THE GLASS DOORS
CHAPTER 20-24
CHAPTER 20
Awakening
When I awoke, it was time to venture off and I decided that I would indeed go north and meet Sol. It was time to figure out how to thank the villagers for their care and kind treatment. However, when I emerged from the temple they were gone, and the village was empty. There had been a few hundred villagers, but now not one remained. It was a bad omen. I felt like looking up to the skies, and shaking my fist at the racist star who I knew was orchestrating the whole sick and twisted cosmic game from above.
I stood outside the temple and considered my useful options. Suddenly, a naked man came around the corner and he was dragging a woman by the ankle, while she kicked and screamed for freedom. He was super-sized like me and the five sons of Pi and Ea, but I had never observed him before. Also, this brute was completely naked but covered in black and red ink sign markings which looked like a cross between the Western alphabet and some kind of primitive pictograms. It was unlikely that I would win the fight, however, I had no choice but to stop this raging monster.
The young woman that was being dragged continued her panicked struggle to break free from the naked inked man’s clutches. I lunged at the naked inked man and fell flat on my face. Either the pair of them were invisible, or I was. I tested it and tried to pick up a rock. I was unable to pick up the rock and then realized that it was I who now lacked corporeal tangibility.
The brute dragged the young woman up the stone stairs and into the temple. He had no regard for her whatsoever and her head smacked hard on almost every step. I attempted to mount the stairs but found that my foot had no substance against the stone. It just fell through the stone like a ghost. Then, I began to sink into the land itself. It was as if I had fallen into quicksand. I promptly recalled a documentary I had watched on television which explained the best way to get out of quicksand was to not struggle and instead attempt to go prostrate and distribute your weight across as much area as possible. I tried it.
It is unclear if the logic of what I did mattered with respect to distribution of body weight, however, my mental focus on the environment seemed to pull me back up to ground level. I concentrated mentally on the task of climbing the stairs and was able to mount them slowly but surely.
Inside the temple, I could see the naked inked man violating the young woman. The act was brutal and heinous. What he was doing put me in a murderous rage and yet again I tried to stop him. Instead, while I swung wildly at him with tightly clenched fists that phased through his body, it almost felt like I was part of the rape, either as a co-victim, or a co-perpetrator. I stopped my violence and began crying. My emotional breakdown also disrupted my mental fortitude and I found myself back in the quicksand effect, slipping through the base of the temple and falling into the ground underneath it.
It was almost impossible to concentrate on my own body with what was going on in the temple with the two other bodies, right in front of me. I resigned myself to drowning into the land, yet I didn’t sink to the bottom. My head and shoulders remained above the floor in the temple. I was defeated. My cosmic desires had been dashed and I had now experienced things that compromised the basic claims of my Moral Paradigm. I was ruined, although I was still stuck, and the horror persisted in front of me.
Awakening
When I awoke, it was time to venture off and I decided that I would indeed go north and meet Sol. It was time to figure out how to thank the villagers for their care and kind treatment. However, when I emerged from the temple they were gone, and the village was empty. There had been a few hundred villagers, but now not one remained. It was a bad omen. I felt like looking up to the skies, and shaking my fist at the racist star who I knew was orchestrating the whole sick and twisted cosmic game from above.
I stood outside the temple and considered my useful options. Suddenly, a naked man came around the corner and he was dragging a woman by the ankle, while she kicked and screamed for freedom. He was super-sized like me and the five sons of Pi and Ea, but I had never observed him before. Also, this brute was completely naked but covered in black and red ink sign markings which looked like a cross between the Western alphabet and some kind of primitive pictograms. It was unlikely that I would win the fight, however, I had no choice but to stop this raging monster.
The young woman that was being dragged continued her panicked struggle to break free from the naked inked man’s clutches. I lunged at the naked inked man and fell flat on my face. Either the pair of them were invisible, or I was. I tested it and tried to pick up a rock. I was unable to pick up the rock and then realized that it was I who now lacked corporeal tangibility.
The brute dragged the young woman up the stone stairs and into the temple. He had no regard for her whatsoever and her head smacked hard on almost every step. I attempted to mount the stairs but found that my foot had no substance against the stone. It just fell through the stone like a ghost. Then, I began to sink into the land itself. It was as if I had fallen into quicksand. I promptly recalled a documentary I had watched on television which explained the best way to get out of quicksand was to not struggle and instead attempt to go prostrate and distribute your weight across as much area as possible. I tried it.
It is unclear if the logic of what I did mattered with respect to distribution of body weight, however, my mental focus on the environment seemed to pull me back up to ground level. I concentrated mentally on the task of climbing the stairs and was able to mount them slowly but surely.
Inside the temple, I could see the naked inked man violating the young woman. The act was brutal and heinous. What he was doing put me in a murderous rage and yet again I tried to stop him. Instead, while I swung wildly at him with tightly clenched fists that phased through his body, it almost felt like I was part of the rape, either as a co-victim, or a co-perpetrator. I stopped my violence and began crying. My emotional breakdown also disrupted my mental fortitude and I found myself back in the quicksand effect, slipping through the base of the temple and falling into the ground underneath it.
It was almost impossible to concentrate on my own body with what was going on in the temple with the two other bodies, right in front of me. I resigned myself to drowning into the land, yet I didn’t sink to the bottom. My head and shoulders remained above the floor in the temple. I was defeated. My cosmic desires had been dashed and I had now experienced things that compromised the basic claims of my Moral Paradigm. I was ruined, although I was still stuck, and the horror persisted in front of me.
