My Name is Sheol by P. Julian
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Copyright © 2026 P. Julian
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ISBN: 9798268917185
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My Name is Sheol - Full Text Section 4
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Chapter 9 - MY NAME IS SHEOL
152. After my confrontation with Doctor Samuels I walk slowly back to my room. I sit on the bed and try to slow my thoughts down, my mind gradually settles in the silence and some realisations come. How long I have been suspicious of my dreamlike experience in this place, how long I have denied those suspicions and looked the other way. I have dealt with the doctor but I now understand that there is more serious work to do - and greater contact to be made - but I also see how much care I have to exercise as I go about that work.
153. One thing I know for certain is that I must take my time. I have to meet signal events at the precise instant they occur, and any rashness on my part could bring everything undone. I slow my thinking to the point where ordinary time begins to lose its meaning, the light in the room slowly sinks and rises a few times and I would guess that I sat on that bed for days. I build up a plan divided between things that seem permitted to me and other things that feel strictly proscribed. My mind starts to connect each node of the plan with every other, like those walls of pinned strings linking bits of evidence in films where the hero might be brilliant or crazy or some mixture of both. I sit there until I have connected every possible link between every possible node and when I open my eyes to find that it is twilight I know it is time for me to find Luc.
154. I walk back into the ward to find Luc sitting in one of the lounge chairs in the far corner of the TV room. He is sitting quietly as though he might be waiting for something, flanked by two of his nurse-helpers who have taken up protective positions around him. As I approach they look up at me and their wings flare suddenly in protection. I should be surprised at how angelic they seem but I just stop for a moment to await their decision. After a brief pause his helpers take a step back from him and look away from me in deference, folding their wings tightly around themselves to signal I am free to approach. I notice Ariel standing in the opposite corner of the room and although her head is bowed she gestures very slightly towards Luc with her hands.
155. With Ariel’s blessing I slowly approach Luc until I stand just a couple of feet away from him. He looks up at me in bewilderment and says don’t touch me and I just nod and begin to sink down on one knee in front of him. Speaking to him in a low voice, saying: Luc you can trust me. He replies in a constricted voice I haven’t heard from him before: why should I trust you? I don’t trust anyone. Without moving towards him or away from him I say again: Luc you are going to have to trust me. If you want to get yourself out of here. You know me, Luc, you know you can trust me. My repeated reassurance seems to reach into him a little, calming him and opening his heart just that tiny bit that I need.
156. Luc relaxes as he sees that I do not mean him any harm. His nurse-helpers have the strength to soothe him very slightly, supporting him to feel less stressed and more open to the process that is unfolding. I have been smiling at him and he eventually smiles back and in that moment a tremendous wave of recognition sweeps over me. I no longer have any doubt who Luc is and why his soul seems so familiar, and there are vast waves of sorrow as the bleakness of his story is revealed to me. The shape of his suffering and how he came to be here, the jagged edges of pain and self-loathing that this man is beset by. I understand that I was born to be witness to these things - along with the means of their alleviation - and as I faithfully bear that witness a set of words is revealed to me, words to be spoken in a register quite unlike my ordinary speech.
157. I have to get these words out of the way before we can continue and so I speak to Luc in the strange cadences that have come to me.
You know where you are Luc.
There is silence before he answers.
I do, he says.
With a slight tremor in his voice.
He says nothing else and I have to press him on it.
You need to say it, Luc.
Before we can move on.
You need to tell me where you are.
And what you have done, Luc.
What you have done to put yourself in this place.
158. For a moment I feel sure I am going to lose him. He moves to get up from where he is sitting and his nurse-helpers see him do it, he grips his chair to propel himself upwards as their wings flare protectively on either side. If he breaks from me now I will not find him again - no matter how many dream worlds I traverse - and my heart sinks to see him shimmer and begin to break contact with this world. But he does not break contact. He halts suddenly and lets out a cry of frustration and then all of his strength goes out of him and he slumps back into his chair. The tension within him breaks and with his head bowed he pushes his bandaged forearms towards me, turning them upwards as he says in a defeated tone: I know where I am. And so do you Che, you don’t need to taunt me with it.
159. I shift forwards towards Luc and he does not recoil. He merely bows his head further as I say: Luc I am not being cruel. This is not some kind of game. I just need to hear you say it before anything can be done. Do you hear me Luc? He nods his head in tiny motions as he stretches his hands out towards me as far as they will go, holding them wrist-upwards so that I can glimpse the wounds on his arms.
