What's Written on the Walls

Here in November in this house of leaves
We'll pray

Poe, 'Haunted'

***

The past is a lump in my throat.

The past is a story written on my arm in Braille. Close your eyes, slide your fingers over my skin, and that’s my life.

None of that means anything, now that I’m dead.

***

I wrote a poem, a long time ago. It went like this:

The halls rustle, tonight –
ghosts, meeting.
Their sheets whisper as they kiss –
whisper secrets as they kiss.

‘Scratch I’m ruined into your arm’
the ghosts whisper and taunt me.
Their gauze whispers haunt me
as I crawl down the hallway.

It’s not a great poem, not even close, but I like the irony of it. My entire life I was haunted – by shadows, by the past, by love – and now I’m the ghost, rattling the loose bones in this awful, bloody place.

***

There are so many of us here. We all died the same way, cut down on the dance floor, gutted like pigs. We all died in the name of something that I understand all too well. Nihilism, chaos, emptiness. Despair. I only got a glimpse of the ragged children, our murderers. They should have let me join them. I would have left with them.

I heard the howls. I still do. They’re trapped, just like us.

***

There is plenty of reading material here. It helps pass the time.

***

It’s always a mistake. It’s always a bad idea. It always ends like this. It always ends here. I am forever here. We are forever here.

Dear world. I have fallen in love again! And this time, it’s for real. He’s not a loser. He has a job. He bought me flowers yesterday! I won’t let him hit me. I’ve promised myself that. Signed, a new me.

She is a fucking Goddess. There is nothing I won’t do for her, in this moment.

My dad brought me here when I was a little girl. That was the first time I met his friend Elias. There were lots of friends after that, too many to count, but Elias was the first. Tonight he will be a different kind of first, when I find him. Goodbye.

Here I am. Where are you?

I just saw him with her, tonight. Stupid cunt. I fucking hate him. I am done. Never again. No one will ever hurt me again.

***

Sometimes we have visitors. First, it was the police. The detective in charge of the investigation was tall, thin as a barn cat. She moved like a cat, too. Every step taken with such deliberation. When she was still, the whole room went quiet. Even us, wild ghosts screaming as loud as we could, desperate to be heard, stilled the tremors in our useless throats when she stopped to examine a knife that had been left on the floor. I had already looked at it; it was covered in crude symbols, nothing that made sense to me. She looked at it closely, tilted her head closer and closer to the sticky blade. ‘Someone get me an evidence bag,’ she said, and the spell was broken. We ghosts went back to our frantic keening.

It was a comfort at first, to make noise. We learned, soon enough, that the living cannot hear our screams, so we stopped. A trick that we learned from the Dogs, when they came sniffing around, is that the living can, sometimes, hear our whispers.

I should have known that. I was taunted by whispering ghosts for years, after all.

I liked the detective. I tried to help her. I whispered things in her ear about the Dogs, everything I had learned. After death there was no division between Us and the Children. She brushed me away like I was a fly, so I stopped. She didn’t need to know the Truth of it, anyway. Truths are best left to the dead, I know that now.

After the police lost interest, the thrill-seekers came. The ones who heard the murmured rumours and some who were here when it happened. There is much to see here, and I don’t blame them. The walls are bloody. Redder than red. We ghosts have some powers, nothing extraordinary. But we do keep the walls red and sticky. Sometimes we make the broken lights bleed for visitors; it’s a good trick. The thrill-seekers bring the bones of strange animals and leave them for us. I am not sure why. We have no use for bones here. This is our City of Blood, now. But we appreciate the thought.

***

We first met, right here, leaning against this wall. An hour later we were fucking standing up in the alley, me pressed up against the cement wall. It was the best day of my life, which is sad.

I don’t have a love story to leave here.

once upon a time there was a handsome prince and he fell in love with a beautiful princess and they lived happily ever after the end until the princess got pregnant and had to have an abortion because there was no way she could support him herself and a baby on a stripper’s wages not to mention his new habit that was costing more and more every day when he found out he gave her a black eye and almost broke her arm but luckily it was only a sprain and she couldn’t leave because no one would ever love her the way he loved her and they lived happily ever after the end

She fucks my friends, and she knows I know it, and I love her anyway. I think ours is the purest love. No one else sees her the way I see her. She is the sun and I lift my face hungrily to hers.

