Metamorphosis

My Start and Finish

Here is a terrifying and awesome place. Here the Gods and Goddesses of the oldest civilisations come to rest and die; to fade away into the ӕther. Adonis and Bel join Zeus and Thor in a final burning grave. Prometheus forever lies tethered to a rock, his bowels eaten away through eternity. Yaweh and Satan gently subside with molten rocks and end their battle in the bowels of the Earth. Domineering peaks rise to the heights of their infamy and then fall away into canyons and obscurity. They end in craters and the smoking brimstone of their failure and death.

I was living on the border of an eight waved volcano. It stretched out on every side like a strangled eagle with its feathers forming eight huge gullies that fell down into multiple valleys. They stretched away from the mountain like fingers through the ground. The crater’s long, sun-tinted rim was fed by a great burning centre and the devastating fires of a long forgotten evil trapped in its belly. Its head was a massive spire of rock that looked as if it was forever about to fall into the molten stomach of the massive crater. It created a macabre echo of times long passed.

The wind here is at its strongest and the gusts continually blow around me, whipping up dust and smoke in strange and haunting shapes. I am not entirely alone and smaller men and women are blown from their perches on the edge of the crater, where they spiral down into the fiery bowels of Vulcan. Death hangs balanced with life as surges of lava consume everything in giant and fiery worms. It fills the heart with soaring ambition and ambiguous anxieties, whilst the eyes can only behold fear soaked grief. Tears dry against my retina whilst I continue staring into that pit of darkness, searching for what lies beyond that deep red tinge of the molten core, searching for a revelation.

We are all dressed the same, with long cowed hoods hiding our faces from one another and barely daring to peek from beneath them. Our robes are stained and blackened and often singed or even burnt to their threads. Whether we are related or not is difficult to tell as each robed figure smouldered and burnt with a thick smoke around them.

The heat was unbearable.

Some would stand with me for a short while, fighting the elements until they were blown off the edge and thrown into the nothingness that is the abyss. Others, the few that didn’t get blown into the lava, would eventually vitrify into rocks, baked by the constant heat and surging lava. They would add to the already hundreds of strange shaped rocks around the immense and grandiose crater. Like some kind of siphon into the centre of the soul, it would simmer away below these statue-like remains, slowly eroding their faces and cavities and with time, over the millennia, they would crumble into the nothing. I wished I could follow the smaller bodies as they rose up over the hot waves of air like eagles on an updraft… like flies trapped in a whirlwind... like a school of fish descending into a burning red sea.

Though these sudden gusts were frequent, they wouldn’t bother me. I would remain, like one of the statues, like one of the dead that had fluttered up to me, staring rigidly into the beauty of creation. I was already like a statue on most days and the wind would pass around me, taking other victims and returning me to my peaceful loneliness.

I do not know why I treasure this turbulent world nor why I must remain staring day in and day out. The other pilgrims, the ones I regard as my inferior, perish within moments of their arrival. The ones I come to think of as equals remain as statues. All would perish eventually.

I have touched one of their stony faces before and watched the rock dissolve like a sandcastle being swallowed by a wave. Within moments it had fallen away from its shoulders and flooded over its chest in a torrent of water. I had turned to its friend/brother/relative and seen them burst into tears, only to have the water boil from their cheeks. I seemed to suddenly be surrounded by pain and have yet have no concept of it myself. Screams had flooded my conscious mind and left me reeling, watching their faces crumble into water and dissolve.

I ignore them now and would remain here forever if it wasn’t for the persistent rain. Great storms would sometimes sweep up over the mountainsides and play havoc across the sky, puncturing it with bright and penetrating flashes of pure magnetic power as magnificent as the volcano itself. I would stand mesmerised by them as they passed and only my persistent shivering in the cold and rain would force me away from my view over the geological titan and the meteorological lightshow that played around it.

