Maria, The Destroyer

Josef knocked the heady marble floor with a mahogany gold cane, whistled a clear soprano scale of D flat major that knocked itself off the starry ceiling and down the black staircase, slumpily released another moment’s angry carbon and double tapped his feet at every step, walking through the cubic open gallery the size of a monster, uniform students scribbling and choking on their words amongst rivers of paper and trash piles of old novels, drumming hands flippantly off the jittering tables, confused and busier than the world, whilst Josef’s skull faced the heady marble floor, beating into his mind like an anvil, as Professor Garnet tripped out of his office and into the hall like a haggard Jesus, brushing fallen motes from his cufflinks, thinking about snow globes, sinking in a dirge-filled mental universe of Claudio Monteverdi and superstring insanity, searching the burning windows for the rays of a heralding dusk, whilst children played outside, whilst Mohammad Qasim P.H.D lay in a musty stinging dump and punctured his wild eyes with sticks, as the druggish foreign music slunk out of a crack in his bedroom door and into the ancient corridors and the black staircase, absorbed by an endless choking rattle hour after hour, dead and gone, as two strangers met across the chalky rift, and Mohammad wondered again what was the point in anything.

“Yesterday I dreamt again that the stars were falling ... and that I could trace a pathway between galaxies with my hands.”

“And did you tell your students this?”

“No, no, no. What would my students want with dreams?”

“But did you tell anyone about it?” The conversation moved in low tones, running through the aisles of books, and now collided with the walls of the wide Garnet office. Inside, they were lined with book cases, not a shape or piece out of place. Josef sat down.

“What would they want with it?

When I woke up there were bars on my windows and inside my brain, and there were angels of different colours, and each angel spoke in short sharp screams and said twelve and a half things at once. I remembered studying experimental chemistry when I was 9 years old, when we made flames and watched liquid evaporate. It came down the glass walls in streams of blue and green – It was beautiful. I remember looking for minnows in streams in Kentucky,-field biology; I was 5 – and the Europa landing ... not the landing itself but my parents’ conversation during the broadcast. I was barely six months old – I don’t know how I could have remembered that.”

Professor Garnet spoke a little slowly.

“My whole past is being recounted to me in the clear morning by angels. They say “Io, io, sono’, sono’, it means so much to know, know...” and then they start to siphon my earlier life to me through holes in the air. They say other things too, like “you lived, you lived.” It doesn’t mean anything now, but when they’re here I know exactly what they mean,” the Professor said.

“You should tell someone.”

“...I could not tell people.”

“Do not be ashamed.”

“I am finding myself in vivid, delusional states for what must be several hours each day now. No one can know. My students would demand I get out. My colleagues would have me excused across the border like the rest of the mentals.”

“Find someone you can trust. Whether you stay or not, these hallucinations are painful for you. There are doctors and psychologists here.”

“No. Once one person knows, then the whole floor of that student hall knows. I’ve seen it happen. No, I cannot tell people that I am disturbed.”

“And still, you are.”

The fan behind him whirred and prayed lightly on his tufts of hair. The Professor took off his glasses and tapped them on his desk. Behind their rims, the monster was waiting in the sparkling of light.

“And still ... I am.”

Josef looked up at the rectangular window above Garnet’s head, where deep orange light was slowly ebbing with their conversation.

In the summerish glow on the outside the kids laughed with every jump they made, across the sand in the playground, at the edge of the long desert. The sun was regular, half-set, booming at the periphery of their whole world, and their joyful screams were lost with cicadas in the somnedy of mid-evening, boys work too hard, girls work too fast, all of them alone on the inside now; I’m sorry, children, I am so sorry.

~

“What do you think, Saty?”

Get out of there, John, it’s going to blow!

“What do I think? What do you think?”

I elect you deputy, send them in there, agent. This is earth reporting, mission report.

“I think we’re all running out of time, Saty, slowly, bit after bit.”

