Reflections of Beauty

Dark... Brooding... It’s chaotic, the slate grey majesty of her destructive power... The sliding temptress, beneath a sky of blinding white light, forming a barrier as impassable as the death that bound this place, crashes against the rocky pinnacle of a deserted, sandy shore littered with those footfalls of they who had imprinted their meaning, their work onto the earth... There is an atmosphere of memories, of a time long passed, of watchers who saw too much and felt too little of what had come to pass... secrets, desires, fleeting emotions that all left a little bit of themselves behind when they moved on or were forgotten. Discarded. Abandoned... This place was old... as old as time and full of deep, ancient thoughts... death and pain and hope and the remnants of life...

The girl stood on the dark rocks just above the waterline, staring sorrowfully out at the turbulent mass of writhing souls, the currents of the dead... her eyes glowed green as the storm tossed waves and her tattered shift billowed in the shrieking winds, oblivious to the biting cold of the torrential spray, kicked up by the furious waves that raged against the crags, seemingly determined to crumble them to dust beneath her bare feet. Amidst the tempestuous fury that encompassed, her the girl sank to her knees, her movements as fluid, as graceful as the waters beneath her, undisturbed, unperturbed by the violence around her, locked as she was in her own mind, amid the savage beauty of the place she dwelt in... Captivated by the desolate wasteland, the empty, haunted earth upon which the ocean beat, pulsing with life, with death, with power, with throbbing, poignant emotion, she stared out at the terrible beauty displayed before her. Casting her mind back, her dead heart pulsing with the crashing ocean waves, she sought solace this cold night, in this empty place, solace and inspiration, guidance from the only living thing left to her...

She stared down at the ocean, thinking of that fateful night... the night her heart shattered, the night her world ended, the night... she died. Every fatal second of that hellish night was burned into her memory, every second she was tormented by those final moments... No misery even this place could create could mangle her soul, tear her apart, keep her in weeping agony...  for the hell in which she stood could not hurt her... The anguish in her mind, the demons in her past, her tortured memories... these consumed her, kept her suffering, a sorrow unsurpassed by any that this place could ever inflict upon her... 

It was supposed to be the happiest day of her life... it had been perfect. The man she had loved for most of her life had proposed to her. She was engaged to be married! The jubilance she felt that night, she couldn’t remember ever being that happy! It was like a high, like bubbling champagne, like pure contentment, like bliss. They drove home that night soaring on the ecstasy, the pure wonderment of the love they had for each other, the fact that they had found each other in this brutal world, the life they shared and the one they were going to build. It had been the most amazing feeling, that joy, that happiness... and then... it ended.

Some drunken idiot had swerved into their lane, and on the wet, slick road that ribboned its way down a precipitous cliff, their fate was sealed. He had veered to the side to avoid a collision with the other driver and slammed into the side of the cliff face. There was a screeching of twisted, tortured metal and the flash of blazing sparks on the road. Then all she knew was pain... every part of her body screamed with it, as she, dazed and confused, her body battered, broken and bloody lay there... then she heard, through the fog hazing her mind, her name called in tones of desperation and fear... She groaned and shifted as the fog cleared. Blinking, she looked around and screamed as she saw the tiny outcropping she lay upon, just out of reach of the top of the cliff. She heard the rocks beneath her shift and screamed again, a sound choked with fear and tears... She peered down over the edge of the outcropping and saw far below her the stormy ocean waves swirling against the jagged rocks reaching hungrily up far below her... She let out a faint whimpering noise and scrambled back, feeling, in her growing panic the shift in the ground beneath her... terrified, she called out his name, hoping against all odds that he was okay... she looked up and saw him above her, his arms stretched out to try and grab her. She reached up... There was the flash of lightening ripping through the sky... rock crumbling... fingertips meeting... then falling... falling and screaming... staring up at him, his face a mask of terror and shock and pain and fear and a wordless denial... I love you... her last thoughts before... BOOM! Impact.

Now here she stood... on a barren, deserted beach in hell... for she would not allow herself to go to heaven... Her soul was good, but she would not leave hell, her grief, her pain was so great... she glanced down at the rocks behind her, thinking of the past, trapped in it, unable to escape, unable to find solace, to free herself of the pain... and was jolted into awareness of the present when she saw something that should not exist in this dead place...

