Death-lesson, or the prelude to a ghost. 1 - 7

Part one: the prelude to a ghost.

                                  1

It was early summer in the late afternoon.  Liam was visiting the father who had done the best he could to avoid the child. His grandmother left him having died of cancer earlier in the year and in the child's eyes she had abandoned him there with her son.  No one understood Liam's father not even Jack (Liam's father's name, or at least what he insisted his son call him.) and that terrified the child.
    Without much to go on Jack said "So here are the rules, one, you cannot close any of the doors in this house. Two, you may not open any of the doors in this house that is already closed.  If you do either of these things, I will light your ass up, understood?" Liam nodded slowly and thought without out trying to give any of his feelings away "Shit this is going to be a long summer." But he had not done his job well enough for his father stared at him long and hard before saying "Drop your shit and go and stand in the living room." Then snapped his finger and pointed at the front door twice in rapid succession with each emphasized by the other. Liam started to cry but Jack said: "Don't you start howling yet!" then picked up the backpack that Liam dropped to the ground.
   "So let's see, you have clothes and you had comics. I don't want that shit in my house." Liam glared through tears at the man he had to stay with until they could get ahold of his uncle and see if he would watch the child. "Come here, come here!" said Jack picking up the paint stirrer up off the couch. Liam walked to the couch and said: "I am already hurt enough!" Jack smacked the paint stirrer down on the side of Liam's thigh hard and screamed: "not till I say you are!" Grabbing Liam by the arm and pulling him over his lap, he begins to wail on power rangers face that was on the back of Liam's underwear.
   The next week was more of the same. The seven-year-old Liam wasn't allowed outside even though they were miles from the nearest house. But he was learning how to make things easier on himself. One day Jack told a story "When you were two, maybe three. You wouldn't stop crying. So your mom and I made you stand in the corner. I took a belt and crossed it over itself and pulled it together making it pop. I would scream at you 'I am beating your ass!' and you would whimper and bawl. I did that for ten or fifteen minutes before you shit yourself. Your just a stupid kid you always have been." Jack started to laugh, and Liam made himself laugh with him. Jack looked at him and said, "At least your smart enough to see how stupid you are."

                              2

There was only one door that was shut in the whole house, and it had a padlock on it at all times. Liam asked Jack what was down there and his dad told him "A shovel and a hole in the ground."
   Jack kept a gun on his belt every waking hour and sat it next to his pillow when he went to sleep. Liam wanted to kill his father.
   Jack would go down, through the forbidden door at least once a day with a plate of food.  But the door was always locked in the morning.
   Then one day jack said, "Come with me." and he undid the lock, making Liam walk-in front of him down the long narrow stairs.  There was another door that jack unlocked. Then there was a room with a bed, and a chain bolted to the floor, and at the end of the chain was elven-Year-old Alex.
   Alex was used to having things inside of him and on him. He was quiet and had emotions like a lizard behind his eyes. The white dress he wore was stained with shit and blood. The skin on his bones looked like a sheet draped over a skeleton.
   Liam said nothing just looked at the thing on its leash and thought "I am going to die." before pissing his pants. Jack said "fucking disgusting Liam." before starting to laugh. Still laughing he said "you're going to kill Alex for me." then reached into his pocket and pulled out a swiss army knife. Pulling the blade free from its base with a thunk. Handing the open blade to his son. "Cut his throat," said Jack "or, I will cut yours."
   Liam held the knife and started to cry. Jack said, "Now Liam, that is not going to work." he got down on his knee looking Liam in the eyes telling him "you can do this." He felt his fathers heavy breathing on his face and decided it was worth it. So he stabbed at his father's eye, the blade went in but as his father recoiled from it. The knife came out and snapped shut on Liam's fingers cutting deep just above Liam's fingernail of His index finger.
   The screaming filled the room. The chaos played out as Liam tried to open the blade again but the blood made it slip closed as it fell to the floor.
   Terrified Alex Jumped on the back of Jack grabbing at his face with one of his fingers sliding into and spreading the damage inside of the eye socket. Jack screamed like a wounded animal and instinctively reached for his Glock that still hung on his hip. While Liam gave up looking for the knife and instead grabbed his father's hand that had freed the Glock: then there was a bang!
   Laying dead on the floor, Liam no longer had a nose just a hole in his head. Alex screamed and pushed his middle finger deep inside of Jack's only functioning eye. Before he was thrown to the floor with a clanking from the chain attached to his collar. The now blind jack barked out "Fuck" than put the gun to his own head and spread his brains over the room with a bang!
   Alex cut his leather caller off with the knife he found covered in blood and was seen two days later walking into town.
  

