Mean Dogs & Goldfish
1) Phone Sex
A. "Has anyone ever told you that you have a really sexy voice?"
B. "Yeah, I used to work for the radio station when I was in college. You should hear me whisper."
C. Barely audible bedroom whisper in his left ear, a little raspy with unbearable sexxxy resonance..."Get the fuck outta here creep."
2) Mean Spirited
A. "I think this roommate situation will work out well, but there's something you should know. There's a ghost that's been fucking with me. He tried to kill my last roommate. His name is Jameson."
B. "Okay, that's cool. Good to know. Lucky for you, ghosts love me."
C. Six months later: Fucking Jameson knocked over my whole goddam box of Goldfish just to be a dick. What a monster.
3) Ghosted
A. "Where are you? What happened? I'm so confused." Radio silence.
B. Unanswered texts = 37. Unreturned phone calls = 15. Profound voicemails = 1.
C. "I've decided to leave you one singular voicemail since you're ghosting me after 4 months together. It's called Casper the Cowardly Ghost. I hope you like it, you stupid mother fucker." **True story. I did this** :) :) :)
4) Lie with the Dogs
A. "Your boyfriend left you because you have a terrible singing voice."
B. "You didn't deserve to be ghosted."
C. "I'm a nice dog."
5) Nightmares
A. "How's your novel coming along?"
B. "Not great, but my mean dog and Jameson believe in me."
C. Unwritten chapters = 37. Thank God my radio silence has a sexy voice.
Alienation
I expected it — I was notified
I accepted it — aware and clear-eyed
Therefrom came the scheduled rendezvous
My Star Caller, punctual, followed through
As ethereal, mega-headed, and telepathic
In agreement with my intuition
It accepted my precondition
It would not communicate
Or otherwise concentrate
With anyone else extrasensorate
Lest a whirlwind of complex humanity
Confound it in cultures contradictory
I needed to break it in gently
To the foibles of mankind's assembly
And risk not, tragically, alienate
I considered first contact, at least,
With a rabbi, an imam, or priest
But even that could involve trysts
Of subtly misread, misunderstood risks
Simple mistakes incompatibly mutate
No, I needed to go even humbler
Lest make the usual human blunder
Of solipsistic hubris, misassumption,
Leading our summit to fruitless disjunction
Essential to avoid the ill-passionate
Who should I deem it meet
To avoid our unavoidable conceit?
Who, from it, should we dutifully hide,
Those it couldn't, wouldn't, shouldn't abide?
The very same saboteurs who pontificate
Where are the Kings, Mother Theresas, and Ghandis
And the Mandelas we ideally embrace so fondly
When sidestepping the ubiquitous, quotidian cruelties
That the rest of us wear so proudly as jewelry?
The deceit, invectives, and racism used to subjugate
It turns out I met it, impotently, to befriend us
But with no one I trusted to fairly represent us
Until there appeared a proxy enchanted
Who was always there but taken for granted
Man's best friend, incarnate
He greeted the being satisfactory
With wagging inquiries olfactory
Opened its mouth to invite it
And have faith his jowls wouldn't bite it
More than enough to appreciate
This oral seduction inviting to trust
Between dog and Star Caller was decisively sussed
Giving the gentle but powerful canine
The benefit of the doubt without reading his mind
Neither a biting-the-hand-that-feeds-it correlate
"For surely," said Star Caller, "this gentle sentience
Could tear my flesh apart in temperamental violence.
But taking my limb so softly, with such teeth
Dignifies sweet innocence underneath."
Host and guest forged a whole world's fate
"I've seen enough," concluded Star Caller.
"How can I wreck a planet that's smaller
Than the love such a creature has for its friend
And who will live for him till the very end?"
Without judgment, scoring, or debate
Star Caller returned to the skies, aimed at his Sun
To report back to those whence he had come
En route called, but once, via quantum transmitter
To put down a deposit for the pick of the litter
Godforsaken Desert Lows
He died in the winter of his 32nd year
Coming home to a place he'd never been before
He couldn't leave yesterday behind him
You might say he was dead all along
You might say he lost the keys to the door
When he first came to the desert his life was far away
Off the trails, hanging by a grain of sand
All his dreams broken and he wished he cared more
It keeps coming down and he won't last much more
In the Godforsaken Desert Lows
I've seen it snowing sand on the moon
The sunlight behind the night sky is louder than we know
Godforsaken Desert Lows (Godforsaken lows)
Godforsaken Desert Lows (God only knows)
He fell from idolic mountains
He hit the dusty roads below
He couldn't see everything he was meant to be
They say he went crazy
When the sand blocked the sun
He couldn't make friends with the moon or memories
Now we walk without him
With his desolation and dunes
Seeking forgiveness with every step we take
He lost sight of himself and we can't ever understand
The turbulence of a lost soul in wasted desert sands
In the Godforsaken Desert Lows
I've seen it snowing sand on the moon
Talked to God but he didn't reply
Godforsaken Desert Lows (Godforsaken lows)
Godforsaken Desert Lows (God only knows)
Now his life is full but it's over
And our hearts know a new kind of fear
Complicated hearts we can all understand
Weeping under mountains instead of climbing some more
We're all scarred from our own Godforsaken wars
In the Godforsaken Desert Lows
I've seen it snowing sand on the moon
I've seen a man lose his life too soon
Fuck these Wasted Desert Lows
Godforsaken Desert Lows
I've seen it snowing sand on the moon
Strangers around the campfire and everybody's low
We're all wasted in these Godforsaken Desert Lows
The Desert Moon
It's beneath the sand
where all is buried
in desert low
like a pearl
the pool
Beneath the sand
down where it's
neither
hot nor cooled
Beneath the sand
of Time
where all lies
in waiting
Beneath the sand
drawn for its own
full occasion
by the tide
Beneath the sand
the pull of water
dips anew...
