The Angel's Knight #29 - Golden Musings

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110 miles north of Los Angeles, October 15, 2017

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"Something is happening!"

"I know that! Don't you think I know that?"

"No reason to be a bitch about it, I was just telling you that something is happening!"

"As you are perfectly aware of there is nothing you can see that I can not also see. Therefore this remark of yours that something is happening is completely redundant. As is most of your mindless rambling."

"Bitch!"

"I heard that!"

"You were meant to!"

Silence.

"Do you think it's...?"

"Don't get your hopes up, girl! Believe me, it leads to nothing but disappointment."

"But if we give up hope we might as well be..."

"Dead? Who says we aren't? Who says that this isn't hell? It certainly fits all the specifications they taught us about in Sunday school, doesn't it?"

"No, this isn't hell! It can't be! I can't be..."

"God, listen to yourself, girl! An eternity in this place, or so it feels, and you still haven't learned a thing, have you? I don't know if this is hell, but if it is, then we certainly both belong here. Stop kidding yourself!"

Silence.

"I never meant to hurt anyone."

"I'm sure you didn't. How did that old cliché about good intentions go?"

"I..."

"You raped your girlfriend's mind, you raised your best friend as a zombie that nearly killed a lot of people, and you ended up destroying the whole town when you tried it a second time. I think there is a name for that kind of behavior."

"I'm not evil!"

"That's debatable. I was actually thinking more along the lines of insanity, though."

"I'm not insane."

"Aren't you? I think one definition of insanity says that it's trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. You tried to wipe your friends' memories twice and twice you failed. You tried to raise your dead friend twice and twice you failed. How about it, girl? Want to go for third time's the charm?"

Silence.

"Then again, being stuck here for so long, who knows? Maybe I'm insane, too. Maybe you're not even really here and I'm imagining you because I feel so lonely."

"Or maybe you're a product of my imagination. Ever think of that?"

"Sometimes. But if you consider the notion that you're really holding a dialogue with yourself, you can throw all claims of not being insane right out the window."

"I'm not insane! If I were I wouldn't ask myself the question."

"If that helps you sleep better... metaphorically speaking. I don't remember the last time I actually managed to sleep."

"I'm not sure I have slept at all that last year before... you know. There are a lot of things I've forgotten." Pause. "I'd really like to scream sometimes."

"If only we could."

"We can speak, can't we? I don't get why we can't scream when we can speak."

"You honestly think we're speaking here? Girl, you're having a dialogue in your mind with someone that might or might not be actually here. Or maybe I'm the one doing it. I'm open to everything by now."

Silence.

"Do you think... all the things we've seen... are they just figments of my... our... imagination as well? Nothing but madness?"

"If so I have a lot more imagination than I ever gave myself credit for, let me tell you that. I certainly never used to daydream about this kind of stuff."

"Well, gigantic entities that play dice with the universe never figured much into my imagination, either. I mean, who comes up with stuff like that? I always pretty much believed in the whole good vs. evil thing and..."

"And you considered yourself one of the good girls, right? Probably expected them to print a picture of you in the dictionary right next to the term 'good girl'."

"It wasn't like that."

"No? I've seen girls like you before. All innocent and shy, couldn't harm a fly, never an angry word. But once you look beneath that exterior things inevitably change. They always do."

"Can we not talk about this, please? There are more important things to worry about right now."

"Are there? Don't tell me you're still hoping that this 'something happening' thing will get us free."

"But it might! Ever since we discovered that opening..."

"Your imagined opening, you mean!"

"I'll give you potential opening, but not imagined."

"Oh, please! You think you sense some kind of pinhole in our little prison and you imagine someone might be listening on the other side. So you scream all day and all night, metaphorically speaking, in the vain hope that someone might be listening and picking up all those little facts that might just stem from our combined imagination."

"You really do have a defeatist attitude, you know that?"

"At least I'm not clinging to delusions of grandeur. Or refuse to recognize my own sins."

"Some things went wrong, I know that! But..."

"Not 'things', girl! 'Things' didn't go wrong! *You* went wrong! I know all about that, believe me! Unlike you, though, I spent the time in this prison admitting to myself what I did. I know it was wrong to do ... that ... to my own flesh and blood. I know I can never make up for that and I know I deserve hell for it. But you still lie to yourself, tell yourself that everything would have worked out just fine if everyone would just have done as you wanted them to and not been so petty as to mind a little brain- raping. God, you sicken me!"

Silence.

"I never meant to hurt anyone."

"And we're back at square one again!"

"Look, forget about that for now, okay? I really think something big is about to happen. I know someone heard me! I know someone received all that information we shouted out into the ether."

"Someone like your former friends, you mean?"

