The first time I saw him I thought he was beautiful.  I had seen many men, many women and everything in between - but there was something special about him.  Perhaps it was the eyes or the lips, or it was something inside that drew me to him, whatever it was I could not name it but I longed to possess it and put a name to it.  Even now that I look back on those days I can not name what he possessed that made fall so deeply for him.  I have lived many, many years and I have seen many, many more men that have come after him but nothing seemed to compare to that first feeling of endearment and love.  Perhaps it is true what they say, that your first love is your greatest - it seems silly for me to wax philosophical about such things considering I have no heart or soul.

But this is a story about the past and a time when I still possessed wide eyed optimism and innocence when it came to certain things and sex and love were two of those things.  He taught me many things about both of those.  He taught me how to feel good and made me into a woman, and made me feel like I was the only woman in the world all though I was certainly not.  After so many years of being invisible and cold he saw me and made me feel warm, it was amazing to close my eyes and to pretend to feel my heart beating in my chest. 

After we no longer saw each other, or spoke to each other I sometimes would go to his house in Greece and lay on his bed.  To press my face into his pillows and smell him on his sheets and covers and pretend that my heart was beating once more.

The pages are scribbled and inked up from this point forward covered mostly in names, dates, and places.

343

She cleans up his mess, the dinner he found unsuitable. So unsuitable, he declares, that he wouldn't feed it to pigs. That doesn't stop him from throwing it on the floor and sticking her face in it.

        Bad dog. Disgusting pig. Look at what you've done.

She cries, not because she's hurt, or even humiliated. No, she lost all pride years ago, he beat it out of her. She's crying because she tried so very hard and now it's going to waste. He kicks her in the side and she wines like a dog, scurrying away from him and cowering against the corner cupboards.

        Clean it up, this shit, this mess. Clean the whole fucking thing up. He turns to leave the kitchen but pauses, and stop your fucking crying. Jesus, it's annoying.

There have been other messes before this one, small ones, big ones. Messes having to do with money, with kool-aid, and sometimes blood. She says nothing but cleans up what he demands she clean. So she begins, she searches for her rubber gloves, for the sponge and Comet that really can get the most appalling stains out of almost anything. Except she can't find them.

Marinara crusted around her mouth, drying on the floor, and she can't find the fucking Comet. Life as she knows it, comes to a stand still.

if the police asked her, after the incident, why she did it, she probably would have told them the truth, she couldn't find the Comet, or the gloves, or the sponge. The necessities of her life.

So, she did what any sane woman would do. Blow her abusive husband's head off with a 12 gauge shot gun and then turn it on herself. Because while it might not be right to cry over spilled milk, sometimes you just have to get a little homicidal over chicken  marinara.

Now it's my mess to clean up.

(327)

            I remember very little firsts, and I believe that is because my memory was ruined in the last overhaul I received.  They took many things from me, and gave me back the scraps of my childhood and a few other random memories that I hold very close.  So now they flicker upon the wall like some silent, eight millimeter film that has been tapped together from cuttings on the floor.  There is no noise, no music or voices to play along to the movie and so I press my ear upon the stone wall as if the voices of my brothers and mother were trapped in there.  I find nothing but silence.

I find nothing but silence when I close my eyes and go back in my current memory, searching for my mother.  In moments of weakness I wish to hear her voice once more, to feel her arms around me and to smell the perfume she wore.  I do not even know if these sense memories are bogus, I could have made them by simply by watching people around me.  It is foolish to ache for made up memories, but the little girl on the film looks so happy, and the world looks so bright that it is hard to want differently.

I see her run, I see shadow puppets on the wall from brothers fingers and a bed side lamp.  I see him give me a hasty kiss before he sneaks back to his own room. From my eyes I can see the stars in the darkness, and I can see my little brother laying next to me, and I teaching him to count the stars, making sure not to miss a single one.  He follows my finger with his own, and I can imagine my mouth moving, and his following in chorus.

ichi . . . ni . . san . . . yon . . . go . . .  roku . . . nana . . . hachi . . . ku . . . juu

Ten little stars, all in a row, watch them now and see how they glow!