A flash in the distance would silhouette the far side of the crater and then the ground shook with the terrible power being thrown down on the horizon. The volcano would respond, billowing jets of liquid rock into the heavens and threatening the continual clouds that dominated them. Then another bolt would be delivered from the sky, this time closer. It blinds me momentarily, flickering through the air and reverberating with an earth shattering crack. It is like everything has been illuminated clearly for the briefest of moments and then I can see nothing at all. Every rock, every being and every fissure in view is suddenly defined perfectly. Then nothing.

The light returns slowly to me, revealing the Earth in its usual drab and mundane tones. I flinch and turn away, feeling the rain suddenly begin to beat down on me. I wish I would stay longer. I wish I had the strength to remain in the face of such destructive beauty and defy it.

The rain was the worst part of it all. It struck my face and body like a constant barrage, forcing me to squint through it at the view that fed my soul. I tried my best to defy it and hold my gaze. I would always fail.

I would wait until it was unbearable, watching the steady stream of pilgrims return to their abodes rather than attempt to complete their fatal homage to the mighty crater. Then, as the last of them gave up and returned to the town, I would turn and descend with them, heading for my home, not far from the tumultuous peak of the volcano.

I live some little way down the mountainside, in a cave cut away into the rock that was warmed by the natural heat from the local lava tubes. The storm beats the mountainside into submission, leaving long and sinister waves of mist and steam rising from the ground. It is a humble dwelling, with no furniture nor clothing nor simplest of amenities. I crawl into it and stare into the darkness like a caged lion - two bright and silvery eyes staring from a velvety black nothing. They are as dark and hollow as the soul that hides behind them.

I am never happy here. This is not really my home. My real home is on the edge of the volcano. This is just the place I go to when I need to hide from its grandeur; once my mind has supped in full on the glory of creation and finality.

Sometimes the pilgrims passed my cave, where they stopped for a moment on their way to the grand view at the top. They would stop and stare for a just a fleeting moment, wondering whether those bright and piercing eyes in the darkness were real or just shiny stones glinting from the darkness of the cave. When I blinked or moved they fled - turning up and down the mountainside and charging in their chosen direction and into the arms of fate. Those that went up would die. Those that went down would wish they had continued to the top, forever robbed of the view that feeds the vestiges of my soul. They would never know what happened to their friends, brothers, partners and parents that reached the peak. They would never know whether they lived in eternity or whether they had fallen into hell. This is the curse and the reward of this terrible and mighty place. I am in love with it. I cannot leave.

I have not emerged from my hole for some days. The last storm has not abated and I am wondering whether I should return to my usual spot. Last time I went somewhere different I had discovered strange looking creatures with long and hairy snouts and large, unwholesome eyes. They were similar in size and shape to penguins but had arms and stubby legs and rolls of flab that covered them to their elbows like sleeves. Yet despite their scraggy, mismatched and unsymmetrical features, they held an air of innocence. A single tear on each of their cheeks, summoned there by the intense view of the scene ahead, had trickled down their faces in unison, moving my heart in a way that I had not felt for aeons.

They were slowly cooking in the intense heat and released a foul smelling smoke as they baked. Yet none of them flopped into the lava filled basin below, not one of them vitrified like the foolish unsuspecting humans that shared my view from the opposite side. Instead, they simply stared on forever - looking into their lost souls and the foundations of their creation, framed against the forever midnight skies of the infinite. Nothing would ever be the same for their simple minds, nothing would ever hang with the same impunity to the unknown… nothing would ever be so real again.

