Everything that's in my head

Chapter 3

Dougal already had. In total about 327 times and into 15 different languages, He felt that medieval French lent it something that perhaps Mandarin didn’t.

He had certainly read it but what was needed was for him to sit with the author and thrash out some of the more cryptic passages. If he got that, so much the better, but if he didn’t, Dougal still felt he could put it to the council, confident that they would buy it.
Dougal followed Adam to his room and sat on the bed whilst the young man curled over and set his head on the pillow.

While Adam snoozed, Dougal began to read from a certain Chapter 6: a piece of writing that had certainly caught his attention. He read it quietly, giving it a gravity Adam felt it didn't deserve.

The Book of Adam
Page 221/222
'I had become a vampire in that I lived not on the blood of my victims but their vitality. I would suck in their sinewy energy and use it to warm the lonely, unloved beast within. It didn't satisfy me for long. I would always be back for more, when I needed a boost.
No matter how I resisted, I would find myself in a familiar situation. Why? Why does a dog lick its balls? Because it can. In that brief, fumbling moment, I felt alive and God, arms folded, looked away in disgust.

Don't get me wrong, I loved her; I loved her with my entire being. Every atom I possessed had her name scrawled on it. Every thought that ran through my mind clutched a bright, crimson flag with her face smiling from it. Her laughter fell about the room like water from a sacred spring and her smile was a thousand candles. When her feet touched the very ground, the sullied clay became holy and any pillow upon which her face rested, angels would pluck for feathers.

She ate me alive. She consumed me. I slept in her belly. As a desert thirsts, so did she. Her freedoms were unfettered by conscience or remorse. Pleasure itself was the Nirvana she sailed towards. If this was a way to trap a man, then she was the one who prized the steely jaws open. If there was a woman who could make saints stray, then it was surely she. I drowned in her rich juice and was content.

The Catch

Can one fall in love with beauty alone? Is it enough to sustain you?
No, and a thousand times no. No to infinity; eight trillion no's; a 'no' as big as a president on Mount Rushmore. It can't. It can never, ever sustain you. It is magnesium aflame: as bright and as hot but also as quick; a terrific spark and a lifeless ash, all in the blinking of an eye.

One day, it left me. I wasn't conscious of it as a specific moment in time. I didn't suddenly become aware, no epiphany just a slow, glacial realization, that I didn't love her any more because there was nothing to love.

It was something as simple as crossing a bridge. On one side I loved her but by the time I had crossed, the light had gone out. Then I had to live with this for many a year. I limped with it like, a man afflicted. A terrible, livid birthmark: invisible to the naked eye.

A temper, like a storm, comes and goes and at times is predictable, given the right experience: go ask a fisherman or a farmer.
The aftermath of a storm comes as a relief to all and a lovely peace descends. It is under this special awning of calm, that lovers love to dwell. For it is here, that love and sincerity are reborn. With her, there was no calm either before the storm or after, only a never-never world of tempest and more tempest.
Her temper was a knife that would slash soft skin.

I think, deep down, she believed in love, as seen through her prism. She believed in it as much as her life would let her believe.
Her first memory was her father beating her mother and dragging the poor woman out the door by her long blond hair. When father wasn't fucking the woman from the bank, Mother was fucking her Commie lover. And so it went on. Her youth was a Punch and Judy show with porn in the interval. She sat on the stairs and watched her mother pack, begging her not to go but Mother left all the same.

Shipped here and there between the two warring factions, she learnt to dodge the darting arrows of no-man's land all the while hewing from hard rock, an impenetrable bunker she could retreat to; away from the maelstrom overhead.

As the two empires fought, so work on this underground lair continued and by the time we were married, it was ready to move into should the occasion arise. No one again would, could or ever be able to get to her and if they tried she would simply close the iron gates and wait until it was safe to come out.

I had a terrible time with that bunker. It was yards thick. Her outside flesh was like a verdant garden, filled with fresh spring posies but scratch away the top soil and you could wrap your knuckles on an anvil of steel.

Time ticked by. Minds wandered.

I went to bars. They became an oasis of opportunity to feed my then growing addiction. It was full of the creatures that could give me life. That could carry me from one moment to another. From them I could replace the dying cells within me: In that brief fumble, I could satisfy my yearning. It would take me back to that time when I was loved, and loved; the way I wanted I wanted it so badly, only by hanging off its slender teat, could I breathe.

I told her what I had been up to with these creatures. I begged at her feet to forgive me. What she must have thought, I dare not think. There was this hysterical heap at her toes pleading for mercy; 'time to give the bunker an airing, methinks.'

We carried on as if nothing had happened. But it had and when I did it again some three years later and told her in pretty much the same way as before, she retreated further into her concrete cocoon.

The Revenge

Revenge is a thing that some people really enjoy and actively pursue: others prefer to lie on their backs and dream of all the things they would like to do to people but never actually get round to doing. She was the former. She set the dish to slow burn and while the meat stewed she went about her business of empire building. The timing had to be just right. Knives were sharpened in readiness for the feast, for it would be a feast, served cold naturally, cold as steel.
Her fruits became fat on the vine. I could feel the revenge coming. It sounded like a thousand horses hooves beating the ground, far off at first but relentless, drawing ever near and me in my paper castle.

That's when the tears started. My tide had ebbed, and I was taken out to sea. I looked in the glass and saw wrath; not at anything else, nobody or thing just at myself and my addiction.
She drew up a chair to watch as I writhed, content to see me burn.
And how I burned: a shaking, lifeless form of utter despair. This was her moment, this was her fat fruit come to fruition and it fell in her lap like an over ripe grape.
This revenge was terrible as it was perfect. even the devil pleaded for mercy but it was unforthcoming. The dice had been cast. She was now content and she tossed her head back and laughed and laughed and laughed.

The light had faded when Dougal put the book down. He placed a soft leather bookmark in between the now well-thumbed pages and rose slowly from the bed. He drew the curtains silently and tiptoed to the door. Before he slipped out he turned for one last look. He turned back into his true self and said:

'All hail, the tired voyager, journey's end'.