The Harrowing
I've been harrowed twice, and Charon knows, one never gets used to that feeling.
First the pain increases- the wound in my belly expanded like a black hole, sucking my entire Psyche in. I felt myself disappearing into it like liquid vanishing down the drainage pipe. Every single time is the same, and every single time you think that it will never end, that this pain will be all of your existence from this moment on, silent childbirth of Hurt that swims over you, overwhelming every sense, numbing every emotion.
Heretics who speak of Transcendence probably never experienced the Harrowing, or if they have they are a bunch of sadistic liars' intent on spreading the pain. And that lie seems calming enough if you don't know shit about how painful detachment from one's passions is. It's not some gentle Nirvana- like state of divine calamity- it's the pulsating gangrene eating at the nerve endings of your spiritual body after playing a tourniquet jig on their sensitive strings.
"There is always a choice when you are struck inside the Harrowing- every situation is a Labyrinth" I remembered Cletus talking to me during one of his lectures. We sat at the table in Five Spots Café, the very same table where we sat when he was, twenty five years later plunged into his own Harrowing by a bullet of crazy singer. "If you choose right, you return, almost unscathed. If you choose wrong you can be forever stuck in the Labyrinth, playing out the same fragment of your breathing life, again and again, until your Psyche finally folds and your Shadow takes over."
"And how will I know what the right choice is?"
"You won't until you made it. You probably won't even know that Harrowing is a test of your will."
After the pain the Voices come to play. They indulge in their triumph, flocking like mosquitoes upon exposed Psyche, drinking every shameful secret, stabbing their greedy proboscises into insecurities kept tucked away in the dark, shadowy corners of the mind.
They knew they can keep me here forever, a play-toy for bunch of moronic grinning children, a fly with an infinite number of wings and legs for them to slowly pull off. The last vestiges of Shadowlands, are still dancing somewhere on the other end of the tunnel- grave image of a man (Isaac?) wasted by pellagra that has my own Stygian-steel blade buried inside me. His face is a face of Despair, death of laughter coming from the streets its sullen victory song.
But they soon disappear, with only the vaguest, teasing thoughts playing themselves over and over, a skipping vinyl record playing inside my Psyche.
"It must really come dreadful to you, to be murdered for the second time. I am sorry, girl but some people want you out of here, and this is only hope I have of seeing my daughter ever again. "
"Remember Syv, remember."
every situation is a Labyrinth
"Murdered for the second time"
Second time…Second time…Second time"
Although I know that it serves no use, I attempt a scream as I am amputated from my own afterlife and thrown into the blackness.
And, cue for the worst part- Oblivion. All memories, all thoughts and all emotions disappear. They will be recreated by those torturing Voices, but only in a way that suits their twisted little game. The game of Harrowing.
I did it again- I thought as another spray of acrid transparent vomit hit the bottom of the toilet bowl. Half digested vodka, bitter and gooey hit the roof of my mouth and I retched again.
"Oh, you stupid, stupid bitch." – the voice inside my head sounded suspiciously like my mother's so I puked again. My calves and knees felt cramped on the dirty floor of the restroom. Cuts I have made yesterday still throbbed when I got up focusing on the invigorating swirl of jazz coming in from the main hall. It was better. I was still unsteady on my feet, but let's face it, I was at the White Horse at about midnight and it meant that there wasn't a living soul around that was still sober. As I leaned over the basin for a drink of water, I tried to piece together the wild and now, unfortunately, puke-stained collage of the evening. I was with Melanie and that new bloke; I think his name was Blaine. Blaine was a unremarkable young man, with a blonde, shortly cropped hair, a English lit student that arrived from Minnesota- quiet, unpretentious kind of guy, with pencil holders in the pocket of his dirty- white shirt. We had a couple of drink and then I started feeling lonesome. It seemed that every conversation went right above my head- there was nothing to talk about, nothing to mention. Melanie quizzed Blaine about Midwest; couples were dancing to the hot bebop played by four-man Harlem band, the drinks kept coming and I stood there wondering what are those folks thinking about me, those folks who were so happy and eager to live.
I knew Melanie invited me only to cheer me up, and now I felt like my very presence was bothering them- there was that new guy, who probably seemed to her so refreshingly reliable and responsible behind his round eyeglasses and his pencil holder. And there was I- ghost of a girl trying to ignore the wild prairie of emptiness that stretched inside me. In a moment I became aware of their waiting gazes and I spoke before I was actually aware about what actually came out of my mouth:
"Are there prairies in Minnesota? Are there beautifully empty. Can you lose your gaze in them? I'd like to lose mine, I've seen to much."
There was concern on Melanie's face; slight amusement on Blaine's.
"Excuse me." I said awkwardly, trying to patch the unpleasant situation. "I have to go and refresh myself."
"Syv! Syv! Are you all…" Melanie's voice was lost in the saxophone's blare.
A moment later I sat alone at the bar and gulped down shot after shot of clear, strong vodka.