        Part two: Death-Lesson
 
                              3

Alex Addison was sixteen. He shaved his head, wore makeup, and had a feminine jaw line. He was proud that his girlfriend could share clothes with him.  That they could share everything but his past.  What is in a personal history, just something that happened? Or was it supposed to be some sacred thing always tempting the present from a frame of wellness and safety?  Unsure he walked his apartment looking for his eyeliner, trying to get ready for his date with Jolene Irish: beautiful compared to his prior lovers or the women he saw in porn but still there was a distance between them.
   He began to think about the past. How he had been chosen because he was a drag queen.  He remembers when being caught wearing makeup in the first grade. And his liberal, well-meaning mother asked him if "Do you think you are a girl?" and he explained her "No...but dresses seem fun." And they understood something, Alex Addison was braver than he was allowed to be by the School system.
   It pissed him off when they told him he couldn't wear the clothes he wanted to, or paint his face the way he saw it. The episode came to a head years later when Alex started a Youtube channel teaching how he put on his face. After six months he had become popular enough that the well-meaning liberal community gave him the support he deserved and needed. They put him on the daytime time talk shows amazed at his courage and the charm he carried as his only weapon against the conservative Bible-thumping community that bullied him.
   Alex was ten in the winter of 2011 when he was kidnapped by jack. The year he lived in jack's dungeon was the only part of his life he wouldn't talk about. He could remember it, but as something that happened to someone else "that is not me!" he thought.
   Years of therapy helped with the episode, but still, he could not remember it without wanting to kill himself. The little boy who saved his life was dead, but the ghost followed him wherever he was.  Liam Jet was floating in the corner of the room "Your guyliner is in your purse you ding dong." he said. "Thank you, you dirty little ass monkey!" said Alex. Liam laughed, it had been a few years, and he was over the trauma of his death. He was wearing the clothes he died in. Still missing his nose with the rest of his flesh rotting and a hole in the back of his head he would hide stuff inside of on occasion.
   They had talked about it before, and Liam said "When I saw the light...I told it to go fuck itself then there was a long pause before I heard it say 'I will be here when you are ready.'" Alex laughed when he heard this.
   Jolene Irish knocked on the door. "Hey, you know the rules," Alex told Liam "she can't see you...shew." "Understood boss." said the sad little ghost. "Hey don't be that way, I won't be out late," said Alex. "Can we hang out when you get home?" said the little ghost. "Don't act as if I neglect you," said Alex "and I will bring you home a surprise. Just watch a movie or something?" Alex heard another knock on the door then went to answer it.

                                  4

"Who were you talking to?" said Jolene. "Myself!" laughed Alex. "You do that a lot lately?" said Jolene. "I guess, so. I get lonely without my mom home, you know?" "Hey why don't we just stay here, and you know...." She wrapped her soft hands around Alex's forearm. "We can later, but I really want to get and parade you around first." said Alex.  "Me or you?" she said. He kissed her with tung then said: "Do you care either way?" Jolene laughed then smirked a sleek persuasion; "I have tricks?"
   They lay on his mother's bed (because it was bigger.) Alex was running his fingers through Jolene's green and orange kool-aid dyed hair. "Do you love me?" she said. "What do you think?" said Alex. "I think you're avoiding the question," she said.  "I am just not good at verbalizing my affection is all." said Alex.  "that isn't fair, I love you." she said. "I love you too." said Alex.  
   The rest of the night was pleasant, but Alex knew how restless Liam could get when there was a broken promise involved, and as soon as Jolene was asleep Liam was haunting the space over the bed. "where is my surprise?" said Liam. "I will get it for you tomorrow." sighed Alex. "You lied to me!" said Liam. "Hey, whisper!" Alex hissed. "And what if I don't?" said the little ghost "are you going to kill me?" then he raised an eyebrow at Alex. "No, Liam...." Said Alex. "I am going to play the ps3...." said Liam. "just don't make much noise, OK?" said Alex. "Sure...." said Liam.
   The game was simple; you sneak around killing and are rewarded with cutscenes that provide the context of you doing good in taking lives. You murder and are rewarded for your skill in doing so. The mullet hero said profound things on memes. Told the little ghost that the power of contamination overwhelms any need to be contaminated. 
   Liam had died before, bullets hurt and they have consequences. But none of the dead soldiers in this game haunted him they just laid down covered in red no longer being a threat.
   "Am I a threat?" thought the little ghost. Then he put the controller down and went to the kitchen and made a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich. Meditating with his scarred brain and on the arrogance and disdain of it all, It is just a game to be played for my enjoyment. Just a game where there are no real consequences. Other than the investment of time I am willing to provide, and as a dead person, there is no limit to the time I can offer.

   Death-lessons come in so many forms, and you only die one death. Lesson implies there is something to learn when there is only one teacher, and he is more of a role to be played than a personification of that role. What is my death lesson thought the little ghost?  Then he smiled and said aloud "The point where the bullet contacts an artery or the brain." then he stuck the half-eaten sandwich in the back of his head where the crater was; deciding to save it for later. Then went back to playing his violent video games.