CHAPTER 21
Altruism
I could not wedge myself free from the temple floor even after the naked inked man had left. The young woman who had been violated nestled up in the leather pillows and rug that had briefly been my bed. It seemed like she didn’t intend on leaving. I called out to her, and it was the first words that I had spoken since being forced into the new world. The sound of my voice remained muffled, and she could not hear me.
She stayed for several nights huddled in the comfy corner of that stolid temple. Eventually, she left, but I still could not move. For whatever cosmic reason, I did not feel hunger, nor did I have to relieve myself. My eyes did not strain, and my throat was never parched. I was put into an ideal state physically and it was undisturbed by the environmental conditions. A few weeks later, the young woman returned to the temple, and she had some of her belongings with her. It seemed that she was going to make my new home, her new home as well.
Months passed and she was showing. The naked inked man had knocked her up and this seemed commonplace for the time, in fact, it was commonplace in my time on Earth as well. But, in all that time when the young woman was in the temple with me, I never heard her speak, and I heard no sounds from the villagers outside the temple. It seemed that they had ventured off permanently. The inked man never returned either. She was going to do what she felt she had to do… and do it alone.
The young woman came to term and gave birth in the temple. It was powerfully shocking and awe-inspiring at the same time. Although quite young, she seemed to know how to deliver the child and then care for it in those initial hours after birth. Once she had recovered, she cleaned up the temple and then left briefly. Her baby was left behind pinned to the rug by the leather pouch pillows.
For the first time in months I decided to use my mental focus to move my immobilized body. On previous attempts, movement had been a futile endeavor, and I had given up. But I was compelled to get a better look at the baby now. The baby began wailing. I blocked out the noise and focused my thoughts on moving my body. My left arm swayed forward. I felt very light from the moment of joy accompanying my first movement in months. Then, a few more pushes forward succeeded. I was on the move through the ground and stone blocks that formed the base of the temple.
I shuffled over to the comfy corner, and I looked upon the baby which was oddly at my eye level. The baby had not ceased wailing. Then, I noticed something strange. The naked baby was intersexual – or what they used to call, hermaphroditic – and it had both male and female external reproductive organs. I was disturbed and didn’t know what it meant specifically to me and my situation.
Suddenly, I felt a wave of repulsion and had a strong urge to “swim” out of the ground and away from the temple as far as I could until there was a sense of relief that washed over me. I didn’t get that far. I was repositioned at the foot of the stairs at the opening of the temple. My mental focus dissipated. Once again, I was immobile. The view had improved at least.
The baby was colic and wailed profusely day and night. The young woman placidly attended to the baby as if the ceaseless crying was normal. I was going mad from the noise, and I could still not move from my position half stuck in the ground under the temple. The sea was within sight. That racist star shined on my face. The situation was intolerable.
The young woman had turned to the papyrus sheets and ink during those sleepless nights with her fretful babe. I could barely make out what she was doing with the papyrus, but it looked like drawings from where I was positioned at the entrance to the temple. The drawings were dark and evil. The young woman depicted the scene of the inked man ravaging her and then there were other morbid depictions of her smothering or drowning the colic baby. I was convinced that I had landed in Hell, but I spent day and night trying to determine how it was deserved and what I had done to justify damnation.
I was stuck in the temple for years, but to me I experienced it more like months, and the young woman never deserted the temple as a home. The colic baby became a despondent child. The young woman attempted to teach the child, but it had great difficulty learning and hadn’t articulated speech by age five. The child was wretched and threw irrational angry fits and would then sulk for the rest of the day. Also, this child now had a name – Ister.
I recognized “Ister” as an androgynous name in the young woman’s culture for communities at the mouth of the river Sep, and she recognized that the sexual abnormality of Ister was a cause for concern. I suspected that she was worried about a gendered name because she didn’t know how Ister would appear once reaching puberty. By age eight, Ister had male countenance, but more female physiology. The androgynous appearance was unsettling to me, and I couldn’t ascertain if it was a personal slight against me courtesy the racist star. The racist star now seemed more of a barefaced, bigot star, and I cursed its name.
Fortunately, once the young woman had begun venturing away from the temple, I discovered that I too was more mobile. I was able to move in my ghostly form wherever I wanted provided I remained within visual range of Ister. It was a blessing and deeply insulting at the same time.
The young woman had returned to her neighboring village. I traveled there with them and noted some of the villagers who had once been my hosts at the temple when I had first arrived at the mouth of the river Sep. At age ten, Ister went into a catatonic schizophrenic state and refused to communicate with the world. The young woman spoon-fed her child and cleaned up after it. The only time that Ister would come out of the catatonic state was when another child in the village touched it. Ister would then scream at the top of its lungs. The maniacal shrill pierced the sky like unholy thunder.
I resented everything I was going through. If there was a lesson in all of it, it was lost to me at the time. Years passed for the young woman, and she had aged poorly through the ordeal and now appeared close to death. Ister came out of the catatonic state as a teenager and left its mother secretly in the night. I felt that forceful push on the back of my head once more. I was shoved along by that force and made to follow Ister away from the village. Now, I knew that my connection wasn’t to the young woman who I had attempted to save from all this indignity, but rather, I was tethered to the wretched, Ister. Indignantly, I followed behind Ister in my ghostly form, now bored and uninspired. This was a prison sentence, and my cellmate was the most miserable person that had ever lived.
Altruism
I could not wedge myself free from the temple floor even after the naked inked man had left. The young woman who had been violated nestled up in the leather pillows and rug that had briefly been my bed. It seemed like she didn’t intend on leaving. I called out to her, and it was the first words that I had spoken since being forced into the new world. The sound of my voice remained muffled, and she could not hear me.
