It started out simple. I was visiting my friend’s estate while on holiday in New England; we would be searching for various antique books. The house itself is exceptionally old and has surprising detailing. The cornices of the house are decorated with hems of waves. The rest of the house is very odd in that its rooms are not square or rectangular in shape, they are varying ovals and hexagons. The corners peak upward to ceilings dark recesses covered in cobwebs and dust. The servants oddly enough don’t seem to clean very often if at all. That’s all I remember about the house from my last very brief visit. Here I stand before his house and I feel something deep within my stomach, a churning sensation almost painful. I toted my luggage up the steps of the home; it was here that I would spend the next few weeks and it is here that I will begin my descent into the bowels of this town; at this point I was unbeknownst to both.  

                                The foyer’s walls were a peeling sea foam green and the room reeked of mold. The house was an unnatural cold considering the smoldering heat outside. Then there was Sven, my acquaintance and accomplice in this tale. His unkempt mane of blonde hair complemented his stoic face and his piercing green eyes. He was quite the sight to behold. He told me about the book he had recently come across while going through a police sale, the book apparently belonged to a bunch of religious zealots whose compound had been foreclosed. He said the book appeared to just be random scribblings along with detailed graphs, charts and pictures with some footnotes in broken English.                

                                We walked through his home to his study which was vast compared to the small study in my small studio apartment. His shelves were filled with large, leather-bound tomes and some small paperbacks that appeared to be personal journals (who knows of what. They could be medical or small day to day happenings). The room had a high ceiling; its octagonal shape cast odd shadows. The carpet was an expensive tapestry that must have been custom made for the room as it fit its hulking form perfectly. He approached one of the behemoth shelves and pulled the aforementioned book from betwixt two large atlases. He opened it to a page portraying a large thing sitting…no…squatting over a throne. It appeared to have the head of an octopus but the body of a dragon and yet it seemed to position itself upright like a man. There were odd symbols and things, the only legible English on the page read “rites of the star spawn”. We both skimmed through the book, staring at its many paintings and odd drawings. But the way the damn thing smelled, it was awful. The book smelled like a mixture of piss and other strange bodily ichors. Luckily Sven had grown tired of the things and shelved it.

                                Sven and I proceeded to drink from his brandy collection, reminiscing about our college days and old love interests from days gone by. He told me of this girl he was infatuated with, her jet black hair was always up. He had tried on numerous occasions to talk to her but failed as she snubbed him at every conversational upstart possible. The way he described her still, even after all these years you can tell he still had pangs of guilt for never wooing her. Her name was Rebecca, a beautiful name. We sat there in silence as I imagined this beautiful girl; her condescending glares giving off some mysterious sex appeal. As I looked up at Sven I noticed he looked beside himself; whether it is from regret or just the pains of realizing how old we have both become. In that silence came a stirring in the walls that startled us both, it sounded as if an entire colony of rats moved and slithered within the wall when suddenly…everything went quiet. The candles in the room were snuffed by some wind without origin and there we sat in total darkness. There was a great guttural noise that resonated within that room, a noise that nearly reduced me to tears. It was a sound so wretched and sickening that I vomited upon myself. I sat there, immobilized with fear while the thing within the walls moved about us, its form making revolting sounds. I heard Sven across the room, I could hear his teeth chattering and I could smell his piss.

                                We spent the whole night in that room, in terror we waited as the nameless thing stalked us from within the walls. For hours we sat there after the thing left, hoping that it wouldn’t return. Morning came and we exited the study. Neither of us looked at each other and neither of us acknowledged what just happened. That day we spent in our own separate rooms, I didn’t leave mine until I heard a loud bang from Sven’s room. I stood at my door, shaking…not knowing whether the nameless thing had finally left the walls and begun its hunt. Finally I forced myself to open the door and make my way down the hallway. When I opened the door to his room there he was…hanging from the rafters, his dead green eyes staring through me.