“What can you mean, Davy?”

The war with the xraags is complete; get those diamonds back on the ship, lifting off in eleven, ten, nine...

“Oh, well look all of it...”

Quick! Man down! “...Everyones just think they knows what the problem is but they don’t and none's doing one thing to sort it. So that’s it then...”

Powdery bloomed over the soft black ground. The air was cool but the earth itself still warmed all over, burning, scorning. “...And we’re all too late.”

“Never is too late if you hav hope.”

Dust swarmed the kidsphere over. Davy’s hands felt the earth’s rumble.

"What is hope for?"

Saty stood and looked to east. “So we can sort it.”

Come back quick, Mark, your signal is waning!

“Everyone wants to sort it but none ever sorts it because no one can really believe the problem and the horrors, and get to stick in their heads, so we always leave it... Its was okay before. But we have to sort it Saty, it’s starting to feel real now.”

Are you authorised in this domain? This is my legion, general, I depose you!

Brown strands flew about as the breeze fluttered in Saty’s hair, slowly undoing the tresses.

“Yes. I can feel it with my hands.”

~

In Prof. Edward Garnet’s office, he stood holding his weight with two fists, equidistant, on the desk. His elbows quivered, his legs bent, and he slowly retreated back into his little chair.

“We are having some trouble with Professor Qasim up there. I am very concerned about his situation,” Garnet said, wavering.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Oh, oh – It’s very complicated, but anyone on the staff here will tell you about it.”

Josef didn’t say anything, but looked in Edward’s eyes. “Of course, I will go and try to resolve matters with him. All members of staff will be convening tomorrow at quarter past eleven.”

“I spoke to him on Curphone. He seemed alright.”

“He is a deceiver. He is not alright,” Edward said, looking away.

~

Josef strode forward and struck Prof. Mohammad Qasim’s black bedroom door with his golden cane. After the eleventh quiet knock the dark entrance crept off its hinge; Qasim looked out with one eye from the chamber’s hanging, sooty colouration.

“...WHaat.”

“There’s a meeting.”

O Lord – Earth, swallow me up.

“Wasn’t this door red?” Josef said.

Mohammad spewed little particles of dust and saliva into the heavy air, turning his head away towards the broken bed.

“No. Ill ... I’m ill,” he said.

“We’re all feeling a bit peaky. There is a new parasite here.”

“I feel dead ... my soul is departed. Alas, nay ... I cannot go to the party – I shall stay at home, my mother, and work...”

Josef ignored him and tuned into the clatter of downstairs.

“Come on. You have to come out,” he said.

“—Don’t pressure me, you – shouldn’t do that...”

Josef pushed his knuckles between his teeth and breathed some apology.

“But it’s important.”

Mohammad kicked his khaki shoes a little in the doorway; grit his teeth, staring at the glittering floor of the mezzanine outside, and the helices of the staircase up to the uni’s top. His eyeballs hurt with the sight of it all, its magnitudinal unfriendliness.

“For you, so many things are important. But for me...”

He caught sight of the screaming crowds hurrying about in the library, a few people ascending the stairs that he could not recognise. In the bedroom, Josef located a sound behind a door to the side of Qasim’s desk, a scratching, a whining.

“Are you going to let that dog out?”

“Yes – exactly. I have to take my dog for a walk, so I cannot go to the meeting.”

Josef stared. “You must come.”

“No. No is my answer,” he said.

“Please,” he begged, pressing his palm into the door frame. “I have not seen you in five years. We all want to speak to you again.”

“Josef – you have asked me a question. I give you my answer only. And I say No, no.”

“Tomorrow, at 11:15.”

“No ... Wa `Alaykum As-Salaam. Bye.”

The black door slowly closed and met Josef’s eyes.

