Scarleton Series I : Before the Cult (16 page)

My vision got
blurred by tears. I knew what he meant. The sheer beauty, without
even flaunting it. Those moments when your emotions surge like a
tide and nothing seemed to matter but it, this enigmatic
thing
upon you. Suddenly everything you ever loved,
everything you are and all pleasures are minor and irrelevant; all
of that drifts into nothingness and
the crop
remains the
only thing. Sole beauty. That was the
crop
, that was the
fields
. Surpassed your true love telling you she loves you
back and knowing it to be truest of all truths. The cure for AIDS
or Cancer. It is all that matters. This life is a grain of sand
compared to its magnitude.

I gazed at
Macxermillio, his face almost unrecognizable, “I need to get a
drink.”

He left for the
bar.

“Why have you
hardened your heart so when you have seen what I have seen?”
Macfearson asked.

“Because we
can’t trust anything the calling shows us. I know you don’t believe
it but I think it is just here to destroy us and stop us from
achieving this. It sees we are heading in the right direction so
now it is desperate,” I said.

Macfearson
snorted. “Or maybe number twenty one is the answer. Maybe it knew
we would be here with her.” He shifted his gaze to Kim who was busy
reassuring her friends she is fine accompanying me. “She is no
lifeling
and she is no
deathling
... You feel it. You
can’t put her in a category but her nature allows her to adapt.
That is why she whores herself...she moulds to every shape and
changes into every substance. She is the perfect sample and maybe
that is why we saw that vision today.”

“You are wrong.
If the calling is this desperate it goes to show that what we are
about to do here today is even bigger. Perhaps there is something
it would hate if we discovered.”

He sighed.
“Listen to me. I don’t know what you have against sampling a whore
and if that fails we could easily come back here and continue with
your process. This way we can do both. Just me and you, no Mac. He
is too slow.”

I shook my
head. “You know he won’t allow it. He knows it’s stupid. This is
bloodthirstiness toying with our minds. The kinda thing that is
self-destructive and he is well aware of that. The truth is we
can’t trust your judgment, not until Tuesday when |I see
Cheryl.”

“I feel
something when you speak to her... It’s not lust for her blood. I
feel purpose and duty, something I never felt before. It’s as if my
heart touches the essence of her spirit. She is something else. A
lamb for the sacrificial altar. Talk to her some more and tell me
if there is nothing that you feel. A deep rage, love and hatred for
her, a lust not just for her blood but her essence and life. You
want to preserve it and honour it, it’s as if you can’t stand it
but at the same time you can’t live without it. You also care for
her. Tell me you don’t pick up on it.”

I took three
shots of rum, the past flashing behind my closed eyes as I
squeamishly swallowed . The broken, the lost and the irretrievable.
The things that are forever out of reach, in between all the sanely
insane deeds I would take on to try reclaim knowing full well I
would fall short. And also vivid images of the bleak future that
lay ahead for the hooker .The bar folks lumbered about as I
lumbered in my past, a resourceful reflection of the future. Think
this : it is not old habits die hard, it is duty and natural
instinct taking over (pure and blameless).

Kim beckoned me
to the table just when her friends left. Her shoulders were lifted
and she had grin on her face. Her eagerness too apparent. Those
sparkling eyes stirred me in the core. I was struck by the sudden
power they held on me, at that moment it was difficult to tell what
emotions they were evoking.

Oh,
beautiful Miss Bersert
, I found myself smiling back.

“I am sorry
about that,” she said as I sat down, gentle and genuinely
friendly.

“It’s chilled,”
I said, feeling the possession of alcohol taking place. The ease
and certainty I would have my way coming with it.

“Yeah, um …
where were we?”

I ogled at her
glistening lips. Symmetrical teeth and her sexy nose . Her skin
tone perfectly preserved, if not make up. Her neck… her
vulnerability undoing. A toy thing she seemed. A doll. A relic.

“I can’t
recall,” I answered.

