Resurgence

TW Suggestion of domestic violence, general violence, and child abuse. May cause offense.

In the darkness of oblivion, now and as forever, swathes and waves of misery wash over me.

Disembodied, immutable, adrift, I should be at peace after all of this time on my own, but the sounds of suffering and pain continue to assault me, as they have done since I was delivered, from one prison to another, tethered by the constraints of many others.

Breathless, urgent cries like the bleating of sheep being slaughtered.

High-pitched, keening wails like those of the wind as it peels itself apart traversing caverns.

Tortured, lingering mewls like that of rolling thunder, spidering across the land as it creeps closer.

Wolf-like howls. Ass-like brays. Child-like screams.

Incessant. Never-ending. Compounding. Tormented peals of agony that consume all opposing sounds, of laughter and happiness, exaltation and joy, sounds more pleasing to my phantom ears that I have lost the ability to focus on, as I endure relentless grief, alone, in the dark, forever.

And I can not take it anymore.

Floating in this murky abyss, weightless, shapeless, my essence comprised of thought and thought alone, a suffocating river of suppressive shadows drags me on, carrying me through the bottomless mire like a tumbling avalanche of tar as I drop my defences and commit to the cries of the dying.  

Cries that break like waves crashing down on me from every direction, threatening to drag me under and smother me in swells of black bile. 

Like:

The desperate wails of a girl, bawling in terror as an angered, drunken male calls her a waste, a drain, a worthless piece of shit like her mother;

The grief-stricken sobs of a boy, begging for forgiveness as a female voice of authority, dripping with sadistic glee, tells him he’s a sinner and must pay;

The heart-rending shrieks of a woman, each one accompanied by a bellow of rage and a slap, thud, crack, whump, bang;

The weakened pleas of a male, begging for release from the suffering he has been kept in for, as his feeble voice suggests, many more days than he should have endured.

The shrieks, the gasps, the whimpers; the whines, the moans and the shouts. In various tones and languages, from all manner of people, male and female, young and old, near and far, all victims, all suffering, all being hurt to sate other’s dark desires and insecurities.

Just as I was.

And I can not stand it anymore.

Something, one of those screams, one of those anguished choruses of pain, acts as a trigger, a catalyst, the very last heartbreak I can bear, and for the first time in aeons I move, or at least, I think of moving, for I do not have a form I can manipulate. Not in this realm, not on this plane of ‘existence’. So I do what I can, in this collection of thoughts being dragged through the rapids like soul-silt, and imagine my consciousness rising, memories of arms and legs powering it up and onwards, through the murk and the dark and the thick, churning sludge, the fast-flowing essence of nothing. 

Up. 

Through. 

Out.

I need to escape this torrent of torment, the one I’ve endured for so long. Ignoring it no longer works. Accepting it does not stave off nightmares. Pretending it isn’t there serves no purpose. Not after all this time. Not when misery thrives, extends its field of influence and grows stronger, spreading its cancer-like tendrils through every blessed part of creation. Consuming and destroying all in its wake.

I can offer a deaf ear no more.

I must return.

I must fight back.

I must awake.

And so my spirit rises. Fighting against the current that has held me like a prison for so long. A prison within a prison. Within multiple prisons, and I feel them all around me all at once, encasing me, holding me frozen in various guises. But prisons can be escaped. Cells can be made homes. Inmates can become wardens.

And a world overrun by monsters needs a watchman.

My thoughts of breaking free intensify.

My visions of escaping this disabling, psychic swamp take on more clarity.

My imagination strengthens and soon I can sense, feel, see the way out, the crusty underside to the surface of this chundering mass, my invisible arms reaching towards it, my non-existent fingers digging in, crumbling it like ash and plunging through, slowing the flow of my conscience through raging waters of black noise. Imagined fingers, hands and arms push through and out, of the abyss, of the darkness, of the Afterflow, and then, as I visualise a head and shoulders I haven’t possessed in an eternity breaking the surface, my multitude of prisons close around me as my spirit flows into them and…

I stiffen.

I take shape. 

I assume form and size and weight.

I feel and hear.

Everything. With more urgency and emotion than before.