I tire of my movies now, these memories do nothing for me and so I turn my back on them.  Nothing but paintings in a museum, real or imagined pictures in time.  I do not turn it off though, I do not leave the cave, just turn my back and hide.  Like a child, I think that if I am not paying attention, it will come to life, like dolls in a cupboard, or fairies.  What a stupid game.

     No one really appreciates the versatility of tar any more.  Oh, everyone hears in history class about people being “tarred and feathered” but no one really understands how horrific it is.  No, people just see it in the cartoons, some caricature of a person or an animal toddles around half covered with tar with a hand full of feathers thrown in for good measure.  This thing isn’t screaming in pain, or desperately trying to get the impossible stuff off of them.

That’s a real shame.

The great thing about tar is the pain and suffering it brings along with it.  It seems relatively harmless until applied in great quantities to the human flesh.   What was pure as snow, becomes filthy and black.  Pores begin to clog, skin begins to sizzle because you have to heat the stuff up to at least three hundred and fifty degrees in order to apply it the correct way.  Think of the smell as construction workers having a cook out while they repave your street.

Oh, it’s truly horrific.  Watching people trying to breathe against the fumes or even better, trying to some how roll around in the dirt to stop the pain.  I should just tell you now, that stuff is never, ever coming off.  Especially when it hardens fully.  I mean I suppose you could burn the stuff off, but that would be subjecting the human body to extreme heat.  You may as well put a bullet between their eyes, it’s the most humane thing to do.

If you aren’t into that kind of stuff you can pose them once they’ve gone into shock and stopped flailing around like an idiot.  You could put them in your back yard, tar sculptures.  You could sell them at art galleries to pretentious assholes who look down their nose at you, but tolerate you because you produce: “great art.”

Or, at night, when you get lonely, you could set your creations on fire, you could watch them melt away.  Everything you’ve worked hard for, everything you strove to perfect.  Dripping down into nothing but a puddle of black brittle and sharp with the fragments of broken bones.

It just goes to show you, that nothing lasts forever.

(387)

    "It's 3am and my baby's gone. . ."  The old blues man moaned while his fingers moved easily over the strings of his guitar.  "She left me sad and lonely - and she left me black and blue. . ."

    The room is smoky, filled with people who, by this time, were good and drunk.  Slumped over the bar, and the tables they sat at, listening to the old man bemoan the loss of his love.  The half empty beers at their side, and the old twangy guitar sound the only thing to keep them company.  Death sat, motionless and waiting by the stage, listening along with the other patrons, but refusing to feel the effects of the music as they did.

As the last notes faded, a few of the more sober people at the bar clapped, and the old man nodded his head in their direction.  Very slowly he reached out and picked up his glass of water, drinking the cloudy liquid he had time to pause and reflect.  When he sat the glass down, he finally turned his blind eyes to where Death was sitting.  For a long time, the man did not move, he simply watched - and Death could see his milky white eyes flicking behind dark glasses.

Finally, he nodded as if coming to an agreement with himself and then cleared his throat.  "One more song, then we can go, now?  Is dat okay with you?"  No one else in the bar seemed to hear, or maybe they weren't meant to hear, they certainly hadn't heard anything else the man had said.  But Death nodded and responded. 

    Turning back to his guitar, the old musician and entertainer nodded very slowly before starting his song.  His last song was about heading back home, about bein' all around the world and seein' a lot of things, but not really bein' seen.  Now he's old and he's broken, and he's headin' back where he belongs.  Gonna lay his head down on a pillow white, and sleep the last sleep, he's ever gonna need.

When the last notes faded, he took a moment to gather himself - standing up, he took a few shuffling steps toward the edge of the stage.  Years of practice, helped him get along fine, and with guitar in hand he made his way to the rooms in his back, waiting for that pillow of white.

(426)

    Stendhal syndrome is when a person becomes physically moved when exposed to beautiful works of art.  Their body shakes, they become dizzy, their heart rate increases and they can even have hallucinations.  To see something so beautiful it really does, literally take your breath away.  Something so powerful that it moves people to tears, to make them at a loss for words.

At eighty-six years of age, Klara Sofiya had waited her whole life to travel to Paris to see the amazing works of art she had only read about in the ancient books she had borrowed from an old neighbor.  The old man had traveled around the world before settling down in the small Ukrainian village.  He would tell her stories as she flipped through the brittle yellow pages, looking over the black and white photos that enthralled her.