Staring into their eyes as they stared into the nothing, I could see that they no longer focussed on the near distance. They seemed to see straight through me and focussed on the farthest reaches of their perspective, like they had stretched their vision further and further out so that it was now seeing things impossibly far away but with such clarity that their attention remained fixated on that spot. It was like they saw things many light years away, watching them and waiting for the light to reach their eyes. My childish brain had interpreted this as an excuse to behave inexcusably around them. My baser instincts had shown themselves and at first my idle curiosity had just led me to poke, prod and antagonise them. When this met with no response, I had laughed and danced around them, trying harder to gain their attention. I stretched out their strange, blubbery limbs and pulled tufts of their fur from their skin. I goaded them, stabbing at their eyes and scratching their faces. I even attempted to push them into the depths of the boiling crater below. I failed repeatedly to gain their attention or indeed kill any of them. Instead I had to collapse back and rest in the forever growing heat. I found it hard to catch my breath whilst their fur smouldered and stank all around me. Tiny wisps of black and pungent smoke rose from their slimy looking feet.

It did not take long for me to wretch at the stench, feeling the hot, sulphurous oxygen burn my lungs as the foul smell of decades of rotting fish matter was smoked out through their smouldering skin. Whatever these creatures were, their similarity in shape and diet to penguins was quite remarkable. The only thing that I could be sure of, however, was that they were quite certainly not penguins.

It was strange that I compared them to penguins, being that I had no real recollection of having ever seen any other creatures other than what was here, on the edge of the volcano. It reminded me of a story of Marco Polo seeing a Rhino for the first time and relating it to a unicorn. How I remembered this story or even the animals involved (magical or mythical), I was not sure. What I was certain of, however, was that I could not remain amongst them indefinitely.

I left them after a couple of days, having given up trying to attract their attention or kill them in childish ways. Instead, I returned to my hole until two boys had come sneaking up to the entrance and tried to throw a stone at my bright, fearsome and feline-like eyes. They had stopped just a few yards from where I sat, unable to distinguish the shape of my body from the shadows, unable to perceive my sinister claws in the darkness. The lead one had pointed inside my home and beckoned to his friend with a strange air of anxiety, made evident by his quivering, excited gestures. He was dressed like the other pilgrims and his hair was matted beneath the thick, heavy hood that covered his head. His friend was almost albino in colour and as his face peeked out from his cowl it reflected the sun like a mirror.

They had started to jeer and goad me, trying their best to get me to react like some mythical ogre or black bear. They grow tired relatively quickly and for a short moment there had been silence as they tried to gauge what I was. They were not even sure that I was a creature, as the rumours from the others that had fled were their only basis for comparison. Stories of a wild beast had been whispered between them, stories of an ancient and vengeful witch or hero who had been cursed. None of it was true, though all of it was fascinating to my ears. To think that such exaggerations could be projected around such a simple life, to think that I could be capable of the epic struggles that they said I was capable of. To think that I was the subject of their tirade of worship, fear and awe. Then that was slowly replaced by the same malevolent evil that every small boy holds. Their eyes scrunched into tiny and cruel slits, their irises barely penetrating from behind their squinting lids.

I tensed.

I felt the muscles in my legs and arms coil like springs.

I heard a rock move - that unmistakable clatter of solid stone grazing against the cave wall and the gentle trickle of pebbles that the movement dislodged. One of the boys had raised a cold grey rock in his right hand and was weighing it.

My breath caught in my throat.

For a second there had been no sound other than the distant smouldering volcano. Then I leapt.

The boy had thrown his rock out of surprise, but it struck me like a lightning bolt, sending my leap off course and paralysing me with wracks of electrical-like energy. I had reeled around in pain and confusion. The boys had run and suddenly I was alone, cupping what felt like a broken nose – feeling the seeping blood across my face and dripping down over my chin. It stung and brought water to my eyes, especially whilst I sat there prodding it and trying to plug the bleeding. It had been a long time since I had felt physical pain. It had been a long time since such a thing could penetrate deep enough through the emotional wreckage and the psychological pain that penetrated my soul. The blood had tasted salty and tanged, not at all like I remembered it tasting. Why I should remember what blood tasted like when I had no memory of my name, my origin and my forebears, I did not understand, but I believe this was the first time I had started to consider my existence before this strange place. I had ended up coming to the assumption that I had always been here, like this, in one way or another. I could not even remember what this place was, just that I was drawn to it and could never shed its serene shackles and be free of the beauty and grandeur it provided. I wonder now if anything else was ever important to me, whether there was anything else in life other than staring out over the volcano and into the churning mill of creation that boiled from within its basin. I could tell that the penguin-like creatures on the opposite side of the crater didn’t care for anything else.