She stayed for several nights huddled in the comfy corner of that stolid temple. Eventually, she left, but I still could not move. For whatever cosmic reason, I did not feel hunger, nor did I have to relieve myself. My eyes did not strain, and my throat was never parched. I was put into an ideal state physically and it was undisturbed by the environmental conditions. A few weeks later, the young woman returned to the temple, and she had some of her belongings with her. It seemed that she was going to make my new home, her new home as well.
Months passed and she was showing. The naked inked man had knocked her up and this seemed commonplace for the time, in fact, it was commonplace in my time on Earth as well. But, in all that time when the young woman was in the temple with me, I never heard her speak, and I heard no sounds from the villagers outside the temple. It seemed that they had ventured off permanently. The inked man never returned either. She was going to do what she felt she had to do… and do it alone.
The young woman came to term and gave birth in the temple. It was powerfully shocking and awe-inspiring at the same time. Although quite young, she seemed to know how to deliver the child and then care for it in those initial hours after birth. Once she had recovered, she cleaned up the temple and then left briefly. Her baby was left behind pinned to the rug by the leather pouch pillows.
For the first time in months I decided to use my mental focus to move my immobilized body. On previous attempts, movement had been a futile endeavor, and I had given up. But I was compelled to get a better look at the baby now. The baby began wailing. I blocked out the noise and focused my thoughts on moving my body. My left arm swayed forward. I felt very light from the moment of joy accompanying my first movement in months. Then, a few more pushes forward succeeded. I was on the move through the ground and stone blocks that formed the base of the temple.
I shuffled over to the comfy corner, and I looked upon the baby which was oddly at my eye level. The baby had not ceased wailing. Then, I noticed something strange. The naked baby was intersexual – or what they used to call, hermaphroditic – and it had both male and female external reproductive organs. I was disturbed and didn’t know what it meant specifically to me and my situation.
Suddenly, I felt a wave of repulsion and had a strong urge to “swim” out of the ground and away from the temple as far as I could until there was a sense of relief that washed over me. I didn’t get that far. I was repositioned at the foot of the stairs at the opening of the temple. My mental focus dissipated. Once again, I was immobile. The view had improved at least.
The baby was colic and wailed profusely day and night. The young woman placidly attended to the baby as if the ceaseless crying was normal. I was going mad from the noise, and I could still not move from my position half stuck in the ground under the temple. The sea was within sight. That racist star shined on my face. The situation was intolerable.
The young woman had turned to the papyrus sheets and ink during those sleepless nights with her fretful babe. I could barely make out what she was doing with the papyrus, but it looked like drawings from where I was positioned at the entrance to the temple. The drawings were dark and evil. The young woman depicted the scene of the inked man ravaging her and then there were other morbid depictions of her smothering or drowning the colic baby. I was convinced that I had landed in Hell, but I spent day and night trying to determine how it was deserved and what I had done to justify damnation.
I was stuck in the temple for years, but to me I experienced it more like months, and the young woman never deserted the temple as a home. The colic baby became a despondent child. The young woman attempted to teach the child, but it had great difficulty learning and hadn’t articulated speech by age five. The child was wretched and threw irrational angry fits and would then sulk for the rest of the day. Also, this child now had a name – Ister.
I recognized “Ister” as an androgynous name in the young woman’s culture for communities at the mouth of the river Sep, and she recognized that the sexual abnormality of Ister was a cause for concern. I suspected that she was worried about a gendered name because she didn’t know how Ister would appear once reaching puberty. By age eight, Ister had male countenance, but more female physiology. The androgynous appearance was unsettling to me, and I couldn’t ascertain if it was a personal slight against me courtesy the racist star. The racist star now seemed more of a barefaced, bigot star, and I cursed its name.
Fortunately, once the young woman had begun venturing away from the temple, I discovered that I too was more mobile. I was able to move in my ghostly form wherever I wanted provided I remained within visual range of Ister. It was a blessing and deeply insulting at the same time.
The young woman had returned to her neighboring village. I traveled there with them and noted some of the villagers who had once been my hosts at the temple when I had first arrived at the mouth of the river Sep. At age ten, Ister went into a catatonic schizophrenic state and refused to communicate with the world. The young woman spoon-fed her child and cleaned up after it. The only time that Ister would come out of the catatonic state was when another child in the village touched it. Ister would then scream at the top of its lungs. The maniacal shrill pierced the sky like unholy thunder.
I resented everything I was going through. If there was a lesson in all of it, it was lost to me at the time. Years passed for the young woman, and she had aged poorly through the ordeal and now appeared close to death. Ister came out of the catatonic state as a teenager and left its mother secretly in the night. I felt that forceful push on the back of my head once more. I was shoved along by that force and made to follow Ister away from the village. Now, I knew that my connection wasn’t to the young woman who I had attempted to save from all this indignity, but rather, I was tethered to the wretched, Ister. Indignantly, I followed behind Ister in my ghostly form, now bored and uninspired. This was a prison sentence, and my cellmate was the most miserable person that had ever lived.
CHAPTER 22
Resignation
During our journey, when I decided to dig in my heels after Ister began traveling again, the invisible force returned and pushed me forward much in the way that like poles of a magnet feel against each other when you force them together. Ister moved from village to village, slowly heading northeast into the meso-region that the sons of Hum had cultivated as their land for radical worship and brutal zealotry.
