proseriot

[proseriot]

"I missed you," he said. "I missed you so much."

But the Ouija board refused to move at all.

[proseriot]

Making a hard soft magic system … 

is proving an interesting challenge. The nature of the world is such that magic exists but acts as a kind of global weather pattern, flowing and shifting through the world in ways and for reasons unknown to mortals, gods, or spirits. 

There is a valley where everyone in it can vanish to appear wherever they wish: the village that exists there is constructed unlike any other place in the world. 

There is a grove in the middle of a forest where only bees can use magic, and it lets them be as large as horses. 

There are places where shouts shatter bones, where those with blue eyes can kill with a glance, a town where anyone born with green thumbs can change the colour of flowers with a touch. 

The magic is different in all places. There there places  seemingly without magic, for nothing has figured out how to use the magic in them.  And in time the magic moves on and changes for the area.  The only certainty is that all magic has some cost, though sometimes it is never known. 

And then there is the Ibisian Empire. It is the first and sole empire the world has ever known, for as Ibis expands, the magic of it subsumes the local magic. The magic is Ibis is terrifyingly simple: you sacrifice something of yourself - life energy, time, strength - and that energy can be used to shape the world around you. Exhaust yourself as if you ran a marathon, and you have that energy to use toward other things: building a wall, or breaking through a door. The magic of Ibis is broad and the costs deep.

But since Ibis has managed to exist and be stable for thousands of years, they’ve built Academies. Their mages know precisely how much effort leads to X result, and situations where magic is always useful and those in which it should never be used at all. There are mages who do nothing but try and save seconds of cost from ‘standard’ uses of the magic of sacrifice, and others who work on finding ways to store a standard use of magic in an item without too much energy bleeding out. 

Everyone knew the Ibisian mages were powerful, but the breaking of the world proved that on two different levels: the pisces of the continent that sheared off to become islands were no longer part of the empire, proof the empire cannot expand beyond the continent its own. (This was a relief to other continents across the ocean.) But the Sovran of the Ibisian Empire was furious, and in their anger at the loss of that land, they drew on the magic of all mages from the academies and killed every single creature on one of the new-formed islands in a single moment. You can’t even call it a war. Nothing has been able to live on the Empty Island since: no animal, no insect, certainly not any people. 

The Sovran of the Ibisian Empire did not repeat that display of power. They answer to their family, the Hundred Blessed and the Thousand Courts. Also the Academies of mages were not consulted at all: many, many mages died as they were drained to death in that display of overwhelming power.  But to those who really paid attention, what happened next was even more impressive. One of the 13 Academies used only for magic was on one of the broken lands; and overnight it vanished back into the Empire. The skill and use of magic to move an entire academy is a feat of magic that may never be replicated again. 

Thus the empire remains unique in the world, with a magic they understand perfectly, in a way no one ever has before or since. It’s considered a given that the magic itself hates this, but the empire has endured all assaults on it and only grown stronger. The breaking of the world shook the empire for the first time in living memory, but even those who think it should never have existed doubt this will be enough to make it fall.

[proseriot]

Of Spirits and Unwise Choices

The park was called Remedy, back when it was going to be be of those zero-sum-zero housing developments boasting about being green. But turning a park into condos proved a hard sell, and the only green was the money being thrown at the city and lobbies. The park had been half-torn up before they left and the city somehow had no funds to fix it even if they’d accepted a small fortune to ruin it. Remedy remained the name, the old truth of the park gone: a statement and warning. People stopped going to it. Stories spread.

You could see ghosts there, some people said. The kind that changed you, and weren’t really ghosts. Sometimes people went into it after dark and they never came out quite the same after. It wasn’t everyone, and it was always someone who knew someone rather than Lu-Ellen who you could just meet, but the stories stuck. No one had proof, but no one one disputed that they were true. Until Rexford. No one should name a kid that. But he was on the football team, cruising toward a scholarship at one of those universities that existed just as a sports stadium where academics were just a side hustle.