 A single yellow flower, a simple daisy, grew upon the rock below her... Her eyes teared up as she stared at that single, fragile, beautiful impossibility. They were her favourite flowers, he had bought her a bouquet on their first date... always sunny and cheerful he said, just like her. The storm raged on, unabated but she could not care now. For the first time in a thousand days she smiled, and it was truly a sight to behold, one as beautiful as heaven ever could be. For the first time in so long she felt something other than the restless, painful storm... Laughter... She jumped down to the stone and stared at the daisy, the vivid detail, the bright color and she smiled. She could not believe it was real but she felt it, soft, delicate, alive. There was strength there, strength, power and endurance... the patience to grow through tons of rock, strength to grow so far and courage to grow in such a place as it did... and it possessed all three and more to survive in hell, a place with no life...

She stood again and there was no sadness in her any more. Just calm acceptance of her fate, of the pain she suffered... for like the flower she could survive this. She would be with her love again soon enough... she lifted her eyes to the blinding white sky and felt warmth on her face for the first time in so long... she felt a release, a sense of peace and overwhelming joy before the light consumed her and she vanished from those rocks in hell... there was a rushing sound and more light and then silence... in hell, upon that rocky dead beach, tranquil waters moved upon a silent, serene ocean... peaceful... content... Calm.

My father once told me, “it’s not important to win but it is important to take part.”

When I was little, I skinned my knee when I fell out of a tree. I was trying to get to the top because in my strange, childish little brain, the tree dared me to climb as high as I could and then climb higher. I climbed as high as I could but couldn’t climb any higher. The tree won that day. I was so upset, a child’s pique at being denied. My father held me and told me not to worry. He sat me down on our red, velvet couch, looked me straight in the eye and told me, “It’s not important to win but it is important to take part.” I was too little to understand what he meant, but as I grew older, I began to... As I was shunted from one home to another, one beating after another, I began to understand. I had admired him, had adored him with a child’s devotion - “it was him and me against the world.” How wrong I was... and how much more wrong he was...

People are strange creatures. My mother died bringing me into this world, and my father died trying (in his mind at least) to take me out of it... traumatising for a child, the depth of hatred a man can harbour for something he spawned. So now I spend my time living on streets, avoiding the homes and generally making my social worker’s life miserable. I can’t handle my own mind, being lost in its folding, twisting turns, rushing towards a feeble attempt at trying to find something worth not cutting my throat... my reason: it would make a mess. Isn’t that pathetic?

I’m tired now... so very tired. I find myself consumed more and more with lethargy, even breathing has become an effort. There’s a strange pool of red around me. It’s bright and dark and I’m sitting in it. It’s flowing from somewhere, a rich, red wine... a waterfall of red liquid pooling around me, staining clothes worn and threadbare... I see a girl beside me. She looks so tired, her eyes so heartbreakingly sad... I try to lift my hand to comfort her, to brush her long pale hair (filthy with the grime of the streets) away from her face, only to stop as she mirrors my action, her slow movements in tandem with mine. We stop and turn our heads to smile at each other, sharing in the warmth of human companionship, of simple comforting touch to ease the coldness settled so deeply within us. That same red liquid surrounds her.

I blink, confused, trying to see past the fog blanketing my mind in numb slumber... I’m so tired... but she looks so sad and empty, like someone who’s taken too many knocks in the ring of life and can’t get  up again... How can I leave this poor lonely child...? She looks so lost (like me) someone with no one and nothing to go home too... Does she have a home? I wonder to myself. In my heart I know the answer. It’s etched in every line of her face, every scar on her body, in her tattered, filthy rags and in dead eyes screaming with pain and sorrow and haunted by too many experiences that broke her... I look down slowly, languidly, a part of my mind still puzzling over my lethargy and the two pools of mingling. I found that strangely symbolic in my fog-fuddled mind... I raised my head to tell her and saw her still mirroring my movements.

I felt the bright heat of unbelievable fury then, for the fate of this fragile, broken child left on the street like so much refuse. I raged against the Gods then, hating them. Hating fate, hating the cruel, cruel sick world we all played this game called ‘life’ in. The savage strength of my inferno was enough to burn away the fog clouding my consciousness and I turned to embrace this child the world shunned so callously. I froze when I saw her, here every movement, the wild rage and overwhelming, compassionate sorrow, that driving urge to comfort someone who could not be comforted, identical to mine.

I glanced down and my heart froze when I saw that the pool of red I had thought mingling was just mirrored. I reached out hesitantly and my shaking fingers touched a cool surface, just as the haunted child’s did. The pitiful, hopeless wraith I had longed to comfort, was me,,, and the fingers touching the tormented reflection of a life gone wrong and a game lost left rust red streaks on the glass... it wasn’t paint or died water... it was blood... my blood pooling around me as I sank back into the fog... back down into oblivion.

