Black Dog

Chapter 1

Black, white, spin; sickening vertigo dragging at consciousness whilst teetering on the verge of flight. Time has exploded sending particles of thought spiralling ever outward, falling away from the cataclysm. Matter stitching and tearing, dissolving, coalescing; it pulses with spasms of life texturing the sea of space-time with fragments of the creator. In the beginning there was the word.

Where have we been all this time? Whilst the sticky arms of time sway and whorl gathering the remnants of a lost memory. We gain and lose, rise and fall live and die unaware of the magik we perceived so clearly as children, the magik of discovery and the wonder of perceptual bliss. The presence of the divine in every moment of existence dulls over the years giving way to order and repetition: a series of zeros and ones, alpha and beta, hunter and prey. Decide your side and play to the script. Where does it leave the whole when yin overpowers yang?

Five minutes into the future the past comes rushing in to drown his soul with sweet melancholy. “When to the sessions of sweet silent thought / I summon up remembrance of things past.  It is love that awakens me. It is love that designed me. It will be for the love of all that I die. My place in this arena is transitory but I have been here before and I will return.”

When Jesus walked with Buddha and Mohammed they decided to split the task. They each agreed that omniscience was to unravel the imperfections that were the temporary trap of life. A pact was made: they would uneducate the illiterate and drown philosophy in wonder and awe. The destruction of Babel was insufficient. Humans must be made to wonder without tearing that bubble of space-time that he had created as one. The triptych was born, the knot untied and wisdom was lost to the world.

Jennifer had come to meet him; he had almost ceased existing in the normal sense of the word. Days spent dying again and again, repeatedly sinking into the cess of another’s psychopathic intellect. He’d tried to intermingle, socialise but the hum of androgynous apathy held him to the floor sexually. Mute he would stand flailing at the congregating mass of a Saturday night’s stupor. The opposite sex was not alien to his thought nor was his own but it seemed neither could interest him sexually, intellectually or emotionally.

So it was to drink he turned and with that came bravado and the wild witticisms of intoxication. People laughed, but around him and not with him. It was getting so that even he stopped getting his own jokes; so profound had they become. Pontificating in his own solipsistic universe he felt supremely alive, untouchable, unfathomable. But he was fading and he knew it.

Standing uncomfortably on the edge of the crowd his innards coiled and throbbed in time with the thumping of the bass. He ordered another sexless drink consumed it and wondered at the state of things. “If this works I’ll be rather surprised and impressed.”

“Of course it will work, just follow my lead and you’ll be fine.” Marks ponderous response.

“Certainty at this point would seem Ill advised. I’ve felt the fabric of the universe tear once already this evening and the more people I meet the more people that die.”

“What the fuck Jimmy! Settle down matey, you seem to be on some kinda trip man.”

They moved into the mass creating space and wake wherever they went. Homogenous groups of youths milled arrhythmically to an uninspiring 4/4 beat compacted at stuttered gasps by a hologram of Barbie-animate writhing and wailing in sexual bliss. Each face glared in black-lit strobe, eagerly unimpressed with their counterpoint. Jim and Mark broke through the meniscus, spat out into the spectator’s ether.

“You’ve been acting weird all night man, what are you on?”

“Nothing at all but this piss we’ve been swilling, and possibly the moon.”

“Well if you want to meet people you’re going the wrong way about it.”

“Not my fault my man. The world is becoming dull and uninspiring despite the endless supply of progress.”

“My shout?”

“Why not?”

It was a ploy of separation and each played their part in silence. It is frequently noted in private that when ostracised types band together for safety’s sake they seem too eager to leave that protective sphere. The effort seems unjustified but still they persist knowing instinctively that it is not only social suicide that may be at stake but a rash and viscous turning of the elements. These can result in bodily harm. Unintended homicide.

His eyes glazed over to repel any unwanted evil eyes, lit a cigarette and downed half a cider in a single pull. The toxins worked their magic on his brain and three synapses miss fired bringing him dangerously close to the edge of nirvana. He realised instinctively that despite not knowing how to calculate quantum mechanics he grasped how to engineer space-time to create a wormhole with a targetable exit point. How safe this was, was another question.

It was then, in this state of unrested mental nausea, that she appeared hanging off the towering bulk Mark. His huge paws supported three more drinks and an elbow supported Jennifer. He had seen her before of course at a distance. It is hard not to notice an individual in a crowd, even harder not to notice the crowd’s individual. So her face was familiar, as was the line of her back and hips, her smell, her rhythm, her vibration.

“This is Jennifer.”

“Hi.”

“Hello.”

Jennifer swayed drunkenly in a vague trance staring into the hypnotic swirling crowd. It’s mass shifting and whirling too closely represented the sway of an ordered Hawkins universe for Jim but he followed suit. She noted the path of his eye from her to the mass and had a common ice breaking idea.

“Dance with me?” pulling Marks arm.

“No, my foot’s swollen from last night. Dance with Jimmy.”

Jennifer turned to Jim, eyes pleading gentleness whilst feigning indifference. His response began disbelief, ended relief. Standing he offered his hand and they became one with the crowd.

As they coagulated into position Jim became disorientated, somewhere deep in his existential cortex re-emerged an image of brutality, a swirling fear that enveloped him in a palpitating de ja vu. Stumbling forward he steadied himself on Jennifer’s arm and fell into an embrace. Locking eyes they kissed and the writhing mass melted away. Only the ever-present gut wrenching kick of bass heating like a heartbeat tied them to that plane. Lifting and caressing, swaying gently ever stroking out empathy and compassion, rising to primal carnality.

