#why do i even exist i am just pond scum in motion

[bunny-bunny-boing-boing]

i don’t know how much distress tolerance and radical acceptance i’ve got left in me

[ricorper-tow-blog]

but for you it would never be such salvation.

The ghosts are loud tonight.

Schmendrik stands surveying candles and lesson plans, his back to the magnificent windows of his house's private study. Moonlight streamed in; through the gossamer curtains and sepia, stained figures only he could see. Could feel; gaseous hands curling into the folds of his clothes, cold lips pressing whispers of hate to his ears. There is nothing he can do. Given the state of the world, it's all he can do to hold o to the desk and shut his eyes. To allow them to grieve and rend his hair and shirt, tearing at both with their spindly fingers. Warped mouths twist and moan, abyssal hurricanes of icy regret. Should've fought harder, murmured one. Why us? Hissed another. Schmendrik swallows, twisting in their grip.

“What can I do?” He asks the wraiths. Their tattered figures dissipate and writhe; forming smoky symbols on the air. Words inscribed in their faces; etched with fury and lined with pain. Old men; children, young women, countless others who stretch for miles beyond what he can physically see before him. A little girl takes his hand with an icy squeeze and Schmendrik feels her last breath as if it is his own. Tears prickle; bloody and raw at the edges of his eyes. She points, but at what, he does not see.

“What can I do?” He repeats himself desperately. A teenager stumbles toward him silently, limping. His face is a mishmash of scratches; as if someone had tried to blot his existence out of photographs. His head jerks to the side and his arms lift, motioning that same, defiant gesture that implies action. Yentl’s face shifts to an expression of despair. No voices are consistent enough for words; but all are loud – clamoring, gongs and groans, cymbals and song. They are mourning.

“I’ll go home,” he promises weakly, sinking down behind his desk. Perhaps that is what they want. Back to America. To stop what he can. To do what he can. The ghosts fall in as a cascade, silvery and soft. Their pressure builds across his shoulders, each tightening their grip. He feels the energy in the room change as the noises increase. The walls are shaking. The lights are brightening; then dimming – a pulse; the only pulse a ghost can have. The choir of wandering apparitions howls.

“I’ll go,” Schmendrik manages to say, trying to lift his head. It is pushed into the desk and his hands are drawn behind his back. The poltergeists keep him hostage. One stoops low to press her lips to his ear again, and finally, he discerns words for human ears,

“Do not let this happen again,” it says.

When he opens his mouth to respond, he finds he has no voice – his study is plunged into blackness and he wakes from a nightmare; stricken and sick.

Around him, the walls feel very small.

And all is far too silent. - I don't deserve to speak the name of G-D. Being who and what I am, I have revoked my right to approach the word of the Lord aloud.

No one would guess a man with the name of Etienne J. Murray to be who he is – a formerly Jewish, formerly human, formerly prospector of gold who likes the occasional whiskey and singing session. Liked. Well. Likes. I can still (somewhat) enjoy whiskey, at any rate. Gold and humanity are behind me, of course, but some things cling on – while I don’t always sing, I can (sort of), and Judaism is too deeply rooted in me to ignore.

But I’m getting off-topic. I can feel it. Shockingly I’m not much of a talker, but here we are. You did ask.

You asked me how I feel about my faith. Well. Given the recent difficulty of things, it’s hard. It’s hard for me personally because I’m so estranged from, you know, religion and all of that I don’t even know if I have a say. ‘You feel me’; as Chad would say? You don’t know Chad. That’s fine. Nobody needs to know Chad.

Anyway.

I’m pissed. Quietly; deeply pissed. I’ve made it my sole focus to go after assholes and take care of my own that way. Not so much avenging angel as I am Very Hungry Hippo with a lotta smaller hippos to feed, though – you haven’t committed any crimes, though, right? You’re just a reporter. Fuck it, I’m fucking with you. Don’t look so stressed. One wrong word and I’m afraid you’re gonna snap, twigs.

It’s so easy to hate. It’s lazy. It’s uncouth. I spent four fucking years following the Yukon gold rush to the end you see before you – four miserable, damp, bloody years panning for nothing. For shit. I traded blows with so-called men of faith over their treatment of Algonquins and black folks – doesn’t make me a good ally. I could’ve done more. It was the 19th fucking century; sure, but I’m still angry at myself for not doing more. But greed owned me more than the G-D I kept praying to, somehow. The off prayer of “fuck don’t let me fall down this big hole” that I finally forgot to ask the day…it happened.

Doesn’t make me hate G-D though.

