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CALLASSA
COSMICALLA
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Erotica and Brutality
in
Multi-Dimension
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Welcome to the Unbelievable
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What is unknown is everything
Come, be with the Cosmicalla
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Preamble
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My name is David Lawrence. I was born in Yorkshire, England, I am twenty years old. Today feels cold, which is to be expected for late Autumn. A few moments ago I think there was a smattering of rain against the window. I don’t know for certain because the curtains are closed, but it sounded as though there was rain. I can begin describing this house where I live as being almost immersed by tall trees. These are predominantly silver birch and oak, with willows down by the small lake. The house is old, as houses go, having been built over two centuries past. Everything inside is likewise, old. To find the house, a visitor has first to discover the not very obvious entry road and then be led through and toward an asphalt frontage. It is an uncommon house because most houses are neither old nor hidden. Therefore it’s an untypical place for a young person such as me to live. But I would say that most people aren’t so fortunate though I know many hanker for what is more up to date, is more in touch with the modern world and so forth. I didn’t begin this way, no, not by any stretch of the imagination. ‘Imagination’ … What a word this is. I am in the mood for reflecting on the past, for reliving the journey I made to here. I have to say, it is a journey that plays havoc with what is regarded as common-place, a journey that takes the word imagination and casts it into the air.
Reflecting is not an uncommon thing for me to do because my journey (I like that word) was and still is absolutely fantastic. I will just say that connecting up with what most people would assume to be a character of science-fiction is a contrary thing to do. I mean, for a person who is surrounded by the classically ornamented contents of this house. For example, the four poster bed and its tapestry canopy has a very obvious presence and fits with the historical context of the house. The armoires and dresser finished in marble are equally earthly in their heavy statement. Not to forget the oil paintings of romantic scenes that adorn the walls. Likewise the dark stone that was used to build the house, the surrounding trees and the rain now falling upon them. So, for me to introduce, in addition, something greater in significance, something that intuition might reject. (I mentioned the words ‘science-fiction’). To include this, what most, if not all, regard as more to do with celestial myth, hearsay, exaggeration, product of inventiveness, imagination, even lies and so forth, is an odd thing to do. I agree, because I think it is odd too, while at the same time, I don’t agree, because I absolutely cannot, no, simply because what ostensibly is ‘science-fiction’ is undeniable present. Yes, it is.
I have to say, just to add, that this is not fiction nor be these the tenets of any science. Therefore thinking in terms of science-fiction will need reevaluation. You’ll see!
I can hear the ravens calling. There are many of these wonderful birds living in the dark and dense cover that the trees make for them. Their sounds enter the house even while the windows are closed. Though they are perpetually present I don’t always hear their sound. I’ve seen all kinds of birds, of all colours, all sounds. I like birds. It’s an early morning of October. 1985. As I said, I think it’s raining. The rain I always find makes for heaviness about things, a solemnity. Perhaps it’s because of the atmosphere that sits beneath the clouds and presses down, heavy and mellow, mellow and heavy? I wonder whether the intention is to put a person in a reflective mood? I mean so to hear the birds?
I am alone for the day. Well, until late afternoon when ‘she’ is due to return. Who is she? You rightly wonder. This is the reason for my being deep in thought, while lying here and upon this canopied bed. She. The woman. ‘The Cosmicalla’. That’s her designation. Yes, the Cosmicalla and it is unusual, but so is she unusual. I’m smiling at the thought of where the coming hours of recollection will lead. I know it will lead close to her, even though she is absent. Perhaps I’ll get to know a different nuance of her? That I might learn or discover what I previously missed, there, while among the rivers and the fields, the places and the people of my dreams, the child’s dreams? While among the contents that can never grow old? The contents that are fantastic and though the life that holds them is by necessity destined to age?
I have been living here for just over one year, in this, what I can describe as a magically charged time. For me to arrive at this house from where I began means starting very differently, in the place I was born, among the people I knew then and what I was doing. Importantly, it means starting with what was there and how it carried me to this wonderful place, carried, as does a winged body carry its possession. I like my prior analogy because I do like birds.
I could just as easily say what began as a childhood fascination and after a short time did snatch me and then dispense me among the clouds and beyond. It didn’t stop there. I am referring to a certain female, more akin to those one sees in comic books, fantasy art and such, a female whose features and abilities are super-exaggerated, super-human. She was there in my past and I have to say, she is here now, the Cosmicalla. Believe me.
I was reading a magazine earlier. It contained articles regarding this and that. I wasn’t really interested, though there was a statement (among many) regarding the place of science within the quest for understanding of ‘space’, the prospective ability to travel into space and discover new worlds and the life, expected to be thereupon. All is a challenge of science to shift the human race toward discovery. It’s not a picture of the future anyone can ignore because this ‘quest’ is ingrained into the fabric of life. The space stations, the satellites, the landings. I suppose ever since there was a man upon the Moon, it has been there. I thought it was interesting because what I read fits nowhere with who I mentioned prior as, the Cosmicalla . . . Cosmicalla. . . Cosmicalla. . . I suppose it’s not helpful at this point to claim this or that about her. Though I will say; that scientists may move along in what they create. They may seek in their creating and may create in their seeking. I enjoy word play. However, I want to paint a portrait of the Cosmicalla and the context in which we met. My doing so brings me close to her during her absence, as I said and fills the time while she is away. But picturing her will also serve to describe what she really is, a multi-dimensional form, connected and disconnected to human time. Disconnected to my time and to everyone’s time. Welcome to the unbelievable and what should not be true. The unknown is everything. Come, be with the Cosmicalla. I shall start at the beginning and during my altogether different life.