I had rubbed my nose one last time, feeling the blood drying and cracking inside my nasal cavity and scratching at the hairs and sensitive skin there. It had made me sniff and scrunch my face up, releasing some of the pressure and allowing a gust of sulphurous, volcanic air up through my mouth so that it stung on its way down into my lungs. I hacked some of the black dust back up, staring at it as it mixed with the blood from my nose. Something about the way the two mingled had reminded me of something long, long ago. Something about when I had first arrived here, before the town below the volcano and before the strange, black, penguin-like creatures had arrived on the opposite side of the crater. I knew not what. At the time I did not care enough. Only now do these questions start to plague me.

I had found my feet a while later and stepped hesitantly back onto the side of the mountain, emerging from my cave with my hand still plugging my nose.

There was nobody nearby, the boys had fled as soon as they had seen me move. They didn’t want to face my vengeance in fear that any number of the stories and myths they had been told about me were true. They hadn’t even stayed to see if the rock had hit.

I had made my way up over the mountain and using the path that had been eroded into the rock by the flow of pilgrims. Far below, the tiny town at the base of the hill smouldered its way through the eternal night, never wondering why sunlight never reached it… Never wondering why morning never came because they had never seen one for comparison.

It was a strange place and yet it was definitely my home.

I had taken the first few steps with caution, sweeping the countryside with my gaze and scouring the rocks, nooks and crevices of the area for life or for the two children that had thrown the stone. I could vaguely make out two faint outlines, running upwards and towards their doom. For a strange second I thought of warning them, as if some small part of my normally altruistic nature was trying to emerge from the hardened, cynical shell that it was being encased in. Instead, I watched them go – disappearing up to the edge of the crater and then rising into the air on the constant wind. Then they were gone, swept up like tiny flecks of ash in the warm air currents and lost forever over the massive boiling soup of lava in its basin. I had smiled, watching the ashen-like dots as they spiralled around one another, caught in some kind of magical, mortal dance that led them ever closer to the flaming and painful death in the lava.

Watching their ant-like bodies fly through the hot winds on the precipice of existence had made me think of the immortal coils of religion and God. This place resonated with the creative power of the Almighty, yet at the same time it was godless and barren, devoid of any kind of salvation. It was here that my mind had wandered and I had found myself repeating the questions through my mind until I was again lost in a state of confusion.

Though the concept of God seemed distant and child-like, I could still remember the same awe from the thought of God as I do when I stand at the edge of the crater and stare into the pit. I cannot deny the creative force that lies before me, as if it were the eye of Ra staring back at me. I wonder sometimes whether this concept of God and Creation marry into one another. One is nothing without the other, for what is a God that does not create? What is Creation without a supreme being to guide its force?

The answer was staring me in the face: the volcano bubbled and seethed with natural chaotic energies, bursting up across the banks as if in response to my foolishness. Surging and roiling around me, caught in the winds of another great storm, it appeared as if all the forces of the universe were combining in that one dark hole. Once more it erupted, spewing forth jets and streams of molten rock into the air. Those foolish pilgrims that remained were smothered in ash. I, of course, retreated like a cat across the open rocks and fled for the safety of my cave. From there, once more, I could watch the streams of death bring life down the side of the mountain, looking like fiery fingers, working the soil and releasing new cavernous ravines into its mighty sides. Occasionally a tree, uprooted from the eruption, fell away amidst a sea of fire, caught in the streams of destruction as they descend towards the town at the volcano’s base.

The rumbling continued above me, echoed in the skies by great flashes of lightening and distant thunder. The wind whipped around the mountainside, fanning flames across the rocks. A distant cry, a death cry, was caught on a gust of wind that carried it across the horizon. It contrasted sharply against the rumble of the volcano.

