Gabriel Caine, Patient No. 21200057342. Age: 26.
He was the scarecrow, a sacrifice to the gods of hate and pain. He writhed on the twin mattress, soaked with sweat and memories buried too deep for words to find them. He had stepped into that world where he no longer knew himself or anyone else around him, he was only a scarecrow, crucified to his post and abandoned in his field. Worn emerald green stones belonged to the road that twisted about the countryside, full of crossroads and demons, saints and sinners lost on their way to Hell’s Court. He belonged to that world; the one that raped the innocent to keep everything in balance, the one that shattered itself and spun out the colors of reality into pools of paint and rain-water. He knew that the roads and crossroads were only figments of frustration in his twisted realities, but he still tried to follow them with his eyes, still tried to leave his post to walk those beautiful and rough stones.
The doctors told him that he would be fine with therapy. What did they know about him? What did they care if he was ever whole again? Had they ever seen the Night of Eve, when Hell’s Court brought the sacrifice to the crossroads and left her there? Had they ever heard the moons of Catalysis and Neptsis screaming in their orbit, ghosts of his reality? No, they hadn’t. They said those places and those things didn’t exist, but they seemed so real to him. Maybe he was crazy, maybe it was just all this horrible illness that had taken control of him. Or maybe he was right and he was that scarecrow, chained to a wooden stake, awaiting the next sacrifice at the crossroads.
The one thing he had never understood was why? Why did they sacrifice at the crossroads, what made them leave one of their own to die for all of them? How was that fair? And how did he fit in? Why must he stand as witness, as a helpless man captive to a will beyond his own design? He just couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand to watch as girl after girl was sacrificed, couldn’t stand to listen as day after day the moons cried out for one another, lost and drifting on an endless sea of sky and space.
Sitting up, he shook himself and tried to focus, he could hear the nurses making their rounds, could hear other patients crying out and banging against their padded walls. Maybe the screaming of the moons was just the cries of disillusioned people, trapped within their own heads and trying to escape. Maybe those girls that he watched die were just young women he had read about in the newspapers back when he had a job and a home. And a wife. This last he thought of reluctantly, as if conjuring her name and image would send him back to that god-forsaken post.
Since he was already beginning to think of her, he let his mind wander to their last days as man and wife. She was crying that day, the day she left him. Her arms were full of another man’s child and another man’s love. She couldn’t stay, she said. She couldn’t watch him destroy himself any longer. So she walked away, still holding that other man’s child and that other man’s love. She had never really known him, he decided. Had never really forgiven him for being himself. And, in the end, who else could he be, but himself?
He stopped the rest of the oncoming flood, before it began to breach the dams he had built for defense. He didn’t want to overindulge his memories, which would only leave him with an ache in his heart and his empty arms. Damn her. He had loved her, had tried to give her everything he could. Why hadn’t she seen that? In the end it had always come down to the fact that he could never be what she wanted him to be and the “real” love of her life was waiting with open arms and an open bed.
Well, that was fine. Who needed her anyway? He didn’t need her. The sounds of patients and nurses with carts full of medication faded into background noise as he settled into the sound of an imaginary piano playing Beethoven. His fingers moved in time with the music, grazing chords and keys like he would a lover’s curves. Beethoven was really all he had left, he supposed. At least Beethoven would never ask him for a divorce and then give birth to a child that would never even be his.
He supposed a lot of things, thinking too much for his own good, really. Even Dr. Samisen said so. Why not think though? He was a poet, a philosopher, an intelligent man with a good brain for thinking. Why shouldn’t he try to figure out the world that was so cruel to him, try to figure out the world that resided behind closed eyelids and broken psyches? He had a right to think, just like any other Joe on the street. So he would think, he would lapse into that pool of memory and epiphanies and trains of thought, then drift away on whatever might decide to command his attention.
He liked that pool, that place behind his eyes, within something deeper than his soul, the part of himself no one would ever know about except him. The place that housed that world that forced him to stand at his post, to keep record of the girls that traveled on the back of the wind into the Mirror of Eve. God, he thought, why do I keep coming back to this place? Why do I do this to myself over and over?
And with that thought, he found himself at his place, dreaming of another young woman’s death.
She stood, lifeless, at the crossroads. She was drowning within herself, breathless and frantic. All she could see was the broken white rose lying at the center of the crossroad. All she could hear was the breaking of a thousand hearts. She could not feel, the mirror in front of her bearing no claim of her existence. She remained, doll-like, at the point of intersection, frozen in time without a soul or a heart to hear her silent screams.
