#and from a fissure in the earth emerges these two freaks

[lizlemondyke]

move over hannah einbinder and jean smart there’s a new weirdly flirtatious may december lady celbricouple and this time they’re PUBLICLY UNHINGED MEAN BRUNETTES PLEASE WELCOME AUBREY PLAZA AND PATTI LUPONE

[thedovahcat]

Lucidity

What were they exactly?

Dreams that made his head pound for one… Odd dreams. Ones full of whispers and dark shadows and the feeling of eyes. The feeling of something watching…

Rev stirred but held his eyes shut. He was still half asleep. He knew better than that. Whatever these were, they were just nightmares shuffling through his head yet again. They happened every so often, when the shadows dared come close during the evening hours. He couldn’t quite explain it, but there was always a sort of evil crawling under the earth. One he could feel. One he knew many others could as well. The taint of the Old Ones.

At first he’d felt parchment in his hands. And while Rev could not see any words much less the actual parchment itself, he knew what they read.

“It begins with a sign.”

His head sailed and it suddenly felt cold. The smell of oil hit his nose and he felt electricity in the air. Another familiar place he had a hard time remembering. But it was somewhere to the far north. Very few places had a chill as bitter as this.

A rusted creaking noise sounded in the distance, like gears turning…

“A thousand years imprisoned. Surely, it weighs on the mind…”

The air was now foul. Sickly, dark, evil. And while there was no other sound, Rev felt himself being stared at again, this time by something far larger than himself, and most things. Something staring at him, something staring right THROUGH him.

He felt his body turn and immediately he was assaulted by a gigantic yellow-slitted eyeball. It blinked once, causing him to recoil, before it shimmered out of sight, the lights falling like jewels being dumped onto the floor.

“Deeper than deep, awaits your seat,”

The gems rolled down into a hole he hadn’t seen prior, and Rev couldn’t help but kneel to see where they’d gone. Into the earth he went, far below the surface in a flash… and even lower still. Into dark tunnels with burrowing life forms, more soft glowing gems… Another fissure in the ground.

The background twirled and was sucked into the darkness, leaving him in a small cavern with a singular chair and a skull resting upon it.

Just the sight of it unnerved him, but he approached, stretching out his hand to touch it. He felt compelled to.

“Where the shaded delegate may appear…”

Again the already dark cavern twisted and tore into fragments, reassembling itself into a place of machinery. Cold metal floors and walls, the whirring of engines and the hissing of steam.

Machines with levers stood in front of him. Rev tilted his head, cringing slightly. What kind of dream was this? He’d never been to a place like this before.

He stood still for a moment, before hesitantly approaching the levers. They had numbers on them, and he couldn’t understand what they were for.

“…One, two, two… What is this?” There was no making sense of it. Then his head pounded again, this time harder than before.

“Games and toys are left behind,”

“What are- what’s going on- What are you talking about- who ARE you?”

“When you awaken screaming.”

His feet suddenly felt as though they had no ground to stand on, and he plummeted into the abyss, only to be spat out in a house. A ruined house with red veins and corrupt seeping into the wooden floors… Quickly he stood up and kept away from the dripping walls.

A pulsating tumor caught his attention on the other side of the room. It was swollen and wet and all sorts of disgusting, but as soon as his eye laid on the eye? it also had, the flesh twisted and pulled itself free, spinning in the air and indeed, it did have an eye of its own.

“What the fuck-”

The demon, or was it a demon really? danced around him before lines upon lines appeared beside it like a sticky, tangled up web. Orbs were attached to each string, all crisscrossing each other in various ways.

What was he supposed to do, touch it?

They almost beckoned him to. So he did.

“Is this real, or an illusion? You are going mad.”

Rev snorted. “You’re telling me.”

Once untangled, the red beams began to glow a soft blue, very much like he would whenever he would…change. And he heard the dark voice whisper again in his ears.

“What you seek is buried within…”

Cold air returned, but it smelled different this time. It smelled like pines… like fresh mountain air, even the slightest hints of tea leaves. Scents he was very familiar with. But that all went away, and a hollow ringing filled his ears as the smells turned musty and dank, like moss, and a place that hadn’t been walked in in a very long time.

In his hands he felt something.