It took her seventy years to finally make it to Paris, the city of lights.  Hunched over, her body frail, bones weak and brittle.  Her fingers warped with arthritis wrapped around the head of a cane she used to move slowly from one room filled with paintings to another.  All around her, in bright color were the paints that inspired her when she was a little girl.  After all the dreams, and the fantasies she had about this moment, she felt like a little girl again.

Her back straightened and she moved more easily, her words came fast, and in French to her nephew who had gone along with her on the trip.  In her lightness she moved through the galleries to the one she was specifically looking for, finding at long last the painting that she had always adored.  Standing very still, she stared at it for a long time, allowing herself to fall silent, to shut everything down besides her eyes.

There were no words, no sounds, nothing except the beauty that was in front of her.  The beauty brought an ache to her heart, to her head, and she found it hard to breathe, hard to stand.  In the presence of beauty everything stopped, including her heart.  On the floor of the Louvre, she died, smiling at a perfect work of art.

(375)

    He was tired, tired of her nagging, of the way she picked at him - tearing him down, bit by bit.  She hated the way he dressed, he ate, the way that he watched TV.  At night, when he crawled into bed, she hated the way he slept, and the way he snored.  That's how he ended up on the couch in the den, and from then on that's where he slept.  The couch hurt his back, and he couldn't stretch out the way he wanted to, but at least he could Jerk off.  She hated that too, when he touched her, or even when he touched himself.  The beautiful, sweet woman he had married had turned into a bitter, angry shrew, and, after time - he hated her too.

He didn't know when he snapped, maybe when she turned his kids on him, the disgusted looks from them, and the sneers were enough to send him over the edge.

At night, he laid on the couch, the lumpy couch with the spring that poked him in the back, and waited for the house to settle.  When he could hear the clock in the hall, and nothing else - he got up and walked down the hall to the master bedroom.  The room that use to be his, the one he shared with his wife.  His wife, now passed out, sprawled on the bed, her face covered with some sort of night mask - her hair in curlers, and her mouth open in a snore.  

Without a flicker of emotion he picked up the pillow he use to sleep on and pushed it against her face.  There was a struggle, but he expected that, and he easily out weighted her, and the more she fought the harder he pushed.  When she didn't even twitch, and her chest no longer rose and fell, he pulled the pillow back.  The cold cream was smeared over her face, hair around her cheeks and her mouth open as if she was going to yell at him, again.

With a satisfied grunt, he turned and walked back to his couch in the den and fell into the deepest, happiest sleep of his marriage.


(378)

    Standing in front of the video cameras, the bank of microphones, his brown eyes shiny with tears.  "We need her killer brought to justice."  Behind him, a group of mourners, clutching each other, clutching pictures of the dead girl.  She stares out at the crowd of reports, curly hair framing her face still chubby with baby fat, her smile showing off her missing baby teeth.

    "We need to find the predator who took our baby girl, who took away our light."  He grips the podium, a father torn apart by grief.  His head bows and he takes deep breaths as if to steady himself.  Everyone pities him, a man who's wife had died years before, leaving him with his little girl.  Who's little girl was taken from him by some brutal monster, a pedophile and murder.  The cameras clicked, the reporters shifted and the soft noise of cries and sniffles were the background noises for the pleas, intensifying the man's grief.

The thing about justice, is that it is blind, it strikes down the guilty and spares the innocent.  It may be slow in coming, but when the word falls, it is swift and sure.  

Weeks passed, then months, and finally years.  The father is old now, sitting in his kitchen with his cup of tea, alone and left with his own thoughts.  He is forgotten now, his girl has disappeared from the public eye, and he is, on occasion given half hearted updates from the old retired cop who caught his daughters' case all those years ago.

In some ways, he should be happy with the lack of news, with the inability for the police to solve his daughters case - but it is a happiness he can't share with anyone else.  He thinks back on that day often, the older, the more alone he becomes he focuses on the details of that day.  Today, he can close his eyes and smell the wet dirt he buried her in, the way she struggled and cried - and his heart starts to race.  That old heart, beating a million times a day, finally gave out against the strain of his living.

