The Wretched

The liquid pewter danced near his bare feet. He slipped his fingers into the warm wet then, extracted them, and examined their shininess as they dried in the evening breeze. Gazing out across the water his thoughts fell over the edge of earth. There, they were swallowed up by the monster that produced them. For many nights he had roamed this secluded stretch of beach. Just him, the wind and his strategies. The stars threw their fiery glitter down on top of his shoulders as he now sat on his knees in the sand under the soft silvered light. Clutching into the damp sand with his fingers, he dragged it up and placed it in even mounds in front of him self. Then, he began to fashion it as if he had thrown it down onto a potter’s wheel. Constructing the design into the first pile he borrowed from the resources of the substantial other dollops beside it to add more clarity into the initial shape in which he forming. Smiling briefly to himself, he marveled at the simplicity and, yet the complexity of what was forming under the guidance of his notion. Under the subtle glow of the slightly filtered moon he drew a finger horizontally as he sensuously carved even slashes into the sides of vessel. Well, some might call it a vessel not really guessing at its purpose. But, then they would never see it. For when, in the morning, beachcombers discovered this spot in which he was now kneeling, all traces of his previous evening’s endeavor would have been cleansed from sight by an impatient and tenacious tide. All anyone would find of what he was now engaged in, would be some charred limbs from a shyly smoldering fire a little farther up the beach near a woolen blanket he had abandoned. As he drew another handful of sand to press it around the top of the vessel design, he smiled at himself again. It amused him to think that he would leave such a small remnant like a blanket just to generate any speculation that he knew he would never be physically present to witness. But that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t see a reaction. He made a little game out of it within his lightening quick mind and he hummed an eerie tune as he continued in his task. It was a tune that timed itself within the rhythm of the tide as it encroached even closer upon his design now. As evident as it was that his sand plan would soon be dragged away in the undertow he continued to work and hum, “Something I Can Never Have,” quietly to himself. As he finished he sat back on his knees and stared back out across the now blackened water. The monster no longer swallowed his thoughts and he stood up and watched the foam of the sea snake up onto the walls of the gritty vessel to coil around and fill up the inside of it. He closed his eyes, and turned his face into the full moon and spoke the words proficiently and reverently. When he opened them again, they were already observing again, attending the collapse of the physical creation of his conceptual arrangement, a suggestion now being heartily consumed to sate the slithering watery appetite. Confident that the small natural fire pit and, the blanket had remained untouched by the deluge, he walked away thinking about the woman, who would soon be admonishing her two young boys for picking up a dirty beach blanket, thinking that it contained the sweat and ardor of a previous night's tryst. He knew it would happen because he’d already seen it. But, it jolted a bit of laughter from his chest anyway. As he plodded contemplatively through the tall grasses of the dunes he thought of her. But, he was a patient guy. He would wait, because sooner or later she would tell him. And, he would never confirm it, because she would never ask. Even if she did ask, he would never tell her because it was not for him to inform her, it was up to her to discover. Playing a little game with himself, he decided that two days would elapse before she would notice it. Because even though she was most of the time nearly confused, her mind was yet quick enough to grasp whatever he wanted it to subconsciously. It all came down to her writing really. It was her messages to him that would always show him what he needed to know. But, he also had a tenderness for her, an affection that he now remembered as he found himself unconsciously clinging to the hemp spiral cord she wound for him as it now tucked a spherical jade pendent into his hand.



In the parking lot he found his car. After rubbing the sand from his feet, he stepped into it. As he drove away from the beach area, he gaped out in a huge yawn that squeezed droplets from the corners of his eyes. Dragging the visor down over the wind shield he drove home facing the emerging brightness of the day. It had been a long night and he longed to sleep, not so much for the rest but to see what the dreams would bring now, now that he had created vessel and, then had allowed its deliberate destruction. The glare on the glass in front of him reminded him of the mirror that he could no longer see into. It sort of saddened him but he knew that there was a reason for it just as there was a reason for all else that happened between the watery barriers of the universe. Consciousness...he knew that it was a part of it. He had accepted this, and from the discussions he had been having with her, he knew that she had accepted that too.



After he let himself into his apartment with his key, he went and opened up the refrigerator. Spotting the carton of orange juice he set it onto the counter and then pulled a clear glass from out of the cupboard. Quietly, respectfully he regard it. Then, he poured himself some of the juice. Then he walked over and stood in front of his small living room window. He stared down on the stretching and waking street below as the streetlights pardoned themselves from the presence of the intensifying glow of the new day. Shrugging his shoulders, he headed for his bedroom tugging off his sandy clothes, throwing them into a chair in front of his computer. Then, he went and climbed into the shower.



