One day, a rock became a friend.

It was quiet, mysterious, and free.

Then I met a dandelion and forgot about the rock

Until I walked by it and smashed it apart at the seams.

I realized no matter how much I talked

to the pieces, it would never be the same.

So I picked the dandelion flowers and tossed them away.

Then a person said, “I should never give up.”

So I found a new rock.

And it waits so patiently

for me

to find a flower.

And to be smashed away in its final hour.

Doesn’t everybody wonder why they are here?

It is a daunting question because there is no final answer. Not one that satisfies everybody. Not one that lasts. Religion enters the empty space with answers about faith, suffering, purpose, reward, and redemption. Buddhists understand something essential about existence: life contains suffering, and suffering cannot be escaped by pretending it does not exist. Christians offer the promise of redemption and eternal life. Other traditions offer their own maps through pain, fear, guilt, desire, and death.

I could go through all the religions, but most of them share one human promise: something better may be waiting. Maybe not here. Maybe not now. Maybe not in this body. But somewhere, somehow, the search has meaning.

No matter where you live or who you pray to, human beings seem to expect a reward. We search for a path. We search for a purpose. We search for the future that will justify the present.

If we are not doing that, then what are we? Born-again nihilists? Psychotic? Or simply tired?

The need to create the future may be the one thing every human has in common. We are doomed to create. We create careers, marriages, children, art, governments, religions, theories, enemies, and explanations. We create promotions. We create agents. We create weddings. Every decision is made in the moment, but the moment is never enough. The moment always points forward. We presume we know the next step, and then the next, and then the next.

In some of its practices, Buddhism tries to step away from the karma of creation. Every action creates a ripple in the wave of life. Every choice extends beyond itself. Every intention becomes a seed. To live is to disturb the water.

A bird is required to create a nest by its patterning. A human is patterned to create a future. The future is the human version of a nest.

This may be where sanity and madness begin to touch.

People often debate whether a person who suffers from mental illness is actually ill. And if they are ill, why can’t they simply be healed? I am not sure either question is as simple as people want it to be. What seems clear is that severe mental suffering does not remove a person from the human search for meaning. It may intensify it. It may distort it. It may turn the search inward until the mind becomes trapped inside its own symbols.

The person who believes there are wires in their body is still searching. They are searching for the source of their pain. They are searching for the system that controls them. They are searching for the reason they cannot leave the apartment, cannot enter the world, cannot do what others expect them to do.

The rest of us are also searching for invisible wires.

We search for the rules that govern our lives. We search for the reason we are anxious, poor, lonely, ambitious, jealous, bored, or afraid. We search for the mechanism. We search for the hidden system. We search for whatever is pulling on us from behind the wall.

Are we so sane that we are entirely different?

One person believes they are diseased and cannot enter the world. Another person believes that if they do not enter the world, they will be destroyed by poverty. One person cannot obey the rules of productivity because their private reality has overtaken them. The other obeys the rules of productivity because the public reality has overtaken them.

One person is trapped by a madness almost no one else can see. The other is trapped by a madness everyone has agreed to call normal.

Both are creating. One creates a world out of terror. The other creates a life inside a system they cannot control.

The material is different. The outcome is different. But the process is familiar. The mind searches. The mind builds. The mind follows clues. The mind cannot tolerate emptiness, so it creates a pattern.

We are doomed to search. It is how our minds work.

Do you doubt that? Look at movies.

Can you think of a movie that does not involve a search? Crime movies search for revenge, justice, or the killer. Romance searches for the soul mate, then creates an obstacle to delay the discovery. The obstacle is overcome, the search is rewarded, and everyone lives happily ever after. Science fiction searches for new worlds, new species, new gods, new dangers, new versions of ourselves.

Look at Star Trek, that great sixties dream: “to boldly go where no man has gone before.” Searching the universe for new life and new civilizations. But why? What else would humans do?

The same is true of television. Reality shows are searches disguised as competitions. Naked on an island? Search for food, shelter, alliance, survival. Looking for aliens? Search the sky for proof that we are not alone. The news performs the search for us and then tells us what we need to know. Wheel of Fortune turns the search into entertainment: contestants search for missing letters, missing words, missing phrases. The pleasure is not only in the answer. The pleasure is in the search.

Our being and our thought become one command: search, and then search again.

We have no choice. We are programmed to follow a trail of clues. And when there is no trail, we make one up.

Look at The Curse of Oak Island. For years, they have followed data that supposedly indicates a great treasure. But if you look closely, much of the data may only show remnants of human activity that could mean almost anything. A piece of wood. A tunnel. A coin. A fragment. A theory. Another theory. Another hole in the ground.

