1
We had to learn about the crop, our home. Although we got the sense the place was forbidden and we, although we hadn’t learnt our nature, would not succeed in unravelling the mystery. Something was growing on those fields and it was a call of destiny to uncover what it was. It felt as if the whole meaning of our existence, if not existence itself depended on it. There was completeness there. It has been a year since we began taking on this ordeal as a trio. Before then things were murky and bleak. We coming together was also in the foggiest and hopeless of circumstances. I should make it clear that they found me, on the mystical day amongst the woods of an unknown land. Mystical because it is hard to pinpoint where and when in my memory, nonetheless the detail is fair, even to one with a blurry mind-eye it is simple to see.
I heard hoofs at a gallop approaching. Apprehensive, I turned my head to its direction. There was shouting and a faint cry of a man. Through the fog, further amongst the trees and in sight, something silver shone from the distance. Then the faint cry swayed back and forth from panting to crying. A wretched man in muddy jeans and a white jersey bolted into view. As he passed a trail of fear hung behind. He was a man pushed to his limits, running from immediate peril. He was clumsy, the mud slowed his heels and strained the bit of strength that was left within him.
Then emerged a black horse and the rider. His velvet cloak, red in the inside and black on the outside, fluttering behind him. Its collar spiked to his ears, mingling with his long white hair. There was dirt and stains on it like he had been fighting in a medieval battle. Focus distorting his face like anguish, his eyes determined and sharp. His right leather gloved hand at the reins as the left grasped a long sword. As he manoeuvred his way amongst the trees and branches the sword moved effortlessly and expertly like a part of his hand.
At the verge of my sight the man tripped. Slammed to the ground head first. His face submerged in mud and grass. He turned to his side and then to his back, spitting, wheezing and coughing. In a few seconds, the rider had caught on. With a tug, he reeled his black monster to a halt. Climbed off the saddle and strolled towards the man in his heavy black boots. He hovered over him for a few moments disgust, wrinkling his face with each second.
As the cold tip lightly pressed against the man’s throat he whimpered. “Take a dope it’s just a dip,” the rider said, clearly exasperated. His was voice guttural.
The man continued wheezing, his chest convulsing. “Please…please,” he implored. Affright, he tried to speak but he was tongue-tied.
“Why was your name on the inscription?” the rider demanded.
“I don’t know what-“
“One more of those and I will slit your throat!” He paused giving the man a chance to think it through. “What is the crop? What grows there?”
The man began sobbing.
He poked the man again and he flinched. His sob stifled. “You are a priest, right?”
“Yes.”
“So you know the truth.”
“Not that kind of truth.”
“What other kind of truth could there be?” the rider interposed sarcastically. “You work for the man farming it? This God of yours?”
“I know nothing of a crop or a farm for that matter!” he cried.
“How do you explain the painting?”
He did not answer.
“Tell me!” the rider snapped.
“You are a mad man,” the man moaned. “I don’t know what you –“
There was stillness then his voice broke it again. “I just wanna see my family again, Lord.”
The rider sighed, slumped his shoulders and then suddenly hacked the man like he was chopping wood with an axe. He was ferocious and cannibalistic in his execution. The sounds were eerily similar to the one shovelling mud with a spade makes. There was a spray of red haze spewing into the fog. Blood spurting into the riders face and attire. He hacked the throat and the head multiple times. It was silent. No screaming, no laborious grunts. Just the sound of that merciless act, the man’s body shuddering as life jostled out of him, the gurgling and the shovelling. Then the wretched man widened his eyes, there was a stare he gave…like he was looking at something of amazing awe. An enchanted stare, then I knew it was over.
The rider turned towards me and sized me up with a couple glances. “I’m Evlin Macfearson. What is it that you seek?” He grunted.
Surprised he had even noticed I was there, I blurted. “The crop.”
And that was my first encounter with Macfearson.
2
We walked in the woods, to a destination he only knew. I felt kidnapped by, caught and trapped by tendrils of his presence, and robbed out of thoughts of escape. At first it felt awkward but as we progressed it felt instinctively right, like a decision I had made. One that really mattered this time, one that would give the meaninglessness of my existence significance. There was no mention of what I had seen and he did not bother to explain anything. There was an assumed understanding it appeared. There was not much talk than "watch that puddle" or "let's go this way" or "don't try pushing through the branches ". I watched curiously and studied him as we went along. He was surprisingly observant for his contemplative state. He was fully engaged in two worlds, the mental and the real with sharp efficacy. All I became aware of, the further we walked, was how my calves ached and how increasingly lost I started to feel. My thoughts began to shift from the abstract to the more pragmatic, like the need for water and rest and how amazing it would be. As time went by thoughts got darker and morbid, of how maybe I would be impaled at midnight by this stranger I just met in some cult ritual.
