The Angel and the Pussycat

I touch galaxies when I sleep. In my head, I see them, those stars that twinkle down from on high, I see them and they're hot and painful and touching them is like needles, like hedgehogs, spindles on spinning wheels. They leave my fingernails blue, dark blue, that velvety midnight blue. And I'm blue, God when I think about it, it makes me melancholic.

I lie awake in the heat of the night, surrounded by a cocoon of soothing music and the fog created by the medical onslaught required to cure this melancholic from bad things and bad thoughts. Half the time, I'm never entirely sure that I am sad but then it is remarked that I'm crying and not noticed. I taste it but the saline taste is absent. Like it's water or phlegm or some other bodily fluid snailing down my face.

They left me alone yesterday and I went mad. Technically yesterday, of course. They left five or six hours ago. At first, it was fine. I was on my own and I liked it. The sky was lighter then but my nails still reflected the night sky. It was more white than blue, if I'm honest. White sky, whiter sun, erasing the clouds and the mists that are part of my homeland and I despised it. I felt like I was being erased and I would rather be swallowed by the black holes than burnt by the stars and that is a fact. A fact indeed and nothing more than that and if you think otherwise then you're delusional.

They say I'm delusional. They've never been stared at by a car. I had to tell them about what happened in the library.

I don't think one could understand until you hear it. I don't think so at least. There is always the possibility of someone understanding but when you think about it too much, it spills over into every corner of your consciousness and you question everything that ever existed ever.

However.

There are whispers on the pages of my book. Whispers from Time itself. It's written in a soft, gray ink. It's not pencil: I checked and you couldn't erase the words. Sophronius looked at it and frowned that same old frown he would when I told him about such things. It looked dusty like him, like day old bread. Sophronius never dares to dream beyond what can be sought around him. The man is a stick insect, a measuring stick, a stick of many descriptions except actually being sticky. I would imagine if one were to eat him, all you would taste in your mouth would be charcoal, burning your tongue, suffocating you, waiting to seek a solaced revenge within his own measure.

So I ignore him. I ignore the bastard a lot, I must say. That may come later. I don't know. I think I do not know it. I do not know the future; nor does Sophronius although he pretends he does. He pretends to estimate the universe's co-ordinates, the vastness, the shallowness, the eternal despair before simply shrugging his slight shoulders and sighing that trademarked resigned sigh. He does not understand either.

The actual words are interesting enough. They do not stay still. I mark the pages down but the words never appear on the same page twice: 42, 73, 28, 37, 26, 97, 39, 38. The words themselves change sometimes too. I don't understand why.

We are dead men.

We are all dead.

We're dead.

We're all dead men.

No one is alive.

The words do not change in meaning that is not what I meant, as you can see. They are the same but not. Expression changes, semantics doesn't. Still, the words confuse me enough. What does it mean to be dead? Surely the truth can only come from Time? Time has no need to lie...why should it? I feel sometimes that if there are so many dimensions to the universe and that they are constricted by the inability to separate what is perception and what are sight and smell and sound, then what is there left to trust? So I trust Time over Sophronius. The words themselves scare me: why are they directed to me? The book is not read by many other people; the fourteen lines are either too complicated or too wee for this place. I don't pretend to understand other people's choice in literature but everything is escapism of variance. Romance stories show lonely people. Fantasy shows disillusioned people. Drama shows people with dull or madcap lives. Depends on a number of factors of which watching people come and go doesn't always tell me.

Poetry, I desire beauty and meaning in life. It's such a large brushstroke and yet people never understand it. It's dusty, tiny little verses and stanzas and that scares people. It reminds them of old school desks and rulers slammed against wrists and ink and condensation and Spam fritters and hobnail boots and a million other moderate-to-miserable remembrances. I don't have that; poetry speaks to the tabala rasa in my consciousness that's screaming out to be written on, to not be blank anymore. And and and, where would that come from? I don’t understand. Where is that cerebral ink in which to scribe a lover's name? I can't seem to remember being told the stationery store. Perhaps it's moved? Why should stationery remain stationary? It's the eternal debate: to write or not to write? Writing leads to chaos and understanding and order and destruction and renewal and oblivion and Heaven and Hell; a simultaneous orgasm of philosophical proportions. And to not even have that power in my own memory makes me more of a shell of a human being, a husk waiting to be filled. Maybe filled with a smaller husk: husks all the way until they are micro-husks, nano-husks, yotto-husks - giving the illusion of being filled when they're not really.

The book, in case you're curious - and not a cat - is a collection of sonnets and other poetry by Shakespeare. Man of Muses. Muse Inspirata - a god of Muses, I suppose. There is something to be said for a man who can write and write and write and be remembered in the way he is remembered today. The man is a brand name, fair game for nicking ideas from. And witches and warlocks and familiar spirits: could they contend with his young man and his Blackamoor lady?

I think not.

