Aberrations of Reality

by Aaron J. French

  The Paladin goes to her, for he has come from halls of loneliness, from city streets burned out with fires and poverty, where the living lie half-dead in alleys, and the somnambulistic souls who pursue a life not designed by them, but by something unseen, strive toward nothingness. His job and his heart and his career and his livelihood, once these stood before his ego as utter truths but have since fallen away, so that now he only passes through windows, openings in and out of the worlds. He peers into places where he should not look—where he should not be able to look.

  Still, it is a race to leave himself. And so the Paladin is running. Running out of all things. But especially running out of time.

  He rides broad-chested and regal astride a fine red equus 2012 Ford Mustang, with a front splitter and a pair of blocked-off fog lamp openings and boomerang striping along the bodysides. He is dressed in the leather tux of his father, and his father’s father. He is shouldering the burden of his lineage. A bloodline thrums in his veins. As the steed picks its way along the road leading to The Holy One, the Paladin looks out among the foliage and the tempered sky overhead, his mood something doleful, like a piece has been taken away.

  Part of him misses that old life. But truly he despised it, and is glad to be free. It is only this transitioning period that finds him saturnine—that wears upon his soul, as a hammer melds lead into steel. For he is mourning the death of parts—singular parts—of his individuality.

  He is becoming that which he was not.

  So when he talks to her in the wind, they are flying side-by-side, through cloud and sun. She smiles at him. That smile which heaves him forth into new a being. Out of pain, loneliness, death. The same happens again as they comb the bottommost regions of the seafloor. She raises her hands from where they were digging in the shells and rocks, and touches his face. It reminds him of the lonely life he left behind. The life before he met her, living alone in the dregs of his past experiences, clicking through the Internet in search of something more—until now—now her—now this.

  The Holy One. That which he has always wanted. She is everything. She is perfect. And now she is his.

  Standing fully upright, she is under six feet tall. Her long reddish hair, with a streak of brown toward the ends, glimmers radiantly. She is accustomed to wearing long white skirts and a blue blouse, her handbag and her iPhone, constantly changing positions.

  There is an air of nobility about her—that would suggest she came from royalty, or at the very least from aristocratic bloodlines, above the commons herds who flock the streets amid fog. Her face—pale, chiseled, Grecian, smooth face of stone—is illuminated in the upper half by twin globes of greenish blue, which look upon the world in endless fascination. Her pupils are portals, he knows; they are entryways into forests of magic.

  “I once spoke to a maple tree,” she says, as they sit in the dark, redwood dining room of her home. She has prepared peppermint tea and dispenses it in a pair of porcelain cups. She tells him of her life.

  As she joins him at the table, sitting in one fluid motion which seems extended somehow, elongated, she hands him his tea. He replies, “What does it mean, spoken to a tree?”

  “Exactly what it says. You can learn a lot from trees. Their inner voice is a causeway to gods. Their voice echoes deep within the elements of all human beings. Listen and practice will allow you to hear them, too. Come, I will show you.”

  She gets up from the table.

  He has slept dreamlessly after she is gone, after the murderer has taken her. He remains alone in the upper rooms of the house, alone in the bed, staring out the window, where a bulbous moon and a parade of stars meet his gaze. He thinks of The Holy One and he tosses and turns, for he cannot sleep. He cycles through the television stations, but they are all blind. There is a small bronze bust of Goethe on the night stand, and lying beside it, a shaving razor, and beside that a hand mirror. The Paladin is afraid to touch any one of these. The razor, especially. Things have souls. Things can kill you.

  … kill her, kill you, kill me…

  Yes.

  Morning light streams into the room. The bust of Goethe turns, is animated and talkative. The old poet remarks to him, “You know, I once was so lonely and miserable that I thought of committing suicide. Over a woman—yes, of course, partially—but over a host of additional, more existential reasons also. The hand with the knife pierced my navel but stopped soon after. I wrote a book. The Sorrows of Young Werther. Ever heard of it?”

