I awake in violence and I inhale so deep I almost choke on it, fleeing a dream best forgotten. Collapsing back against the pillow I breathe shallow for a while waiting for the thumping of my chest to return to a murmur. Things are not right this morning. A smell in the air, a dampness but more then that, a disconnection. This isn't my bedroom... no, it is, but it’s not the way I left it. Things have been moved around. Has someone else been here?. How did I get home last night? Nothing, my memory's a void.
Ritual, the shield of the lost and world weary and so to the shower I shamble. It stinks in here, tomorrow I promise I will clean this place. Heh, tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow, I'd lie to myself to get me into bed. The shower head shudders and spits rust for a while till it clears and white vapor occludes the filth of the walls. I shower and I think, why cant I remember, what can't I remember.
Dry, dress, coffee, thanks I'll have the usual. I wander to the lounge room and to an accusation. A note taped to the screen of my television, a commentary on my life as that’s the first place I would look. ' She's not here. Outside' I live alone and have done so since my separation. I have no reason to expect anyone to be here. But my bedroom, things had been moved around. Did I come home with someone? I feel chilled, needles in my back, the only sound I can hear is the echoing of my breathing. No traffic, no wind just the white hum in my ears defying silence. I don't think I'm ready for what’s out there, but I open the door anyway.
I tear the door open band-aid fast, it will hurt less that way. I powder tooth on tooth and step outside. Nothing, no one. I don’t know what I was expecting, again with the lie, I was expecting someone. I thought they would be here all threats and accusations, a face that would answer questions and condemn me with a single glance. Instead the stairwell blankly looks back at me, graffiti on the walls, unusual in design but not in presence and the plants, sickly and dying drenched in a cloying fog.
I descend the stairs slowly as the damp, disturbingly warm air coils around me seeking out my mouth, my nose, access to the deepest recesses of my lungs. The dampness, the same smell I encountered when I awoke and for a second I am back there, I have not escaped the dream. I’m drowning and there is something in the dark and viscous water with me, some leviathan creature new to the world and hungry with the rage of its birth. I snap back and clutch hard at the wall next to me imbedding grit in my fingers and smashing back a nail. The pain brings focus and I look around. The mist is everywhere moving like some ponderous animal, there are no other signs of life, the units are quiet. I move towards the road, I don’t expect there to be traffic.
There is no surprise, the road is silent, no stories of travelers to tell. Confused I turn and turn, what now? Uncertainty claws at me, I am not in control of my actions here, I am a puppet, not dancing, but thrown in a trunk for transport. I have no control over where I will end up next, where I will next have to perform for an audience of faceless voracious things. Make a mistake, a wrong choice and they will devour me. I feel a chill over my shoulder and the ground shudders ever so slightly, a wave caused by something growling inaudibly in the distance, something large. The Leviathan. It knows where I am and its coming for me. I dare not turn around as I run down the hill toward the stage and my audience.
I thunder down the hill, feet slamming jagged holes into the dirt, heart grinds blood like sand, attempting to keep in rhythm. One misstep is all it takes to bring me down, ribs to concrete, ankle torn like paper. Eyelashes flick grit and stars from my vision in equal measure. Movement, something is in there, in the shadowy orifice of the building, something feminine and wanting. For a moment all else halts, a warm wash of comfort and lust suffuses me and for a second I too want. But I heed the sign and pull myself forward, the abattoir mess of my ankle numb as a memory. Do I even have a choice anymore?
I move forward blindly, the soft moist sound of every second foot fall brings with it questions of purpose and no answers. Running from something. Running to something. To escape here. To go to her. Her, clearer in my mind now, someone I care for? Someone I abused? I pass the once familiar. Shops whose butchers trade will begin again in earnest when I inevitably fall. My flesh is chaff to be sorted from the passions and base desires. The sound of heels brings my wandering thoughts back home, I turn my head.
Temptation stares at me, waiting for my embrace, to reverse the act of penetration. She wants to be inside me. The steel, an answer when I had none. I lay my chest against her, a final consummation is all it will take. So this is how it feels, a comfort oiled in fear. The Leviathan waits behind me crouched low, moving like a stopped watch, no need to hurry now. I hope She will forgive me for what I have done / didn’t do. The pole is chill on the ice of my skin, to thin, she will break though to the depths with barely a whisper. I close my eyes, together we will drown, not swim.
Again flickers of the dream, no, yes. The dream but tainted, tinted with an edge of struggling memory. Claws rend at me within the depths, shredding emotion, will and whimsy, refining them into crystal whose vibrations sing of my past. Agreements and acceptance, to die here, now, is to lose that which I set out to claim. I had forgotten… I had come here by choice... for her, to save her. I slip back into myself, hard against the blood slick skin of a lover born of unseemly desire. I slip aside, ignore her cries, her need unfulfilled and run. The construct before me is the gateway, shackled within its bowls is my grail.
Stairs define the path I diligently follow now, still being pushed, pulled and torn by an unknown hand but it is the path I would have chosen, if choice had been mine. The walls groan and slither, heavy with the purpose of this place, aching for mouths to spill all they have witnessed, desperate for release. Here there is none. The low empty murmur of the Leviathan fills the cavernous space. In the dark below it crouches, the black silt of consumed hopes is stirred by the wake of its titanic breathing. I was never running from it. Step after step, so familiar, the echo may well mark my grave as it has my life.
All is silent as face my journeys end, the audience holds its breath in anticipation of the final act. The air stifles time and the grinding tick of seconds only sound in my thoughts. The final choice, the only choice, is mine to make and I will make it for her, my lover? My friend? It no longer matters, she has become my world and my purpose. I step onto the tracks, a future marked in steel and washed in elements. I lift my head and look forward, time moves again, sound returns with a satisfied roar and the sodden slap of impact. My Leviathan, it is everything I had hoped. The world collapses in crimson and rust.
I awake in violence and I inhale so deep I almost choke on it, fleeing a reality of my own making. Collapsing back against the pillow I breathe shallow for a while waiting for the thumping of my chest to return to a murmur it isn’t going to happen. Things are right this morning. A smell in the air, a woman, but more then that, I have direction. This is my bedroom, but it’s not the way I left it. Things have been moved around. Someone else has been here. How did I get home last night? That doesn’t matter, all that matters is that she is here I can hear her in the lounge.
Ritual, a protective cloak to hide my excitement, so I shower. It no longer stinks in here, I remember cleaning it in anticipation, a gloss bright enough to hide a truth. I shower and I think, I think of how I got here, what I have been through and how it was all worth it. An ordeal, a price, paid in full, no more fear, from this day on she will be safe. The pain is a shadow, I am whole again.
I wander to the lounge room and to an embrace. I feel suffused with warmth, giddy with it, intoxicated, elated. No one has ever known, can ever know how I feel. To revel in the knowledge that nothing can take this away again, that the arbitrary cruelties of the world can from this day forth only rail and impotently dash themselves against our rock. I take her hand, soft and warm in the morning air, I move my head close to hers, her smell a comfort beyond words. “Come with me, there is somewhere I want to show you”