~

When dawn arrived Edward finally had clumsily achieved the power of confidence and paced the night stairs, shifty, from the clattering atrium, meeting students on the steps with folders to their breast and strained face, abrupt little glances up from interrupted people navigating weeks of stolen and borrowed papers built up on the desks in the cult of trading, and low-eyed lecturers with epic, stern books. None could distract his resolve, already verified and settled, to brazen out his colleague Mr. Qasim; and thus, he loomed towards the murky hollow, weaving his words.

He knocked with uneven hand the entry.

“Hi,” Mohammed said, rising behind the door. “Hullo?”

“Good-Day,” Garnet said, shocked by the directness of Mohammed’s eyes. “I’d like to talk about your absence from the meeting this week. Can I come in?”

Qasim awkwardly pulled the door back, knocking his feet with it, and tip-toeing away. “Oh I’m sorry. I think I forgot.”

“You ... think ... you forgot?” Edward said, loading his cannons.

“No, I’m – alright, I’m miserable. I’m in a bad place, you know that.”

“Well,” he said with cheery cynicism, “that is an awful shame – this place is so very uplifting!”

“I just couldn’t face the other people I’m sorry I’m sorry...”

“Well you have to face the other people. Your job and life is here, with the other people. If you need to get out, you can get out- we will order a truck for you.”

“I l-like people here. The students know me, they … like me. I just need my own time, I can get better. I’m sorry.”

“I forgive you. But you can’t go on like this, leech-sucking off their pubescent holy adulation, the capricious romance of children. You’re on leave for this – this depression or something – but you seek no help. Listen to me. You must either stay or go. Come on. Get your damn act together,” he demanded.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean...”

Professor Garnet’s teeth quaked and he adjusted his glasses, frustratedly blinking. For the next few moments, Mohammed gave him nothing and stood silent through the thunder of the tirade.

“I mean that people love you because you’re a bloody cryptic bastard and you think you’re a genius! You have no genius, you have no sense; you have your cretinous style, your disgusting self-serving, vapid, damn ... incompetent ... you’re pathetic, you’re a stupid waste, and they want to throw me out of this fucking place! The absolute indignity! Can you believe it? Can you believe that?! Well good riddance to you if you’ll say nothing. Bugger you. Bugger you!”

Edward lifted the chair he was leaning on and charged it into the ground like a bull with his hooves.

“Go on living with no concern for your fellow man! Continue to wave your brooding bohemian dick around the place, you suave, stupid twat. You stupid, useless shit!”

As a means of conclusion, Garnet cried, “And by the way; absence of evidence IS evidence of absence, you fuck!” and bitterly slammed the black door behind him. Mohammed shuddered and stood alone again, immersed in a crawling sludge-aether that seemed to want to smother and eat him.

Hearing the Professor march along the balcony, his military footsteps trickling away along the swirling marble floor, Mohammad soundlessly through the blankness turned toward the only source of light and freed it.

Through the window there was bright azure; such beauty – It was clear morning, and he had not slept.

Mother, may I have your ears in this hour? I need to – I need you to – adjust, make ... sometimes I need some ... some – adjustment, some clarification, of everything. I’m lost. Can you hear me?

Sometimes I feel like all the sensitivity has been drained out of the world since I was eight years old.

Maria, I wished to become a prouder being. But I confess to you, I have felt no different since my eighteenth year and I worry that I will never feel different. Small shifts come to affect the scenery of living, but when I sit alone or wake from sleep, I am the same man, I am the same boy.

I wonder if education and study amounts to anything at all. It seems to me our academia is about the improvement and growth of minds, but I am wondering whether anyone finds themselves improving and growing here.

When I was a child, learning was powerful. Now lectures are all a kind of ghastly training exercise without passion or meaning. I know I complain. I’d like to be a progressive force – but I’ve got no will and no strength. As you will have seen, my addiction is ruining me. The depraved visions and torments I have – there are some things there I think even you might not understand.

Is my suggestion heresy ... or adoration?

Gradually came the sound of a deep grumbling, far in the distance.

