spotted hands looked more like claws than human appendages. When giving his sermons on Sunday his congregation had to strain to hear, as his voice was nothing but a husk of its former self. Gravelly, like sand paper rubbing against wood.

He sat down behind his desk and looked out into the New York night. The twin towers of the New York Trade Center were just visible to the left of his window. He opened a drawer to his right and pulled out a sheaf of paper. He scribbled a few words and put down his pen. He then took a key from his pocket and opened the top drawer to his left. In it lay a .45 caliber automatic. A box of shells lay to the left of this. He took them both out and lay them side by side on his relatively clean and tidy desk. He then took a long slow drink from the bottle and set it aside. Loading the gun slowly and methodically he stared out at the night sky which should have been filled with stars, but instead held that opaque and reddish glow common to all big cities. It looked like Hell. The Big Apple indeed. He wondered if anyone really grasped the biblical connotations of a nickname like that.

Father O’Malley then put the gun in his mouth and squeezed the trigger, firing off a single sharp report and splattering his brains all over the back wall. Blood poured from his mouth and ears as he lay askew, staring out at nothing.





The screams of the maid the next day could be heard all throughout St. Paul’s cathedral. When the police arrived they found a single note, spattered with blood, on Father O’Malley’s desk. It read simply, “Oh, ye brothers of the cloth, follow me in my way.”

www.pornographicsuicide.com

False Death
By Nathan Charles
Its mind was a tangle of ingrown misery as it walked the black, scorched earth. Smoke poured from every crevice, choking out the air it no longer cared to breath. Were it not already dead it may have died soon enough in such a world as that in which it dwelled. Nought but a skeleton, feeling of the misery of death in life in a place where all was dead, yet still continued to exist. And death as most would claim to know it is nought but misery. Real death is another matter, for another page…
Here, all the world was nought but smoke and coal and all was strangely cold as the skeleton walked, its mind a barrage of all manner of jaded miseries, reflections of a past not quite remembered…
Images of flesh distorted and pupilless eyes sunk far into the faces of these unknown beings fraught with agony…
Whispering inflections passing softly through the many streams of smoke and echoing between the many fissures of the earth…
And soon all light as there was beyond this world by which it was illuminated died as well, and there was nought but the sensation of the smoke itself. Dry, acrid, and continually pouring forth the stench of misery…
And all was death in the sense of the perpetually dying…
Existence as nought but dying and the putrefaction of this death…
Nought but false death and the skeleton whose misery would never end…

www.pornographicsuicide.com

Awesome! I started reading it but i'm going to print it out so I can read it tonight

edit: also.. if you don't mind can the color be changed to something less bright ?

No problem and thanks!

How's red?

This is the first "chapter" of the Dark Muse. If anyone likes it I will add more, as the whole thing is about fifty pages all together.

The Dark Muse
By Nathan Charles
I
As the ancient ship sailed across the sea broken souls and angry spirits swam within the fog. The fog of deceit as the weeping echoed through this darkness of our own creation. Out from this unseen womb, somewhere drifting and alone, Eros heard the fluttering of wings, distant as he strained to hear. Struggling for comprehension of this unknown presence Eros' consciousness lay naked, waiting for the awakening, the discovery of this thing… what was it? What did he search for on this expedition? It seemed he’d lost a cause. How was it that he found himself drowning in this darkness, this fog, this atmosphere of screaming and flashes of decay; images, unreal. Were these faces surfacing as he tried in vain to catch a glimpse? He searched for it; this thing driving him. Destiny? No. Destiny is action irremediable. We are destined to our will. Each incitement is an act of fate and all that he portray is that which we receive. What had driven Eros to delve so far into this wilderness of his own metaphorical insanity? How long at sea?
How had he forgotten all that was? Nameless faces, sleepless hours. He sailed through voices, whispers, hinting at his heart. What had he forgotten? What was lost? What had become? The fluttering of wings suddenly became a roar and he wondered, were these the wings of demons surfacing from out the fog of innocence? Darkness to all eyes which do not see…
Sailing, seeking what? Eros searched, struggling to escape the distortion of these screams, this fluttering of wings, these surfacing faces, taunting him in the shadow of his view; naught but a glimpse at that of which is tangible. These whispers, somehow louder than the screams. With what, he wondered, did they beckon him? Why? Such confusion, yet somehow he understood this lament. Such words that danced just out of reach, compromising comprehension. What was it, overall, that could induce such longing, such desire for this thing? It hinted secret beauty, surrounded as it was by this decay, this suffering, so familiar…
The fog surrounded him, remaining, as it was, the apotheosis of pure anguish. Human anguish, the suffering of souls made real before his hungry eyes. This hunger, this longing, was all that remained his life, of himself. Primitive, yet contained; this ancient instinct. And this moving fog, souls put on display. An esoteric music of all past pain that dwindled in his aged and callous heart. This hurt that seems to fade, only to surface once again at the slightest form of persuasion. Perhaps music, drifting from out of nowhere, tugging at the tissue of a hidden scar. An injury thought forgotten. Or a scent, perhaps, some perfume caught for an instant, reminding us of lovers dead and gone.
The music of this dome of fog began to quicken as these thoughts reached his mind. And suddenly a scent began to permeate, familiar, hinting. Seductions of the past.
He imagined himself rising up through this dome, this portrait of decay and vulgar renderings of agony. How long would it take to reach the light? How much suffering before the gratification of bliss?
Eros found himself consumed by this secret pondering when a memory began to surface. It was a dream he’d had long ago and it began to flood vividly from out his own private abyss…