He wears me. I have
stitched my body to his –
slid pins through his skin,
joined us limb to limb –
braided my hair into his –
left nothing unattached.
He wear me – a
crochet, I loosen daily –
deft hands tear my masterpiece.
My threads unravel.
He will soon be gone – my cold
statue, my beginning,
my zero.

There is no better truth-teller than a pitcher of beer. Ask me at the end of the night what I think about love.

***

No one has ever come looking for me. After the thrill-seekers and the blood-lusters came the Beloved. The ones who were left behind after we died. Some of us, if we had visitors, tried screaming, but gave up quickly, reminded that we cannot be heard. It’s better to whisper.

I would have liked a visitor. I came to the City to find something – happiness, love, something – and all I got was this. Trapped in the house of love, forever whispering.

***

A man came here, one day. By that time the police, the thrill-seekers, and the Beloved were long gone. It was only us ghosts, rattling the bones, reading the walls, whispering amongst ourselves. The man opened the door and walked in, trailing a cloud of cigarette smoke behind him. His long black coat was dusty. He was barefoot.

He walked to the back wall and stood there for awhile, reading.

I drifted, peered over his shoulder.

I am her prisoner, but I fastened the chains myself, it read.

Not my favorite, to be honest, but I’ve had months – maybe years, I can’t remember – to study the psalms (as some here have taken to calling them) and puzzle out their meanings.

The man looked right at me.

Prisoners do not write on walls.

I heard his voice inside me, inside the whorls and folds of my ghostly self. For the first time in so long, I felt warm.

You can leave now.

His voice was the sun. The sun is a brilliant egg, I remembered. A yellow thing, new every morning.

‘Thank you’, I whispered.

He left.

***

The past is a story that I am whispering. Soon, I think that I will be leaving.

The Love Letters I Never Wrote

(Alternatively titled: Dead Sea Scrolls)

There is a place far from the freedom of the City where the sun is always shining. Waves roll up a sandy beach with a crisp, full sound. Sitting right where the tide comes in, the cool water refreshes weary feet. It's always a striking blue. The horizon continues into a “yonder,” when the sky meets the sea for as far as the eye can see. This is where I live.

Behind that sacred seat, is the lush greenery that I think is called a jungle. Life here exists brilliantly, vibrantly.

Psalm 24

She makes me feel alive, in a new way. In a way that I don't even know how to explain... it's like... fuck, man – it's the reason curse words were invented. My religious friends always said that the gods fill a hole in your heart that you didn't know you had. She does that. Since the moment I fucking saw her, I became different. I became hungry. For the first time in my life, I didn't just understand it, I was it.

I don't know how to tell her, but I try every time she lets me. I want her. I want to fuck her, I want to provide for her, I want to make her smile, I want to know everything about her. She makes me want to live, to adventure, to be a better person. Life was black and white, meaningless and dull before her. Now, whenever I think of her, the whole world seems bright and alive. I feel real.

I suppose I was on a pilgrimage of my own, of sorts, when I saw him. It is not enough to say that he had a strange look to him, for the City is defined by its sense of strangeness. But he radiated a presence, standing on the street, that set him apart. The breeze seemed to blow by him, not against him. He was on the very edge of the curb and his coat flapped quickly every time a car sped past his person. His hands were by his side – open palmed in what seemed like reverence towards the endless traffic. As I moved closer to this sight, I saw that his eyes were closed – he was in a sort of reverence.

My curiosity got the better of me, but before I could ask “why are you here?” I heard his voice in my head.

Prisoners do not write on walls.

It's true, I thought: walls write on them. As my mind finished processing the response, I looked up to see the figure open his eyes and step off the curb. The car that hit him was going so fast that I don't think his foot reached the cement. Several meters away, his face did.

Psalm 68

I lost her. It was so sudden. My friends all think I'm ridiculous – I suppose I am. But I'm drunk and here, so I might as well put down my story. I was never really with her, but there was a chemistry there. I know there was. And now it's gone. She just isn't interested anymore. I feel it too – I'm just not as interesting. Where did it all go? Where's all that goddamn magic?