Beneath the sand
the desert Moon.
11.26.2023
The Desert Moon challenge @Huckleberry_Hoo
Hitting the Wall
For the last few years, I've been obsessed with gender relations. I watched countless hours of YouTube videos on the subject from many different perspectives. What I found is that there is a lot of bitterness out there from both men and women.
There are a lot of women who just straight up hate men. There are also a lot of women who have decided that they are done with being a "strong independent" woman. They have reached a place in their life where they don't want to go through it alone anymore. However, they are having a hard time getting the men they want to take them seriously and they have come to the realization that they will be spending the rest of their lives alone.
There are also men who hate women. They resent women because they are in that large group of men with whom women won't give the time of day. There are also men who have witnessed friends or relatives being taken to the cleaners in divorce and hesitate to enter into that kind of arrangement themselves.
I am in that large group of men with whom women don't even see. There are reasons for that which I won't regurgitate here but once explained make perfect sense.
So, I have come to a place where I am sympathetic with the things women have to consider when selecting a partner. I can also accept that as a man I need to develop myself to a certain extent otherwise women aren't going to see me. I can choose to put in that work or if I think it's not worth it, not put in the work.
I never thought that I would ever be the object of any womans desire. I also thought I would end up as the guy that some woman had to settle for because she either let the guy she really wanted go or couldn't secure him in the first place.
However, I was wrong. This past year I met a woman who truly desired me. It was as amazing as I thought it would be. I had never felt love like that from anyone before. It would have been beyond amazing if that could have been maintained but that turned out not to be the case. Still, I don't regret it for even a moment. She loved me and it felt more real than anything else I have ever experienced. If she is reading this, she should know that she deserves both love and devotion.
I'm not ever going to be the same and it's in the best way possible. To leave someone in a better place than when you found them is a good thing and that is certainly the case with me. I don't expect to ever find that again but at least I now know it's possible.
You may be asking what "hitting the wall" means in terms of mate selection. What it means is that you are no longer capable of attracting the person you want. In the case of women, they can always get sex. There will always be some guy somewhere willing to have sex with you if you are desperate enough, but I'm not talking about sex, I'm talking about the person you want to spend the rest of your life with.
Men start out worthless (unless they have looks) and have to work to get to the place where they can attract the person they want. Most men never get to that place.
If you've seen a video by some woman who has realized that they don't want to be alone anymore and can no longer attract the person they want, it can be sad because you only live once and if you screw it up, that's pretty much it. However, I don't feel sorry for anyone, especially myself. I'm responsible for putting in the work to get the life I want. I either do it or I don't. That's what being a man is.
So, I'm doing it and the closer I get to that place, the more that women are going to notice. That's just the way it works. However, I'm not working on myself to attract a woman, I am working on myself because the more I work on myself, being the person I've always wanted to be, the happier I am going to be.
There is a woman who is worth being devoted to, I know because I've met her, and she has set the bar super high for any other woman that might find me attractive in the future.
