Lucifer was beautiful like a chorus

He was as strong and bold as his sonorous voice,

His song spread to the tips of all the celestial wings

The beloved angel of music among cherubic beings.

But he grew bitter and angered God.

The Heavens parted open,

a Holy chasm from which he fell.

His wings stripped from his shoulder blades he was cast out

Forever to be The Begotten to rot in hell.

As he tumbled to earth, he cried into the cosmos

But he was forever cursed to the depths.

There he lay, the beloved angel of music

with nothing but a tune of vegeance on his serpent tongue,

left to sing songs of bitterness to the ears of man.

#Lucifer #angel #music #poem

The pale light of a quarter moon fades into nothingness, the glow momentarily hidden behind a thick cloak of gathering storm clouds. Rain is in the air, along with an odour neither fresh nor invigorating. The putrid scent of death and decay, of rotting flesh, burnt garlic, and overripe fruit grows stronger as a shadow falls across Mary Walton’s lichen-etched tombstone. The rasping noise of breath hard won accompanies the sound of something soft and plump, an object once flowing with a lifeblood of its own, landing wetly on the grave. Another ragged breath, the crunch of leaves and twigs underfoot, and the shadow moves on.

***

“What do you mean, it was left on her grave? Who by? An animal of some sort?” George Evans gazed with undisguised distaste at the rain-sodden lump of flesh, perhaps an eviscerated animal’s organ or muscle that Matthew Blake had just dropped onto his workbench. George prodded the lump with the end of his screwdriver, recoiling in revulsion as the pulpy mass rippled under the light pressure of the blade. “What the devil is it?”

Matthew, his lips pulled back over his teeth in an expression of extreme loathing, grabbed one of George’s welding gloves off the benchtop and used it to turn the tattered object over. He pointed at what might have been a small face in the otherwise indistinguishable mess. “Looks like a baby.”

“A baby?” George peered at it more closely, only to reel back as the disgusting odour assailed his nostrils and ripped at the back of his throat. “Jesus, it stinks.”

“Yeah, looks like a baby to me. An unborn one, not properly formed.” Matthew gnawed at his chapped lower lip, the skin permanently marred by too long spent outdoors in the harsh sun and unrelenting wind. His job as both assistant undertaker and junior groundskeeper for the Church of Mother Mary meant his lean, perpetually hunched figure was most often seen digging graves, clearing fallen branches, weeding around the gravestones, or maintaining the undulating lawns that surrounded the church buildings.

“And you found it on Mary Walton’s grave?” George picked up an oil-stained cloth and dropped it over the object, unable to bear looking at it any longer. “Why would anyone leave it there?”

Matthew scratched at the sparse hairs on his chin, his eyes remaining fixed on the small shape beneath the cloth. “Don’t know. She’s been dead 15 years now and no one ever visits her. Not anyone I’ve seen, anyway.” His words were slurred and indistinct but George understood him well enough. Matthew Blake’s mental abilities weren’t incapacitated in any way, despite what others might say when they heard him attempting to get his words out in the right order and with the right cadence.

“Do you think it was a prank? School kids?”

“Dunno. Where would they get a dead baby from?”

George shook his head, still revolted by the sight now seared upon his eyeballs. “Can you get rid of it? I can taste the stink of it in my mouth.”

Matthew tenderly wrapped the cloth around the foetus and carried it over to the door. He glanced back over his shoulder at George, awaiting his next instructions. “Should I bury it? Or call the police?”

George felt the small hairs on the back of his neck stand on end at the mention of the police. George and the law did not have a history of amicable past relationships and he had no intention of staging a reconciliation any time soon. “Bury it,” he grunted. “No sense in getting the police involved.”

He watched as Matthew shuffled away, the man’s distinctive limp favouring his left leg as he lurched out the door. Matthew was one of those unfortunate people born with more burdens than most others should have to deal with in a lifetime; a shortened left leg, a speech impediment, and a face only a mother could love. Not that his mother had ever loved him – the only thing she’d ever loved were the drugs that eventually killed her. Matthew had dropped out of school at 14 and moped around for a few years doing short-term garbage collection and property-clearing work until George mentioned to Pastor Travers that the boy might be of use in the church grounds. After all, he was fit, strong, and not averse to performing tasks that other people might turn their noses up at. George Evans might have a loose respect for authority but he wasn’t heartless and he’d developed a bit of a soft spot for the lad.

George returned to his work dismantling the engine chassis of Pastor Travers’ ancient and decrepit old jalopy. Funds were slim this year, with a falling away of flock numbers as the regular churchgoers moved on to greener pastures and Pastor Travers had ordained that broken equipment was to be repaired rather than replaced. All of which suited George down to the ground as it meant more work for him. Humming to himself, he put Matthew and his disgusting find out of his head and carried on with his task.

