by Brad Cox
She was gifted with wisdom, and carried an introvert's mystique. A healthy and well-rounded family gave her shine. She was poreless, beautiful and instantly intrigued by Magnus; he was the yin to her yang. Growing up in a suburban neighborhood made charting the traditional course toward financial security a breeze and curiosity, a luxury.
Science was her God and she worshiped daily. Societal laws were tolerated, so much as to gain the type of freedom that only submission could provide. At heart, she was an artist, but her internal negative dialog refused to allow her to dismiss realism and risk judgment.
Though withdrawn, she was still able to develop comfortable relationships in tragically hip social circles. She did her best to till the garden for quality over quantity relationships and on this principle, only the most determined individuals were allowed behind the curtain. Her rejection generated followers.
Introductions aside, the two arrived.
Chapter 7
Visions of the red bird (anan)
The Council communicated through mad dreams and could send haunting visions of the red bird to participants of The Program. The bird, Anan, represented dimensionality, and could effortlessly make the sands of an hourglass pour in both directions or in hypnotic tandem. Orchestrating synchronicity in physicality was intuitive to its nature, as was leading unwilling spectators to the depths of life after life.
Anan showed Programmers how to understand time beyond the boundaries of linear thinking, and encouraged them to divorce the simplistic measurements of man's capacity. It explained the complexities of a mitosis-driven universe and was able to articulate how the beginning and end could simultaneously exist in an ever-expanding and fracturing soul cycle, while passing through each moment of awareness, connecting everything to everyone in every time period.
Elisa recalled her dream. Resting in puffy hotel linens, watching sitcom reruns and nibbling on leftover airplane peanuts, in a complimentary white robe, she found her taxed mind drifting. It had been a long week of hotel hopping, with her Senior Week crew — she was wiped. The posh parties had taken their toll. As her bloodshot eyes switched the channels of consciousness, she encountered the ruby red bird.
From atop the television set, it stared through her startled eyes and instructed her to gaze into the static, like the girl from Poltergeist. Scrambling signals, the tube idled and reflected her image like a mirror. Intuitively she assumed she was being taped for a graduation prank. Nervously testing its accuracy, she slowly waved her cautious hand about. Accepting the lucid moment, Anan began rewinding her life. She watched herself sleep, conscious, then quickly regressing through her current life, afterlife and witnessing a moment from her former life. No longer the voyeur, she relived it, like reincarnation in reverse.
The Santa Monica Boulevard was tense and humid. Distracted, looking for her mischievous keys in an extravagant Melrose-inspired handbag, Elisa emerged from an old mom and pop shop, awkwardly drinking from a tall carton of whole milk. Crossing the threshold, dark storm clouds, manifesting above the quaking parking lot, began descending around her.
“Hi, Elisa, what are you looking for?” asked a voice.
“My keys...” she said, pulling a teething ring from her purse.
“I may never see you again. Please don't make me kill you. We can still be together.”
“What are you talking about? Are you really trying to kill me in my sleep?” she asked.
Shots fired. She awoke, hurling expletives toward the idiot box. The sequence was more lucid than any of the intolerably bad dreams she'd been forced to bear witness. As her eyes focused on a new day, a magnificent cardinal caught her unfocused gaze. Beckoning notice, it comfortably perched upon the sill, tweeting a soft short melody before taking flight. Making the connection, Elisa rushed toward the window, but it was gone — blending with the towering New York City skyscrapers.
+++
Sometimes the dreams were guideposts. I can still recall the unsettling feelings sparked by a marathon series of Faces of Death Vol. 1-4. Fearing REM, heavy eyelids were reinforced with Jolt cola and Skittles. A desktop lamp was tasked with running surveillance, and thwarting the threats of the monsters who would soon abound my twilit room. It was too late, nature had already begun its countdown, and prepared to up the ante on the disturbing images I'd carelessly consumed. I awoke in a vision, wrestling immurement. All exits were sealed.
Confined, the red bird, Anan, crowed to me.
Upon acidic concrete prison walls, I was shown a tetrad of ways to understand the limitlessness of space. Moments were shown on the dripping northern wall, from the past and of the future, when the astringent obstacles no longer existed. It was an escape plan. Chirps of faith encouraged me to risk chemical burns and simply walk through the blockade of smoldering green gasses. Without caution, my spirit was released into a parallel dimension on the outside of the prison.
“If time isn't confined to the body, how can these walls hold you?” asked Anan.
I was then returned to the prison. The only light came from the flickering southern wall.
“In darkness, nothing exists, except for the fate created by an architect's mind,” crowed Anan. When the illumination ceased, the walls faded and the universe, anew, became imaginable.
“Everything is light,” added the red bird.
Again, I awoke. The eastern and western walls were replaced with mirrors, to express infinity.
“Look to the East, everything is within,” said Anan.
The mirrors vanished and I was startled by the lightning flashes on the western wall. It was there I was shown the image of a baby with purplish eyes. It represented the cycle of a promised evolution. In the vision, I was chased by a possessed looking man with a piercing fury, while a beautiful young woman ran with the infant child through a bustling city. She was surrounded by wolves. I was trying to protect a new world from death's grip.