The last thought I had... my mind had drifted back to when I had a life worth something... “It’s not important to win but it is important to take part.” I felt the last dregs of my broken humanity leave me and felt a mocking, insane, desperate laugh well up in my rasping throat... as I watched the last of my life’s blood drain from the ragged cuts on my scarred arms... winning isn’t everything... if that’s the case, why try to win? In this contest of life, the only alternative to absolute victory is death... to risk the ultimate to gain the ultimate... I risked it all... played the hand I was dealt as best I could, but sometimes your best isn’t enough... winning is everything when you have everything to lose... And I? I lost it all...

I am what I am, I am proud to be me

Andrea reached hesitantly for the lipstick and applied it with shaking hands, her heavily shadowed eyes framed by sooty lashes staring at her in the mirror, full of trepidation and desire. She adjusted her dress straps in an attempt to make the shapeless thing more alluring on her mannish chest and delicate, soft body... Feeling equal parts of excitement and fearful confusion, she stared at herself in the mirror, the hot shameful disgust of the wrongness of what she was doing filling her, helpless to stop herself. She heard the front door shut below and jumped, terrified. Hastily, she pulled of the dress and stuffed it under the bed, before running into the bathroom to wipe the make-up of her fine-boned, feminine features, fear making her clumsy in her desperation. She felt the door slam open behind her and turned to face her father, almost sobbing in terror. He stood in the doorway, filling it with his large frame, an expression of disgusted rage on his face.

“Andrew. What the hell are you doing?”

Andrew’s voice was shaking as he gasped desperately, “Dad, I...”

SMACK!

Andrew screamed and staggered back against the sink, his face on fire and his ears ringing from his father’s heavy blow as sick bile rose in his throat and hot, fresh tears cut a track down his powdered face. His father looked at him curled up against the sink, whimpering in pain and clutching his head, moaning “I’m sorry... I'm sorry...” over and over again, and unmoved by his pleas for mercy, reached slowly for the heavy, leather belt at his waist...

SMACK

SMACK!

SMACK!!

The dull, sickening sound of leather hitting fragile flesh was drowned out by the sounds of torturous agony. Andrew’s voice grew hoarse from the screams till finally; he could take no more, slipping quietly into the comforting, familiar embrace of peaceful, blissful oblivion, on a cold bathroom floor, alone in a pool of his own cooling blood...

She dreamed of fire... of freedom and warmth and safety in the arms of the only being to ever give her surcease from her pains... the hypnotic, dancing laughter of tongues of flame strong and seductive, sensuous and moody, indestructible and uncontainable, the epitome of everything she longed in the depths of her most sacred places to be... Fire had saved her, had protected her, had kept her sane as cruel hands had bruised her tender flesh, grabbing and tearing and hurting, always hurting... Angry at what they had found under her beautiful dress pale and silvery as the moon, they found other ways to punish her for being in the wrong place at the wrong time... but it had been their brutal ministrations that had forged within her the realisation that she was not what she should be...

She had staggered home, her dress filthy and torn, covered in the blood seeping from her bruised, battered, violated body... her eyes, sunken deep into her bloody, swollen, tear-stained face, were the blank orbs of those who had gone away, leaving only a shell in their absence... Andrea had gone away to dance with the fire in her soul, the flames flickering in her mind... Andrew walked through the door and into a new hell... his family could not understand, would not accept... his father tried to beat it out of him, his mother could not bear to touch him, to look at him, unclean abomination that she named him, and his little sister, when he turned blindly to face her, hoping in his crushed soul for compassion, for mercy, for a kind word or gentle hand to soothe the pain that was his world away, barely fifteen laughed at him, scorned him, mocked his desires, tormented his already broken mind and rejected him. “You are not my brother,” she said cruelly, each word piercing him, tearing into the depths of him and shattering the little humanity he had left, “You’re just a freak who likes to dress up like a girl and get raped by men. You are nothing. Pathetic. You aren’t one of us.” She spat it venomously. “You’re not woman enough to be a girl.” She laughed at him and flaunted the female body he so desperately desired to have in front of him, taunting him, adding to the abject misery he lived in...

