Lost Xanadu

January 23, 2018January 26, 2018 ~ Piece, of the Sky ~ 1 Comment

Mississippi Sky (1)

Kaan walked through the streets in the late afternoon. A light rain was falling. Trash tumbled across the asphalt and collapsed into the gutter. Power lines crisscrossed the sky.

She walked past burned-out houses, the tops of their windows blackened with smoke.

The sky was beige, going orange, as it neared sunset. Kaan allowed her steps to fall in step with the extra weight of the 9mm on her waist, and kept moving forward.

The landscape grew more dilapidated. She passed more burned-out houses, some of the fires more recent, lawns still submerged in fire-hydrant water, water-logged and saturated, the long grass, not mowed in months, poking out of the brackish water, like tufts of hair.

Kaan passed a gnarled, dried-out willow, her way-marker in this area. Xan lived around here, at the edge of the woods, at the edge of night.

Xan’s house, was more of a shack, re-purposed, with faulty wiring and rerouted piping. The one window on the house’s façade loomed like an empty eye socket, a toothless smile.

The ridged, cast-iron door opened as Kaan approached, making her way through the fallen leaves. Xan appeared in the doorway, albino hair unkempt, wearing her usual stained all-white clothes.

Kaan came to the threshold, “Why do you continue to live here?”

Xan just gave her a frightened look. “I offered you space at the shelter; why don’t you live there?” Kaan continued.

Xan was not paying attention, instead looking around Kaan and expectantly at the package Kaan was surely carrying in her black trench coat.

Kaan sighed, “Do you have the money?”

Xan cast her forlorn, sunken eyes in Kaan’s direction, and produced from a soiled satchel a tangled wad of cash.

Kaan took the cash, counted the 100s and pocketed them. From her coat, she produced the package, wrapped in brown paper and duct tape. Heladon, the esper’s drug. Prevented complete identity disintegration – as Xan was clearly suffering from here.

“Here you go,” Kaan said.

Xan grabbed the package, and anger flashed through her eyes, before her face slackened into its standard flat expression.

Kaan, exasperated, turned to go.

“We were all in the same lab once, you know.” Xan said. The cast-iron door closed behind Kaan. The clouds opened, and the wind blew down from the upper atmosphere, in the final minutes of twilight.

a perfect dream

Songs:

BACKWOOD BOY – LEAN WIT DA FANTA PT. 2

prodlzr – WTF ARE YOU DOING

Cosmastly – PINK FUR COAT

Cosmastly – DEEZ WITCHE$

Erasure – A Little Respect

Related: Espers and Labs

Otter, Alone

January 19, 2018April 8, 2018 ~ Piece, of the Sky ~ 1 Comment

Rain was falling on the window. Rivulets fled down the red tile of the roof and gurgled, as water charged down the drain pipe that led to the gutter.

Jan buttered a bagel inside. Steam from the tea pot misted on the glass.

In her heart, it was summertime and she was swimming, on her back, down the river – the water, warm, leaves and twigs going by. Sunlight struck her eyelids.

The rain was filling up the cave behind the house, swirling in puddles, saturating the sand. Buried in the ground was a simple gold chain, with a silver heart.

The tree branches outside the window groaned under the weight of the wind. The shutters rocked. Jan got up and used a mitt to pick up the kettle and pour water over ginseng tea leaves.

The cave was flooding, the water picking up dirt and stones – and the forgotten necklace.

Jan drank the tea in front of the fire. She waited to hear car wheels squeal over gravel, but only endless white noise met her ears.

In the summer, they walked in the woods. They visited the cave, with its tiny shell fossils pressed into the shale and ancient air pockets in the soft rock.

The forest floor twigs and soil stuck to the bottom of their feet. They walked through the forest, to their “secret” cave. They had buried the necklace to commemorate their love.

“There’s a pool of electrons all around us,” Alli had said, “The currents of the collective unconscious will bring me back to you.”

Alli practiced meditation and psychokinesis. A Zener card “expert” had come down from New York, with an offer to be in a psychic experiment. A native New Yorker herself, Alli was haunted by her ancestors’ memories, the spirit world and time.

But, Jan suspected there was something else: this new esper, Dallas. Bending spoons and speaking of an illustrious alien inheritance, Dallas had lured Alli away, in the waning days of August. Suddenly, Alli was speaking about quantum mechanics, auras and human magnetic fields, instead of just “ravens, spirit world birds.”

“You used to have your shaman feathers,” said Jan, “Now, you’re trying to build this mythic couple!”

Alli, of course, had denied this. But, by the time of fall’s first frost, Alli had packed up and moved back up north with Dallas, to New York.

“Planetary ocean of electrons, my foot.” Tired of the fire, Jan stood with her tea, watching rain paint the bay windows.

Alli had said Jan was a “3-Sigma event,” with “real-life ESP.” It was Alli who had called them “Otter and Bear.”

Today, it was just Jan – Otter – alone. If the floorboards creaked at night, Jan imagined it was Alli’s ghost, her living spirit, an astral projection, walking around, still looking for the remote. But no, only ravens disturbed her porch now.

During some night of incredible humidity, Alli had whispered to her, “Love is a haunting,” and Jan had no idea, at the time, what Alli had been meaning to say.

peaceful home