Friday, 12 February 2016

V is for Vagenda (Part 25 – Split Decision)



V is for Vagenda (Part 25 – Split Decision)


“Those who are aware of their condition and experience themselves as "multiple" might refer to themselves as "we" rather than "I." I shall use the term "multiple" at times, in respect for their internal experience. It is important to point out, however, that I recognize that someone who is multiple is actually a single fragmented person rather than many people. On the outside, a multiple is probably not visibly different from anyone else. But that image is only an imitation: people who are multiple cannot think like the rest of us, and we cannot think like them. (In fact, since it is difficult for the multiple to understand how singletons think, some of them might think that is is you who are strange).
Just as a singleton cannot become a multiple at will, a multiple cannot become a singleton until and unless the barriers between the parts of the self are removed. Those barriers were put up to enable the child to tolerate, and so survive, unavoidable abuse.
Multiple: a person with dissociative identity disorder (DID) or DDNOS.
Singleton: a person without DID or DDNOS, i.e. with a single, unified personality”

― Alison Miller, Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control




It is not easy to describe, as it was like I was in a dream.  Everyone from both the Lords of Order and Chaos assembled to debate in this dimension outside of time, to pass judgement on me.  Every soul, if that is even the right word to use, was like a color without a shape; but connected, like living smoke.  Maybe it was my mind trying to create a visual, struggling to process the sensation of my surroundings into something tangible, something I could process and make sense of.  I distinctly remember the voices, and the sense that there was no proper dimension as I know it.  The feeling that we were each a shapeless, morphing, shifting ethereal thing that both occupied space, and didn’t occupy space – it was hard to track who was who until I associated colors with the voices.  It started to almost feel like a lava lamp universe of some kind, so alien, yet somehow a very incredibly broken down simplification of the actual nature of our soul – I think…. Did I think that, or hear that?  It kind of sounded like my voice, but I’m not sure where that idea came from and I don’t think I spoke it.
As I acclimate to this, I start to understand what they are arguing about.  Someone opened a secret tomb of forbidden spells.  No – it is worse – someone used one!  “It wasn’t my fault, I was under someone else’s influence when I was forced to learn the spell, and I was under yet another’s influence when I was forced to use the spell.”
Wait, did I say that?  I’m looking toward where I heard my voice and see a cloud of light blue.  No, Sky Blue.  My mind is distinctly identifying this as Sky Blue?  It is so confusing.  “I didn’t say that, did I?” I say, hoping to get clarification – reassured since I’m hearing my voice come from my own sense of location and not where I hear my other voice.
“This convocation recognizes both Vagenda’s in this matter.  Nabu, do you recognize the second as a consequence to your influence?”…
That seemed to be coming from everyone simultaneously?  I start to feel cold, creeped out, as the unified voice begins to fragment into separate lines of thought and argument between all the participants around me.  The various directions the voices are coming from become frightening.  Even in a crowded city, the directions of random voices are limited to a 2 dimensional plane encircling me, and I have bearings.  I know up from down, left from right, etc.  I’ve never had a sensation like this.  The sense of emotion and dialog spherically surrounding me in 3 dimensions, and I have no bearing on any direction. 
I can hear some talk of how it was Nabu’s responsibility for possessing my body and forcing me to learn one of the forbidden spells.  I relive the horror of having been summoned, transformed, and that energy piercing through me, enslaving me inside myself to his will, becoming a monster of his design, forced to read what should never be read, and repeat, and repeat, and repeat, and repeat, until it was memori… wait a minute, that never happened!  I don’t remember any of that?  I’m living juxtaposition of resentment and denial, of confusion and anger, of remorse and delight.  This contradiction inside myself, I’m beside myself.  I don’t understand. 
Next I hear an argument about how I killed, that it was my mind that knew the spell, spoke the words, cast the energy, erased the life…  Erased the life?  No, I’m a healer!  I would never do anything like that!  I can and can’t recall it.  Another points out that I was not conscious or in any way in control of my actions, that it was Circe who commanded I do my worst, that it was Nabu who supplied me with what my worst truly was.  Nabu adding his arguments to the type of person affected, appealing to fate, and to what fate that they all know awaits me regardless as appeasement to judgement toward my person should they still have any.  Guilt, shock, denial, confidence, rage, remorse, aggravation – am I losing my ability to control my emotions?
Another adds that due to the nature of the spell even the Lords can no longer know what fate was before the spell was cast versus what fate is now, suggesting Nabu’s reasoning is out of convenience since no one could hope to know if help or harm was truly done to the timeline.  She shapes and trajectories of voices start shifting violently on this point.  I feel a lot of pride poisoning the arguments.  It is chaotic, and I can’t make anything out until suddenly I have a new mental depiction.  My mind struggles to process and now the imagery changes.
I’m in the country, at night, under a full moon, by a very old abandoned hockey rink.  The roof is gone, the walls are barely holding up.  The wood is largely rotten, and the paint is all long gone.  The bleachers are intact and the ice is somehow still there.
I don’t know how or why, but everyone is taking a more familiar corporeal form.  Is this what they chose, or is this how my mind is processing the experience?  Clearly defined shaped emerge in the arena, and somehow I know them by sight.  Closest to me, I sense Deedra, Jheryl, Vandaemon, Gorrum, Mordru, and myself.  Each are holding what looks like a flashlight.  Everyone’s arguments, from fact to feeling, the innate infused passion behind the sentiment, it all seems to be represented in their weapon and I’m seeing it as the color and intensity of the light coming from them.  I have one two.  Mine is an intense light that I am somehow compelled to yell “French Rose” in order to shoot the light out.
Wait, how can I be near myself in this scenario?  I’m taken back as I hear my voice emerge screaming out “Sky Blue!” and I see me running into the Arena as a battle emerges.  The voices scatter in my mind as it quickly escalates.  All I hear is “Emerald Green!”, “Ruby Red!”, “Lavender!”, “Jasmine Yellow!”, “True Blue!”, “Chestnut Brown!”, and many more as I fly over the rick looking down at the lightshow of the battle.  It doesn’t seem appropriate for me to get involved further.  No further “French Rose” will contribute to this balance.  I’m not really sure what I’m seeing.
Is this how the Lords Of Order and Chaos debate in their realm?  Am I involved as “Sky Blue”?  If so, why am I holding “French Rose”?
I awake alone in my room.  What a weird dream…