Then, when she could not take any more humiliation, any more pain, any more rejection and hurt and loneliness... the flames started to whisper to her... Kill... Burn... KILL... BURN... They will burn for this! ALL OF THEM WILL BURN! She began to dream of screams, of fire roaring, crackling, consuming and destroying... Huge pillars of flame, the power of the gods, devouring those who had hurt her... mocked him... beat him... Andrew, Andrea... Andrea, Andrew... ANDREW, ANDREA! THEY WILL BURN!!

Andrea woke suddenly, a scream filling welling from the depths of her soul, torn from her very firmament, as she rose slowly from the cold, hard bathroom floor. She did not see her blood covering her, an ugly rust staining the otherwise pristine floor, did not hear the whimpering, animalistic noises she made as her brutalised body moved slowly, agonisingly through the door. Her mind was burning, her essence consumed by the blazing inferno that burned through her entirety. All she saw through burning eyes was a blazing riot of intense white heat, all she heard through burning ears was the roaring crackle of insatiable destruction demanding that she kill... demanding that she burn... demanding death for her pain...

She staggered up the stairs, clutching a butcher’s knife in her bloodstained hand... Every step she took, she steeled herself, taking courage from it, drawing strength from her determination, from the fire searing through her mind, racing through her soul, taking pride in it, revelling in who she was.

She stood in her room, after covering every inch of the house that had become hell in accelerant and fingered the knife, fascinated by the cold, silvery gleam in her hands, the metallic death she held...

Steeling herself once more, she grasped the last evidence of Andrew’s hated existence in one hand and raised the glittering blade, hungry for blood, high... Her agonised, bloodcurdling scream pierced the silence of the dark night, as the severed flesh fell to the floor and hot, fresh blood splattered against the wall. Shaking with shock and throbbing, torturous pain, she heated the bloody blade on the dancing flames she had created. The white hot metal seared and sizzled against her mangled, ruined body and the sickeningly intoxicating smell of burning flesh filled the room. Andrea could not feel - the shock had made her numb and the pain and blood loss had made her light-headed...

When the blood stopped flowing, Andrea moved slowly, barely conscious, out of the house while her family slumbered on, uncaring of the screams that had rent the silence of the house apart. She was nothing to them, her pain was nothing. They had had the perfect family, had one daughter and one son and now... they had no son. They had only one child. Andrew was no more...

Andrea stood outside, the cold night’s air cooling her throbbing body as she stared at the hell she was now going to leave in ruins. Her blood pounded in her ears and fire roared through her veins. There was no going back now. She lit a match slowly, watching the flare of deadly beauty, of vengeful hunger. She dropped the result of her ruination to the floor and time slowed... then there was a blinding flash of light as the conflagration leapt joyfully to life, hungry, ready to consume and devour anything foolish enough to hurt her... Instantly the house was engulfed in the fiery blaze.

Andrea laughed with reckless, exultant abandon as she watched the house and its now burning occupants turn to ash before her eyes. The flames leapt and danced and ran joyfully through the accelerant covered hell, burning, devouring, and consuming it. There was no home now, only a blazing fireball reaching gloriously into the dark sky, framed by the stars and moving to the music of its own raw, destructive fury. The family that lived there could be heard faintly, their screams and shrieks adding to the perfection of the moment. Andrea laughed as she heard it, relishing the fact that their anguish now matched hers... Riding the mad fury of the flames, she laughed and laughed till she cried, and as the sound of sirens filled the horizon, she turned and staggered away, leaving nothing but the last glowing embers of Andrew’s life.

N.B Andrea and Andrew are derivatives of the word “androgynous” meaning “asexual, of both sexes” 

THE MAN YOU SEE

it stands, a twisted, gnarled homage to a distorted, subverted society

on the side of a road, eyes see and a mouth gapes, screaming a silent, perverted agony of ugliness in nature

it is wrong, an aberration of the structures that grace the walkways of yonder

majestic no longer. a misshappen dwarf in a small world choked by the cruelties of an uncaring society

rooted in tar and born from the perverse stength of a nature that would not be denied

in its ugliness can you see strength

courage

brutal honesty

the fractured distortion of society is shown in an unnatural nature

it is ugly, an anomaly

but it is beauty

it will not be denied

choked and crushed by the dark stain of humanity

it it the beauty that lies in what is ugly

the pool of blood and pain at childbirth

the rainbow dancing on oily waves

slick and poisonous as it kills

it is the purity of an atom bomb

the eagle as it swoops in on prey

this is humanity

this is how we twist and warp nature

this is the price our destructive arrogance will wreak upon the world

this is man overcoming nature

and eventually being absorbed by it...