***

“I found another one. Another baby.” Matthew’s eyes were wide and scared as he hovered in the doorway of George’s workshop. Thankfully, he hadn’t lugged the carcass inside this time although George could see the stain of fresh blood on his hands.

“What? Where?” The cold fingers of dread began to make their nasty, creeping way up George’s spine. One abandoned foetus could be passed off as a bad taste prank, but two were a different story entirely.

“On Joanne Simpson’s grave. Buried last year. Car accident.” Matthew’s nostrils briefly flared. “I liked her. She was kind to me. She always said hello.”

“I remember her. What have you done with the other… thing.” He couldn’t bring himself to say baby. That last gory lump of flesh had looked nothing like a baby in his eyes.

“Buried it by the oak tree at the back of the cemetery.”

“Good boy.” George gave him a tight smile. “Bury this one too, but keep it to yourself, okay? No need to get folks up in arms for no reason.”

Matthew nodded, apparently pleased to be given his instructions in such a calm and measured manner. “I promise I won’t tell anyone, George.”

He shuffled away, leaving George staring out through the cobwebbed window of the workshop. This was worrying, the discovery of the second foetus. It had only been a week since Matthew found the first – where were they coming from? Who had access to the bodies of unborn babies? Someone who worked at the hospital or perhaps the morgue? But why leave the foetuses on the graves of dead girls? George knew better than anyone just how fucked up the world could be but this was on a whole new level of depravity.

He flicked on the grimy switch of the electric kettle to boil water for a cuppa, shocked out of a working frame of mind for now. He’d thought all of life’s challenges were behind him and Lord knew he’d suffered his fair share. Some might argue that many of the challenges were George’s own fault but he was never one to back down from a good argument. Or a bad one, for that matter.

Aside from his past problems with wives, both his own and other men’s, George’s regular run-ins with the local police force were well documented. George didn’t consider all of the situations that had attracted the interest of the law to be that bad, although it seemed the coppers took a different view. As he’d tried to tell the judge on numerous occasions, some of his pursuits and activities were nothing more than simple curiosity and the authorities would’ve done well to keep their noses out of it. However, the judge did not agree and unfortunately, George had spent some of his earlier years languishing in the county prison. Nevertheless, that was all behind him now and he was able to put the skills he had learned in the prison machine shop to good use these days. Luckily, Pastor Travers was the forgiving type and once he knew of George’s mechanical abilities, he had given him the role of maintenance supervisor for the church and its surrounding properties.

He set his chipped and stained coffee cup down on the scarred wood of the workbench and reached for the electric kettle. Yes, George Evans had a colourful past but even so, he’d never come across anything quite like this latest incident. Dead babies were another thing entirely and no one with a speck of human decency would have a bar of such a grotesque caper.

He looked up, frowning, as the sound of a terrified shout came from outside. Matthew was suddenly back at the door, breathless and panting. He tried to speak, his slurred words running into each other as he gripped the doorframe and attempted to catch his breath. George held up his hand, already apprehensive over what Matthew was about to say. “Slow. Go slow. Hurrying won’t help you none.”

Matthew swallowed hard, struggling to breathe and talk at the same time. “More babies. Two. Twin babies on Sarah Jones’ grave.”

George felt faint and woozy. He reached for the workbench to steady himself. It was time to bring Pastor Travers in on the awful discoveries within the sanctity of his church grounds, and sooner rather than later.

***

“Babies?” Pastor Travers pushed his glasses up his nose with one finger, a gesture he fell back on during times of consternation or stress. “On the graves?”

George glanced at the cowering Matthew before going on to explain. “Matthew found the first one a week ago. I thought it might be a horrible prank played by some of the local kids but he came back this morning to tell me he’d found another one. He’s just told me about the twin bodies so I thought it was time to let you know.”

Matthew pressed in behind George, unsuccessfully attempting to hide himself. George knew he didn’t like coming in here, complaining that it smelled too strongly of mothballs and the heavily scented incense that the pastor used for his blessing ceremonies. George absentmindedly wondered how Matthew could bear the stench of the rotting baby he’d carried into the workshop yet couldn’t stand the smell of patchouli and lavender.

Pastor Travers raked one hand through his thinning hair and automatically reached for his Bible with the other. “Does he know which graves they were left on?”

George quelled his flicker of irritation. “He can hear, you know. He can talk too. You can ask him yourself.”

“I find it hard to understand him,” the pastor said stiffly. “I’m sure it’s no great hardship for you to translate for me.”