That's when I saw her. Time. Time Incarnate. Chronos. Romana. Rani. Crowning glory of bronze-coloured curls coiled on her head and a black and white striped dress. Monotone, black and white, life and death, past and future - a schism, a dichotomy personified. I don't recall her having any feet. She floated like she was weightless, massless in the atmosphere. I had read about zero gravity and had seen its effects in cartoons and documentaries but this was no zero gravity chambers or a vomit comet.

"Allie," she said, serene vowels and constants, sticking in my ears, mingling with my neurons, switching hormones from dormant to active in a foul swoop. Coldness gone, burning now. Burning and talking without words.

"Yes." I can barely choke it out and I sound dead when I do. We are all dead. So that makes sense to me. To others it doesn't but who cares about them, anyway?

"My notes, did you get my notes?" she smiled; maybe she could hear my screaming thoughts. They were so loud, thumping in my ears like a buzzing, buzzing honey in my ears, sticky words like honey bees crawling in my ears, over my throat, stinging stinging, masturbating blankets for the Queen Bee, so like reality. People only touch themselves to appease something or someone but they never admit it. Everyone's a puppet. It might be the other way around, maybe, now I think about it. People don't touch themselves. Later generations will forget to touch and feel and be mechanical and then, then would be the time of chaos and shit-spattered fans.

"Sweetheart, are you listening? Aren't you listening to me?" Reverie broken and she's closer and she's holding my face, I didn't realise she was. I blink a few times. It was unexpected but my mind is like a train, you see. Chug chug chug along, mowing down the suicidal pleas of the outside world.

"Y-yeah, I got them," I opened the book and showed her the chicken scratch graphite. She smiles, sticky red lips, pink lips, amethyst lips, dripping dripping and sticky. Blood drinker, dribbler, mistress of something wet.

"Don't you understand them?" I could tell she was trying to pull that trick that psychologists pull when they want to know something, even when they know you don't actually know. Maybe they think you do, but you never do and I don't know is never a good enough answer. She always gives me this wry little smile and it becomes a joke. Considering the questions are quite deep, for the answers to be jokes seems somewhat a little misplaced or maybe it's entirely justified, who knows? I'm no psychologist.

"We...we're not real?" I frowned, trying to elaborate. "The world is a lie. This is the afterlife, Limbo, Purgatory, Hell, Heaven, Valhalla..." I trail off, she moves away. A man. I see a man now. I've seen this man before in my dreams. Throat dries on sight and I resist the urge to scream, I am still in a library and people would not appreciate screaming. That's why I'm not locked away. I understand when it's okay to scream and when it's not. His eyes were green. I've seen the man in reality and he's perfectly amiable. Not this man. He has green eyes. And whiskers - like he's not shaved in a few days, whiskers whiskers and a whining voice and violently green eyes. Almost yellow. Yellow and dangerous - shark infested custard. Custard and fish fingers, I remember someone likes that but whom? Vanilla and cod, sounds like a recipe from the desperate at some frozen food store. Marketing never fails.

"Kill yourself." he said. He says it a lot and it's easy to ignore. But him, he's in a new suit too, red and black. "Kill yourself, Allie. You want quiet? Don't you Allie? You want to be left alone. I know you. Little lonely Allie. Be the ultimate celestial hermit, Allie. Kill yourself."

"Don't do that, Allie. This life...is dead but you could still be happy, still lead some decent things, do some good in the world."

"You can do no good. You're bad. You're disgusting. Just die a little Allie. Die for your Master..."

"My name is Quartus Regnum. Believe me Alice..."

"Alex, listen to me, you're no good....!"

"Live!"

"Die!

"Live!"

And that's when they disappeared. I could still hear them bicker bicker bicker in my ears, buzzing in the honey. But everyone was looking at me. It was my scream that made them fade away.

And I touch the skies. I can because reality hasn't been the same since then. I can grab the mouth and kiss the lonely face of the man who lives there. I wake up damp from the arguments raging in my body, hot and cold sweats, snow blindness, blackouts. I feel cracked, I feel split in two. Sometimes I find myself near the edge, or falling from them in my dreams. And serenity from that is wonderful. Kissing oblivion, feeling its cold edges pressed against my body, that overwhelming darkness leering when I sleep or lie, like right now. And I’m in two minds.

Death or life. Life or death. Am I dead? Am I alive? Should I die? Would anything change?

And all I can hear in my hears, despite the music and the medication and Sophronius being concerned and doctors, a never ending barrage of white coat entertainers summoned by the mysterious Head of the Revels, the National Health Service. The National Whore's Cervix, the system fucks you over. And I'm not well still. Maybe I'm dying and I don't need to jump and be swallowed by Death's hungry jaws. Maybe I don't need to touch the darkness. Maybe I need to sunbathe, drink up that milky white sky, that milky live giver in the sky, beaming in satirical sunshine and drink it up and become real, become solid and stop floating footlessly.

Either way, life or death, maybe the argument will stop.

Is that too much to ask?