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Cosmicalla
I saw you in a line of light
You began and ended quickly as I held you in my sight.
Neque Lucis novae aurora tam superba tam decora victa
tuo surget splendor
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Chapter One
David Lawrence is a different
person in a different place
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I am now eighteen year’s old. The village where I live is called Little Hampton. Our street, one of three, has fifty houses. The other streets have same, all joined together. They’re called terraces, or ‘two-up two-downers’. We have bathrooms that were built on at the rear. Years ago, I’m not sure how many years, there was an outside WC. I can’t imagine what that was like to use during the biting frost. Little Hampton is surrounded by the Yorkshire moors and so the winds blow colder here. It’s cold inside, let alone out. Today is November month. It is late autumn of 1984.
My dad was a coal miner that is, until he became disabled. He suffered an accident with a coal cutting machine. His arm was badly broken. It becomes claustrophobic in the house because he’s here all the time with my mother. I have no brothers or sisters, which is just as well. We would be sharing this back bedroom if I had. My mother waits on my dad hand and foot. She’s not unusual. They seem pretty similar here do the people. I get along with my parents. We watch TV together, more because it’s switched on all the time now that it’s a colour set. We don’t have a car. Most people do. Most have a great deal more than we have.
Boxing, fist fighting, this is my only skill. I have never been good at schoolwork, nor anything else. My knuckles are like steel balls according to Smacker, the guy who organises my fights. He is also my trainer. He’s old is Smacker, but knows what he’s talking about. He was a fighter before I was born or even thought about. Smacker is my friend. He runs a gym and boxing club situated next to the colliery. He’s also a coal miner. Everyone in Hamp is or was something to do with coal. I don’t want to do the same because it’s bad for the lungs and knees. Most of the miners suffer. They cough and spit out that black phlegm. I can hear the early shift passing at five am. I’ve always been able to hear them. They wear hobnail boots and they make a clinking sound on the pavement. About two hours or so after more will be returning from the night shift. And so on, on and on. I want to be a professional boxer but Smacker told me my time is limited. I think he meant I have to work up more quickly which is a risky thing to do because I can end up in the ring with someone I’m not ready for. Smacker is doing his best. I’ve had ten fights and won them all. Not all of these were official, but were just staged at the club and ended up that way. I don’t have any money to help me and this is the reason, I suspect, that Smacker is concerned. I ought to have sponsorship but I do not. I just have my dream. Many have the same dream, I know. I am different and I like to lay here with my legs propped against the headboard of my bed and reflect on just how different my particular dream is. I am not training at the gym today. I’ll take a run later, over the moors and I might take Bill’s dog, Bill is our neighbour. He has some kind of senile problem. He forgets things. He doesn’t know who I am most of the time and when he does, he tells me I’ll end up the same. He’s seen my face when I’ve been knocked around in the ring. Bill’s wife is perpetually making cups of tea.
Until I go out and this will be hours away, I am just going to lay and think. I’m going to think about the Cosmicalla. You see, she is the force in my punches. She is the way I move my head to the left to avoid a right that would likely remove it altogether. She is my determination, my training. It’s funny how someone like me can be saying these things about a science-fiction character. That’s what she is. I began reading about her when I was about ten, in a comic book. I used to want her power. She could travel through universi without constraint. She could emerge in places as though she had always been there. She’d be a Roman and frighten the Hell out of people. Her, with a metallic breast plate, horned helmet and winged feet. Sometimes she was ragged, an ancient pauper because she had lost her powers. I used to read about what she was doing and then go watch the boxers working out at the club next to the colliery. I watched Smacker, him with his bald head and big arms. He was so different than the Cosmicalla. The science-fiction chick, as the comics referred to her. Different than Smacker in the extreme, to look at, I mean. I plucked up the courage to ask him if I could learn boxing and he told me to come back with my dad. I went home and returned with my comic books. I’d carried them under my arm. I gave Smacker these and told him that the Cosmicalla was my dad. He laughed and sent me home. Next day I went there again with a note from my proper dad who was on afternoon shift. He was sitting at his table and listening to music. He said that he was only there when not working down the pit and this meant that unless I was prepared to go during the night he wouldn’t see me. If I did, there would be someone to give me a lift home. Well, the Cosmicalla, the space chick, she was always flying around in the dark (until she came to where it was light). I told him about her. How she could fight men, was beautiful, and that if I was like her, I could do the same. POW. WHAM. SMASH. It was simple. He covered his face with his hands. I can remember. He was looking at me through his fingers and mumbling. How many years ago was that? Three . . . Four, perhaps. Now, he says I’m the best fighter in the world, even better than he was. I don’t tell him so much that I still read the comic I had when a kid. That they’re all here in a box next to my bed and none the worse for wear. He’d worry about me if I went into how I haven’t done anything ever that was not touched in some way by her, the Cosmicalla. He’d think I was nuts. I don’t care, but I do about him, so I keep certain ‘things’ to myself.