I'll never know whether the man was making an allusion to the Red Door or not. But when I first found it 7 months later, I thought of him. People didn't say it was the best club in town, at the time, because it was. They just went there. It was the kind of place that all the other, less desirable places called fake or cliché or cheesy. But the truth was, it was the only joint in town that was real.

I won't rehash what others have probably already told you about the place – you can discover plenty on your own. There must be enough people willing to talk about it.

I will tell you what it was like for me, though. I didn't go there with someone, I went there looking for someone. It was the Great Temple on my own personal quest for meaning. And I certainly found someone. Hundreds of someones, written all over the walls. Every one was unique, and yet it was the same. Thousands of stories, each with their own personal, private interest, and each full of universal importance.

Night after night I went to those walls. Night after night I read them like prayers. Night after night I memorized them like scripture.

Psalm 3

We may look like animals, but we fuck like gods.

I suppose you could say that there, I found Her. In the heat of the night, Sin itself seemed to make love to Truth, surrounded by voyeurs and disciples. The marriage was one of divine significance. Ugly, raw, real, polite, unintentional, direct, tempting, dirty, fantastic and blissful. Amidst it, one could not help but understand what prophets meant when they said they had “found” religion. One could barely help becoming a prophet themselves: the writing, as they say, was on the wall.

Psalm 40

I would move to the City for her. Many would. Some already have. But neither of those are the point.

All my life I have carefully disciplined my life to not need another person. I've told myself, over and over, that the right person has to fit. I cannot just uproot on some meager fancy. What's more, I have to be true to myself: I have to follow a path that I enjoy, work in work that I love, not that provides me money. I have to live where I am happy and comfortable, not where it is economically convenient. I have to be me.

But, if she said she wanted me, I'd move tomorrow. I'd be scared shitless, but I'd find a job, even if I hated it, that made oodles of money so that I could provide for her – so that she'd never have to worry about being in love with a “loser,” or worry about the financial comfort of her child/children. I'd take night classes so that I could move up in the world, and I'd certainly make her breakfast or make breakfast with her every day.

Because she's got it. I don't know how else to explain it. I know she's a regular person. I know that she has weaknesses and quirks and undesirables in her past. I know that there is so much about her that I don't know, and lots of things that might make me feel uncomfortable. I know that one day, she'll get wrinkles and get saggy and all of the other realities of age. But, including all of that, not ignoring it, she's perfect.

And she's got a charm that will knock your socks off.

I've never looked her in the eye and told her how serious I am. That would ruin it. I've told her how wonderful she is, including her inner and outer beauty. We've joked about her capacity for enchantment endlessly. Meaningfully, but playfully. But when it comes to that critical connection I know that “part of our magic is what's not said.” Sacred words from her. But she knows.

I don't expect it to “go anywhere” – I don't expect it to be anything other than what it is, and what it will be. That in and of itself, is perfect and wonderful. We are, uncompromisingly, who we are. But I wanted to tell someone: I needed to tell someone straight.

I want her.

I was there that day, when those Bastard children appeared. Don't ask me what happened. I don't really know. I know that I was in the middle of finally writing my own story. I know that one of the first ones to die was my Beloved.

I know that I didn't finish.

And then, I know that I blacked out.

Psalm 96

The best thing about the three of us, is that we never know what's going to come next....

Or who's cumming first!

When I awoke I was here on this beach. Ever since, I have been here with no knowledge of how it came to be, or how I am to return. No matter how far I walked down the beach, or into the trees, the place remained the same. The same beautiful horizon, and vibrant tree-line. Here, there is almost no semblance of the City that I once knew. Almost.

It was when I was uprooting in mourning that I first noticed the subtle similarity. I had finally allowed myself to admit what I had lost, and in a rage I began tearing at anything I had the strength to destroy. When I paused, plants in hand, I saw it. The plants here all had a majesty about them, but deep within the old roots something strange was gnarled. So much vitality combined with so much absence had caused the place to yearn. And aimless, nameless, unrecognized yearning has a way of twisting itself into an entirely different kind of villainy. Once I noticed it, everything here seemed... different.

I had to find things to pass the time – I could never starve nor overheat, nor lack for any other physical sustenance, but was otherwise left to my own devices. I refused to grow the same roots, to succumb to the saturation of insanity.

I will not bore you with my efforts – the summary was simple: nothing worked. Everything I did offered the same reflection.