Split Decision


Future Luthor, pacing, activates his com to signal to Laura Lightning.  She quickly answers.
“What is the status of your mission?  I grow impatient at the lack of progress that seems to be made in your objectives.  Or have you forgotten who you answer to while busying yourself with this new League of yours?” Future Luthor scowls.
“I’ve done everything you asked of me.  I left my fiancĂ©.  I went to every event you claimed she would be at, and even those I deduced she would be at.  She didn’t even go to the wake for her ex.  Did you know that?  Are you sure about your own data?” Laura snipes back defiantly.
“You forget yourself” Future Luthor snaps back.  “You may be leader in Danger Force, but your ego drove your objective out of the league.  That scenario was handed to you, and it was your own blinded nature that ruined a perfect opportunity.  Perhaps you need a reminder.”
Future Luthor turns on another monitor showing Laura Lantern strapped to a table, with several medical leads attached to her body to equipment that is distinctly not medical looking.
Future Luthor smirks back “You’ve lost yourself.  You’ve lost a connection to one of you.  Surprised?  Try reaching out.  You can’t, can you.  Can you even remember her?  If it wasn’t for the resemblance…”  Lex turns down a dial on a remote lowering a bright force field from around Laura Lantern.
“STOP!” Laura Lightning screams horrified as memories of that self suddenly are flooding back.  It pains her to realize she had forgotten herself and the sum of those experiences.  It pains her to receive it all back in a brief moment.  She holds her head struggling to stay standing as Future Luthor geers.
“Don’t forget who I am, young pawn.  I’ve the collective knowledge on how Brainiac defeated all of you.  You were built to be three.  You’ve been living as two, and didn’t even remember your third self.  Living as a duality left you unstable, and apparently that left you self-absorbed.  Perhaps you felt that void and were trying to fill it.”  Future Luthor throws another switch electrocuting Laura Lantern, and raises the field as she dies.
“How dare you!” Laura lashes back, the pain becoming numbness as the field rises again.  “You will regret that, you monster!”
Future Luthor doesn’t seem threatened or impressed at the reaction at all as he turns on another monitor.  This time there are three tables, with three more Laura’s.
“Say hello to Laura Lifebringer, Laura Luminary, and Laura Legend – built from your own DNA to my specifications and needs.  As soon as I lower this field, this stable trio will join your consciousness, and dominate the watered down psyche that will result from it.  You were built for three, got selfish as two, let’s see if you are a little more malleable to my will as a minority within five” Future Luthor declares with a leering sense of finality.
The force field lowers, and Laura Lightning’s eyes glaze over as the three new clones, and their experience collectively, integrate into her whole.