I hurt my wrist the first time I ever hit a bag. Smacker put these huge padded gloves on me and showed me how to move my arms in a jab. Jab. Jab. He told me. Ten times with my right and ten times with my left. My shoulders, they ached straight away. Then, when I hit the bag I thought I had broken my wrist. He did too. It was the end as far as he was concerned. He was ready to take off my gloves and send me home with a note he was going to write. I started hitting with my left. I hit ten times. From that first contact my fist made I felt something being sent through my arm and into my body. I loved the sensation. I did it again, ten hits and harder this time. Smacker was amazed. He said I was too quick for someone without any experience at all. He thought I’d been to a different club and was just messing him around. Me, then a fourteen year old kid. I wasn’t messing him around. Even though my right wrist was sprained I tapped the bag. I wanted the pain. I wanted it because I knew even then that the feeling would follow me everywhere I went. That pain, it was like the Cosmicalla, the woman with the winged feet, who wore the breastplate and horned helmet. She held pain in her hand and blew it into space. It’s true.
Because Smacker had been impressed he decided to show me around the gym. The guys were all so much older. I can remember some of them looking down at me and sporting their massive arms, tattoos and slicked back hair. They weren’t too friendly either. I suppose by modern standards, I mean how gyms are portrayed in movies, Smacker’s gym was an absolute dump. It was filthy because it was next to the colliery, so there would be dust floating through. There used to be this rubber belting on the floor that had been taken from down the hole. It always had a smell about it. The place was ‘done up’ as they say, a year ago. It was better before. Anyway, for a young kid in a world of grown-up fighters, it was pretty daunting. As I said, they were not exactly a friendly bunch and didn’t take kindly to being asked things. I had Smacker, so it didn’t matter. He showed me what to do from the start. I mean, how to bring me on developmentally as a fighter. He told me a lot about things that weren’t anything to do with boxing. Things my parents never did. I think he wanted to make me mature. I didn’t appear that way, telling him about comic book characters and such, especially those who were female.
The first advice he ever gave me was that a fighter should avoid being hit. That boxing was an art. An art that was a defence first and an attack the second. That if I thought I could be an attacker and nothing else, all it would take would be someone who came through and that I wasn’t skilled at preventing and I would be hurt. To be hurt is not the objective. The reverse is and all the skill that a boxer develops is to achieve this end. Anybody can, he told me, go attacking, but the best boxers of all time were not only that. Those who didn’t look like fighters if you saw them on the street. There were those who used to train with Smacker who must have been contrary to his rule because they had flat noses, scarred faces, even cauliflower ears. I came to learn that despite the good advice, theory and practice can merge into each other. While training I was a defensive fighter, but for some reason I wasn’t so while sparring. Of course, it was a long while before I did spar. I was given a bloody nose. I can remember it well. I wanted to hit back and never stop. The more I tried, the more I was prevented, so there.
Around the time I began, when I first went into Smacker’s gym, I wasn’t a tough kid. Actually I was the opposite. I would get pushed around and even beat up by other kids. It was and still is a very rough neighbourhood. I can remember going home bawling my eyes out and with the surface of the road imprinted in my face. The beating, by someone older and bigger, remained with me. The feeling of not being able to do anything, others laughing, that sort of thing. It didn’t take me long to toughen up. I did bag work. Hitting and hitting this giant who didn’t even move a fraction for my effort. Not hitting with sequences of ten rights and ten lefts, but with controlled flurries. These would mesmerise another fighter, I was told, if developed properly. Feigning punches to invite a response, then pow, to deliver the intended blow, ideally as a close-in uppercut. It took me about six months to know what I was doing with these punches. All of the fighters at the gym used barbells. I took to using them too although there was some concern that it wasn’t right for a kid. There were arguments in the gym about this. The first time I used a dumb bell, it was one that was specially made up with a sleeve and tape, because I couldn’t even move the others. There was a long rack and I used to wonder who on earth would use the heaviest ones. A monster was what I assumed. There was someone who did. I think he was a wrestler who used the weights, not a boxer. He was a monster. I couldn’t move my arms for a whole day and I ached everywhere. Weights didn’t seem to be the right thing to combine with boxing. It would harden me up. Though at first I was unsure, I was getting tough very quickly. I was disciplined. I had a routine. Smacker said that without this routine all my efforts would come to nothing. I had to refer to these routines and note the changes and how they affected me. We’d talk about them. Well, not seriously at first and these talks were more like questions bawled at me. Later and when I was older and wiser we would sit together, Smacker and me and talk about what I just mentioned. That and about other fighters who were in the limelight and whose styles we could examine. There was no one who had reached any height at the gym. I wanted to be the first. Smacker wanted that for me too. So did the Cosmicalla. Yes, she did. She was more instrumental in my getting there than even he was and I know you are wondering how on earth that could be. This is understandable.