The emerald green blocks of stone were worn and cracked underneath her bare feet, the green darkened over time. The Mirror of Eve sparkled violently, glittering and blinding, but empty of any reflection of life. Behind the girl was a wide field, charred and blackened by time and in the middle of the field stood a scarecrow, his old grey hat pulled down over his eyes.
The moons stood side-by-side, one about to fade below the horizon of endless azure sky and the other rising to greet another day of night. Lower and lower sank the one, a shining ivory disk against the bruised and battered sky. Higher and higher rose the other, darker than ebony, its face etched in blood and tears. An intense black emptiness filled the sky until no light shone but that of the bleeding moon, only its crimson stained the wretched night.
As the suffocating darkness surrounded her, the brighter red light fell upon her chest. For a moment time stood still and only the red light seemed to move. The light took on a life of its own, its fiery fingers moving up to the girl's throat and its hand moving as a lover's over her pale face. The light morphed and transformed until it had the shape of a man, its hand continuing to caress the girl's face. As it passed its hands through her snowy curls, it began to dissipate, changing the girl's hair to a rosy pink, then fled swiftly upward. Leaving the girl behind, lying dead at the crossroads, a white jasper lily in her hand and an onyx dagger plunged into her virgin soul.
The scarecrow, in his blackened field, was the only witness, the only eyes to see the death and hear the screams. From one violent green eye fell a broken tear, his sadness hidden partially by his dark hat. He did not move from his field, or move at all, remaining frozen at his post. He only wept, a silent witness.
Quietly, the girl's body withered, burning from a fire within until all that remained were dust and ash. These were picked up by the wind, fleeing the place on her back. She fled to the Mirror of Eve, it now opening, as a door, to her remains. On the other side she was once again transformed, shedding all the pain of living like a winter cloak. She seemed to glow, ethereal and unbroken. She looked out of her mirror, seeing with new eyes all the emptiness of the place.
The scarecrow watched as the Mirror shattered, sparkling like millions of fiery stars upon the emerald stones. As the pieces faded into nothingness, the moon began to cry, blood and ice falling like daggers to the earth. Everything stood in silence. All that remained of the girl was a broken white rose, a white jasper lily and the onyx dagger, stained with the blood of her virgin soul. And these were consumed with fire and bloody ice so that none may know of the rape of the lifeless girl at the crossroads.
He was the scarecrow, a sacrifice to the gods of hate and pain. He writhed on the twin mattress, soaked with sweat and memories buried too deep for words to find them. He had stepped into that world where he no longer knew himself or anyone else around him, he was only a scarecrow, crucified to his post and abandoned in his field. Worn emerald green stones belonged to the road that twisted about the countryside, full of crossroads and demons, saints and sinners lost on their way to Hell’s Court. He belonged to that world; the one that raped the innocent to keep everything in balance, the one that shattered itself and spun out the colors of reality into pools of paint and rain-water. He knew that the roads and crossroads were only figments of frustration in his twisted realities, but he still tried to follow them with his eyes, still tried to leave his post to walk those beautiful and rough stones.
The doctors told him that he would be fine with therapy. What did they know about him? What did they care if he was ever whole again? Had they ever seen the Night of Eve, when Hell’s Court brought the sacrifice to the crossroads and left her there? Had they ever heard the moons of Catalysis and Neptsis screaming in their orbit, ghosts of his reality? No, they hadn’t. They said those places and those things didn’t exist, but they seemed so real to him. Maybe he was crazy, maybe it was just all this horrible illness that had taken control of him. Or maybe he was right and he was that scarecrow, chained to a wooden stake, awaiting the next sacrifice at the crossroads.
The one thing he had never understood was why? Why did they sacrifice at the crossroads, what made them leave one of their own to die for all of them? How was that fair? And how did he fit in? Why must he stand as witness, as a helpless man captive to a will beyond his own design? He just couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand to watch as girl after girl was sacrificed, couldn’t stand to listen as day after day the moons cried out for one another, lost and drifting on an endless sea of sky and space.
Sitting up, he shook himself and tried to focus, he could hear the nurses making their rounds, could hear other patients crying out and banging against their padded walls. Maybe the screaming of the moons was just the cries of disillusioned people, trapped within their own heads and trying to escape. Maybe those girls that he watched die were just young women he had read about in the newspapers back when he had a job and a home. And a wife. This last he thought of reluctantly, as if conjuring her name and image would send him back to that god-forsaken post.