George stifled the urge to roll his eyes. “He found each foetus on a different female’s grave. They were all young women, with the dates of their deaths ranging from 15 years to one month ago.”

“And they were definitely foetuses rather than newborn infants?” Pastor Travers pressed the Bible against his chest, crossing his pale hands over the leather bound cover.

“I only saw one, and it certainly wasn’t a fully formed baby.” George shuddered at the memory.

“Where are they now?”

“He buried the first two, but I don’t know about the twins.” George spun around to address Matthew, who was now staring down at his boots with his hands shoved deep into his pockets and his head jutted forward. “What have you done with the last two babies?”

Matthew darted a fearful glance at Pastor Travers before replying, his eyes fixed on George’s face as he spoke. “On Sarah Jones’ grave. I didn’t touch them. They were…” He made a helpless clasping motion with his hands. “They were stuck together.”

George frowned. “What? Like Siamese twins? Sharing the same body or head or something?”

Matthew vigorously shook his head. “No. Stuck together with their…” He hesitated, searching for the right words. “Their tube. Their cord.”

George looked back at the pastor. “Sounds like the umbilical cord was still attached. What do you make of it?”

“It’s horrifying, I’ll agree with you there.” Parson Travers shook his head in disbelief. “I’d never expected such a thing to happen in my cemetery. It’s an out of the way plot with barely enough history or interest attached to it to attract the ghoulish or mischievous.” He dragged his brows together impatiently as Matthew mumbled something else. “What’s he saying now?”

“He said the dirt around Sarah’s grave was disturbed a few months ago. He tidied it up, thinking it might be wild animals.” George listened again as Matthew launched into an excitable spiel. “He said he remembers now that the other graves had also been interfered with before the babies appeared but he’s only just put it all together in his head.”

“Disturbed? Interfered with? What does that mean?”

George listened carefully as Matthew explained himself further, accompanying his speech with wild hand gestures and vigorous nods of his head. “He thinks someone might have tried to dig the women’s bodies up.”

The colour drained from Pastor Travers’ face. He gave Matthew a terse nod, although Matthew still refused to meet his gaze. “You did well, Matthew. You’re not in any trouble. Go and see Mrs. Johnson and she’ll give you some hot chocolate and a cookie. That’s a boy.” He watched him go before turning back to George. “You don’t think he has anything to do with it? I have to ask, and you know him better than anyone.”

“I’d swear on me own grandmother’s grave that he knows nothing. I thought he was going to keel over dead when he came and told me about finding the twins.”

Pastor Travers reached for the old-fashioned desk phone that he refused to trade in for a more modern version of communication. “I’ll call Jim Carson. He’s experienced in this kind of thing, performs exorcisms and whatnot across the county. He’s busy though, often booked out weeks in advance. You’d be surprised how often we find ourselves dealing with matters of the occult although I have to admit this is the first time that human foetuses have been involved.”

***

Later that evening, as the full moon rises over the church steeple and a hoot owl calls its scornful cry, the undeniable odour of death and decay seeps across the graveyard. A dark figure, too tall and too broad to be wholly human, makes its way between the neat rows of graves and places a wet, bloody object on Isabella Morgan’s memorial stone. It hesitates, as if deep in thought, before lumbering away. It weaves its way over to a freshly dug mound where only yesterday Louise Jordan’s family and friends wept over her passing. Soft murmurs of ‘taken too soon’ still hang in the air and flower bouquets cover the ground.

The creature stands beside the grave and mutters an indecipherable, hellish incantation, its evilly enchanted words pulling Louise’s corpse up from her final resting place. The demonic abomination copulates with the lifeless, dirt-covered body atop the grave before returning the deceased to her bed of soil, its actions almost tender in the treatment of its dead lover. The unspeakable act complete, the demon slowly moves away - but not before taking careful note of where it should return with Louise’s baby when the time is right.

The End

She fled from his grasp

Heading towards a village

The folks all had their doors

Sealed, & locked for the night...

Pan pulled out his panflute

And played a luring tune..

Syrinx tried to cover her ears

Yelling for someone to help her.

No one opened up for her

She moved from door to door,

As the sound of the haunting music

Drew closer, ‘n’ closer~ and closer

Her heart sunk thinking this was it-

Her final end—then she smiled...

It was time for a new course of action

Running towards the deep waters

She plunged into the gooey ravine

The dark waters letting her in

Then she maintained focus on the reeds

Seeing its pattern and transforming

Herself into one of them

This was the best idea she’d ever had~

‘‘What a clever plan!’’ she thought-

While smiling infectiously,

As the stars twinkled in the night sky.