I think it was about three months after I started my boxing, when I was over fifteen that I got into my first street fight. It was with one of the locals who’d beat me up. Him and his gang, they started pushing me around at school and I reacted. After school and out in the fields there was going to be a fight. I was going to get a kicking, or so the story went. I had sparred at the gym, against someone waving pads at me. Not in a ring or anything, but I was undaunted. I wasn’t afraid like I had been before, the feeling that had caused me sickness in the stomach. Not to mention the humiliation from the beating and seeing people’s faces as they were enjoying watching me be hurt. Well, after school when I got to the arranged place, there were loads of spectators waiting. This kid I was fighting, called Smithey, was sitting with his girlfriend. She told him to go beat me up and come back. She was sitting there watching, smiling. I can remember what she looked like. She was skinny, with blond hair. She was nothing like the girl I knew in the comic books. The ‘space chick’ I knew even better by then.
It wasn’t going to be a fight where rules prevailed and Smithey being bigger and heavier had an advantage. It was going to be all-in fighting and I knew I would have to modify the techniques I’d been taught and had practiced. I had to be able to use his approaching weight in such a way that while avoiding it, I made sure it collided with about five punches. I knew vaguely how to go about doing this because the fighters at the gym were all way bigger than me and sometimes I used to mess around, play acting with them, pretending fights. They taught me a few dirty tricks too and I had to promise not to tell Smacker. Using elbows was one and kicking the side of an opponent’s leg so to break it, was another. The objective being to avoid in-fighting with a heavier opponent. I suppose it’s easy to talk about how best to do things but reality is different. Anyway there was something different for me now, even then, so young. I felt confident but more than that, I had this killer instinct. I didn’t just want to hit Smithey, or even cause him harm, I wanted to destroy him. I wanted to remove him from the face of the Earth and leave no trace of him ever having been alive. I started with this intention.
Smithey came at me and lunging and I knew he would try and wrestle me to the ground. If that had happened I’d have been done for. It was what took place the last time. I didn’t want that feeling again. I shifted to the side of him and landed my knuckles clean to the side of his temple. I couldn’t hit him again because he’d moved past me. I turned and I was facing his back. That was when I hit him as many times as I could muster. I hit him everywhere, on the back of the head, to the side of his head, between his shoulder blades, in the kidneys. He stumbled and that was when I really started. I think I must have landed fifty blows to his head after the initial first I turned my fist in a screwing motion as I made contact. There was blood everywhere, including over me. When he went down I kicked him in the face four times. I felt the tip of my shoe removing his front teeth.
Those who were watching weren’t too pleased and especially Smithey’s girlfriend. One of the teachers had come running up the field because he’d seen the crowd assembled. I was in trouble, deep trouble. The fact that Smithey was much bigger than I was and had a reputation as a bully, went some way to aiding my case, but not far. I was suspended from school for six months and had to appear at Juvenile Court on a charge of causing grievous bodily harm. There was talk about sending me to borstal or approved school for a year. Smithey had lost his upper and lower front teeth altogether, had a fractured scull and bleeding on the surface of the brain. I didn’t think he had any brains but it just shows you. I was told that I had to behave, otherwise it would be borstal and my parents had to pay restitution for Smithey’s injuries to the tune of one thousand pounds. Not a lot now, but it was then. I never went back to school after that and there was a lot of bad blood in the street. People spitting on our door, throwing rubbish on the step, that sort of thing. Having to pay out money was a big deal for my dad, but when Smacker found out there was hardship, he offered to pay the monthly installments. He said he felt responsible, him teaching me to fight and all. He said to me that he was proud of me, but I hadn’t to tell anyone. He said that the alternative would have been me ending up like Smithey was, so that was that. My training at the gym took on a whole new meaning. I was growing up quickly. I was getting stronger, more muscular, heavier. I was taking my meals there for free (sandwiches warmed up in a microwave). I’d also taken to sparring almost daily. When there was no one available I used to shadow box in the ring. I could do this for an hour and make it seem that no time had passed at all. Where was my comic book heroine in all of this? She was there. Yes, I used to imagine sparring with her. I know this sounds crazy, but it’s true. I would be landing blows onto her metal breast plate, never on her face. She had some fancy tricks up her sleeve (she didn’t have sleeves). One was doing leaps over my head and causing me to have to turn quickly to avoid being hit. I didn’t avoid her and she hit me, more a slap. It was great fun. Obviously no one could see her, nor even imagine her. Only I could do that. I saw her pretend to be gasping for breath, grinning after landing a blow, perspiring against the ropes. I began wondering what she was like without clothes? I used to do this after she’d gone, disappeared. She told me that soon she would show me what she was really like. It was just that she needed her armor plate and stuff because it gave her super-human drama. Without any of these she would be just like everyone else. She told me the same things that I read in the comics. She was acting them out. This wasn’t really the truth of her, because she was much more. I say she ‘told me’ because this is how it began. She had moved from the comics and into the world. She had moved into my dreams. But really, she’d been there all along. Yes, this really is how it was.