As the steam cascaded down over his slightly tight muscles the heavy wet streams drew the curl out of his long dark hair and, it rebounded off of his sturdy chest. It was the slight clinging downward tug that had served to remind him, that once again, he had forgotten to take off the necklace before he got into the shower. It was the awareness of its presence that caused him to awaken from the dream that he was having as he dozed in his standing position underneath the pulsating rhythm of the water that was reverberating off of the rain slicked walls. He knew he’d forgotten it, because you don’t remove that which is a part of yourself. But, recently the spiral cord had started to fray and with it frayed his belief that it would not break due to his negligence to remember to remove it before indulging in his time and space within his near sauna. As he continued to stand in the caressing warmth of the shower, he thought about the dream he had just been having just then. He remembered the waterfall, the stones and the crystal. As he cranked down the knob of the shower, he shook his head, then, emerged from out of the mist like a specter from a revelation. Wet footprints followed him into his bedroom where he bumped into the chair while he was toweling off his hair. As he looked up he noticed the streaming star field on his computer screen and, impulsively he grabbed for the mouse and brought back into focus the website that he had been looking at before he left his apartment. There were four new messages in his inbox. A huge smile spread across his face as he sat down in the chair to read them. As he opened the first one he, paused for a moment and wondered, would she realize that he was between the shower and his clothes? His eyes lit with merriment as he read her first message. Apparently she was writing something new and fantastical and she wasn’t quite sure about it. In fact it was leaving her a bit embarrassed. He raised up his thick dark angular eyebrows and concentrated on the box within the screen. His fingers flew quickly over the keys as he wrote her a quick note to let her know that she had seen what she thought she had and that he could understand her embarrassment. How he had informed her of this was with the well placed words he put into, “Raw nakedness of uncomfortable facts is necessary in creation of stories. Keep writing and soon the feeling of discomfort will pass you from that passage into a feeling within a new one.” Then he hit send, satisfied that her subconscious would calm itself. That, he was sitting there reading her messages au natural, was a reminder to him, that he was aware, that she had already seen this moment, because at the beach he had just bent the time space continuum to fit his purpose and, as usually happened there was always some residual form of shock wave from it. How fortunate that it was only this minor. As he read her next message he found something very disturbing in her new poem. She was always anxious for his approval of her work, as much as he was for the content of it. As he read it, he raised up his eyebrows again. Then, he opened up the notepad beside his computer and jotted down some quick notes while he still had the connection. Then, he sat there quietly after he put his pen down. It was evident that the council must be informed of this latest development. As he finished reading her following two messages, he felt slightly preoccupied and, only managed to answer one of them.



Pushing out of his chair he went and crawled under the covers in his bed and waited for sleep to continue to tell him what it knew about the meaning of the waterfall, stones and crystal. Once more he drifted into that place where he broke physical laws, his thoughts straying back to where he was watching the vessel dissolve on the beach. The water had created the new level in the connection. The vessel would protect it because after he had formed it, he had destroyed it, so that its creation would remain forever hidden from those whom he had wished never to gain an awareness that he had taken an outside step and shaped it into existence. His awareness had told him that he was the water and, as such, he could adapt his shape into whatever confluence he chose to guide himself through. It was merely a coincidence that he discovered how close he had been to the fire the whole time. The fire that had contacted him with a simple question about something he had written on the website. He knew from what was written in her innocent query that that the fire was within her. It was flame that would burn a hole through anything because she had the clarity to be able to see. It was this clarity that had alerted him as to her existence, as she unconsciously revealed to him, the things that were important for him to know. It was this ignition that set the precedence for her primary importance. But, over the many months of communicating with her it had flourished into an affectionate upon his part and he began to feel a need within him self that kept him returning into the brilliant flame that she warmed him with, within her words. Part of him drew closer to her because he knew that he needed her so that he could feel good about himself. Who he was, or, what he was, was a cold and lonely path and it was difficult to walk. There were those that loathed him and repelled his ideas. Then, there were those that nearly fell prostrate at his feet. Thinking on this, he knew that, she did worship him. But, most of all, he was well aware that he must never allow himself to take personal advantage this because, it was a condition stated to him at that time in which he was appointed to be her retainer and mentor. He recalled once more the stern faces of the guardian council as they confirmed it for him. It was an assignment that he had been comparably free lanced for, one, in which he was to wait until he was summoned. After a while he had started to believe that he would never be summoned for the job because the offer had come in a dream. He spent many years waiting, never finding out who he was in charge of until the night that the council requested of him, the simple question he had received from someone he had been writing to. When the council appeared to him again the following night, it was to hand her into his care. But as they did, they issued with it a stern warning. He was never to become personally involved with tutelage under his care. Then, to fix it within his subconscious not to doubt that she was the one, they whispered to him her name.