Petrichor
he wakes his love
dark rumble
over lush surface
she feels his insistence
a building deluge
that can no longer be denied
cloudbursts profess
his love unbound
as she achingly pulls
every aqueous droplet offered
into her substratum
for she knows
this is life itself
spent, he deeply inhales
the rising aromatic nectar
of their liaison
upon her landscape
The Cut
I wonder if you will ever know the damage you’ve caused. It’s been a year, but in my soul the time where we existed together seems like the only reality I’ve ever known. Everything now seems hollow in comparison and lacking reason or sense of purpose...Will it always be this way? It’s almost funny, so many times we discussed which one of us would flake from this relationship. If i’m being honest I always believed it would have been me. True enough, it was the punch I didn’t see coming…It was you…I fucking hate you for it. So much so that I laugh and cry at the same time, the insanity of the moment creating suffocation within me. Believe you me I’ve tried to forget you. I’ve gone out with my friends; I’ve picked up hobbies, and even turned to religion for comfort. Did you know I even tried kissing another girl just the other day? Her name was Alice. She was sweet, beautiful, and certainly more agreeable than you ever were. By any standard a ten if there ever was one. Yet, I left her all together after that kiss. Nothing tasted more bitter on my lips. Nothing offended my eyes more. Nothing broke me quite as deep than painfully being aware she wasn’t you. Where ever I go, whatever I do, your the reminder that something will forever be missing. There are days were I muster the strength to look at the old oak tree in the field. You remember the one?…I still chuckle thinking of the night of the famous One-Star show. You laid at the feet of that tattered old oak, like a child whose about to see their first firework; the anticipation of magic in your eyes waiting for a sky full of stars to shine in splendor. Yet there was only one. Not even the moon was full. By all means a disappointment by any who knew better, but not you, your eyes stared at that one star as if you were looking at the face of God. Never disappointed, and in that one moment making me realize just how much I loved you. You didn’t see the world the same way I did which is why I needed you near me. My colors grew ever brighter from your light…I dare admit I still need you…So much so that now I lay at the feet of that tattered old tree, and I look for that one star among a sky of millions. When I find it I stare it, much like you did. Only it’s not God I see, but you; it’s not magic I feel, but an endless grief. I will burn this letter after it is written. With eyes welled up, within me never grew the strength to admit and accept; that the moment my life ended was the day you……
True Crime
These vignettes are snapshots collected in a scrapbook. Added all together, they make a short film on a small segment of my life in these last few years. When I look back at the gathered pieces of prose, they give me a tangible view of memory and perception. These pieces are real life, tossed out among fantastic stories of the nearly believable.
I wish these little pieces weren't so easy to believe.
I'd much rather convince the reader that vampires exist and monsters walk among us. Murder makes a far more compelling subject, I think.
These holiday stories, they tell the tale of aging parents and the inevitable conclusion of a major life chapter.
My grandmother wasn't a saint, but that's probably because she didn't live long enough to become a villain. My grandfather did.
I don't think my mother will.
She may not be a villain, but her heroic days are long gone. She doesn't even go to bed anymore. I don't know if that's because she doesn't have the energy, or if it's because she's fine staying in the recliner. I know I sometimes sleep in mine, but I almost always wake up in the middle of the night, drunk with sleep and stumbling into my bedroom.
She seems to sleep all the time.
"What do you want to watch on tv?" She asks, for the twentieth time. She punctuates the question with scrolling down the Dish Network guide page, but she nods off with her finger on the remote. I look over at my stepfather, and he shrugs, shaking his head. This is the new normal.
She sleeps this way for five minutes, ten, maybe even an hour. She awakens with a start, asking if I'd decided what channel to watch. "Whatever you want to see," I answer, thumbing to the next page of my book.
We don't really talk. We never really have, at least not in years. This is our routine, this is our love language: it started in the days of Turtles before it became Blockbuster, hell, it started before chain movie rentals were even a thing. We'd snag enough movies to last a weekend, and we'd make our way through them. Sometimes we'd check out six at a time. Now, we surf the half-dozen subscription services we have on our phones, or maybe we scroll down that guide page on the Dish.
What little talking we do on this trip is about a girl I almost dated. She had a feature in the paper, local lady does good over at the District Attorney's office.
Mom always did want me to be a lawyer. I guess reminding me of the lawyer I let get away is as close as she'll get. (The fact that we never dated hasn't really clicked with Mom for decades, and God knows it doesn't click now.)
So I drive back home, and we begin watching television. Or, we begin looking for something to watch, which actually takes more time than watching what's been agreed upon. This trip, I managed to save a small collection of movies I thought would do. Some of them did the trick, but a few were "too weird," as she puts it.
Big words from a lady who sleeps through the credits and most of the stuff in between them.
I'm not sure of the moment everything changed with these trips back home. I know it began to change back when she got a secondary infection from an operation a few years ago. The anti-biotics did a number on her kidneys.
It's been a slippery slope ever since.
This Thanksgiving has given me a harsh live-action glimpse of life back home. Historically, Mom did all the work in the kitchen. Not just Thanksgiving, but all of it. She was a stay at home mom, her job was to make the house a home. She did this expertly, preparing daily southern meals that Paula Deen or Martha Stewart would be lucky to share.
She doesn't cook anymore.
This thing, this centerpiece of pride, a chore that made up so much of her identity (not to me, but to herself) is gone.
My step-father does all the kitchenwork now, and he prepared the Thanksgiving meal.
For the first time, I saw the ghost of my mother sleeping in the chair where my mom used to sit.