I don’t hate much, anymore. I used to be full of it. Greed and hate. Now it’s just gluttony; hunger. Endless. I had to have something else to fill the hole when…arguably, I shoulda died down there in the mines. Or, I shoulda had faith somebody would find me. Or faith in G-D or whatever.

But there again, faith only gets you so far – hard work and determination; standing up for yourself and your beliefs? That’s something else altogether. Faith will back that, I think.

So I have faith in my methods now. G-D might not support everything I do, but I don’t even know if I’m fully His anymore.

And I’ll keep removing scum from the bottom of the fucking pond up if it means there’s a little less garbage in the world G-D did (or didn’t) make.

-        E.J. Murray as interviewed by Dusek Reznik

- He turned off the news and sat motionless in his chair, staring into the dark space where the living room sat vacant and bare.

 In this cool, quiet void, Byron knew he existed, and for a moment, everything felt…safe.

 It crashed upon him with a suddenness; a wave that swept beneath him and carried him away into the hushed nothing – a gap where God ought to have been; perhaps, were he still worthy of faith and acceptance and acknowledgment. He had lived the past several years as a shell of a person – only now coming back to things such as a personality, a future, and a voice – none of which he still believed he fully deserved.

 Upstairs, Kegan slept, unbothered by most things save the absence of Byron beside him – Byron; an insomniac and a restless spirit by nature, had taken the liberty of looking up global news to follow just in case someone, say, exposed supernaturals or threatened to invade the supposed “safe-haven” they all inhabited (albeit just how ‘safe’ that haven was still remained to be seen).

 In doing so, Byron had witnessed not any preternatural destruction or threat of war between species, but rather, a war between humans that was not so much blossoming as it was reigniting. The torches and pitchforks were reminiscent of ancient days; better-covered and more widely-distributed. The hatred spread with diseased intent; an inflammation that fanned over the globe and sought to burn alive any who dared try to put it out.

 When he’d stopped shivering long enough to come back to himself and remember who and where he was, Byron swallowed the barbs and needles in his throat that came from outright terror – and, shutting his eyes, tried to find something in the dark. He groped blankly for a handhold or a foothold in the bleak absence of light – numbly shuffling forward in his mind to seek what made him; him. Who he was, what he was, and where, why, how – what could he do? Helplessness was another wave that broke upon him and left Byron in an ice-cold sweat.

For the first time since his turning, Byron Jones sat down, faced the east, and began to pray.

 -

I stumbled into faith the way a blind man finds an oasis in the desert – sheer luck, or misfortune, depending on whether he drinks or drowns.

My cross was the one I wore to burn my fears away – a pair of Gucci sunglasses to deflect the light and a boatload of sunblock to hold me closer than moss to the gravestones of my predecessors. Though I rose up from blood; I was not a savior – though I came from a war, I was not a soldier.

I was, for all intents and purposes, not someone you’d expect to care about the comings and goings of all things religious.

Neon churches on a Nevada strip that was bare in more ways than one I called my covenant. My congregation was the unfortunate; sex workers, tourists, violent criminals, hustlers, bouncers, semi-automatic-toting gangsters. I was in the midst of a den of thieves and miscreants; loving every ounce of it. Blood money; sweat money, tears weren’t allowed – I thrived in the leather backseats of cars so expensive they’d drain the bank accounts of Dubai and the Swiss alike.

I was…who I was. I still am.

I find myself surrounded, nowadays, by these people – agents of chaos (or Khaos) all; supplementing success for fame and empty promises.

And then faith found me a home in a kosher deli where the old man working there didn’t mind giving me buckets of the blood he drained from paring animals. He didn’t speak English; so I learned Hebrew. He didn’t want to talk, I sat in silence with him. We watched the news together and eventually, he began to open up.

His name was Aaron; he was a Jew from Utah who’d wandered down to Nevada on a pilgrimage after his wife had passed away. He thought he could do some good here; provide people with something genuine and well-meant. Well-made, too, as he did all the work himself and refused to ask for help. I could respect that about him, being much the same way.

He taught me, slowly and roughly, about the faith, and I was fascinated. Imagine; me, a vampire, meandering into Judaism. It’s not bad though. It’s not necessarily good, and I don’t recommend it on a daily basis (because…ow), but. It’s something real. Something I could sink metaphorical teeth into and feel the pulse of without the fear of draining it dry.

Faith was a well.

Faith was an oasis in the desert.

And when Aaron died; because he would not let me turn him, I mourned in the way he would’ve wanted.

And I keep his faith alive some forty years later.

The Star somehow doesn’t burn the way a neon cross does.