Reverent Dreams

Chapter One: Apparitional Psyche

Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
I am I and you are you,
Whatever we were to each other, that we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name,
Speak to me in the easy way which you always used.
Put no difference in your tone,
wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow,
laugh as we always laughed
at the little jokes we enjoyed together.

Pray smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word
that it always was.
Let it be spoken without effort,
without the trace of a shadow in it.

Life means all that it ever meant,
it is the same as it ever was.
There is unbroken continuity,
why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you
somewhere very near
just around the corner.
All is well

Henry Scott Holland 1847-1918
Canon of St Paul's Cathedral

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I never cared about models. Rock stars and porn gods annoyed me. I didn't want the perfect, giggling little boy or the big breasted, curvy female.

I abhorred fame and the attitudes it gave a person. I hated the spotlight.

I wanted simplicity. My brother, my lover, my books, and maybe a packet of cigarettes.

Everything else was un-needed trappings, pretty baubles to ensnare the crowd.

Beauty is only skin deep, and what I was after was so much more.

Until him.

A exquisite, shining, perfect angel, sent down from the heavens to debauch my body and trap my mind.

And with him, he brought an apprentice.

How could one, weak, single man resist two golden beings? No one could, and anyone who begs to differ is a dirty liar. But life had this…quirk about it. It never works out as you intended it to. And things go wrong, so very, very wrong.

In the end, I didn't resist. I succumbed and fell. So, so far down. Every time I think of it I want to either cry or vomit. I know he does, both of them.

It's been…five…ten…years? Time is rather slow here, everything rushing, rushing but it goes right past you, until you lose all concept of what is what and where is where.

I heard a legend once, when I was a child. It told of the most perfect, most glorious place. There were colours there that you could never imagine, tastes that were unlike anything you could have experienced or dreamed of. Thoughts, feelings, all of it…absolute perfection.

But only the pure could go there. Those with no sin, no pain.

Instead, if you had a stain, you were bound to the earth, until someone freed you. And if you committed a sin against another…who would want to?

So I'm here, always here, watching and staring and…waiting. The legend got one thing wrong though, I'm not cruel and vengeful, taking my wrath out on whomever I meet. I can't meet, I can't even jerk off.

Nope, I'm not cruel, just tired…and sad. And every time they visit me, alone or together, I get sadder and even more tired.

I just want to speak with him, one last time.

TBC