Yes, I watch the show.

But I think I am fascinated less by the treasure than by the search itself. The treasure almost does not matter anymore. The search has become the treasure. The need to continue has become the point.

That may be the human condition in miniature.

We are not unified by what we believe. We are unified by the fact that we search. We create so that we can search, and we search so that our creations have meaning. We build questions and then spend our lives trying to answer them.

What is the main function of computing? Databases. Why do we build databases? So we can search. We collect information, organize it, store it, retrieve it, and ask it to explain the world back to us.

And now we have AI.

AI is the search impulse turned into machinery. It searches the internet for answers. It searches patterns faster than we can. It searches language, images, code, markets, medicine, war, employment, and desire. We created a machine to search for us because human searching was too slow.

But the machine does not only search for answers. It may also search for efficiencies. It may search for redundancies. It may search for the places where human beings are no longer required.

Maybe that is what we were always building toward.

A bird creates a nest.

A human creates a future.

But maybe the future was never the real point. Maybe the real point was the problem.

Human beings seem programmed to solve. We solve for hunger, shelter, danger, illness, loneliness, status, meaning, and death. The mind wants a problem because a problem gives it direction. A problem gives the search a shape. Without a problem, the mind does not rest. It begins to invent one.

That may be our brilliance and our curse.

When there is no tiger at the edge of the firelight, we imagine one. When there is no immediate threat, we create systems, enemies, tests, ambitions, prophecies, conspiracies, and futures to fear. We are problem-solving creatures who cannot tolerate the absence of a problem.

Religion may be the greatest example. It gives us the impossible problem: Why are we here? What is suffering for? What happens after death? What does God want? How do we become worthy? These questions cannot be solved in the ordinary sense, and that may be why they endure. Religion gives the search an eternal object. It gives the mind a problem large enough to survive every answer.

Madness may do something similar, but without the shared language of faith. The person with wires in their body has also been given an impossible problem: Who put them there? What do they mean? How can they be removed? The private terror becomes a system. The system becomes a search. The search becomes a life.

And the rest of us are not as different as we pretend.

We create careers, wars, economies, technologies, religions, stories, and machines because we are trying to solve what may never be solved. Then, when our machines solve too much, we create new problems for them to solve. AI may be the latest expression of this hunger. We built a machine to search faster than us, to answer faster than us, to solve faster than us. But in doing so, we may have created a new problem we cannot solve.

That is the human pattern.

We search for the answer.

We create the problem.

Then we suffer inside the world our searching has made.

A bird creates a nest because it must.

A human creates a future because it must.

And when the future asks why we were here, maybe the answer will be simple:

We were here to solve problems.

And when we run out of problems, we create images of ourselves. Even more dangerous than the maker.

Dreaming on athoughtful Sea

Deep and deeper,

calling waves where spirits go.

Their  Sand castles never wash away.

Her spirit steps,

dances over Sailor lost waves—

 swimmers of stars who always find

 the crest of light

and leave the world behind.

 

Three of my favorite occult films are Eyes Wide Shut, The Ninth Gate, and Angel Heart. I saw all three in theaters. I watched Angel Heart in a small town, in an almost empty cinema. The emptiness of the room, the rain outside, and that red window stayed with me long after the film ended. Eyes Wide Shut disappointed me on first viewing. I felt Kubrick was hinting at something that never arrived. The Ninth Gate, by contrast, I waited to see on video, knowing it would reward closer attention.

Power, Access, and Exclusion

Looking back now, these films feel connected by more than mood or subject matter. They form a loose occult trilogy about power, access, and exclusion. Each depicts a world divided between those who merely perform the gestures of the Occult and those who genuinely belong to a supernatural order. Wealth functions as the visible gate into these hidden worlds, but language marks the deeper divide. God creates through living speech, while demonic power operates through fixed images, books, contracts, and systems that imitate creation without possessing it. The protagonists move through these worlds not as initiates, but as couriers or thresholds. In doing so, the films suggest that true occult power is neither theatrical nor democratic, and that belief itself may be the final trap.

Directors and Systems of Power

Kubrick, Polanski, and Parker were all keen observers of elite social worlds. They understood how power clusters and how privilege shields itself. Kubrick famously warned that the powerful were to be avoided. Polanski’s work is haunted by catastrophe and aftermath. His films return obsessively to systems that claim to explain evil but offer no redemption. Parker moved easily among the artistic elite of London.