I am condemned, he says.
But where, Luc.
You have to tell me where.
The way he shakes his head shows me that he knows.
And in a quiet voice he confirms that it is so.
I am cast down, Che.
For what I have done.
I have been sent down.
Down into the pit.
Is that what you want to hear from me?
I have damned myself and there is nothing to be done.
160. When Luc says these words all the fight goes out of his soul. He sinks down in his chair and although I would like to soothe him I cannot reach out to him until he makes a proper account of what he has done. By some stern edict he must make a full confession before I can retrieve him, and if he refuses to confess then he must be left where he is. In that knowledge I speak to him again, words that feel justified even though I am not the source of their content. Saying: Luc you know me from those times I came into your dreams. But I do not lodge there in the same way you do. And you know my name is not Che, Luc. My name is Sheol and you understand what that means for your position. If you are obstinate you will be confined to this place - in the depths of your eternal soul - and before I can do anything you are required to tell me the reasons why you came here.
161. Luc listens to my words and he responds almost immediately, calling me by my full name as he sets down exactly what has happened. He says truthfully that he does not know exactly what kind of place this is, although he feels sure it only represents some kind of makeshift reality. He describes his violence against his own life and the despair which brought him to it, he confesses to the destruction which caused him to come here even though he knew it was proscribed. I listen carefully as he ploughs through his confession but I also notice faint interweaving lines starting to form around his body, growing into tow points or fixing points for me to drag his soul out of here. Luc continues to speak gravely and sincerely long after these contact points have solidified, building an after-death vehicle that he doesn’t yet have the vision to see. His sincere remorse shaping his uplift out of this realm, his way back into the land of the living although he has forgotten his way home.
162. When Luc’s confession ends I move towards him very gently, as close as I have ever come to him in this dream reality we share. I reach out and take his hands in my hands, he pulls back ever so slightly but he does not break contact with me. I draw his hands towards me until his forearms are facing upwards directly beneath my eyes. I see the horrible tatty dressings and beneath them I can sense the terrible wounds that he made. I glance up to see whether he is willing for me to continue, he nods his bent head and so I continue to focus my attention on his arms. Eventually I come to the point where I have seen enough and can gently close my eyes.
163. Against my closed eyelids I see a growing circle of light rotating counterclockwise against the darkness. It comes to undo the damage that has been done and I let it spin there while it brightens. When I open my eyes again I see his forearms being unwound of their bandages, the crepe fabric falling looser and looser as each turn of his wrapping is wound away. The gauze pulls and then falls away completely to reveal stained and half-adhered wound dressings peeling away from the lower part of his forearms. I have to look beneath these dressings and so I utter words to make it so and before my eyes each dressing flashes and curls in a cool fire before it is completely burned away. Luc sits there looking downwards and I must presume his eyes are closed. He does not cry out or protest as his bindings are burned away.
164. I expect to see dried or sutured cuts but Luc’s wounds appear livid and freshly made. This place was never a place of healing and his wounds are just as lethal as the night on which they were made. I am also given clear sight of how he inflicted these wounds - although I would prefer not to witness it - the rough shards tearing into his hands as he rips gullies out of his own flesh. Letting his blood to escape the demons that had harried him in the world. And I also see the most terrible part of his actions: the condemnation of any person close enough to love him, the people who still love him desperately and will never recover from his loss.
165. Before Luc’s redemption can proceed there are formal words which must be said to him, words of hope and validation that can surge between certain realms, like deep calling to another deep. These words come through me in my ordinary voice, saying softly to Luc that his transgression is forgiven, that his sin is remitted, that his iniquity is pardoned, that She has uplifted all burdens from his soul. I see his body quake as I tell him these things, as I continue to inform him that his prayers have been heard, that his petition has been answered, that simply to call on Her in his extremity was to have his petition upheld. I see tears begin to fall from his eyes as these words continue to stream out of me, and as I witness his relief I am moved towards tears as well.
She is your hiding place, Luc.
She will preserve you from trouble.
She will encompass you about with songs of deliverance.
She will strengthen you under the shadow of Her wings.
She will instruct you from a high place.
She will teach you in the ways in which you shall go.