           5

Jolene said, "Let's move on to murder, shall we." "who are we going to kill?" said Alex. "well Mr sarcastic, what would you rather do play with a Ouija board?" "You know murder is not my style I am a lover, not a Jason Voorhees."  "well anyways this is what I have purchased." She laid on the bed a copy of Sarcastic-Hallellugha: or, the Nightmare grimoire of cardinal sins. "not one of those stupid things" said Alex. "oh come on, people go missing summoning demons it is fun for the whole fucking family." said Jolene "where did you buy that crap?" said Alex "what...my sales pitch because 1. it was fucking gold and 2. I got it off of Amazon...it said it on the sticker on the plastic wrap when it came in the mail." "So what demon do we summon? and if it involves murder you can count me the fuck, out." said Alex "this one," said Jolene pointing at the picture of a sinister looking penguin nurturing an egg between its legs. "A fucking sinister looking fucking penguin." said Alex. "well what is so sinister about it I mean come one it's a penguin they are cute even when they have a skull and crossbones on the whites of there bellies, and also it is technically the only things with practical instructions that were not embarrassingly nerdy."
   She laid out the offering of gummy worms pouring cherry cola on top of the bowl she poured them into. And read the incantation to summon the penguin. They made bad jokes and tried there damned best to point out that you could buy anything off amazon. The point was to laugh at the supernatural. You know to flip the bird to a higher power. But that is not what happened.
   The floor is gone, and everything disappears but for the green light and in it appeared the penguin. The penguin was alien if nothing else, a skull and crossbones on the whites of its belly. It guarded an egg that lay between its legs and when the egg hatched it faded into the details of the background. Then there was a skeleton holding a book in robes of a monk, and it said "in this book, a book that's paper was made from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. With binding made from the flesh of the first man, Adam. In this book is the spirit of the demiurge." 
   It holds up the book revealing a face made of leather that opens showing eyes and mouth that are very much alive, and it looks at Alex Addison saying only "mere plaything!" then the fire consumes him scarring him and his memory, and he sees the skeleton as a pile of bones on the ground. While he, holding the book. And with every flicker of the light, his soul is fed to the flames, and soon all that is left is a shell for suffering.  A living rag-doll was thrown forward into time past the day of judgment and left alone in the Holly-Hollow woods  at a pub called "the joke is on you." The place where all who effectively summon Tngocs (the sinister penguin) are sent.

                   6

      (fifty two years later)