"Things are getting harder," he quietly said to me. We whispered in hurried murmurs when Mom stepped into the master bathroom. "Her mind is..." he trailed off. Shifting gears, he continued, "Her moods are hard."
He didn't say it, but he didn't have to.
Her mind is going.
"Did you decide what to watch on television?" She asks, shuffle-stepping back to ease down into her recliner. I smile, and tell her it doesn't matter to me.
We don't talk, we watch television.
She falls asleep again after putting the TV on a true crime show.
Looking over towards the woman who still knows me, but whom I used to know, I think time is the truest criminal. Maybe this is a story about murder, after all.
sacred time
may I wake up to in the morning
to the sound of my brother
laughing in my mother's arms
they are dancing to the coffee song
(that's what he calls it)
tonight we'll chase fireflies
it is the year of the cicadas
and the summer of mosquitos
we'll get out the citronella candles
and the tealights for dinner
my dad is coming home today
we'll eat dinner on the deck
at my grandparents house
corn on the cob, off the cob
steak and dessert - always
there is a sister and a daughter
I hug her tightly and she smiles
with some of her teeth missing
she still has a birthmark
on her forehead but it's faded
this time is sacred, I linger before I leave
and it is the only thing that heals me
Madness
I.
“He is life's liberating force.
He is release of limbs and communion through dance.
He is laughter, and music in flutes.
He is repose from all cares— he is sleep!
When his blood bursts from the grape
and flows across tables laid in his honor
to fuse with our blood,
he gently, gradually, wraps us in shadows
of ivy-cool sleep.”
― Euripides, The Bacchae
***
They called it Morgellons disease. When I told the doctors about the vines that had begun their march through my veins. The grapes that had begun to swell under my skin, creating bulges and ulcers that stretched my skin, pulled at my joints. My pimples began oozing wine instead of pus. It hurt to walk, for my toes had been swollen with grape-sized bunions. It began about a month ago.
I was twenty-two.
My finals were next week. It was my senior year. All I had to do was make it through the next month, and then I’d be free. Free to pursue my insanity. So instead of being institutionalized, I left the doctors office, holed up in my dorm, and studied.
I looked over my classical literature. I was a Classics major. It had always been a point of contention with my parents. A useless major, they said. A silly fantasy, chasing after childhood dreams, rejecting common sense in favor of a beautiful but shallow dream.
Some people wrote. Some people drew. Some people sculpted clay. My art form was consumption: The Odyssey. The Iliad. The Bacchae.
The Bacchae.
Something about that story resonated with me, a deep, sacred sensation that wove its way through my soul. It was a feeling I had never felt before, a sense of belonging, of place. An identity. Where did it come from? And why, only now, was I feeling it?
I had found myself in the pages. Purpose. Life. Meaning. Love. Joy.
I gave up on studying and instead read and reread Euripides’s tragedy until I could practically recite it from memory.
And thus began my Madness.
II.
“Prepare yourselves
for the roaring voice of the God of Joy!”
― Euripides, The Bacchae
***
After failing my exams (an expected result, but still a painful one, especially my most cataclysmic failure: 13% in English, in what had previously been my best subject.) I resolved to dedicate the remainder of my life to madness. Contrary to popular belief, Madness, like any other skill, can be learned. Practiced. Mastered.
I freed the grapes from underneath my skin. Plucked them out and ate them. The wine that ran from my veins stained the carpet of my apartment, just like it stained my teeth. Red. Red wine.
My bed began smelling strongly of vinegar. Or perhaps it was piss. Piss and vinegar, ha, ha. I would wake up in the night clutching wet sheets, my body throbbing, the grapes growing larger and larger until my whole body was simply a mass of deformed flesh, and then shrinking back down again. Returning to normal. Except my skin was looser now. I was a vessel. A vessel for more grapes. More wine. More vines. My body was a vineyard, a winery. I was merely a field waiting to be tilled, a harvest of grapes waiting to be fermented into something greater.
No more college. No more job. I was a full-time Madman.
Of course, after three months of no rent and a foul smelling odor coming from my apartment, I was evicted. The rest of my savings went to paying for damages. Something about stained carpets. Alas, an unfortunate side-effect of my condition.
Madness, I have discovered, is a comfort. Insanity has freed me from those daily tediums. ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,’ right? I am no longer a dull boy. Now I’m sharp. Like a knife. Or a broken wine bottle, with deep red-hued pieces that get lost in the carpet and stick into your bare feet.
It’s funny, I’d always thought a psychotic break would be terrifying. No idea what is real or what isn’t. But I know exactly what’s real: the vines. The wine.
I drank a lot of it, the wine. More than before. I’d always enjoyed liquid courage on the weekends, but now, with no obligations, every day was a weekend. More time to devote to my new god, Dionysus. He had chosen me as his apostle, his servant, his protege. A new Pentheus, Man of Sorrow, except I will not make the same mistakes. I will remain reverent. I have been chosen. Of all the Madmen, every person with the dark seed within them, I have been chosen to let it flourish, let it sprout, let it grow, let my dark fruit give birth to the finest wine: Madness.