It was a pouch. He could see it. He could see his own hands, and he was most certainly holding onto it. As he squeezed it with his fingers however, he could hardly tell what it was, so he pulled it open. Dust scattered into the air and was blown ahead of him. No, not dust. Ashes.

The particles scattered, eventually forming a hallway, and then a large chamber in which he now stood. Everything refused to move after that, and he was left alone, standing there in the midst of purple torch light.

Only then did he feel absolutely alone. Abandoned almost.

With a single step forward, Rev turned his head. One of the passages was blocked with stones. Two other entryways loomed ahead and to the side of himself…

“Which way?” He asked aloud, practically expecting an answer. But none came.

The longer he waited, the more dread he started to feel. He wasn’t REALLY here was he? No, he couldn’t be. He was just lucid-dreaming again. …Or lucid-nightmaring he liked to call it.

“Well I’m sure I’ll wake up eventually…” He wandered forward, choosing to go straight, and as he passed through the archway, smoke enveloped everything briefly before fading away.

His brows furrowed as he essentially walked out into the exact same hallway with absolutely no differences.

“…So, it’s going to be one of those nights isn’t it…”

He knew better than to start freaking out. He had no idea how long he was going to be there, but he knew it wouldn’t be forever. Still, there was always that tiny possibility that it just MIGHT…

Rather than dwell on it any further, he only focused on one thing. If he didn’t get out of here, who the hell was going to feed that dopey troll-husband of his? Exactly. Nobody else would. Well, nobody else would do it RIGHT anyway…

Clenching his fists, he proceeded towards whatever direction he felt was best, for quite some time.

Just as he was beginning to get frustrated, green light caught his attention as he entered another copy-cat hallway. The torches in here glowed green instead… How odd.

The firelight flickered ominously, before wafting into the air and over towards him, becoming round and soft looking. Rev reached out and grabbed a hold of it. He could touch it. It wasn’t hot, in fact it was almost soothing.

Slowly he brought it over to his chest, looking around again for anything else. There was nothing. So he kept walking.

Eventually he found other strangely colored fires, though he found he could only really have one at a time.

A maze…that’s what it was. This was a puzzle. How his mind was THIS capable of forming such a place was beyond him. Maybe it wasn’t his doing at all, he didn’t know. But it didn’t matter. He had to get out somehow.

As he continued along he ran into similarly colored runes. And on the off chance he had the same colored torchlight with him, he was able to dispel them rather easily.

He went on a while longer. It felt like hours, but it could have very well been only minutes. No light came into these tunnels, so there was no way to tell.

Along the way he tried to keep track of what he’d done and where he’d gone.

Green, red, yellow, purple… he held a blue light with him now. There weren’t any MORE colors were there? Like pink and orange? He hoped not.

Despite having an excellent memory in terms of remembering images and visual details, he couldn’t figure out this place. Not in the slightest.

A long time passed and his feet ached as though he really HAD been walking into endless, samey hallways. All dark and purple. Upon reaching the altar again, he sat on it and tried to catch his breath.

“Too old for this…” At least it was HIM stuck in there and not the troll. That would have been absolutely chaotic and he’d have probably keeled over by now from a heart attack or frustration alone.

Once he felt he’d caught his breath, he started again. And it was another long time before he finally stumbled upon the blue glowing rune etched onto the altar.

Quickly he dispelled it and waited for something to happen. Nothing did. How odd…

“…So, do I get to wake up now?”

No answer. Maybe he could simply walk outside. It was worth a try.

As he stepped into the black shroud again, this time he emerged elsewhere. Crows cawed noisily above him and he tilted his head back to look at the gray sky, and the massive tower before him.

“…Karazhan? Odd choice…”

“The way is now open. To the greatest secret never told.”

“Yeah over my dead body.”

Nearby he heard a metal gate being pulled open. “Might as well see this through I guess…” He listened and began to follow the noise against his better judgement. What he stumbled upon was a crypt leading down into the darkness once again. Unsurprisingly.

So down he went. His boots sloshed muddy and murky water around as he ventured deeper and deeper into the tomb, taking note of all the skeletal remains lying around and about. He wasn’t frightened though. It was just an empty series of rooms, nothing more.

Only when he reached the end, along with a massive pile of human bones, did he notice the world around him start to fade. Was he finally waking up?

“Hm?”

A box rested at the top of the bone pile. Shiny and tempting.