166. These words flow out of me for a long time as Luc weeps softly and bows his head. They speak of many things both just and merciful and every word that falls from me falls to retrieve his soul. Because upon every word is stamped the truth: you are Hers now, Luc. She has carved you on the palm of Her hand and in the shape of your heart is Her heart. She will never forget you, She will not leave you orphaned, She will guide you and protect you and in places beyond hope you will make your stand for Her. You will fight for Her, Luc, you will repay Her faith in you. You are entered into covenant with Her everlasting if you will only take your stand for the covenant. If you will glorify Her name and the marvellous things that She has done: so that whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose upon the earth shall be considered loosed in heaven.
167. My words fade out as Luc’s sin becomes history and I see how he will not suffer for it again. I also see growing ruptures and fissures in the dream space around us as I fill up with the love I feel for this man. His nurse-helpers step back a couple of paces and I grab on tight to his hands as the space of the ward perforates and becomes hazy and incomplete. That process reaches a critical point and we start to fall down, and despite his fear he doesn’t pull away from me. We descend through layers and layers of provisional worlds and although it feels like we are going in the wrong direction I keep saying softly: stay with me Luc. You need to stay with me. He places his forehead against mine to show his assent, and with that contact made we punch down rapidly through these strata of liminal space. It also feels as though we are expanding outwards through layers on every side, towards some brilliance that beckons from just outside their limits.
168. As we burst through many physical layers there also come layers made of memory and desire, and much stranger layers made out of expectation or belief. Some present as tightly stretched membranes through which we only pass by great effort, barely breaking through them as though they were made of some high tensile plastic. I try to keep us moving but in many levels we are slowed by all kinds of distractions, huge dragonflies and scarab beetles and illuminated insectoid creatures exploding from tiled palaces crammed with spinning orbs. Huge scintillating sculptural forms forever turning and turning inwards upon themselves, with the whole array designed to divert our attention from navigating our escape. I work hard to focus on Luc’s presence and not these pulsating machine entities, with all of their hyper-reality especially around their eyes.
169. As I wrestle with these distractions our progress slows. If I were alone I could crash through these layers without effort but now I am dragging Luc with me. It would be easy to let him go and I hear voices counselling me to do it, but as beautiful as these voices are I know that they are the very essence of deception. Along with their singing speech these sirens send out heavy tendrils that drape across us like sea-grass, weighing us down heavily and causing our progress to slow even more. I refuse to abandon Luc to these doldrums but as I hang on to him tighter and tighter we eventually grind to a complete halt. I was sent down to retrieve this man and I will not be thwarted in that attempt, I will cling to him even if our fate becomes hopeless and there is nowhere else to go.
170. As I cleave to Luc in that stagnant place some hint of new knowledge flows into me. Telling me that I might not yet have failed, instructing my heart in more direct means of redemption. I press myself closer to Luc and although he is silent and cannot hear me his body responds to the invitation of my body. This time I know we must yield to each other completely, that he must let me come at him as urgently as possible without recoiling or pushing me away. And he must come towards me too, bearing every ounce of his strength to me without restraining himself at all. I start to press against him as his body responds and he presses against me too.
171. I close down against every distraction and I am surprised how easily I do it. Sinking back into the familiar darkness of those dreams I have held Luc within. Once again there is only him and me holding close in the formless dark and I know without any doubt that this is the way I will redeem him. I close off any sensation that might distract me from his presence and with my sight gone and my hearing faded I am plunged back into the scent of his body like I have been so many times before. But what differs from those previous times is how wholly and completely I am immersed in it, so that the best description I ever gave counts for nothing compared to the richness of what surrounds me now.
172. His scent is so complete that it defies any effort to describe it. If I described raw sugar or licorice you would miss the spicy notes that come, like star anise unfolding its warm welcoming smell, like cardamom pods slowly softening in fresh hot honeyed milk. With each scent quickly merging into even more complex smells: from honeyed milk towards the aroma of wheat cereal waiting for milk to boil, on a wood-stove warming up a brisk morning and the comfort these smells can bring. If I mention wheat I must also mention wheaten bread as it bakes, giving way to the smell of charred crust and salted butter melting into freshly baked bread. And the smell of firewood merges into well-wooded bourbon before setting off a cascade of every alcohol smell you could imagine: heavy red wine that has been aged in bourbon casks, the vanillin spine that always links such aromas together.