After a while, I emerge from my cave and look around, taking in the smoky landscape and the new paths from the lava flow- many of which were still lit with a deep red afterglow from the heat. They crisscrossed up and down and across the mountain, looking like a mis-matched pattern from a blind crochet artist. They looked like the glorious movements of chaos against an infinite night of charred rocks. They looked like nature asserting its creative force– bringing life in the strangest of forms.

The town at the base of the mountain was now a burning wreck, with great husks smouldering on the perimeter of the still flaming centre. People fled from the far side, falling over one another to escape the valley floor. It was a laughable sight – with young and old beating each other in their attempts to take flight, almost as if they believed that the people behind them would slow or even halt the flow before it caught them. Inevitably, almost all of them failed and were ultimately swallowed by the flames or by the great rivers of lava that washed down towards them. It did not matter, there would always be more. The town lasted a few hours before the winds caught the ashen hulks that remained and sent them spiralling into the air, their still smouldering particles catching one final time in the oxygen rich air. They then ignited more forests and possibly more towns, farther and farther into the distance.

The sky was now dark with the soot and ash, which still billowed out in a thick, black and bubbly plume from the centre of the crater. The storm from earlier was washing up around the clouds and massive flashes of lightening burst from its centre as the two magnetically opposed forces collided. It was almost as impressive as the force of the eruption itself.

I stand there for some time, realising that I had not taken in this particular view since I arrived. It made me wonder when it was that I had arrived here in the first place. What had I thought? Had I really imagined that this was the place where I would remain for the rest of my days? Did I even believe that I had arrived? Had I always been here?

I think there had been a quest involved, which may have taken my entire life. I can’t remember where I had left from and only the most vague memories remained of the journey. Some of these recollections were clearly blurred with dream-like fantasies. I have difficulty believing them. I am left staring across the mountainside with a blank expression. I sigh.

I trek further up the mountain and am met by a celebration of celestial choruses, as a new age is governed to have begun in the wake of the eruption. It is like a fanfare of trumpets and drums, following the distant rumble from the centre of the Earth. I stare up into the sparkling heavens and marvel for a moment on the amazing image of angels as they herald my approach. They sing of the wheel of time. They praise the culling of man and beast. They herald a newer and more ‘Godly’ race. It was beautiful and yet deadly hypnotic. They were singing in great choirs of heavenly beauty, contrasting themselves against the midnight and oily black sky that surrounds the still smouldering mountain. They emerged and faded through the dark columns of smoke like apparitions. They burst with light and radiance.

They are not angels. They are not demons. They are sparks in front of my eyes. I have foolishly wandered too far into the storm and am choking to death without realising it. The oxygen here has been burnt away, leaving only the fatal taste of the burnt rocks. I am choking on sulphur. I can feel the slowly numbing effects eating into my brain and bringing death, whilst all the angels and demons of the universe fight their battle in the thick and smoky atmosphere around me.

The crater erupted, spiralling debris into sky and wiping out the unlucky pilgrims that cowered at its edge. It spins into the heavens, bursting the electricity in the clouds and sparking shards of lightening into the horizon and all around the sky. Its booming thunder rocked the landscape like the cry of the gods that it had so arrogantly displaced.

The debris fell like rain around me and leaping like a cat I avoid these blade-like shards by the skin of my teeth. Going from boulder to boulder, outcrop to outcrop – leaping, pouncing and cowering. Then I am struck down, as if an arm has penetrated my world from its heavens and stabbed me in the stomach.

I reel with pain, but I do not let it stop me. I can feel blood pulse out from me, matching my heatbeat, yet I did not care. I had one single goal in mind and nothing would stop me from accomplishing it. I would reach that craters edge that one last time and I would stare into the pool of Genesis at is heart until death could finally take me.

