Macfearson shrugged. "There is still a possibility that we did not do it the right way." He flicked the cigarette butt to the floor and stepped on it.
“Don’t you get it?” I said. “We can’t kill any more people! This killing is the problem, we can’t risk that shit anymore.”
“No, we just have to do it right.” Macfearson shook his head, shifting to a more upright posture. “Are you a little rattled after fleeting a few lifelings?” He scowled.
“I’m not guilty over killing them. I’m not guilty at all. I’m saying you can’t dig a hole deep enough to cover all this mess for long enough!” I said.
“That may be the case,” Macxermillio said. “As far as I am concerned there is no reason we should be edgy about that right now. We should worry about the fact that these voices from the calling are there to jeopardize us and stir us away from our goal.”
“We are not sure about that just yet,” said Macfearson. He lit another cigarette. “Maybe we picked the wrong samples. I have been thinking about this all night, tossing it in my head and I think we need to sample a deathling.”
“Oh my fuck!” I shouted.
“What?”
“You’re bloodthirsty that is what you are. You are addicted to it as much as you are to the self-harm. You can’t stand the possibility of going on without hackin’ someone’s head off,” I said.
He flinched in his chair. “Fuck off, you miserable dead freak! You have no idea what this is about. These voices in our heads appeal to our brute instinct as deathlings, if there is a way to uncover ourselves is through them. Maybe with a bit more self-knowledge we might do something right and head off to the fuckin’ crop.”
"Well, I think we have listened too much to our instincts. Don't think it is getting us anywhere quite frankly. We are still here, maybe even right back where we started. The calling is just another system of rejection like the atmosphere of this world that we are forcing down our lungs. It is poison."
“Mac, maybe we should use this prick as a sample next,” he grunted. “You fuck.”
“Calm down,” Said Macxermillio. “The sampling was just one way of testing for credibility. What we need to figure out is the alternative to sampling.” He cleared his throat and slowly rubbed his hands together, “There must be something.”
“Does it have to be killing people?” I asked.
Macfearson glared at me.
“No,” Macxermillio answered.
I leered at Macfearson, watching him for a reaction. “I think we should see someone,” I said.
Macfearson darkly grinned. “What?”
“I think one of the ways to start fixing this is by getting an alternative viewpoint. We are too close to this to see clearly. I think a therapist would help weed out some garbage.” I offered.
Macfearson jumped up and kicked his chair to the wall almost breaking it. “No way!”
Macxermillio watched as Macfearson ruffled his hair in frustration and punched the closet multiple times. I cowered in my seat, cringing at the thought of being battered by his fists.
“Pipe the fuck down!” Maxcermillio bellowed. A tone and a choice of words foreign to his repertoire, because of that it chugged Macfearson to a halt. Macfearson got on his feet and authoritatively gestured for Macfearson to sit down. “Sit the fuck down.”
Hesitantly, Macfearson picked up the chair and set it. He glared at Macxermillio, this time with less intensity and contempt. “He --”
“It sounds like a fuckin’ good idea, alright?” Macxermillio said. He turned to me. “Obviously we can’t tell anyone about the sampling we have to think of an allegory of a sort. Great idea.” He shifted his attention to Macfearson. "I know it may feel like we falling back, that we are starting over, but this is not the case .Believe me. You know, it is just part of the process, burning old bridges to build new ones. At least now we know a dozen things that don’t work and that is progress. We are narrowing down and closing in. I think you are so desperate for this to be right because you can’t handle putting your faith in something else and have it belied again. I understand that pain, we all feel it. But now, by doing this we are taking another step, exposing ourselves to a different doctrine that may very well dispel all this pain and suffering. I know, you wanna leave this place as soon as possible, you can’t stand not doing something pragmatic.” Then to us all, “I know we are hooked on blood. This can help us with that urge and maybe distil a bit of focus and clarity. Buy us some time before we fuck things up.”
Macfearson spoke through his hardened mouth, “Where are these therapists?”
I leaned forward. “The university provides free counselling for students. Obviously you can’t use that service so I will go on our behalf and share whatever knowledge I can get.”
His nose flaring, Macfearson grimaced. “You will?”
“I will.”
“I don’t need to tell you what I’m capable of.” Macfearson rose and marched out of the room banging the door behind him.
Macxermillio turned my way. “He has a hard time letting go and moving on. It’s one of the reasons I took him with me. Keeps us from wandering.”
Chapter 4
1
We had to learn about the crop, our home. Although we got the sense the place was forbidden and we, although we hadn’t learnt our nature, would not succeed in unravelling the mystery. Something was growing on those fields and it was a call of destiny to uncover what it was. It felt as if the whole meaning of our existence, if not existence itself depended on it. There was completeness there. It has been a year since we began taking on this ordeal as a trio. Before then things were murky and bleak. We coming together was also in the foggiest and hopeless of circumstances. I should make it clear that they found me, on the mystical day amongst the woods of an unknown land. Mystical because it is hard to pinpoint where and when in my memory, nonetheless the detail is fair, even to one with a blurry mind-eye it is simple to see.