173. The only thing that can distract me from Luc’s scent is the sudden coming of his sensual body, spearing upwards towards me out of the deepest parts of Hell. I feel him rising and straining towards me, with all of the power he wields now he has been purified by his ordeal. As his strength explodes within me all scent of him recedes until it is relegated to protecting our flanks and outer boundaries. His power crashes through me and onwards to every side of me and I regain that beautiful feeling of being completely possessed by this man, held by him in an urgent and protective way that I will never be able to describe. He keeps coming at me until he is closer than he has ever been, until I know for certain that I will never hold him so close again.
174. Luc pushes me towards ecstasy again and again but I cannot give in to it. I have to find some way to pull him up through the powerful resistance that is pressing down on us from above. I try to drag him sideways or out on oblique angles but every attempt I make to move him is thwarted. I go to lift us again in a rising panic but then I feel his firm hand upon me, directing me towards stillness rather than any onward movement. After resisting for a moment I fall back into his arms and I remain precisely where I am. Gradually the two of us start expanding in the same direction I was trying to pull us in and we also expand in every other direction. Like a new sun insistently pushing past the gravity of our embrace, a brand new star blasting out brilliantly in every direction at once.
175. Our radiance pushes us past the limits of our senses into the pure energy of our embrace. Blowing my emotions wide open as I teeter at the lip of that familiar chasm. But this time Luc’s sorrow merges with my own sorrow and every space within us fills with the sudden consolation of tears. They come in streams but also as the softest imaginable mist and every tear falls to signify the deep fertility of Her soul, Her miracle of bringing life into the world and even bringing life back. With every fallen man reprieved by the constancy of Her love and Her sorrow, Her tears falling like rain to bring him back into the world.
176. And then everything becomes rain. Falling softly to make our jagged edges smooth, falling to ease our hard feelings against the neglect which built them. From Her vast Heart of Love that makes everything grow in its proper place and to its proper season. I can still sense Luc beside me and the deep repairs that are being made, I would cry out his name in love and encouragement but there is no need to do so. And if he would praise my mortal name he has already been ushered into silence. Leaving the subtle sense that this man is genuinely being renewed, that his soul has been held harmless but also forged into something long prophesied. All of the truths I saw gathered around him although they were yet to come. And I can feel Her relief at his rescue and redemption: powerful enough to overwhelm all of my senses, quieting me and collapsing me gently back into sleep.
Chapter 10 - BEFORE MY BODY WAS BORN
177. After a long passage through dreamless sleep I wake up to find myself in my own bed. Back in my own home, the place the ambulance took me from however long ago. I have no idea when my dreaming began or how long I have slept but it hardly feels like it matters. The important thing is that I have woken up to my pre-dream reality, in the same bed I went to sleep in God knows how many nights ago.
178. I don’t remember the exact point I realised that Luc was beside me in bed. I do know that it began as a subtle feeling but once it got going I felt it starting to quicken. At a certain stage I felt his soul leap back into his body - one huge discrete jump - as I felt his presence begin to solidify beside me. I said a few quiet words to steady him until he took a sharp intake of breath that sounded like a man almost drowned, a man dragged back to shore against all odds. He gulped at the air a few times before I placed my hand on his chest to settle him, and as his heart slowed gradually I knew beyond any doubt that Luc lay in bed beside me.
179. This is the scene I will remember. When everything else is lost to me, when my memory and identity lie torn and strewn about. I will remember opening my eyes to see Luc resting beside me, the long silence as I listened to him breathe. How I held myself so still for fear of shaking his soul loose, how I could have watched over his recovery forever. These memories are so dreamlike that I can recall them at any level of resolution, seeing the scene from every point within my bedroom and from every other viewpoint as well. I don’t try to hold him or orient him to the room, it is just him gently recovering and me guarding him while he does. I also have a strong recollection – no matter how recursive it seems - of deliberately preserving each layer of the moments he lay beside me, rendering the texture of every detail to give me a complete place to return to.
180. I would have been happy for the two of us to lie there forever but Luc does eventually stir. He seems a bit distressed and I can see - only very faintly, now that I am awake - that he has dragged back fragments of the realms we passed through on our way back towards reality. I see broken shards of scarabs and machine entities that he has to shake loose before he can properly exit that dream world. He brushes his body with his hands and all of these fragments shatter and he recovers to the point where he can sink back heavily against the bed. I know he can feel me there beside him because he calls me by my name.
Che, he says.
I’m here, I say.
I know.
But where am I?
You’re back, I say.
You’re back home.
