Destiny: Book of Light (3 page)

With the sun glasses on the whole sky moved in waves with the music playing in the background. With the glasses off the sky was still. He figured it was better to wear them. He emerged in unity with everything around him. He began to explore the new world he saw. Peering into bushes and all other forms of nature. It all became clear to him. Beauty in connections. Everything was beautiful. He picked up a guitar that had been lying around and began to play. It was second nature to him. He hadn't played in years but he didn't even have to think about what he was doing. He sat there and played all day, until night crept in. He looked down at his hands and he couldn't believe how well he was playing. So much so that it began to freak him out. He threw down the guitar and looked up to the sky. The night was not as beautiful as the day. The drug was turning on him. The sky started to cave in on him. "FUCK!"

He saw the evil in his head. All the people he had killed began to appear all around him. They just stood there. They didn't move and they didn't say anything, but their eyes followed him. He tried to run but everywhere he went they would just reappear. He could do nothing but curl up in a ball under a blanket. He knew it was just the drug. Cold sweats crawled up and down his back as shear terror was unleashed in him. He figured if he stayed right here then he could do no harm to himself and that this horror would pass, and it did. He gained control of the freak out and once he had control of it he was higher than ever before. It was as if he came through to another world. Everything was relative, his place on this planet. The vastness of the planet and the rest of the beyond.

I see the world differently now. I see waves harmonizing everything. Harmonizing them in pain, but beautiful pain. Pain that stems so much. Pain that nurtures hatred, lust, revenge and so on. Pain that carries with it so many memories down through the ages. Memories that no man should posses, or travel these roads. The acid is kicking in strong now.
"This is a batch of Morocco’s finest black," I said.
"Come join us?" I said.
"I will," she said.
I passed the second number to her, allowing her to spark it up. She did, and as the light from the cherry lit up her face, I was reminded again of just how much I loved her. Some time later, when we had gone through the best part of a quarter, the blind man spoke through the silence, with the exception of smoke related necessity.

"Some people say that they would hate to live in the past. But just like the fact that I don't have a sense of sight, makes no difference to me, because I don't know what I'm missing, or any other life besides the one I have. Would we miss the media? Maybe people wouldn't like to live in the past because they already know the benefits of the media and modern technology. But if u didn't know what you were missing, would it be better to not be controlled by advertising, and massive corporations?"

I looked at him with the best, falsely constructed, interested face that I could manage, which seemed pointless on a count of his blindness, but yet I found a comfort in it. My wife looked intrigued. So to please her I tried to keep up appearances. Again he spoke.

"I wonder why it is human nature to kill. War as it exists today, obviously didn't exist before. But what about when war didn't exist at all, and people only fought for mating rights, or food. The days when we as a race were more like animals than humans. Would there be more death then, or now. In that case does that mean that because the main amount of killing of our own race nowadays is organized into a category called war, that we are more civilized than our animal ancestors?"

Once again what he said went straight over my head. It began to stress me out that this guy, blind or not, had more intelligence than me, and could bond with my wife on a plain that I could never reach, who by now was totally involved with every word he spoke. I lit up another with the hope that somehow it would manage to console me. And again he spoke.

"I wonder what it is like to be a tortured mind. To feel pain that hopefully I'll never know, nor will most people. The torments of war. Abused children. Insanity. To be blind. All these simple words we give to some things that are so complicated. How are these words supposed to do so much pain justice?"

I couldn’t take it anymore. I stood up and made my apologies; I said I was going for a walk. I could hear his mutters of wisdom as I strolled out the door. I had hoped my wife would notice something was wrong like she usually did, and come after me to see if I was ok, but she didn’t.

I wandered alone down by the river. The night was wild. It had a feeling of evil to it, which I later put down to my own state of mind. The river, dark and withholding, moved silently, south, carrying with it, its murky secrets. My mind meandered along side it. All the thinking had tired me out, and I picked a spot next to the bank amidst the reeds, to sit among. After rolling, I put flame to quite an impressive number. It must have taken me an hour to build, but the time flew, as the novelty of an occupied mind took preference over the paranoia that went with thinking about my wife.

There used to be a day when we were happy, though it seemed like a distant dream, when we laughed. Unfortunately through the erosion of a structured and efficient life, dedicated to living in modern society, we became distant. I studied the habitat around me. Each member living in sync with some, and at odds with others. Life seemed much simpler. No tax, or money, or stress. I wish that just for one day I could be like that. Just to let my mind rest, and recuperate. As the joint got smaller, so too did I begin to lie back. The grass my sheets, and the reeds my blanket. With the little creatures of this earth as my company I settled in for the night.

I almost had forgotten about it. I sat up as if a child was being given candy. I reached into my pocket and took it out. Sheltering it in my hands it was as if it shone in the moonlight. I’m not sure what they had called this one, green hand, or green monster, or something. Either way it was acid all the same. This was my way out of this particular problem, just like the last time I took it, was a solution to whatever problem I may have had then. I popped it under my tongue, and set about building another.

The best part of an hour had passed and I was on my way up. I was beginning to see the night life of the river with new eyes. I loved this feeling and I knew that it was just the beginning, but nothing could have prepared me for what was going to happen. The trip at first was pleasant and going on, just the way it was meant to. My mind opened, as is the effect of acid. I began hallucinating, and felt at one with nature. I knew that in every acid trip, you came up, then, after a while, you would freak out, and then you would gain control of the freaking out and become higher than ever before. That was the way it went for me anyway.