If Parker’s career reveals anything about the world he depicts in Angel Heart, it is this: even those who create stories of power and ritual are themselves enmeshed in systems of financing, collaboration, compromise, and hierarchy.

Something was clearly on the minds of these filmmakers as the twentieth century closed and the millennium approached. There was anxiety everywhere about technology, about systems, about whether humanity was surrendering something essential to machines and abstractions.

999, Endings, and inversion

Angel Heart was released in 1987, while The Ninth Gate and Eyes Wide Shut appeared in 1999. Occultly, the number 999 signifies completion pushed to its limit, the exhaustion of a form just before transition or inversion. It marks an ending that cannot continue as it is. That symbolism fits well with the end of the century. Inverted, 999 becomes 666. Perhaps these films were not predicting apocalypse but diagnosing a world already reorganized around hidden structures of power. Probably just an artistic coincidence. Nothing to see here. Maybe.

Rituals and Restricted Entry

If we look closely at these films, the patterns are hard to ignore. Eyes Wide Shut centers on a ritual orgy at a secluded estate. Polanski stages a similar elite gathering in The Ninth Gate. Parker does the same in Angel Heart, though the central ritual occurs off-screen before the story begins. The transmutation of Harry Angel is revealed only later, when Ethan Krusemark receives his gumbo bath and ice tong interrogation. There is also another ceremony at the beginning of the film. The Harlem scene appears to be a funeral. Ironically, the preacher speaks of reincarnation and following a path.

In each film, we are given a privileged point of view from above. In all cases, a group gathers for a spiritual ritual that may or may not invoke an actual presence.

Who Is Allowed In

In all three films, access is regulated. Harry is chased out of the temple. Bill is excluded and warned to stay away. Corso is also excluded. Balkan wants information from him. Liana wants the book returned. No one wants to include him in their inner world. And yet Corso is ultimately included, while the Balkan cabal is excluded. A strange reversal takes place. Corso alone is permitted to walk into the light and, through it, into the Kingdom of Shadows.

Wealth as Protection

Consider who holds influence. Ethan Krusemark, the son of a US senator, owns much of New Orleans. He and his daughter were present at the ceremony that created Harry Angel. Bill and Alice Hartford stumble into a world of immense wealth. Dean Corso serves collectors whose libraries contain priceless first editions of Don Quixote. Wealth does not merely accompany occult knowledge. It appears to protect it.

The Proletariat of the Supernatural

In Eyes Wide Shut, the wealthy practice sex magick. Whether it actually works is beside the point. What matters is that not everyone is permitted to wear a mask and enter the ballroom. Bill Hartford crosses a line he is not authorized to cross. When he returns to Somerton, he finds himself on the wrong side of a locked gate. He and Alice are forced back into the material world. That is why the final scene takes place in a department store, surrounded by toys, artificial magic, and endless consumption. They are condemned to shopping, distraction, and repetition. They are the proletariat of the supernatural. Dollar Bill can buy almost anything except membership in the Occult. He is only a dollar bill, a tool to be spent.

Performance Versus Power

Are the participants at Somerton real occultists? The Ninth Gate raises the same question. The occult meeting Balkan attends looks similar, but it feels theatrical. Masks, costumes, devil imagery. Halloween at a Christmas party. Balkan himself dismisses it as mumbo jumbo. Kubrick establishes a dialectic between those who imitate occult power and those who embody it. These films suggest that fundamental supernatural forces operate off-screen. Since such forces cannot be shown directly, any attempt to depict them would appear artificial.

Threshold Figures

Each protagonist occupies an unstable position. Harry Angel is both a demon and a man. Bill Hartford longs for the underworld but remains trapped in his white coat. Corso resembles Harry more than Bill. He is not striving for entry. He is moving toward recognition. Like Harry, he is accompanied by a supernatural entity that guides his path.

The Harlem Church as Cosmology

In Angel Heart, this division becomes explicit in the Harlem church. The space functions as a symbolic cosmology. On the ground floor, a preacher violates the Ten Commandments in spirit if not in form. The congregation is dressed in black. The service is performance without substance, mirroring the rituals of Eyes Wide Shut. Above this, Angel and Winesap observe from a higher level. Their meeting has a cosmic dimension, separate from the human congregation below. Finally, Harry meets Louis Cypher, seated on his throne. Unlike the preacher, no one on Earth is going to knock him off it. Indeed, not Harry Angel.

Harry has killed all the others involved in the ritual. He cannot kill Cypher because Cypher is not human.