  “I don’t speak German,” the Paladin replies.

  He gets out of bed and goes out into the world to find her.

  The body of The Holy One is pinned up between two trees, lashed to the branches, arms spread to either side. A bloodless corpse. Hanging, still prettily, still a radiant, physical organism now devoid of personality and life, but a treasure nonetheless. Still holy. Still pure.

  He cuts her down with his father’s dagger and carries her into the woods. Tears follow. The trees speak quietly to him, whispering words of solace, which permeate his being. He carries her farther to the crest of the green hill, where a clearing of grass lies open beneath a gray bowstring sky. A single, tabletop of stone has been erected in the center of the field. He places her on it, sprawled on her back, arms dangling over the sides, as clouds gather in the heavens.

  Lightning. Thunder. The Paladin raises the dagger… It rains.

  THE CHRIST

  When Mother informed me of Uncle Lewis’s death and my inheritance of his rundown property in the countryside, it wasn’t like people begged me to stick around in New York. Not even her. I didn’t have friends in the City and my job as a columnist was on hiatus. Although I taught online writing seminars in my spare time, there hadn’t been many enrollments.

  Luckily Uncle Lewis had also left money in a bank account for me, so everything seemed in place to begin my new life. His death had been ruled a misadventure but I suspected suicide as the likely cause.

  Still, there were suspicious circumstances surrounding his death that were only hinted at in the police report. His body was found dangling from one of the pine trees on his property. His eyes had been eaten out by birds and he had hung up there for so long before being found that his skin had decayed, leaving only a dangling skeleton.

  I couldn’t think of a better image for my uncle—a skeleton. It accurately described what I knew about the man: bare at minimum, almost next to nothing. Mother on the other hand was the bane of my existence, and now that she was getting on in years, we were getting along even less.

  She was only concerned with Facebook and eBay accounts, buying and selling books on spirituality, and her little stuffed animals she called Plushies. She had a whole collection of these Plushies in a room in her house that she’d christened the “Self-Nurturing Temple,” in which she performed elaborate “self-nurturing” rituals that included crystals, incense, and hot pink candles.

  I wanted nothing to do with spirituality or religion. I was a practical man, a borderline agnostic, a veracious atheist in my darker moments. True, my lack of faith had been a source of great agony and hopelessness at times, but it also provided me with the much-needed assurance that I was nothing like Mother.

  She subscribed to a non-denominational religion, something called The Metaphysical Church: a hangout for ex-hippies, in my opinion. Omnitheist was the technical term. Omnitheists worshiped Christ, Jahvey, Buddha, Krishna, and astrology, crystals, druidic priestesses, even tarot decks. But Mother’s biggest reverence was toward the aliens. She believed Christ was an alien who would return to Earth in the form of a large, very rare, very precious quartz crystal, somewhere in the Himalayas.

  I’d hoped my move would symbolize independence and freedom, not only from Mother but from her spirituality. However it became immediately apparent that Uncle Lewis had also been deeply spiritual—perhaps more than her.

  Religious paraphernalia infested his home. I spent several hours taking down all the crucifixes and paintings of the Virgin Mary
and the Last Supper. He seemed fixated on the crucifixion and the scene at Calvary. Many of the paintings, even smaller portraits I found filed away in a dresser drawer, displayed Christ on the cross—His wounds; all the rest.

  As I dug around in Uncle’s collection, I grew intrigued. The images were striking. I even felt myself moved occasionally. The depictions of the scene at Calvary hit me the hardest. When I looked at Christ’s facial expressions, which varied in emotional content, His eyes seemed to stare out at me. I could feel His suffering as though it were my own. I saw the nails in His wrists and feet and I thought of my own invisible nails, which affixed me to a life I had never asked for: a life joyless and dull.

  Sometimes I did want to believe. It pained me to admit it… Whenever I thought of anything higher than a material life, I saw only Mother and her Self-Nurturing Temple.

