Mid-morning. Breakfast and the Sunday paper. Carol is reading the paper while the cat is sunning in a curl on the top of a green and white striped seat cushion on her nondescript grays travel box. Her ears twitch everytime she hears a movement but those green eyes lie deep behind the black hairy closed lids.
An errand or two, then a Subway picnic along the Little Miami where you also worked on scene ten while Carol read.
Scene Ten
Early evening of the eighth day; supper at The Mikroikia. Salamon, Mario and Sophia walk into the local eatery for communal flavor, taste and conversation. Each has an agenda for discussion and each, sits with a semi-sweet white wine in hand. Sophia begins not realizing goddess Athena is disguised as a gray shadow underneath the table. If looking, and no one is, a glint of spotted rays of the forever gold trumpet is sheathed flat out at Athena’s shadowy waist, which when gleaned from an eye in the café’s floor appeared as small ordered Orion’s belt. If one were of another Mediterranean culture Athena could appear as the arch-angelic figure, Michael, also with golden trumpet; not here though, not in Elysium.
Among the Dead, Salamon is the first to speak. “We need to build the bridge as far onto the Styx as we can. It is a show of solidarity among us.”
Sophia silently acknowledges him and glances to Mario, who speaks, “I agree, Salamon, but we may have a problem with the older Dead. Takis already speaks with the other Dead, the Egyptian Dead, for instance, and those of other cultures also. I have witnessed this first hand. He knew we were building the bridge but did nothing to encourage us, or Mother either, I would imagine.”
“I assume Takis has his reasons,” responded Sophia quietly.
“We assume all of our Dead are with us on this mission to return to Earth but there is more than one method, I am sure of it. The methods for the Rebellion are going to divide the ranks. No question, we are all equally dead. Our spiritual stuffings allow our consciousness in this, our atmosphere, along the bank of the Styx.”
“Dignity,” says Sophia with continued quietude. “We must maintain our dignity.”
“That’s how we exist at all, isn’t it?” asked Salamon rhetorically.
“I am sure Takis and Mother would agree,” noted Mario, “but even so there is going to be division.” He almost added, ‘among the troops.’
The three sat silently at the table as if thought had melted from their minds. The predispositioned thoughts of Sophia, Mario and Salamon invisibly dripped from their minds into the mouth of Athena for her further suckling and contemplation. Division there will be, recognized Athena. The varieties of their methods will mark the diversion from their goal. Zeus must know, it will be nearly seven hundred more generations of Dead before this first rebellion will be resolved by a second.
Scene Eleven
Athena sat as a ready stone-like stenographer while facing her father, the dark skinned Zeus. She smiled politely after a silence and said, “What do you wish to do?”
“What need I do? As you say, there will be division among the Dead. That will end this rebellion before it really begins.”
“It will be as always, father, the older Dead will split from the younger. They miss the old ways.”
Zeus slid in the thought, “They miss being closer to the gods than the younger.”
“An illusion,” smirked Athena.
Zeus muttered, “It makes little difference among the Dead just as it made little difference among the Living. Most of their reality is illusionary but they go about their business indifferent to whatever setting they happen to be in.”
“Survival.”
“To the Living perhaps, but it means little to the Dead.”
Athena snipped, “You are wrong, Father. The Dead fear loss of dignity. It is dignity that continues with the bridge building across the Styx.”
“Why so?”
She responded, “They enjoy the illusion of work, with physically connecting with the foreign Dead.”
Zeus quipped, “The shamans broke that molded thinking long ago.”
Athena’s calm smile sat as a shield unnoticed by her father. She noted matter-of-factly, “These Dead do not trust their own kind.”
“Division will always be their downfall,” reinforced Zeus gruffly.
Athena then unsheathed words, “The Dead exist. If they are an illusion, they are also our own. A true social contract exists within the species.”
Ignoring her tone Zeus ordered, “Let’s do away with this contract.”
With the control of a goddess Athena responded, “Their contract is by an indeterminable will over which we nor they have control.”
“Like our own existence?” countered Zeus.
“Not likely,” voiced the Air between the twosome.
Both god and goddess felt the Voice as if it were a foundational element, a mystery particle scratching the bottom of the Styx. Godly reason alone mispronounced it as a slight shiver in the spine.
Zeus glanced at the ceiling and remembered that a golden piece is still missing. His eyes then drilled through his warrior daughter. He saw neither a particle nor the wave of the goddess reflected.