I heard hoofs at a gallop approaching. Apprehensive, I turned my head to its direction. There was shouting and a faint cry of a man. Through the fog, further amongst the trees and in sight, something silver shone from the distance. Then the faint cry swayed back and forth from panting to crying. A wretched man in muddy jeans and a white jersey bolted into view. As he passed a trail of fear hung behind. He was a man pushed to his limits, running from immediate peril. He was clumsy, the mud slowed his heels and strained the bit of strength that was left within him.
Then emerged a black horse and the rider. His velvet cloak, red in the inside and black on the outside, fluttering behind him. Its collar spiked to his ears, mingling with his long white hair. There was dirt and stains on it like he had been fighting in a medieval battle. Focus distorting his face like anguish, his eyes determined and sharp. His right leather gloved hand at the reins as the left grasped a long sword. As he manoeuvred his way amongst the trees and branches the sword moved effortlessly and expertly like a part of his hand.
At the verge of my sight the man tripped. Slammed to the ground head first. His face submerged in mud and grass. He turned to his side and then to his back, spitting, wheezing and coughing. In a few seconds, the rider had caught on. With a tug, he reeled his black monster to a halt. Climbed off the saddle and strolled towards the man in his heavy black boots. He hovered over him for a few moments disgust, wrinkling his face with each second.
As the cold tip lightly pressed against the man’s throat he whimpered. “Take a dope it’s just a dip,” the rider said, clearly exasperated. His was voice guttural.
The man continued wheezing, his chest convulsing. “Please…please,” he implored. Affright, he tried to speak but he was tongue-tied.
“Why was your name on the inscription?” the rider demanded.
“I don’t know what-“
“One more of those and I will slit your throat!” He paused giving the man a chance to think it through. “What is the crop? What grows there?”
The man
began sobbing.
He poked the man again and he flinched. His sob stifled. “You are a priest, right?”
“Yes.”
“So you know the truth.”
“Not that kind of truth.”
“What other kind of truth could there be?” the rider interposed sarcastically. “You work for the man farming it? This God of yours?”
“I know nothing of a crop or a farm for that matter!” he cried.
“How do you explain the painting?”
He did not answer.
“Tell me!” the rider snapped.
“You are a mad man,” the man moaned. “I don’t know what you –“
There was stillness then his voice broke it again. “I just wanna see my family again, Lord.”
The rider sighed, slumped his shoulders and then suddenly hacked the man like he was chopping wood with an axe. He was ferocious and cannibalistic in his execution. The sounds were eerily similar to the one shovelling mud with a spade makes. There was a spray of red haze spewing into the fog. Blood spurting into the riders face and attire. He hacked the throat and the head multiple times. It was silent. No screaming, no laborious grunts. Just the sound of that merciless act, the man’s body shuddering as life jostled out of him, the gurgling and the shovelling. Then the wretched man widened his eyes, there was a stare he gave…like he was looking at something of amazing awe. An enchanted stare, then I knew it was over.
The rider turned towards me and sized me up with a couple glances. “I’m Evlin Macfearson. What is it that you seek?” He grunted.
Surprised he had even noticed I was there, I blurted. “The crop.”
And that was my first encounter with Macfearson.
2
We walked in the woods, to a destination he only knew. I felt kidnapped by, caught and trapped by tendrils of his presence, and robbed out of thoughts of escape. At first it felt awkward but as we progressed it felt instinctively right, like a decision I had made. One that really mattered this time, one that would give the meaninglessness of my existence significance. There was no mention of what I had seen and he did not bother to explain anything. There was an assumed understanding it appeared. There was not much talk than "watch that puddle" or "let's go this way" or "don't try pushing through the branches ". I watched curiously and studied him as we went along. He was surprisingly observant for his contemplative state. He was fully engaged in two worlds, the mental and the real with sharp efficacy. All I became aware of, the further we walked, was how my calves ached and how increasingly lost I started to feel. My thoughts began to shift from the abstract to the more pragmatic, like the need for water and rest and how amazing it would be. As time went by thoughts got darker and morbid, of how maybe I would be impaled at midnight by this stranger I just met in some cult ritual.
Why can’t he just have me dig a grave and rest, I thought.
Quenching my thirst ceased to matter at that point. Not even rest in the comfiest of beds. I desired a deeper release… the kind death can only offer.
Oh, Death, you conjuring seductress.
Every entity … everything …
We got deeper and deeper, in the uncharted corners of the cosmos. The paradoxically inaccessible and accessible, the remote and abundant, the foreign and very familiar, the certain and uncertain, the real and unreal. A thin cord between the horizon of the existing and purely imaginative. Whether this is an explanation of my experience or a statement about the nature of things I am yet to discover for myself. However, that was the point I lost and discovered myself, and so I believe.
We reached a clearing. And as I walked into it, exhausted, a thought fleeted in my head.
The truth is in the irony.
The kind of thought that reaches and calls from the intuitive well within.