He shakes his head confused and says: no.
No, Che, no.
This is not my home.
181. I go to say something reassuring but Luc is too distressed to hear anything I say. I try to project soothing images into our shared thought space but that space has been shut down. I don’t speak about death or redemption because such talk might unseat him and I desperately want him to stay. I would reassure him that dragging him out of that place was not done of my own volition, that he owes me no debt as his redeemer but simply the recognition of a loving friend who found him in a place where she was also condemned. But anything I say to him would come accompanied by some shadow sentence, a truth which might entangle him back into the shadows until those shadows eventually prevailed.
182. As he lies there beside me Luc becomes increasingly distressed. He gasps for air and his heart begins to pound and his trembling turns into intense shivering. Through chattering teeth he tells me that he is freezing cold, I try to pull him towards me and tuck the bedding around his body but he holds himself away from me, saying: Che that won’t get me warm. I move towards him again but he flinches when I do it. He won’t look at me or let me get near him and I can’t think what I have done to deserve this kind of treatment. After a long period of silence he asks in an unsteady voice: do you think I could have a shower? I jump up quickly to grab a towel from the top shelf of my wardrobe and Luc shuffles unsteadily into my little en-suite. I hear him turn the water up as high as it will go.
183. Luc showers for a long time. I would like to join him but I guess it would be better to leave him to the healing of the hot water. I stay where I am even when I hear the shower shut off and the glass doors clank back and there is nothing but silence from him. I am worried about the direction his thinking might be taking, and as his silence extends I begin to feel uneasy and then genuinely concerned that all of our dream strangeness might lead him to believe that this is also just a dream. I slip out of bed and go over to the bathroom door and gently call his name and after a short pause he says: Che.
You can come in.
There is…
There is something I need to ask you.
184. I head into the bathroom to find Luc staring into the mirror. His towel is slung low around his hips and I can see the stark outline of his hip bones pushing out on each side of his belly. He is tall and his shoulders are broad but his body is quite a few degrees past lean. His skin looks almost translucent as though he has been restricting his diet for a long time. As I look at his gaunt face I get a sense of the suffering he has endured and how much love he is going to need, how much re-feeding and sensual generosity and I have any amount of these things to give him. I walk up behind him and kiss him gently on the back of his left shoulder as we stand there together, seeing each other clearly for the very first time.
185. Luc is pressing his fingers down gingerly on various parts of his body as though he were testing them for substance. Like he is assessing the body of some other person who has come to him in pain. He shakes his head with every press of his fingers before he starts to tremble again and sink back down into his distress.
Luc, I say.
Please talk to me.
You can tell me what’s wrong.
What’s wrong? he asks.
Everything is wrong.
Are you in pain?
No, Che.
Pain would not be a problem.
This is something quite a bit worse than that.
186. Luc’s hands rise up to press against the sides of his face, and as he pulls back against the skin of his cheeks and the sides of his neck he looks at me through the mirror very darkly.
This is not me, he says.
I don't look like this.
What happened to my face?
What has happened to my body?
This… thing you made me into Che.
You have to fix it.
You have to change me back.
187. I stare back at Luc through the mirror as a strange rising heat starts to build in my chest. I look at his body and I see nothing wrong. I think he must be complaining about how lean he is until suddenly I understand what he is saying. I am stunned for a moment, and then I shake my head before answering him with the obvious question.
What did you hope you would look like?
Like myself, he says.
I need to look like myself.
Like I used to look in the mirror.
He pulls at his skin more aggressively this time.
This is not my body, Che.
This is not my face.
It’s not even close.
You have to fix it.
You have to change me back.
188. Luc’s pleas feel unfair and ungrateful and for a moment I don't know how to respond. He should be pleased to find himself in any living body at all, for him to accuse me of not putting him back in the right one doesn’t make any sense.
I brought you back, Luc.
I got you out of there.
He goes quiet before he says more gently.
That’s not what I mean, Che.
You know that's not what I mean.
It’s just that I can’t accept this body.
It doesn’t look like me.
It does look like you, I say.
This is exactly how you looked, Luc.
This is how you looked before you were born.
189. Luc’s face softens as he hears these words.
Before I was born, he says.
And after I died?
My other body…
As he goes to ask the question he already knows the answer.
It’s gone, I say.
You know that, Luc.
It is in ashes.
There is nothing left.
Luc visibly deflates and slumps his shoulders.
