Terrorism, starts in the home

Another August blown into town, hot, sticky, and lousy with no see'ums.1

Her name passes through my mind from time to time like the passage of a dark cloud.2

August, after all is her time of year; Suitably dark and verdant with air pregnant and damp under boiling skies. The atmosphere literally crackles with the threat of violent strikes.3

Don't know what possessed me to watch that movie. 4

I suppose the day was suitably stormy to remain indoors. Plus, I figured I'd made him wade through enough romantic histories, and documentaries. I owed him some good, red-blooded gore. He had after all been waiting so patiently ever since it hit the theaters to land in DVD form. Who knew? 5

I could have retreated into my music, books or called a friend. I could've done a million and one things instead. But I didn't. I sat glued to the flickering set, enamored of the costume design and romantic lead figure, in his cape and mask, and oh so civilized tongue. Who knew?6

Who knew some cinematic eye candy would unravel me to the core, fill me with remembrance, with horror, with those things I can't let my mind rest on too long for fear of desire. 7

Desire, the root of all human suffering.8

Desire. My suffering.9

Desire to stick my fingers in the wound and open it, for all of humanity to see.10

Desire to expose the weeds that choke the life out of good green shoots. 11

To expose the fungi, the first birth pangs of poisonous spores poised for escape. 12

Desire to scream what I know at the top of my lungs from the tippy topiest plateau of the great primeval mountain.13

Somewhere within those 90 minutes of futuristic fashion and revolution, my world tilted. I was again skinny and twelve facing off with my own tormentor.14

"Why'd you do it?" I asked her, "Why'd you do it!?" I screeched! "Why'd you take me from everyone and thing I knew? WHY?"15

A ripple of rage passed over her alabaster face, her answer came hissing from between her teeth, "I had to have what you had. I had to have your will. More distantly, as if remembering an ancient prom dress, or a brand new piece of vinyl, "I had to have it." " I had to." 16

I just learned the truth. I just plucked the first strand of her web, that would in years to come completely unravel revealing a dark tale, a real life horror story involving real life people, involving real life blood. I was very much aware, how lucky I was. 17

To be alive.18

But who would listen? Who would see? Who could possibly comprehend the self-sustaining horror contained in the blind corners of human hearts? This self-sustaining horror that is wildly rejected by every mind. Every soul on this planet struggling to push aside that which they can't let their minds rest on for one moment, cuz if they did... All hell would break loose.19

With nothing to prove my existence, there is none who can confirm my story. Without proper letters of introduction, without credentials, or reputation I am no one. Nothing. And being a nothing, a no one, my story is non, nada, ne pas.20

As you can see, this desire to shout it out from the rooftops, to blog it throughout cyberspace, to let it drip like poison from my pen across my page, torments me. The futility of my desire torments me. 21

I should rename myself Cassandra, or Sybil, or Desdemona, or Ophelia. My doom is just as theatric.22

x23

"Writer's", he said, "tell lies to reveal the truth."24

In her cell, she languished with no one for company but a rat. A creature whose only purpose in showing itself, was to steal from the tin plate periodically pushed through the slot of an iron door.25

Cruelly, she is dragged from her cell, by masculine hands down a corridor lined with identical iron doors.26

She is tortured in all the usual ways, icy showers, electrocution, beatings, strangulations, on and on and her features blurred, reformed and were replaced by a more familiar visage.27

I shook the familiar features from my sight and wandered off mid-movie to do a few dishes, keeping my ears pricked for interesting bits.28

Forlorn, she hears something rustle from inside the rat hole. Something that sounded less like rat, and more like paper.29

She stretches out her filthy little hand, into the filthier, little-er hole and withdraws treasure.30

A rolled up piece of parchment, written by hand. The first installment of the lost life of a woman. A modern life that was swallowed up by a futuristic society fuelled by tyranny, hysterics, and fanatical homogeneity.31