  But often the emptiness I felt was greater. Thinking about the scientific world-model of random causality—where nothing had meaning and everything was occasioned by accident—made me want to put a gun to my head. If there was no reason for life, then why bother trying? I had tried and tried with nothing to show for it—no success in love or career—and if all that trying had been done in vain, then I’d might as well pull the trigger and give myself a little peace.

  After a week of taking down the religious relics, the place finally started to feel like my own. I hung my clothes in Uncle’s former closet, and also filled the kitchen with new cutlery and a fresh supply of food. A window in that room looked out on the wooded hilltop. Uncle’s hanging tree was visible up there too, nestled in with the other pines. I set up my laptop and office materials at the dining table, hoping the view would serve as an inspiration.

  In the nearby town was an art store where I purchased replacement pieces for the religious paintings: a few nature scenes, an astronomical starscape, a Van Gogh replica.

  I mounted the paintings in the same places where the religious art had hung and felt rather pleased. It seemed I was carving out a new life.

  Later, while I worked, I glanced out the kitchen window as the sun set behind the trees and thought I saw movement on the hilltop.

  I watched longer and saw shapes moving. I supposed my neighbors were out hiking or hunting, though I couldn’t tell what they were doing. I heard the faint sounds of hammers and saws. After the sun went down, they were gone.

  I lay in bed, trying to fall asleep. I couldn’t forget the Calvary paintings and the depictions of Christ’s crucifixion. Why did you take us down? the pictures wanted know. Why did you hide us?

  “Because I don’t like you,” I said. “You remind me of my pain.”

  Then I heard Mother’s voice: I knew moving into my brother’s house would be good for you. You’re always so unhappy. You need a change. I feel sorry for you because you have no spirituality.

  “Shut up, Mother,” I said. Finally I fell asleep.

  In the morning I stood in the hallway with terror pumping through my veins. My new paintings were gone, replaced with Uncle’s original Christ prints.

  I continued to tell myself I was still asleep, that eventually I would wake for real. But when I didn’t wake, I pondered the possibility that I’d never hung the new paintings; maybe that was the dream.

  I returned to the bedroom and looked in my wallet; sure enough the receipt for the art store was folded among the bills.

  I went into the kitchen, brewed some coffee, and stared out the window. My hand trembled as I held the mug.

  In the following days I purchased more paintings to replace the religious ones, but each morning I awoke to find them gone, and the originals returned.

  “You must have a lot of wall space,” the owner of the art store told me.

  As a last attempt I made a fire in Uncle’s stone barbecue pit and fed the paintings to the flames. I watched, pleased, as the face of Christ again and again yielded to the fire.

  I went to sleep thinking I’d stopped the bizarre phenomenon once and for all. In the morning when I found the paintings restored and mounted back into position, I released the scream of a wild animal and tore through the house upsetting furniture and smashing glass, convinced I was losing my mind.

  * * *

  In the afternoon I tried to nap, but again I couldn’t sleep. Many of the pictures were now in the room with me. They’d inched their way across the walls, taking up positions about my bed.

  The Christ stared at me with sorrowful, beseeching eyes. I ignored Him as I read through one of Uncle’s biblical books whose title was in Latin but whose text combined both Latin and Old English. There was a section that described the Stations of the Cross, and I kept seeing His harrowing ascent to Calvary: the mocking, jeering spectators; the heavy wood boards carried upon His shoulders.

  Thinking about His pain made me want to cry, so I shut my eyes. I’d known pain. I’d been jeered in high school, back when I couldn’t get a girlfriend and walking through the hallway felt like taking the road out of Jerusalem.

  After a while I fell asleep and had a dream. I was back at Mother’s house. I was a teenager, isolated in my own bedroom. Suddenly there was a knock and the door opened.

  Christ appeared. I fell onto my bed as He entered. He wore only a leather cloth on His hips, and His emaciated ribs protruded, glistening with blood and sweat as He spread His arms.