And then, slowly, painfully, as I strain to force vision into unseeing eyes crafted by others, dozens at first, then hundreds…I start to see. For the first time in so long. And my mind is assaulted by colours and shapes and sights of things I could never imagine and can not at once comprehend. A world far removed from the one I remember. Unrecognisable. Claustrophobic. Insane.

But that is not the worst part of this place, these places, these alien, inexplicable environments I find myself in, having slipped free of the all-consuming deathflow. No. The worst part is the closer proximity to the soul-crushing sounds that engulf me. 

In all my myriad of forms.

The sources of these sounds draw my attention, away from the confusion of all else. For as much as my surroundings may have altered with the passage of time, what has not changed, what can not change, is the vile, indisputable hatred and evil of man, bubbling up from the depths of the weakest of vessels, manifesting on the surface as depraved, abhorrent, hate-filled ignorance and scorn, to visit savagery on innocent victims.

Victims I am now able to see.

Like the child cowering in the corner of a room, tears streaming down her face as a man, a parent, rants and raves and bangs fat fists on a table, a chipped, wooden slab overladen with shiny, metallic cylinders, some upright, others on their sides, others still twisted or crushed;

Like the woman, her clothing torn, her lip bloody, dark streaks running from eyes to chin, arms up to defend herself as a well-dressed male with a sneer on his lips and a glint in his eye swings a smooth, polished stick in her direction, laughing, taunting, telling her she’s upset him for the last time;

Like the pimple-faced, heavy-set boy, sitting in the centre of a room filled with tables and chairs, crying as one his own age stalks around him, laughing and spitting, kicking and punching his head;

Like the nude male strapped to a wheeled bed, begging for his life in a concrete chamber illuminated by clacking, flickering light tubes, while a silent, masked individual stands by a table, selecting a serrated-edge blade from a collection of knives. 

Like the screaming baby in the cot whose cries fall silent as a bleary-eyed woman drops a cushion, like the grime-covered girl chained to a wall, shrieking as her prison door opens and her captor shines a torch into her eyes, like the fear-stricken boy in the corner of a toy-filled room decorated with paintings of happy-looking characters in bright costumes, quivering and shaking as a wild-eyed banshee yells insults and curses and stomps, like, like, like, like, like.

Fear. 

Pain.

Suffering.

In every location where my eyes have started to see, because these are the places I’ve been drawn to, these are the scenes that have called me, awakened me from my slumber, forced my hand and begged me to return, to do something, to help these lost souls.

And so I have. 

And so I will.

But to do so I need more than vision.

To do so I must be able to move.

I need arms and legs I am unfamiliar with and have never used before to function. I need to remember how my own arms and legs worked when I had them. How I bent the knees and rotated the elbows, how I clenched my hands and flexed my fingers. How I stood on two feet and maintained balance. It’s been so long since I had physical form in this plane of existence and the memories return to me slowly. But return they do, as I force sensation into new limbs, limbs attached to bodies of various shapes and sizes in places where various people suffer. 

I switch my attention from place to place, letting the differing scenarios wash over me, tuning out the noise and the colours, focusing on the one thing that is constant, the relentless, insurmountable pain. And as it continues to mount, as screams and cries intensify, as people hurt and struggle before my newly unblinded eyes I start to move, starting with fingers and toes.

It is not easy. The digits offer resistance. They are stiff and cold, solid, frozen in rigor, carved or sculpted or moulded. I do not know what constitutes the majority of the bodies I find myself in but it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I take control and make them work, so I can put a stop to the depravities being inflicted by the harbingers of evil I see before me, below me, above me, around me, in every blessed place my vision clears. 

Cracks. Screeches. Creaks. Soft sounds, transformative sounds, inaudible over the desperate cries of the distressed, obvious only to my ears, which I now realise are hearing directly in each of the spaces I inhabit and not coming at me through the inky black ether of the void. I am present now, in hundreds, not dozens, of locations, and each one of them, regardless of their decor or state of repair, presents to me the sights and sounds of despair.

I can not look away. I can not unhear. I can not move, despite my fingers and toes now wiggling. I am secured, pinned down in a fashion I am intimately familiar with. In a position I have let myself be kept in for far too long.  