I wandered the vine-encrusted undersides of bridges, cut my feet on the broken glass and stones that lined my path. Follow the vines. Follow the vines. Follow the vines.
Once a boy holding a shining smartphone dumped wine on my head as I slept. It awoke me, cold, sticky, sweet. He laughed as he stuffed his phone into my face.
“Look at this loser,” he said with a cackle. “I bet you’re addicted to crack, aren’t you? Ain’t ya? Ancha? Ancha?”
Ancha. Ancha. Ancha.
His voice distorts, becomes a chant. Like a prayer to some ancient god.
Without thinking, my hand closes around his wrist. He drops the phone. The screen shatters. I see my wild eyes reflected in it, twin pits, deep, bottomless, empty.
“You’re gonna pay for that, you crackhead bitch!” he screams.
I stare at him with cold, dead eyes.
“ΘΥΜΑΣΑΙ?”
The voice was not my own, the words, a language I did not recognize. The question was as much directed at me as it was at the boy. If only I knew what I was asking. What I was being asked.
I let go of his wrist. White marks on his skin turning red. He ran. I ran. Opposite directions. I just knew I could not stay here anymore.
He left the broken phone on the sidewalk.
I was aware after minutes (Hours? Days? Years?) of running that I was being followed. My shadow was in front of me, illuminated by approaching red and blue lights, the rhythm of my heavy breathing obscured by the pulsating rhythm of sirens.
I stopped running, surrendered. A deep feeling in my stomach, somewhere between dread and peace, told me it was time.
III.
“O Dionysus, Son of God,
do you see our sufferings?
Do you see your faithful
in helpless agony before the oppressor?
O Lord, come down from Olympus,
shake your golden thyrsus
and stifle the murderer's insolent fury.”
― Euripides, The Bacchae
***
I was twenty-four, and the padded cell made it hard to breathe.
Not in the literal sense, simply in the metaphorical. Here there was no wine, no vines to follow. Only white walls, too soft for me to crush the grapes upon it.
It was still hard to breathe. In and Out. In was easy. Getting out, much harder.
I have to get out.
I had been there, in the place they call Harvest Hospital, for two months before I resolved to end my life.
I thought extensively of how I would do it, confined to four padded walls and two pills a day. Antipsychotics, they told me. I learned it was in my best interest to lie when they asked about my “persistent delusions.”
The vines were still here. The grapes were still here. The only thing missing was the sweet sweet wine.
I found myself picking at hangnails until they bled, comforting myself on the miniscule droplets of wine that shed from my fingers. When I could, I smeared it on the walls— the padded walls may have resisted my flesh, but the wine it absorbed hungrily, a stain— in words I did not recognize, but that thrilled me with some infernal meaning.
ΔΙΟΝΥΣΙΟΣ.
One of the therapists (one of many, an every rotating cast of professionals whose names and faces blurred together, psychiatrists and specialists and doctors and soothsayers and mindfulness coaches and every manner of well-educated quacks who claimed to understand what I was feeling, what I was.) inadvertently translated this phrase for me in a session.
“So what does Dionysus mean to you?” she asked.
I was startled into speaking.
“What?”
“Dionysus. The word on your walls.”
I was silent, mulling over this new significance. She continued to prod, but I ignored her. Dionysus. He was here, within me, exerting his influence. Closer than I’d ever imagined. It was a thrilling, almost sensual, realization.
It only strengthened my resolve.
I knew I needed to die. To kill myself. It was the final step in a two-year journey. The ultimate climax of Madness. I began my search. On the rare moments when I left my room, I was scouring the floors, looking for anything I could use. A screw. A broken bit of plastic. A discarded paper clip. Anything.
Nothing.
I scratched an itch. A particularly annoying pimple— a grape— I picked at until it oozed sweet wine. I sucked it away. A red ring left on the flesh of my arm where it used to be. An abscess. An absence.
I wondered if I could tear out my veins— the vines, ΦΛΕΒΕΣ— with my teeth. Perhaps I could. But probably not. I’m not crazy enough yet, I suppose. I must push myself further.
Once alone, I bite my shoulders, easily hidden underneath the cream white hospital gown. Deep red marks. No blood.
Not Mad enough. Never Mad enough. Get better. Get stronger. Rip and tear and bite and swallow the wine and the grapes and write His name on the walls. Dionysus. ΔΙΟΝΥΣΙΟΣ.
I am close. So close. Very close. I can taste the wine, smell the vines, lose myself in the sickly sweet sensation of Madness.
I bite again. This time there is blood. A small bead of it, like a dew drop on a spider’s web, crimson. Red wine.