He went in there with six friends, overnight four months back. Girl Guides had the week before, but they were Girl Guides. You don’t mess with them. One of his friends was hesitant, everyone mentioned the scouts and laughed. Rexford hasn’t played a single game since. His other friends seemed fine, but he was all distant and quiet now. His parents had him on drugs to ‘bring him home’ like some kind of soldier with PTSD, but his other friends said they’d only heard voices and seen shadows and nothing else.

The team had tanked since, and Rexford wasn’t that important, so they were all lying. The city put up a new fence around the park. And tonight, well, tonight Dad and I had that fight again. What I’d do after school, if I had any ambitions, what kind of person I’d be. I don’t want to waste the trust fund from Uncle Ahn on schooling that would lead nowhere. We exchanged shouts, because Mom was away for work and not there to step between us. I slammed the door when I left and just walked.

I didn’t have a costume, despite it being Halloween. When anyone asked, I said my costume had been pretending not to be me for years. Some got it. Most didn’t. I’d left my phone, so I felt more naked than normal, and hadn’t even been aware I was heading to Remedy until I was there. Someone had taken bolt cutters to the fence in a couple of places, but there were two rent-a-thugs circling the park, and a police car a block away with people near it.

I used the distraction of some kids shouting at them and just walked up to the torn fence and into the park without much thought beyond proving something to Dad.

Beyond the fence was overgrown greenery and thin, gnarled trees. The park should have had large trees in the decade since the project ended, but everything looked wrecked. As if the park had decided to remind everyone of what happened to it. It was a silly thought, but I didn’t laugh. I realized, fifteen steps in, that I couldn’t hear the sirens that were close enough to hear.

I turned back, and the fence was there. It wasn’t a horror movie. ‘The world is that,’ is something Zhang would have said if he was here. But his family was on some vacation that let him out of school. They had Plans for him, and he was just going along with it. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to work in a pharmacy like Mom or help run a store like Dad did. The both wanted more for me, and from me, but we couldn’t agree on any of what that was. It was hard to win a fight when you couldn’t articulate what you were fighting for.

So I walked. I’d never been on a sport or team beyond a bit of soccer that didn’t care who I was. Everything else wanted labels like we were pieces of clothing and not people. The park still had a path, mostly overgrown. The benches were mostly broken, not that I was going to sit at them. Not even when I saw a than sitting on one of the benches. I’d never seen one of the spirits grandma talked about, but I could see through it: the spirit looked a little like a person, and somewhat like a flower.

“Hello?” I said.

“You should not be here. This is not a safe night. Not a safe place,” the spirit whispered.

“I can go,” I snapped, turning.

“I am afraid not.”

The path hadn’t changed. I could see the city over the stunted trees, but there was a coldness in the air that held me.

I made a noise.

A boy came down the path from further into the park. He was eleven, and took my fear away. Mostly because he was barefoot, wearing a kilt and blouse along with a formal vest, all of which had was white. He was wearing a white cloak done up to look like a ghost in a cheap movie, but looked very proud of it.

“Hi!” His grin was huge and friendly and somehow knocked the fear out of me.

“You should not be here,” the – not a than, not a spirit, something wholly other – whispered from inside the shadows.

“Oh! I shouldn’t be lots of places but! that’s often why I should be there.” The boy bounded over beside me.

“There is an evil spirit here. It isn’t wrong,” I said. “Run.”

The boy looked like he knew how to run.

Instead he let out a huge, impressive sigh. “Lots of spirits get all kinds of weirdy around Halloween you know!”

“This one has come freely,” the voice said, only it was more than one voice. Soft. Cold. Hungry. A loud pop filled the air, making my ears ring.

“– belongs to us now,” the spirits hissed.

“Wow! I know you’re extra hungry, but Chau isn’t that,” the boy said firmly.

“.... I never said my name.” My voice was funny to my ears.

“I am really jaysome at knowing names,” the boy offered. “Mine is Jay!”