Psalm 108

How can we be so perfect and yet so imperfect? We have all of the puzzle pieces, and they fit, but we just don't work. Everyone thinks we should be together. We understand each other and enjoy each other's company. So where is that spark? Are we scared? Are we broken? Or is this just the way things are supposed to be?

Why can't we be lovers?

Psalm 109

Me again. She's gone. The truth is, I'd just end up hurting her.

I had given up. As a passing irony I thought that a fitting commemoration to decent would be to finish my own long lost and uncompleted story. There, across the endless sand, and with only the waves to cheer me on, I drew out the whole tale – as it was supposed to have been.

It was a long process, rank of ritual that the place was otherwise devoid of. Each stick-stroke brought me closer to a sense of closure, so that when my final “i” had been dotted and my final “t” had been crossed, I was filled with a solitary contentment.

I would never write that tale again. As I watched the tides come in to wash it all away, I could rest assured that it was Ours, and Ours alone.

Epilogue:

Shortly after the tide had gone out I found myself considering the old walls. Silently I recited the familiar hymns of heartache and hope, slipping in and out of a trance. When I came to, it was evening, and the moonlight highlighted something down the beach from where I had come. My dazed search revealed that it was a large plant of some kind – itself a stark oasis against the horizon of granules. It was like an overgrown rose. The petals shimmered in the starlight.

Methodically, and without thought, I began to trace one of my favorite 6 word stories on the petal. It was the second story from the Red Door that I memorized, and to this day my favorite scripture. As I finished, the petal broke away suddenly and floated up. A sudden breeze carried it into the air and over the treeline.

I don't know where it went, but the roots of that plant were distinctly different.

Psalm 2

I will never regret it. Never.

In Through the Red Door (Complete)

Yeah, there are a few clubs here, in the City. The usual mix, I guess; lots of filthy dives like this place; an exclusive trans-bar that’s almost im-fuckin-possible to get into, believe me; a rain-blow dance club for the queer kids – you know, the kids looking for cheap sex and even cheaper drugs; a couple of your classier S&M joints, where everyone wears Carnival masks and drooping feathers; and the Red Door.

Well, to be precise, the Red Door used to be here. Now, it’s no longer. I mean, the building is still standing, and the sign is still there, but that’s it. No more lights. No more music, unless the clanging of bones against bones against splintered table legs counts as music.

It was the place to be, the Red Door. Everyone went there, and I mean everyone. Kids from every scene imaginable (even the Vampire kids, who are way too fucking elitist to ever mix with City scum), every kind of trans-creature, even City men in suits and slicked-back hair.

I guess the big twist, and the reason we all went there, is that the Red Door was all about love. Yeah, the front door was red, but if you looked closely you’d see that it was actually a hundred different shades of red, made up of interlocking hearts, some of them the ‘O’ in love, some of them just perfect little hearts, like the ones you make when you’re a kid: fold a piece of paper in half, draw a wing, and cut. The walls inside were painted red too, and we used permanent markers to write on them. Management allowed one love story each; other than that, there weren’t really any rules. I guess there was a whole city’s-worth of love stories written on the walls.

I mean, it’s no fucking wonder the place went insane.

Can I remember what I wrote? Jesus. I actually wrote a lot of things on those walls, to be honest. I don’t remember them all. They were probably mostly long strings of drunken expletives, anyway. I mean, that’s what I do. You’ve figured that out by now, I bet.

I think it was around the time when I first met Fresia that I wrote something coherent. I don’t know. Ask her if she remembers.

Personally, I remember a lot of stupid fucking poems.

Have I ever been in love? Wrong question. Moving the fuck on.

It was a nice place, the Red Door. Not like this place, just another goddamn dive in a city full of goddamn dives. The drinks were good and strong. They had names like ‘The Beatrice’ and ‘Temporary Madness’ and ‘Ophelia’s Cunt’ (yeah, that was my favorite). No black lights to pick out the lint and semen on your dress; they wouldn’t have worked with the red walls. Just dim lamps on each table, and a few rippling spotlights on the dance floor.

I remember one of the songs that was playing that night:

I can't forget I am the sole architect
I built the shadows here
I built the growl in the voice I fear

‘The growl in the voice I fear’. That’s good shit, right? Something about those lines always gets me, I don’t know what it is.