Good, ruminated Zeus. I digest best in and between my own sense of reason and consideration.
Scene Twelve
The Olympian evening sky sheeted in folds overhead hiding and shifting a silent secret light. Unconscious shade sowed down on two unwitting messengers to unknown predators with sight.
In a sudden unwilled apprehension, Aeneas probed beneath the right shoulder of Agathia’s loose toga as it were the only reality in all of Elysium.
Agathia rolled and turned with honest annoyance, “What is it, Aeneas, that you would have me do beyond the simplest of pleasures; whisper to Sophia that the belly I presently rest my ear on would rather dance above the surface of the Styx with Takis than sleep in her uncompromised wisdom?”
Scene Thirteen
Agathia need not have concerned herself with Sophia this night as the woman was about to embark on an adventure of her own as Salamon opened the door to his personal shelter to her for the first time.
After entering, Sophia anxiously sat down in the chair nearest the door. “I don’t think I have been to your privacy before?”
“I have been to yours though,” smiled Salamon.
She smiled demurely, “We three were ready for a discussion.”
He sat across from her in the windowless four-cornered room with the open ceiling architecture receiving the seemingly natural twilight. Salamon noted, “That three-way bed-talk was about Mother’s original culture, that’s the way I remember it – that Mother was pre-Greek.”
“What I remember most was the question, ‘Where are all the other Dead?’”
Salamon piped, “Mother is the key to bridging this.”
Sophia grumbled, “What I am afraid of, Salamon, is that our bridge will not become the symbol I am hoping for.”
“It isn’t a symbol alone, Sophia. “We are into the construction. There may be a real connection, a real bridge for the Dead even if we cannot bridge the Living.”
Salamon spoke comfortably, “It would make sense if the Egyptian Dead were on the other side of the Styx.”
She blurted,, “Mother knows things.”
“I am sure of it.”
“Why doesn’t she tell us the truth?”
“About us Greeks or the Dead?”
She sighed, “We are the Dead, Salamon.”
“I meant the foreign Dead, Sophia. Don’t twist me.”
“Panagiotakis also knows. He probably controls Mother. It would not be unheard of in a shaman.”
“I cannot imagine that. Mother is his grandchild.”
She balked, “Why is he not considered our Father? Tell me that Salamon.”
“Relax, Sophia. Lie down and relax.” He thrust his index finger skyward, “We can observe the heavens from the mattress. Create our own constellations with a few sips of wine and say what comes to mind.”
She handily glanced and remarked, “I thought when I died I’d be closer to stars yet here they still are.”
“See, a conversation. I’ll pull a couple of wine glasses from the wall cabinet .”
“Sophia quickly added, “We can conjure our favorite fruit for a mix.”
“That’s what I like to hear.” He spritely walked over and selected two glass tumblers and two shallow saucers from the common cupboard setting on the floor along the west wall.
Sophia rested herself on the knee-high mattress. “Why do you have the grass surrounding the bed?”
“I like to feel it with hands and feet while sleeping. I’ll roll over, seemingly to frieze into sleeping stone and awake with the blades tickling my toes. Sleepy stone coming to life amongst blades of grass.”
Sophia discerned, he’s too quaint or too odd, I’m not sure which.
Salamon handed her a glass and dish, sat down on the edge of the mattress with her and empty goblet toasted empty goblet. Each sipped and tasted their best memory of grape. They sat awhile and said little, eventually held hands and fell back onto the mattress and observed the twilight rolling into starlight.
Sophia whispered, “When I was young I loved the mystery of the moon more than the sun.” She paused, “Here we are with no sun for the light of day, and the moon ever shines in day or night as it did when we were living.”
“I had not thought that about the moon, Sophia,” replied Salamon.
“She still dresses into one of her four quarters. A pretty sight even in waning.” Sophia closed her eyes secretly smiling into memories of youth.
Sophia is so much smarter than myself, realized Salamon. Yet our fingers enjoy their stimulation. The sun still shines within Sophia’s touch. And shortly . . .
. . . On the mattress in early evening. Sophia loosed her garment and re-rolled onto her back. She playfully reached to Salamon’s waist as he easefully listed and distributed himself between her extended thighs and pushed his palms on the mattress beyond her shoulders for balance.
Sophia placed her left arm so her hand gripped his fictional flesh to the right of his spine where she placed her arm in such a way that her hand pulled to accommodate her outspread right thigh.