Of course, Che.
Of course it is.
Why would I think any different?
190. I do feel sorry for Luc but I can’t help feeling resentful. I even feel some genuine anger when he accuses me in this way. He picks up on that and says: Che please don’t take this the wrong way. I am indebted to you in ways I can’t describe, ways that would terrify me if I stopped to think about them. But you must see why I can’t accept this. Why you have to make it different. If you could make me this way you can make me any other way too.
But you’re beautiful, I say.
You look perfect.
But you must, Che.
Surely you must…
A sharp slash of realisation passes over his face before it collapses into horror.
191. O God, he says.
God you don’t know.
What, I say.
What don’t I know?
He creases his brow and presses his fingers against it.
Che I am…
I have…
I have people.
192. As Luc says these words a nasty jolt passes through me, making my ears ring and the world feel badly skewed. I know what he is telling me although my mind won’t process it, the truth I should have anticipated when instead I was wilfully blind.
People? I ask in an unsteady voice.
People, he says.
I have a wife, Che.
I have daughters.
Two little daughters.
I try to keep my voice steady but I fail.
But…
But Luc you never…
I did, he says.
I always did.
You just wouldn’t listen to me, Che.
You never wanted to hear.
193. Luc fills in the details as my heart grows cold. He tells me his wife’s name, he relates a few details about his life with her and their two daughters. Huge waves of unreality crash over me but I know this is no dream, and the worst part of it is knowing that Luc is not to blame. I should have made no other assumption than that this was a cherished man, a man with a loving family who would revel in his capacity to love. I feel so stupid and childish when I survey my hopes for the two of us but I also feel puzzled when I remember where I found him, the actions that landed him there. I put these things to him without thinking how cruel they sound.
But Luc you…denied them.
You left them.
I know, he says.
You don't have to remind me.
I find myself stumbling over my words.
But if you were…
Then how could you…
My questions are unfinished but the accusation remains.
194. In the silence I can’t find anything soothing to say and so I decide to say something true. You look really beautiful Luc. That has to be worth something. He purses his lips and dips his head and when he looks back at me through the mirror he says: Che if I need to say it? This is not on you. This body is so much more than I deserve but it leaves me completely stranded. If I could just get my old face back, just so they might recognise me. All recrimination drops out of his speech and he sounds genuinely contrite and I am moved to reach out gently towards him and say: Luc every part of it is gone. They burn the dead with due reverence and they scatter the ashes. I don’t even know whether you remain the same inside. And you have changed me too Luc you should never forget that. I feel… fragmented from staying in that place too long and I couldn’t get us back there even if I tried. I would not be surprised - when we escaped, however that happened - if every trace of it was scattered as well.
195. Then change my mind, he says. Change my soul. Make me forget everything I know, Che, make me believe anything you want me to. You would be the one to benefit, you must understand that. You would be able to hold me and love me just like you did when you came into my dreams. I wouldn’t blame you for it. It’s a natural desire and all you have to do is make me forget. Change my name, even, surely you must be able to change that one… He slows and takes a deep breath before he looks at me and says: even my name is different now isn't it. Then tell me Che what my name is. For God’s sake that's the least you could do, to tell me my new name.
196. This is a strange request that I cannot respond to in words. Instead an image comes which I can project visibly into the mirror for Luc to see. It shows a veiled woman rendered completely in white stone, her face downcast and her eyes hooded with grief at the death of the young man she holds in her arms. The body of a dead lover or a dead son. The man has suffered a violent death but his body is now in repose, as though his torture exhausted him to the point where he needs rest before he can journey on. He lies across her lap amongst the rolls and folds of her heavy garments and it is only slowly that we see how strange their proportions are, how much larger than the man is his grieving wife, his grieving mother. So that she becomes the eternal feminine supporting the soul of this man, grieving for him and for every man cruelly cast out of this world.
197. The image turns hazy and soon a different scene appears. A slender young woman wearing a dress and a low crown, her auburn hair flowing over her shoulders in the glow of a stone room. A man bows to her in front of a few hushed onlookers, his squire holds his shield while he kneels there completely disarmed. The woman dubs him with a long sword that he has surrendered to her for this purpose. This is a man at the height of his powers, resplendent in a suit of mail and a red tunic emblazoned with an eagle clutching a golden crescent. As Luc stares into the mirror I place my hand on his shoulder and say: for the moment this is only my hand Luc. You may feel Her touch more directly in time. Luc sees how close the sword is to the throat of the kneeling man and how that is by design, out of the nature of such covenants and the way they must be fulfilled.