I stop before I reach the crater edge and stare at the flickering lights. My lungs are burning. I realise, just as my vision starts to darken, that this life is just another transcendental moment in the darkness and I am actually falling into a dream state, one which may feel like a lifetime of experiences, just like this one, but was in actual fact a fleeting moment in another reality, at present unobtainable.

I black out.

First Intermediary

I am not asleep, I am sure of this. I am lying down, though this may just be a perspective issue. I could well be standing up, but without any sense of where up and down are, I cannot be sure. I am sure that I am awake, though, and that moment in another world of volcanic ash was just a thought, a day-dream amidst an eternal night of introspection. I might not even exist, as there is nothing here to tell me that I do – just my lonely thoughts revolving around my solemn mind – alone on a journey of internal perceptions.

I think I can move my limbs, though I am not sure any part of my body is responding. I can blink, but my eyes only show darkness when they are open. I can breath, though I can’t feel the oxygen that my lungs require. I can walk, though I can’t feel a floor nor see any sign of actual movement.

It is a strange thing, as a moment of clarity on a swirling storm of thoughts, that I can’t see in this darkness and yet can’t imagine myself in another place. Other places must have existed once, otherwise I would not be able to perceive them. Perhaps that was what I needed to do – simply believe myself to be somewhere else. Perhaps I needed to believe that I needed to wake up and I finally would.

I am not asleep. Of this I am sure. I can still use my body, though I cannot feel it. It is like my disembodied will, still connected in some way to my body, has been displaced into a black hole and lost all ability to affect the outside world. Yet my body could still affect my mind. My limbs ached and head throbbed, yet I had no way of telling where they were.

I have willed myself to wake many times before, I am sure. Whether it was whilst here, caught in this eternal nightmare, I am not so sure. Whether it was whilst in the comfort of home or somewhere else is again beyond my ability to recall. All I can be certain of is that I am not asleep now, so that trying to wake myself is futile.

I can start to think of other places, other times… yet none of them seem real to me. They are all places that I can perceive but none that I have seen with my own eyes. I can’t remember anything of where I came from, or anything I had seen on my way to this place (whatever and wherever this place was). All I can be sure of was that I had not always been here and that I must have arrived here by some means.

I thought of the volcano and mountainous crater at its top. I knew I had never been there, I knew that it wasn’t real. I can see how it was compelling and how it had been easy to believe that it was real – especially with its impressive landscape, boiling clouds and bubbling lava. It was a relative heaven in comparison with this eternal, weightless darkness. Yet I had had no memory of how I had reached there, either. It was as if part of my mind was intentionally trying to hide that memory from me in every reality. Without that vital piece of information, however, I could not work out where I was now nor indeed who I was, either.

I become frantic. I wave my arms and feel nothing from them. I call out in desperation and hear only the sound of blood rushing in my ears. I whimper through the unbearable quiet, trying to hear my pathetic voice in the darkness. I hear nothing; I see nothing. There is only the eternal night, spreading out for infinity in front of me.

Something flickers in the darkness. Something is alive in here with me. I reach out towards where it had come from and find only air and weightlessness. I find darkness. I am not even sure if I am even moving my arms it is so dark.

It flickers again, this time more definitively. It is like a beam of light, shining futilely into the black and reflecting off a watery shimmer. The beam is invisible, but there is definitely some kind of reflective pattern playing across the distance. For a moment it seems to expand in growing waves, like stones being thrown into a pool. Then it starts diving against the black and emerging like a blossoming phoenix into the air, burning like the sun and flying out with all the force of the volcanic eruption I had seen earlier.

It engulfs, it conquers it grows and it spreads. No longer is it dark. The light is blinding, eternal and like no other. It penetrates and passes through like a laser, sheering through me and cutting flesh bone and boiling blood and skin.

Then it is gone.

I can feel gravity.

I can feel the breeze.

I can smell fresh air, with a dash of cold sea salt caught in a spray. It is warm.

I open my eyes, aware for the first time that I had slammed them shut when the phoenix had arisen. I am confused.