From the balcony of a castle he viewed, from dizzying heights, a play. A silent play, as naught was heard save that of the muted murmurs of consciousness. There were gestures seen here and there, bodies draped in an era of renaissance. The play was vacant and meaningless, the actors lost and afraid. Gesticulations of confusion beckoned him and he found himself leaping from the balcony and as he fell he began a spiral. Eros could see a thousand faces from a thousand balconies as he plummeted toward the stage, which was really a courtyard made from cold white marble. The balconies surrounded the stage and all were filled with these staring faces, beautiful in their shocked and fearful silence.
At last he reached the foot, touching softly to the ground. The actors quickly surrounded him in their desperation. They begged him to write a play for them. He was pulled this way and that by this group of pitiful strangers. All faces were animated with the same desperate look. He loved, as he laughed, being the at the heart of such desperate need. Of course he would write a play for them; and from out of this throng of uninflected emptiness came a tablet and a feather pen. He began to write, rapidly creating scene after scene, part after part, until the wall in front of him began to open up, revealing the darkest abyss he had ever laid eyes upon. It was immense and foreboding. The actors fled from this darkness and Eros was left to face it, alone. He felt himself floating out of this strange and silent castle, or rather the castle began to float around and away from him, and he was suddenly surrounded by this darkness as the castle was quickly swept away. And from out of this endless black he heard a million voices, ethereal and in perpetual soprano. It was unreal in its angelic beauty, so mellifluous Eros nearly wept. It was the sound of innocence, untouched by pain or anguish or despair. It was love made sound.
Then, from out of nowhere it became sight. And such a beautiful sight it was, holding as it did an incandescent brilliance. It was a ship, immense and floating toward him as he awaited the embrace of its singing passengers with staring eyes and open arms.
Angels, so lovely, so incredibly wondrous in their resplendent yet somehow gentle glow. There were millions of them, yet they seemed as one, moving in a pattern of caressing and affection… of love.
Eros looked down at his hands, realizing that he still held in them the tablet and feather pen, and as he did there suddenly came a voice, or rather a presence animated with a message… one of danger. Not for him, but for these angels he so loved. Where does this danger come from, he demanded. Laughter emanated from the presence, and Eros realized with an abrupt and astonished horror that the danger came from the presence itself.
Would you save them? the presence taunted him. If so, than how are you to continue to create? What action could possibly be taken if you continue to hide behind the barrier of tablet and pen and quiver and bow?
Again, he laid eyes upon his hands pondering the significance of this. What poet was it that had had this same revelation? This terrible discovery that his mind could not possibly carry a balance between receiving inspiration and becoming inspiration. Impossible to be his own muse. Inspiring others was his muse. His only source of comfort, tearing him away from the inner suffering… wait. Slipping away.
Eros watched as the tablet and pen slipped from his hands, ripping out of him like the soul of a lover who never really cared. But there was no time to try and mend a broken heart, for the soprano of his beloved angels became a million horrid cries of pain. And, all at once these cries molded into one massive blur of pure anguish. He saw them falling, his angels, falling into the dark, the despair, the empty. Nothingness is clarity. These words came flashing, momentarily, meaningless.
His hands, filling with this light, angelic, animate, struggling to gather these deities to himself. Eros' own soul as a sanctuary for these lost beings, betrayed by a faith in something unseen. They had journeyed on a ship of faith through nothingness, meaninglessness. The eventuality of such a journey had led to the inevitable outcome of all blind faith: unseen death. This presence, this “faith,” had turned its back on them. And Eros tried to save them, but they were too numerous, their light too vivid and immense. The inner sufferings of his heart made it impossible to harbor outside light; outside beauty.
This hidden darkness held an arrogance, an unconscious selfishness where Eros found himself consumed by the notion that all things lovely were made for him, for his benefit…

