kAlts of Beulah: C1

Ice blue frozen glass exploded black hole retina, terminus maximus; FIN. Consumption over. The thinnest rim of colour dancing time immemorial hidden within the unfathomable infinite abyss of the ineffable mirror.

“Poor sod” Blake Fatel whispered to herself in the cold hard neon luminescent chrome nightclub of the dead. Expunged. Void. Redundant. Tragic divinity of lifeless flesh and bone. Vessels. Blake eulogised to herself in the restricted area of Libertalia's morgue. Her nano-laced faux leather trench coat and Fedora hat dripped, soaked through from the schizophrenic weather systems of Antarctica Prime.

The movement of skin and gritted teeth sucked tears back up reverse mourning ducts reunited with watery offspring; the only physical manifestations of weakness trauma buried deep in the battlefields of a life’s epic blood history. A raging fire of atomised existential loss burned so hard within her breast it brought crimson to her cheeks. Her hands trembled — Thomas Adès’ Arcadiana — ‘O Albion’ at the peak of cum.

She stood very still.

Her eyelids peeled wide searching not blinking. Only her head moved typewriter ding, scanning left right ding, for clues, ding. “Too much mess,” she realised staring into the charred mangled remains of her extinct friend Jan Lee, the First and Last Custodian of Libertalia.

The tick tick tick of her pre-Albion watch artefact. Left wrist.

Right there and then Blake took an oath to honour her dead friend Jan…

Blake promised that when she found the red thread she would pull it. As she always did. No matter where it took her. This was always a cross she had to bear, her major malfunction. She never could look the other way. Blake was incapable of pretending like most. Refused to be assimilated into the mass hallucination. Rejected all hierarchy. Even in the most niche or decentralised nodes a hierarchy will always emerge, power coalesces, the story of the ‘Fall’ begins again ad infinitum, entropy, the snake eats its own tail, the Tower of Babel rises.

“I am a Fool” she condemned herself and considered the complications of the vertebrate. A spine connected to integrity, honesty and independent thought comes at a great evolutionary cost to the individual. Blake’s thought train moved up through the gears. She clenched her fist. Apparently for most there comes a time in so-called polite or civilised society, where you simply just give a knowing wink and a nod and carry on sailing la de da down the river; cocktails and Qabalah hand in hand, head first into the eternal gnashing teeth of Armageddon.

Blake relaxed her fist.

Fogging breath vanishing to the four corners of the morgue.

Her mind still racing.

The cosy sound of her own angry voice in her head…

If you have read the room and still don’t comply. Still continue to persist in wondering at the staggering cognitive dissonance experienced by those around you; as we all bear witness in real time to the cataclysmic decaying facade of the televisual show: REALITY! 

Soon enough you eventually find yourself liberated to the fringes, haunting mosaic stained glass lead-lined narratives that nobody cares for. No more invitations to gatherings formal and informal. Blake shuddered under the growing dread of an approaching conflict as the silent malevolent winds of maladministration stalked the thriving tombstone planet Earth.

Jan’s body.

The artefact on her left wrist.

Tick.

Blake’s eyes glazed over searching for clarity, reforging her identity…

Faded scent of unsolvable mystery the ancients of ancients sniffed the immanence of our looming destruction and rebirth timetable scheduled cosmic case of time and matter and smiled in union with the universe.  “Namaste” Blake whispered.

CUT TO: Breeding hysterical fear of a nebulous nothing a purposely cruel architecture which dictates and fertilises fear of the other, disenfranchisement, greed and idiocy. Historical manipulation, accompanied and enhanced with regular pruning.

Trees ripped from roots.

Flowers starved of water and Sol.

Sickness festers in the air.

Ignorance suffocates buried alive.

Approaching doom.

Nothing was private for long in Antarctica Prime.

The news of the Custodian’s death would hit soon.

Blake’s eyes closed tight.

Many initiates seek Kether, she thought. Many disappear lost far far away never to return drifting out to sea on ill-made rafts circling the drain. The willing initiate follows the threads embedded within the externalisation of our collective expressions of Lux Occulta, a decalcomania of this us. DNA within our literature, art, music; a detailed mapping of essence, nature, soul signposts surviving the filtering processes of Empires. Symbols that could not be eradicated or erased by authoritarian totalitarian censorship, inquisitions, crusades, digital apocalypse. Carve it into stone, it WILL last longer.

Blake became stone.

Strong.

Impenetrable.

She knew she was alone on the less untrodden path leading oneself further away from the herd that is content to graze on contaminated land. Venturing into unknown territory the foolish brave push on understanding that the rewards for selfhood cannot be compromised. Death or Glory. The negative veil of existence awaits. The primordial point calling.

A lighthouse that pulls you towards the rocks.

Siren

Holy Grails

Albion

The corner of Blake's lips rose to meet the fluorescent neon Sun of the morgue, then vanished leaving the impression to any lurking remote viewer of a gentle ripple generated cause and effect by a submarine’s periscope appearing from below a calm surface, Goethe's rainbow,  The Albatross, infinite oceans, before the smile slips back down into the depths from whence it came, back beneath into viscera. Returned to stasis.

Blake settled.

Waiting.

Listening.

Omnipresent technological hum of Urizen cloaked Libertalia in a shroud of fear and hope. Blake closed her eyes inhaling the potent wash of disinfected frozen dead. “Calibration 3, 6, 7... Ready…OPEN”. Staring deeper, pouring her gaze into the deconstructed disfigured tech enhanced skull of the Custodian, to her surprise she puked luminous green gunge into the remains of the dead man’s violently mangled face, shattered bone and leftover brain soup. The vomit slurped and oozed and tangled with the implanted nano fibres which laced and weaved throughout the lifeless cadaver; tracing the network of synthetic streams and rivers and tributaries of fibre and vein and vomit ploughing deeper diving into the meat, disappearing heading directly back to the source towards the thing that cannot be found. The empirical ghost. Elusive shadow.

Blake felt better.

Post vomit euphoria.

Clarity.

Not even the silky black blood of Nanoglobin could wake this dead man’s sleeping heart, Blake thought. NO bleeping machines. NO blinking lights of augmentation. NO grinding of bone and stainless steel. NO zipping bio electrical charge. NO lightning bolts from the Gods could reanimate this corpse.

Jan Lee The First and Last Custodian of Libertalia was well and truly dead.

“CUNT! GET OUT CUNT!” a dangerous voice barked drooling from behind her...