Pursuit, Not Punishment

When Harry later returns to the church, he is not so much attacked as pursued. Hell is reclaiming what does not belong among humans. Harry flees through alleys and emerges onto the street as the preacher is carried on a throne. No one notices Harry because he functions like a shadow in reality. Yet his presence causes men to fall, with dire consequences. Harry collides with the preacher and knocks him down. Harry has power over him, unlike Cypher. That is why Harry must return to Hell, or wherever he truly belongs.

Word, Image, and Revelation

All three films divide the world into the natural and the supernatural, and that division manifests through the Word. In mythic language, God creates reality through speech. The devil can only imitate that power by fixing it into writing, books, contracts, and images. In Angel Heart, the preacher offers false words and hollow rituals. In The Ninth Gate, Liana believes a book will grant her access to Hell. Balkan knows better. Human words do not weigh on the supernatural world.

Mirrors and Masks

No one tells Harry Angel who he is. He discovers the truth by staring into a mirror. Images, not words, restore him to Johnny Favorite. Bill Hartford is warned with words and ignores them. He later finds the mask on his bed. An image confronts him with what he wanted to be. He responds with confession, as if speech could undo what has already occurred. Corso requires no revelation. He arrives where he belongs. The illustrations in The Ninth Gate are not spells. They are diagrams. Roadmaps were created for individuals like Corso to return home.

False Authorities and the Scholarly Gate

Balkan’s authority derives from scholarship, not magic. When he lectures on demonology, he is invoking canonical texts. Two of the most important are Jean Bodin’s De la démonomanie des sorciers and Martín del Río’s Disquisitionum Magicarum Libri Sex, foundational works of early modern demonology. Magicians or heretics did not write these books. They were written by jurists and theologians invested in preserving order. Their purpose was not to grant access to the supernatural but to classify, contain, and place it under institutional authority.

Bodin and the Fantasy of Negotiation

Bodin argued that witchcraft was real, demonic pacts were binding, and mercy toward witches was a sin against both God and the state. For him, the supernatural was invasive and required violent containment. This worldview flatters Balkan. It suggests that knowledge and possession of forbidden texts might grant proximity to power. Bodin leaves room for the fantasy that a learned man might stand at the threshold of Hell and negotiate his way inside.

Del Río and the Collapse of the Book

Del Río dismantles that fantasy. While affirming the existence of demons, he insists that books, diagrams, and formulas possess no intrinsic power. Demons act by will, not compulsion. Grimoires do not command them. They merely attract the attention of those who have already been chosen. Knowledge does not grant access. Possession does not imply belonging. Authority resides not with the reader, but with the hierarchy that governs meaning.

Balkan’s Error

Balkan lectures on these texts but learns the wrong lesson. He believes accumulation can substitute for authorization. He collects every illustration, every fragment, every edition, assuming the whole can be assembled like a puzzle. Del Río explicitly warns against this error. The book is not a gate. It is a filter. It reveals who does not belong. Balkan’s death is not punishment for ambition but for category confusion. He mistakes scholarship for initiation and information for rank.

Names, Ranks, and Functions

Names in these films are not incidental. They signal rank, function, and limitation within occult hierarchies.

Dean Corso

Dean Corso derives from the Italian and Latin corso, meaning ‘course,’ ‘path,’ or ‘pursuit.’ It is also related to Corsair, a licensed thief. He loots reality on behalf of a higher authority. Balkan tells Corso, nemo pervenit qui non legitime certaverit. No one reaches the end unless they contend according to the rules. Corso does precisely that. The name Dean suggests rank rather than identity. In traditions such as Abramelin, Hell is meticulously ordered. Corso behaves as if he already belongs to that order. The green-eyed woman recognizes him immediately at Balkan’s lecture because he is authorized to proceed.

Boris Balkan

Boris Balkan signifies fragmentation. To balkanize is to break something into hostile, irreconcilable pieces. Balkan possesses every fragment of knowledge yet cannot assemble the whole. He believes understanding grants access. That belief is his fatal error.

Liana Telfer

Liana Telfer is named for a climbing vine. A liana does not stand on its own. It wraps around stronger structures to ascend. Liana marries wealth, mimics devotion, and performs ritual, mistaking proximity for qualification. Her ascent is vertical but never foundational. This error recurs across all three films.

The Green-Eyed Woman

The green-eyed woman remains unnamed because demons cannot be named. She is a guardian, not a reader. Her green eyes signal a non-human origin. She remains near Balkan only until Corso appears, at which point Balkan becomes irrelevant. Their union is framed as a transition rather than seduction, as if Corso is being guided toward a place he already belongs.