"I know I might have lost their friendship, but I have no doubt they are still out there, trying to do the right thing. If I can somehow get the things I have seen to them..."

"They will do what? I have seen the same things you did, girl. What will they do against two all-powerful beings that play their games with whole worlds? Not for good and evil, but for order and chaos. Both looking to remake the world in their image. Either into a flaming hell of myth run wild or a realm of cold logic that will bore everyone to tears. What will your friends do against entities like that?"

"We have faced gods before."

"Oh, please! I saw the same images you saw, dear! Glory wasn't a god, at least not in the way those things are. She was just someone who got her hands on more power than any one mere human should have and went insane in the process. That is something we can both emphasize with, can't we?"

"I... I'm not going into that again with you. My friends are coming, I know it. They will find a way to make everything right."

Silence.

"Have you ever considered what you might be doing to whomever is receiving all those pictures you're sending?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, dear, that you and I are stuck in this ... whatever it is, and in some way I won't even pretend to understand we have been given some sort of insight into what is happening, really happening, in the world around us. Fires of myth, nonexistent hell dimensions, creatures that take their form from other peoples' expectations. I've long given up hope that my mind has survived all this intact. I'm pretty sure I'm insane and I don't have too many doubts about you, either. What do you think it's doing to the person or persons who might be picking all this up, and filtered through your questionably sane mind no less?"

"I... I never thought of that."

"Of course not. You never do."

"But... but it should be okay. At best the person on the other end should be receiving no more than a few images. At worst they should..."

"Blah, blah, blah! Same old song, girl. You don't get it, do you? You always have the best of intentions, but you never once pause to consider how many people might get hurt along the way. Or that maybe people don't want or need your help."

"Says the woman who stole her daughter's body."

"Yes, I did that. It was the worst thing I ever did and I deserve to burn in hell for it. My point is, I had the best of intentions, too. I saw my daughter waste her youth, just like I had done. I thought I could do better. Granted, it was very selfish, but I never intended to hurt anyone, either. I fully intended to give her back her body once I got done reliving my youth. At least that was the plan at first. Somehow my good intentions didn't hold up. In the end I more or less admitted to myself that it was all about me and that I didn't care how many bodies I had to step over. And now I know how much it hurt the people I used to love. I know because this is the hell I planned to subject my own daughter to. It's rather fitting that I should be the one to burn here."

"You think regretting your deeds makes it better?"

"Better than denying them, that's for sure. I know what you're thinking. Not too difficult a task, seeing as we're meshed together here. You think you can somehow make everything better again. You think that by discovering all these truths - by accident only, but who cares - and giving them to someone so they can do something about it, you can somehow come out the shining heroine. No one will remember what you did because, in the end, you helped save the world. But it doesn't work that way, girl. It never does."

"So what? We should just sit here and let the world go to hell? Or whatever that other place might be, the one where order rules supreme and myth has been annihilated."

"We can't do anything but sit here, girl! Haven't you realized that by now? How do you think all this information is coming to us? No theories on that? How do we know all this? The Torch, the Hellmouth, all these creatures... don't you remember how you got to be here?"

"I tried to do the right..."

"Spare me! You tried to access the power of the Hellmouth and when it started to suck you in you tried to hold on to something. That something was me, stuck in my own little prison ever since I tried to blast my own daughter into oblivion. So now we're stuck together and we're stuck right in the middle of the greatest source of magical energy in the whole world."

"So?"

"For someone as powerful as you once were you really know nothing about the basic rules of magic, do you? I mean that this magical prison we conjured ourselves by way of our misfired spells and black magic might be the only thing keeping the Hellmouth from erupting. The only thing that keeps the balance from tilting headlong into chaos. And if we're freed..."

"Oh my God!"

"Ah, I see it's finally penetrated."

"But we can't be sure that's going to happen. Our imprisonment might just be some sort of side effect. When I lost control of the Hellmouth's power I tried to seal it. Maybe I succeeded and this is just..."

"You're grasping at straws."

"Why do you think you have it all figured out? A minute ago you confessed that you're not even sure whether you're real, whether anything of this I real. For all I know I might be holding this conversation with myself."

"Which would make you a certified madwoman. In that case you certainly shouldn't try to do anything rash. Like unleashing Hellmouths or such."

"I refuse to talk to you! My friends will get here! They will save the world and... and maybe..."

"Get you out? Forgive you? Praise you for helping them?"

Silence.

"Something is happening."

"I know that."

"No, something really is happening! Can't you feel it?"

"What? Oh, you mean that pulling sensation? Yes, I can feel that. What do you suppose it means?"

"I'm not sure. But I think I just remembered something."

"Something? Like what?"

"Like how to scream!"

TO BE CONTINUED