A Shaman's Black Cloak: Vol1 Read online

there-- not standing; floating, and from every angle. I was everywhere at once, like you are in your own imagination. I watched this happen until the heart swelled as it smoldered and I thought it was going to rupture in a gigantic wave of blood, but as it cracked, first this white ooze boiled out, until the heart boomed open in a loud BANG with a blinding and instantaneous white light that came out in a triangular and geometric fashion straight into my omni-present eyes. The light pierced through me entirely in every direction from every angle and I was totally white-washed of my perspective and just floating around for an amount of time I couldn't perceive.

  Then out of the white void I thought of the name Rossel, Osmun, Caye. The horrific face of the man from before appeared, only, the mutated antler protruding from his forehead dissolved in the white light, and the fucked-up geometrically twisted inverse-reflection of the rest of his face gently curled back up and took its place the way it was before. The blood around him evaporated, leaving just his face in a clean and normal-looking way. His expression seemed... Not happy, not sad, not angry, but not welcoming. It seemed real, but there weren't boarders to it; there was nothing else to distinguish against. His name was Rossel, and for now he was just there, and I wasn't anymore.

  I don't know how long I was there-- or... not … there for-- but eventually the experience was gone in as unexplainable a way as it had come to be. In fact I just remember thinking tubies...like... the word 'tubies' as the first thing I did out of the experience.

  Right after that pieces started coming together when I thought what the fuck was that?-- I mean, I knew it was my first experience with DMT, but, even then, there was this feeling that persisted in me that I hadn't begun to articulate yet. In stead what was happening was I was getting visions of stuff that happened in the “real” world.

  His name was Rossel Osmun Caye. But he went by an abbreviated “Rockey”-- and the guy had serious issues, yeah, but... He was still a person. Not everything made sense, but I felt that the experience that I had just had was meant for him somehow; or, rather, the times where I wasn't experiencing anything he was borrowing my body to send the message for death to take him. I knew he had an obsession with... someone... who was his first love and broke his heart, but that's what part of him wanted-- that's what the flaming heart that grew from virtually nothing meant. I knew that when he died, he essentially had a wank, ejaculated, and blew his brains out. 'ats where the white ooze and the loud BANG of white light came from. The bullet had killed him too quickly for his brain to experience what it had to in order to see his spirit off to the other side.

  Though... so much of that was unresolved for me. The teacup of my essence was still out there, and missing, and everything that I had experienced left things open-ended, and I was still figuring it out. Though, I knew that was going to be some lifelong journey of mine. I felt like a bit of me had been taken and splashed out over the other side. Almost like Rockey was saying to others like him 'this guy; go to this guy.' before he left, like he had left just a little room in my soul for other spirits to grab hold of the way a crack in a rock helps a mountain-climber get where they need to go.

  I was more or less just laying on the floor, with the back of my head against the wall. My eyes were already wide open, but not dry. I took my first breath the way you take your first breath when you wake up, but it hurt sharply. There was a small puddle of dried blood that surrounded my arm where it had been cut and crept under my back through the fabric of my shirt. I tried to turn and get up, but a sharp pain shot through my heart. Had I had a heart attack? I thought, but gradually the pain subsided, and I looked to my cut arm. It... seemed okay. I got up and squatted on my feet to hold my arm up to the street-light. It had scabbed over. Completely. I heard a distinctive creek and swing of the door opening, which immediately excited me, though... I wasn't creeped out by this place now; I was too … I don't know how to describe the feeling, other than 'not afraid'-- I guess familiar? But not familiar; more like I understood it. The only thing that really frightens us is the unknown; and, though there was plenty about the place I was still clueless and a bit perturbed about; I knew enough. I got up, and went through the living room towards the back door that I heard swing open. The living-room wasn't dead silent; I could hear the rush of the breeze in the trees from outside percolating through the windows, and emanating from the bare roof.

  I saw the back door open there and a dark figure standing in the doorway-- but a familiar one. It was Jasmine. If I hadn't just been made jaded to a permanently skewed view of reality, she probably would've frightened me, having been so sneaky and quiet. She called out to me in the dark; I guess she was kind of spooked by the noise of me moving around in the dark. I said I was coming, as I tore off a strip of that black curtain I had ducked under when I put my arm out the broken window; I wanted to see how much blood I had left, but something compelled me to take a piece of that fabric. Maybe because it was kind of cold, and I wanted to use it as a scarf, which I did.

  I met up with Jasmine out on the back porch and couldn't tell if she had had a romp with that guy or not; truth be told I barely even cared, but, apparently she had a ride to go on to... well she didn't say. Or maybe she did say and I just wasn't paying attention; I was looking at that fucking window on that door that was so unbreakable from before. When she finished talking I decided to punch it, and it cracked. Then I punched it again and it just shattered like normal glass.

  Jasmine... being a weirdo like me laughed at that and was like 'what the fuck was that?'

  I figured the place wasn't haunted anymore, so I just said what she had planned sounded groovy and we should go. We got in the back of the truck of some older guys and headed down the road. A while later I realized that I didn't have my knife, but figured that; it being “Rockey”-- it belonged there anyway, wherever it was now.

  Anyway, that was my first experience with anything supernatural and... well... my true self. From that moment on I knew my life wasn't about success or attachment in this world; it was about finding myself in the next, and freeing those trapped here along the way.”

  Val took another drag of his cigarette so that it was down to just a stub. He flicked it but... it didn't land anywhere. It just shot off into the dark of the room. Elwain cleared his throat. “Tape!” a man from the crew said sharply and loudly. Elwain briskly nodded to queue the changing of the tape.

  Val had slouched back in the chair he was in, and the end of a new cigarette glowed from the dark and lit up just his eyes, which studied Elwain. “Y'know... Why don't you just say it?” Val asked.

  “Say what?” Asked Elwain, while he diverted his attention to taking down some notes on a pad of paper he had.

  Val chuckled. “Really? Never mind then...”