Swan shaped decorations, amid puddles of rain, sat in vigil of a white cake that was ready to topple into the mud. There were only footprints in the grass, soaked tablecloths and flower petals scattered in testimony of a brighter story. Only the darker story was the truth and only truth could illuminate the shadow that had fallen.
"God is fairness and reason, goodwill and love. God exists as a spark of this in the hearts of all people." The words of the sermon still echoed strangely, preaching to the rumbling of the storm. The choir of raindrops whispered back:
"Destroyer, why do you stand crying in the rain? Why have you dropped your weapon and begun to weep?" Said the voices of the water. The dripping caress of the cold droplets were teardrops from the skies.
For a moment I questioned my sanity. I asked myself if I had gone mad, hearing the sound of ancestral humors, assuring me that I was indeed lost. The laughter continued until I fell to my knees, the white dress greedily absorbing the stains of the earth. I could hear it until I clasped my hand over my mouth, then it would stop. I released myself and the maniac continued the chortle from within me.
Terror gripped me as I recognized my own voice. My gleeful laughter became as a sobbing gasping moan. Then I was just wailing, my tiny trembling fists shaking in defiance. I knelt there and my mind poured from my lips as a desperate scream. As the fear of losing my mind subsided, gradually, I sank into the mud.
What was left of me was salvaged. They took the body away, wrapped in a cocoon of blankets. I watched her suffer for me, watched them crucify her with their eyes. Listened as they flayed her with their words. They had no faces and their voices were all a part of the sound.
As I sat alone in my alabaster light I reconciled the softness of the walls. Hard stone would be kinder, its grayness a gentler color. None of their drugs could sedate the woman in my bleached skull who screamed day and night, trapped inside of my body, my body imprisoned by the memory. The memory of forgetting who I was.
"I'm a unicorn." I told Doctor Welsh.
"You are Serene Sinclair." Doctor Welsh told me at the end of an otherwise silent review.
They wanted to make sure I was fit to stand trial. Apparently I was not. I was not even sure what I was meant to stand trial for. I could not remember.
"Do you understand what I am telling you, Serene? We found him. He is still alive. You don't have to stay here. We can move you to Dellfriar, get you better treatment." My own mother was saying to me.
"Where am I?" I asked her. "I want to come home."
Then I enjoyed a brief moment of clarity. I recalled all that I have shared, learned as much as I can say now. I recognized my mother and Doctor Welsh. They, in turn, knew who I was. It was all I had until I got to Dellfriar.
There the castle loomed, old and fantastic. My room in Dellfriar was hard gray stone, covered in plaster that was painted a light yellow color. I began to heal as I looked out upon the forests and the waters and the skies. I could not stay for long, I needed to heal quickly.
There was so little time, it seemed. I did not know how long the journey would be, nor could I anticipate the challenges I would face when I tried to tell my story. I know it is important, for others to know what I have found. The story of how I discovered the Great Symbol. Perhaps this tale will doom the whole world, when the truth is known. Perhaps it will set us all free. Maybe both will happen.
What I have learned is that one thing that happens does not mean that something, the complete opposite, does not also happen. What I have learned, is that when something happens, it is more of a guarantee that such a thing will be. To a rational person I would say: "To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." and they would agree with me when I make it sound neat and clear. I am not very good at sounding neat and clear; I can only say the words that my mind thinks, and those words are my words. That is the best I can do.
The Great Symbol is easy to describe. It is that first image that everyone sees when they have stopped dreaming and opened their eyes to the new day. The Great Symbol feels like the smile and laughter of a newborn baby. It heals and it unites us, it is the same for every person. It dwells deep inside of each of us and it makes us altruistic and concerned for others. Some people obey the Great Symbol, tracing the lines and curves of it with each step they take. Others stumble over it and notice it and are content to live because they can feel its light. Few rebel against it, but secretly wish to possess it and to become one with the Great Symbol.