Closer. Closer still.
I surrender for the night.
Perhaps tomorrow.
IV.
“His blood, the blood of the grape,
lightens the burden of our mortal misery.
Though himself a God, it is his blood we pour out
to offer thanks to the Gods. And through him, we are blessed.”
― Euripides, The Bacchae
***
Blood. Wine.
Blood. Wine. Grapes. Flesh.
ΑΙΜΑ. ΚΡΑΣΙ.
He is trying to tell me something. It is written on the walls. I cannot read it. Yet. I have tried to decipher the letters, and nearly succeeded, but I cannot decipher the words they spell. Meaningless collections of consonants and vowels. Letters without words. Words without meaning. A lost language.
Blood. Wine. Flesh. Drinking. Hunting. Darkness. Heat. Shattered. Broken fragments of memory. Memories that don’t exist.
What does it mean?
ΚΑΤΑΝΑΛΩΣΑΤΕ ΤΟΥΣ ΥΠΗΡΈΤΕΣ ΜΟΥ, ΑΝΕΞΑΡΤΗΤΑ ΑΠΟ ΤΙΣ ΣΥΝΕΠΕΙΕΣ. ΤΩΡΑ ΚΑΤΑΝΑΛΩΝΩ ΤΟ ΜΥΑΛΟ ΣΟΥ.
It was a voice without form, without sound, without substance. An echo from within.
“I don’t understand you! What are you saying to me?”
Now I am swarmed with doctors. I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud. I’m still screaming.
“What do you want, my lord? I’ll do it! I’ll do anything!”
One of the doctors, or nurses, or therapists, or just some random person, shoves a needle into my neck. The pain is short lived. But the darkness approaches. Perhaps I will meet him. Perhaps I will receive the answers I seek. In dreams. The sweet nectar of the subconscious rises in my throat like vomit.
I swallow. And then I am gone.
***
A black hole of memory. Dreams of parasitic grapes fermenting in my stomach. Innards turned to wine. A great black hole reaches for me, consumes the wine and flesh. A gaping hole. There is nothing. Nothing left. It has all been taken. Something sacred has been stolen. I cry out, my voice echoes, falling on deaf ears. Red spots dance in my vision, like mirages of grapes. A mouth stretches towards me, oddly familiar lips. Stained teeth. It sucks at my stomach, tongue licking my intestines, sucking away the wine. I am unraveling, eviscerated.
Then I am awake. Cold. Sweating. Afraid.
The mouth was mine.
V.
“The gods appear in many forms,
carrying with them unwelcome things.
What people thought would happen never did.
What they did not expect, the gods made happen.”
― Euripides, The Bacchae
***
The room is smaller now. Tighter. They give me three pills instead of one, and check on me at the top of every hour. I never leave. I have lost that privilege. I am “dangerous” now, unpredictable. There’s a red label at the top of my chart— I saw it when the nurse came in to check on me. She was afraid when she looked at me. Like she expected me to lunge, attack her.
She was pretty. Almost excessively so. It was hard to look at her, knowing that to her, I was an animal. A monster. This hospital was a zoo for her, full of degenerate monkeys. She’s forced to feed us, and every time she prays she does not get bit.
I found myself thinking about her long after she left. My food had grown cold. There were no shadows outside my door.
I wondered what it would feel like if we had met another way. Another time. Another place. She looked familiar.
But that is not what Dionysus wants for me. It is not what I am meant for.
But still…
I can so easily imagine soft blonde hair in my hands, kissing soft lips…
ΟΧΙ.
No.
There is a brief fleeting moment where I remember something. Understand something. Know everything.
The moment passes. I am gone.
***
Today is the day.
For twenty years I have been waiting in this gods-forsaken hospital. Scrounging what I could. Bargaining for what I couldn’t. An unholy cocktail of substances has both kept me alive and doomed me to a premature death. I could feel it. The vines grew fat and wide in my veins. The grapes began to swell into my throat. But the premature death was, of course, inevitable. It was always supposed to happen this way. Every day I awaited the day I could sink my teeth into my flesh and tear free the vines, taste the grapes, sink into the dark pool of the afterlife.
My teeth feel sharp. My flesh willing. Knives and fruit. Scissors and paper. Corkscrews and corks. Teeth and flesh.
I am watching the door. It is midnight. They will be coming to check on me, and then it will be a whole hour before they come back. If all goes well.
All will go well. This is all part of Dionysus’s plan.
Door opens. Face peeks in. I am pretending to be asleep. Door closes. I could hear the footsteps as they walked away. Maybe it was the nurse again.
One-two, three-four, five-six. Right-left, right-left, right-left.
Gone.
A wine-hued haze descends over my vision. I am frantic, manic, devoted, motivated.