V is for Vagenda (Part 24 – All Who Remain)



V is for Vagenda (Part 24 – All Who Remain)



Tell the one above he's a criminal
For taking and giving life like marble candy
Everything collapses around me
Overwhelms and astounds me
A Terrible Truth

When you leave this life, the world will be a darker place for all who remain
When you leave this life, the world will be a darker place for all who remain
And the light you gave the human race will go away...

I see you every time that I close my eyes
I hum every lullaby that you used to sing
You never know the last time you'll see someone
So give them all of your love
Cause they'll disappear

When you leave this life, the world will be a darker place for all who remain
When you leave this life, the world will be a darker place for all who remain
And the light you gave the human race will go away...

If I can't have you in this life
Then I don't want this life at all
Cause there's nothing in this broken world
That I'll ever love as much

I called and I called but you never picked up
And I cried and I cried but you never woke up
You died and you died without asking me first
You left me all alone here on Earth

When you leave this life the world will be a darker place for all who remain
When you leave this life the world will be a darker place for all who remain
When you leave this life the world will be a darker place for all who remain
When you leave this life the world will be a darker place for all who remain

We are all
We are all who remain
We are all
We are all who remain




Fitting that this was the last song playing on my radio.  I waited a few seconds alone in the car after the long drive here, tears running freely in my running car, and I don’t care who can see.  Who am I trying to impress, anyway?  No one.  No one ever again.  I shut off the car as the song completes, slowly emerging a stranger in a strange place.  Rain pouring down, I guess that will conceal the tears from anyone looking.  I can smell gasoline, staring at the water dripping from the “M” in Michelin on the front drivers side tire.  Where am I going?  Does it matter?






All Who Remain





I love the feeling of being lost, going somewhere new, being unknown, discovering new things in unfamiliar surroundings with absolutely no bearings.  Imagining what it might be like to live there, or what the people there are like, what hope feels like…  Like anything else other than what it is to be me…
I couldn’t face the funeral.  The people who would know me, judge me, too afraid to ask what even I can’t face to answer to myself.  Questions like “What are you doing here?”, or “How dare you show up here? This is his families’ time to grieve, you have no right!  How could you be so selfish?” will certainly be the small ones that will never come up now.  How could I look at his lifeless body?  It isn’t how I want to remember him.  How could I stand staring at the biggest mistake I ever made?  Maybe, just maybe, if I thought I was worthy and took him, kept him, embraced deserving him, told him how I felt when he bore it all to me instead of pushing him away breaking his heart – just maybe we both would have been happy – and both be alive today.
I used to think I wasn’t enough, that I had nothing to offer, that he could do better and deserved so much better.  It was too late when I finally realized that because I even could have such feelings for him, and care to hold him on such a high pedestal, that I really was the one who loved him most – that no one could ever love him more purely.  It hurt feeling his thoughts all these years, knowing this was mutual.  The failure was mine.
He tried to find solace, and love in this life in the wake of what would become the origin of my ultimate spiritual self-destruction.  He never found anyone who treated him right, and when he discovered he got his last girlfriend pregnant, he did what those rare good men do – everything they can to make a family work to honor who was about to bear his line.  It should have been me – after that he was tied to her, and whether or not he liked it, he would never risk anyone’s feelings straying short of doing all he could to make it work.
I’m a fucking idiot, and deserve this searing pain. 
It is no coincidence in my mind that I began my lifetime of pain with this disease within a month of making the biggest mistake of my life.  I never knew how to turn things around and make it right – and now I never can.
I stop at a convenience store after walking in the rain for the last hour with these thoughts cycling in my mind tormenting my soul when I see it behind the counter – cigarettes.  Specifically, “Canadian Classics”.  His brand.  I might as well do this right – I buy a pack, a Mercedes branded Zippo, and a gold-plated svelte cigarette case.
It is something that is a better fit for cowards like me – as it was for me in the past, him in his lifetime, and deep down, I suspect universal for all.  When life can feel too dark and hopeless, a cigarette can help.  It can help you feel in control knowing you are slowly ruining the remaining beauty in you in small subconscious steps – microscopic suicide – in portions small enough for those of us too afraid to just do it all at once.
I quit cold turkey when my daughter was born, but today, relapse.
I contemplate the state of my sanity, and the level of corruption now within my once pure soul as I toss the smoking butt into the dirty slush on the side of the dimly lit road.
…my head hurts so much...
I snap out of my depressing stupor for a moment as I get a message on my communicator – forgot I still had the stupid thing on me...
I read the text and laugh at this vicious scowling diatribe from Laura Lightning pissed of that she went to the funeral to find I wasn’t there.  Typical that when she seeks to do something compassionate, she still manages to make a sad matter worse, and twist her delivery so we can all see how everything is about her.  Times like this provide perspective and priority.
Fuck the little bitch.
Blocked…