This was a woman who, believing she was about to die felt compelled to relate her story. To someone, to anyone. 32

To the person in the next cell, she tells a heart aching tale of coming out. First to her self with the recognition of her first crush. Second, to her parents who turned her away and disowned her. The next few years move forward, until she meets Ruth, the love of her life, the last woman she would ever be desirous of kissing. 33

For three years, they had each other. Until a war from across the Ocean came to their shores, in the form of plague, and hysteria. Cascading events ushered in a new age, and with it the new Chancellor, a tyrant more effective than Hitler, he swept his society clean of the undesirables, the lame, ill, foreign and homosexual.34

First they came and took Ruth. She wrote she had never cried harder in her life. 35

Then they came and got her. As she slowly starves and succumbs to her injuries of torture in the next cell, she recounts the joy of those three years, and her lack of regret for loving Ruth openly and freely as she had. Death was not feared, because she had those three years of loving and being loved by, Ruth.36

I was glad for the running water and soap bubbles as I bathed my dishes, letting loose a stream of salty tears for the extermination of this woman’s brief, bright life. 37

The saga ends with a few of these words, "I don't know you, I've never seen your face, or heard your voice, but know this, know, I love you.38

This was the sweet spot, the catalyst for the motion picture heroine's emotional transformation. 39

This message of love, given out of love and for no other reason than that, acted as an anchor, steeling our prisoners resolve to face what she must, without fear.40

This terror- come -love -out -of -the -blue -come -courage alchemical formulae clicked into time and place swinging the door inward, allowing the heroine to step outward, only to discover her prison was nothing more than a clever set design.41

Who knew some cinematic eye candy would unravel me to the core; fill me with remembrance, of unmasking the monster in the basement cell.42

Of coming face to face with my savior, the one who plucked me from sure extinction off the streets. Remembrance of her features shifting in Twin Peaks fashion from that of my most trusted ally, to that of my persecutor.43

"Why'd you do it?" I asked her, "Why'd you do it!?" I screeched! "Why'd you take me to the edges of death and back, over and over and over again?!"44

From the lip of her grave, a shady hiss issued an answer.45

"I wanted to show you. I wanted to show you what was shown to me. I wanted to show you, so you could explain it to me.46

Tormented, she haunts me still from a foot beyond my window, from just out of range of the lamppost’s glow, from just beyond the corner of my eye. She's still waiting for me to translate the rush and boom of life and death, for her. 47

Lillith, the emerald eyed demon of my childhood. The waxy skinned woman, self proclaimed anarchist, Crowlian styled hierophant, creator and destroyer of worlds. 48

Lillith, the consumer of cast off children, the shadow separated from the flame, the bitch who brays at the harvest moon and licks her chops in anticipation of the hunt. The witch that clipped the wings of the most ferocious angels, fell under my boot as I shook off the dust of her dwelling and took flight down a winding road.49

A skinny twelve year old, in the wide world for the first time in seven years. Her only companion, a black bird circling over head. Or was that a storm cloud?50

Snap!51

I returned to the present, and the movie; as our shaven heroin stands on the top of a UK building, arms raised, head shaved torrents of rain sweat and tears slick her white shirt to her slender frame. Lightening flashes above her, a crowning glory as she inhales her first free breath in life. Her savior/tormentor beams in masked pride behind her. 52

As sure as the lightening slashed the scenery on screen, my mind was slashed open by claws claiming eureka and saw Lillith’s portrait displayed to me as if on a dark mirror, the hippy V for victory sign she taught us was never about victory for her. As it was with the masked revolutionist of the film, so it also was with her. V is for Vendetta, an artistic illustration of the rationalization of emotional terrorism. A justification of means by the out turn of events. 53

Who knew some cinematic eye candy would unravel me to the core; to deliver a message from so far in the past, from some other dimension, from that hall of learning where all answers lie waiting, praying for discovery; the message that, "Terrorism, starts in the home."54