Her feet arched and her toes involuntarily squiggled as he slowly thrust in and pulled nearly out in a machine-like rhythm accelerating his pelvis through ever-quicker motions. Salamon, automatically minded in his ridged air-like driver, a perfect attachment by will alone. Repeatedly their pelvises clapped their shared passion.
Real enough, reflected Salamon. These rush of motions trigger the living memory of body. Nature can exist even here in Elysium. Sophia allowed me to pin her with ease – an accepted signal without a second thought. Still, she is as Pandora. Her wriggling toes moved independently like her feet. I pierced her shell. She swallowed me whole – and I, in turn, was resurrected through the friction of my own body. Real enough in this Elysium. And shortly after . . .
. . . How would it really be, asked Salamon, if, when dead, we met with someone who had killed our parents or grandparents?
This is a problem, thought Sophia. We have been thinking the Dead would unite to find a way home, to Earth, back to the Living. She mumbled, “I would imagine this kind of thing has been resolved.”
“Like it is resolved within our own culture?” asked Salamon. “People avoid others or ignore them. You ostracize your enemy as others do you. We can always disappear in such situations and do. Avoidance. How is that going to work if we Dead have to unite on a common front?”
“This is painful to think on, Salamon. Fratricides. Incest. Premeditated murder. People spend most of their time speculating what was going on in the perpetrator’s mind. Then floods of anger and wish for vengeance for lack of justice in our family ties.”
Salamon chuckled darkly and commented, “It appears there is no divine justice here, at least not amongst our own cultural tribe.”
“We are here in Elysium. Where are the other Greeks? Are they in Tartarus?”
“Then we unite with other Dead who are as we are, the good, the considered heroes of the culture. The evil in each civilization is banished. That is how it seems,” responded Salamon.
“Divine Justice then is swift and without retribution either way. We each, as we are, satisfied with our friends, neighbors and acquaintances in this place.” Sophia, thus satisfied, added with a sparkle, “We have common Greek ground in Justice.”
He grinned and proclaimed, “All the Greek Dead?”
She desirably responded with a siren’s alluring eyes, “I should think.”
Mattress on the floor in the evening. Salamon, turned to lay on his upraised back, supporting by his elbows and focusing on Sophia’s lower back. Sophia’s left hand rests on the mattress as she tucked and rested her right hand on his inner right thigh with a slight index and middle finger touch. She said in her reassuring tone, “Do you feel it now?”
Salamon’s satisfying smile remains unseen by Sophia. He replied straightforwardly, “You are wonderfully arched – a bridge of affection.”
She inched her softly bent rump up and closer to his upper chest. “How’s this?” she asked patiently.
Salamon did not reply, enjoying the slight prickle of inner and outer feminine rounded parts across his ribs as well as the nearly unconscious contact with her left breast just above his left knee.
Face bent down if she were speaking to her lover in a totality of secrets Sophia whispered, “My dear Salamon, where are you?”
“I sense your unusual warmth but am little stirred.” Deeper voiced he said, “I am more interested in the widening of your backside.”
Sophia lightly squeezed her right hand, playfully and discretely. She commented, “A little stirring is truthfully put.” Such as it is, she thought. Mind outlines the body, hands and bodily warmth. The illusionary sense of being wholly bodied once more. The hand can grasp a once masculinity. This fervent tubular swelling of passionate enthusiasm fills within my functioning hand. The unanticipated pleasurable surprises trickle slowly, perspiration-like along the ancient bodily ways of man-kind. Arousal and salivation – breathing, ever a genuine semblance bordering life and death. Our pupils dilate or appear to. We become one, a fleshy bubble to hold the skinless mind. This is what it is to be dead and still human. And, a very short while later . . .
. . . Salamon whispers with wishful anticipation, “Shall we circle?”
She nibbled a bite of ear, and erotically ordered, “Work up from between my toes with a bridging tongue and I will shimmer as the mighty Styx.”
Mattress on the floor late evening. Sophia suddenly discovered that she was more conscious of Salamon’s right hand, thumb and fingers spread across the back of her right hip than his unconsciously moving tongue stroking her snuggle warm, semi-erected passion. His right hand is solid. His other hand rests, comforting my outer thigh just above my left knee. Salamon tempts sucking something not fully between and here. A small fleshy flint. Does he remember the taste of feminine moisture on his nose? What is the male enchantment? The born man-child comes head first, is it his plan of subterfuge, to worm his way back in? I give him the two things he wants in the moment. A metaphor. Sharing what I don’t have with what he doesn’t have. As in life, it is the thought of giving the most of one’s private self.