Somehow, the park felt less cold. I could almost see shadows dissolve, fading and folding away like some kind of alien origami.

There was a sound, a hiss, a feeling I had no words for.

“There’s no need to be mean-face,” Jay said, and the boy had my right hand in his left, casual. “Chau made a mistake, because people do that and! sometimes they’re just mistakes that aren’t oopses so we’re going to leave.”

“NO.” It wasn’t a voice, it was something felt instead of heard.

“Man. I promised Honcho I wouldn’t do anything scary at all today and sometimes that’s really hard when you’re not scary but you can scare people,” Jay said.

Somehow, that made sense.

“But I’m not alone because of very good reasons,” Jay added proudly. “I brought Charlie and she’s really good at doing helpings.”

The woman who came from the direction of the hole in the fence I’d come from wasn’t in a hurry. She moved like she was resigned: 20s, also dressed up like a ghost but in her case she just had a black sheet on. Her skin was proper goth-pale and she looked about at the shadows with a careful scowl.

“Hi, Charlie! This is Chau and they kind of got lost and! some spirits are not being jaysome,” Jay said firmly.

“And you haven’t hugged them yet?” Charlie asked.

“They don’t want to be hugged because they like being mad?” And Jay sounded so baffled at that that I had no idea why I thought he was an old as eleven even though I knew he was. That, also, made perfect sense in the moment.

“Mmmm.” Charlie glanced about behind me. “You’re not harming anyone tonight or ever again.”

The words weren’t a request. They weren’t even a demand. It was a casual fact of someone who knew they’d be listened to.

Something hissed in the darkness that wasn’t a spirit at all.

Charlie snorted. “You can’t scare me. Trust me on that. And Jay won’t let you scare Chau. So you’re going to let us leave without issue, or I am going to get cross with you.”

There was a cold, empty silence in response to that.

Charlie shifted slightly one shoe to another. “Don’t.” And she snapped the fingers of her right hand.

Nothing happened, that I could tell, but the sense of danger was gone.

“That wasn’t a proper exorcism: this is a bad night to do those, and I don’t think what is here deserves that treatment. The spirits have earned their anger, so I won’t take that from them. Unless you make me,” Charlie added, raising her voice slightly.

There was no reply at all, and we walked back to the fence without issue. Jay let go of my hand once we were outside it and bounded into Charlie to hug her.

“That was extra jaysome!”

Charlie laughed, ruffling Jay’s hair with one hand. “I do have my moments, and the park will be okay in time. It met you.”

The boy somehow grinned even wider, and then spun back to face me. “Do you want to be a ghost too? I made a lot of sheets into costumes!”

I hesitated.

“Sometimes it’s nice to not be seen, because sometimes we don’t want to be seen by us,” Jay said.

I stared at the boy.

Innocence stared up at me.

I put on a rainbow sheet, and got candy at six houses on the way back home. Charlie didn’t come up to the door. Jay always got extra candy, and talked to everyone like he was friends with them. Mostly he didn’t make sense, except to whoever he talked to.

I let him go to the last house alone and looked at Charlie. “I never told him my name.”

“Jay is good with names. Among many other things,” she said, dry and gentle. “You’ll find his name in your phone: only call if someone really needs help. Jay doesn’t stop helping once he starts.”

“He can do things, like you?”

“Not like me, but yes.”

“In the park, when the air went – odd?”

Charlie’s smile isn’t Jay’s. Nothing human can be that. But she understood, somehow, in ways only human. “Jay wasn’t going to let the spirits of that place misgender you no matter the promise he made to not do certain things. He knows things. And made certain I did to so I didn’t make a mistake myself.”

“Oh.”

“Yo should go home: your family is likely worried, and that park won’t be safe for a long time.”

“Even if you could make it safe?”