Harry Angel and Louis Cypher

Harry Angel is a contradiction by design. An angel is a messenger. Harry exists because a message had to be delivered and an error corrected. Created illegally through ritual, he destroys everyone involved in his creation and must return to where he belongs. He is Lucifer’s angel walking the Earth to settle accounts.

Louis Cypher is not merely Lucifer in disguise. A cipher decodes and substitutes. Louis comes to Earth to determine what happened to Johnny Favorite, once trusted and then lost. His presence guides Harry toward the guilty and restores order. Like Corso, Harry leaves death in his wake.

Winesap and Macintosh

Winesap and Macintosh are apples. The symbolism is obvious. The fall of man. Lawyers as serpents in the garden. Perhaps an inside joke. Perhaps not.

The Inward Gate

These films are not warnings about temptation or making pacts. They depict a universe in which most people may only imitate power, never access it. Gates are guarded. Membership is restricted. The nine gates open inward. There is no escape.

Eyes Wide Shut, The Ninth Gate, and Angel Heart form an occult trilogy about power, access, and exclusion. This essay explores why belief is not enough, why books do not open gates, and why true authority operates off-screen. These films are not about temptation or rebellion, but about hierarchy, legitimacy, and the systems that decide who belongs.

Enemies and friends walked across a sunset,
broken limbs, broken trees, cast away
like empty chairs on family day.
Secrets locked in heroic talks.

But:

The devil has his way, stealing men,
spoken in whispers, liturgical curses.
Swords sharpen to slay the soul
and bury the body in word-lined boxes.

Enemies and friends walked across a sunset.
promises of peace, as bodies begin to feed trees.
widows lament
as childless fathers
learn with their friends
to walk across a sunset.

Walking over to my bookcase, I had a book hidden in the back. It was the Encyclopedia of the Occult; I looked up Lucifer. I opened it, and the leaves of the pages fluttered to Dr. Justin Johannes. It was strange that the book settled on a story about a doctor. I read the following passage:

A succubus approached Justin on a dark country road. It was close to midnight. Justin was returning home after visiting a sick patient who had died. The succubus asked for his assistance, saying she had a family in the woods that needed his help. The good Doctor followed the demon. At times, it looked like his patient, who had died that night. In a moonlit glade, the succubus seduced him with words of magic and human frailty. When the demon had his way with him, Justin looked up and was surrounded by a legion of hell and fallen mortals.

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Suddenly, my clock chimed six times. It shook up my senses. The book, as if it had a mind of its own, slammed shut. Taking a couple of deep breaths, I carefully slipped it back into the bookcase. I walked over and picked up the clock, and wondered what had happened to it. Over the last couple of days, it had stopped keeping time and was chiming erratically. I checked my watch, and it was almost noon. Opening the glass case, I adjusted the clock’s hands to the correct time.

My cell rang. It was Lior.

“Lior, hello.”

There was only quiet.

“Lior? Are you okay?”

The phone went dead.

The clock chimed six times again.

“What the fuck.”

I looked over, and it displayed 6:00 again. “That is it. You’re going in the garbage,” I said to the clock as I recalled Lior’s number. I hit redial, but the call didn’t go through. It was dead.

“Damn.”

Perhaps Lior was playing games with me. But I was concerned about how she left, and I was deeply worried about her safety. I looked up her address so I could relay that information to the police. They could then conduct a welfare check. The whole situation felt more bizarre by the minute.

I knew the cops would probably just call. The rain, Lior, and the fact that it was the weekend were all beginning to feel like a day on the Titanic. I found a coffee shop on Valencia and waited to see if the police had made contact.

The rain was still pouring down, and the shop was empty. A glazed donut and a cup of coffee can solve almost any problem. I sat by a window and watched the rain wash the street. I felt invisible, as if I had opened a door and slipped out of the world. People walked by, sheltered by umbrellas and with their hats or hoods pulled over their faces, ducking the rain.

Across the street, on the opposite side, the 9R bus pulled up. It was empty except for a couple of people. I took a sip of coffee and watched the rain dive-bomb the puddles. Then I felt eyes on me. One rider on the bus was staring. A vacant stare. A body emptied of a soul. It was a woman with a hood. She pulled it back.

It was Lior.

I waved. She did not respond. I got up and ran out.

I yelled, “Lior.” The coffee shop door slammed behind me. I crossed the threshold into the pouring rain. I waved again. She just watched with horrible sadness. Running across the street, I shouted, “Hey, wait!”

The bus pulled away from the curb. A splash from the wheels drenched me. I grabbed the streetlight pole beside me to steady myself and watched as it drove off.