Silently, I
watched her think back. Tapping her feet and eyes rolling. Her eye
brows creased.

“You are
beautiful,” I blurted, distracting her process.

A smile
flickered across her face, followed by a comically curious look.
The fidgeting and the rolling eyes had paused.

“Where is this
going?”

“Nowhere ,” I
mused.

She laughed.
“Just as everything else.”

I considered.
“It’s all nothingness.”

“Don’t think
so.”

“Why ?”

“I feel
it.”

I knew what was
coming, I clenched my fists hoping this time it would be different.
Cautious, I asked the fundamental question, “What else do you
feel?”

She breathed as
if she knew it too. “Abundance,” she answered, sounding more like a
question than an answer.

“Of?”

“Love,
happiness and life,” she shrugged.

Sigh.

She looked away
almost troubled by whatever was going through her mind. “But … it’s
just as everything else.”

Her beauty
began to fade, and an image of something else was starting to take
form. Her words were stripping her.

“Going
nowhere?”

She locked my
eyes with a ‘yes’ . Like her superficiality it was clearly
conscious. She added onto it, “Disposable.”

“Worthless?”

She closed her
eyes taking air in. “Temporal.”

“Empty?”

Her eyes still
closed. “Meaningful.”

Her answer
reclaimed her beauty but I was still intrigued by what I saw.

“Don’t try to
see me,” she ordered, her tone meek and fierce at once.

As my face
moulded into a charming persuasive look she laughed killing words
in my mouth.

“I’m not gonna
buy any of it,” she explained.

I narrowed my
eyes, saddening even more. “You don’t see it? You have no faith nor
hope? You don’t believe I might truly care?”

I had a
compulsion to convince her the grass gets greener.

But greener,
the more snakes
, I thought to myself.

“Humans are
corrupted easily. They smile at you while sticking a knife on your
back. That is who they are, that is who we are. We are horrible
evil monsters. We use charm and wit as bait,” She spoke
earnestly.

“You can’t
trust anyone?”

“No one.”

“Love? If there
is anything that is real in this world I am sure it’s that.”

She studied me.
She rolled her eyes and sighed in the I-have-heard-that-before
gesture. “Not convinced.”

“Never will
be?”

“‘Til the
grave,” she spoke blandly.

I can make
that sooner
, I thought,
You feel empty like I do.

I smiled. “Hope
you get lucky soon.”

She
giggled.

“I guess there
is something you can always trust.”

“What?”

“That it’s just
as everything else.”

Like everything
else …

Pointless,
vast, demeaning and undoing. Like everything else, a huge void
filled with mere modifications. Nothing ideal, certain or right.
Finding a place of loss and taking comfort in it. Taking comfort in
what is missing, misery in search of that which is substantial. Its
flaw depends on how you look at it because objectivity is a flaw.
That which is intangible and disprovable has ultimate reality.

Just like the
memories.

“I’m
intrigued,” I said.

She accepted by
a smile.

“You’ve had a
fair share of scars?” I asked.

She giggled.
“Now why would you think that? You are Psychology major?”

“I am, but not
that kind. Organizational.”

“Then why? Read
some stats on hookers and their daddy issues?”

“I’m sorry but
I keep on forgetting that fact.”

She rubbed the
tip of her finger on the rim of her glass slowly. “Then why?” her
voice husky.

“I have a
hunch.”

“Hmm…
Intuitive,” she remarked.

We sat in
silence for a while.

“So tell me
about your life,” I requested.

She sighed,
studied me and stared down. “We are not on a date, Mister. Why
would I wanna tell you that?”

“You find me
trustworthy. We agreed to sit here and talk. The time we have been
here you never second guessed a drink I offered you. I would assume
that someone in your profession would be cautious of men offering
drinks. You not stupid neither am I, there is a wave of intuitive
connection between us and it’s real as this table between us.” I
paused. “Unlike everything else,” these last words just slipped
out, not quite sure what I meant or what they meant or why they
felt so right.

She sighed. The
silence lingered, nothing but her solemn expression filling it.

