Onward and upward, the stairs twined inexorably upwards and she was compelled to climb them. For the most part all she had to look at where the stairs themselves.Their cold smooth service almost impervious to the passage of time. Little trace of what have gone before except the shallow indent, a record of how over the centuries people had hugged the wall as they made their way ever onwards and upwards.
She didn't recognise the stone that wall and stair appeared to be carved from. A cool grey stone which emitted an eerie glow such that in the long gaps between windows she could make her way forward without the need of light. The stone repelled her, to touch it sent convulsions of disgust through her body. It felt almost alive, as though it had absorbed all the fears of those who had walked the stairs before her.
She could not keep her mind from those who had gone before. Echoes of their presence rang discordant in her brain.
Time
Where were you the day the lights went out. Do you even remember. I always think of it as one of those questions that everybody remembers the answer too. Like where were you the day Kennedy was shot?, or where were you the day Elvis died?. Anyone who was alive at the time seemed to remember where they were and what they were doing.
Nobody expected the lights to go out,it was a total shock. For some reason the approaching disaster had been hidden and most people had no idea what was about to happen. We thought it was just a power cut and they'd come back soon, two days later we started to panic, as the streams of melt water leaked from defrosting freezers.
And still we thought the lights would go back on, and we waited, for relief that never came. Funny that with no electricity at all it was the lights we missed most. The few candles that existed soon dissappeared from the shelves of shops, and then the shops began to close as their shelves emptied, and lay their bare, forever waiting for deliveries from factories that had ground to a halt.
I guess we never really realised how much we relied upon fossil fuels until they ran out.
Time
They call me the spinner of dreams. Funny that when what I really spin are nightmares, or more accurately one nightmare my own.
I wonder if they realised what they were doing when they made me a controller of fate. How painful I would find it to take the destiny of others in my hand and twist them into complicated patterns.
Me the great believer in free will. Who always argued that nobody could truly understand anothers motivation and hence should not make decisions for anybody but themselves. To have to make so many decisions not knowing what the results would be or why I picked one pattern over another. Taking a strand and combining it with another, for no other reason other than blind chance.
Cruel fate, to use me so. But then I remember I am fate. Wouldn't those I left behind be surprised to see me now. How would they cope with the knowledge of the great universal plan being a child of caos, pure random patterns.
So often we sat at nights, debating the meaning of life. What we each theorised to be the purpose and how much or little we attributed to fate. In one way or another each of seemed convinced there was some purpose or pattern to our existence. How wrong we were. The only pattern being the motion of old fingers as they pluck a strand to add to the wheel.
Time
Trigger Warning, only because I know where this was going, but there might be others who would recognise that too
Tunnel vision. That's what you said I have. You claim I'm blinded to reality and can only see in the one direction. "Keep your eyes on the prize" you agrees "but make room in your life for other things too. Take off the blinkers, look around and get a full picture".
If only it was that easy to do. He doesn't understand I have to focus on vengeance, there is no room in my life for anything else. If I give up the quest then I'll have to stop and take stock. To do that I think would be fatal. I can only tolerate the pain by denying it.
Good old Freud. He tried so hard to stop his victims/patients to stop repressing, to face the things he thought they were denying. It was his belief that when they faced their demons they would defeat them and become whole. He never really got his head around the idea that sometimes when you fight demons, the demons win.
You weren't there during the time when I shut down totally, when I sat in a corner and refused to acknowledge the world. I have vague memories of the nurses tending my body. I almost returned for a while when they forced the tube down my throat so that they could pour enough sustenance into me to keep me alive. almost but not quite. I was safe, divorced from my body, floating in a sea of fantasy, quiet, and cool and comforting
Dissociation they called it. Apparently
Time
"Over here, over here" the voice echoed around the stone arches. We ran over trying to find the source of the sound.
Through eerie passages and large chambers connected by giant stone arches we sought our prey. Always he eluded us, as insubstantial as air, his shadowey presence did not seem out of place in this substantial building.
The echoes of history vibrated within the walls and we almost believed that we'd stepped back through the mists of time to a time when the building hummed with activity. Only the incongrous grafitti, gouged out by those with little respect for the old castle and it's place in local myth, kept us grounded in the present.
"Hurry, hurry" the voice called again, impelling us forward with a sense of urgency.
Time
The children gathered around the elder, and listened to his tales, time and time again he told the story that must never be forgotten in the hopes that by doing so he could imprint in these childrens mind, and they in turn in their childrens mind's the necessity of it never being allowed to happen again.
At 42 he was the oldest person they'd ever known, and most amazingly he was clean and whole. They rarely saw anybody who was clean and whole. He promised them that the day would come when their grandchildren or great grandchildren would be born clean and whole. The nuclear pollution would finally wash from their dna and children would be born with 4 whole limbs, with faces that that were full and round rather than maligned and twisted.
The children needed to believe this and when they listened to his voice for a short while they knew hope. To them he was like a god, the picture of perfection that they all strived to emulate.
"I used to think my mother was crazy" he said "spending so much time protesting about nuclear weapons. Being dragged through the courts and even once being sent to prison for three years.". I begged her to stop to spend more time with us, planning our futures. I didn't understand when she shook her head sadly and said "Unless people like me do this there are no futures for anybody"
Time
Today I sat in the branches of the swinging tree and wept. As my tears fell into the water below me they sent out small ripples that disturbed the surface for a short while then faded away.
That is what my memories had been like, small ripples that barely touched consciousness. I really thought it was all far enough behind me when I embarked on this pilgramage in the landscape of my childhood.
But today, today was different, today I had returned to the one place where I stole a few moments of childhood glee. Where I'd tasted fun and for a few brief hours occasionally experienced what it was like to be a child.
Somehow to return to this place is sorrow beyond bearing. The grief at the child I might have been pierced my outer casing and cascaded over in a torrent of tears, so many tears, walled up for so long.
Time
