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CALLASSA
Invicta Veritate
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I AM ZA
Part No. III
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‘I thought of the evening time we spent together she and I. I told her I loved a woman who entered my dreams and she believed me, one of the very few who had. I told her about Callassa. I told her about aliens. I told her I knew we were not as the rest. Darling Moot.’
CALLASSA
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Why had I been thinking that particular way, that I had entered the meta-cosmic vagina? Did I even have my own thoughts? Had I a complete mis-perception? Who was ‘I’? Could any distinction be so simply made? I asked because while anything was possible, yes, my thoughts were somehow entering me and the intention carrying them was indeed felt as a loving caress, but there was more to it, everything more. I was in sore need of love, yes, while here in this unrelentingly bizarre place. I was being given that, but could I even begin to picture what that loving caress could mean?
There was no sound. I remained hidden. I held dear a picture of my lost life, those images, entering and leaving what had been akin to a memory-stage in the sky, a replay. These relived emotions were becoming more intense and so was my feeling of estrangement from Callassa. With my face buried, I recalled her hair, its familiar perfume, the warming and deep brown of her eyes. All the time I knew I was completely lost in this other-dimensional plateau.
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It was while I had been ready to leave the protective cover of the undergrowth that something began to happen. I could see, but still I remained crouched. I was cautious and who wouldn’t be? Who else would need to be? Huh. My thoughts were as whispers …
Strange forms had begun emerging from the connection. What were these shapes of things? They were all different. Some were comprised of what appeared to be moving parts, as meteors shooting through the dark immensity of space. Others were distant shapes made from multi-coloured air and others more ghostly. All were moving, blending. For some strange reason I made the association with music, with a symphony that made me afraid of hearing it. I was where I was not meant to be. Wasn’t I? What I had been when deposited from the craft was not what I was now. I had merely wished for this guise. Was I as they? Were they the alien forces dispatched? I knew not, but they had begun to destroy the connection. There was a sound as the line to where I had come from disappeared. It really was being destroyed. These beings could move through the air and through where my memories of childhood had been replaying in the sky. Their speed of movement was immense. What was I to do now? Should I have made myself known to what I had just seen? Had they destroyed the connection, or somehow dismantled it? Was the connection shared by beings from elsewhere? I buried my head. I knew absolutely nothing. Had I ever? Again my terror was clawing and clawing at me.
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When I was again somehow ‘assured’ that I was alone, I moved but only very cautiously from my hiding place. I walked tentatively to where I had been before, the place on the sand. This was my place, I decided. Then, I wondered why I had likened what I’d just witnessed to music and to a symphony? Even to rainbows in wetted and warmed air? Maybe that was some kind of assurance that I would pick up on? Maybe it was that there was significance in music I had failed to appreciate while … While … Sing to me mother, mother please do.
While upon my knees, I began thinking of the mansion in the woods and as before, there appeared a picture in the sky. I was there, just as I had been with Callassa. She was standing by the stone fountain in the garden. We were not moving. I stared, awe-stricken at the enormity of this particular vision, at its treasure, its collective significance. Then I began asking myself whether we were in fact dead? When I had seen my parents in the prior vision they’d moved, all be it in an unnatural movement. Then, I saw that we were in fact dead. What I saw caused me to begin to vomit. We’d been obliterated. Yes, this was true. The hostile aliens had inspired our deaths. Callassa had grossly miscalculated their capacity. There had been no protection of us. I didn’t want to be dead. I wanted to go back. I wanted for things to be as they had been. I wanted the joy of the daffodils, the roses and ferns, the long, long days spent together. What we’d been capable of doing had overridden all of that. I refer to our capacity as space travelers, from a place on the Great Scheme that was in transition. Human beings in their entirety were no more. I recalled Callassa having gone to the future and in doing so causing furor. The delicate balance had been caused to shift and all that had been was caused to change. Was this what was left? Were these new forms of existence? Were they at a different position in the Great Scheme? Was I in a wholly different domain, away from what I was and had known? I suspected that both were true. Everything was possible, I had been told so many times. For me, here in my extreme limitation, I would have to overcome, but how? I had wished myself human and I was. I suspected that I would remain so. Were there others here in similar circumstance? Perhaps many? If I cut my finger would I bleed, or would I have to wish it? What about sustenance?