Some unspecified time after that- the flow of time seemed to have become stretched, fuzzy and fragmented at the same time- I was barfing on the floor of the ladies-room drunk as a skunk. There was nothing left to do but collect last pieces of dignity, get out, call a cab and phone Melanie in the morning to apologize. Make up something about feeling a bit under the weather lately- hey, she knew as well as I did about us New England ladies being prone to depression in the summertime. I she didn't maybe I could show her the razor- marks on the insides of my calves? Wouldn't it be amusing to give her the final proof that her young guest editor had gone completely of the rocker?
I stumbled through the thinning crowd. There was a drunken applause as the last motes of music fell upon the dirty redwood floor. Manhattan summer fell heavy on my cheeks. The buzzing cacophony of traffic was comforting- it reminded me of beehives. There was a poem in that, but I think I'll save that for another day.
I stood on a hot pavement in front of the "White horse", breathing in the July, salted with musty tang of the ocean. I decided against a cab- my apartment was only two blocks down the lane. The air was heavy but fresh and it brought unexpected clarity into my mind. I took my heels off and walked, probing the concrete with the soles of my feet. It was cool, and dewy. The roar of engines and distant din of the machinery from Manhattan harbour. A drunk's voice calling out a name. Jane or James, maybe.
Everything lulled me, as I tried to think about what in the world went wrong with me. Was it the sadness at the repressed knowledge that my days in the Big Apple are nearing an end, that in a fortnight I'll have to return to my sullen home in the New England waiting for the slow agony of dying summer by the uncaring ocean to end? All that under close watch of my mother followed by the dirge of seagulls. Was it the fact that I accomplished nothing here- I missed meeting Dylan Thomas by an inch, because of stupid drunken mistake. My application for Harvard creative writing course was turned down. My internship in the fashion magazine devolved into endless pointless string of drunken evenings.
Those things seemed downright stupid- overly dramatic foolishness of an adolescent girl. But underneath those surface disappointments there was something else.
It seemed as if something ancient stood rearing its ugly head from behind the glass and steel towers of Manhattan. It was there, and for some reason I could sense it as I walked home. Every comforting sound, every shadow even the touch of air upon my skin was a passing illusion that hid the frightening face leering around the crooked corners of existence, just like the pile of coats thrown across a chair in the corner of child's bedroom obscures the shape of a boogeyman. It stood there, dreaming, and silence was its song. The very fact that the reality never seemed so unreal was the very thing that was driving me insane.
I reached the boarding house in which my apartment was located. It was on the small puckered mouth of 11th street on a place where it left Manhattan and kissed West Village. It was an ugly, small three-story building with faded walls of dull red brick. My apartment stood on the second floor. Stairway was eternally damp, and dark. I reached for a light switch. It clicked like empty gun in one of the old John Ford movies. It seemed that the light was out. Probing for the first stair with my foot, I started to ascend.
I climbed up the stars, grasping the handrail, feeling woozy again, only now it was more pure exhaustion than drink that made me lightheaded. My feet shuffled along the wooden stairs their soft patter the only thing that broke the silence. Dark and silence, isn't it peculiar how they always seem to go together? If dark night was a comforting reality of the death, the silence was the song of the dead, discordantly bellowed into infinity- there was nothing to hear and nothing to communicate. Only a mute choir singing the silence, again and again. If life was a story full of the scream and the fury death was likewise an idiot's story, a tale full of silence and numb, sedated catatonia, pair of murky eyes staring out into the distance.
I shuddered as I unlocked my door. Nervously I reached for the light. Its yellow gaze was oddly comforting. I collapsed upon the carpet, dropping my purse and high heels down with a clatter.
"You're headed for a nutty-home Syv?" I mumbled to myself. I saw my twitching hand, poor pale ghost, adorned with bitten-out nails struggling with the latch. I should really get some sleep, perhaps it was only the drink and the exhaustion that was getting to me…
The moment my trembling fingers found the latch, I paused. There was a sound of footsteps coming through the darkness. I could hear them, climbing out the stairs. It was a slow click-clack of the high-heels. They were closing in.
"Don't be ridiculous." I spoke out loud without noticing it immediately flinching at the sound of my own voice. "People come and go here all the time,
(…in Charon's name)
for crying out loud. It's a boarding house, Syv, and it's Friday night, after all. You don't need paranoia on top of everything, don't you?"
The footsteps stopped just in front of my door. My breathing halted. There was a knob inside my throat and I kept trying to swallow it in vain.
The door knob slowly turned. I put my back against the door, remembering, in my panic, that I have dropped the keychain when I heard the steps. I felt slow, reluctant but steady push against my lower back. Brass doorknob was digging itself into my hip. I braced myself, trying to stifle a scream that flowered inside my dry throat.
Just a push. And then a nervous titter of girl's laughter from the other side.
The footsteps again. This time moving away from the door.
I slowly rose, and looked around to see if anybody is watching me. It was absurd of course. There was no one in my small apartment (a bed, a turned off electrical heater, a nightstand covered in books and papers, small coffee table with a kitchen chair and a gas stove, with two kitchen cabinets poised above it as a pair of eyes) but myself. Waiting for the footsteps to die out I opened the door.
The two objects I found before it filled me with puzzlement and unexplainable dread that spread outward like wildfire from the pit of my stomach.
First thing that had gotten my attention was a clear blue envelope.
The second was beekeepers hat.