Two hours pass thus. The union incomplete but sustaining, they retreat to the harbour of Mark and the forgotten beverages. Finishing the drink the expectations of the two never stray far from the others target. Unspoken pacts emerge soundlessly but with great fanfare.

“We’re leaving.”

“Oh –.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Sure.”

“See ya,” in unison.

“Bye.”

Nervous and exited the couple tumble down the alcohol adhesion of the stairs. They titter, regressing to adolescence in their intoxicated state. They manage to overcome the question of contraception and protection and float toward the heaven of her bed.

Waking was always falling for Jim. Opening his eyes would herald the rush of unwanted details and the nausea of free fall, but this morning was different. Opening like a spring bud he emerged from slumber slowly and purposefully. Somehow the world was still today. Time had frozen over this pocket of existence letting it warm in the glow of dawn. He unfolded slowly, gaining the experience in packets of warm bliss; he sensed a comforting presence nuzzling into the hollow of his neck. Jennifer.

Slowly he pieced each detail of the night before into its place. They had made love unashamedly and passionately and this puzzled Jim having never encountered her form or like before. Somehow they joined psychically as well as physically. Twixt life and death they danced to the repeating pulse of the species, not speaking, not censoring or controlling but springing loose on the impulses of life and lust, death and rebirth.

He was complete he decided in his womblike afterglow. A position of stability had been established; from here he could climb mountains and hurl himself from the nemesis apex unhindered in flight to the lap of God. What wonders were not possible? He engendered himself with the virtues of an ideal ideology unknowable and indefinable. His purpose was the will of the universe. Nothing could stop him.

How different it seemed, this world. If it were not for the vague similarities of his physical form and the unmistakable click and transposition of his senses he would swear that he had been transported to another realm of perception. Could they have, colliding in the night, become a symbiotic transformation vibrating sympathetically to the pulse of the cosmos? Could this propel them from one universe to another or had the fates decided that, spiritual ores that they were, some alchemical reaction ensued that could bend the will of reality when their spheres of existence touched?

These thoughts entertained him as Jennifer awoke. She stroked his cheek and smiled the same knowing smile. ”Good morning beautiful.”

“Don’t, I must look awful.”

“No. One of the most entrancing images mine eyes have seen, bed hair and all.”

“Shut up. You’ll bust something straining like that.”

Rising from bed, the cool morning light bathed her visage in opalescent glory. Her feline form caught his breath as it stalked lazily across the room. Anticipation was already at work, oxytocin coursed through his veins tripping his want to desire. He was losing himself.

Turning, Jennifer lit her gaze directly down the barrel of Jim’s soul. He was caught like a deer in headlights, heartbeat quickening with each staccato breath. “I have to leave for work.”

“I’ll let you get ready.”

He rose and dressed quickly. A hot flush of embarrassment burned at his chest and cheek. Presumption would be the end of him one day he mused whilst his erect member conspired against any sort of dignity; it strained against the crotch of his pants doubling him over into an undignified hunch. Buttoning his shirt and shuffling toward the door his soul began to ache with the fond embrace of melancholic disappointment.

“Will I see you again?”

“Sure. I’ll call you.”

“48 215 215”

“Yeah, I’ll call you. Don’t worry.”

Realising the desperation in his voice was far from attractive the spell was at last extinguished. His heart fell in a free fall rush and his soul clicked finally into place drawing the bleak surrounds into sickening detail. Waking was falling. Gravity is weak but unrelenting. Her unattainable beauty stared at him quizzically as he bid her a pathetic “Adieu.”

It was only warm in the direct sunlight this early in the spring at nine a.m. Moving down the suburban streets Jim found himself again contemplating his stupidity. His neediness startled prospective lovers like a hidden scar. Too often he would couple with strangers thinking that it could be the beginning of the ride and not the end. The laws of casual sex implied his guilt. Emotional thirst was not quenched in these trysts, this he had known since childhood.

Her face haunted his minds eye, her scent clung to him mockingly, and every step toward his empty flat filled his soul with dread. “She spoke to me wordlessly.” Repeating over and again. He crossed streets heedless of traffic receiving abuse without response. Legs moved automatically. Autopilot set for home.

“Why do I set myself up this way? I could have slinked away while she slept and retained some air of mystery, some modicum of respect, but no, I have to bask in the afterglow waiting for adoration like an overstuffed Caesar. Pathetic!” He chastised himself mercilessly as he passed the mall, his feet aiming toward its gaping maw unconsciously. Sex, he decided, filled his ego too close to bursting. It left his soul unprotected by his finely woven scepticism, his expertly honed sarcasm. It left him naked, exposed to the soft wind of desolation.

The clerk’s question of payment brought him out of his reverie. He handed him twenty dollars and grabbed the plastic carry bag. He would be home soon he told himself. Soon he would be free of the weight that stranger’s stares brought to bare on his soul. These thoughts quickened his pace.

Perhaps the fabric of reality was strained to tearing; he only vaguely remembered where Jennifer lived. Perhaps it had all been hallucination; his wanting soul crying out in the dark of a Saturday nights festivities had blinded his drunken conscience to the fact that he was unknowable, untouchable, unclean. It had invented Jennifer and her slow embrace to quell the yearning. It had shown him what he knew he could never hold for long; empathy, compassion, lust. His wicked intelligence had conspired against the will of fate to show him the pleasure that he could never know in sobriety.

The door to Jim’s flat opened with the hiss of a desecrated tomb. The chill greeted him knowingly, embracing him fondly as he flicked the switch on the stereo to fill the void of single living. He uncorked the bottle and drank greedily. The pain of knowledge dulled, his focus obscured.

  To Be Continued

© James Cross