Ister focused on paying for its travels through prostitution and in that respect presented itself as an exotic creature with hidden talents. Partway through the lurid act, Ister would reveal the true nature of its body. Some of the men fled, others became nauseated, while others still were intrigued and explored the possibilities of a unique sexual experience. Ister seemed to get off on the power to revolt, whereas Ister resented those men who were inclined to venerate the otherworldly pleasures of unfettered sexual access.
Some men felt betrayed, duped, and assaulted. They responded in kind. However, Ister was a formidable opponent with an aptitude for combat. Likely, Ister had spent all those years in a catatonic state playing out the myriad possibilities of how to defend itself physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Ister could not afford to stick around one village for too long because eventually the villagers realized that Ister was a malevolent character bent on destruction and fueled by hatred. Ister would secure funds through prostitution and then move on.
I had noticed that time was shifting in the new world differently than in the real world, and progress happened rapidly. Just as the five brothers in the Tribe of Oor had brought about rapid development in hunting techniques and engineering projects, this new world was generally moving forward at a quicker pace than it did for human beings on Earth. The age of hunting-gathering had transitioned to agrarian culture while I had been watching when placed across the cosmic games table from that bigoted star. For almost two decades while stuck on the surface of the new world, I had seen rapid development in the social organization and economic systems of communities I encountered.
There was one good bit of news in that time shifting phenomenon – perhaps I would get back to the 21st century expeditiously, and then be able to get my bearings once comparing this new world to the real one I had known.
Being tethered to Ister was almost second nature for me at one point, and I acquired a perverse sense of bonding with it, as if I were the little good conscience Acme angel on Ister’s shoulder. I had not influenced Ister in any way but had been bearing witness to the wicked deeds and awful lifestyle of that wretched character. That had been enough to feel like a guardian angel, and the feeling boosted my own self-esteem slightly and helped me get through the awful and surreal experience.
Then, Ister killed that vibe for me. One morning, Ister left the tavern in the meso-region where it had been lodging for several weeks. Ister found an isolated cave up on a limestone hill and went inside the cave. Ister indulged in the catatonic state once more. The female innkeeper from the tavern had followed Ister and discovered it sitting stoically in the cave. I wished that I could have warned the innkeeper about Ister. Instead, this poor woman spent months taking care of Ister much the same as its mother had done years earlier when Ister was a child and went into the catatonic state for the first time.
The diligent care of the female innkeeper for Ister ensured its survival in that dank hermitage of the limestone cave. I was stuck far enough away from the village that there was little visual stimulation for me. I wondered whether Ister would simply die in the cave, and it seemed preferable to watching how it was violating trust with strangers on a constant basis.
However, Ister began acting oddly and its appetite had altered. After months in the cave, Ister came out of the catatonic state and moved back down the limestone hill as it headed toward the nearest lake. Ister walked into the water and relieved itself and then snatched a fish and ate it raw, bones and all. It was a ghastly sight for me, but Ister appeared proud.
Ister then lifted its tunic and rubbed its belly. I had a very bad feeling about what was happening. I was forced to follow Ister back to the temple where it had been conceived. The temple was my first home in the new world and seeing it brought on emotions that reminded me I was a real person with feelings that mattered.
Somehow, Ister had immaculately conceived. It was showing. Months passed at the temple, and I was happy to be in familiar terrain with the ability to move around provided I remained in visual range of Ister. Ister had resented that it was pregnant and been indulging in self-abuse and mutilation for many weeks. I assumed that Ister was trying to cruelly abuse the unborn child more than stimulate a miscarriage.
Then, one day, Ister gave birth to a son. Ister disappeared and I was not forced to follow. A great burden had been lifted; however, I had a duty to keep the baby alive and well. It was important to concentrate like I had in the past when needing to materialize in the world and have physical tangibility. No one knew that Ister’s baby was in the temple except me, and I had no way to communicate with others from my ghostly form.
I concentrated and tried as hard as I could to reach out and touch the newborn, but I continued to phase through its body. Then, to my surprise, I heard shouting outside the temple. I moved to the entrance to the temple to see what the commotion was. Ister was pushing a woman from the nearby village toward the temple. This woman was being forced to become an adoptive mother for Ister’s baby. Ister threw the woman up the temple steps and then stormed off. I remember feeling deep spite and wishing a short and grim future for the monstrous Ister.
The adoptive mother entered the temple and tended to the newborn baby. It dawned on me that I was no longer tethered to anyone in the new world and that I would be free to move around despite remaining invisible to others. The adoptive mother’s sister arrived at the temple shortly after and they returned to the village together. I stayed at the temple alone and contemplated the entire sad experience in quiet solitude.
Resignation
During our journey, when I decided to dig in my heels after Ister began traveling again, the invisible force returned and pushed me forward much in the way that like poles of a magnet feel against each other when you force them together. Ister moved from village to village, slowly heading northeast into the meso-region that the sons of Hum had cultivated as their land for radical worship and brutal zealotry.
Ister focused on paying for its travels through prostitution and in that respect presented itself as an exotic creature with hidden talents. Partway through the lurid act, Ister would reveal the true nature of its body. Some of the men fled, others became nauseated, while others still were intrigued and explored the possibilities of a unique sexual experience. Ister seemed to get off on the power to revolt, whereas Ister resented those men who were inclined to venerate the otherworldly pleasures of unfettered sexual access.
Some men felt betrayed, duped, and assaulted. They responded in kind. However, Ister was a formidable opponent with an aptitude for combat. Likely, Ister had spent all those years in a catatonic state playing out the myriad possibilities of how to defend itself physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Ister could not afford to stick around one village for too long because eventually the villagers realized that Ister was a malevolent character bent on destruction and fueled by hatred. Ister would secure funds through prostitution and then move on.