His chair fell backward and he gasped, fighting for breath, his body suddenly reacting to the stopping of his heart.  As his body start to shut down, his brain cells struggling for air, breaking up and dying.  While the cells slowly withered away he is plagued with images of his little girl crying and kicking at him.  Dying in his kitchen, he is forced to see his little girl die under him.  When all the air was gone, when his eyelids closed he was faced with his own sin, with his own lie.  With his girl standing over him, her curly hair caked with dirt - her clothes torn and crusty with blood, she laughed.  The noise, the last thing he heard before submitting to eternal justice.

(506)

Everyone has their moments to shine, these are mine.  My headlines over the years:

Turkey Bombs Kurdish rebels in Iraq, thirty five confirmed dead. 

Six killed in Northern Illinois University Shooting. 

Father stones fourteen year old daughter to Death.

Minnesota women charged in killed four children in car crash. 

One hundred and sixty eight Dead after Attack on Federal Building in Oklahoma. 

Tsunami rocks Indonesia, United Nations confirms over Two hundred thirty thousand Deaths. 

Four hundred to Eight hundred thought dead in Tiananmen Square protest.

Congressman and nine hundred and nine die in cult camp, Jonestown. 

Uganda doomsday cult death toll rises to seven hundred.

South Korean Police officer, Woo Bum-Kon goes on killing spree; fifty-eight declared dead  

Lovers spat considered in Bronx dance club arson where eighty-seven died. 

Cop killer and Black Panther member kills ten in New Orleans hotel.

Iñaki de Juana Chaos, head of ETA and convicted killer of twenty-five people, released. 

Three hundred and thirty-four children declared dead in Beslan hostage situation. 

Wedding planning, blows. I am the queen of time management. I can collect souls, comfort the dying, deal with deity bureaucracy and then be home to cook dinner. However, I am loathed to deal with even the minor details that are suppose to be one of the happiest days of my life. It is like staring into an abyss, and true to Nietzsche's prediction, the abyss has come to stare back.

The question is why, why do I look at my engagement ring and start panicking as if I had never been faced with a commitment before. Dresses, flowers, a cake, the meal afterward -- truth be told I have not even asked my ancestors to give their blessing on my marriage. I am not looking forward to the fight that I know will go with that conversation. After our last fight and my inability to tell my soon to be husband apart from a demon disguised as him, I believe I have lost some faith in myself.

In our bed room I have a binder, complete with carefully sectioned off parts for each major decision I need to make. The location, the ring, the dress, the flowers, the cake, the food, the guests, arrangements, everything that makes me want to tear my hair out. The binder has become the bane of my being. If I was Superman it would be my Kryptonite.  If I was a demon it would be holy water. 

I need a supernatural wedding planner, I need a plan, I need some sort of idea of what the hell to do!  Hell, I need a damn Xanax.  Which reminds me, if I hear about Heath Ledger one more time I do believe I might put my head through something. 

I do not want my indecision and panic when dealing with these plans to appear that I do not want to marry Grady.  I do, I want to spend the rest of eternity with him, and after his choice it seems like that will be completely possible.  Why then can I not make a simple step toward a ceremony that will show that? 

I am having the PMS.  I think.  I am going ice skating.

(373)

"Nothing is impossible for God, who strengthens me! Philippians 4:13!" Small little voices recited in the dark space of an empty basement, each child standing in a single row, looking up toward a teacher for leadership, for guidance.

Locked away from the outside world, currently in turmoil, these young children repeat bible verses and listen to stories of how Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden, and how David slew Goliath. None of them have the faintest idea of what is going down out side. The marching, the demonstrations, the waving of flags while a new order of government over throws the last regime.

There will be changes, there will be good changes, no one will be poor, no one will go hungry! The people in the past, the rich will suffer for their mistreatment of the poor and everyone will be equal and free. A once impossible dream, now realized. Of course those words do not effect these children, to young to know any better, to understand what this means for them.

They do understand that Jesus was a baby, that he was born in a barn and he was like them once. Someone who ran and played, who shouted to other children and laughed in the street. Things they sometimes do, when they aren't in the basement, hiding. Jesus had parents who watched over him, who loved him and made sure he was washed. Who kissed him good night when he went to bed. These children have parents, some of them are even still around, some parents though are gone now. They had to go talk with the people who promised to make everything better, and they haven't come back.

The children don't know that their parents are dead, or, worse, in prison, a forced labor camp - working without thanks to support the people and the country that put them there.

