Scarleton Series I : Before the Cult (13 page)

Intuitively I
knew something was off. The calling was all the proof I needed. The
wrongness in the world and life itself seeped deep into the cracks
; my burden was knowing it.

The calling
grew audible with each passing sand of time.

“Jump. Head
first, snap your neck and dissolve into bliss. The nothingness, the
not being. It is the only way out. You better off dead. No one will
miss you, no one will care. The misery, the pain, and the confusion
it will slide away. What is life anyway? What is existence?” the
calling enticed with its voice, transfixing me.

“What is death?
What does it mean? The end of me or bliss and peace?” I asked,
staring out the window as the entity slithered beneath the thin
fabric of reality.

Then there was
a cringing pause. Just then the pain of the calling consumes me.
Broody, I cried. Hating myself for existing. There was a bottomless
sadness and grief over being so undone.

“No one
understands you. They don’t get you. They don’t see you. You are
invisible,” tears race down my cheeks as the calling whispered from
within. “You don’t deserve anything. You are a freak. A wandering
mistake, unlovable, and nothing. Not even the gods who created you
can love you. All you give will be taken from you. You will always
lose friends and carry this unbearable pain in your soul.”

“Why can’t I be
happy?”

“You are
incapable of it. How can you even know what is happiness when you
do find it if you have never felt it before? You will always be
lifeless, lost, and dead inside. Come, come, jump!”

“What’s wrong
with me?”

“Your very
existence.”

“Will death
extinguish it?”

“Come,
jump!”

“Will it be
painful?” My heart thudded.

“Yessss… sweet
explosions of pain. It’s the most beautiful thing. No drug can make
you feel that good. This does not have to go on. You must break to
become less fractured. “

“Will I go
home?”

No answer.

“What is the
crop?”

No answer.

“How can I
trust you?”

Silence, then
it slowly spoke, “Look inside yourself.”

“How do I get
to the crop?”

Silence.

“You lie,
right? You’re lying,” I bawled, trembling to my loins

Silence.

I picked up the
razor blade from the windowsill and started slashing my wrist. That
way it would leave me alone for a moment. A moment of strange
incomplete and murky peace was worth the trouble, always. The
hopelessness and helplessness lingered like drug abuse shame.

Dark sky
grumbled above, thrashing us with sweet vomit and turning the world
into acid. As green as Scarleton was tonight something was flooding
the life in it. It was not the water that raced down from the hills
or the rain, carried by the gale that beat down mercilessly. It
rendered the streets quiet and desolate, an usual occurrence in a
city where Friday nights tremble with drunken commotion and
congested with party people. Usually at the time cars boomed with
party music roaming the streets, on the sidewalks drunk students
chanting various bar songs, cheering girls, rowdy conversations and
vendors selling fast-food. It was the peak of freedom, rebellion
and victory for these students and they were shredding it to
oblivion every chance they got. Their minds and spirits were united
in making mayhem. On those nights the streets were bright, too
bright. Tonight the streetlights were dead and in the shadows a
darkness was lurking, scheming and conspiring. The sky
unsuccessfully trying to hold in the rage and menace. Malevolence
residing in the alleys, chilling. Eye balls quivered and darted
their glances about, apprehensive.

“She sends you
here and you are here,” Macfearson said, his face still frigid with
disbelief and protest. “Gosh, Mac, how did it come to this?”

“It’s a smoking
lifeling
fest in there,” Macxermillio said, sounding the
least confident about our assigned task compared to before when we
were not standing in front of the bar.

Sounds of
revelry were buzzing out the bar. That musk of friends, hook-ups,
cougars, girlfriends, students, sex, flirting, conversations, jokes
and rejection. All the overwhelming and disconcerting things to a
deathling’s
ears. A racket.

“Guys I am the
one getting drenched here can we go in please?” I ignored them.

“Oh, that’s
what you get for being a whiny little pretend-to-be
lifeling
,” said Macfearson.