198. These images seem to calm Luc and when they fade he asks me very quietly whether we could lie down again. We go back to my bed and get under the covers and lie there on our sides facing one another, with no touch between us other than our held hands. Luc begins to tell me things that there is no need to tell me but I do find them consoling in a lonely kind of way. How he is bound to make contact with his wife no matter how slim his chances, how she is the only way back to his little daughters although he cannot imagine how she might let him through. I have to try, he says. To reach her without causing any more grief, without getting myself arrested although that would be no deterrent if I could somehow make her see.
199. Luc goes to express his gratitude towards me but I hush him by placing my hand gently over his mouth. I ask whether we could just lie together quietly for a while without talking, just holding hands like we are and taking some time to settle down. He nods and I close my eyes and I feel him close his eyes too and in the resulting darkness I get small hints of the way I used to encounter him in my dreams. I can breathe in his scent and feel his body the way I used to feel it even though he is no longer pressing against me. The connection between us is coming to an end and I know it must be severed but it is reassuring to lie there with him holding my hand in his hand, his warm body as close to my body as I had always hoped it would be.
200. Then it was done. Luc drew his hand back from mine and sat up on his side of the bed, looking around and asking me whether he could borrow some clothes. We quickly got him into my loose work overalls with the bib left hanging and his waist hitched around with an elasticated belt. I gave him a pair of oversized slippers and the largest of my baggy hoodies and although he ended up looking like a scarecrow it was better than nothing. I offered to make him some food but he said he wasn’t hungry, I suggested he wait until it was light outside but he just shook his head. I asked him where he would sleep or what he would eat and he grinned: Che I don't think any of that matters anymore. I gave him what little cash I had along with a handful of junk silver jewellery and a little backpack for things he might pick up along the way. Then suddenly he was straddling the sill of my upstairs window, eyeing off the brick wall running between the house and the laneway below. I was not ready for him to leave but it happened anyway. I went to hug him but he just put one arm half around me and gave me a squeeze before he shifted his weight and was gone.
201. After Luc left I went back to bed without much hope of sleep. I lay there thinking and listening in the small hours of the morning, hearing what you might call voices although that is a very loose description. They were more like half-sentences or fragments of disembodied thought describing various things including what they called our Rules of Engagement. Saying that I was still bound to watch over Luc although my role in his redemption had finished, that I must hold the space around him harmless although I could not imagine what that meant. I saw how this role offered some compensation for the loss I had suffered, allowing me to draw close to him and watch over him especially in his sleep where I now had manifest superiority. And how this might grant me some solace no matter how incomplete, no matter how partial the comfort that was being offered.
202. As I lay there being instructed in these things I was also shown the poetics of the two of us. The same tragic tale that keeps getting retold, with Luc as the crazy one and me as the lucid lover who waits and pines like crazy. For a love too intense to be allowed, a love that would heap shame upon every other love that has previously come into the world. In this current reality no woman can know how it feels to love someone like that: without sanity, without guile, without calculation or restraint. A love empowered to redeem a man and rebuild his body and that is just the beginning. Bridging every chasm that has ever divided us, redeeming every grief-struck lover from their pain and condemnation. If there could ever truly be a love like that, if we could somehow become capable of recognising it when it comes.
203. As dawn loomed I set down some prayers for Luc and I also made supplication on my own behalf. I confessed that I had loved him from the first time I encountered him, and regardless of what flesh the world clothed him in I would continue to love him body and soul. I confessed to knowing that Luc would never be mine to hold, but to be denied any instant to hold him - no matter how brief - would have been intolerably cruel. I declared that if Luc had ten wives and a hundred children I still would have gone down there to save him: even with a broken heart, despite my broken heart. And I guessed at the deeds She must have ordained for him because She does not lightly tolerate the heartbreak of Her women. I also swore - on my life this time, whatever life I had left - that if every man I rescue turns to wound me that will only prove that it is my destiny to be wounded, my destiny to remain alone.
Chapter 11 - LETTER BETTER UNSENT
SAVE AS DRAFT
Dear Sicko,
I know you will take this as some kind of victory over me. Or some other kind of superiority depending on what is wrong with you. But there is more than one purpose to any written piece and I don’t care if you feel superior. My friends and family have told me to ignore you and I will do that but I also have every right to set down this email and even to press send if that is what I choose to do.
