CHAPTER 15

He placed a crystal given to him by Lazarus on his birthday on the altar. It was a gift when Michael got involved in metaphysics. Surprised was not the right word. At this point in their relationship, they were now only friends and no longer lovers. Lazarus was taking an interest in his spiritual pursuits. He wanted to believe someday Lazarus would return.

He focused his attention on the crystal. For a few seconds, he got a glimpse of a dragon surrounded by crystals. This didn't make sense to him and he thought his imagination was playing tricks.

Then there was nothing for a few minutes. Nothing special was felt. He wasn't even sure something should be felt. Then he thought let me imagine my image inside the crystal. He imagined a beam of white light shooting from his third eye into the crystal.

He got flashes of moments that he could not explain.

Flash.

His grandmother stood at the window looking at the decaying garden. The pear tree was no longer fertile. Its bark was leathery, its sap had turned to dust and it stood as a withered homeless man worn down from the storms from men's mind. The backyard had no grass. The ground parched, cracked had a dry cough to it.

"Once you leave here, you must call a new name to the universe. The name that binds you at birth has no vitality, no life. You must transcend the names."

"I don't want to leave you here."

"The house is bleeding. The walls are crumbling. Even the floor is caving in. Slowly the Unknown was consuming the other rooms. You cannot stay here. I'm in your heart. I've always been in your heart. In your discomfort, you placed me outside yourself. I've been many madwomen to bring you to yourself."

"This house holds so many memories," he replied tearfully.

His grandmother's voice was strong and commanding. "Stop giving power to memories. Observe them, don't judge them as good or bad, see them, witness in silence. And do not make this place your sanctuary. Do you hear me; do not make this place Sanctuary?"

There was a tearing sound. Another room was being torn from his grandmother's house.

"Every time you have constructed temples to hide in, they have become museums or mausoleums. Do not live in relics. This house is no longer sanctuary."

"I still need to hide. I'm not ready. I cannot be human; I cannot!"

"No matter what corners you run to, what mask you wear, or what fortress of solitude you construct, the dark will find you. You must stop running and embrace everything. Stop separating things into categories, into success or failures, into good or bad, into a specified gender identification. Stop making your suffering into an art, it is only another type of coffin."

"Where will I go next?"

"Do not create limitations. They will be come like mental institutions. Now you must go, I cannot hold the reality of this place much longer. You have drawn so much power from this place that once gave power. The land dies so you are no longer bound to this illusion. And yet, you have not poisoned your raiment."

"Memories gave me identity. Yet, when I look at my reflection in a mirror the mirror does not show my true face. I see only the past constructed in my face as a social mask. Something in me wants to pull off the face. I'm screaming inside let me out, crack the egg, break the cocoon, and destroy the prison."

"Live Michael!"

"Grandmother!"

"You have died for so many things. Now what will you live for!"

Michael looked into her eyes. "I thought I was some monstrous creation of the Divine, its spittle. Use to hide because I thought everyone would see how dark I was. I've been afraid of being, of being good but I know it's in me to even be beyond good."

"Then let go."

The room trembled.

"I'm not a fan of pain."

"Then give it no power."

The walls started cracking. The floor started breaking apart. A dark oily substance bubbled up from the floor.

He looked around. His grandmother was gone. Parts of the roof were falling. Parasitic worms were falling through the roof, gnashing at him with their teeth as he pushed them away telekinetically. What remained of the house was howling in great pain.

Michael stood in silence. Everything fell around him as the darkness consumed it.

"I am love." He began to glow brighter and brighter as his light turned into a spiritual fire consuming all in his path until this sanctuary that had become dark existed no more as he was without form or attachment. "I am as I always was without boundaries, no religions, no commandments, no flesh that is binding, and no words can contain my meaning."

Flash. Michael is standing on a pedestal.

Director walks and looks at the statute of Michael. He unzips his pants and urinates on the base of the pedestal.

"You smell of Earth," Michael says.

"Is that a synopsis of my life, from shit to shit?

"I look for you among shadows but you never answered.

"When Lazarus rose from the dead, he had no memories. That's the line of crap fed to the minions. The reality of the situation was that it was a political move by a man who wanted to fulfill a prophesize that had been concocted to give hope to people that they would be rescued from their miserable life. So when this man challenged the authority of the sect, he assumed a position of authority without going through the necessary hierarchy and thereby saying without saying he was a Sun of God. Now when you raise your selves from the dead, will you give them memory or make a statement, go against the system, break down the God spell and give them full consciousness. The reality of the situation is that no one respects a whore, no matter how you dress the bitch up, so stay upon your pedestal, let us worship the illusion. As long as we can control how we will deal with the likes of you, this free will and thinking for yourself shit doesn't work in this reality, so get the message, mankind will piss on the likes of you."

Flash. He was underground. He knew he lived in a Temple City. This place was from the prying eyes of humans. He stood near an altar as some ritual was taking place. His skin was reptilian. He knew he was assisting the Hierophant with the ceremony. He was holding a bowl of water. The Hierophant passed his hands over the bowl of water and uttered words and sparks of light flashed in the water, and a woman's face appeared momentarily and then the face cracked and a hideous demonic face made of rocks and stones, and oozing a black oil from its skin appeared and stared at the Hierophant and began laughing hideously.