The familiarity in these remembrances of the self was a comfort, if nothing else. But as he relished in this state of introspection Eros found himself wandering away, or rather the memory wandered away like a glimmer of hope shattered by an inevitable despair. He struggled to retain this glimpse of himself as he returned to the fog. To the fluttering of wings and perpetual cries of torment. But soon the glimpse began to dissipate and to fade. The manner in which it fell away gave the impression of the dead decaying in an instantaneous crumbling of the molecular structure. Of flowers curling into a dry darkness within moments, ever after portraying the likeness of the dead.
As the gaze of consciousness returned to its outward state Eros became aware that a change had taken place aboard his ship. He could not remember a single moment on this expedition when his eyes had met with those of his men. Strange. Had communication been entirely mechanical? As he returned from his inward reflection he’d found himself surrounded by their faces. Their blank and staring eyes were fixed upon his being, gazing through him as it were, and Eros wondered what it was that lay behind this vacant stare.
Perhaps, in their monotonous wallowing through this esoteric fog they had reached a state of primitive interaction with the symbolic wilderness surrounding them. Sensation without perception. Perhaps, his sudden leap into actual thought, into actual perception of that which he received, had stirred something in them that could not have otherwise been felt. Had Eros not fully reached that primeval state of pure instinctual awareness? As he gazed upon this crowd of staring eyes he realized that there was no possible way of knowing, for memory is the essence of conscious thought. And memory of instinctual experience is not a memory of any actual event, but a memory of that which dictate the nature of our impulses. There was simply no way of knowing whether or not he had reached this state of blankness.
As he pondered this Eros noticed something in his men quicken. And as he became aware of this they backed away, slightly.
Who were these men? These primitive creatures who were apparently affected by each vibration of his mind. He had been pondering things as far back on this journey as he could remember and they hadn’t stirred before. What caused this change? It seemed they rose from their mechanical stupor after the memory of his life before the fog had taken shape. After the recollection of a dream. What was it that captured them in the feeling of this dream, this memory, that had done nothing before? What was the nature of the trance in which they moved? Was it a trance? Or was it simply the world as it always had been and always would be?
No. He had to fight this notion. A memory had surfaced and Eros would not be forced to let it go.
But what of the fog? How would Eros begin to penetrate this thing surrounding them so closely, yet moving with them just out of reach?
He would find a way. He would break the dome of fog to reach the Sun-soaked shores of bliss. Eros would find answers to these cries of anguish, the fluttering of wings his own. These faces dancing just out of reach would be unveiled to reveal their hidden beauty.
But what of this veil? What of this beclouded blanket hinting at unseen suffering? Was this covering of numinous fog meant as a womb to protect seeing eyes from the truths that lay waiting? Truth is to be feared is it not?
No. This was wrong. These were not his words, Eros realized with a sudden, yet stymied wave of fear. Not only were these thoughts alien to him, but not his at all. Someone, or some thing, some presence, was manipulating his thoughts, attempting to crush his undying optimism under the fallacy of unmitigated misery. It promised comfort in this endless gloom and despair, this wallowing in purgatory. A weak and pathetic coward’s paradise. An ignorance of those who have never conquered, never overcome.
Never will I fall into this, he thought, and as he did his petty fear became pure and seething rage.
Let the fog take hold. Let it consume you. Give in to the utter hopelessness of your own private agony. You will die if you try to fight.
Suddenly a cry erupted from the inner-most regions of his being, and Eros felt his head fall back with the overpowering fury of this cry. Strange that it could rise from him before he had even become aware of it. Strange that he saw these hands moving out in front of his body to attack the members of his crew as he realized that the presence, the voice, was them, or perhaps speaking through them. He felt his thumbs pushing the flesh of shielding eyelids, popping through and leaving two gaping founts of gushing blood. He felt the grip of his hand upon the knife as organs spilled and fluids spattered and his scream became all the more frenzied until it was more cerberusian than god…

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