“Some places need to be what they are, unsafe or not. It’s not something Jay quite understands, but warning others will be wise. There are spirits there, even if they are not what you would call spirits and have shapes I hope you never know nor feel.” Charlie pulled out a phone from her pocket, checking a text like anyone else would. “Good. Honcho is done helping others who ran into the spirits, so we’ll see what the next town needs soon.”

“Thank you,” I got out.

“I’m just glad we could help,” she said, and walked over to Jay as he bounded back to us. They talked, and Jay waved, and I wasn’t surprised when Jay took her hand and they vanished. It wasn’t even surprising that no one else noticed that happen.

I finished the walk back home, went inside. Dad was in the living room, TV on to the news. He only listened to the news when he was worried.

“Dad?” He turned the tv off at my tone.

I stepped in and hugged him.

“Chau.”

“Thank you,” I said. “It was a good fight.”

“Pardon?”

“I needed a yell, and you let me. I’m good. There was – school stuff. Zhang. Just a lot, and the future is too soon and I’m scared.”

Dad let out a breath. “We all are. We all are.”

And we hugged again, and that was the only treat that mattered.

[proseriot]

…my fear of abandonment made me hang on far too long but still, years ago you abandoned me. Your fear of abandonment caused you to never really bond yourself to me.

This I see. This I know. You only wanted control. This is not love.

[proseriot]

"My name is Curtis, and I don't have any tricks left." The vampire waited, but no one said a word. "I can still give the kids treats. Charms, surprising them with fangs. But it's been over a decade since I properly scared anyone. I'm not - what I used to be. Everyone knows all the powers I have. All the things I can do. I don't know what to do."

It was Li the ghost who stirred. "You can turn into a bat, yes?"

"Sometimes," he admitted.

"Be a man-bat, a werebat if you can for a few years. Then surprise those who expect that with something else?"

Curtis let out a breath he didn't need to hold. "Thank could work. Thank you."

Those who could clap in the support group did.

[proseriot]

sometimes you can hold onto nothing so tightly that it becomes a something. do not attempt this if the nothing has teeth.

[proseriot]

Memento Mori

Rigatoni & the bowl: white slice on umber Board. Piddling pence of antiquity, The fork is dead nature;        Memento mori.

Blue fluted half lace, jewels line the cup & saucer; ring the china As hands clasp/         Heads bow—

The performer sells copies of his work: Forty-day fast, skin cured Of fatty flesh,

       & darling hunger        Burned        On his cattle ass.

[proseriot]

Everyone always talks about the girl in the movies, n sometimes I find myself wondering about her too.

Maybe she’d say yes to going out for coffee, or perhaps she’d prefer something a little bit stronger.

Maybe she’d be of the utmost composure, or the kind of person that makes you want to take your shoes off and dance about the room.

Does she listen to music so loud it shakes her or rather it be at more of a whisper, as to touch the soul lightly.

And maybe, just maybe she thinks about me too–the girl watching the movies instead. Fistfulls of popcorn in a sea of scattered theatre textbooks in a flat above a store in the heart of NYC.

S.a

[proseriot]

out: living my father

he was talking to mom or as usual listening to her talk about who knows what, but now that i recall the scene neither seemed to be speaking but both in a pose of conversation

he is sitting at an angle and the only way i really know there have been words is the look on his face: half-amused, probably not by what is being said but the importance it seems to have for her; and ready, when there is sufficient pause, to say it’s probably time he headed out; but he’s going nowhere

i think i’m calling him, trying to get his attention; he isn’t turning around, but i know he hears me; am i even making sounds; he has to hear me; he isn’t acknowledging anything, and i remember he’s been dead over twenty years

when i wake i realize that the father i saw was a young version of the sober man he became long after the divorce but before having had a chance to be old: clean shaven, thin, a cross between burt reynolds and johnny cash; he is preoccupied, but doesn’t know with what

i excuse him as i always did: he’s dead, been so a long time; long enough to say something or at least nod in my direction, but who am i to talk

i’m not

[proseriot]

After lunch, I show him a machine I built. It is a glowing box covered in superconducting material to send light outward. He shades his eyes as he looks away. “What is it for?” he breathes. 