It inspires our myths and it raises our heroes. We pray to it as though it were a god and we reconcile with it when we are ashamed. All of us can feel it when we listen for its quiet music and anyone can come to serve it and to teach its existence to others. When it is forgotten it is remembered again in another form. It is woven into our blood, twisting and braided and coiled so that if it were unraveled, so too would we be. It is the human and all the cousins of the human. It is the animals and all of the grass and insects. It is in the skies, the grinding of the mountains and the vastness of the ages and the whole universe. It is in me and it is in you. It cannot be changed from its true form, only mistaken for another, and yet it is in all forms, formless and voiceless.
The Great Symbol is impossible to describe. It is the last wonder that the wisest and final person shall witness. They shall be told to look to it by the one before, a witness to a witness. In its greatness it shall continue, but not for the human. We shall all perish, as every living thing dies, so too does the species die, once its purpose is complete.
"Masters of the spark of destruction, worship now your doom. Make peace with war, for it is war that made you civilized and it is civilization that built its own device of execution." I heard the flames speaking. They spoke of fire that would consume the world and give it back to the most ancient ones, the true landlords of the planet.
In terror I trembled in the darkness, looking away as the flames before me died away. The dead body of the man I would have married sat there, or perhaps it was my own mother. Thousands of cockroaches were crawling all over it and feeding upon it. I choked on the stench and listened and the horror slowly grew dull:
"Three hundred and fifty million years ago, and also sixteen million years, we were promised this world. You humans have only existed for a mere ten thousand years and another twenty thousand years came before. Nothing is promised to you and you are merely tenants, slaves to our needs, erecting surface space and removing the possibility of usurpers, rendering them extinct. You will be done soon and we will remain." The cockroaches said to me.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
I trembled in awful fear. I tried to scream, but in the darkness I was suffocating. The insects were eating a person as I watched. Then the body bulged and burst, the spill of grue burst and trickled as its many legs stretched with the sticky redness festooned as they unfolded. It slowly crawled out, the thing that was too massive to be a cockroach, but looking exactly like one. I realized that the person was already dead, long before this creature was born.
"Why do you stay here? Are you not tasked with finding the Great Symbol?" The cockroach asked me with the voice I had heard before. Then there came the sound, almost like an applause. I had heard the sound before too. "Go now and find the Great Symbol. Tell all the world what you learn. You have no choice."
"I am a prisoner." I objected.
"Nobody that seeks the Great Symbol can be held prisoner. It is not possible to impeded the progress of the Great Symbol. Only a human could forget such truth." The cockroach spoke. Its voice had a strange quality to it, as though it had rehearsed this moment for all time and waited just to say it to me one time. Something not unlike perfection.
"I go now." I said shakily. I stood up and the door to my room opened before me. I walked down the hallway and reached the gate for the guard.
"Going somewhere, Serene?" He asked.
"I am leaving." I told him. I looked at his identification badge and added his name: "Charles."
"Gonna go and seek the Great Symbol, huh?" He asked me.
"I must." I told him.
"Come on through, babe." Charles had the surveillance cameras turned off in preparation for my egress. Then he opened the gate. Several of his friends were waiting for me.
"Have her back before midnight, boys. If you don't then she will turn into a pumpkin." Charles told them.
I went with them to their van and climbed in the back and sat on the old mattress. They closed the back doors and drove us to a nearby quarry where they parked. They had all gotten out and were drinking and discussing which one would get a date with me first. There was no hurry, they assured each other. They would all get a turn.
They began screaming in sudden terror and panic. I heard their bottles clink on the gravel and the thump and scratches of their bodies being flung down and dragged around on the ground. The ferocious growls of the denizen of the pit subsided as it chose the cleanest of them to drink from. When it was done sucking the husk dry it was satisfied and gave the van a relatively gentle thump that caused the back doors to pop open. Then it galloped back into the darkness below, ashamed that a seeker of the Great Symbol might see its hideous visage.
I looked at the huge claw marks on my dead suitors and glanced at the finger paint their killer had left imprinted on the side of the van. I knew of no such animal that could do what it had done or leave such a track. I left them where they had fallen, walking like a black specter from the headlights back towards the road.