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As a growing kid I was curious about women’s anatomy. At fifteen, I was hyper-curious and at sixteen I found out what I’d wanted to know. The other kids I knew and who I had grown up among seemed immature to me, the up-coming boxer who had been educated about life by adult fighters. Needless to say, I’d grown differently than the other kids. Not just physically, but in every way. I think I’d become a repository for much of what the guys at the gym had missed out on during their younger years and enjoyed talking about. I wouldn’t have had this at school, nor dare I say anything like it. From being told things I became very curious, like I said, especially with respect to what were described to me as ‘first experiences’, the how’s and the where’s, as per the female anatomy. There were many descriptions and as many as there were guys at the gym. I didn’t have the first experience in the conventional sense and saying this might invite the kind of response that I used to see on TV programmes. I am referring to when there is a look over a pair of spectacles from a more educated and worldly person, likely sporting a beard and saying something like, “What you’re telling me is obviously nutty. Please get with the programme!” Anyway, as I said, the Cosmicalla had ceased to be restricted to a comic book heroine because she’d entered my dreams in a vivid way. A way that on each occasion it happened, changed me most profoundly. I’d been seeing her in a different context for a while, but she really began having an effect on me when I was sixteen. I think she chose sixteen because it made things seem appropriate. Not that she could be accused of anything, because she wasn’t real, right? No, not right, wrong. OK so far?
When I first saw her in a dream it was in a castle that occupied a place in space. It was made from planets and stars and thus of infinite size, inconceivable in form. This was how she described where she lived. To try, I subsequently discovered when I’d gotten used to this transition, to make things relatable for me. A castle wall was symbolic, she said, of the separateness that existed between her and human beings. That human beings existed in space as did she, but that human beings existed within her. It was impossible to make me visualise this latter description so a castle was better. It distantly accorded with where the creator of the comic book story had placed her. She told me that the idea to describe her at all had come from her in the way she was with regard to me. The only difference being that she was in love with me and the comic book artist had made her appeal to me. What about all the other kids who were fascinated equally as I was with her? They would grow from the fascination into a world of artifacts that would fascinate them more, whereas I would be with her. We were not even at the beginning stage. She subsequently told me something that when I recalled it after and during daylight, remained very powerfully in my mind. This was in relation to ‘human beings living within her for a duration without beginning and end’. She said that the all of everything could be likened to a woman’s reproductive system. This, as with the case of human women is prone to infections. In her case human beings caused the infections by their being on this particular planetary body and for her to remedy this infection she had to medicate. Medicating meant doing the things that the comic book pictured her doing. I mean coming to the Earth, appearing vaguely like a human, but with immense powers so to change things. Her powers were unlimited in application and degree of ferocity. The Cosmicalla was therefore by definition, an alien being, one who didn’t care much for humans, especially those who disrespected other creatures and caused explosions. But she loved me. Why?
I had little choice other than to accept the fact that I was not simply creating this relationship, that I wasn’t completely insane. Not a bad way to be insane, I must admit. She told me how I could go find something, a buried coin for example. When I went to the place she told me, somewhere I had never been before, I found what had been described. She did this often. Occasionally the things were at the gym. Sometimes they were what was going to be reported on TV. I was left with no doubting that she existed independently of my imagining her, though I couldn’t understand what she was. I never would, because to do so was impossible. This was how I would spend my days. I mean filled with magical thoughts regarding what had taken place in dreams. This and my boxing, while everyone else was at work, while doing what everyone did, except me. Interesting, you think?
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The guy I used to enjoy sparring with was called Sidney. He was sixteen when I first started with him. He’d gone to work down the pit and didn’t like it because of the heat and the water, not to mention the lack of air, a kind of important thing really. Sid was a real terror. He even tried head butting me once while I had him on the ropes. His aggression taught me how best to defend against it, that being never to be carried along in it. Aggression caused a fighter to make mistakes and be open to a slamming. Of course I never slammed Sid in the mouth, though he asked for it more than once. He was a street fighter, not really a boxer and couldn’t make the transition. Smacker didn’t like him much. I mention him because it was while I was sparring with him that I became aware of something that would aid me in my boxing and in ways that would give me a great advantage. It was as though I weren’t alone. There was something ghostly around me and of course I did more than suspect that it was connected to her. Through this ‘addition’ I had sufficient extra strength to overcome my opponents with ease. In truth, I had suspected this was the case going back to my fight with Smithey, the bully at school. Now I knew as fact. Of course, my trying to explain this to anybody would have got me locked up. The effect of this was that I wasn’t fully in control. This is awkward to explain in the sense that a boxer has to be and how I’ve described boxing. But it was like I was carried along in a power I knew was additional. I knew because it felt external. I was a changed person in the ring or should I say while fighting because I could guarantee that any scuffles outside the ring would invite the same enhanced (enchanted) response from me. In many ways, I was a comic book character myself. This was how many were portrayed, not only the Cosmicalla, though she was who I had a relationship with. The aspects of this relationship that fascinate even while I am looking back are firstly, what we did together (and still do) and secondly, what it was like with her (and is so now).