“You know how it starts,” Macfearson explained, the campfire illuminating his pale face. The truth is there was no way of knowing how or when it starts, it is something that you notice. It is there but cannot be put to a timeline, neither beginning nor end. I knew what he meant. He was speaking of the moment you start noticing it, not necessarily when it starts because no one can know for certain if it really did start, no one could remember. “You grow up in a house where you are always an absent member of the family. They forget you, at birthdays, the store or even when you at home. The only time they give you attention is when you have done something really bad. ‘Silly boy!’ they call you. Your father gives you a beating and sometimes you don’t know why. Sometimes you can’t remember why. You do stupid things like drowning puppies and dissecting your pets so you can better understand what makes them tick. You don't understand why but you are driven by energy, a certain curiosity that always lands you in trouble. Your mind is on a different lane than your peers and so are your senses. You feel so confused and out of place. By this point, you cannot tell if you are the mistake or you make mistakes. You are just a dumb child, a dumb burden of a nuisance," he paused, his face contemplative. Somewhere between trying to figure out the best way to articulate what he had forming in his mind and deciding to continue, not out of lack of words but a state of being overwhelmed by a whirlwind of surging emotions. Memories as nostalgic as a black and white portrait of a childhood never lived. The mind buries such things (sometimes in a form of delusions and illusions) making it hard for one to recall because it knows their danger and pain. Perhaps that was the reason of his pause, discerning and delving for the bitter truth. He gazed at me for the first time since, forwarding his intense aura. Tragically vulnerable and battered he was, exhausted on site by the weight of his demons. “Then the neighbour’s kids won’t come play with you. When they about to play a game of soccer or cricket you never get picked for the team. If they do you don’t stay long in the field, they kick you out. Then they start teasing you, calling you names. You are always a subject of ridicule and annihilation. Annihilation because they make you disappear. Makes you feel invisible. Then you isolate yourself, you get used to loneliness not because you desire it but because it is all that makes sense. At least in that deep nothingness nothing can hurt you but the problem is that the emptiness craves to be filled, it eats at you. Of course, right now your parents are relieved of all the complaining parents because of the trouble you cause. From then on your life exists on the periphery.
“Then you start noticing the feelings. They have been always there but all this time you did not see it, you only needed time alone with yourself to notice them. You start seeing things, realizing things. You get it, right?”
I nodded. I was losing my composer, this was an uncanny experience. In my life, I had never met someone who understood. Someone who truly knew…
“It is like you are at a wrong place. A false realm of reality…like the angels had made a mistake when delivering your soul to a body. That your existence is a mistake. You feel like wrongly human. The wrongness consumes you…an emptiness that eats up any human emotion you have. A nothingness that shouldn’t have any effect at all, because by definition it is non-existent. A ghost that you can only see,” he stared at me gravely. I had an impression this was one of his pauses again that he needed to tell me his story without a reply of any sorts. His inner face had revealed itself, all the toiling, agony and loss. I became deeply sad just looking at it. Then his eyes became teary. “You begin to wonder what the point to all of this is. Who are you? What is the nature of your existence? Why existence at all? Why life?”
He paused, snorted and looked away. “Once you realize you are an eagle among penguins you can’t help but fly.”
I knew what he meant, only then we were penguins among eagles.
“The truth is…there is no life before the crop, now we are slaves to finding it…because there is nothing else that matters really. And that makes us deathlings. I have never lived until the day I set out for my quest. I am still dead now, but the only time we get to live is when we get there. Find what grows there!”
“Am I the only deathling you have
ever met since?”
“No, there is one more.”
Before I could ask he answered. "He will meet us here. This is where we sleeping tonight. He went collecting some wood. We had been hunting the priest for some time now. We thought in a few hours we would catch him and get the answers. We saw him at the town at first, but he was uncooperative, thought being here he would have no choice. We knew he comes here to pray every now and then." He paused. "But we have our ways.”
“Do have sleeping bags?” He knew what the sentence implied.
“Nah, we going to our house tomorrow. It is just this night.” He shrugged.
“What have you learned about the fields?”
He shook his head wearily. “Let’s just wait for Macxermillio, okay?”
3
I watched the flames as Macxermillio and Macfearson discussed something a few feet from the light. Macxermillio had not said much when he came. He added wood to the fire, offered me pie out of courtesy. He appeared very cautious and calculating. There was shrewd malice to him even though I had not witnessed it, a man like him carries his deeds with him like a smoker carries the smell of tobacco. Macfearson abided by him, following his orders without a sigh or question. Every now and then Macxermillio gave me a suspicious look, like he could see in my soul or I smelled like dog shit.
I could hear them talking in whispers but could not make out what they are saying at all, not much of it anyway. When that was the case I tried to use their tones to discern their attitude or conflict, if there was any.
“So what happened to him?” I heard Macxermillio ask, speaking a lot more loudly but still not easy to make out.
“He didn’t cooperate.”
“He saw you do it?”
“Yeah, the whole thing.”
“Are you sure that…” Then I couldn’t make out the rest.
“Not really.”
“What does he know?”
I saw Macfearson shake his head from the periphery. “Didn’t say. But he wants you to tell him.”