The Story So Far

 Where to begin? In 2020, when no one could deny it anymore? In 2014, when we first began to suspect? or back in 1998, when I was born?

Surely it was after that, once I was alive and aware enough to be effected by the world around me. To realise how poorly I fit in.

Mother would have you believe that this all part of my illness. That the strangeness within my soul stems from the pollution of my mind which can be healed through vigorous excercise of the body.

Father would have you believe that I am lying.

Maybe they are right.

Maybe I am making it all up for attention.

Maybe the wrongness comes from never knowing what I felt or how to feel it, never knowing if I was being touched or why, or living outside of my skin.

Maybe it was something done to me, something THEY DID TO ME, something that makes me not at peace with myself. Corrupted. 

Or maybe maybe maybe it is that they don't know my name, and I do. Maybe I know what I want more than they know what they want for me. Maybe I know who I am.

Maybe.

Or maybe I'm making it all up for attention. After all, I've only been alive Twenty Two Years. That's not nearly enough time to know anything for certain. 

Feral / It Was Easier

It was easier, they thought, to pretend the phenomena was a new mental disorder. The hallucinations were the first symptom, they said. If you have experienced hallucinations of a forest, filled with pink light and water dripping off of trees, then you may be a sufferer of this newly discovered condition. It is probably triggered by stress, they said.

Most of those diagnosed with this new condition were those who had existing diagnoses  of Sensory Processing Disorder, autism or ADHD.

After the hallucinations come the identity crisis. The creation of false memories, and the paranoia that something is coming, something is coming soon. The hallucinations would continue. False memories of this great glowing forest, and the belief that you now had special abilities, the ability to do magic.

Don’t worry, they said, we can help you with that. We have set up a special hospital for people with this mysterious new condition. We can study them, and keep them safe. Come and stay with us, they said, at this place- more like a retreat than a hospital, really, where everyone else is going through the same thing, and you won’t feel alone.

And we came. God help us, we came. We arrived at the little hospital- and it was nice, it really was. Most of us arrived with others driving, our caretakers handing us over to someone they thought could take better care. None of them wanted to hurt us. I truly believe that. I truly do.

***


It was easier, they thought, to control us, since we were already broken. Bright lights and loud noises jarred us easily, we could be distracted by pretty patterns and repetitive sounds. They medicated us and put us in neat little rooms and tried to figure out how to stop us from believing we could do magic.
Tilda stayed with me. She didn’t think I could be left on my own, not like that, and she stayed with me a few days to make sure I didn’t cry myself to sleep at the strangeness of it all.

When she left it got much worse. And she did leave. I asked her when she was going to, and she kept saying she wouldn’t. They think that we don’t understand lies, broken promises, betrayal. Even a dog will whine when it’s been abandoned. And we are human beings! Or, we all thought we were. We deserved to be treated with human decency. We were not.

I didn’t want to take my medication, you see. I have never felt that there was anything wrong with my strangeness. So long as you can tell the difference between the voices in your head and the voices in real life you’re all right. The doctor in charge became angry with me. “That one is feral,” he said. “We can’t do anything for them.”

By that time most of us were experiencing the fourth stage off the new condition: the call. We all knew that we were supposed to be somewhere else, doing something else. And it made us restless. People kept trying to break out, run away, get to where we belonged.

They set up a high pitched noise to play through the facility, one that seemed to bother no one but us. It broke our concentration and our spirits.

The one thing that I was able to cling to was a word. “Feral.” That one is feral, I thought, that one is me. They can’t do anything about me.


***


It wasn’t easy, fighting when you cannot stand to be touched. But I got past them.

Bare feet, paper gown, hot cement and then the rain began. At first it was behind my eyes, inside those false memories of glowing forest. But then it was real, real rain splashing down. And I was not alone. Dozens of us had made it out of the hospital. But I was the first.

It’s because I’m Feral, I thought. I’m the fastest and they can’t catch me. Untamed, unbound, unbroken. Un-fucking-dimmed. And they didn’t catch me. They didn’t catch any of us.

The rain was warm, and as night gave way slowly to a bright pink dawn it did not slow. By the time it was light enough to see the streets, they were flooded. Two feet deep at least. We waded onwards, still heeding the call.

Voices called and called, some inarticulate with confusion or delight, and where our mouths failed us our bodies took over, hands and elbows and necks and knees moving in a secret, jittery language that they cannot understand. Even those of them who love us, or claim to. They cannot ever know all that they lack.


***

It was easier, we thought, to let them live with their delusions. When we found the boundary between their world and ours, we did not hesitate long. We crossed back into our world, the one of belonging. The world of the collective, of reason, of things making sense. We don’t have to pretend to be like them anymore. And they don’t have to pretend not to notice our strangeness.