What we did together is best approached, I think, through the emerging of her influence. I was aware of her presence as I said. Sid, my first sparring partner wasn’t the only one to help me learn that I was kind of unique. There was Fred too. I had almost killed Fred. He was a Scotsman, on loan from a gym in Manchester. He was staying nearby with relatives. He was going to teach me a few things. Give me (and everyone else) a whoopin, to use his words. He was tall, a fact I remember well, him being six ten. His reach was far superior to mine and the important point being that he was years ahead in experience. I didn’t like him and I don’t think I ever could have. He seemed to be the bully type with a great deal to back it up. I suppose the word arrogant is appropriate. He used to brag about his trip to the USA, where at a Detroit gym, he sparred with a middleweight contender. I can remember it was a rainy Monday night. I’d walked to the gym and gotten wet through. I passed no one along the way. Outside the gym was a sporty new car, I forget the make, though it had that ‘can’t afford me’ air about it. How could I ever have something of that cost? I was walking everywhere because I didn’t even have bus fare. All the gear I had were gifts. I didn’t even buy the food I ate. Here was someone brandishing the fruits of success and it bothered me. Not because I wanted the same. I mean, I had the Cosmicalla and what could compare? No, my gripe was with the intention behind it. I mean, to brandish something ostensibly what the lads around couldn’t have. We were all poor. Poverty bound us.
Smacker had told me to get on with my training and ignore Fred, the Scotsman. I saw him in the ring. He was good. He had an elegance about him, suggestive of a fighter who’d been receptive to good advice. There were many I knew who wouldn’t take dancing lessons because they thought it soppy. They preferred using weights. Fred obviously (I was of a mind) had taken dancing lessons. His footwork was superb and the way he delivered his left jab was as the force of an eagle at full speed. He seemed to own a sweeping elegance. He didn’t care for me watching him and said so. Of course, my response had been; I don’t want to watch you, I want to fight you. This bothered Smacker, because he thought I wasn’t ready. Well that was what he said, but there had been a list of surprises all along with me. One more wouldn’t do any harm.
There hadn’t been many of the locals in the gym this night. I was pleased of Smacker’s attendance, but he had to leave for work within fifteen minutes. His not being able to stay put an additional pressure on me. How long could this fight be made to last? Five minutes? Five seconds? It was a challenge. While I’d been getting changed there were words of support from some of the others. It was something about Yorkshire pride being on the line. It was more than that. I wanted to see just how quickly I could deal with this. The power. The force. The addition.
When I looked into Fred’s eyes I saw deadness indicative of a fighter with no qualms. He would put me in hospital, even end my career before it had begun and not care less.
I think the ‘fight’ lasted one second. Just as long as it took for my fist to contact his chin. It was a blow like the ones that used to almost remove the practice bag from its chain. The blow I knew could do just that, if I wanted it to. Fred was out cold and according to what Smacker said later, was on the danger list. They took him away in an ambulance. No one understood what had happened. We found out that there were multiple fractures to his jaw and he would never be able to fight again. A full recovery would take a long time. There were legal issues because Fred was attached to a promoter. He was making money from fights. He wouldn’t be any longer. It was going to be a problem. But like Smacker said, and as he would say many times, ‘better him than you’.
What had happened? Was it me? Was it what had come along to assist me? I knew the answers to these questions at a superficial level, but there were many I could not even begin. One of these was why. Why hurting people in this way? I wondered if it would change to something wider, like I would want to kill everyone? Or whether what was influencing me might change and become like the pictures I used to imagine of beautiful places. A beautiful woman. Her. This had already become partially addressed because I had seen ‘her’ in other circumstances. In her castle that filled space.
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It had been one of those evenings when my leaving the gym at ten o clock had coincided with the afternoon shift ending at the colliery. I’d walked home with a few of the guys I knew well and who lived on our street. Despite having had showers they’d carry dust around their eyes. It looked like mascara. They were tired, wanting a drink, in a hurry for the Old Lantern. I neither worked nor drank beer, but still I felt close to them. They were like me in many ways though I was privileged by not having to do what they did. They had money and I didn’t. This was on my mind too. Anyway I bid them good-bye. I was looking forward to an omelet and a thoughtful hour spent with my feet up in my room. I’d trained hard while there had been men underground, even beneath me. I’d been thinking about this until I saw a couple of the local girls all dressed up. They were waiting beneath the old gas light for whoever was going to take them out. My seeing them left me wondering. It didn’t take much for me to wonder about girls. It was always there beneath the surface, but not in the way most would assume.
For some reason, when I had walked through the door and seen my parents watching the TV I became very bored. I just wanted something different. It had been a while since I’d sat with them. Now, I couldn’t bear the programmes.
I made something to eat and took it upstairs to my room, the smaller, back room of the two. I wondered if my parents ever questioned why I kept the box of comics? Why I was always reading them? To me it was more of a grown-up thing to do than what they did, night after night, day after day. What I had was quite literally fabulous in comparison. I knew that others would think so too if they were in my position. Unbeknown to me this evening, things were going to become very different.