I had noticed that time was shifting in the new world differently than in the real world, and progress happened rapidly. Just as the five brothers in the Tribe of Oor had brought about rapid development in hunting techniques and engineering projects, this new world was generally moving forward at a quicker pace than it did for human beings on Earth. The age of hunting-gathering had transitioned to agrarian culture while I had been watching when placed across the cosmic games table from that bigoted star. For almost two decades while stuck on the surface of the new world, I had seen rapid development in the social organization and economic systems of communities I encountered.
There was one good bit of news in that time shifting phenomenon – perhaps I would get back to the 21st century expeditiously, and then be able to get my bearings once comparing this new world to the real one I had known.
Being tethered to Ister was almost second nature for me at one point, and I acquired a perverse sense of bonding with it, as if I were the little good conscience Acme angel on Ister’s shoulder. I had not influenced Ister in any way but had been bearing witness to the wicked deeds and awful lifestyle of that wretched character. That had been enough to feel like a guardian angel, and the feeling boosted my own self-esteem slightly and helped me get through the awful and surreal experience.
Then, Ister killed that vibe for me. One morning, Ister left the tavern in the meso-region where it had been lodging for several weeks. Ister found an isolated cave up on a limestone hill and went inside the cave. Ister indulged in the catatonic state once more. The female innkeeper from the tavern had followed Ister and discovered it sitting stoically in the cave. I wished that I could have warned the innkeeper about Ister. Instead, this poor woman spent months taking care of Ister much the same as its mother had done years earlier when Ister was a child and went into the catatonic state for the first time.
The diligent care of the female innkeeper for Ister ensured its survival in that dank hermitage of the limestone cave. I was stuck far enough away from the village that there was little visual stimulation for me. I wondered whether Ister would simply die in the cave, and it seemed preferable to watching how it was violating trust with strangers on a constant basis.
However, Ister began acting oddly and its appetite had altered. After months in the cave, Ister came out of the catatonic state and moved back down the limestone hill as it headed toward the nearest lake. Ister walked into the water and relieved itself and then snatched a fish and ate it raw, bones and all. It was a ghastly sight for me, but Ister appeared proud.
Ister then lifted its tunic and rubbed its belly. I had a very bad feeling about what was happening. I was forced to follow Ister back to the temple where it had been conceived. The temple was my first home in the new world and seeing it brought on emotions that reminded me I was a real person with feelings that mattered.
Somehow, Ister had immaculately conceived. It was showing. Months passed at the temple, and I was happy to be in familiar terrain with the ability to move around provided I remained in visual range of Ister. Ister had resented that it was pregnant and been indulging in self-abuse and mutilation for many weeks. I assumed that Ister was trying to cruelly abuse the unborn child more than stimulate a miscarriage.
Then, one day, Ister gave birth to a son. Ister disappeared and I was not forced to follow. A great burden had been lifted; however, I had a duty to keep the baby alive and well. It was important to concentrate like I had in the past when needing to materialize in the world and have physical tangibility. No one knew that Ister’s baby was in the temple except me, and I had no way to communicate with others from my ghostly form.
I concentrated and tried as hard as I could to reach out and touch the newborn, but I continued to phase through its body. Then, to my surprise, I heard shouting outside the temple. I moved to the entrance to the temple to see what the commotion was. Ister was pushing a woman from the nearby village toward the temple. This woman was being forced to become an adoptive mother for Ister’s baby. Ister threw the woman up the temple steps and then stormed off. I remember feeling deep spite and wishing a short and grim future for the monstrous Ister.
The adoptive mother entered the temple and tended to the newborn baby. It dawned on me that I was no longer tethered to anyone in the new world and that I would be free to move around despite remaining invisible to others. The adoptive mother’s sister arrived at the temple shortly after and they returned to the village together. I stayed at the temple alone and contemplated the entire sad experience in quiet solitude.
CHAPTER 23
Equity
A new day had dawned and my time with Ister was at an end. I was unburdened and it felt like anything was possible, except for that small detail that I was still invisible to the world. However, I traveled the lands freely, and although I was unable to communicate with others, my ghostly form sustained me ideally and I wanted for nothing physically apart from the touch of another. I felt no hunger or exhaustion, and sleep was more about peaceful meditation than a required rest for a taxed body.
Many years passed and I had been learning some of the dialects from the regions I visited. The loneliness stimulated a new faith in the idea of the skeleton crew of my real cosmic family and friends. I imagined they were watching over me. My guy, Henry, was giving me a thumbs up, and my buddy, Alan, was reciting a list of possible retributions against the bigot star. This Bigot Star had to be put down, but I didn’t yet understand how to do that. I had attempted suicide several times in my ghostly form, but death was not possible.
During my journeys throughout the new world, I was affected by nostalgia and returned to the temple at the mouth of the river Sep, north of the cradle where the Tribe of Oor had once prospered. Surprisingly, the temple was not barren. Someone had been using it as a home. I waited inside the temple and became increasingly curious about the nature of the guest. The main part of the temple had some furnishings now, including, a wooden bench and some twine baskets with various items stored inside.
Late at night, a boy entered the temple, and he could not see me although for a moment I thought he caught a glimpse of my shadow based on a surprised stutter step he took coming down the three steps into the temple. I watched as this scrawny, dark-haired boy wrestled with the leather pouches that I had once used as pillows. It was an aggressive show for him, and he appeared frustrated and angry about something. The pillows were still filled with down, but he had also put the papyrus drawings in the pouches as if he were coveting the rudimentary illustrations.