“Shit.” In anger, I grabbed a flyer that had been posted on the streetlight and ripped it off. Crunching it into a ball, I was about to throw it into a pool of water, but my phone rang. Instead, I stuck it in my pocket.

“Dr. Thomas?”

“Yes,” I answered, still angry.

“Officer Sanchez, SFPD.”

“Sorry.”

“Everything okay, sir?”

“Thank you for calling back.”

“On the matter of the wellness check. You’re sure about that address, 900 Guerrero, Apt 6?”

“Positive.”

“We spoke with the janitor. He says a woman by that name lived there maybe three years ago. Dr. Thomas…”

“I just saw her on a bus.”

“Where are you right now?”

“Valencia Street. I saw her on the 9R bus?”

“9R runs on Van Ness.”

“Look, it was her. I saw Lior.”

“Have you been drinking today, sir?”

“What?”

Silence, then: “Filing a false police report is a crime.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

“You are Dr. William Thomas?”

“Yes, I-am-doctor-William-Thomas,” I said, emphasizing each word.

“Well, the janitor told us your patient died about three years ago. Suicide. Hung herself.”

“She’s dead?”

“Suicide, like I said.”

“I just saw her.”

“I’m passing this to the detectives. Goodbye, Dr. Thomas. If you’re Dr. Thomas. I hope for your sake that’s true.”

The line clicked off. I stared at the phone for a long time. The screen was dark, but my reflection stared back for a second. It was a horrible second; I thought someone was behind me, looking over my shoulder. I wiped the rain from the screen, hands shaking. I spun around. Just a soaked San Francisco street.

I was hoping somehow it was Lior. How could she be dead? It had to be a mistake. “How could she have hanged herself?” I whispered. It made little sense. I touched her hand yesterday and saw her breathing, talking, and crying. I could still smell her perfume. She was almost naked in my office. How could she be gone?

I sat down at the small table by the window. My coffee had gone cold. The rain drummed harder against the window, then softened to nothing, as if it too had run out of words.

Maybe the officer was wrong. Maybe it was someone else. Or maybe I was losing my mind.

The server approached me, full of life at twenty years old and still in love with it.

“Sorry, I took your half-eaten donut. You want a refill? I saw you chase after that bus. Was your girlfriend on it or something?”

“I thought it was a patient. Maybe a decaf this time.”

“You’re okay, right?” she said with concern.

“I’m fine.”

In a minute, she was back with my decaf and a donut.

“I didn’t ask for the donut.”

“It’s on the house.”

“Very kind of you,” I said as I reached into my pocket to get my wallet. Instead, I pulled out the scrunched-up piece of paper. “Darn. Could you throw this out for me?” I handed the paper to the server and kept digging for my wallet.

She unrolled the paper. “I might go to this.” She flattened it completely. It read:

LAIRDE SCHLECKER — New Art Installation. Tonight at eight p.m.

I felt like I had taken an ice-cold bath. I couldn’t stop staring at the paper.

“Hey.” She waved her hand in front of my face to get my attention.

“I’m sorry. What do I owe you?” I distractedly asked.

“Five dollars and twenty-six cents.”

I gave her my card.

“I will be back. I hear the guy is brilliant.”

Not waiting, I snatched up the flyer and headed to the door.

A faint, “You forgot your card,” drifted behind me.

The address was in the TL—that is, the Tenderloin. Cops in SF called it the Tenderloin because it was a cash cow for extra pay. The address was on Taylor near Leavenworth. The rain had stopped, so I walked. Checking my watch, I saw it was 3:30. I wasn’t sure where the time had gone. However, if Lairde had a show at 8:00 pm, I would explore the venue.

As I entered the TL, the walk turned into something out of Dante’s Inferno. I wish I had taken an Uber. Drug dealers, prostitutes, and wrecked people trolled the streets. They were like the city’s dark thoughts made into flesh, hiding in plain sight.

A block away, I saw his studio. It was all black with a banner of red Gothic letters. As I approached, none of the inhabitants of the TL were hovering around the building. The sidewalk was clean, and I noticed people walked on the other side of the street. Whatever Lairde had done, his building seemed to repel the street folks.

I crossed the street to the entrance. A sign was advertising the art of Lairde. The door had the same sigil that Lior displayed between her breasts. I saw a group of people looking at me and pointing. I turned. A young man approached but stood in the middle of the street. He was dressed in jeans, a ball cap, and beaten-up Adidas. “Homeboy, what are you looking for?”

“Well…ah… See this show,” I said, sort of surprised by the question. It seemed earnest.

