Another Day in Paradise

She had become sacred to him, and there was nothing he would not do for her, even to this day. He will always love her.

"I've seen fire and I've seen rain, sunny days I thought would never end; now sweet dreams and flying machines are pieces on the ground."

(James Taylor)

The color of the sky was a strange, dark orange, opaque. Lurking behind its translucent glow a foreboding blackness threatened to dominate the heavens. Suddenly brimstone fire fell from the sky, striking the ground everywhere, yet never touching him. He choked and coughed from the stench of the fires they wrought. He must move on, forward, alone. Deserted was the wasteland which lay waiting, ahead of him, and again, he was alone.

Now gazing as far as his eyes could see, into the barren desert which lay ahead of him, he could not see anything living. He was then possessed with a feeling, an all pervasive and overwhelming sense of dread and futility consumed him. As well, he was disgusted and sickened by this place; this place was familiar to him He had been here before, many times, yet he had never ventured this far.

Here and there; dark clumps of material could be seen scattered throughout the vast expanse ahead of him. Behind him lay a fading sunset, a green forest of giant sequoias. A forest filled with lush ferns, daises and forget-me-not flowers. Sunny clear blue skies, filled with fond memories which were now fading out and away, into oblivion.

He could not go back, not without her, ahead was his destiny unknown. He knew that he must move forward into the direction of the dead. He had been here before but then this place had not been wasteland, it was then a lush and bountiful garden, filled with the dreams that they had cherished and fulfilled together. He now knew that he must face the atrocities ahead. He knew what those 'clumps' or mounds were; dark silhouettes of his broken and shattered dreams, skeletons of his desecrated past.

"She promised me." he thinks to himself shaking his head in disbelief. One single silver tear falls from his left eye.

"But how could she know what she had done?" he reminds himself.

"This is not her fault." he affirms.

"I must move, fast... see if there is anything to save." he thinks to himself but he knows that there will be no-redemption here, not in this place.

"But I must witness the deaths. I must know. I must experience the loss or I will never be free." He proclaims to himself.

"I will not survive this!" He screams to the heavens above, tears now flowing rapidly. As he yells, screaming to and looking above, he opens his moist eyes to see the clock near his night stand as he awakens.

"3:00 A.M. Another nightmare." he says to himself, his eyes and cheeks are now wet with real tears. He is crying for real now, the dream vivid in his mind.

Pain wrecks his body, as he rises up from the bed to go outside for a cigarette.

“Can I have no peace?” He pleads to his heavenly Father and Mother, as he was now shaking his head, lowered with the overwhelming feeling of despair that the dream had left him with. Wiping the snot away from his drooling nose, he then Lights a Camel, he takes a deep inhale of the nicotine drug to break the entrapment of the dream and then, contemplates;

Twenty four years and the haunting possessed no abatement for him.

“I must be cursed” he thinks.

He then remembers the promise, his part of the promise, a promise he never forgot, the promise that he would keep. This was his curse. This was, as well, his salvation.

He thinks of a Greek mythological story of Adonis venturing into the underworld of Hades for his lost love.

“Yes, if only ‘they’ knew how true that story was” Maybe then, they would not be so quick to judge, maybe then they could have some humility, and some compassion, he stubs out the camel with a feeling of disgust. He then rises from the patio chair to step inside the house now intent upon brewing himself a cup of espresso. As he prepares the coffee he asks himself in a self-analytical way.

“Why am I haunted so?” He is perplexed. He feels cursed. “What have I done wrong?” With the brutality of the executioner’s madness he tortures himself with the questions of the foolish and the insane. Those questions of which have no answers, of which the only purpose is to be gleamed from self-destruction. He unwisely thinks that he may find some absolution in his madness. “Was it my fault they died?” Wearied he tries to fend off the demons of the past— yet they are far from finished with him. “Why was I spared?” His self-torment was only beginning when suddenly the venomous serpent of his thoughts manifested in the form of the noisy hiss from the espresso machine— a noxious intrusion upon his obscure, macabre thoughts. 

The Juggernaut

The feeling was with him constantly. The pervasive dread was a darkness of which consumed him. He died a thousand deaths each and every day. One would never expect; perceiving the boyish innocence of his looks that such darkness lurked within him. He felt hunted by it.

The cold damp chill of the morgue never left him; it would be with him always.