Teeth ripping into flesh. Staining the clothes, the sheets, the floor. Running down my lips, my neck, my hands. Sweet wine. Sweet death. Liquid death. I am coming, Dionysus.
ΠΑΡΑΔΙΝΟΜΑΙ ΣΕ ΣΟΥ. I surrender. To you, Dionysus. My Lord.
Vision blinking in and out. No. Not yet. I need to bite more, rip and tear, bleed, die.
Oh Gods it hurts, it fucking hurts, deep red agony, ripping, tearing agony. ΑΓΩΝΙΑ.
I am shaking. Sobbing. Suddenly afraid.
It’s not wine. It is blood. My blood. Death. My death.
I am not ready.
Please, don’t…
Too late.
I’m
…
VI.
“You who are so desperately eager
to see those things you should not look upon,
so keen to chase what you should not pursue.”
― Euripides, The Bacchae
***
ΕΣΕΙΣ. Ο ΔΟΛΟΦΟΝΟΣ ΤΩΝ ΙΕΡΩΝ ΤΕΛΕΤΩΝ.
I feel the words. They pulse like hot blood at my wrists, through my vine-veins, oozing from each pimple and scab.
Then I understand them. Hear them. As if spoken, although I cannot see their source.
“You. The Killer of Sacred Ceremonies.”
“Who is there?”
There is a deep, rumbling laugh. No. Not a laugh. Laughter is too human. This was some unholy expression of Eldritch amusement. A horrifying sound, a sensation too powerful to comprehend.
“You know who I am, boy. As I know you.”
It seemed too good to be true.
“D-Dionysus?”
“Indeed.”
The darkness around me swelled with purple light, undulating, vibrant.
I looked upon the face of my God.
I expected a bearded man, a crown of vines, deep black eyes. I expected the Dionysus that I had seen in statues, in myths. Strong, powerful.
What I got was an abomination, an incomprehensible mass of flesh and vines, thousands of blinking eyes, a nonexistent mouth that formed Ancient Greek words that I could only half understand. The stench of decay mixed with sickly sweet fermenting grapes. Dripping with wine in all shades and varieties, wines as old as time itself. Aged. Sweet. Sour. Wine that by sight and smell alone made you want to lean in, take a long, endless drink… Ambrosia, the nectar of the gods, the taste of paradise itself, if only I could just…
I screamed with the raw terror that only a dead Madman can produce. The sound seemed to feed him, to stabilize the roiling mass of flesh into something distantly resembling a face, if you squinted.
His many eyes watched, and waited.
Finally, I could no longer scream. The terror had abated into a kind of distant, manageable dread.
I looked down at my body, suspended in the void, and I saw… nothing. No vines pulsing under my flesh. No grapes swelling at the edges of my bones, bursting at my skin. Just the loose skin of an addict. Wrinkled, yellowed, scarred.
I smiled.
“Lord Dionysus.”
Now I could finally have the answers. Why I was chosen, why he sent me down this path.
He shifted the roiling mass of his body. As if he was cocking his head to the side. Amused.
“You have a question, I see. Ask, child.”
“Why?”
He stops moving. His malformed face surges towards me.
“Why what?” he spit. His sudden malice rendered me speechless for a moment. But only for a moment.
“Why was I chosen? To be here? To follow this path?” I only seemed to make him even angrier, so I continued, hurriedly. “I mean, was it boredom? Obsession? A random impulse? You must’ve chosen me for something.”
Some of Dionysus’s anger abated. His laughter was dark, cold. It tingled in my ears. Like wine in the brain.
“As if I’d ever ‘choose’ the likes of you,” he sneered in a garbled version of English. It sounded as if he was mocking me.
Suddenly I wanted to cry.
“Punishment, then?” My voice shook. “For… for what?” I was afraid to ask, but as I spoke Dionysus seemed more amused than annoyed. The twisted face he’d formed grinned, impossibly wide, with teeth stained wine red. His many eyes rolled in disdain. Then he fell still, his eyes almost seeming to mist over with a gloss of tears… if such a thing was even possible.
“I see… so you truly do not remember.”
“Remember what?”
Η ΑΜΑΡΤΙΑ ΣΟΥ.
ΤΟ ΕΓΚΛΗΜΑ ΣΟΥ.
Ο ΒΙΑΣΜΟΣ ΣΟΥ.
“I don’t understand.”
Dionysus smiles, that twisted, inhuman expression. Like he wanted to swallow me whole. Pop me between his teeth like a fat, fresh grape. Plucked from the vine.
“You used to be quite the partier, Everett.”
Saying my name stirred a memory that I didn't recognize. Tried to taste the memory of parties. Tried to remember the last time someone, myself included, had used my name. Found that I could not. All I knew, all I could remember, was madness. At 22, my life began. Everything before that had been consumed into a darkness that I could not understand. I didn't remember my parents. My friends. Only the Madness. There was only ever Madness. What everyone saw as a fantasy was my one and only reality.