"To the One Who Walks Without A Name

Let your voice take this from my sight.

To the One Who Walks in the In Between

Take this Abomination from our sight.

Ancient Evil speaks not or make a sound.

The One Who Walks Without A Name.

From their Voice now be bound.

A shadow passed over the face of the Hierophant. For a moment, the image of the Abomination passed and he saw a young man with dark skinning writhing in pain and bolts of lightning were flashing from his eyes. He then saw an eye descend upon this dark skinned man, and numerous faces emerge and then suddenly submerged, and one face was his. The Initiate dropped the bowl.

The other Initiates gasped.

"The ritual has been diseased. The ritual now serves a darker purpose," spoke the Hierophant.

"Your journeys inward has led you to the true Master," said the Acolyte. "You will all come to know the Abomination's will."

"Why have you turned against your brothers," asked the Hierophant.

The Acolyte stepped forward as the other Initiates stepped back. He stretched out his hand and a staff appeared. "Your teachings are weakening us of our birth right. We have become as property to this goddess, her footstool. Now is the beginning of a new era as my God reaches through time and space to subjugate the Goddess to his will. The humans have reduced us to nothing as we have been forced to live in this subterranean world."

"Then you have learned nothing from the teachings," said the Hierophant.

"Your ceremonial words are drowning us into a stupor." The Acolyte pointed his staff at the Hierophant and attempted to strike him with a bolt of eldritch fire but the Hierophant pushed back the flames that were attempting to consume him. His body racked in pain as his mind was on fire. Looking at the Initiate who was serving him, he cried out, "It is the time of the passing."

"No," cried out the Initiate who understood.

"Now!"

The Initiate stepped forward as the Hierophant continued to push back the fire with his will but the Acolyte persisted with his attack. With his other hand he grabbed the Initiate on the arm. "What was, what is, and what is to come, let it be with you."

The Initiate felt a force passed from the Hierophant into him causing a dizziness to overcome him as he stumbled back. Without the power coursing through him, he could not thwart the Acolyte's onslaught. The Hierophant cried out as the bolt of psi force consumed his body and reduced him to ashes. The Acolyte stood over the ashes glaring at the other Initiates cowering in fear. "Who is greater than my God? You all worship that Whore Goddess thinking she will be the Redeemer. You will learn who the true power is - my God. There is no other God but my God." His eyes began to glow a fiery red.

"That Abomination will have its judgment day as you are meeting yours," said the Initiate who regained composure from his dizziness. He reached within his robe, pulled a dagger from its hiding place, and flung it swiftly at the Acolyte. A look of horror encircled his face as the blade struck in the forehead.

"Your goddess will die," said the Acolyte gasping for air. He fell to the ground. He was barely alive as he was twitching in the last throngs of life. The others stepped back as the Initiate made his way through the grouping. He stood over the body, waved a hand over the body of the Acolyte as he his eyes began to glow a brilliant white fiery light. He chanted words not familiar with the other Initiates.

"The battle of Dark and Light will not be won in flesh but in spirit," said the Initiate as his body began to glow with a white light, as he kneeled beside the body of the Acolyte. Pulling out the knife, with a precision so swift and precise, he cut the heart out before the Acolyte took his last breath. He took a bite out of the heart and held it above the body taking its last breath. Holding the half eaten heart above the Acolyte, the power in his hands ignited the heart into flames and he held it until it fell on ashes upon the corpse of the Acolyte.

A light from within the Initiate enveloped him, as he cried out in silence, and his body was changed into the personage of a Hierophant. He spoke in a distressing tone, "He and the others have gather their horror around them and made a god. In their ignorance to control, they have made dark servants from their seeds, these egregores that seek a separate life from themselves. This is what comes when you put the power outside yourself like our brethren who were once surface dwellers. We are the original inhabitants of Tiamat until our world was destroyed and reborn as Earth. We are no longer the original caretakers. The ancient gods saw fit to place humans upon our lands. And now, we must prepare for the greatest transition that a race can make. Though others don't believe in our teachings, we cannot allow them to thwart our plan if we are to move our people to the place beyond the Sun. Though we are hidden in these underground cities, there will come a time when we will surface within the consciousness of our counterparts. Darkness has been creeping over the surface world. Those who do not guard their thoughts have brought out of the shadows that passes themselves off as gods. These dead dreamers are seeking physical manifestations. Man's polluted mind will contaminate our ancient skies. We must prepare our minds to bring man back to forefront of creation if we are to save ourselves. Those who do not believe we are the Ones are doomed to live in a hell of separation for eternity. We must look beyond our flesh my brethren, we are One. What fears we carry behind the eyes is now in front of our eyes. The darkness again seeks to poison our teachings. Has not the poison brought us to these underground realms? Must we relive the mistakes of Atlantis and Lemuria over and over again? Desires achieved are death. Desire is mourning, a lamentation. It is an eternal separation from self."

An Initiate spoke, "What if humans are a residue of desire?"

Michael fell out of the memory fading quickly and found him self weeping uncontrollably in front of the altar.