Its not impossible to believe that these children are rounded up, along with their teacher and forced to reeducation camps. In an over crowded country it is not impossible to be eliminated simply because of their beliefs. In the end, lost, alone and afraid, God may strengthen, but he seems so very far away.

(383)

    I do not seduce, I am not pretty or clever enough to do so.  I am, at best times, awkward and gawky, a teenager, much like my body portrays me to be.  I am content to sit on the side lines and watch others flirt and make eyes at each other.  I find it an interesting spectacle to watch, because human nature is a funny thing, and human need is even funnier.  I have seen people do pretty outrageous things all in the name of something they want, or they think they need.

I do not think that I have ever been seduced, even with Grady.  When I met him he simply smiled and batted his eye lashes and made passes toward me.  At that point of his life he didn't have to put any effort into coaxing whatever woman he wanted into bed.  That is the charm of the playboy, the confidence to take anything or anyone he wants and then do whatever he pleases with them.

Just because I slept with him that night, does not mean I was seduced by him.  I knew full well what he wanted and what I wanted also, probably even more so then he did.  He was drunk, and half stupid with it, and half stupid by the last woman he had been with.  He was still very tender and attentive, very nice to me given that it was my first time.  It wasn't seduction though, it was giving in.  Perhaps I am not clever enough to actually be seduced.  I suppose that is for the best, Grady is the only one that will have me.

(285)

I do not think, what they say may be true, that greatness is to be misunderstood. I know that to be great is to be dead.

Being dead is the new being alive. It is fashionable to be dead, some of the most well known, well spoken about people are dead. In the United States, your holidays, they consist of the birthdays of dead people. It seems to me that any misunderstanding is seemingly resolved when a person finally dies. All of a sudden it does not matter that they took opiates, or they cheated on their wives - if they had numerous mistresses.

       All you see is some hero to be proclaimed, some greatness that was seemingly cut short due to my interference.

      Their music is suddenly celebrated, their art becomes more accepted and praise worthy, their books fly off the shelves.

Train wrecks of lives become beautiful, misunderstood works of art - a body who was cut down in their prime. [60°10'15"N, 24°56'15"E Ludde Soini 13:45:36.]

A tragedy. Over doses, suicides, car wrecks, heart attacks, anorexia induced deaths, duels - all become catalysts that rocket one up to the top of the glory list. There is even greatness in death, there is celebrity status in the way one passes. We all talk about the man who broke his neck trying to suck his own dick, the model who starved herself, her body producing so much potassium that her heart stopped. Lethal injection by denial. [33°26.27'S, 70°39.02'W Evita Noelia 13:45:37.]

After awhile, it's all just a race to the finish line. After awhile, rabies isn't associated with Louis Pasteur and Emile Roux, but Edgar Allen Poe. Write a few massively depressing poems, get attacked by a carrying bat or dog and hyper salivate your way to stardom. Dying is the biggest and best publicity stunt ever devised by some hack who wanted to be remembered.

    Little 180 nm cells traveling up your nerves toward the central nervous system, attacking your brain, tearing it apart piece by piece, multiplying, spreading like good little warriors. [36°51'S 174°47'E Tanisha Teman. 13:46:05] All the while your hunched over the toilet praying that your book that was slowly climbing up the New York Times Best sellers list is finally at number three so, by the time you are twitching and drooling like some mad invalid you'll be push the last few paces up to number one.

If your an artist this is the time to finally give all your lesser known works to friends and loved ones because you know they are about to triple in value.

Ophelia never did anything great in Hamlet except die, and now she is arguably one of the most recognized figures to teenage and college aged girls across the world. They might not know who the woman in the painting by John Everett Millais is, but everyone has seen the painting, or variations of it. Long hair floating on the water, a holy veil for a wedding that would never be. Flowers surround her as she drifts serenely down the river, her gossamer gown spreading out like wings.

                Death never looked so good. [64°10'N, 51°45'W Inge Bodil. 13:47:10]

True fact, the body decomposes four times as fast in water then it does underground. Why? Because the minute you hit the water you have fish, algae, bacteria slowly breaking down your cells that still fight hard to survive. These invaders get into your lungs, eating you from the inside out, they don't care, they just want lunch. I can guarantee you that any Ophelia, real or fictional ever looked that way after a few hours in the water.