“What?”
“Everett Sterling. That is your name, isn’t it?”
His grin was cruel. I couldn’t remember, and he knew it.
“What is this?”
I was seeing things. Things with dim house lights and bitter liquid. Not wine. Stronger.
“You found yourself in the wrong frat party. One populated with the wrong kind of Greek Life.”
“I… I don’t… I don’t understand.”
Dionysus’s voice became static, burning into my eardrums, slicing into my brain, ripping me apart.
“YOU DISTURBED THE SACRED RITES,” he roars. “YOU DARED TO LAY HANDS UPON MY MOST DEVOTED FOLLOWERS.”
The force of his voice is enough to blow the greasy strands of hair out of my face.
“I don’t… I don’t understand.”
“Of course,” Dionysus says, his voice suddenly cold and calm again. “To you, it was just another house party. Your friend Marty invited you, yes?”
I did not remember a Marty. But I was beginning to feel sick.
“He was killed after what happened, of course. He couldn’t be left alive. He was one of my own. A satyr, trained to seek and find those with the seed of Madness within them. He saw potential in you, Everett. The potential for Madness. The good kind. The kind of Madness that makes artists great, that makes men into immortals.” His smile was rueful, bitterness and sorrow. Not regret. Merely tainted with the knowledge of what could have been. “Everett, you were, in fact, chosen… in a way. Marty was trying to save you by taking you to that house party. I mean, seriously. A business major? You would’ve been miserable in a nine-to-five, and you know it. It’s why you gave in to me so easily.”
“So… what changed? What happened? What did Marty do?”
“Marty did nothing beyond extending the invitation. His punishment was by proxy. A relatively painless death. But you… you did the real crime. You entered into MY TEMPLE, invited to one of the finest revels in all of human history, and you decide to do what you humans are always so fond of doing: drinking. And taking. Except this time you went too far. You found one of my Maenads. My most vicious warriors. This time you decided you needed her. You wouldn’t take no. This time you were the vicious one. This is the one event where my Maenads are not allowed to attack, where gods and mortals can come together as one. And you used that against her.”
“No…” I pressed my knuckles into my neck. They are red, raw, thin. “No. I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t do that.”
“You DARE accuse me of lying, boy?”
“No. No, no. I just… I couldn’t… I don’t remember…”
“FOOLISH. You know what you did. You’re just afraid to admit it. Afraid to admit that you are capable of such a thing. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying: Alcohol doesn’t change one’s character. It merely intensifies it, reveals that which might otherwise be hidden. You are, deep inside, nothing more than an abuser. A user. A predator. ΥΒΡΙΣΤΗΣ.”
“I couldn’t. I couldn’t. Please, there must be some mistake… I would never defy you, Lord Dionysus. I devoted my whole life to you. To Madness. Please.”
“You merely served the punishment you were given. You think you are more noble than any other madman? The woman who drowned her kids in the bathtub because she thought that was the only way to save their souls? The men who devoured the flesh of their brethren to survive in the harshest mountains, bargaining with God to excuse their sin? Better yet, do you think you are any better than the women who fight back against their abuser, who live a life of pills and therapy just to come to terms with someone else’s senseless violence?”
“No. No. I just… I just…”
“You just refuse to accept that it is over. You wasted your life thinking you were better than everyone else, believing yourself to be chosen, the heir to my eternal rewards. Even before you fell victim to my curse, you thought you could do no wrong. Women were merely objects to you. Even holy women.”
I tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come.
“Silence now. I grow tired of this talk,” Dionysus says. “We are going in circles.” Vines separate themselves from the mass, creeping towards me.
“Wait!” I yell, my voice finally coming. “What… What will happen to me now?”
“The same thing that happens to every other man like you. Just another shade tied down in the Fields of Punishment for eternity.”
“But…”
“But what, fool? You think yourself deserving of some special new punishment? Nay, boy. I do not dare lump you in with the myths of Sisyphus or Tantalus. Your tale will not be immortalized. You will not be remembered. Already, my Maenad has forgotten you exist, lost in a manic slurry of more joyful memories. She will recover. You will not.”
“But… It’s not… It’s not fair…” I was gasping now, the words coming out of me in desperate bursts.
Each and every one of Dionysus’s eyes lit up with fury.
“What do you know of fairness, ΑΝΟΗΤΟΣ? You dare to face your sin with indignity? This is your burden. You must bear the consequences of your actions.”
The dread was intensified into terror again, but this time the terror cut too deeply to formulate a scream.
“Di… o… nysus… My… Lo… ord…” My voice is disappearing. My already pale skin is growing paler, translucent. Transparent. Fading. “No-o-o…”
“Goodbye, Everett.”
And thus ended my madness.