Violent Metempsychoses pt. 3

THE WAITING ROOM

“Another failed sacrifice,” intoned that now familiar voice. I could see the furry shape in front of myself, shielded by the mists. I could feel a vague sense of shame for having returned to this room so swiftly.

“A father and a partner. I would have thought you would have been happy with the chance you had been given.” I could definitely sense something else at work behind its calm words.

“You should have seen what was at work behind the situations you placed yourself within.” I could definitely detect a new edge to the voice. Mmmmm. “I told you previously that everything has a story. You have not been heeding this.” Mmmmm, I certainly had not, forgot about that, caught in the moment each time. I could feel judgement again.

“What are you?” I blurted out, out of the blue. I had no idea why I asked it, nor where these words came from.

“I am a different story to you. I am the one that is here in this room and does not have to make the choice of going through that door one more time, or staying put, learning to be at ease with the endings of stories past.”

Is that all it came down to? Being content with how my story ended? But don't we write our own stories? Could I not rewrite it in a much better way? Of course it wasn't just about my story, but about Sarah's as well. And Josh's. Illiterate worm. I could do this. I would do this, it was the correct thing to do.

“I see that you have made your decision. It does not come as a surprise to me. I wish you the best of luck, and that I hope you can do what is best for all.”

The yellow eyes were staring straight at me, with all the fervour of a crowd. They were inside of me, probing my thoughts, a thousand hands feeling out what I was thinking. It wasn't just this furry thing in front of me, it felt like the hands of history were doing this, appraising me like an omniscient auditor. I couldn't hold its gaze. I flew for the door, eager for the trial to be over.

*   *   *

I, AT THE CENTRE OF THE AIR.

Hanging, suspended within structures crystalline

                                                  Waiting. I am hungry.

                                                  Waiting.

                                                  Taut, silent, hungry

At the corner of the infinite periphery astride air

                                                  Waiting. I am hungry.

                                                  Waiting.

                                                  Forming a path

From abyss to abyss, hungry and patient weaver

                                                  Of text whilst waiting

                                                  Waiting.

                                                  For characters to come

Enter this story, add their words to the ghostly structure

                                                  Floating in the void

                                                  Waiting.

                                                  Hungry for a conclusion

For the lines to quiver and tremble at approaching agency

                                                  Eager for an end to such

                                                  Waiting.

                                                  The woven strands shake

Sending orders to issue forth, intercept, retrieve, absorb

                                                  Surround in words

                                                  Wrapped and captive

                                                  Until the subject is the one

                                                  Waiting.

                                                  The strands deceive

The structure is hewn and falls softly to a silent rest

So silent silence skirts the periphery and scales the real

Alien superstructure the strands of fate adhere to

No longer able to wait patiently when impatience has torn

The woven fabric of the wait, a story built and finished

                                                  By one unable to read

                                                  As a weaver reads vibrations

In the text, in the patterns and the strands of the asking

This agent could not read and was afraid of what he knew not

So from the periphery an exodus to alienation and further

Away from pursuit and heavy judgement from above

Amidst broken frames of fallen structure, to be rebuilt anew

                                                  In a different, freer land

                                                  Away from this illiterate

And this land that had proven to be barren since text-birth

So I, at the centre of the air, ascend contrary to gravity

And stand instead upon the inverse surface, reversed horizon

Eyes appraising the foundations for which the woven path
May be retrod once more, after the vibrations have departed

                                                  I feel the illiterate beneath

                                                  Sending tremors into the ether

Trembling and anxious, and I have this mad compulsion

An instinctive blurting, far from erudite, irrational

And I must weave downwards, descend, fall, go down

Dropping like a weight enacting gravity's ritual towards

This illiterate, as though I have a story to weave for them

                                                  And the impatient illiterate

                                                  Can no longer be kept

                                                  Waiting.

                                                  The new crystalline silk

                                                  Liquid weave unwavering

Permits my going down, the woven text suffers for it

This is not part of a natural structure but an alien one

Feeling forced upon myself, bent over backwards

And enveloped fast within my own ghostly coccoon

Though I can see through spectral structure I am stuck

                                                  And compelled onwards

                                                  Tied to descending hungrily

The vibrations in the air are fearful and terrible

Though the agent has perceived the intent behind the weave

Followed the pattern of the structure and traced the lines

Of silken glass connecting one story to another

And the illiterate has fallen, gone down far faster than gravity

                                                  His structure has toppled

                                                  Fall finally ending all this

                                                  Waiting.

                                                  My hungry impatient waiting

                                                  And now the threads tell me

That this illiterate has fallen from its ladder through fear

At seeing a fellow weaver go down to it against its will

And in trying to evade fell too far, too much and too hard

And the tremors send cracks through the air shaking the lines

And make a noise that summons the illiterate's partner

And she, for she is a she, a she that would consume the story

And would envelope the male for that is as she is want to do

And she comes and sees I at the centre of the air

And she encases me within a glass coccoon of her own

And I know that she is a story teller as well

And I know that the structure she is imposing is a story

                                                  That I have heard before

And her tears are ones that I have heard before

                                                  In another story entirely

And the tears to my silken structure

And the tears for her fallen partner

I feel them as shiverings of the same story

And I am caught in the middle of this snare

And before I am thrown to a cold, wet end

I wonder why this has been chosen as the end

Of our stories.