I continued gazing affectedly at the flat and deathly portraits of my life, as they were being presented. There was no order to these. I was a child again and I was an adult. The before and the after were being jumbled together, a scattering of what appeared to be familiar. Then non-human images began in front of the replaying of my life. These really did pass silently and eerily between and seemed closer to me. They were giraffes, dogs, elephants, horses, crocodiles, spiders … cats … birds … They were ghostly, unseeing of me. There were more and more creatures appearing, quicker in their gait. I wondered what the significance of their natural movement was, while what appeared behind remained still? The sky was alive. Was I the sky? Was it the sky at all? Would it be dark soon? Would I sleep?
I began seeing whales and dolphins among creatures of the sea. I didn’t recognise the others. I was going insane very quickly amid this massive proliferation of imagery, of personal message. Was I going to see all that had been from where I came?
Was it that nothing ever died and their meaning lived into eternity? I had always thought this, but not so much of people.
There had been a reason made clear to me why human beings were invariably bastards toward each other. The ones hailed by others and themselves as godly being the worst of all the malefactorious.
The great majority of the human images in the scenes above me had been stationary and if any had moved, they hadn’t really. I was being told something by this and I guessed it to be that humans died, passed from existence altogether, whether influenced by the aliens or not. Everything else became of the eternal. I found myself wondering about all those who Callassa had described to me as having been removed following the Alien War? Those who Talsaw (the divine ‘father’ of Callassa, and first of the Mother Creator) knew as ‘the innocents’? I had no answer. I assumed the war had taken place because that was why I was here. I wondered also whether my reasoning was anything like accurate? Whether my every single assumption was inapplicable? I needed for there to be a link, an explanation however vague, between myself and all of this that I could hold on to. How was I to know? How? How? I was more sickened by the asking.
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I began feeling an urge to explore. Yes, to go looking at things, at whatever they were. I assumed the pictures in the sky would remain. That perhaps they would go and reappear as they once had, their fading from view having been a precursor to a visitation of hostile beings, those who had destroyed the craft.
I had a sensation that time was passing because time was a facet of my history. Whether it was appropriate to think this was another matter. I felt as though hours had passed by, but there was no discernible change in the light. Would it remain as this, as a perpetual and red tinted day? Was this the effect of having planets so very close? I began walking away from the place I’d been regarding as my ’emerging point.’ This being where the connection had been. I was very thirsty. I had to search for water. Was there any? Could I drink the sea water? Should I? My feet were hot.
With great apprehension I walked along the beach. Presumably it was safe to do so? I hadn’t felt this way while among the trees and foliage, though I’d encountered nothing and been sheltered. What might there be to encounter? Were their beings all around me I could not see? Would the light burn me? I could breathe, that was one sure thing, wasn’t it? I was breathing, wasn’t I?
This place shared very few if any similarities with anywhere I’d ever known. My attention was continuously being drawn toward the pictures in the sky. I was walking sideways and I tripped.
I walked and walked. I was becoming weaker. My constitution was impaired through dehydration and hunger. I was tough, I used to be fit and strong. I reminded myself of the fact. My being here wasn’t really like being in a fight, it wasn’t like anything. I tried to joke with myself that I would walk into someone with a camera, or a beach vendor. I had no money. Ha! I’d tried wishing for a bar with cold drinks and ice cream, but I began thinking my doing this was ridiculous. I walked on.
After about what seemed like an hour, I stopped my walking and sat. The pictures were still there. Their presence caused me to question whether I had covered any distance? I realised that nothing had changed. The place I’d begun was where it had been when I’d set off. The only distance I could make was by going into the foliage. I gazed at the animals streaking across the space. Were they really there? What were they? Was I hallucinating now? Would I soon fade into nothingness?
I looked to the three huge planets. Their effect was dizzying even while I was sat. There appeared to be something leaving the one that was sprayed with purple haze. If I could see it, then how big was it? Immediately the movement was a discernible line and the line’s end was at my feet. The light was red. I began to scramble away, frantic, running, running . . . running. I headed toward the foliage again but I knew there was something hovering above me.
I looked and all I saw was a silver coloured, plate-shaped object. I kept running but I couldn’t run away from its presence. I took a left turn and dived into the undergrowth. Would the trees hide me? Hide me from something that could instantaneously be here from a great distance away? What the Hell was it? Was it a hostile, alien craft? Was I the alien? I was terrified, I was perspiring. I didn’t want to be fried alive or made to suffer. I just wanted to be away. I was moving fast through the undergrowth and now I was thinking this would have been the better place to explore. I really could cover a distance in here. It appeared so anyway. I’d obviously been seen from the planet. I knew the vessel was still above. I knew I couldn’t be away from it.