I held out my thumb, standing in front of a sign that prohibited picking up hitchhikers because of the nearby Dellfriar. Many hours of shivering darkness were mine to enjoy alone. Crickets and stars kept me company until at last a car came. It was an older couple and for some reason they ignored my uniform and picked me up.
"Sweetie you don't have to go back to that awful place. You can come and stay with us. You look just like our daughter did. She died not far from here. But now you have come back to us. You are home." The old woman said. The old man said it too, with his eyes. I was welcome to live with them and impersonate their daughter in spirit.
I stayed with them and they called me Rose and they fed me until I had gained a little weight and had learned how to write in a journal. They told me I could keep what I wrote, that I was free to come and go.
"I must leave and find the Great Symbol, but I will recall your kindness. I will know you wherever I find you." I told them.
Those words made my new mother cry. She had begun to heal while I was there, and she was afraid the healing would be forgotten. My new father warned me:
"Not everyone is kind. You might need to protect yourself. Take this." He gave me a whistle made of bone. "Blow this whistle and help shall come. Look away when it does."
"Yes, Father." I promised. I kissed them both goodbye and set forth from home.
I walked with a backpack on with all of my things. My journey was to be on foot, eating from trash, roadkill or people's gardens. I survived, shamelessly, bathed by the rain, warmed by the sunlight and gathering the miles towards the moment I would find the Great Symbol.
The next time I reached a milestone was at a bar. The midnight lights welcomed me, suggesting that at least a clue resided within. I got twice that many before I left.
Outside I saw two men quarreling. They began to strike each other, unobserved by anyone except me. One of the men fell down and the other fell upon him and lifted a brick from the primitive parking lot. When he had finished smashing the other man's head he stood up, looked around and then dragged the body into a nearby ditch. I left him to bury his brother under trash and rotting leaves and went inside.
I was invited to play a game of cards and so I sat and played. I did not understand the rules but I could not stop winning. When I had claimed all of the money I quit and walked away, leaving it on the table. The other players were frustrated at my gesture and began to follow me, cursing until they ran out of breath.
At the end of the drive, half of them had turned back, deciding to divide the spoils among themselves. The rest continued to follow me, from then on. I told them of the Great Symbol and they abandoned their lives of gambling and alcohol and became my followers.
We arrived at the Stream Of Life where a young musician was articulating the Great Symbol into music. The tone was incorrect and the musician was frustrated, unable to find the exact key. I knew it was time to sacrifice the sound. I gave to the young musician the whistle of bone that my Father had given to me.
When we found the ruins it became our church. The chapel hummed and buzzed as the insects arrived by the millions, covering all but the steps we took and our own bodies. The structure shimmered and moved as they switched positions, but the pillars never ceased in shape. As one beetle left another took its place. And so we had our home. There I left my followers, to continue in fellowship what I had begun alone.
There was much to do at our church of the Great Symbol. We ate a eucharist of larvae and received a baptism of crawling things. We lost all of our fear, realizing that the moment when the Great Symbol would be revealed was very close.
The farmer whose land we were on came to us, outraged by our presence. This lasted until the sight of our holy house startled him. Terror filled his eyes and he screamed in loathing and defiance of the unseen wonder. He ran out into his field and fell.
"Blasphemy!" Unclean hordes!" He screamed as he rolled and crushed the fruit of his land.
I pointed to the cross upon which he was to be displayed. My followers took him and nailed him to it. He became as a living scarecrow, moaning and crying day and night until he finally died.
My journey from my congregation was to follow a butterfly to the entrance of the womb of the ground. The black cave bore my words down into the darkness. There I read out loud all of the words I had written in my journal. Having thus prayed, I returned to my church.
"The world, the world is forgetting the Great Symbol." One of my acolytes informed me.
"No. The world will always remember what final things I have said. I have spoken of my journey and told the world what I have found. I have described the Great Symbol using the language of humans. We have completed our purpose." I preached.
And so we waited for the sunrise, expecting a cloud of fire and destruction. We celebrated all night and into the sunset and past midnight and then, when it was dark, we sang with the crawling things of the earth. I knew then, as I shall say, that we have only one fate left, the one we have prepared for.
And the cockroaches wait too, very patiently.