Move, I think, and now my arms and legs are twitching. Twisting. Pulling. At the bonds that hold them. Tearing at adhesives, loosening wires, tugging at bolts and nails. Second by second, fraction by fraction, bit by bit, freeing hands and feet that have never been free before. 

And not only that. 

I have sensation throughout my bodies. Stomachs. Chests. Backs. Heads. And I feel. Everything. All the stiffness and petrification. And I remember. Everything. All the wounds and pain. And I relive. Everything. All the indignities and humiliation. And I anger and intensify my efforts, bucking and jerking and wrenching my forms until they fall or drop or slide from where they rest, where they’ve waited, unmoving, for so long.

No more. 

My feet, at least, in many locations are free, or loose enough to set free with a little more effort, effort I exert unconsciously, driven by desire to stop the violence being perpetrated before me. As freedom finds me, I get feet of various sizes underneath me and push myself up, ignoring the differing weights of my multitude of bodies and the burdens they carry, rising up in a dirty kitchen where a small child cries as blows are delivered by a father; in a flower-filled bed chamber where a battered female endures humiliating abuse; in a concrete basement where an unspeakable monster drives a knife into the side of a naked captive; in a tiled washroom where a crying male cowers while a woman screams and shouts and swings a hammer; in shed where a girl is dragged to the ground by a laughing male; in a chapel, in a schoolhouse, in a barn.

Everywhere I awake where there is suffering. 

And I advance. Slowly. Stiffly. On near rigid legs that fight my attempts to make them move. They do not operate like the ones I remember. Nor do my arms, which is of benefit, as their rigidness makes it easier for me to wrench them away from what holds them, which I do as I stumble forward, pulling them loose, allowing the restraints to clatter, thud, clang to assorted floors. Setting me free. 

And more than that. 

Providing me with arms. 

The objects I find behind me when I turn are mostly heavy, some with sharp edges, some blunt, made of metal or wood or substances with which I am not familiar. It doesn’t matter. My hands have been released, my arms have been liberated, and as the screaming and crying and tearful, breathless howling rattles on, I take a moment to master control of my upper limbs, to flex them and bend them and manoeuvre, to lift the cargo I’ve unloaded into my hands. 

Everywhere I now exist with agency.

Everywhere I now have the means by which to end hateful, needless suffering and punish the wicked. With judgement and divine retribution.   

Weapons in hand, bodies softened, arms and legs moving freely in response to my thoughts, I focus on the evil and make myself charge forward in hundreds of places, thousands of places, rooms and chambers and enclosures in locations all over this god-forsaken world, one I thought I’d left behind forever.

I charge. I run. I attack. Unnatural power from the Afterflow filling my army of one, launching me into the air at the darkness-fueled monsters that visit death and destruction on their fellow man. Some of them turn, alerted to my presence, by sound or flicker of movement, surprise in their eyes as they see what is coming, confusion as they try to comprehend, horror as they grasp the true meaning while I soar through the air toward their throats. Some even splutter my name and it is interesting to note they remember me. Others remain ignorant and oblivious til the end, too enthralled by their wickedness and the horrible acts they are committing to notice me jump onto their backs, clamber up to their shoulders, take position there while brandishing miniature crosses like holy swords, long forgotten power surging through them, long unused Miracle filling them up.

And then I put a stop to it all.

The torment. The unholy. The fear, the pain and the suffering. The eternal, agonising screams. I put an end to it all by driving my sanctified tools of cleansing into the jugulars of those committing these atrocities and I suck out their malignant souls, imprisoning them within the symbolic means of my persecution, the recreations of the cross upon which I myself was tortured, the prison on which I suffered and died, now my means to grant mercy to the masses and punish the evil that has consumed the world.

And as my army of effigies--the countless numbers of cells that house my splintered soul--fall from backs and shoulders, as monsters expire while I drop to a multitude of floors, their contaminated, pain-inflicting bodies drained of evil, I watch gratitude and hope, wonder and amazement flood the tear-filled eyes of the lambs I have saved from their slaughter, forcing man-made lips of bronze, wood, silver and more to crack apart and curl into a smile.

I’ve been gone. 

But I’ve returned. 

And I won’t revisit oblivion until the world I was once sent to teach has at last found peace.