“…Geez…”

It was hard to get a foothold on a pile of rattling bones, especially since they kept sliding out from under him. But he managed to scurry up to the top and towards the sealed chest. A dark rune swirled around on the top of it until he had touched it. He pulled the lid off and looked inside- “A fitting end to your journey.”

“It’s a-” ________

Rev’s eyes shot open to the darkness. Rain was once again tapping the window directly across from him, and a flash of lightning illuminated the bedroom briefly.

He was back in their room in Hearthglen. There was the fireplace, and over there, the end table with the snuffed out candle and a book, and on the other side, a regular table with two chairs, the curtains draped in front of the window, clothes discarded on the floor… Everything was as it always was.

Even Hassour snored next to him, asleep (which in and of itself was a rarity usually.)

Carefully he laid back, staring upwards towards the ceiling, listening.

He heard no strange voices, saw no strange eyes or other shining, shimmering things. There was nothing here. And the sense of dread he had was gone.

The only thing that really bothered him was that he never DID get to see what was in the box.

What rotten luck, after all that trouble too…

Disappointed, he rolled over onto his side and faced the troll, scooting closer to him and shutting his eyes again.

Outside he heard a horse neighing rather loudly. Not terribly unusual, but they weren’t typically awake at this hour either. Maybe the lightning scared them.

With a sigh he let himself relax. Maybe NOW he could actually get some sleep.

[7r0773r]

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

We don’t know what’s going on here. If these tremendous events are random combinations of matter run amok, the yield of millions of monkeys at millions of typewriters, then what is it in us, hammered out of those same typewriters, that they ignite? We don’t know. Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise. (Heaven and Earth in Jest, p. 10)

***

I am an explorer, then, and I am also a stalker, or the instrument of the hunt itself. Certain Indians used to carve long grooves along the wooden shafts of their arrows. They called the grooves “lightning marks,” because they resembled the curved fissure lightning slices down the trunks of trees. The function of lightning marks is this: if the arrow fails to kill the game, blood from a deep wound will channel along the lightning mark, streak down the arrow shaft, and spatter to the ground, laying a trail dripped on broad-leaves, on stones, that the barefoot and trembling archer can follow into whatever deep or rare wilderness it leads. I am the arrow shaft, carved along my length by unexpected lights and gashes from the very sky, and this book is the straying trail of blood. (Heaven and Earth in Jest, p. 14)

***

When her doctor took her bandages off and led her into the garden, the girl who was no longer blind saw “the tree with the lights in it.” It was for this tree I searched through the peach orchards of summer, in the forests of fall and down winter and spring for years. Then one day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The flood of fire abated, but I’m still spending the power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells unflamed and disappeared. I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck. I have since only very rarely seen the tree with the lights in it. The vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it, for the moment when the mountains open and a new light roars in spate through the crack, and the mountains slam. (Seeing, p. 35)

***

This is the sort of stuff I read all winter. The books I read are like the stone men built by the Eskimos of the great desolate tundras west of Hudson’s Bay. They still build them today, according to Farley Mowat. An Eskimo traveling alone in flat barrens will heap round stones to the height of a man, travel till he can no longer see the beacon, and build another. So I travel mute among these books, these eyeless men and women that people the empty plain. I wake up thinking: What am I reading? What will I read next? I’m terrified that I’ll run out, that I will read through all I want to, and be forced to learn wildflowers at last, to keep awake. (Winter, p. 44)

***

When I was in elementary school, one of the teachers brought in a mantis egg case in a Mason jar. I watched the newly hatched mantises emerge and shed their skins; they were spidery and translucent, all over joints. They trailed from the egg case to the base of the Mason jar in a living bridge that looked like Arabic calligraphy, some baffling text from the Koran inscribed down the air by a fine hand. Over a period of several hours, during which time the teacher never summoned the nerve or the sense to release them, they ate each other until only two were left. Tiny legs were still kicking from the mouths of both. The two survivors grappled and sawed in the Mason jar; finally both died of injuries. I felt as though I myself should swallow the corpses, shutting my eyes and washing them down like jagged pills, so all that life wouldn’t be lost. (The Fixed, p. 56)