He couldn’t sleep. So he scrounged around by the lamp stand near his bed. Grabbing his pack of cigarettes, he shook one into his long tapered fingers. After he lit it he inhaled deeply upon it. Then, as he blew it out slowly he thought of the first letter that he asked her to write to him. Not a message, but a real handwritten letter. He had asked her to write it because he would be capable of holding her hand as he looked at the stroll of her writing. It was as he held her pen, that he felt something else. It was something he shouldn’t feel, something he was not allowed to feel. And, it created within him a tug of war because if he allowed himself to feel, then it was possible that those feelings could sneak into his messages to her. Then, the council would know, about what was happening to him, because they looked over his shoulder at all of his correspondence with her. Even now he was twisting up inside as he tried to deny the softness in the skin that he felt in holding her pen as it wrote him that first letter. But, hadn’t he been told that the handwritten letters would contain more detailed information than those of Internet messages would. Sometimes he wished that he never had met her. But, then every time he did wish that, it created a rocking ache as if his thoughts would forever be emptied out with out contact with her. But, recently he had also become aware that things were advancing more quickly than those of the preparations that had been made to greet the changes, because there had been a new indication given. She had told him that she had dreamed of dolphins jumping through a door over a large body of water. As he had read it, it actually alarmed him. He knew what it was but she had no clue. To her it was merely an odd vision. Visions that she never believed in until he was allowed to tell her that they were real, something she would never have believed in by her self. Mainly because she did not think herself capable of such. But, this current vision had meant that she had moved up to the next level, and, he knew it was too soon. This, then, meant that he had to take steps to create some protection, not only for her, but for him as well. Besides the vessel he had just created, he had the previous month before, sent her a labradorite talisman. She had remained completely unaware that he had had it blessed by a practitioner. Her joy upon receiving its beauty was evident in her message response. It had said that she felt honored to have been bestowed it and that she would wear it out of loyalty. It pained him that he had to keep her hidden and in the dark. It was imperative that she never be privy as to her true worth. It was also necessary for him to maintain her at such a standard that others would think her slightly insane in her gift. A gift she categorically denied existence of because she didn’t believe herself capable of really seeing. But, he knew that the council had searched long and hard to find her. But, he had to admit that even though he had thought that she was a myth for the longest time, her gift was astonishing. Because of this, as part of his instruction of her, he had included in one of his letters to her, some poems that he had written her on some circular cardboard inserts found in boxes that he had unpacked at his work in a factory that machined parts for jets. He remembered her comments about how they made her dizzy when she tried to read the small writing he put on them. He had spent hours perfecting the spiral flow of the script on them. The purpose for this was so that as she turned them they would put her into a trance. He had thought that she had arrived at the point in her training that it was important for her to learn how to enter one. He then remembered how he had been sitting at his kitchen table reading her fourth handwritten letter and nearly choked on his tea as he read her next comment after the one about getting dizzy. She had said, “Honestly, I thought that you hadn’t sent me spiral poetry. I thought you were sending me a crystal ball like you wanted me to scry for you or, something. But, you know what, this is really weird and I know you’re going to think this is odd, but, when I read the poem, I swear to god, I saw a huge inferno. Flames were leaping through the cities and huge winds were blowing over buildings. This has never happened to me before. I’m sort of feeling like the Oracle of Delphi.” Then, she put LOL after the comment. Only he did not laugh, he felt sad. Sad for the innocence of her truth, and his truth, that he was in love with her but, he could never have her in his life in the way he would want it. It was not allowed. His job was to train the gift that was within her, the one she was truly unaware of. Because if he allowed himself to pacify his selfish desires then, the whole world would be at peril. Because, what she had seen in the spiral was something he already knew about because he had already once bent the time space continuum to that point, for time was water. As one of the keepers of the wave, he was not allowed to transfer physical energy to an oracle. The day she had wanted to talk to him in a private chat room he had walked away from his computer and delayed answering her message about whether he would go into one with her. He had stood by the window his desire engulfing him, his mind screaming, ‘do it’. But duty prevailed, warning him against opening a Pandora’s box of visions that would haunt her. He knew that if they were even to chat within a created virtual time space his words would force a tide beneath her skin that would wash an apocalypse through her mind, one that he had seen come and, then disperse into the winds. If this were to happen, then she would become too traumatized to connect the dots, for the council. Her writings would no longer be able to help them prevent the coming events. Events that he had already seen come and pass; though the council was unaware of this. Insane, she would be useless to the council. No, all that he was permitted, was an exchange of spiritual energy that, for him at least, bordered on sacredness. It was well established that a time keeper’s physical energy was too great for an oracle’s highly tuned fragile mind to accept, and it’s innocence and peace of mind needed to be maintained to promote the clarity of it’s function. As this last phrase of the wise few breached his thoughts again, he snapped himself out of his escape to her physical residence. But, before he did, he took one long last slow puff on his cigarette as if he was breathing in her breath within a kiss that would connect them further. He tamped out his cigarette and slid back under the covers of his bed and closed his eyes. Prior to falling asleep he viewed again one of her recent messages of the summer. It was filled with rose gardens and warm breezes. Then, as he drifted off he met her there and, he took up her hand and led her underneath the gazebo.