“What?” I
probed.

“Nothing.”

“There is no
such thing.”

“Well, I don’t
know what to say. Or rather I don’t want to speak,” realising what
that could mean, she corrected, “At least not about that or maybe
not now.”

“So you do
wanna talk about it?”

“I don’t know,”
she shrugged.

“This is a
question of confidence,” I told her. “Whether you are confident
enough to tell me?”

“No one ever
wants to hear my story, at least that is what their reactions tell
me. It’s a question of whether you’ve got the balls to sit through
it,” She returned, her eyes laser-bright.

“Then I guess
we have a need for some bondage here. Didn’t you say you wanted to
know how I ended up here?”

I began to feel
like I was in a presence of a lioness. With alcohol lubricating my
mind I had become quite impulsive. We sustained a gaze devouring
each other. The shackles of inhibition were slipping away.

“I gotta go to
the bathroom,” She got up.

It swelled up
from my chest at breakneck speed. A gulp of emotions climbing up my
throat. Could not understand it at first. The way my face stiffened
and chest quivered. When it exploded I sobbed, waterfalls of tears.
I could have used a hug, a cigarette and most importantly a razor
blade. The darkness and the pain overwhelming me.

Macfearson
looked down at me pitifully and asked the obvious. “What’s the
matter?”

“It’s…it’s all
wrong. Everything is a mess,” I managed.

Everything?
The everything that merely translates to nothing
, I thought.
Nothing is certain, only the crop and the fields … but even that
is elusive. I’m so tired...just wanna lay down on a train track and
die.

“What do you
mean?”

“Existence,
life itself. Kim,” I wiped tears with my palms. My blurry vision
burying me into my darkness, adding to disorientation. “I don’t
know if I can carry on after her. I have given everything and tried
everything else. I’m done.” I felt the strength seep out of me and
I tried nothing to hold onto it.

“Sandy?” a
woman’s voice called.

Raised my head
to find that it was
her.
The one Macfearson dearly hated.
Her face nicely framed by her shinning black hair. Black eyes
teeming with concern. Whether it was genuine or not was impossible
to know.

“Cheryl?” I
uttered through a sharp sob.

“What’s wrong?
You want me to call any help for you or take you home?” She asked
in that therapist’s voice of hers. I always wondered if it ever
changed around different people, or her personality did. She always
gave out a reserved, cautious, concerned and calculated atmosphere.
The possibility that her role is not genuine was bothersome. Could
not tell if she liked me, hated me or thought I was downright
insane. Her client-centred therapy approach was questionable, it
insinuated that she did not care.

Time : First
Therapy Session

The view was
beautiful, heavenly in a divine sense. There was a transcendent
aura to it. Maybe it was how people looked like ants from up here
or how external noise was almost diminished. From inside the world
out there could be mistaken for a mere illusion. Leaning into the
armchair like I owned the world felt comfy. Out there flourished a
wilderness of chaos, here simplicity and order - a small table with
Kleenex on the side in case I wept. The order here was imposing,
too much comfort can get unnerving.

Her black eyes
focused on me for a while, glistening like wet pebbles behind
spectacles. She slithered in black silk pants and a woollen V-neck
shirt. Black hair curling under her jaws. Her earrings nothing
dashy. All you could get are her hands and wrists if you got lucky,
knees kissing and a clipboard on her lap.

“Okay,” she
pressed her thin red lips. “We just gotta go through your form
right now to get the basic idea of why you are here and basically
how we can help you,” she paused and flicked her hair in an attempt
to remember something.

I merely
nodded, biting my lip.

“Alright. My
name is Cheryl and I will be your therapist.”

Therapist? What
the fuck it’s not like I’m crazy, don’t say it like that… like I’m
troubled or shit.

Okay…okay…maybe
be this is just routine, something she has to say.

“Are you
alright with me being your therapist?”

I studied
her.

Yeah, you look
good, trustworthy, reserved and somewhat enchanted. I like that,
quite goth.