That night, the boy slept, and my curiosity persisted, therefore, I stayed in the temple and waited until the next morning to plan my upcoming set of travels. In the morning, the boy looked over the stack of Ister’s mother’s papyrus drawings. The gaze of his beady black eyes was piercing and his attention to the details of the illustrations was unwavering. That’s when it dawned on me – this boy was Ister’s child, and the boy had mistakenly interpreted the drawings as that of the mother who had abandoned him.
I stayed a few more days and saw too much of Ister in the boy. This angry, weak, and sickly boy had fits of rage, condemned the world, and sought pleasure in pain. I wanted nothing more to do with him, and I left.
My travels became more ambitious, and I spent time in the northern continent becoming acquainted with the communities that Sol and Ria had fostered there. Also, I traveled eastward past the disordered meso-region that was pervaded by radical zealotry. I reached the territories that had been developed by Sum. In the northern and eastern continents, the cross-pollination of superior genetics from Pi and Ea’s progeny was blaringly obvious. Villages were fast becoming towns, and then small cities. Everyday people were literate. Some local geniuses were developing a variety of medicine and health treatments.
There was something interesting about all of these journeys for me personally because I hadn’t traveled to similar places on the real Earth. My parents had taken me to western Europe, and I had done a little traveling throughout North America, but the rest of Earth had been a mystery, and the exotic lands of Africa or Asia had been as foreign to me as the fictional planets of George Lucas’s Star Wars galaxy. Clearly, the Bigot Star had wanted this new world that I was being shown to mirror the real world I had been raised in. I refused to show gratitude to that horrible taskmaster, but the enriched experience was undeniable as well as me having a small sense of fair compensation. Effectively, I was traveling through China, the Middle East, and Africa while I was in the new world with my ideal physicality, ghostly protection, and favorable temporal experience. It was a unique adventure regardless of the loneliness and frustration of being captive.
However, I was troubled by the boy at the temple – Ister’s offspring. I returned to the temple for the last time. As mentioned, my physical form was ghostly but ideally constructed and I had not been aging. Suicide wasn’t possible. It seemed that I was trapped for as long as the Bigot Star planned to hold me. There was some consolation in the fact that big things were happening across the globe. Events unfolded faster than expected. The high pace suggested that there was a greater purpose to my being there than mere imprisonment.
Back at the temple, the boy had now become a young man. He had also become a prolific predator. He preyed on small children, usually boys, and sometimes he traveled as far as the meso-region to stalk his targets. This is when I started to focus very hard on mental fortitude and on bringing my form more material tangibility in the new world. Yet, I truly felt that some unconscious fear was standing in my way, and I couldn’t let my unconscious mind’s survival instinct force me into living immorally. This psychotic offspring of Ister had to be stopped and destroyed.
Ister’s son did not stop, and his murderous ways continued unabated. I could not watch. Also, I no longer went inside the temple because that is where the children were taken. Time passed and I continued to focus mentally on touching objects in the world. More than anything, I wanted to pick up a rock and throw it. It didn’t have to hit Ister’s son, but rather, just spook him and persuade him to stop his evil deeds through provoking an acute sense of superstition.
The days were long, and I no longer followed behind Ister’s son on his “hunts”. Instead, I stayed outside the temple and looked to the sea longing for escape. But, one night I had a reprieve of sorts.
Ister had returned to the temple and its son was still away stalking the vulnerable and helpless. Ister perused the furnishings in the temple and then settled in. A few days later, Ister’s son returned and was empty-handed. He was shocked to see someone in the temple – his sanctum sanctorum. I figured he must have thought that Ister was a concerned parent ready to accuse the abhorrent man of unspeakable acts. Instead, Ister removed its tunic and stood in front of its son bare. Somehow, Ister knew that the man was its son. Yet, the son appeared clueless to that relationship.
The son was enraged by Ister’s provocative display, and he attacked Ister with wild punches. Then, and most heinously, the couple began to embrace and soon they were copulating on the leather rug in the comfy corner of the stolid temple. I shook my head, accompanied by a strong sense of antipathy that washed over me. Somehow, none of it surprised me really. I left the entrance to the temple and felt distinctly ill. It was the first time my ghostly form and fortified body had provided a physical sensation of weakness. Perhaps, I was dying? This was a good thing, then.
Not much changed over the following few months and Ister helped its son with his infanticidal mania. Of course, Ister was pregnant once more, and I suspected that it wasn’t immaculate conception this time. The whole thing was tasteless for me, and I recognized the Bigot Star as an evil overlord attempting to rule through an Immoral Paradigm. This perception was radically different from my previously held belief that the Bigot Star was simply amoral and reckless in how it was torturing me, which I had believed it was misconstruing as a worthy imparting of special knowledge. Where once I had thought what I was experiencing was a perverse educational program, I now saw it as a perniciously cruel game.
Things were about to change, however.
Equity
A new day had dawned and my time with Ister was at an end. I was unburdened and it felt like anything was possible, except for that small detail that I was still invisible to the world. However, I traveled the lands freely, and although I was unable to communicate with others, my ghostly form sustained me ideally and I wanted for nothing physically apart from the touch of another. I felt no hunger or exhaustion, and sleep was more about peaceful meditation than a required rest for a taxed body.
Many years passed and I had been learning some of the dialects from the regions I visited. The loneliness stimulated a new faith in the idea of the skeleton crew of my real cosmic family and friends. I imagined they were watching over me. My guy, Henry, was giving me a thumbs up, and my buddy, Alan, was reciting a list of possible retributions against the bigot star. This Bigot Star had to be put down, but I didn’t yet understand how to do that. I had attempted suicide several times in my ghostly form, but death was not possible.