                                As I stepped into his room I found pictures of a beautiful black haired girl scattered below him. I assumed this was his Rebecca. There were dozens upon dozens of these pictures. I began to sift through them, seeing less and less of a beautiful girl and more of an obsession. There are some of her much younger, I assume in her twenties. But then there are more, ones in her thirties and could be very recent. The odd thing is, they all seem candid. She’s always off to the far side of the shot or seemingly unaware her picture is being taken. I sat there for a while; absorbing the photos. I came across a picture that really caught my eye. It was Rebecca, with her sprawled across the couch in some room definantly not in this house. She looked so serene laying there, her arms gently holding a pillow to her chest. I wanted to lay next to her, I wanted to have her hold me and eclipse all this. I laughed. I laughed so hard it hurt, here I was at my friend’s feet and fantasizing over a woman I had never met before in my life and yet I longed to be with her.

                                I decided it best to clean up the photos and move them into my room, I would figure out what to do with Sven later. It horrified me how desensitized I had become from last night. I felt as if I should be crippled by all this, immobilized at Sven’s feet and yet, here I stand in my room surprisingly numb.  I thought it best to avoid the police for now; they’d toss me in an asylum if I told them what happened last night. Something deep within me needed me to stay in that house.

End of Part 1

     So lately I’ve been trying to become a better person, pursuing more spiritual rites of satisfaction. I’ve taken up my old mantle of a Transcendentalist Buddhist with so much more behind it. I’ve really tried to distance myself from negative personalities and tried to embrace people a lot more. I’ve started to stand my ground a lot more when it comes to how I express myself; nobody is getting between me and my will to create something tangible.

         I realize I’ve hurt a lot of people over my time here on earth and would like to thoroughly apologize to those that truly didn’t deserve anything of that sort. With all these long walks in the silent forest, it’s hard not to notice something larger at work. In those walks I’ve re-confronted and re-assessed my views of reincarnation and the cycle of Samsara and I’ve come to terms with who I am as a person again, finally comfortable in my own skin.

     I’ve started to realize that the days are too beautiful to waste locked away in front of a screen most of the time and made it my mission to spend a vast amount of time with the rocks and roots that hold me while I cloud watch. It’s a beautiful world; I might as well make the best of it. I can already feel so much weight lifting off me, like some anvil has been lifted from my arms. Everything and everyone has become so much brighter, no shades of gray blotting out faces, no static voices blocking out what people are saying.

    There’s a citrus mist on every smile I see now, a sweet note to every word and I can’t help but see your silver lining. Though there are a few people I’ll probably have to leave behind in this, people that are immature and self-centered that can’t help but bring me down. These people constantly try to make me feel below them and I won’t have it anymore. These people were supposed to be my closest friends but instead they suppress and oppress what I have to say and what I have willed into existence. I’m in search of heavier sounds from amplifiers, not some torpid tripe from a car commercial. I need atmosphere to breathe; you can’t convert melody to oxygen. At this point I’ve got something much larger to create, a grander vision of stories to tell, of voices to let slip over drenched violence and percussive blasts of oaky strength.

I am Jerrod Preston
and I love you

We set out with one mission: To get to the end of the rainbow. We don't know why we were compelled to set off into the rain and mud to follow this archway into the sky. We followed it along the railroad tracks until we came to a great gravel space. Then, it split in two. We followed one to a point that overlooked a green field surrounded by barbwire fences overtaken by nature; vines spiraling and weaving tapestries through their rusty ribs. As we looked on we saw what we were afraid of the most; losing each other, we saw the end of our childhood before our eyes. We talked about our last summer as we followed the fading rainbow to the other side. There sat a tree, bathed in light from the sun when all the others were in the shade. It was a beacon, beckoning us to the top of the hill. We had to cross a stream to ascend this steep face of moss and grass but when we reached the top we followed it until we came to a great field of powerlines and golden suns and in the middle...sat a broken boat. It was a beautiful sight, poetic as it was natural. Unnatural as it was moving. We found a pair of binoculars in the dirt and used the to look into the field; we didn't see a single house and then...we all smiled.