  He looked ghostly pale white. His eyes were wide, bulging. He stepped up to the mattress, and then I heard Mother’s voice calling from the other room. Christ opened His hands, evincing the throbbing wounds, and bent forward to place His palms upon the tops of my thighs.

  “Child…,” He whispered.

  He dug His fingers into my skin, clamping down on my legs. A world of icy pain opened up to me. He sank them deeper, deeper—until He grasped my muscles and bones.

  I screamed and awoke trembling, rolling out of the bed.

  * * *

  I gave up the hope of controlling the paintings and allowed them to move freely along the walls. Sometimes they followed me around the house, eyes opening, mouths whispering.

  Cantate Deo, quoniam regna terrae: cantate Domino: Cantate Deo.

  Sing to God, ye kingdoms of the earth: sing ye to the Lord: Sing ye to God.

  I came down with a horrid case of insomnia. I sat at my laptop for hours trying to prepare next summer’s curriculum, but nothing came of it. I stared out the window beside the dining table, drinking coffee, reading the King James Version of the Bible.

  Strange signs appeared on my palms and feet, swelling red welts that I identified as the nail wounds of Christ. I sensed a feverish itching about the crown of my head. When the markings subsided, I took it as an indication that the crucifixion wounds had entered into me.

  Excited to share this news with Mother, I gave her a call. After several rings, she picked up.

  “Mother? It’s me.”

  “Yes.” I could hear the TV set blaring in the background. “Is it nice over there?”

  “Mother, something happened. Something… I can’t quite explain. It’s so crazy!”

  “Tell Mother.”

  “It’s… the paintings… something about them…” I struggled to put words together, but finally the phrase came out: “I found my spirituality.”

  A pause. Then: “Really?”

  “Yes. Christ came to me. He chose me. Well… not just me. I believe He has chosen everyone. But—this is true.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve seen Him, for fuck’s sake!”

  “Language.”

  “He comes to me. I feel Him growing inside me.”

  “Oh Monty, how I’ve waited…”

  “Waited?”

  She coughed. The TV volume decreased. She sounded emotional.

  “You’ve been saved! I waited all these years. That’s why I disowned you!”

  “Disowned me? Mother!”

  “It’s true. I couldn’t love a son who had no spirituality. But now the Christ has come to you. The alien being
s have taken you aboard their ship—”

  “No aliens, Mother—”

  “Did you dream about the Christ?”

  “Yes, but the paintings—”

  “That’s their ship, you see, the dreams—when you’re dreaming of the Christ you’re really aboard their spacecraft; your mind’s been transported there. Now that you’ve been there too, now that you’ve been contacted, you are reborn to me.”

  I felt the old anger bubbling… I didn’t understand how she had turned this conversation into something of her own, a podium to taut her metaphysical propaganda.

  “Christ once came to me in a dream,” she was saying. “While I was pregnant with you. I never told you… I was standing on the banks of a lake in the woods. Water was icy gray. I was there and you were there, but you were full-grown, and I knew who you were even though you weren’t born.”

  She chuckled. “We were already arguing. Then the Christ rose out of the lake. He was so bright. I could see His long robe and hair, and it was all so bright. I immediately bent my knees, praising Him, weeping.

  “You, on the other hand, folded your arms in contempt. ‘This is just a bunch of bullcrap,’ you said, except you used the S-word. Then you turned away. I knew I would have to disown you but before I could say anything, Christ reached down and took me in His arms. His touch burned me. He told me I’d given birth to a demon. He began shaking me, thrashing me about, screaming, ‘Wake up, Christine! Wake up!’

  “And you know what?”

  “What?”

  “I did. And I’ve been waking more ever since. I was sad about you, but I accepted it. But now I’m happy for you—in fact I’m coming to see you—”

  I punched END on my cell phone; before I knew it I had dashed it to the floor and smashed it under my heel.