“It’s a lifeboat,” I murmur. “You told me I should try doing something good for the world.” He takes a deep breath. “The superconducting shell will spread the heat out evenly,” I add.

[proseriot]

16: To enter Light again

You feel a bit nervous when you enter his house again. There is nothing else you’d rather do right now, though, and that is not because of the great warm living room you are stepping into! His table is ready for one, and he rushes into his kitchen to collect a plate and lots of wonderful foods: bread, butter, meat, even olive oil, and you feel like crying, for it is such a long time since you got full for real.  You look around, expecting his wife anytime now, but all you see is him.  When he sits down, ready to eat - he smiles.  “I suspected as much, that you didn’t get the news of last autumn.” You look at him, tilting your head slightly. He smiles again, and his warm eyes fills your every cell. “Well, short after your.. husband died, my wife died, too. She caught a serious infection, and it was nothing the doctors could do. She is buried not far away from your husband actually.” Hearing this makes you confused, and maybe a bit scared. And sad, definitively sad. His wife died last autumn, and you didn’t know? All you did the last 15 months was hiding away from life and from people. No wonder you never heard. 

You get angry with yourself. 

“I… am sorry. I really didn’t know. I was so… caught up in my own stuff….” you say, stopping because you feel so ashamed that you could have sunken into the floor, appetite suddenly gone, no matter how hungry you are. 

The Carpenter smiles again. His eyes glow of calm and beauty. “Of course you didn’ t I totally understand that. You were busy taking care of yourself, after living with that horrible man in many years. I am impressed of how you survived it all, to be honest!”

You get silent for a little while, but then you nod. He is right, and it helps on your conscience. 

“So,” he continues, still smiling the most beautiful smile you’ve ever seen.

“Shall we eat?”

Christmas Calendar 2018 * December 16th. * Cosmic Calendar 2018 🎄

[proseriot]

So, I’m clearing out my drafts and then I’ll leave the page on a breathing tube…and then, the plug gets yanked off.

Seeing your avatar’s pixilated is more than I can honestly take.  And when the avatar then changes to some unknown character it scares me…because I know the blog is set for deletion.

I’m not going to say that I’m surprised by this corporation’s tactics.  Let this be a lesson, honestly, to anyone who has been sleeping on laurels, thinking this type stuff could never happen here or to you…or that this was only a means to cut at the pornography.  I bet that if Tumblr would have made bigger budgets for their IT division and had better management, they would have been able to tackle better the true perversion that lived in the dark corners of this website.  ie.  pedophelia, porn bots, etc.  

But that didn’t happen.  They would rather deal with inept technology which flags classical works of art that show nudity, than effectively deal with people who post hate speech, etc.

For a second, I’d like you to consider how this type stuff, which is happening right here is common occurrence in places like where I come from… Cuba.  Or in other places like China.  Or Iran.  Turkey.  The list goes on and on.

Censorship begins by choking the artist.  And good people will applaud because most are afraid of how art makes us feel.  Art threatens because if it’s good…It unmasks us–And begs us to face our real enemies that are either within or in front of us…and most people don’t want to be vulnerable. Most people think they just have enough strength to follow the lead…because it’s easier that way. 

[proseriot]

Waiting for October

Dear Love, you are a walking synesthesia. In the arch of your eyebrows I experienced crystalline blue. I drowned in cherry pixie sticks and woke up sick as a dog. I foamed at the mouth for you. I threw up the ocean and you said it comes in waves. in and out, in and out. I can’t remember the taste of the wind, but you froze the sun with your finger tips just to warm me up. She did your bidding the same way I did. All yellow about it. Now my teeth are cracking under the monotony of the universe. My skin half baked like brittle leaves in languid death. I am full of hope & sap so slow and sugary syrup sometimes I barely move. Did you want to taste? Feels like these days I’d let anyone in. Feels like these days no one will ever get in. Open me up and see that all of this was a lie. I’m just a hollowed out tree. Are you disappointed? Or do you love the cold dark? Come see all this space for you inside of me. Would you turn a light on?