Since he was already beginning to think of her, he let his mind wander to their last days as man and wife. She was crying that day, the day she left him. Her arms were full of another man’s child and another man’s love. She couldn’t stay, she said. She couldn’t watch him destroy himself any longer. So she walked away, still holding that other man’s child and that other man’s love. She had never really known him, he decided. Had never really forgiven him for being himself. And, in the end, who else could he be, but himself?
He stopped the rest of the oncoming flood, before it began to breach the dams he had built for defense. He didn’t want to overindulge his memories, which would only leave him with an ache in his heart and his empty arms. Damn her. He had loved her, had tried to give her everything he could. Why hadn’t she seen that? In the end it had always come down to the fact that he could never be what she wanted him to be and the “real” love of her life was waiting with open arms and an open bed.
Well, that was fine. Who needed her anyway? He didn’t need her. The sounds of patients and nurses with carts full of medication faded into background noise as he settled into the sound of an imaginary piano playing Beethoven. His fingers moved in time with the music, grazing chords and keys like he would a lover’s curves. Beethoven was really all he had left, he supposed. At least Beethoven would never ask him for a divorce and then give birth to a child that would never even be his.
He supposed a lot of things, thinking too much for his own good, really. Even Dr. Samisen said so. Why not think though? He was a poet, a philosopher, an intelligent man with a good brain for thinking. Why shouldn’t he try to figure out the world that was so cruel to him, try to figure out the world that resided behind closed eyelids and broken psyches? He had a right to think, just like any other Joe on the street. So he would think, he would lapse into that pool of memory and epiphanies and trains of thought, then drift away on whatever might decide to command his attention.
He liked that pool, that place behind his eyes, within something deeper than his soul, the part of himself no one would ever know about except him. The place that housed that world that forced him to stand at his post, to keep record of the girls that traveled on the back of the wind into the Mirror of Eve. God, he thought, why do I keep coming back to this place? Why do I do this to myself over and over?
And with that thought, he found himself at his place, dreaming of another young woman’s death.
She stood, lifeless, at the crossroads. She was drowning within herself, breathless and frantic. All she could see was the broken white rose lying at the center of the crossroad. All she could hear was the breaking of a thousand hearts. She could not feel, the mirror in front of her bearing no claim of her existence. She remained, doll-like, at the point of intersection, frozen in time without a soul or a heart to hear her silent screams.
The emerald green blocks of stone were worn and cracked underneath her bare feet, the green darkened over time. The Mirror of Eve sparkled violently, glittering and blinding, but empty of any reflection of life. Behind the girl was a wide field, charred and blackened by time and in the middle of the field stood a scarecrow, his old grey hat pulled down over his eyes.
The moons stood side-by-side, one about to fade below the horizon of endless azure sky and the other rising to greet another day of night. Lower and lower sank the one, a shining ivory disk against the bruised and battered sky. Higher and higher rose the other, darker than ebony, its face etched in blood and tears. An intense black emptiness filled the sky until no light shone but that of the bleeding moon, only its crimson stained the wretched night.
As the suffocating darkness surrounded her, the brighter red light fell upon her chest. For a moment time stood still and only the red light seemed to move. The light took on a life of its own, its fiery fingers moving up to the girl's throat and its hand moving as a lover's over her pale face. The light morphed and transformed until it had the shape of a man, its hand continuing to caress the girl's face. As it passed its hands through her snowy curls, it began to dissipate, changing the girl's hair to a rosy pink, then fled swiftly upward. Leaving the girl behind, lying dead at the crossroads, a white jasper lily in her hand and an onyx dagger plunged into her virgin soul.
The scarecrow, in his blackened field, was the only witness, the only eyes to see the death and hear the screams. From one violent green eye fell a broken tear, his sadness hidden partially by his dark hat. He did not move from his field, or move at all, remaining frozen at his post. He only wept, a silent witness.
Quietly, the girl's body withered, burning from a fire within until all that remained were dust and ash. These were picked up by the wind, fleeing the place on her back. She fled to the Mirror of Eve, it now opening, as a door, to her remains. On the other side she was once again transformed, shedding all the pain of living like a winter cloak. She seemed to glow, ethereal and unbroken. She looked out of her mirror, seeing with new eyes all the emptiness of the place.
The scarecrow watched as the Mirror shattered, sparkling like millions of fiery stars upon the emerald stones. As the pieces faded into nothingness, the moon began to cry, blood and ice falling like daggers to the earth. Everything stood in silence. All that remained of the girl was a broken white rose, a white jasper lily and the onyx dagger, stained with the blood of her virgin soul. And these were consumed with fire and bloody ice so that none may know of the rape of the lifeless girl at the crossroads.
