At Midnight, All The Agents (I)

The sky was the colour of a smoker's lung with the smoker peeled away. And so truth is introduced with theft - a better writer walked before us, his memorial these footsteps that stretch before us in the sand.

This too is deceit. An idea cannot be stolen. It can only be copied, duplicated, replicated. Copying leaves the original intact, whole, but altered. Original but no longer unique (Eliot wrote what he wrote only because he did not understand the secret ways by which the conscience might be murdered).

This is the truth and the whole of the truth: all writers are the same that way. All that matters is that you find your own way through the last wall. Four is more sacred than three.

The clouds pulsed weakly overhead, wringing out the last few drops of rain. It fell sluggishly in great dusty discoloured ropes. Thick and tarry.

I opened the door and I went inside.

* * *

There is always a place like this. It's context, logic. Understand that and a broken chair becomes a horse, a lance, a grail. Understand the logic. Contextualise it. Control it. There's always a place like this. Do as you are bidden, and there will always be a place for you inside.

* * *
Under the blue-white fluorescent wash my skin is ghost pale, the rain outside phantom tears. There is no yellow (of course. I'm smiling. I wear no mask).

What do you see in the corner? A man in white suit and ego? A childish silhouette? Prospero's forgotten mentor, come to exact the vengeance of rememberance? No. No Sycorax, no Prospero. Not even a Caliban or Ariel. You see...

You are in a maze of twisty
 turny written passages all 
alike.

>LOOK

You see nothing special.

Despite - because of? - this the air is charged, callousing, thickening: and in the exchange of charge and the mayfly dance of electrons I see writ the sigils that prophecy a tempest to come.

I take my seat.

* * *

Unveiling is only a synonym for disappointment. What of the masque when the dancers are undone (what is a lie)? Only the process is important. The music is not black marks etched on page, not the scrape of bow on string, not the waves that propogate, that conjugate, in the dead air between sign and signified.

* * *

The mask is the key and I am the lock. As I sit looking into that face (the reflections darting in the periphery, a troupe of ghosts mocking us in the shadow play) the face looks back into me and it smiles and I recognise the smile. I feel the smile, the fluid hydraulics of sinew and muscle that pull the fleshy mask to and fro, that hide the ultimate truth of grinning bone.

The smile is mine and it has been taken from me. I want to tell him that I wear no mask but the context of the place is become a thing of cold iron and glacial silence.

He begins to speak words and it shatters. A splinter has pierced my heart.

All my tears are frozen.

* * *

Wavelength is the distance between repeating units of a wave pattern. It is commonly designated by the Greek letter lambda (λ). Yellow is a colour with a wavelength 565-590 nanometers. It is one of the subtractive primary colours, and its complementary colour is blue. However, because of the characteristics of paint pigments used in the past, painters traditionally regard its complement as purple.

Yellow is a bright cheerful colour, often associated with happiness and peace.

* * *

Operative Firedrake says, "Who are you?"

Firedrake says, "I am Operative Firedrake."

Operative Firedrake says, "Who are you?"

Firedrake says, "I am Operative Firedrake."

Operative Firedrake says, "Who are you?"

Firedrake says, "I am Operative Firedrake."

Operative Firedrake says nothing.

Firedrake says, "I am the pie that bakes and eats himself."