Why can’t he just have me dig a grave and rest, I thought.
Quenching my thirst ceased to matter at that point. Not even rest in the comfiest of beds. I desired a deeper release… the kind death can only offer.
Oh, Death, you conjuring seductress.
Every entity … everything …
We got deeper and deeper, in the uncharted corners of the cosmos. The paradoxically inaccessible and accessible, the remote and abundant, the foreign and very familiar, the certain and uncertain, the real and unreal. A thin cord between the horizon of the existing and purely imaginative. Whether this is an explanation of my experience or a statement about the nature of things I am yet to discover for myself. However, that was the point I lost and discovered myself, and so I believe.
We reached a clearing. And as I walked into it, exhausted, a thought fleeted in my head.
The truth is in the irony.
The kind of thought that reaches and calls from the intuitive well within.
“You know how it starts,” Macfearson explained, the campfire illuminating his pale face. The truth is there was no way of knowing how or when it starts, it is something that you notice. It is there but cannot be put to a timeline, neither beginning nor end. I knew what he meant. He was speaking of the moment you start noticing it, not necessarily when it starts because no one can know for certain if it really did start, no one could remember. “You grow up in a house where you are always an absent member of the family. They forget you, at birthdays, the store or even when you at home. The only time they give you attention is when you have done something really bad. ‘Silly boy!’ they call you. Your father gives you a beating and sometimes you don’t know why. Sometimes you can’t remember why. You do stupid things like drowning puppies and dissecting your pets so you can better understand what makes them tick. You don't understand why but you are driven by energy, a certain curiosity that always lands you in trouble. Your mind is on a different lane than your peers and so are your senses. You feel so confused and out of place. By this point, you cannot tell if you are the mistake or you make mistakes. You are just a dumb child, a dumb burden of a nuisance," he paused, his face contemplative. Somewhere between trying to figure out the best way to articulate what he had forming in his mind and deciding to continue, not out of lack of words but a state of being overwhelmed by a whirlwind of surging emotions. Memories as nostalgic as a black and white portrait of a childhood never lived. The mind buries such things (sometimes in a form of delusions and illusions) making it hard for one to recall because it knows their danger and pain. Perhaps that was the reason of his pause, discerning and delving for the bitter truth. He gazed at me for the first time since, forwarding his intense aura. Tragically vulnerable and battered he was, exhausted on site by the weight of his demons. “Then the neighbour’s kids won’t come play with you. When they about to play a game of soccer or cricket you never get picked for the team. If they do you don’t stay long in the field, they kick you out. Then they start teasing you, calling you names. You are always a subject of ridicule and annihilation. Annihilation because they make you disappear. Makes you feel invisible. Then you isolate yourself, you get used to loneliness not because you desire it but because it is all that makes sense. At least in that deep nothingness nothing can hurt you but the problem is that the emptiness craves to be filled, it eats at you. Of course, right now your parents are relieved of all the complaining parents because of the trouble you cause. From then on your life exists on the periphery.
“Then you start noticing the feelings. They have been always there but all this time you did not see it, you only needed time alone with yourself to notice them. You start seeing things, realizing things. You get it, right?”
I nodded. I was losing my composer, this was an uncanny experience. In my life, I had never met someone who understood. Someone who truly knew…
“It is like you are at a wrong place. A false realm of reality…like the angels had made a mistake when delivering your soul to a body. That your existence is a mistake. You feel like wrongly human. The wrongness consumes you…an emptiness that eats up any human emotion you have. A nothingness that shouldn’t have any effect at all, because by definition it is non-existent. A ghost that you can only see,” he stared at me gravely. I had an impression this was one of his pauses again that he needed to tell me his story without a reply of any sorts. His inner face had revealed itself, all the toiling, agony and loss. I became deeply sad just looking at it. Then his eyes became teary. “You begin to wonder what the point to all of this is. Who are you? What is the nature of your existence? Why existence at all? Why life?”
He paused, snorted and looked away. “Once you realize you are an eagle among penguins you can’t help but fly.”
I knew what he meant, only then we were penguins among eagles.
“The truth is…there is no life before the crop, now we are slaves to finding it…because there is nothing else that matters really. And that makes us deathlings. I have never lived until the day I set out for my quest. I am still dead now, but the only time we get to live is when we get there. Find what grows there!”
“Am I the only deathling you have ever met since?”
“No, there is one more.”
Before I could ask he answered. "He will meet us here. This is where we sleeping tonight. He went collecting some wood. We had been hunting the priest for some time now. We thought in a few hours we would catch him and get the answers. We saw him at the town at first, but he was uncooperative, thought being here he would have no choice. We knew he comes here to pray every now and then." He paused. "But we have our ways.”
“Do have sleeping bags?” He knew what the sentence implied.