Truthfully, no one is every as great in life as they are in death. No one appreciates you more then when you are dead. No one is more understood or loved then they are when they finally shudder one last breath in a pool of their own blood.

                Especially by me. No one will love you more then I will.


(657)

She looked down on him with sorrow in her eyes, he was laying on the bed - breathing softly, in a sleep that was punctuated with a twitch of a leg or arm.  She should be use to seeing him this way, but for some reason it was still hard, and even though she knew - deep in the pit of her stomach that he enjoyed being in this form, this way seemed to be more of a curse then a blessing.

He was still so beautiful, no matter what form he took.  At night his white skin stood out against the rich dark colors of her sheets, his blond hair plastered against his forehead - held there with dried sweat from their previous actions that had left both of them exhausted.  Scars stood out against his skin, pink smooth puckered flesh, that told all the stories of his life, of his past expediences.  She loved them, his physical flaws, just like she had loved his mortality - because there was something lovable about the broken parts of him.  

Now he stretched out on the bed - long hind legs nearly reaching the end of the bed, tail twitching and swishing across the cotton sheets that he nearly blended in with.  Instead of a snore his breathing was a steady purr, which would intensify when she moved her small hand over his stomach, watching his silky black fur pass between her fingers.  She would lay down next to him, her hand moving over his haunches and sides - up his back, enjoying the vibration in his chest.

Even as a wild animal he loved her, he would wrap a leg around her and nuzzle her hair, and then lick at the silky strands, his way of calming her, even bathing her in his primitive way.  Despite the warmth, the lull of his purr, she could feel the sorrow creep into her stomach.  It was the same sorrow she felt when she knew something could never been, her own personal pity for everything she could never possess.  This was not just for herself, though a good majority of it was.  He had lost something important, and she had suffered along with him.  They could no longer even pretend to be a normal couple, never have the simplicity of spending a normal night together without worrying about his reaction to it.

But late at night, when it was just her and the quiet rumble of the man-beast next to her, she would wallow in her sorrow. The years she had lost, the freedom she was deprived of.  All the dreams and the wants she could not verbalize, and could never have.  In the darkness and the silence she let herself feel these things, and mourn, before she let the warm flesh under her calm her - and she went back to work.

(491)

(ooc:  This is apart of the on going rp plot - a response to act II and act III.)


    I wish I could have been a fly on the wall when he signed his life away, the bastard!  Who does this?  Why!  Why did he give away one of the things I loved about him?  His soul, the one thing that truly set him apart, it gave him the freedom that I never have.  He's just a servant like I am, and he doesn't even realize it.

    "Do you play chess?"  It's a common inquiry, I've seen the movie he's talking about - and where Bergman came up with the idea that Death plays chess, I have no clue.  I suppose, one year, a year before I took over, Death did play chess.

He's nervous though, the man in front of me, his hands moving constant, one over the other - they call this ringing his hands, as if the movement would produce some effect, the way he moves and the way he looks around, it is dubious if it produces the desired effect.  He paces the carpet, glancing at the clock on the wall - the steady ticking, punctuating seconds only broken by sighs and noises of frustration from the man who is seeking answers.  

What do I fear?

 

.
(577)

I have a photographic memory, everything I see is stored somewhere, in some file labeled conveniently under time, date, and name.  Its handy for work.  Actually, its not.  I really have no urge to see the same awful things over and over, same dead faces, same bloated corpses, blue fingers and lips.  Faces half torn off.  It makes closing my eyes pretty hard to handle, that and eating.  But they are all just files, like jpegs, stuck into folders and then set in some hard drive.

I am a computer.  I am as useful as one, and about as uninteresting as one.

I wish, however that I could have a picture of the first time Grady said he loved me.  A physical picture, not just one in my head - because there is one in my head, I see it every time I close my eyes.  It doesn't seem real, that far away tucked in between strands of data and junk folders filled with names, and facts.  It's lost its special meaning, and when I play it over and over in my head I do not get the butterflies like I did before.  I wish I had something to hold in my hands though, to tuck into my kimono and to lay against my cheek.

I am foolish to feel this way.  I wish I could find that switch to turn these feelings off once more.  Today has been a hard day.