We followed the call to the weak place between universes, and there the rest of us were waiting. Ancient, by our standards, centuries older than any of us, patiently waiting for the children they’d entrusted to this world to ripen and be ready to come home. The seeds they’d planted and then been forced to abandon, finally gathered in. We waited at the boundary, waited for invitation. It is our way.

And then one by one we were called, we changelings, back amongst our own folk, back into the fold. We crafted new names and new, sweeter purposes. I found myself with a sword and shield- but none of iron. We hate iron.

I have gone back to their world, occasionally, but it has such a reek of badness to it I do not want to stay. Tilda thinks I am dead, or still institutionalised. I do not know what the doctors told her. I have no wish to see her or her trite little life again. I am seized by higher purpose.

There is no extraneous ritual here. And no lies. Each of us has left our family names, our given names, our identities from their world. We carry each a single moniker, heavy with meaning, that is both descriptor and title. They write it into our flesh with ink and needle because it is a Truth. And the name on my shoulder is Feral. Because there’s nothing they can do for me, and nothing I need from them.

The Stolen Moon

The King asks her to marry
She asks to set the rules
The King asks her to fix things
She asks to be excused.
The Crow asks for water
The Crow asks for gold
The Crow asks for blood
She asks him to let go.
The Oracle asks for company,
She only asks to learn
They eat and talk together
And ask nothing in return.
The Chaser does not speak
But the question’s in his eyes
She asks how to escape
And through a normal gate she flies.
The Watchdog asks her to come home
He smiles and says ‘please’
She does not ask- she grabs
And brings him to his knees.
The Chaser asks her
But she does not understand
He speaks the question with his steps
And the answer’s in his hands.
The Moon asks her for a safe return
She asks forgiveness for her crimes
She only asks for a release
From ‘Once upon a time’.

The Magick

Let me tell you a story

There is a pool high in the mountains, fed from a stream that comes out of the cliff face
and then vanishes back into the crevice in the rocks
No one knows its source
nor where it goes later
for there is no river that comes from this side of the mountains, no lakes that might be fed from this stream, no way to meet the river in the valley, either

But the family that lives high in the mountains knows of the stream
and of its magick
and when one comes of age, one may, if one chooses, go there of a night and bathe in it
and it is said that the magick of the stream will make you what you are meant to be
but the results are not, please understand, what you WISH to be
monsters have been birthed from this pool
the pain, they say, is indescribable
but they do try to describe it
flesh and bone being rend and rewritten
reshaped

Sometimes it is a little thing
a few bones around the eyes, perhaps, which signals much greater changes within
most often the body emerges greatly changed
and occaisonally they do not survive

The people of the high mountains say it is better to be changed greatly on the outside, because when the pool changes your body, the YOU that remains is untouched
when the body remains, the mind, spirit and soul can be corrupted, and no one knows what changes have been wrought within

But then, the advent of SCIENCE!

Man's need to understand all things
Man's need to control all things
and tamper with things that should be not tampered with



Picture, if you will, a village in a valley
and halfway up the mountain, a few shops and homes
the hill people
there are always hill people

this valley opens to the ocean in the.... whether it is east or south or west is of no consequence, but the ocean fog rolls in some mornings, and during spawning season seals and sea lions come up river to feast on the fish
up on the cliffs is a house on stilts, a shop of curios
they have gems and talismans... but most famously they have taxidermy
and some of the creatures seem to be horribly mutilated things, afloat in vinegar and formaldehyde

things that might have been human, once

This shop is failing
many of the businesses are
And then one of the boys comes to school with a new pet
let's call him Cooper, that is his name, after all,
and he brings with him a sea lion
            --- go ahead and pet it, it's quite docile---
completely tame
such a thing should not be tamed
cannot
but he has done it
And his friends gather round in excitement, and children he doesn't know gather round in excitement, and popular children gather round in excitement
and the teachers whisper amongst themselves

The source of his new powers is revealed to be the pills that his grandfather manufactures, the owner of the curio shoppe halfway up the mountain
Pills that allow you to change yourself
anything about yourself

Cooper has made himself so that all animals will obey him

There is a girl who does not wish to be as she is anymore, not a girl, exactly, very nearly a woman, and she goes to the old man and they talk, and he tells her that to be unafraid, to be brave, and confident, and all the things she wishes, she must change 2/3 of her internal self
and he gives her the pills to do so

Suddenly the Curio Shoppe on the mountain is doing a very brisk trade indeed
but strange things happen all across the village
for this is not the magick of old, that formed you into truer virtue
this is weilded by man, and man is unweildy