I sniff too, thinks Sophia, and I lick a taste of memory. I remember the sharpness of watching a man beside himself. Automaticity. I can flatten a man much as a runaway oxen can. I can run him down with lip and tongue. Within arching bodies, in little more than are not breathing, we are what we are, a sharing, naked with the only utilities we have to share, our senses. Salamon’s thoughts and feelings are consciously drowned in this reflexive moment. He is not even here. I am that good, I am as solid as my clasping right hand. Salamon fell asleep seemingly semi-solid and still chuckling . . .
. . . As he awoke, Sophia stirred and mumbled, “Why am I not exhausted? I wake up and feel refreshed then the old storm in the back of my head rises and I wonder what this being Dead is all about.” She added, “I wonder about this rebellion.” Are the gods behind this, she thought, then quickly concluded as usual, there are no gods. We are here just as we were alive. We have no control over either circumstance. What we are makes us who we are first.
He formed a seriousness in her words on the rebellion and commented, “The bridge is a form of justice. We are building it by our own design. All of the Dead can walk upon it and we will take it as far out onto the River Styx as this nature will allow us.”
She asked stubbornly, “Who is this Supervisor who is supposedly constantly observing and controlling this nature we survive in?”
Salamon stretched then casually placed his hands behind his gathered mind-in-his-head. Sophia gave him a look and threw a blanket over his nakedness below.
He smirked, “Why’d you do that?”
She smiled politely and replied, “To warm you up.”
He closed his eyes, sighed, and suddenly felt surprisingly alive. With those self-directed feelings to slow the nerves Salamon resurrected below the navel and in the immediacy forgot Sophia’s question.
Mattress on the floor in the later evening. Salamon is lying with his back arched at thirty degrees leaning on his right elbow and forearm, his legs are stretched mostly together and flat out with his tensioned toes slightly spread. He considers the self-generating thought: ‘if only we were real’.
His left arm and hand lean straightforward with his large-knuckled long fingers spread fan-like across the full of Sophia’s lower belly enwrapped in a fantasy designed for gently lifting her soul into his own. Salamon’s thumb is calmly threaded teasingly between her semi-swollen outer lips onto the tip of Sophia’s cozy Gibraltar-shaped passion. A mirage of flowing life energy settled on the spiritual union but that was not to be.
Pressure-parted, Sophia senses a memory of sexual energy wanting to disperse in gentle shivering shocks and quakes above Salamon’s slowly methodical push-and-pulling. To become whole and full-bodied is her desire more than the sex itself. To feel auto-stimulated is to become shaman-like, sparked and inner tingling with a wild-minded woman’s intensity of the here and now. Oh, and oh and oh, again.
Sophia’s softly curved bottom rests on the top of his thighs so she might lightly brush the movement of his well placed cullions. Sophia anchored her raised back with her outstretched arms with palms mattress flat with legs spread, her left ankle touching the back of his partially raised right hand while her right foot with heel raised is well toed for support and pointed away from his narrowed waist.
Sophia’s neck and head arch forward for a centered peek of male viewing further south between taut breasts swelled. She thinks, I am up here, she thinks and down there too. Two places at once, such as it is, oh, making love and being Dead both at once – oh, oh my. And, after a restful nighttime nap . . .
. . . What are we doing here? I have too much to do, thought Sophia. Too much Mother, too much me. She glanced down at the deeply sleeping stone crusted Salamon. She wondered, what is this all about? How long is this relationship going to last?
Such a question. Sophia looked up into the dark sky and grumbled, “Forever sunless. Whenever will we see the light?”
She probed Salamon’s cold left arm thinking – marble. I am here making cryptal love with marble. Transformation with a fingertip’s touch. De-stoning, Salamon said, “You’re awake?”
Sophia grinned, “And, now you are too.”
“I should be tired.”
“You were,” she replied, “stone cold.”
He quickly reflected, “Every new day is a resurrection.”
She quipped, “It’s not yet morning.”
“Another go?” smilingly slipped out.
You are kidding, thought Sophia. What would be the purpose? Where is the meaning with such matters overdone?
Grinning, Salamon reached and gently pulled her down. “We can cuddle.”
She teased, “You need to get warm.” On their chosen sides, rotisserie-like, the two easily lay arm in arm and feet contentedly caressing. Sophia whispered matter of factly, ‘We two warm the heavens.’