Hey pretty, don’t you wanna take a ride with me,
Through my world?

I was there with all the regulars that night, I guess. Fresia (we were on a downward slope, me and her, but we were still fucking, of course, and drinking even more), Gabe, Vito. Vito and I danced all night. Fresia was tired and heavy because of the pills, and I think maybe another surgery. Honestly, I wasn’t very attentive at that point. Fresia was…boring me, I guess.

I hate it.

I hate that I hurt her, that I let myself get bored. Fuck. I wasn’t at my best.

Anyway. Moving the fuck on. Things are better now, and that’s a story for another time. Yeah, there’s always another story.

Gabe doesn’t dance, so he sat at the table with Fresia, drinking and smoking, while Vito and I writhed on the dance floor. Funny that Gabe doesn’t dance; I don’t know many fags who don’t, especially fags who are on as much E as Gabe was that night. Gabe’s weird for a gay boy, though. He doesn’t fit the mold. But fuck was he high that night. I don’t even know how much he remembers. When Fresia brings it up he just glares at her. Which isn’t all that unusual for Gabe, actually. Ornery fucker.

Anyway, Vito and I were on the dance floor, dancing as if our lives depended on it. That’s what we do, me and Vito; we whirl like the Allah freaks you see in Edenwood. Except we aren’t lost in some bullshit religious revelry; we dance because it’s pure sex, and we like how our bodies feel, sliding against the slippery skin of strangers, thrusting our hips, grinding along the hipbones of those same strangers. It feels pretty fucking good.

A trans-boy with silky cat-ears and a tail that whipped sinuously around my waist felt me up with hands that were more paws than fingers. His claws dug into my thighs. Delicious. A Vampire kid was crawling on the floor, trawling for blood. It nipped at my ankle and I kicked it in the ribs. It scuttled away, crab-walking between boots and fuck-me pumps. Excuse the hippy bullshit talk, but there was a good vibe in the air.

I ain’t happy, feeling glad
I got sunshine in a bag
I’m useless, but not for long
The future is coming on
Is coming on
Is coming on

I didn’t hear anything coming.

Is coming on
Is coming on

Cat-boy’s paws were all over me, and damn it if I didn’t care. Fresia could have been watching, I didn’t give a fuck, and I bet she was watching; I got a sick thrill out of it, her watching me grinding against a man, all cock and tail and teeth (yeah, I know how fucking bad it sounds, but I was a bitch back then, and I’m a bitch now, and fuck it; I tell the truth, I remember things as they were, and I tell a goddamn good story). Vito danced next to me, his tight little ass rubbing against my hip, and I saw him meet Gabe’s eyes and smile, like a fucking coy little schoolgirl. The heat between those two, the friction; it always made me sick, and still does.

The spotlights were swirling pink and purple and red; red lights against red walls, it was like dancing inside the pulsating fleshy walls of a womb, all heat and the stink of blood and pussy.

See these eyes so green
I can stare for a thousand years

There was something underneath the music, then, and the floor bucked.

A low growl, different from the thumping bass in the song. I mean really different. The Vampire kids hissed, and cat-boy did too.

I backed away from cat-boy, and there was another growl.

It's been so long
And I've been putting out fire
With gasoline

‘Enough!’

The growl was like a goddamn earthquake, I mean it shook the floor in that place, and tables toppled right the fuck over. The music ended when the voice shouted, and all that was left, now, was the crash of falling glasses and the rumbling growl. I don’t even know where it was coming from. It sounded like it was coming from the walls and the floor and the fucking tectonic plates of the goddamn earth.

Fresia looked at me. I could tell she was terrified. I didn’t go to her. Yeah, I know. I bloody well know what I am, thanks. Vito had run to Gabe, and they were holding each other. Fucking love. I stayed where I was.

Another growl and the floor buckled in a few places. People were scrambling for the door, rushing past me towards the exits, Vampires and trans-folk and City men alike. I guess we were united once in Love and once again in Fear, and not much else.

Fuck profundity.

Cat-boy was on all fours; I hadn’t realized how feral he was, more cat than boy. From the Borderlands, I guessed. They haven’t evolved too much out there. He was poised like a housecat eyeing a mouse; back rippled, lips pulled back, tale twitching. Sexy as hell.