I ate my omelet. I’d put too many onions in it and pepper, but it was fine. I had a black coffee. I’d been told what I was supposed to eat, or better stated, what to avoid eating, which I was of a mind was almost everything. I couldn’t eat meat or anything to do with it, even though Smacker advised doing so. I never told him I didn’t nor why. Anyway I was falling asleep. I had a few new records (remember this was before CDs took over). One I’d borrowed. I needed something with energy and loud. I played Led Zeppelin. The track, ‘Stairway to Heaven’, was my favourite because I felt it was saying something more than it appeared to be. I would think this because of what or who was always on my mind. I picked up the comic book lying at the top of the pile in the box I kept them in. I turned to where her installment began; The Cosmicalla. She was there, with her flowing morass of hair, her breastplate and horned helmet. There were cosmic powers that the earthlings had somehow commandeered and they were attacking her with them, trying to kill her. I saw the message in her large, dark eyes. The same message was in her mouth, upon her lips, as she obliterated the earth vehicles and made dust clouds which she took in her hands and blew away. Her expression while pouting her lips and blowing changed to one of excitement. She was looking straight at me. The message was of the same stuff as empowered me during my fights. I began staring at her thighs, at her crotch. I wondered what a woman was like there? To look at and to feel? I mean, I didn’t know. What unimaginable experience that would be. It was a discovery I was going to make. Yes. Ready?
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I can remember hearing the sound of the TV downstairs. It was floating above my fall into sleep. Sometimes there were loud voices, other times these would fade to be at a distant place. There was background music. All of this was coming and going.
I am not sure how long I had been asleep. Whether I’d begun the experience immediately or after a while. Or even whether I was asleep at all. I was in my room, sitting as though expecting her. In fact, it was the middle of the day, because the sun was coming through the window. The room bright, warm as mid-Summer always is with the sound of the TV always there. Suddenly came a knock on my door. It was more a gentle tap. The sort that is surreptitious, secret. The door opened slightly, then with a swing it was open fully and I saw her there. She was wearing a blue dress with white and red flowers in its pattern. Her hair was as I knew it, long, luscious, brown. As brown as her large, opiate eyes. She wore a belt to exaggerate her voluptuous shape and blue, high heeled shoes to compliment her staggeringly fabulous elegance.
I stared aghast. Had I been expecting her through a prior encounter? Well? I felt that I had but also that there had never been any other experience as this. It was to do with her familiarity, her wondrously beautiful familiarity. Weaving itself through me was the recognition that I already knew her well. Differently? I knew nothing, for certain.
“I have come to see you,” she said and then she hurried in. She closed the door. All the time I was watching her, incredulous. All the myriad aspects of her were battling with my senses for prominence because I was being intoxicated by her. I stood when she was facing me. Her voice against me was subdued for fear of others knowing she was here. It was wonderful. The proximity of her. The taste of her breath, that sweet, so sweet womanly breath. Her eyes upon me. The secret sharer.
“I flew here, Lawrence. Yes, I did. I flew to you.”
I knew not what to say. I saw the features that hitherto had entranced me so very often. Now they were here in more worldly circumstance. Though what she was saying was not.
“I love you,” was what she said as she reached and took my hand in hers.
“I flew from the castle because I love you. I can do these things. Please, do not be alarmed. You know me now.”
“Yes,” was all I managed to mumble, if even that.
She was engaging my eyes in a severely disabling gaze. Was I really seeing the eyes of the Cosmicalla? Yes, I was. I was aware of the softness in her grip. My heart was beating very quickly. She knew the extent of my trepidation. I could have gazed into her eyes for the eons that exist in which to live.
There was an acknowledgement in the smiling motion of her mouth, of the fact that she was the most sought for of all. I was hyper-aware of her significance in the small familiar space with the things that I’d grown up with. I was now standing beside the box of comic books. My attention was wholly on the depth most evident in her eyes.
“I can do all of those things,” she said brightly. “Yes, all of them. Though the writer who portrays me exaggerates the human’s ability. I have already told you this. My baby . . . Mine.”
While I was breathing I was taking something of her into myself. I was becoming filled to overflowing with her aura, her exhilation.
“We never began, you and I. There is no beginning nor is there an end to the circle of my smile.”
I was wondering how she could be here without her breastplate and her helmet? Neither had she winged feet. She needed these to retain her powers. What did this mean? My questioning was inappropriate, immature. Or was it?
“I am more than can be depicted,” she said, and having read my thoughts. “I am all of things.”
“More?. . . All. . . ?”
“If I began telling you I would hold you forever in that telling, but to do so is not important. What is, is that you know me in truth, not fantasy. That you know me sensibly in this, what I make for you,”
The grip of her hand had become tighter. My fingers interlocked. When very close to me, she whispered, “But not here.”
I was making comparisons in my mind of how I used to imagine her and here, like this. She wore a fragrance.
“I am young,” she said. “Never grown, like you, equally shall we never grow old.”
I wanted to speak to her but I was unable. Even more so now than before. I knew what she meant, that she was not a child but that she was forever encapsulated in the idea of a child. She could fill my thoughts with explanations. She didn’t wish to. I could still hear the TV downstairs and there was someone in the street outside. She observed my reactions with a swift movement of her eyes.
Then she was no longer there. I was staring at the window. I was staring through the space where she’d been standing. I didn’t know what to think. I had little if any time to think because I heard her voice, “Come hither, you cannot remain there. Come.”
I felt the grip on my hand again. But where was she? Where? And then I found my reality altogether changed.
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“I am the Cosmicalla. I am the Celestial Queen. I am the Sacrosanct. I am the Immortal.”
