by Micaela Arena
Yes, there’s something the dead are keeping back.
—Robert Frost, The Witch of Coos
For there be divers sorts of death—some wherein the body remaineth; and in some it vanisheth quite away with the spirit. This commonly occurreth only in solitude (such is God’s will) and, none seeing the end, we say the man is lost, or gone on a long journey—which indeed he hath… In one kind of death the spirit also dieth .. while yet the body was in vigor for many years. Sometimes… it dieth with the body, but after a season is raised up again in that place where the body did decay.
—Bierce, An Inhabitant of Carcosa
Monet, Manneporte.
I had often thought about losing my virginity. I’d thought about the time, the place, the person. I thought that he’d be someone I had known for a long while, I thought he’d be my best friend, I thought that I would love him. But I never expected it to be with a stranger, on a beach towel, while the waves crashed and the bonfires burned, and the arch spooled over us in the dark.
He understood why I was crying, and he let his weight go slack, and kissed away my tears with burning lips.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“I didn’t,” he said.
When I woke up the next morning, he was gone and the sun had risen. I sat up, tracing a hand along the burns his gaze had left, and was grateful for the coolness of the ocean breeze. I wasn’t looking forward to the long swim back to shore, but the salt water would help with the burns at least.
The memory of water is never as wet as actual water, I thought, letting the waves carry me. The coldness of the water was pleasantly numbing, but I could still feel his gaze. His eyes glowed, the most beautiful shade of red I’d ever seen—until I saw that his eyes were fire-colored, with white and blue and gold heat writhing behind the red.
It wasn’t until the memory of his eyes faded that I realized I was drowning.
Well, shit. Swim up or die, motherfucker. You might never see his eyes again.
At the thought of never seeing his eyes again, panic overwhelmed me and I sliced my arms up, kicking for all I was worth.
When my head broke the surface of the water, the cold clean air stung my face and I gulped it down, feeling as though I’d never breathed properly before. I turned on my back, floating. The sun was almost mocking in its placidness.
As I swam away, I worried that I’d fouled myself in my terror. At least the water will wash it away if I did. He’ll never know.
When I reached the shore, I took a deep breath and walked through the green, repeating an old childhood song to calm myself.
“Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen,
In Carcosa.
Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies,
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.
Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.
Song of my soul, my voice is dead.
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.”
That was Cassilda’s song. I don’t know where it’s from. The only thing they ever said was that it came from a place that was terrible in its simplicity and overwhelming in its truth.
Carcosa. I let the word fall off my tongue. Carcosa. I kept walking, and the sea gave way to grass, which felt cool beneath my feet. I should have felt the grass-blades’ pain.
The grass eventually grew waist high, which tickled in all sorts of places that grass is not supposed to tickle. It was then that I realized I was naked.
I laughed, and kept walking, my bare feet squishing in the mud.
It was when I came upon the forest that I knew I would find him.
By that point, it was sunset and the sky was a strange shade of orange. The trees were immense and devoid of foliage.
I stepped over a root and slipped inside, and heard a whisper.
It does not bring back memories, because it is not something that I forget.
The whisper was quiet, contemplative, if whispers can be contemplative.
There were other whispers as well.
The world never looks so big as when someone is lost.
Not all those who wander are found.
I shivered at the unknowable Whispering Forest’s intimation, the same way I’d shivered when he of the fire-eyes had licked and burned his way down my stomach, and kept walking.
The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, said a stuffy, self-important old whisper, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.
The important thing is to remember not to start screaming, in case you find that you are unable to stop. The flight attendant’s whisper balmed away over the branches.
I am nervous, I admit, of the Face. There is no Face in my window, but I think of seeing one. At night I am afraid of looking out when the lights are on. I think of seeing the Face. It is never there but I am so afraid of it. Even with the shade drawn, I think of the Face lifting the shade and staring. The Face can’t see me in the dark. Itcan’tseemeinthedark. Itcan’tseemeinthedark—
I want it on my skin. I want to feel the dripping hot blue fire.
I sound dangerous. I’m not. I just live on the wrong side of Day now, and it makes me more honest than I want to be.
As I kept walking, the whispers got older.
First, do no harm. But if motherfuckers won’t listen, harm away.
And what else, Hippocrates?
I’m an agnostic gnostic, another voice whispered. I doubt the reality of the gods I’ve met.
Sexy Phobos wants to put the God of Fear into you.
Anyone who says you can’t fuck a hallucination lacks imagination.
There was another one, a whisper whose rage and helplessness scalded me.
I wish I could give you that sunset. I wish I could give you that rainbow. I wish I could give you the life you always wanted. Here’s a banana. Have some patience, please. I’m only one fucking person.
I walked into a clearing. The trees were contorted and stabbed claw-like at the yellow-black sky, stained by the blood-red setting sun.
Within the clearing, there were speechless whimpers of ecstasy and anguish that shot straight to my groin, so painful that I had to bite my fingers to keep from screaming. I knew he was close, because my skin was dragging my body forward, towards a tree.
I walked up to the tree, pressed my palm to it, and it was as if a veil had been blown away.
Oh, but the songs of Hyades were like torn satin, ghosting at my neck and wrists, singing through the cloud-rifts of the King in Yellow’s tattered mantle, and I saw the black stars swaying in the heavens, and the cloud-waves racing across the dripping moon, and the black towers of Carcosa, and I knew the mysteries of Hali’s divers deaths in all their intimacies, and saw the Pallid Mask sparkling and glowing—
Take off your mask, said he of the fire-eyes.
I tried to speak, but my voice was dead.
You’re here. I knew you’d be here.
His eyes glowed. The blue and gold flickered behind the red. Then the blue breathed its last and flickered out.
And as the sun soared down, we faded away until nothing beside remained save the mammoth, mangled trees.
Rousseau, The Forest in Winter at Sunset.