“With life comes death and in death comes life,” said Anan.
+++
Few people understood the complexities of life more than Benjamin Maynard. At an early age, he was abandoned by his cancerous mother and left to be raised by the Underground, lurking beneath the dank streets of London, England. A nomadic calling drove her into the arms of a Tommy, with zero interest in raising a troubled young chap or sobering from his post-traumatic stress disorder. His biological father settled for a life on the run, after a bank robbery went south, resulting in the misfired deaths of three British Bobbies. Society projected their disappointment upon the only visible reminder they could find. Ben was marked. Seeking his bourbon-riddled father would only carve distress signals, upon his otherwise blank mug and meant risking the whereabouts of a man incarcerated by anonymity; he knew it was wise to wait, without bated breath.
He stood an average height and sported an overflowing dark brown mop top, reminiscent of the Fab 4. His eyes, emerald; and his cautious smile, sincere. His moral barometer was defined by observing neighborhood interactions between old friends and harboring families. A vicarious life served as normalcy and kept his shattered spirit hopeful. Absent from archetypes, his failed parents caused an overwhelming sense of rejection to brew within his tiny frame. Commitment was seen as a home erected on shaky ground. Gambling loss was a luxury built by the posh. His interactions with passersby was curt, but cordial. He was a survivalist, who kept hangers-on just beyond arm's length.
His preteen years were strictly autonomous. He knew the dock and restaurant schedules well enough to sneak seafood or whatever fodder his hands could stow. Monitoring captains' work schedules enabled him short nights on port-side cabin floors; he'd scamper, if caught. Before long, he found refuge with Britain's finest foster care program, no longer trampling the streets of a forgotten scorn. His instincts were sharpened and his ability to survive, unmatched. Though he'd made himself emotionally void, he was not impervious to the feelings aroused by his dreams.
+++
Resting on a dock, the red bird called.
The therapist carefully noted everything.
“I saw my face appearing in the top western ring. It morphed and resurrected feelings from forgotten lifetimes. My soul radiated from these familiar eyes, as I recalled their affect. A strangely familiar girl appeared in the eastern circle. Her face transformed, but remained discernible. Reaching her shackled hands toward me, I could see her longing eyes welling with a vast regret.
“Do you believe she could represent your mother?” asked the doctor.
Hypnotized by his account, Benjamin ignored her diagnosis and marched forward.
“In the bottom circle I saw a brilliant pair of indigo eyes. They instantly faded to black. A small fire ignited and replaced the vacant ring; a fiery angelic face emerged. Without caution, my instincts pawed toward the Aphrodite,” he paused, and quaked.
“Continue,” instructed the curious therapist, placing a comforting hand on his clammy forehead.
“It distorted into a demonic figure and began screaming at me. Its harsh tone was guttural, but piercing. I cried in terror and my heart begged a swift exit from my pulsing ribcage. Opening shuttered eyes, I saw three burning rings,” he said, calming. I awoke with an old rusty black key clenched in my sweaty hand.”
“Do you still have it?”
“I have never been so terrified! I can't shake this dream. It haunts me,” he added, slowly rising from the leather couch. He handed her the key.
She examined the key and passed it back.
“Do you believe this has something to do with your parents and how you might see yourself as the key to bringing them back together?”
It was a fair diagnosis.
chapter 8
long hard road home
“Are y' from around here, cailin? I don't believe we've met,” asked a handsome local bartender. The barman was working the late shift in EJ Morrissey's, off Dublin-Cork Road in Dublin, Ireland, testing a gal's ID and patience, before handing over a cool drink.
“I've always lived in the flats,” huffed a soft female voice. “Do you know the old prison museum in Kilmainham?”
“You're over in the suburbs, a couple miles out?” he prodded.
“Yes! Exactly, sham. I'll just end the suspense, I'm almost 18-years-young. Now, being that you've already served a hapless lass, there's really no sense making a scene or getting either of us into any senseless trouble,” she paused. “You know what, let's have another!”
“So your name is not Zane?” he asked, condoning her flirtation.
“No, it is, but I'm not 20, as the card suggests. Zane Brennan is my birthright. It basically means, bad arse feek,” she added, with blush. She didn't want to lose his trust, nor interest.
“Feek, huh? Modest, too?” he paused. “Why are you out drinking before milk and cookies?”
“Isn't there a commandment on the wall, over there, that says, 'Thou shall not drive through Abbeyleix without pausing in Morrissey's for a pint,'" Zane quipped.
“Yes! Believable, or not, you've got a fetching sass! Carry on.”
“My parents split, my best friend moved and I'm not having too much luck in love.”
“So, you're compensating?”
“I've dated around, but I'm not really attracted to the lads my age,” offered Zane, biting into a thick moment of still air. Her body language was a neon sign, stating, “You are exactly the right age!”
“Maybe I can join you for a drink, sometime?” he asked.