“Sandy, all of
the bullshit going on in there hates us. Even if we were a good
band, or famous you know they won’t like us. We do not belong in
their world and they don’t even appreciate our existence. They call
you a
freak because
of us. We are you and you are us but
they do not see that. They are perfectly human but we are not,”
Macxermillio said, staring down at me, pleading. It became more
apparent to me, although I always knew, how half-heartedly he was
doing all of this. Macxermillio, always easy to compromise within
reason. I couldn’t count the times his brain and his heart were on
lockdown. Like all things strong and hard that ability withered
with time.

I gazed at him
and I knew what he meant. We were never really part of the normal.
Found my gaze shifting to their long cotton trench coats, for a
time amazed by the fact they were so dry, untouched by the rain. As
I shifted my focus I could see the rain curling around their bodies
before contact as if repelled by a layer of energy.

“Guys, let’s
just do this?” I begged. “It will be good. It might just work.” I
was trying to convince myself and it showed in how hollow my tone
was.

The place had
the worst nausea-inducing smell of them all, and that was the smell
of superficiality. Superficiality meant hypocrisy, deceit, silent
rejection and humiliation. How do you read a visage when it is
constantly masked? How do you read the signs? Even with those sharp
eyes we were like Oedipus.

“I don’t see
it. Feels like a waste of life to me,” Macfearson downheartedly
replied. Jaws clenching. A mixture of distaste and anger radiated
from him either at the prospect or at me. It was hard to tell.

“How is this
meant to help? Did you at least ask her that?” Macxermillio asked,
the conviction that the whole task was futile shamelessly
displayed.

“Like we
haven’t tried people before,” Macfearson added. “Did we grow up in
the wild here or something? Why are we here? With
them
?” he
pointed towards the bar. He sighed then added. “We are enough.”

I sighed,
dropped my shoulders almost oblivious to how hard the rain was
bashing me. “I don’t know guys,” my voice came out strained, tears
forming in my eyes. “Maybe it is a test to see if we are truly who
we say we are.”

This was
becoming that moment where desperation produced belief even in the
most unintelligible things. I so wanted that to be truth,
hopelessly hoping. Possible because the mind has a way of fooling
itself especially when the heart is involved, situations turn dire
because that bastard beating heart is stubborn to change. So
stubborn that it won’t stop beating even when stopping would reduce
suffering and the benefits of living were outweighed by those of
death. Is the heart a foolish thing? It seems that way, but then
how things seem and how things actually are is totally
different.

“Fuckin’ Jesus!
Are you crying?” Macferson asked, frustrated with me. He went on to
vent under his breath.

“I’m not
conforming to their sinister ways. I want whatever this is to be
honest and pure,” Macxermillio said.

“Macfearson, do
you have that sword on you?” I asked.

“Yes. Why?” He
frowned.

“Why bring it
here?” I asked, puzzled.

“Why bring me
here?” he replied. As I opened my mouth to protest, he grunted,
“You are a dirty motherfucker. A cunning bastard with no
gratitude.”

I could only
stare. Made quiet by where the insults and accusations could
escalate.

He added, “Some
people just don’t deserve to live and I am god enough in this world
to decide that.”

Macxermillio
and Macfearson were never conventional. Collars of their thick ashy
trench coats were elevated like Mount Etna. Macfearson’s hair long
and white like a wizard’s, they were just in their late twenties
but the scar that straddled Macxermillio’s left cheek to his right
eyebrow was there since life began to slip. How many souls had they
claimed?

Once a door is
opened nothing can ever change the fact that it has been opened. A
time traveller can come and undo it but nothing changes the fact it
had been opened. The cosmos is carved with trails of unfinished and
abandoned paths, these truths are information and instances that
can never be erased. That within this universe, from subjective
point of view, from a view that is disturbingly ignorant (by nature
not by choice) nothing we do leaves trails behind if we decide to
undo it. Nothing said can be taken back, nothing done can be undone
but something broken can be fixed while something dead cannot be.
To say it simply, there is no such thing as turning back…no such
thing as repressed memories either. As we warily stood by door of
the bar, awaiting a never coming sign to enter, we knew this fact.
Everything is permanent. The heart of Scarleton resided in this bar
and that was not good thing. I was cold and soaked but they were
dry and warm. That alone served as an incentive to enter.