Your cruelty and your sickness need to be called out for what they are. Even if that is only in my own mind. I feel free to say things that might shock my family and friends because I do not feel bound to treat you with any humanity at all. Or any concern for your life after you have sent me such life-hating things.
How deep must be the sickness in you. To mock the grief of a wife and two little girls, to dishonour a lost husband and father especially with how that loss occurred. I feel sure that no human being could act in this way although I suppose this is not the truth but I will cling to that feeling to keep your viciousness at bay.
You were some kind of friend to us in the past, that is my best guess. Or you got past his firewall to read his personal correspondence. These are the only things that can explain how much you know about our lives. Even those intimate things that nobody else knows. Disclosing these things no doubt made you sound convincing but really you just sounded sordid, you sounded putrid and insane.
I did not believe in Hell before this disaster but now I have no doubt of it. It is hard to believe in evil before you see its face. I know there will be a reckoning of the deeds of every person and if you understood that you might seek to atone for what you have done. To seek the comfort and well-being of people rather than taking pleasure in their loss, mocking the family of a departed man while they are mired down in their grief.
And if this is you Luc. Against all hope if this is you: I never want to hear from you or speak to you again. I would never let you come near the girls or allow you to touch me or speak to me or have anything to do with me. People would call that cruel but I could never let you back into our family again. In the billion to one chance that you have genuinely returned and this is some miracle then I want no part of it.
No matter how badly you were suffering, Luc. Once you made that choice you could never come back to us again.
Because there were other choices. You never cared to know them or seek them out but they were there. You never stopped to take any care of yourself or take proper care of the people who depended on you. You dreamed of healing the world by taking its sins upon yourself and I hope you have learned: this is a hopeless road. Bringing nothing but your destruction and our devastation in every single lifetime until the world comes to an end.
Because you were the one to suffer Luc. To suffer so pointlessly no matter how much you would hate to hear that. You robbed yourself of any pleasure in this life because of your dreams, your reckless abandon of your own interests and the needs of the people who loved you. I fell in love with you because of that abandon but it made our marriage completely unsupportable and your poor life so afflicted.
You cannot love the whole world, Luc. Not at the same time as you love individual people. When you have a wife and children you cannot keep dreaming childish heroic dreams, hoping for some general eruption of Love that will never come to pass. It has to be one or the other. You could not love us and the entire world, it has to be one or the other.
The last thing I want to do is to burden you further. If I met you now I would have no choice but to immediately set you free, to die for the world in the way you seemed born to do. Hoping that if you did succeed you might find your way back to me, to love me with an undivided heart after achieving those other things. And much more importantly: to love our girls in the way they need you to. Instead of the horrible solitary death that loving me brought upon you my darling.
This is why they told me not to read your email. I no longer know who I'm talking to and I cannot decide what to say. I know who it is though that I do desperately wish to speak to and confess: when you left whole parts of me were dragged with you and I have no hope for their return. I gave them to you freely and it was your free choice what to do with them. Do not return to me without bringing those parts that died with you, the best and most loving part of my nature and probably my only unflawed part. The part that knew what giving really meant, that generosity of spirit you always praised me for.
I have dreamed that when I enter death I need only to focus on those parts of me you have taken in order to be guided straight to you. And if you do make your way back to the land of the living I will know you by the replenishment of the light you left behind. The light living on in Biddy and Rose, which could have been a light unto the world in some different time and place.
You see how I have lost myself. To false hope and the love of lost things that I am reciting. Do not think that I am some angel Luc because if you genuinely returned I would heap endless shame upon your head, for the sorrow you have caused to us I would bury your head in shame. Just as though you were some predator creep, the same shame and vengeful wishes and of course violent speech. Even plain violence as shocking as that is to say.
I have learned many things since you left and they give me some comfort even though you would scoff at them. What happens in those liminal places where all must pass through. Where the unjust and the filthy find themselves condemned to remain. What things come to people in those after-death realms, how that owes directly to their living choices and the merit they have heaped up in this world.
So go and fuck yourself, Sicko. Or rise and shine and redeem the world Luc so you can make your way back to me. I was nothing before I met you and I never will be and that’s the very worst thing you have done. To show me such intolerable things only to abandon me here, without your light or your true compass and without even stopping to say goodbye.
El xxx
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