“That would be your treat!” she joked, with a wink. “I have to leave town, to visit family in the States, but I'm sure I'll find you passed out in the bogs, when I return.”
“Sounds like a date,” he risked.
“It's a date,” she confessed.
“I have better things to do than croak with the frogs,” he said, bidding her giddy hand farewell.
Zane was bedazzled, but painfully average. She rested comfortably in the security her tattooed cred and grandfather's worn military jacket provided and bathed in the bravado her combat boots added to a tragically hip and painfully ironic purple pixie haircut. A tiny silver hoop held onto her petite nose. She was a tomboy, posing as a punk rocker. By all accounts, a disgruntled middle class girl, crying out for attention. She was a novice in her journey toward self-discovery.
We were all heading somewhere.
+++
On its long meandering trek across the midlands, my old red fireball pulsated, shook and pleaded for a second wind. Landscapes changed with the tumbling odometer, while Baltimore waved in the rear view. The senseless charms and revelations of the road kept my lazy foot pressing on. Oblivious to traffic, and unwilling to make a distinction between the pavement and the desert made armadillos calming devices. These hard hat wearing sloths were blessed with an innate ability to block out the world's murderous terrain. It seemed awkwardly metaphoric.
I-40's charms boasted of no name gas stations, seedy strip club billboards and missing children, exhumed from the branching lost highways of the Midwest. My curious tongue was insistent upon French kissing the mouth of the Pacific, regardless of the mischief Arizona had arranged with the heavenly ghosts. Killing two ravenous birds with a rebel stone justified my cooperative urgency. My platitude was that the gods of rock n' roll were ushering me to the Promised Land and would awaken the damned with a ceremonious Hollywood riot in my honor, but a looming reality suggested my experience was called to be far more elaborate than a future memory of the Sunset Strip to boast from a Wicker Man's rocking chair.
Eighteen hours on the barren road can consume the fading mind with paranoia. Roadside naps were of little consequence and only littered my ill mind with episodes and day terrors. My initial stop was a warped refuge. Hunkered down in a cheap hotel, I was convinced I'd been traced by a bearded set of serial killers, motoring a large and suspiciously clean white economy van. Unsure if my profile matched that of someone they'd like to kill, eat or enslave, the warm welcome of a bolted door, a receipt of my whereabouts and a direct phone line to the desk clerk was a worthy bid for my shrinking budget. I incessantly peered from the musty hotel curtains. Nothing.
These types of sensations are amplified by distance, youth and only having a beeper to communicate with. It is hard for me to even type the word beeper without stirring up a generalized anxiety. H-E-L-P (4-3-5-7)!
+++
In the still of the night, I settled. Drifting into the space between consciousness and the void, I was whistled along by a blue bird. Its presence radiated a magnificent spectrum of light. Strangling the hands of time, it broke apart and reanimated as a black, white, gray and red bird. I recognized the riddling red bird and cruel gray, but remained mystified by the murder. Familiar feelings dripped from heaven, triggering my soul to condensate; misfiring synapses didn't have the nerve to unleash the Tell-Tale Heart lurking beneath the floorboards of my conscious.
The birds hovered above the cardinal points of a glowing sphere. Intersecting with six white lines, a clock emerged upon a targeted desert floor. A dove then highlighted the Northern and Eastern portions of the timetable. Isis, the black bird, pecked a septenary into my forehead.
“Forever this moment,” said the red bird.
Naked, sweating and crawling from the center, the birds turned gray and viciously attacked me.
I was awoken by a loud tapping on my
hotel door, in haste.
“Time to check-out,” insisted a perky housekeeper.
“One of these nights, I'll dream about a woman and not these wretched fowl,” I muttered.
+++
I desperately longed for female companionship. No soul embodied the beauty of feminine divinity more than Juno Vestris. Someday she would tap dance across the Atlantic and capture the gaze of every nation. She was inspired by the eclipsing architecture of her histrionic Roman yesterdays; her dances, a tribute to the ancient fallen world. Like the cobblestone streets, her body paved a way for her soul to connect with the simpler hearts of Palestrina, a small commune east of Rome. The roads were her stage and a constant reminder of an elementary time, when people coveted the virtuous patience needed to leave indelible footprints on the emotional psyche of future generations.
Deep roots connected her essence to a Christian faith. Juno often ventured to the Santa Maria della Vittoria to empathize with the suffering human condition, as depicted by the Ecstasy of St. Teresa. She could feel the fire of heaven scorning the damned heart, and knew the beauty and importance of purging negative energy through positive channels. Her mind was constantly musing, which left her studies an afterthought; creativity was a through street, mapped by her soul.
She grew up in a stable environment, compelled to give back. Participating in various children's ministries and women-focused expatriate groups, she made Rome feel like home. Time was an offering, consumed by volunteer driven soup kitchens and Sunday morning baptismal classes; it was a labor of love. Divinity was an unacknowledged hand guiding Christ-followers to the sacred waters of salvation, lurking just beyond the line on the horizon.