There's the smell of rain on concrete and a girl ever so gracefully prowling the sidewalks. She knows what she's doing; she's got me in her crosshairs like a Vietnamese sniper just waiting to blow me away. I want to say something, maybe talk her out of shooting through my aperture; taking away my flow control. The triggers pulled and she doesn't even see my lens shatter, she doesn't see my star-struck face as I'm bathed in scalding light; retreating beneath sun-burnt skin, to a body not-entirely whole. A body, a heart in atrophy, an icy ring of ribs holding back a storm of flusters from a broken muscle. They say the souls in the eyes; hers just pull me down like quick sand. How I wish she'd crawl on-top of me and sink with me, but this time I'm sinking alone. I can't feel my own hands reaching but I know they're doing it, because I can feel that ice cold wind turn my fingers black.

    She's like a sun made of liquid nitrogen, touch the surface and risk shattering my body. Stay away and the light focused through her icy gaze is enough to set me aflame with vulnerable intentions. The fact this pathetic passing thought can affect me so drastically shows great weakness in an otherwise battle-scarred living carcass. The body is a husk and life makes calluses, the body is the witch and the skin is the heretic. She's burning me like a beautiful moth caught in a blow-torch and at the same time, she's freezing me solid so I stand in a torpid stupor as she passes by. I can feel the ropes and tendons snapping, my heart rising like a hot air balloon into my throat and suddenly… the boy that never stopped talking is as silent as a monk during the solstice. Suddenly, my phantom limbs are frostbitten and broken and only my Nitrogen-Star can warm me. Lost in a vacuum of desires quietly caged by broken hands, like a locust chewing out of a corn-stalk cage…it's only a matter of time until a swarm comes down and tears away my husk.

    The human relationship is a frigid and often deadly engagement. There are times when the human spirit can be snapped in-wait by the minor inflection of a word or a suspicious name brought to light in conversation. Relationships, once formed, never actually end. Long after wounded love turns to hate, you are still bound. You still think about one another whether you care to admit it or not, in some cases: often keeping tabs on what they're up to. Patronizing yourself with the burden of wanting to know how they're going along without you.

    Even if the relationship is drowned out in a sea of others; it's still there, under the surface like a jagged reef waiting to slice your foot and call the sharks into frenzy. When you're lost in a sea of relationships it's always nice to have a sandbar to rest on when the waves pick up too much and the rip tide threatens to take you out to the blacker depths of the human mind. I have my sandbar, it's built on the love I've shared and given, the smiles I've made and forced and the hands I've held and the backs I've worked beside. This sandbar of mine is a warm, sun-baked mound in a sea of unfriendly mouths waiting to swallow your heart whole. My sandbar is not perfect by any means; pock marked with rocks and small drop-offs, it's still not a great fortress against the tide but that's the way I like it.

    From my sandbar I build it, purge it and gaze upon the lucid sea of other faces; watching as lives interlock like the fingers of young lovers and beholding the inevitable breaking of the hand. To me, people are as beautiful as they are disgusting. The beauty of people is how they remain so beautiful even when they perform the most revolting acts. Even the act of making love is a violent and putrid act. Even in the most primal and affectionate embrace, one can find horror and a naked vulnerability. The smell of it is so horrid compared to the beautiful sound of breathing. The soft touch of skin compared to the decadent buzz on the back of your neck. This simple embrace can break apart a sandbar or hold it together. The sea has no mercy for lovers as it would seem, it swallows them up like gnarled driftwood and take you away from your haven, dragging you farther and farther away from your sandbar.

    Once again, I can barely find meanings in my own writings, hardly seeing through a veil made of both my selective memory and guilt. I find no solace in what I write, no escape from my sharks. But hopefully they help you find your sandbar.