V is for Vagenda (Part 23 – Pride & Glory)



V is for Vagenda (Part 23 – Pride & Glory)




"When a man lies he murders some part of the world
These are the pale deaths which men miscall their lives
All this I cannot bear to witness any longer
Cannot the kingdom of salvation take me home“
    - Cliff Burton


Pride & Glory


Contemporary author Shannon Alder once said “You will never find the real truth among people that are insecure or have egos to protect. Truth over time becomes either guarded or twisted as their perspective changes; it changes with the seasons of their shame, love, hope or pride.”  Natural seasons are easy to predict, with repeatable results, as the dynamic is based upon physics bearing consistent, reliable, repeatable results.  We understand the cycles of our planets orbit around the sun.  What of the seasons within people, then?  Perhaps the cycles of individuals are not so cleanly organized into steady predictably repetitious patterns as is the case with nature, but are the dynamics behind them truly that obscure?

What of those that posit love being nothing more than a chemical reaction designed to encourage members of a species to breed?  What of those that love once and would prefer to honor that love for life even if that means dying alone in this world?  What of those that operate with broken physiological equipment suffering various forms of mental disease and chemical imbalances?  At what point do we really separate that current state, subtext, and context of our present behaviors and obstacles and root out the pure essence of the spirit inside of us?  Does anyone look beyond their self-concern and immediate impact in this modern fast-food, short attention span, ADHD, convenience and self-love driven generation anymore to have the required commitment to do so?  Who is teaching us how to do this skill properly?

If you determine the quality of a person pure in their spirit, you have a clean slate.  Add onto it years of interaction, experience, damage, rejection, coping mechanisms, glitches, compromised biological processes, injuries – you still have the same person underneath it all begging to be appreciated for being that pure state.  At the core, we all do this.

This is where pride comes from in its proper form.

That desire to have oneself seen is the very reason some are tempted to keep secrets or lie.  Some confuse a positive light for a pure one.  One is the truth, the other an ideal.

Or something like that…

I’ve been at the airport for hours when I decide to escape the rows and rows of people sitting patiently through endless streams of departures, arrivals, and announced delays when I decided to log into my laptop.  No new email.  No new Facebook messages.  Millions of computers sharing a significant share of the entire sum knowledge of mankind, a massive ever-expanding text-based search engine trying to make it all easily accessible, and I’m bored to tears.  Never before in history has so much work and effort been invested into such an impressive body of technology yielding such a grossly unproportioned response as is my unimpressed face in this exact moment.

I check out Twitch to see if anything live is actually interesting with almost no expectation of finding anything.  Once in a while I will see a band like King Cobra, or some aspiring young guitarist wishing he was my brother, put on a pretty fun little show in the Creative Art channels. I like to start at the bottom where no one is watching because usually the artist knows that no one is watching, and assumes no one will, so they are more likely to relax and be themselves, rather than putting on a show, a mask, holding up appearances, and editing how they truly feel for the sake of being politically correct and liked.

I’d rather be real and hated, than fake and liked.  I’d rather hate someone for who they are, than like someone for who they are not, as well.


Meanwhile, at Craddock House…


The solemn form of one Gentleman Ghost emerges floating through the hotels front doors with a hesitance as he reflects back on his life having been taken from him on this very street so many years ago.  From petty thief, to one of the most powerful sorcerer’s of any time - yet he is always alone.  Always, save for once.
In the short time it takes him to levitate along from the hotel entrance to the middle of the road, his mind races recounting his childhood, the Gypsy Queen prophesizing his demise at the hands of royal blood, growing up into one of history’s most notable thieves, and meeting Katherine Manser.

Since that time, his ability to travel through dimensions only served to torture his soul further, seeing firsthand the epic destiny that exists between Hawkgirl and Hawkman.  Time is but a dimension, and through an astral tether connecting his soul to any other, he can travel through dimensions following them.  None have a closer tether to his heart than Kate.