***

Nature is, above all, profligate. Don’t believe them when they tell you how economical and thrifty nature is, whose leaves return to the soil. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to leave them on the tree in the first place? This deciduous business alone is a radical scheme, the brainchild of a deranged manic-depressive with limitless capital. Extravagance! Nature will try anything once. This is what the sign of the insects says. No form is too gruesome, no behavior too grotesque. If you’re dealing with organic compounds, then let them combine. If it works, if it quickens, set it clacking in the grass; there’s always room for one more; you ain’t so handsome yourself. This is a spendthrift economy; though nothing is lost, all is spent. (The Fixed, p. 66)

***

This is it, I think, this is it, right now, the present, this empty gas station, here, this western wind, this tang of coffee on the tongue, and I am patting the puppy, I am watching the mountain. And the second I verbalize this awareness in my brain, I cease to see the mountain or feel the puppy. I am opaque, so much black asphalt. But at the same second, the second I know I’ve lost it, I also realize that the puppy is still squirming on his back under my hand. Nothing has changed for him. He draws his legs down to stretch the skin taut so he feels every fingertip’s stroke along his furred and arching side, his flank, his flung-back throat. I sip my coffee. I look at the mountain, which is still doing its tricks, as you look at a still-beautiful face belonging to a person who was once your lover in another country years ago: with fond nostalgia, and recognition, but no real feeling save a secret astonishment that you are now strangers. Thanks. For the memories. It is ironic that the one thing that all religions recognize as separating us from our creator—our very self-consciousness—is also the one thing that divides us from our fellow creatures. It was a bitter birthday present from evolution, cutting us off at both ends. I get in the car and drive home. (The Present, p. 80)

***

My mind branches and shoots like a tree. (The Present, p. 90)

***

If you analyze a molecule of chlorophyll itself, what you get is one hundred thirty-six atoms of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen arranged in an exact and complex relationship around a central ring. At the ring’s center is a single atom of magnesium. Now: If you remove the atom of magnesium and in its exact place put an atom of iron, you get a molecule of hemoglobin. The iron atom combines with all the other atoms to make red blood. . . . (Intricacy, p. 127)

***

What if God has the same affectionate disregard for us that we have for barnacles? I don’t know if each barnacle larva is of itself unique and special, or if we the people are essentially as interchangeable as bricks. My brain is full of numbers; they swell and would split my skull like a shell. I examine the trapezoids of skin covering the back of my hands like blown dust motes moistened to clay. I have hatched, too, with millions of my kind, into a milky way that spreads from an unknown shore. I have seen the mantis’s abdomen dribbling out eggs in wet bubbles like tapioca pudding glued to a thorn. I have seen a film of a termite queen as big as my face, dead white and featureless, glistening with slime, throbbing and pulsing out rivers of globular eggs. Termite workers, who looked like tiny longshoremen unloading the Queen Mary, licked each egg as fast as it was extruded to prevent mold. The whole world is an incubator for incalculable numbers of eggs, each one coded minutely and ready to burst. (Fecundity, p. 169)

***

I have to look at the landscape of the blue-green world again. Just think: in all the clean beautiful reaches of the solar system, our planet alone is a blot; our planet alone has death. I have to acknowledge that the sea is a cup of death and the land is a stained altar stone. We the living are survivors huddled on flotsam, living on jetsam. We are escapees. We wake in terror, eat in hunger, sleep with a mouthful of blood. (Fecundity, p. 177)

***

Either this world, my mother, is a monster, or I myself am a freak. (Fecundity, p. 179)

***

Is this what it’s like, I thought then, and think now: a little blood here, a chomp there, and still we live, trampling the grass? Must everything whole be nibbled? Here was a new light on the intricate texture of things in the world, the actual plot of the present moment in time after the fall: the way we the living are nibbled and nibbling—not held aloft on a cloud in the air but bumbling pitted and scarred and broken through a frayed and beautiful land. (The Horns of the Altar, p. 230)

***

I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wandering awed about on a splintered wreck I’ve come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty beats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them, under the wind-rent clouds, upstream and down. Simone Weil says simply, “Let us love the country of here below. It is real; it offers resistance to love.” (The Horns of the Altar, p. 245)

***

I stood at the window, the bay window on which one summer a waxen-looking grasshopper had breathed puff puff, and thought, I won’t see this year again, not again so innocent; and longing wrapped round my throat like a scarf. (The Waters of Separation, p. 265)