During my journeys throughout the new world, I was affected by nostalgia and returned to the temple at the mouth of the river Sep, north of the cradle where the Tribe of Oor had once prospered. Surprisingly, the temple was not barren. Someone had been using it as a home. I waited inside the temple and became increasingly curious about the nature of the guest. The main part of the temple had some furnishings now, including, a wooden bench and some twine baskets with various items stored inside.
Late at night, a boy entered the temple, and he could not see me although for a moment I thought he caught a glimpse of my shadow based on a surprised stutter step he took coming down the three steps into the temple. I watched as this scrawny, dark-haired boy wrestled with the leather pouches that I had once used as pillows. It was an aggressive show for him, and he appeared frustrated and angry about something. The pillows were still filled with down, but he had also put the papyrus drawings in the pouches as if he were coveting the rudimentary illustrations.
That night, the boy slept, and my curiosity persisted, therefore, I stayed in the temple and waited until the next morning to plan my upcoming set of travels. In the morning, the boy looked over the stack of Ister’s mother’s papyrus drawings. The gaze of his beady black eyes was piercing and his attention to the details of the illustrations was unwavering. That’s when it dawned on me – this boy was Ister’s child, and the boy had mistakenly interpreted the drawings as that of the mother who had abandoned him.
I stayed a few more days and saw too much of Ister in the boy. This angry, weak, and sickly boy had fits of rage, condemned the world, and sought pleasure in pain. I wanted nothing more to do with him, and I left.
My travels became more ambitious, and I spent time in the northern continent becoming acquainted with the communities that Sol and Ria had fostered there. Also, I traveled eastward past the disordered meso-region that was pervaded by radical zealotry. I reached the territories that had been developed by Sum. In the northern and eastern continents, the cross-pollination of superior genetics from Pi and Ea’s progeny was blaringly obvious. Villages were fast becoming towns, and then small cities. Everyday people were literate. Some local geniuses were developing a variety of medicine and health treatments.
There was something interesting about all of these journeys for me personally because I hadn’t traveled to similar places on the real Earth. My parents had taken me to western Europe, and I had done a little traveling throughout North America, but the rest of Earth had been a mystery, and the exotic lands of Africa or Asia had been as foreign to me as the fictional planets of George Lucas’s Star Wars galaxy. Clearly, the Bigot Star had wanted this new world that I was being shown to mirror the real world I had been raised in. I refused to show gratitude to that horrible taskmaster, but the enriched experience was undeniable as well as me having a small sense of fair compensation. Effectively, I was traveling through China, the Middle East, and Africa while I was in the new world with my ideal physicality, ghostly protection, and favorable temporal experience. It was a unique adventure regardless of the loneliness and frustration of being captive.
However, I was troubled by the boy at the temple – Ister’s offspring. I returned to the temple for the last time. As mentioned, my physical form was ghostly but ideally constructed and I had not been aging. Suicide wasn’t possible. It seemed that I was trapped for as long as the Bigot Star planned to hold me. There was some consolation in the fact that big things were happening across the globe. Events unfolded faster than expected. The high pace suggested that there was a greater purpose to my being there than mere imprisonment.
Back at the temple, the boy had now become a young man. He had also become a prolific predator. He preyed on small children, usually boys, and sometimes he traveled as far as the meso-region to stalk his targets. This is when I started to focus very hard on mental fortitude and on bringing my form more material tangibility in the new world. Yet, I truly felt that some unconscious fear was standing in my way, and I couldn’t let my unconscious mind’s survival instinct force me into living immorally. This psychotic offspring of Ister had to be stopped and destroyed.
Ister’s son did not stop, and his murderous ways continued unabated. I could not watch. Also, I no longer went inside the temple because that is where the children were taken. Time passed and I continued to focus mentally on touching objects in the world. More than anything, I wanted to pick up a rock and throw it. It didn’t have to hit Ister’s son, but rather, just spook him and persuade him to stop his evil deeds through provoking an acute sense of superstition.
The days were long, and I no longer followed behind Ister’s son on his “hunts”. Instead, I stayed outside the temple and looked to the sea longing for escape. But, one night I had a reprieve of sorts.
Ister had returned to the temple and its son was still away stalking the vulnerable and helpless. Ister perused the furnishings in the temple and then settled in. A few days later, Ister’s son returned and was empty-handed. He was shocked to see someone in the temple – his sanctum sanctorum. I figured he must have thought that Ister was a concerned parent ready to accuse the abhorrent man of unspeakable acts. Instead, Ister removed its tunic and stood in front of its son bare. Somehow, Ister knew that the man was its son. Yet, the son appeared clueless to that relationship.
The son was enraged by Ister’s provocative display, and he attacked Ister with wild punches. Then, and most heinously, the couple began to embrace and soon they were copulating on the leather rug in the comfy corner of the stolid temple. I shook my head, accompanied by a strong sense of antipathy that washed over me. Somehow, none of it surprised me really. I left the entrance to the temple and felt distinctly ill. It was the first time my ghostly form and fortified body had provided a physical sensation of weakness. Perhaps, I was dying? This was a good thing, then.
Not much changed over the following few months and Ister helped its son with his infanticidal mania. Of course, Ister was pregnant once more, and I suspected that it wasn’t immaculate conception this time. The whole thing was tasteless for me, and I recognized the Bigot Star as an evil overlord attempting to rule through an Immoral Paradigm. This perception was radically different from my previously held belief that the Bigot Star was simply amoral and reckless in how it was torturing me, which I had believed it was misconstruing as a worthy imparting of special knowledge. Where once I had thought what I was experiencing was a perverse educational program, I now saw it as a perniciously cruel game.