No – I don’t suspect you, Madonna, have tried opium or hallucinogens. They sort of set each other off, in a funny way, you know – but both of them are going to kill me.

They can give you all sorts of presentiments, too.

CHROOOOOOOOM!

And oddly, I knew this was going to happen.

Professor Qasim turned from the light, and skidding, burst out of his bedroom door for the first time in days.

“Look outside – the abomination is become! The abomination is you! You will see only yourself in its confused eyes! You made it with your pomposity and gallivanting cynicism! You did this! You did this to us!”

Mohammed spilled over the balcony, tears welling, his desperate voice slowly dying with the growing roar of the hellion mortal. A black foot crashed through the rooftop. Its great dark mass swallowed and churned up everything; a million books tore into their trillion pages and swarmed like locusts.

Davy! Davy!

“Oh. Fucking Christ Jesus. Oh fucking Christ.”

And at the apex of the three towers, amber explosions rippled downward and the building followed in inflating clouds of dust. In the library, the fierce wind threw bookcases and tables at the walls and the monster’s fist crumbled the marble balconies like sugar cubes. The destroyer stood astride the university and laughed a manic ecstasy; commanding the wind and water. He wailed into the sky, white eyes bulging, staring upwards to a far-off place he may never find again.

“Shit. Oh, Jesus fucking Christ. Oh God.”

The windows at the front of the mezzanine shattered like broken raindrops. Black figures popped out of the metal shell.

“Oh God! God!”

The flooring in the courtyard rumbled and swayed; many of those running fell to their feet and the ashes devoured them.

“Fu-Fuc— Jesus, Oh God help me,”

“Father; fa-father please, please lord...”

“Our fath— echgh – father who art in heav— aech – heaven...”

“S-save me, O lord my god, s-s-ave me l-love I love you, I l-lov— I l— I love you—”

Outside in the playground there were twelve now, thirteen, fourteen, dropped down and kneeling, coughing into the dust and heat, spewing. The tones of their voices became wispier as their legs finally buckled under softly with the intoxicating fog.

“Fooh ... clguoo ... schl ... lo ... ksch...”

And Saty and Davy went running, running, running, far, far, far from the screams and explosions.

“FKml....,fls....c.”

“ff.....f......”

Into the desert, with the unfettered sun.

Fffffffffffff

Fhr0-7d;k6

For ever anddd

evv

er

~

Miles beyond the slump and mound of bleak junk in the Forgotten Blast Land, their feet scuffed and tore up the endless gravel. It was drab out, the sky austere, damp and warm grey. Rain had stopped and hung carefully in the distance without a flicker, stoic against the alien winds that came from all directions.

“Davy...”

He stared into the mist, carrying his limbs along like lumps of nothing, with doomed, sinking eyes.

“Davy, talk...”

He blinked in response, crumpled his lips. Words would not form. Not with the memory that still lingers, of the extinguished coaly bodies, vomiting, eaten by fire and dust, and the great marauder; the destroying thing.

Saty heard a little trickling come out of the whoosh of the breeze, and tipped her head forward over a trough in the rubble. Slowly, it seemed, they had come to a stream populated by strange water dragonflies, terrible diving beetle larva and swift shining danionins with a thousand eggs. It would be easy to cross, but beyond that, the flatness and expanse of thick stony terrain seemed to go far beyond the horizon.

“Why won’t you talk?”

Davy decelerated for a minute until he was standing still. Gradually he turned to her, and opened his mouth.

“I’m just not feeling anymore. I can’t get out of my head. I can’t get out.”

She looked deeply into his troubled face, his cheeks damp and his eyelids slowly drooping, falling down. He felt the binary in him churning, whirring.

“Please get me out please. I’m all stuck.”

She moved, a few small steps, and took his cold hand into hers.

“Don’t worry, worrykins.”

He gripped her.

“Hop to,” she cried, and carried him across the water.