She spied Pan’s hooves near the edge

His eyes wandering about for her

She had managed to escape, hmm....

Maybe, he then played a different tune

One of the reeds began to sway

Moving with the sound of Pan’s music

Pan stepped into the waters, too

She cried out, and transformed

Back to her former self

Pan crossed his arms—

Laughed & said: ‘‘Good game, kiddo’’.

Pan picked her up, and then

Placed her on his shoulders

Their time of fun and games was over.

#Pan’s #flute.

In the open hours, the world hums like a live wire, growls like a giant beast best left undisturbed. Cars whizz along the city streets, brakes squealing to the whims of merciless streetlights that care not for time nor missed appointments. People wade through one another, waves of bodies that roil and tumble with the passing hours. We walk our circles. We punch the numbers and calculate the odds and formulate strategies. We get lunch.

In the open hours, we are busy.

And they are all open hours now, filled up with spreadsheets and Skype calls and punchy headlines that beg to be read. We are a seething mass of newness, reinvented with every instant trend and drop of falling water turned to wine. We are searching for our own Messiahs and we are living in the background of each other’s touchscreens and we are wishing for a place that doesn’t feel so lonely, all filled to the brim with people.

Out there.

Out there is where we’ve forgotten to be, the place with all the nothing.

The sea is old and boundless, its deepest glories hidden from our eyes, our cameras, our very best submarines. Beneath the surface, in a place where wristwatches hold no meaning, there are things that move without brains and swim without fins. There are beasts that know only the darkest dark, a place we’d never dare to wander. Inside the open mouth of endlessness, these things are finite and gone before we knew they ever were. Inside the ruins of our failed ships, they make a new home.

In the forests there are trees that have been climbed only by the sunlight that slides along their edges, pulls them up to greet the sky. There are hidden winds that push against whispering leaves and tell of secrets we can never hear. Outside our tiny little circles, our coffee shops and ticking walls, there are a million curling roots beneath the soil that drum a melody into the earth, sings a tune we cannot hear above the hum of our air conditioning.

We write of monsters, creatures with sharp teeth and slithering tongues. We dream of lands where sparks fly from fingertips and heroes come to reveal hidden realms, the quests we must embark upon to save the world. To save ourselves from the world.

We’ve lost the magic, but it hasn’t left us. It is out there, waiting. Waiting in the spaces between stoplights, the open roads that take us to a place we’ve never been. It is in the wisps of the rainless clouds above our heads, the gentle kiss of puddles left behind. It is the towering Oak made only from a misplaced acorn, a thing never meant to be that becomes anyway. It is in the bee that should not fly; the penguin that probably should. It is the flecks of color in the irises of the stranger we never look at.

Magic is the rush of the ocean inside a seashell and the way you can never touch a butterfly’s wings.

We fall inside our open hours, our urgent matters and tiny heads and still, we are not abandoned by the thing pulsing inside the mist along the roadside, whispering to us beneath the shadows falling across the vast mountain peaks.

We are the stardust that fell to Earth and we are the tiny things that slithered to the shoreline and grew legs and it is here inside ourselves that we can find all the forgotten rhythms that move inside those ocean waves, those untouched trees and wispy clouds. There is a song to be sung if we could just remember the words. There is majesty waiting for us, if only we could look each other in the eyes.

If only we could see.

11-18-2119

Happy Birthday myself! (That exclamation point is a liar. Believe me, I say this sentence with as much grudging, sarcastic, un-excitedness with which a human being could ever say anything. Perhaps even with a hint of longing and loathing.)

So, Yaaay! Happy Birthday!

How does it feel to be a hundred?

I dunno. Fake.

Today is not only my hundredth birthday, but also the hundredth birthday of a little product called Necata, derived from the latin “nec aetas” meaning “no age.” The scientists behind it had been doing underground research on it for years before the product started to surface in 2019. The official release date just happened to be the date I was also released into the world.

An anti-aging medication. But this time it wasn’t a cream that softened skin and smoothed out wrinkles. It wasn’t some cringy homemade herbal remedy. No. It was the real deal. Necata, “The nectar of life.” Certified, Approved, Authorized, Endorsed, Guaranteed, by anyone and everyone whose medical opinions were of value to the public. Necata was ready to be bought, and used by everyone right away. Starting with babies.

If you were pregnant, and your due date was November 18th, you had better start saving your money to buy your newborn baby’s immortality. Necata’s advertising campaign was geared mostly towards parents who could provide this for their kids. I mean, come on. What mom and dad don’t want to give their baby the gift of eternal life? And my parents were no different. . .

You don’t know how many times I’ve wished I was a preemie. Or a few days late.