I had been told by her that she could make new worlds in her image, that everything was possibility. It didn’t matter that my perceiving of her was of the infinitesimal speck. What lived and died was of that same infinitesimal consequence, occurring in the expanse of no limitation. The beings that exist were likewise, limitless. To know her in a minutae of existence was impossible unless she desired that it be and in thoughts that manifest, that are likewise, a minutae, a flash so small that they don’t ever exist at all.
This castle wall. This tower. Was it earthly moment made here? The Roman? Medieval? Nothing? I was looking toward a sky, satiated by darkness, from a place that was equally dark. I was connected to a sleeping mind. If that mind ceased to be, this would all disappear, I knew.
“There are significances,” she’d begun to say. “In what you see, they are made again. There, where you are from.”
She’d gestured to a faraway light. A light immersed by myriad, larger and smaller constellations of lights.
“What the humans think they see really is the case. But they can’t encompass. To perceive a movement and make stories is all they can do. Except for those like you whom we take away. I want you to understand me in your lexicon, as you have where you are from. It is what you are. For now.”
She was attired in a flimsy material, akin to chiffon. My mother had a scarf similar, but it wasn’t that material. I’d touched it and felt tingles in my fingers.
“You would see me in many places if you looked. You would know who I was.”
I could see through what she was wearing. I was looking at her breasts. How they moved when she did. I had never seen breasts before, nor the thighs of a woman. She was more than my imagination could ever have conjured.
“I am not alone in my singularity. I am countless. I am not distance, mass nor motion. I am not a body. Do I excite you? Lawrence? My baby born?”
“Yes,” I said with great difficulty. “You . . . you do, much.”
She moved her head in a smile, as though pleased with the fact that I was excited. I was feeling many exaggerated emotions and excitement was merely one.
“I can take you to places myriad because I can create them. Without what I am, you can do only what was intended on the journey that humans learn. But such is unimportant. What is, is the truth . . . I can allow you to know what is beyond their making. I cannot do this fully yet because it means connecting you with what you are not. Yes, I can do much more upon your death.”
I was listening. I could breathe in the cosmos. I could touch her. I was temporarily a fraction of that same truth that she was describing.
“No,” she said. “You are not. You are only a figment of this, my making. But I can be just like you where you are from. This is the scale upon where you are disadvantaged. But it is of no matter. I am in control. I am how you read about. Yes, Cosmicalla, the female who so fascinates you. Now, you know why.”
I was staring into her eyes. I felt as though my sight were sweeping across eons of space. I was gazing inside her, as she’d said.” Gazing and gazing . . .
“Human history is about what humans see. The unseeable, the unknown is everything. My presence cannot be shown for what it really is. I can link you with the civilisation that was closer to me. You would see how their advancement and sophistication was harnessing of the female, their warring a different aspect of my perceptive power, my authority and my jurisdiction. From the Caesar, Pontifex Maximus, forth and thence, to my leaving them to Constantine’s different vision. Yes, I was among the greatest of all humans.”
What she was telling me was not unfamiliar. This was what I had read. I’d seen her devising ingenious devices and also weapons of war. It was all to do with why the Romans were so able. Isis and Osiris, as well as countless other deities, were among them and the objects of their supplication. The cosmic authority who paid them back for their devotion.
“Yes, you do know,” she said to me. “I would like us to bathe.”
Because she’d introduced the subject of the Romans, I knew what she meant, by bathing. I had read stories where, under the guise of being a Roman and after engaging in ‘cosmic tasks’, she would visit the baths of the Emperor Caracalla, so to relax and sensually indulge herself. Was she going to take me there, to the year, 215? Was she really? To there?
Upon moving, she’d become the female with whom I was most familiar. Her long hair was a torrent of fierce brown curls. There were the short purple sleeves of her undergarment, the silver coloured breast plate, the same purple garment that stopped short of her knees, her horned helmet, winged feet and spear. I was held, utterly transfixed by her gaze. How incomparably beautiful she was. The Cosmicalla.
“Come, my little earth baby. I am your pilot. Ha. Ha. Ha. Yes, to where you say was AD 215. Ha. Ha. Ha.”
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Baths of the Emperor Caracalla
Marcus Aurelius Severus Antoninus Augustus
188 – 217
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THE COSMICALLA
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Neque Lucis Novae Aurora Tam Superba Tam Decora Victa
Tuo Surget Splendor
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Sounds . . . Fragrances . . . Heat . . . Voices . . . Bodies .
. . I was among the most sensual combination of elements and this, she told me was a symbol of her sexuality. Gilded patterns in gigantic extent were gleaming from everywhere I looked. The magnificent roof assembly, the marble ornament, the colours, the undeniable beauty. The people bathing in this massive palace of delight were likewise beautiful. I held her hand and she was naked beside me. Naked we, among myriad. Many rooms, many multi-faceted voluptuous arrangements, the harnessing of cosmic power, her nakedness and the feel of her thighs against me was epic.
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Darling sweet Philip, welcome to the Cosmicalla. I have a suggestion that will exaggerate your reading into the cosmos, and which is that upon completing each extract would you make love to me? This will engage a very different, nay unique reading experience because you will feel me in the timeless space wherein is the Cosmicalla …
CALLASSA
XXX
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CALLASSA
COSMICALLA