Something happened just around when I should have started to freak. I became tired. I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t sure if it was safe to sleep with a head full of acid. It didn’t really matter though because I couldn’t fight it and if I tried I would only end up giving myself an aneurism or something. My eyes closed.
I woke in blackness and with a strange pain in my heart, one I had never felt before. I thought this was it. I surely had died and reached hell. All the worst stories of what hell was meant to be like, burning for all eternity and so on, were nothing but a freckle on the sun in comparison to this. I took a deep breath, and then realized despite being convinced I was dead, I could breath. I moved my right hand and felt something soft and familiar in my grasp. It was the arm of my chair. I heard my own voice come from somewhere else around me, and I heard it with more clarity than anything I had ever heard previously.

"This is a batch of Morocco’s finest black," I said.
Then I got a razor sharp pain that sliced through my brain, and as it did so I felt a rush of information, and memories that weren’t mine, infest my mind, and then relief.
"Come join us?" I said.
Even worse then before the pain returned not only did it slice through my brain this, time but the pain in my heart got increasingly worse, and then relief.
"I will," it was my wife’s voice, I roared.
Never the less another screeching pain tore through my mind, and again my heart felt like it was been ripped out through my chest, and as this was happening, I realized what was happening.

It was the strangest thing, you see with all this information I was getting I was still in blackness, and I knew these weren’t my memories. So then it occurred to me, I couldn’t see, but not only was I blind, these memories belonged to the blind man who I had previously left sitting in my place, in the exact chair that I was sitting in now, and then relief, except for the pain in my heart.

The sounds I heard after that were the sounds that had happened the previous night. Even though I was in the mind of the blind man, I could hear myself talking and the rustling of papers as I rolled, and yet my hands were motionless. I was now a mind with the mind of the blind man that I had resented. I began to hear his voice in my head.

"I hope they like me, these apart from all the others seem like they can accept it." I didn’t understand.
"I feel like just another person in the group, even though I don’t like this smoking, I’ll continue to. He sees me as another man rather than a blind man."

I still didn’t really understand, but I began to search through his memories and then it became clear. He had been blind since birth, and because of it he had developed massive paranoia. He saw himself as having a weakness, and he found it very hard to trust anyone. Every relationship he ever had, he fell in love very quickly, but although he was in love, his paranoia and lack of trust meant that everyday he had his heart broken. Everyday he spent with any girl he got hurt, until he woke in darkness the next morning. In the morning he was fine. Something as simple as his partner going to the shop by herself meant it could start it off again. His blindness stopped him from ever being happy, and because he tried and tried again, he just got hurt again and again and again.

With my wife, he had found in his life of blackness, someone he could trust. And he had come to my house with the last attempt at making a new friend in me. I understood him now. He wasn’t out to impress my wife; he was out to impress me. I had been so ignorant. I left through my selfish jealousy, and as I heard myself making the same excuses that I had made the night before, the pain in my heart, actually the blind mans heart, got worse.

I woke up and it was morning. The sun glistened off the river and I had never appreciated sight as much as right then. I began to make my way homeward with the intention of making amends with the blind man, but when I found myself on the steps of my house, I realized I was scared to go in. What could I say to him? Did he know that whatever it was that happened, happen? I sat at the steps, and tried to work it all out. It had been the best part of an hour until I heard my wife scream. I ran inside, and found her crying at the blind mans feet. He was dead.

"He just died, I was sitting here talking to him, not five minutes ago and I went in to make a cup of tea, I came out and heard him take his last breath."

Once again my selfishness had chosen my path in life. I would have given anything to speak with him.

Unlock. Now press #. Menu. Messages. Inbox. There were two of any importance. One from a guy called Anthony about dropping the cash to a block of apartments, and the other from a woman saying she was going to leave him because he wasn't man enough.
They were born in the same hospital, the same day. In fact only an hour apart. Their Mothers had become acquainted as they lay in beds next to each other, through hours of labour. You would wonder the conversation to be had in a scenario like that. "So how are you?" "Err y'know yourself, can't complain. Great day for it isn't it?" "Ya the weather seems to have picked up nicely alright." And even though they were brought up only thirty miles or so apart they never met until the age of twelve, after both Sarah's parents were killed. The edge of a cliff decided to fall from under them while they had a picnic with their daughter. Luckily she had spotted a patch of daisies and had decided to make a daisy chain for her Mother.

After it gave way, rushing back, she arrived just in time to see them, along with the various picnic inventory hit the sand some ninety feet below. Hours she spent just staring down at the sprawled out figures of what used to be her parents. And then the night sky. Clear stars. It wasn't until the next morning that a farmer taking his dog and wife for their Sunday morning walk, found her. Before she was eased away she threw the daisy chain down to her Mother. She watched as it fluttered in the wind, back and fourth. It landed in her hand and it seemed as if her Mother smiled. She was sent to live with her Aunt.

Sarah had been an only child and adapting to life in a six children family, as an unwanted burden would prove to be very challenging. The Cronins had built a name for themselves on Ashwood lane. The children would be left to run wild causing mayhem up and down the street. Mr Padraig Cronin, or Paddy as he was known, had a reputation for fighting down the local and then waking the whole lane up at early hours of the morning, as he played out arguments that had led to the fight at the top of his lungs. Mrs Roisin Cronin on the other hand was considered a saint. How she had the strength to deal with it all, was the topic of many conversations to be had by the gossip driven neighbours, as they hung the clothes out on the line or waddled their way to Bingo on a Thursday night.

There were whispers that Paddy would often bring his fights home with him. Roaring and shouting would often be heard in the dead of night as neighbours would pretend they couldn't hear it. Denying it to themselves for fear of having to get involved. So concerns remained as whispers. Whispers were also made about other members of the family. Loud bangings, crashings, smashings and screams could be heard during the day too, when Paddy was at work down the docks. Most men on the lane worked the docks, but there wasn't much wealth to be had from it. Hard work and little wage meant keeping food on the table was an achievement, especially in the case of the Cronins, with 6 mouths to feed and most of the income going to The Shamrock Tavern.