Mattress on the floor, late. Salamon lay flat and rested on his back. Sophia stood naked above him.
Sophia inched slowly down. To coordinate Salamon rose into a sitting position with as much anticipation as he could muster. Shortly, he pleasantly found her sitting on the focus of much of his warm semi-solid anticipation. With the fingers of her right hand she spread her much exercised lips and nudged him into place. Then she sat tall with her back parallel to his. Her taut breasts front and center to his neck Salamon quickly found himself bending his mouth instinctively forward to a potential taste of awaiting spiritual nourishment. Lips and tongue, a twist of pleasure mutually felt. He did not notice her more experienced eyes were observing contently above his own.
I feel him within and without. Who is changed more in this parallel frontal positioning? The flesh, the thought of flesh keeps his mind busy on the essentials of fingertips as his right hand appears fresh with a single finger heading towards my bottom just far enough for me to tingle of playful entrance. Erection or finger, I don’t know which counts more in my present, private bottomful of two-way joy.
Contentment is staying this prayful way until morning, thought Sophia, heaven appears to be in the one of our being.
Scene 14
“This short scene focuses on how-things-work in the realm of reasonable metaphysics,” the Supervisor speaking here. As with the Greeks in those days, the modern reader is educated also. The melding of science and philosophy is the dual track these books run on. In those ancient Greek days people more easily understood the Gods of the Pantheon because they were presented anthropomorphically; they were presented in human form performing human-like functions in a godly manner. This principle is well understood today and is still in accepted use. For instance, on the ceiling the of Sistine Chapel God’s hand is outstretched to the hand of Adam. In an updated manner, this device is used here to facilitate a greater understanding of how things work in this fourth and fifth books of the Merlyn’s Mind series.
Picture if you will, a human-like hand of Betweeners, a fully functioning hand (female or male). The index finger (right or left hand) represents me, the Supervisor or Zeus. I point things out, I enlighten. The middle finger represents Athena to the ancient Greeks, but in the modern culture of the writer, the one whose name appears as legal author, the agnostic, has himself a basic background that is Judeo-Christian-Moslem. For the sake of understanding a particular spiritual level, these characters are angelic-like in their nature. Thus, the middle finger, who is as Athena is as Michael in modern times. If your spiritual or, if you will, mythological tendencies lean to another religion with angelic-like creatures, then substitute a more familiar angelic name. Make up your own if you wish. We are open in such matters.
Continuing, the ring finger in ancient Greek would be Apollo, a son of Zeus, a speaker of truth. The modern counterpart in this series is Gabriel. The little finger, is Apollo’s twin, Artemis, who forever looks through the eyes of Zeus into humanity, both the Dead and the Living. Her modern counterpart is Raphael. These are four of the five digits or extensions of the Hand. Betweeners, are the space between the fingers also.
The opposing thumb in this scene’s anthropomorphic exercise is Beyond, and is an invisible personification of Necessity not Will. In this particular scene no dialogue need be expressed in their closed conference. This simple raised compressed and pliable fist with thumb untucked and pressed against the index and middle finger will do. Thus pictured, one can better understanding of how things strong fisted are raised among the Supervisor and his accompanying business associates.
The End of Chapter Six (audio-revised, 10July11)
of the fourth book in the Merlyn’s Mind series
©2010 Richard H. Orndorff
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Cold baked beans and a cold turkey dog for supper mixed with part of a bag of popcorn while watching a couple of shows copied earlier in the week.
I am surprised how fast I edited chapter six. I’m sure there will be at least one more edit/revision before I send it to the publisher. I am astounded that it continues to make sense. This is not orthodox story-telling though.
The simple reason is because the works are not a part of an orthodox dynamics. Consistency is the key to story-telling in these works. Anyone attempting to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt (as the saying goes) that these stories are not about the hearts and souls and minds of human beings will find the attempt impossible. Post. – Amorella.
I don’t like absolute sounding words such as ‘impossible’. In my mind, nothing is impossible. The stories are fictional.
How much so, boy? – Amorella.
All of it.
Prove it. – Amorella.
You cannot prove what is not. The thoughts and words are not fiction because they exist. What the thoughts and words infer, suggest, read and/or intimate are fiction. One cannot prove a heart and soul but the human mind (brain if you will) is not fiction. The mind can be demonstrated and proven to exist in context with our being, our existence as a species. This is a silly argument and not worth the time.
What is time worth, boy, you tell me? Post. – Amorella.
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