Memories of a small child.

The creaking of the cart as the smoke machines fill the room with their illusions. The captains of American industry gathered in Toronto to observe their final rites. I cling to the hand of an aging potato chip heiress as she introduces me to the spells that would transfix my soul for the next three decades of my life.

"Lot 666 then, a chandelier in pieces. Some of you may recall..." I used to know this play by word I was exposed to it so often. Good thing for fundamentalist Christians to expose their children to. What color is this? What color is that? Such an innocent and intoxicating question. It's been all downhill from there.

I feel the need to press my fingernails, reassuring me that they are still intact. My body fluxes in a transitional state between the worlds as electric shock dances from my skullcap down to the root of my being, exploding in a symphony of sweet agony, the likes of which I've never known before. The phantom in his mask aches to be loved, calling us to ignore the hideousness he hides while he seduces us with his unfathomable isolation.

A mirror is drawn up and I see myself in him and he in me. I become him and the world becomes my stage. Half formed and hideous I cling to polite life hoping that the sophisticated ones will be gracious enough not to notice my disfigurements. I do everything in my power to hide them, masking myself from everyone, myself included. Looking at my parents will one eye bubbling out of my being, I ask them if they love me and they barely grunt their approval, leaving me to bask in atomistic isolation and spiritual destitution. Showing me that the only way I can enjoy this world is to unfold my fantasies about what it might become.

I run away to the monuments of our past, surrounded by distant cousins in a city of marble where the elegant statues of matriarchs pour forth their comforting bowls of water for us to bask and heal ourselves within. Off in the corner somewhere are the shaded ones, the dragon hunters of old and I catch them looking at me every once in awhile, and I tremble in the fear that they'll never come knocking at my door.

I am seduced and I become seducer and I am swept away and consumed by a fantasy of self so outrageous that only pervasive insanity and self-denial could maintain it. The illusion is dispelled and yet here I remain. Where to go from here?

Never mind. Not a conversation I'm interested in participating in.

a reply to: Nechash

The link to the video is not working. Somehow the words have become really vivid to me. The innocence stepping into a world controlled by big corp. But being led by someone she trusts not even knowing at the time what this "heiress" thing would even mean. I may be stepping too far but that's how the words spoke to me and I thank you for posting it.

a reply to: AutumnWitch657

Always leave them wanting more. My eldest sister called me this morning. That was an interesting conversation. I miss who I used to think she was. She was already a teenager by the time I was born, so she was more like a second mother to me than a proper sister.

Hmm. Link clicking. Is that a euphamism?

a reply to: IBossJekler

It is working for me. It is the Music of the Night from the Phantom of the Opera. I guess that play was deep programming for me when I was a child. Sadly, I still remember it fondly.