The patchwork god (as he called himself) lived alone in an apartment in the slums of South Knoxville.  Watching the homeless as they struggled to stay warm taking for granted that he could feel no cold. Buttons for eyes, barely eighteen inches tall and sewn from scraps by the hands of the ever-encroaching abyss of darkness.
   The apartment was bookshelves with the lovingly misplaced piles of paperbacks laying about the couch. Pillows on the sofa were hidden under layers of blankets where the patchwork god sometimes slept for fun and other times for profit depending on what his pimp told him.  Toys and dolls lovingly placed by the darkness.  On the shelve and tv stand, Felix the cat and jack skeleton. Godzilla and cloud from final fantasy seven all were the shadows obsessions. The collection of toys and action figures of which he was the favorite by far of the inner abyss that was consuming the souls that lived in the forsaken city of Knoxville.
    His name was Rumple Gorey. Disheveled and disorganized, He could not remember if it had been alive for a hundred years or since noon that very day. But there was a purpose to this ramshackle little plush doll " Handsewn from the shadows of ancient prehistory stuffed with the rags of the rotting dead from nameless graves of dead children. Rumple Gorey spoke the ancient chants. His voice made howling wolf sound innocent and naive as a newborn. Out in the hall, a neighbor heard what sounded like a carney barker parodying the lesser key of Solomon through the sheer absurdity of the reading.
    Its shadow spoke to him for its master the inner abyss. The voice was a kind of euphoric knowing. The type of truth you submerged yourself in the knowing that precedes learning and does not rely on understanding.
   The voice was leaving as soon as Rumple Gorey understood what was happening and ounce the sound had left him the rag-doll started to pack his things. At first, putting far too much in his purse than he could have ever carried, despite his intention of using it as a travel bag. after he emptied it of every book except his copies of the surrealist and Dada manifestos. 
   He exited the apartment and headed for the elevators. Not having any doubts about his ability to find what was lost in his inner abyss. A missing friend or a forgotten name that would resurrect the life that was drowning in the green spiral at his core. Or, maybe some clarity as to what he was looking for be it identity or kinship. "What am I to do, thinking doesn't help, but this commentary in my head is most of what I have. Me, the I and the who. Words only, no! Don't look at me in the eye" lifted off of the floor by a filthy dirty hand. He was being inspected, judged...maybe threatened? "where the hell are you going?" said the irritated voice of an unshaven face. Beady-Eyed and clown-like. Cross-Eyed and still waiting for Godot. "this here is marle, and she is here to cuddle. And cuddle she will do, you know why because that is what she has paid for. How many times must we go over this? you're here because I own you and I make a living by renting you out to witches that come out of the woods and can't afford a therapist so instead; I let them cuddle with the ragdoll in exchange for sexual favors or bread, regular favors...gold is welcome."
   The skinny bony man held the rag doll up staring a marle and unkempt redhead painted up, haphazardly some would say. Her hair looks like she had licked a live power outlet and her dress was a cheap, dirty and rather common victorian fashion statement not uncommon with the witch of holly hollow woods. She smiled an unpleasant smile full of rotten teeth and said "I like him." her eyes fixated on the ragdoll kicking in the air with its tiny arms swinging for damage but teaching no one a lesson. Then finally giving up he hangs lifeless in the hand of his master and says defiantly but without emotion "bastards."
   She held him tight with both arms wrapped around him while the now suicidal collection of rags and attitude fell into familiar apathy as she sucked off cobblestone bill's wank inches away from his face. As cobblestone bill held her head tight and thrust deep into her throat ejaculating to the swallowing and slurping sounds of merle. He patted her on the head and said: "you could suck the chrome off a tailpipe." then wandered off to find something to eat.  shouting from the kitchen "you have thirty minutes."
   She said nothing as they lay together.  In bill's bed wrapped in blankets but it was like Rumple Gorey was dead his lifeless body limp in her arms while he was a lifetime away, in his happy place. Imagine a world where cobblestone bill was dickless and dead, A unich without a headstone. Rumple glory imagined the wind hitting his face as he rode a mechanical unicorn he proudly named "keep on believing" across the parking garage of a place he couldn't point to on a map but longed to return to.
Then the music started...Wheeler Walker Jr's "which one of you queers is gonna suck my dick." That was the day the dream died and Rumple Gorey hearing the worst country music ever made shake the walls of his apartment (even if it was in hell) Decided "people are going to die...and I am going to kill them." bill smacked the doll out of the witches hands and said "your time is up and we are closed for the day." and as she looked for her shoes Rumple glory picked one up and threw it at bill's head. "why you little shit" screamed bill as he ran arms outstretched with nothing on his skeleton but inept muscle stringing together bones. Chasing after the rag doll, fallowing him into the kitchen.
    When they found Rumple, he was holding bills severed head on his lap. The witch was gone, and bill's body was never found. Rumple stayed around a few more days dragging the severed head around by its hair. Most people in Knoxville don't notice things like that, But Rumple always left an impression and now it was tattered and torn a the rags he was made of.

                                    7



           "think of all the fun we had,
                  even when the jokes were bad." - Daniel Johnston


           "The Morality of my activities escapes me."   Dr. Manhatten: Alan Moore

 God had a monolog and so it begins inside of a black hole. "Sadness has poisoned my mind, broken, splintered and as close to shattered as the meat grinder of the world will allow.  Spirit is failing like some cat struggling for its life locked in the jaws dog twice its size. The point is a wailing pain that tries to express the incoherent voice as a child would wail for its mother: the madness, the one that created an ambiguous yet straightforward problem. That cannot be expressed other than anxiety for the future. That history is here debating with us because of the mistakes that were made." An old man is sitting, in the dark, wild hair shaking from a fan. Your image of God in a chair. His voice was my voice or your voice. The sound was defiant; the voice had created all even itself.  So many flaws that it perceived all were sifted till the leaves fell to the earth.
   "There is no reason to worry about any of this. As can be seen, the trouble is that elusive or tainted we fail to change. Because contaminated we, relying on the ending to define the beginning stare at the sun till can barely see around the light. But here I am. Here we are, and failing in your doubt, you become unknown from my presence. But all roads led to Rome and given the time, space-time or whatever existed before the universe (which is to say, God has an ego.) the point becomes clear the best measure of a moment is context being redefined by a singularity.  Or, put another way, not even light escapes a black hole.'
   'Pretension, or, elusive as the will to live takes us what confuses is we are supposed to doubt even out instinct to live (do you think daily on the cross? Oh, I do, the doubt that God felt offering himself to a world of hurt, misery and the symbol faith that his doubt would become to all life on this planet (after all life had left this planet.)"
   He stands to glow for he is the light, triggering and ending the firing of creation. My life forgotten or remembered happened and didn't happen. Because as you will see the distinction, you and I make between yourself and the infinite density inside of a black hole is as alien as the light that cannot escape it. But my symbol of a God standing in a tuxedo after the monolog I attribute to him, providing a context for me. in His infinite knowing he allowed me to type these words and say they were his. So for me, God is forever a question mark? Or an exclamation point! But he is also more than the ending defining the beginning.