Advent

Its 2 am and we’re on our way back to the city. The world is silent, and it’s just me, Jay and Radiohead. She murmurs along sleepily as Thom Yorke sings his heart out, trying to stay awake to keep me company. “You sure you don’t want to get some sleep?” I ask her, smiling. I already know what she’s going to say and sure enough there’s a sound that vaguely resembles a no.

I excavate the bottle of water from the bag firmly secure in Jay’s encircled arms and take a gulp. I’m glad we’d gone on this crazy impulse of a trip. I had to get out of Bangalore to try to coax inspiration to come out of its bloody hole and me and Jay just reached the point in our relationship where we knew neither of us was a crazy axe murderer, so I took her along. It worked like a charm. I managed to get a tenuous hold on my muse, which needless to say was better than none at all, and Jay got the break she needed to stave off becoming a part of the corporate zombie horde.

The car is going at a comfy eighty and the blurry thick lines that are the streetlights melt and revolve into a pinprick of the night. The tiny dot grows and grows, and the breaks screech to a halt. The darkness is a vortex and I lose all sense of space and direction. ‘Fuck!’ I scream. The breaks screech and there’s screaming like a faint background score building up to something horrific. The world is consumed.

There is blood everywhere. There is a sword in my hand and it gleams hungrily as the crimson seeps into it. I feel its insatiable hunger and roar. My army is death manifest and there is nothing that can stop me. The creatures pouring through the mountain pass fall to a sword blessed by The Destroyer himself.

‘General!’ I hear someone shout. Through the fog of bloodlust in my mind a thin light of recognition forces itself. ‘What is it?’ I snap to the burly man as I remove myself from the frontline and the reserve steps in to take my place. A voice that sounds like stones grating emerges from the burly figure in the blackened armour. “We’re being pushed back in the west. Your brother requests reinforcements.’

‘Pushed back? That was their weakest point!’ I grate.

The fellow hesitates. ‘They’ve turned they're elites loose upon us, General. The Hounds have taken to field.’

‘Finally,’ I growl with joy, and lightning crackles in the starless sky.

‘Quickly, quickly, he’s loosing blood,’ someone says, and I grin. I feel like I’m moving but I’m on my back how could that be? ‘Jay,’ I mumble thickly as a face peeps from the sky the face has Lennon glasses but this couldn’t be Lennon when did Lennon get so fat? ‘Give peace a chance,’ I beg indistinctly and there’s a sound of wheels rolling and the wails of an ambulance sirens from somewhere very far away where am I where’s Jay?

Everything is white, clean and sterile its upsetting white is bad white is pain so much pain ‘Jay!’ I scream but it’s strangled by my cruel throat and only its death cries emerge.

The Hounds were disappointing. They were skilful, quick and would have been formidable, perhaps, even against the best of this army mine. But they didn’t fight my army. They fought me.

The customary challenge was made at night, when the armies of the Floating city had withdrawn. The Hounds against me, a battle to the death. They couldn’t refuse such generosity, or as they thought, such foolishness.

I killed them all.

The splendor of the Floating City is enough to make even the most hardened veteran in my army gasp. Its beauty is unparalleled, an aberration in the ugly mottled dawn of the netherworld. The king is in chains, kneeling, and I can taste the despair that swirls about him. He holds his head high. That can be changed. And it is.

The headless body spasms as I walk away. The Floating City is mine. As will be all the realm and the worlds. ‘Emperor,’ I whisper to myself. It starts to rain.

I’ve got a pleasant buzz in my head. It’s been a month since the fucking crash that destroyed me. My life came down like a deck of cards faced down by the big bad wolf. But none of that mattered. Except that Jay was.. Jay was dead.

My hand raises itself to indicate the requirement of another shot of vodka. Morosely numb, I think to myself and snort. If Jay were here she’d probably be pretty cross at how I'm coping, but what the fuck, she wasn’t, and that was precisely why I'm coping how I'm coping in the first flaming place.

The booze is, additionally, generous enough to keep the disturbing hallucinations and dreams that plagued me since the accident away.

It also helps me forget how much I enjoy the bloodshed in them.

The shot comes and disappears. A childhood memory flashes.

I’m by my grandmother’s bed, and her eyes are closed. There isn’t enough life in her to allow such indulgences as the expression of the restlessness she feels, but I can sense it. My mother doesn't know I'm here. My grandmother's eyes crack open, and she beckons me closer. My head has enough ground clearance to be able to see her eye to eye as she turns her head to face me.

The pillow is white, as are the sheets. Clean and sterile. It is sapping her life away. “Should know.. we are.. blood.. the Demon King,” she mumbles. I look at her innocently, uncomprehendingly. “We are the descendants of the Fallen Emporer,” she says suddenly filled with an urgent energy, trying to make me understand. It suddenly slips away again.

She mumbles something, and then mumbles it again. It was the third time that I finally thought I understood what she said.

“Ravan.”

Tantaluses and Religion/A Priest's Gleeful Rhyme

The lights you think are redemption
The lights that you think are release,
That playfully dance away from your hands,
With such maddening ease.

The lights you think are asylum
The lights that you think are home,
Hang onto strings that're cold-hearted things,
Want you forever to roam.

If only your mind was as cosy
To comfort your exhausted soul,
But there will be no rest, that is what's best,
for the idle are the devil's to cajole.