Things were about to change, however.
CHAPTER 24
Idolatry
It seemed as if Ister was about to pop. Ister’s son was a pure sociopath who was indifferent to the pregnancy and stayed focused on his predatory schedule. One night, I heard Ister cry out in pain, and it reminded me of the piercing screams when it was merely a baby. The shrill howl sent shivers up my spine, and again, my body provided a sensation of weakness.
Although, I had vowed to not enter the temple again, the sound of Ister crying out had me instinctively concentrating on getting up the temple steps to investigate. I stood at the entrance to the temple. Ister’s son moved past me – or rather, through me – and was at the side of Ister with more concern than I had ever seen from him. He held Ister’s hand much like a loving husband would.
Ister was breathing heavily and had clearly gone into labor, however, a moment later, Ister’s eyes bulged, and the breathing stopped. Ister’s head slowly rolled back and hung off its shoulders. Ister’s son tried at first to rouse Ister, but to no avail. Then it happened. Ister’s legs parted, and a deafening deep tone resonated in my head. The sound was deafening. An unnatural bright light filled the temple and Ister’s body began to come apart right down the middle. Ister was being split in two by an invisible force. The light was now blinding. The world shook. Then, it was over.
Ister’s son rose to his feet confused by the cataclysmic happening. Ister’s corpse lay limp on the ground in mangled halves. Ister’s son moved past me with a troubled look. I stepped aside not caring to have him to pass through me again. However, as Ister’s son moved down the steps of the temple, I noticed something following behind him – rot and decay.
Ister’s son carried a curse now and wherever he went he brought that curse and infected the land with it. Everything he passed then died. The land became barren, the waters dried up, the vegetation withered and rotted, and people fell down decaying and then ceased up and died.
Ister’s son spent the next few years traveling the face of the new world killing everything in his path. It seemed his goal was to see that world destroyed utterly. I followed behind quietly not directly affected by his cursed touch while in my ghostly form.
A few short years later, the deed was complete. Ister’s son had returned to the temple area, and not only had Ister’s son killed all life on the planet, but the planet itself had shriveled. The new world which I had once viewed as a globe was now a flat piece of dead land with no horizon.
Ister’s son stood in the middle of the remaining territory and looked up at the foggy, sunless skies. He shrieked. The war cry was something misplaced between celebration and defeat. A paradoxical exclamation to punctuate the desolation he had wrought. I wasn’t impressed by the weak, beady-eyed, cruel little man.
Suddenly, I felt something effervescing at my feet. I worried that the land was going to capture me once more in its quicksand form. However, that didn’t happen and instead the small patch of barren land was bleeding – oozing excrement. Anyone else would have been sure that they were now in Hell, but I knew better. I was in Kerplunck and Ister’s son had been Markis, the whole time.
Idolatry
It seemed as if Ister was about to pop. Ister’s son was a pure sociopath who was indifferent to the pregnancy and stayed focused on his predatory schedule. One night, I heard Ister cry out in pain, and it reminded me of the piercing screams when it was merely a baby. The shrill howl sent shivers up my spine, and again, my body provided a sensation of weakness.
Although, I had vowed to not enter the temple again, the sound of Ister crying out had me instinctively concentrating on getting up the temple steps to investigate. I stood at the entrance to the temple. Ister’s son moved past me – or rather, through me – and was at the side of Ister with more concern than I had ever seen from him. He held Ister’s hand much like a loving husband would.
Ister was breathing heavily and had clearly gone into labor, however, a moment later, Ister’s eyes bulged, and the breathing stopped. Ister’s head slowly rolled back and hung off its shoulders. Ister’s son tried at first to rouse Ister, but to no avail. Then it happened. Ister’s legs parted, and a deafening deep tone resonated in my head. The sound was deafening. An unnatural bright light filled the temple and Ister’s body began to come apart right down the middle. Ister was being split in two by an invisible force. The light was now blinding. The world shook. Then, it was over.
Ister’s son rose to his feet confused by the cataclysmic happening. Ister’s corpse lay limp on the ground in mangled halves. Ister’s son moved past me with a troubled look. I stepped aside not caring to have him to pass through me again. However, as Ister’s son moved down the steps of the temple, I noticed something following behind him – rot and decay.
Ister’s son carried a curse now and wherever he went he brought that curse and infected the land with it. Everything he passed then died. The land became barren, the waters dried up, the vegetation withered and rotted, and people fell down decaying and then ceased up and died.
Ister’s son spent the next few years traveling the face of the new world killing everything in his path. It seemed his goal was to see that world destroyed utterly. I followed behind quietly not directly affected by his cursed touch while in my ghostly form.
A few short years later, the deed was complete. Ister’s son had returned to the temple area, and not only had Ister’s son killed all life on the planet, but the planet itself had shriveled. The new world which I had once viewed as a globe was now a flat piece of dead land with no horizon.
Ister’s son stood in the middle of the remaining territory and looked up at the foggy, sunless skies. He shrieked. The war cry was something misplaced between celebration and defeat. A paradoxical exclamation to punctuate the desolation he had wrought. I wasn’t impressed by the weak, beady-eyed, cruel little man.
Suddenly, I felt something effervescing at my feet. I worried that the land was going to capture me once more in its quicksand form. However, that didn’t happen and instead the small patch of barren land was bleeding – oozing excrement. Anyone else would have been sure that they were now in Hell, but I knew better. I was in Kerplunck and Ister’s son had been Markis, the whole time.