“You’re far from home, brother,” advised the man as he watched the door.

“I’m not looking for trouble.” I could see the people on the street watching. Nobody was moving; they were hanging on my words.

“You go in there… You’re looking for trouble.” He put his arms in the air, indicating there was nothing he could do.

I looked at him and the others watching me, then back at the entrance. I realized the man was trying to warn me. They weren’t looking at me like I was their victim—more like I was about to become someone else’s.

“I appreciate …”

The man cut me off and pointed behind me. The door of the gallery opened, and a tall, well-built man walked out. He was dressed in stylish clothes, and like the building, he was also covered in darkness. He had a pronounced scar down the side of his face.

The man in the street froze for a second. “Hey, have a nice day, and Market Street is that way.” He pointed in its direction and hurried off. Everyone scattered.

The man from the studio watched the people disperse. “You look like you are lost?”

“Yeah… I think they were…” I looked at him and decided not to share my thoughts. “I’m interested in the show.”

“It starts at 8 pm.” He went back to the door.

“I got this.” I handed him the flyer

He looked it over. “The best part was ripped off.” He stared at me with wildcat eyes. “I can give you a quick tour.”

I followed him into the gallery. The door shut quietly behind me. I wondered if I was locked in. The darkness itself felt menacing. Before entering the gallery proper, I passed two large candles on either side of the entrance. They stood like guardians, flickering as they watched the door. A scent of sandalwood permeated the air. It seemed to hide the scent of something ancient and evil.

In the gallery, both paintings and sculptures were displayed. The figures in the paintings appeared to be in agony. Some were naked; some were working at mundane jobs. One showed two people having sex. The painting caught my attention.

“These are my works.” The man pointed around the room.

I couldn’t look away from that one painting. A woman was on top of a man. The POV was of a person watching them from behind. The woman in the painting was looking back at the viewer. The look of horror on her face took my breath away.

“Do you like this work? I should warn you; it is already sold.” The man laughed. “Very expensive. They paid in blood for it.”

“It is different.” Then it suddenly hit me — the woman was Lior. “Do you know the model?”

The man smiled. Looked up at his painting. “Ah, right…. You are the good Doctor. William Thomas.”

I was taken aback. “How do you know that?”

The man shifted and smirked. He gestured down at himself. “What am I wearing?”

“Pants…”

“How do you know that?”

“Kind of obvious,” I responded curtly.

“And you are just as obvious… at least to me, Dr. William Thomas.”

“Come on, how do you know me?” I pressed him.

“We are alchemists of life.”

“It’s Lairde, right?”

“Very good.” As he spoke, he clapped his hands.

“Do you know where Lior is?” I said, pointing to her in the painting.

Lairde gave me another condescending smile. “Want a glass of wine?” There was a small bar, and Lairde went behind it. He poured two glasses of wine. Not waiting for my answer, he passed the glass to me.

“No thanks… do you know where she is?”

Lairde took a sip and sat down. He kicked a seat towards me. “Sit.”

I reluctantly sat. “Is that her in the painting?”

“The one there.” He pointed. “The one she is on top of a stranger fucking him?”

The words ran through my mind like poison, shaking me up, nauseating me.

“Maybe we should look at it again.” He looked towards the painting and took another sip.

“No, thank you.”

Lairde laughed. “I was hoping…” He took another sip of wine. “You will be able to grasp the beauty of the work. Have genuine communion with me. Look again with me. Examine the work. In depth.” He touched my shoulder and, with the same hand, gestured towards the painting.

I refused to look. “So you know her?” I tried to shake off the yuck that Lairde was working to place on me.

“She modeled for that painting. Great model. So giving.” Lairde smiled and placed his glass down. “Thank you, Doctor.”

“For what?”

“That was all your good work... her therapy. She was able to find her inner Jezebel.”

I was under attack in a manner I had never experienced before. It was dangerous, but not in terms of physical violence. Lairde was like an empty grave calling my soul.

“I’m leaving… just let her know I asked about her.”

“Why are you angry? You helped her.” He said reassuringly. “She could never have let a stranger ravage her. She gave herself to this disgusting minion .” Liarde drew the invisible figure of a woman as he said, “He gave her such…” He paused. “…such freedom.”

“Is she okay?”

He laughed sardonically.

I spelled it out for him. “IS SHE OKAY?”

“William…” The way he said my name sounded like Lior. “Are you in therapy?”

I refused to answer.

“How do you feel when I ask you about Lior?”

“I am done here…” I said as I got up.

“You have a monk-like quality about you.”

“Whatever.”