Strange things are happening
Electric devices cease to function
Time moves in jumps, or lulls to a standstill
People are seized by powerful and often wildly innapropriate desires
a woman might seduce her sisters fiance
and then tear out his hearts and devour it
and it has all gone too far

one night there is a burglary
The little curio shoppe on the hill is broken into
and all the pills, and all the makings of the pills
are taken
the strangeness of the town dies down, slowly
things return to very nearly normal

But then it becomes stranger by tenfold, and all overnight

a young couple had stolen the pills, and, not knowing how to destroy the magick within, had flushed them away
which in of itself had not been a bad idea
save that the wastewater fed to the ocean
and it had begun to rain

The young couple went to the old man and asked him what to do
they confessed their theft and begged for his help
he laughed and wept, and nodded solemnly
for recall, the source of this magic, the stream in the high mountains?
They must offer something to it
as it was meant to be

and the lovers run there
but others, who like this new power, and do not wish it gone, want to stop them
the lovers strip their clothes and wade into the water
the rain is pouring down and already they can feel it
their skin warps and crawls
they cannot stand to have the other look at them
they cannot stand to be apart
so instead they stand
back to back
and their flesh warps and crawls
and their bones warp and crawl
and maybe it takes hours and maybe only minutes

there are no young lovers anymore

there is only a new god
a god of balance
and of love
and of middle grounds
a perfect androgyne of man and woman mixed
a god with beard and breasts and four arms
and no matter where you stand this god is facing you
perhaps because they have two faces
or perhaps it is the magick and science mixed, and like the atom on gold leaf, the face will be wherever you observe it

The pool never formed monsters
only gods
strange gods
and now, the first god it has forged in millenia
the most powerful
will bring peace to the valley again.

Organising

The table is Father. Does it go against a wall or in a corner? Or stand alone in the center of the room? Doesn't matter. It fits anywhere, but still useful. A perfect wooden rectangle, sturdy and multi-purpose. My father and I built that table together, the third winter I came home from college.

The bookshelf is Mother. Awkward height, not enough shelves, doesn't match the table. I forget that I have these shelves for minutes or hours or days. But it holds my books and my spare change and my camel figurines. Mom gave me that bookshelf when the school didn't need it anymore.

The painting is Grandfather. The frame is reattached, badly, as the canvas had already shrunk away from years of neglect. It sits hung too high up on the wall, looking over my sketches and charts and posters, the first piece of art in my apartment. Blameless save for its amateurism, poor perspective and bad lines. We restored that painting together, the two of us, colouring in the background with sharpie where the canvas was showing.

The laptop is Grandmother. Silver and surprisingly sturdy for its small size, functioning amazingly well for its age. Badly in need of updates, with memory failing more often and various half downloaded viruses wreaking havoc on the hard drive. It can be kept on a long cord anywhere in the apartment, but I can’t let the battery run down or it crashes completely. She bought me this computer as a Christmas gift, my freshman year of high school. I wrote my first novel on it.

The television cabinet is Childhood Home. It’s small and not fancy, cluttered and fairly dinged up. It’s covered with memorabilia from bands and book series I’m not interested in anymore. But it holds a dozen sentimental treasures, and all my belief in magic. It was the first thing I moved into the new apartment, after dad took it down to build a real cupboard.

The bedside table is Family Legacy. Carefully crafted dark stained wood. Its four legs fold together and its leaves fold almost flat, to collapse or expand as needed, and it fits neatly in most parts of my home. Now it holds a bottle of feathers, a few shiny rocks, and all of my weed paraphernalia. I never noticed the end table until adolescence, and then I insisted on having it as my bedside table.

The potted plant is Community. Long, unruly tendrils come crawling onto my window sills when I least expect it. The plant pretends to be finicky, that it needs to be watered just so and get only so much light. When I neglect it, it withers, and I am always afraid I have killed it, but then, suddenly, there is a new, bright green tendril reaching up along my blinds. I bought this plant from my next door neighbor as soon as I moved away from home.

The bed is Adulthood. A queen sized mattress for a twin sized person. It has to stay in its corner because there is no room for it anywhere else. It is possibly the most comfortable bed I’ve slept in. Sometimes I wish I could put in a different corner, a more prominent place in my home, but it would look silly and presumptuous. The bed was the first piece of furniture I bought for myself.

The fridge is Drugs. It’s massive, much bigger than I had expected. Bigger than the ones in other apartments in this building. It was added fairly recently. It hums so loudly in the night that I can hear it though my headphones and it’s hard to think about anything else. So often I’ll go to it when I’m hungry but find there’s very little to satisfy me. Yet, it holds a lot of fairly necessary items. The refrigerator came with the apartment, and it’s the only thing in the room that can’t be re-arranged.