Possession

POSSESSION

He has sworn to do it; now he is very close. But at this moment with the ghosts he resides, and in him they find a home, and an instrument.

His tongue has twisted around these syllables of the spell, of his oath, of his recitation. His tongue has slithered around the syllables of hatred, lust and ambition. There are others who have choked on these syllables, these mere sounds; their tongues have swollen up and turned their faces blue.

Spurting gouts of blood they died in founts of failure

Perhaps on account of his being a parseltongue, he finds it easier. The fear the awe the lust still stay with him when he feels the power coursing through his veins, but his tongue is more skilled at twisting itself, at curving around syllables that had once been foreign, alien to him, syllables that are now family, completely his.

Or : he is completely theirs. But at a very high level all sensations are One.

In the rush of blood to his dizzy head, he is red-eyed, his skin flushed and hot with the blood that drums violently, announcing, showing off, the power it transports. Unable to look ahead, he is blinded most pleasurably by the words and the sounds and his own blood and power. He sits straight in his chair and hums, feeling its throb and the claim it lays upon him, contorting and possessing him.

As if one after the other: he twists his tongue into moving; his tongue twists the air into syllables; the syllables twist themselves into magic; and the magic twists himself into submission.

He is the cause and the effect. But then so is the magic.

It is a fight for dominance, a game of possession. He wins and loses in succession but the sensations, they remain the same. They said extreme pain was almost the equivalent of extreme happiness. At a very high level things cease to be recognisable and merge almost to become one, an unidentifiable Unity.

In this pleasure pain he is oblivious to peeling paint and stinking lavatory, to water dripping from the ceiling and the uncomfortable hardness of the chair he sits on. He is part of the Unity.

(But he is also part of the Illusion)

He feels often as though he is simultaneously being attacked by the forces of magic, of unity. At such high levels of course he cannot recognise which one is seizing him by the neck and compelling him into obedience. But he can recognise that it is his duty, now, to obey. Ineluctable his duty stares him in the face and unwilling to meet its steady gaze he must, with lowered eyes, stooped in reverence, follow.

Possession and compulsion: both beautiful words. Around the first the tongue slithers and hisses over the sibilants, and the second - the second is beautiful to him not in how it is said but in its atmosphere, and in the thrill of compelling and being compelled that holds him captive, staring, as excited as a novice.

All this means one thing to him. This thing is inexpressible. He cannot open his mouth for fear of violating the strength and purity of his belief; he cannot voice something that is a thousand things at once. Every attempt is an abuse, a degradation of the passion he feels, and so in muteness he lets himself be ruled by the Thing That Cannot Be Named. The closest he can come to expressing it is with a prolonged roar of fury: but he is no tiger. Perhaps with an eerie, sinister cackle: but he is no hag. Perhaps in a cry of triumph: but he is not yet a victor. Perhaps in a scream of pain: but no one dares hurt him. Perhaps in the sounds of his festering decay, in the breakdown of his flesh and skin and cells: but he is indestructible. He is a millionth of the highest Unity.

And so, in the dichotomy of the spells he recites, spells that cause pain and death and all things evil, he both holds and is held. Thrills of satisfaction shoot through him, through the channels of his life, and the hair on his arms stand up and his eyes bulge out of his flushed face and he breathes with difficulty. He gasps and feels his own life in another's death.

He is reborn again and again; taking life, like a vampire he sucks it into himself and the old and new lives combine within to strengthen him. And so when he recites the spell a hundred, two hundred voices echo him, adding their power to his.

His is part of the Unity. In its thrall he does not see the blood he has shed, the blood on his walls his floor his shirt his hands under his nails, the blood his shoes are almost floating in and his socks are drenched in. He cannot smell the iron or - a hundred, a thousand, times, sickeningly sickeningly worse - the decay. He hears nothing except his own words and the throb, the thrill, the jolt, the shock within him.

Closing his eyes: he surrenders.

At the highest level all is ...Possession...One - and all is...Illusion...Nothing.