“Nah, we going to our house tomorrow. It is just this night.” He shrugged.
“What have you learned about the fields?”
He shook his head wearily. “Let’s just wait for Macxermillio, okay?”
3
I watched the flames as Macxermillio and Macfearson discussed something a few feet from the light. Macxermillio had not said much when he came. He added wood to the fire, offered me pie out of courtesy. He appeared very cautious and calculating. There was shrewd malice to him even though I had not witnessed it, a man like him carries his deeds with him like a smoker carries the smell of tobacco. Macfearson abided by him, following his orders without a sigh or question. Every now and then Macxermillio gave me a suspicious look, like he could see in my soul or I smelled like dog shit.
I could hear them talking in whispers but could not make out what they are saying at all, not much of it anyway. When that was the case I tried to use their tones to discern their attitude or conflict, if there was any.
“So what happened to him?” I heard Macxermillio ask, speaking a lot more loudly but still not easy to make out.
“He didn’t cooperate.”
“He saw you do it?”
“Yeah, the whole thing.”
“Are you sure that…” Then I couldn’t make out the rest.
“Not really.”
“What does he know?”
I saw Macfearson shake his head from the periphery. “Didn’t say. But he wants you to tell him.”
Silence fell, I felt Macxermillio’s cold gaze on the back of my head.
“Okay then,” said Macxermillio, striding to the fire. He sat cross-legged across from me. Macfearson joined next to him.
He studied me for a moment, for an uncomfortably long time. “Tell me what did you see when that man died?” Macxermillio’s voice was detached and distant, not what I had expected. I thought he would be interrogative and fierce.
I glanced at Macfearson who signalled my cue. “ Um… was like he was realizing something he had forgotten. Like he forgot to update his will or take out the garbage so his wife won’t be pissed. Just the expression on his face. Like when a women gasps and they put their hands on their mouth…they always seem to widen their eyes like that. It was like he saw something… something and it’s too late to do anything about it. I don’t think it was fear. It was all serene.” I shrugged and shook my head, looking down at my lap. Felt like I was getting an orgasm, it was just that release of tingling sensations wriggling through me.
“How’d you feel?”
“Like cuming in his face,” I wept, there was a convulsion of shameful emotions surging in me. Ones I never knew I had and did not want to have, but at the same time it felt homey and right. It was truth that slipped through my lips, strange and unlike me at first but the truest thing I had come to learn about myself. Saying this was as good as letting go of long-held guilt or confession of a burdensome secret you had kept for so long to a loved one. I had never felt better and worse in my life. "I wanted to kiss it, take his picture and cum a dozen more times. Oh… it was beautiful. It was a disgusting thought, but I couldn't help myself…I can't help myself. Like a porn addict who wants to stop. The only difference is that I don’t want to stop.” I paused and wiped my tears with the back of my hand and I could feel dirt on it. I realized I had been unconsciously punching the ground. I could not hold my head up and or face their eyes. The weight of the shame and the pain was paralyzing. I felt like a crack-whore, dirty, ruined and helpless. Hated every inch or thought of my being and my heart more for sustaining the abomination I am.
Hearts…mindless careless things, I thought.
Macxermillio unwrapped something, then gave it to me. It was slim and cold in the weather. Unwrapped, it was a razor blade. “Takes the edge off,” he told me.
The warmth of the fire was comforting like a blanket on a cold night, but the razor blade was better comforter. The first cut across on my wrist burned, the blood slowly seeped out. The most elegant thing I had ever seen. Then the shawl of pain and shame slipped off like the wind blows a hat off. I wanted more and the more I cut my wounds seemed to heal. The five fresh scars on my wrist, oozing, was one of the most enrapturing sights I had seen in the cosmos. It had to just make one happy. I watched, fascinated as each drop soaked the ground between my legs, if I could I would have devoured the soil but I was transfixed.
“The crop can rid us of all this pain,” Maxcermillio told me.
“How do you know this?” I asked.
"It is all intuitive. The truth is we don't know in what nature does it exist, but we have seen and felt enough to know it does exist"
“Like what?”
“Those man’s eyes, maybe. And how you have always felt a wrongness about you, the world and the not belonging here. Like you are lost. Feeling like something is hidden from you and your every move to find it is hindered constantly because you are constantly watched.”
“What are the fields or the crop?” My heart hang for the answer.
“That’s what we need to uncover. I’m sorry I know only what I have told you and nothing more.” He paused and gazed at my wrist. “The blade won’t ever rid you of the pain, it is temporary but still even when most of it is gone the afterglow of the pain can drive a man mad. It might kill you doing it too much and we are not sure yet if that is a way. Watch how much you cut as much as you can, as long as you can, we lost our friend Calvin from the self-harm. He endured to his limits and so can you. You have gotten this far alone, and now you have us.”