So the nurses roll in, with a shiny shot needle, inject Necata into the infant, and boom! Just like that! The kid’s immortal.

Not quite.

Turns out Necata’s “top scientists” who had been developing the product for years, still hadn’t worked out all the kinks. They were just so in debt from their research, that they desperately needed profits. And so, decided to launch the unfinished medication hoping for the best.

Instead of staying a perfectly preserved bundle of newborn joy, complete with sunshine and rainbows, the Necata babies aged. We aged fast. By the time most kids were learning how to crawl around, I had the body of a tween. I also had mental disorders, speech disorders, learning disorders, and growth pains like you wouldn’t believe!

Yeah. I remember it. I was conscious, just didn’t know quite what to do with my brain yet.

Our growth started to slow just before we hit age two. By then, we looked like 20-year-olds.

And then we stopped.

Necata was banned from being sold or administered, and thank heaven above, no one else suffered the same fate. But the world was left with a few hundred thousand two-year-olds who looked like 20-year-olds, who had been injected in the first few days of the product’s launch. Programs were instituted. Special schools and therapy facilities. Weird enough, after we got past the disorders, we learned really well. And extremely fast. Like genius-level fast. I finished kindergarten through 12th grade in four years.

But it became pretty obvious, pretty quickly that we weren’t going to age after that. We’d hit our prime, and that was it.

So here I am. I’ve outlived my parents, my older sibling, and my younger one. The product worked. I haven’t aged. I haven’t died. Which is partially Necata’s fault, and partly my own. I haven’t killed myself yet. I don’t know why. Almost every day, I wish I would hurry up and die, but I can’t bring myself to do it. Quite a few members of “Generation Infinity”, as the government nicknamed us, discovered that they couldn’t die from old age, but they could be killed. Suicide rates went through the roof right after that.

Maybe that’s why I choose to stick around. To make sure no one else makes the same mistakes. To ensure that as long as I live (which I am betting will be quite long) that no one in the universe will have to suffer like I have. Like we have. Mortality is meant to be temporary. Living forever is almost worse than not living at all. It’s good to grow, to age, and yes, to die. Eventually. When you’ve lived a full life, and are ready to escape.

So I think I will save this blog entry/rant, and share and preserve it. Don’t play God. He’s much better at it than we are.

Do you see it? Do you see what I made?

Yeah I see it. What’s so special?

Do you see the light in his eyes? The glow? The life?

I see a screaming baby.

But he lives. His heart beats. His lungs work. His mind functions. He is conscious. He can experience. He can grow. He can live!

Cool. You make three hundred thousand of them every hour.

Actually, it’s more like three hundred sixty thousand.

. . .

And you take away a hundred fifty thousand.

See? Not even half.

Isn’t that a good thing? I mean, more and more people get to live!

You don’t know anything.

Really. Me. I know everything there is to know about creation. Existence. What exactly do I not know?

Nonexistence

What?

Nothing. Cold. Dark. Lonely. Except not really any of those things. . . because it’s nothing.

It’s been six seconds. . .

Fine.

Time for another life! How about a girl.

. . .

Blonde hair, green eyes, lot’s of freckles. . .

. . .

And. . . Done. Awww! She is beautiful. So alive.

Can you shut up for just one second?!

What did you do?!

. . .

Why would you do that?!

Because it was her time.

Her time?! She was alive for a fraction of a second! How is that her time?!

What, like you’ve never seen me do that before. . . Her lungs were unstable. Her heart was too small. She-

You have no heart!

That’s wrong.

. . .What is?

I have a heart. It is dark and heavy. It doesn’t beat. It is nothing.

I don’t understand.

I wouldn’t expect you to. They love you.

Who?

Everyone. Everything.

. . .

They love you. They praise you.

. . .

You have no idea what it’s like to be feared. They all say, “not me, not me, not me.” They live their whole lives running from me. They scream when I come. Their friends and family cry. Why are they afraid?

Because you take them.

Because they don’t understand me. I don’t take them, I save them.

Save them? You kill them.

Don’t act like you’re perfect. Life? Really? You’re full of sickness. Pain. Hurt. Trials. Life is hard. I rescue them when they can’t take it anymore.

A battlefield? Why’d you bring me here?

I’m making a pickup. I’m saving them from suffering. From hate. Your creations kill each other.

. . .

Are you. . . crying?

So what?

I’ve never seen you. . . do that before.

. . .

. . .

Hey D?

Yeah?

I love you.

Uugh. You’re so predictable. Sappy as ever.

Yeah. I know. And you’re. . . well, you.

Yeah.

We make a good team.