“It’s never too
late to change your mind, Sandy,” Macxermillio murmured. His face
saturated in sentiment.

“It seems like
if she wanted you would kill us.,” Macfearson moaned his heart
out.

“How can I kill
a part of me?” I said.

“You are
suicidal, that’s how.”

“Why are you so
threatened by this? I am not changing into something else
different! There is something she expects us to learn here,” I
promised and the promises I made to myself I kept and there were no
exceptions.

“They say it’s
small steps, Sandz. This sure looks like one of those.” Macfearson
sighed. “Fuck, I have never seen you like this. Is there something
she told you that you are not telling us?”.

“Of course
not,” I lied, squirming inside so that it does not show. It was
maybe too late to try hiding that I am lying, because the words had
already came out my mouth without any proper execution for the
illusion of truth and confidence.

Macfearson
stared at me for a while, quite incredulous. His eyes surveyed my
face and eyes for cracks, that is all a person with eyes as sharp
as his only needed to peek in the inside. He knew how to read
another
deathling
more than anyone else. Then he said,
“Okay, let’s go in.” His eyes fixed on me, clearly conveying he
will be watching me and the fact he is agreeing to this is no sign
that he believed me; but , ‘hey, let’s be civil and patient about
these things’ (not because I, Macfearson, am a patient person but
because I have so much confidence in my abilities that I know it
won’t take long to know something is wrong). An observant fellow he
was.

I nodded to
this challenge disguised as a sudden ease and agreement.

We ambled in
like an animated searchlight tower jumping into the deep, uncertain
in its ability to float and remain above water or find what it
seeks in the immense dark ocean among a million creatures. Risking
being lost and crushed under the weight of the overwhelmingly vast
waters, the volume of them immeasurable.

“Nobody notices
us. It’s as if we didn’t just walk in,” Macfeaqrson said, scanning
the room.

“We’re just
dead to them. But we were always dead since the beginning. What is
it any way about life that’s worth having. It’s just empty and
nothing is good…I bet that death is sweeter.
Just
not being
able to feel anything and forget that you were. I hate these
people
,
” Macxermillio said.

“Macx, it
doesn’t feel so sweet from where I’m standing,” Macfearson
sarcastically said.

“Look how happy
they look, it’s as if they are dead,” Macxermillio said. “Sandy, do
you know what exactly we are to look for here?”

I replied,
“From what I gather we just have to interact and things will work
themselves out.”

“We’ve never
been good at that,” Macxermillio said.

“I thought we
might pay someone.”

Genuine
happiness is like light, there is no denying its presence and how
annoyingly bright it is. Music set the norm and conduct, weaving
the social atmosphere and attitude. For us, an unsurprisingly
hostile atmosphere. Kisses for love, hugs for acceptance, smiles
for pleasure and games for belonging. We stood there resentful of
their happiness. Something was eerily ritualistic about it.

“Hi!” Called a
blonde girl through her conniving superficial smile. Running her
delicate fingers through her wavy shiny hair, chin cocked back she
transfixed me with her ravish glance. That is when the tides of her
perfume started rolling in. I assumed she had run down the stairs
from the second floor. She was a presence, whether of worry or
delight was hard to tell then. In an arbitrary sense she was
repelling, maybe because I sensed her expectations and standards.
Too
lifeling
for me to live up to, which did not bother
me.

Superficiality
meant that an elusive door of opportunity was open but at the same
time that I was a possible victim of deceit or manipulation.
Illusions are not real, that is the very fundamental feature about
them including that they swindle one’s consciousness and mental
faculties to doom. And beauty also is a kind of an illusion,
although real, it makes you susceptible to repeating and making the
same old mistakes. The irresistible mirage of the soul.