He’s had the misfortune to witness their journey, in part resulting from exposure to Thanagarian Nth Metal, where Prince Khufu and Chay-Ara follow each other in pure love as Egyptian royalty, and continually reincarnate finding each other.  The bond existing between them is so strong that they even clearly reclaim memories of former lives, enriching the bond between them.

In the 19th century they had just found each other, in that wild west, as gun-slinging law enforcement.  At about that same time, they also were befriended by Gentleman Ghost, who in his actual lifetime was known as Jim Craddock.  

Hold your friends close, and your enemies closer.

Jim knew befriending local authority made his stake as a thief an easier one.  He hadn’t anticipated his raw attraction to Cinnamon – a nickname Kate reluctantly was known by.  He especially hadn’t anticipated how she stole the heart of this master thief.

The fateful day that their love for one another was uncovered, Hawkman (in that incarnation known as Nighthawk) had walked in on them in bed with one another at that very hotel, in room 23.  They scrambled as he entered.  Nighthawk immediately acted on the assumption that this betrayal by a friend was a rape in progress of his one true love.  In truth, Cinnamon stole Jim heart, and Jim had indeed just stolen her virginity.
Hawkman assaulted Jim, dragging him into the streets, and hung him immediately as a public execution – Jim finding his end to the hand of Royal blood just as the Gypsy Queen predicted in his youth.

Cinnamon was horrified helplessly witnessing who she truly loved in this life executed by who she only recently started to know she was “supposed to love”.  She could not live with anyone thinking Jim was a rapist, nor could she fully confess a love that betrayed her destiny and newly emerging memories of past lives.  She cleared Jim’s name to all making sure that all knew that there was no crime of rape at all.  However, her official explanation stopped short of the truth.  She claimed he had merely tried to steal her badge, and Nighthawk merely walked in on a struggle resulting from her awaking to find him try to remove it from her shirt.

Gentleman Ghost, reflecting on this once in a lifetime true love he briefly held with her, came to realize her shared destiny, watching how they continually found each other, life after life, reclaiming the sum of knowledge from each prior existence shortly after fate drew them back together.  It was much more intense a love than anything in the sum of human literature.  Even Romeo and Juliet ended tragically, but theirs was a love that genuinely exists past the grave.  It made Gentleman Ghost feel as though he was somehow inadequate, or inferior.  How can you compare to such an epic fate in a single life?  How can you bear knowing that the very target of your envy was also the very one who had murdered you for committing no crime at all.  In the end, Nighthawk had to live his entire life, and each subsequent one, knowing that in the end he committed murder upon an innocent over jealousy in the end.

Gentleman Ghost, damned to eternity in this form, came to certain powers.  Traversing dimension was sometimes to his advantage, but with the case of Cinnamon, it was also a curse.  In an almost ironic twist, of all the people whom he can touch or harm, he is unable to touch or use powers on virgins.  One thing he could never bring himself to witness was the timeframe within which Cinnamon managed to explain her pregnancy to Jim.  Gentleman Ghost’s entire family grew of this union – did she share that honestly with Nighthawk, or did she take him as a lover and pretend that it was their child she came to bear?

Revenge had largely consumed a lot of Gentleman Ghosts time.  Great care had been taken in the planning therein, as well.  One part of that revenge was to ensure that all future incarnations of Cinnamon would no longer be capable of recalling her former series of lives with Nighthawk.  This left her decidedly less open to his advances each time they were reunited.  This left Hawkman decidedly tortured being alone in the knowledge and history of their love.  The eternal guilt of what Hawkman had done, also, left him very forgiving and compassionate in his handling of all future encounters with Jim, as well.

That very genetic line, forward to present day, takes Gentleman Ghost to his pondering of his descendant – Vagenda.

All of these thoughts are but a few brief moments of personal reflection as Gentleman Ghost now comes to the center of the road.  There is nothing of this world suggesting anyone remembered his tragedy save for the fact that the hotel had been renamed after him.  As he stares at the very place Nighthawk murdered him so long ago, Gentleman Ghost comes to terms with what he has learned from his travels both to the past and to the future.

The world, such as it is, depends on his plan succeeding.

It isn’t that he doesn’t love her.  She is family, after all – even if she is unaware of this.  The timeline depends on the hard truth that Gentleman Ghost must ensure comes to pass.

Vagenda must die.