[proseriot]

Commitment is not always love; so is loyalty.  They could be pills that one swallows whole even after knowing  that they would destroy the kidneys, the liver, the lungs, and the heart.

Apathy does not taste like cucumber.  It is wrong.  It tastes like chocolate balls with nuts.  These balls create golden moments; processed to perfection.  The Gods love them.

My soul is not in excellent condition.  It is cracked. It is looking for adhesives and fillers, which are often out of stock.  

My body is not married to science.  It is in a scandalous relationship with impracticalities.  Thus, I don’t have an idea of how to program my limbs to be both seductive and graceful under pressure.

[proseriot]

I slow, looking around, and slow the world around me as I spot a flash on a rooftop. I move to the side, the first bullet striking pavement. Two bullets are fired at Jay from the same spot, both veering away at the last moment despite his seeming ignorance of their presence. I move, barely avoiding another sniper, left shoulder throbbing from a grazed shot as I skid under an awning.

“We’re having an adventure,” Jay says excitedly, beside me faster than I can process.

“People are trying to kill us!”

“Well, sometimes adventures are like that.”

I open my mouth to ask how many are like that when Jay grabs the back of his head, pulling a bent dart from his hair and handing it to me.

“They’re trying to shoot us, Kate.”

“They have been doing that,” I say, my voice funny in my ears.

“Wait wait wait. They’re doing that for reals?” he demands.

I know I should say nothing, but my left shoulder is throbbing. I’m good, but good isn’t always enough to survive. “Yes,” I say, this time catching a muzzle flash and diving to the right to avoid a gunshot.

People are screaming and bolting from the streets, the air full of incoming sirens.

Jay marches out from under the awning and looks utterly astonished as three bullets hit the ground around him.

Three. I was sure where one sniper was, maybe two. The third I have no idea about. I’m debating trying to enter a building as well when Jay vanishes. Less than two seconds later, the top floor of one of the banking buildings explodes. I doubt that’s a coincidence.

[proseriot]

I shivered a little, unable to help myself. I understood sacrifice. I understood duty. But whatever Mello had done to himself went far beyond anything I was comfortable with. I wondered if the person he had sacrificed himself for would ever know, and what they might do in turn. The worst thing you can do for anyone is something they can never pay back, but I wasn’t sure if the boy understood that.

Or perhaps knew it too well, and that thought was so uncomfortable I wished I’d never had it.

[proseriot]

Yeah, I’ve been to the rainy library. They don’t put plastic on any of the goods. So many waterlogged stacks of books… I remember standing in the massive lobby and looking up over floor after floor of sagging shelves, up to the clouds bumping against the ceiling. The rain was weirdly warm.

But of course the rainy library has books that normal libraries could never find, much less stock, as well as other and more experimental ways of transmitting knowledge.

The online instructions guided me to side halls which forked off crazily in ways that made no sense. I climbed up some stairs and then down others and up again. I rode horizontal elevators, and crossed catwalks over book vaults. It went on for hours. The windows looked out on a city I didn’t recognize, then a desert, then a landscape like the moon, then the black fur of some planet-sized creature out there in the wider universe, breathing.

Finally — soaked, exhausted, and yeah, a little afraid — I arrived at the last room, and pushed open the stone door…

And saw myself standing by a picture window, back turned.

I joined myself at the window.

We looked out at a very clean darkness. It wasn’t dark like space or under blankets — it was like reality ended just outside the window.

Then the darkness began to soften.

It didn’t become light so much as it sort of gave way to a whiteness that was not really white. I can’t put it into words…. It was anti-black. And it made the dark spiral open, in waves, from a central point, like the anti-black petals of an impossible rose.

And inside the rose? At its center?

A gigantic blue eye.

My eye.

Anyway, I’m never going back.