‘Enough!’ the voice said again. I couldn’t see where it was coming from, not over the bodies rushing past, but when it spoke again it bellowed, and it sounded like there were a thousand goddamn growls rippling through every letter. Fuck. What a sound. I can’t explain it. I can still hear it, but I can’t explain it.

‘Enough! We consecrate this place in the name of all the forgotten Gods. They are angry, people. They haven’t forgotten about you, and they’ve been watching.’

Finally I could see the speaker, and you won’t believe me, but it was a fucking child, striding out of the crowd, a goddamn prepubescent boy with oily black hair covering his eyes, barefoot, wearing dirty fucking jeans and a ripped t-shirt, just a child, but that voice.

I can still hear it, but I can’t explain it.

‘They’ve been watching, and they see you for what you are. Filthy.’

The crowd was quiet and still now – I mean, who would want to fuck with that voice? – and I could tell he liked it, the attention, although the way he spit out the word ‘filthy’, I think he really meant it. I think he fucking hated us. I could taste it.

Another growl. I swear it was coming from the walls. Coming from the air.

Cat-boy was poised, swaying slightly. Fucking predators. So goddamn predictable.

‘We’ve come to show you what nihilism is. We’ve come to show you the depths,’ the boy said, and now more kids in rags were advancing from the corners of the Red Door, and spilling through the main door, their filthy forearms and foreheads marked with symbols I couldn’t understand – triangles and upside-down crosses, some of them fresh, bloody.

The kids had knives and razor blades, the ragged lids of discarded soup cans, any goddamn weapons they could scrounge, I guess. Still the fucking growls that seemed to be coming from the walls.

I was hooked; I mean, I couldn’t move. I have a pretty damn sharp instinct for self-fucking-preservation, but this was something I’d never seen before. An army of street kids with prison shivs looking to take on a club-full of misfits? Sick, I know, but I wanted to watch the war.

I wasn’t even looking for Fresia.

The kids were scattered around the crowd now, and fuck it if I couldn’t smell the blood already.

‘Are you fucking ready?’ the leader cried, and cat-boy hissed; he leaped onto the speaker’s back, tearing into the boy’s neck with his claws. I’ve never heard anything like the roar that came next, and to be honest, I hope to fucking god I never do. It was all fury and noise after that; Vampires laughed their weird laughs and sunk their teeth into their neighbour's throats; they can’t help themselves, not when they smell blood. City men, who don’t belong in our world and should never visit, made their way towards the exits, and trampled other City men and their trans-escorts on the way; the walls were dappled black with the shadows of impossible claws, claws and paws like I’d never seen before. It was all cacophony, but I could still hear the growls.

I can still hear them, but I can’t explain them.

Of course Fresia saved my life; that’s just the kind of girl she is. She grabbed my arm and pulled me through the awful dying crowd, along with Gabe and Vito. Fresia is at least a head taller than anyone in any given room, and she’s strong. We got out, and didn’t stop running until we were blocks away from the Red Door, although we could still hear the growls; I think the whole City could hear them. The growling, and the screaming.

I don’t know how anyone got any fucking sleep that night. I mean, how could you? If you heard that noise, how could you ever sleep again?

We stood there and listened to the war, and the wail of the sirens. Cop car after cop car after ambulance after fire truck. They didn’t do much; they only saved a few people, and the wrong people at that. I remember the straights were in a fucking tizzy that Vampire kids had been saved. Scourge of the earth, and all that.

We came out of it okay, though. Me and Fresia and Gabe and Vito, we were fine. Obviously. We’re all still here. I don’t think any of us knows exactly what happened that night, or why; although I got a second taste of something, something touched and off, later, when I visited the Edge. I know all about the symbols now.

Yeah. That’s another story.

This one’s almost done, I think. Not much more to tell.

Fresia and I broke up, for good, pretty soon after. Sometimes we talk about what happened that night; sometimes we don’t. I prefer it when we don’t, to be honest. Like I said, the Red Door is still standing, or at least the building is. If you want to see it for yourself, hey, it’s your choice. Two blocks down, turn left, you can’t miss it.

Check out the scratches on the walls, but only if you’re looking for a new nightmare.

Enough. I’m done now.