There was something in front of me, about as wide as my body and I stopped dead in my tracks because I didn’t want to run into it. This was even stranger than the things I’d already encountered. I was seeing very flimsy looking, one-dimensional images of what I had been seeing in the sky. They were all there. The people. The animals. The birds. Everything was there and bound as in a kind of helix. Upwards it went, forever upwards. There was something else beside me. All of my body was in a state of spasm due to this realisation. Something likely close meant an extra-terrestrial being; the most hostile of cosmology.
I was standing and the helix was at my back. By my side were my best friends, just as I had known them during my very early teenage years and before I had gone away to be with Callassa. Was it really they? Was it so, because they had been on my mind at the very last moment I had spent with Callassa? Had some other intelligent beings taken these images and somehow unraveled them with many more and this was what I’d been seeing? My friends appeared as real as was I. Moot was smiling and holding out her arms. Smoot was standing away because it was what he’d always done. Again, was this a memory made real, just as I was real? Was it being made by ‘those’ on the craft still hovering above me?
“Dear Lawrence.” Moot was speaking. I looked at her eyes. I connected with the very emotion I used to see and wander within as I had all those years gone, when we were always hungry, poor and unwanted. I knew her blue eyes as they were ever endearing and supportive to me. I thought of the evening time we spent together she and I. I told her I loved a woman who entered my dreams and she believed me, one of the very few who had. I told her about Callassa. I told her about aliens. I told her I knew we were not as the rest. Darling Moot.
“Dear Lawrence,” she said again. “We’ve been watching you so often.”
I moved toward her and caught the tip of her fingers. She had no physicality. I immediately pulled away. I couldn’t speak. I knew she was aware of my trepidation. She looked to my old friend Smoot and he did what he had always done. He put his hands in his pockets. He gazed as though about to deliver criticism. Smoot was speaking.
“I can only tell you that we are going to be placed within all that you will see. Lawrence. Oh, Lawrence. We have to say what will be said again and again and again. But you have to know there is nothing that can come here from elsewhere. This is not paradise. You will cease to exist very soon. Therefore we are to send you back with everything that you lost along the way. This is how it is. We are what you lost.”
“Listen to your love Moot,” came Smoot’s wholly familiar voice. I looked at him, unshaven, missing most of his teeth. His woolen cardigan that was scruffy. How could this reuniting be connected with the past? Connected to what lived in our friendship? In our street? The times at the alley when we drank Guiness out of bottles and smoked untipped cigarettes.
“You know the answer,” Smoot said in that distinctive northern slang. “You do lad.”
I wanted to say that I didn’t know the answer. I wanted to say that the love I’d felt during those young years had never faded, that they had made me strong. That I’d adored them through every fraction of every moment. That there was beauty because of them.
“We can’t be away from you,” Moot said. “You cannot exist free of our memory. This is why we did this. Now you can return, yes, but you cannot ever return to what things were.”
“Listen to your love Moot,” he said.
I looked at him and then at her, I felt their closeness more than ever now and in the same way that I had during enormous pangs of loss. This overrode what I was being told about returning and which I didn’t understand.
“You are not alone. But the one who brought you is not here. Yes, the one of Talsaw, the traveler, the music diva, the Cosmicalla. She is as you are now, but not with you. Neither can she return. This is the eternity of which we are all made, but you must be wary of her destiny. We together are what you lost along the way. I hope we are as you remember.”
“Listen to your love Moot,” he said again. I smiled.
“There is not death, as death is considered, but only those who are taken away are into eternity. Eternity is many things. Many places. Many. Many … Many … Many.”
I was watching them both fade before my very eyes. I didn’t want them to go. I wanted to talk to them. I wanted for them to continue their ‘life’ but I was wanting what was inapplicable. I’d been seeing what had somehow been lost from my thoughts during my journey to here. They’d been scooped up. I stopped my reasoning because almost immediately upon my recognition of their leaving, everything changed. There was no helix. No foliage. No hovering craft. No fear.
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Back to Part ONE of Baby Darling
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Back to Part TWO of Baby Darling
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Return to the Honey Pot (INDEX)
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I AM ZA
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CALLASSA
Invicta Veritate
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