“You and her in a painting. I would call it The Monk Tastes Midnight. I can create you. I would give you all the worldly suffering. Endless. I have a client… A patron who loves the arcane.”

“Goodbye… try that stuff on someone else. Tell it all to the cops.”

“That stuff? You want answers. But you don’t really want to hear them.”

I walked to the door and pushed it open.

“If I see her…” He thought for a second. “Give me your card. I will ask around. I think somebody knows where she is.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my business card holder. I passed my card to him.

Lairde looked over the card and read, “Dr. William Thomas.” He moved it around in his hand, examining it. “If you want a better design, let me know.”

Walking to the street, Lairde followed me in silence. Finally, he said, “You never asked.”

“About Lucifer?” I gave a snarky laugh. “The part where you and Lior saw him?”

Lairde smiled and winked at me.

“You know… Lairde, I think you are a manipulator and an asshole. Bad news, buddy. Lucifer doesn’t exist. Enjoy the conversation with the cops.” For the first time, I felt like I had the upper hand.

The streets had gotten empty. Once I got away from the gallery, I ordered an Uber.

A couple of days passed. I filed a police report. On Tuesday, I checked my patient schedule. I saw I was supposed to see Lior. She had scheduled an appointment months ago for seven o’clock. I doubted she would show. But I hoped I was wrong.

I sat in my chair and waited. It was exactly seven. I heard the outer door of my office open. Then there was silence. I got up and went to the waiting room. It was empty. I waited and listened. There was nobody on the stairs. Then the lights flickered and then shut off. I walked back into the dark office. Only the neon light from the street illuminated my room.

Taking one step, I stopped. The room was no longer empty. In the shadows, a person was sitting in the patient’s chair. It faced away from the door. I had no idea how they managed to get past me. Cigarette smoke hung in the air above his head. The tobacco burned with an occasional bright amber.

I circled the chair. “Who are you, you’re not Lior?”

There was a man. I think it was a man. The face had both feminine and male features. A cloud of smoke encircled him. But their eyes burned with an ugly coldness. “Dr. William…” A white, cold arm extended towards me. I reluctantly shook its hand — ancient, dangerous.

“You said I didn’t exist.”

I ripped my hand away.

The ember of the cigarette glowed red. A puff of smoke.

I couldn’t speak.

And…

I couldn’t move.

“Time for you to pay your respects to the ruler of this planet.”

An icy chill ran through me.

Trick or Treat

It rose from the chair like a nightmare climbing out of a dream.

“I’m going to teach you I exist.” He paused. “Say my name.”

Opening my eyes, my phone danced along the table from a call.

I picked it up. It was about nine in the morning.

“Hello...”

“Doc, it’s me...Lior.”

“Lior? It’s early... why are you calling?”

“I got to see you...like now...”

I repeated, “It’s nine in the morning...”

“Now...”

“Why now?”

“Doctor William, now!”

I heard a knocking.

“Gimme a minute... Someone’s at my door.” I put the phone down and approached it. I called out, “Hello...” and looked through the peephole. All I saw was a bleak San Francisco morning. Then I opened the door. No one was there. I looked around and noticed dark clouds charging over Twin Peaks. Closing the door, I picked up my phone. “Lior, I’m back. What is the urgency?” I asked as I went back to my study.

“I told you I saw Lucifer. We did acid, and he appeared.”

I took a small breath. “Is he with you now?”

“Of course, he is not fuckin’ with me now. It is nine o’clock in the morning.”

“You hallucinate on acid, don’t you?”

“William! I’m scared, okay... terrified...” said Lior in a higher-than-normal register.

“I am going to my office around eleven. Can it wait till then?”

“I will see you at eleven,” she said as the phone went dead.

The Visit.

I approached my office building. It was a narrow Victorian that had somehow survived both the earthquake and the neighborhood’s subsequent gentrification. I saw Lior sitting on the sidewalk by the door, smoking. She was dressed in the same clothes, but wore dark glasses.

She never acknowledged my presence as I took the keys out of my pocket. Staring at the street, Lior watched a couple of Saturday drivers go by.

“William, you are late!” She threw the cigarette onto the street and got up.

“It is a role reversal.”

“Whatever... It’s about to rain.”

Opening the door, I trudged up the stairs.

Lior stopped halfway up. “I hear a famous Satanist used to do bad shit in this building.”

I looked back. “I heard that too. That was on California Street.”

“You sure?”

“How about we talk about it in the office?” I continued up the stairs.

Lior followed.

“I hope you brought an umbrella?” I asked as I unlocked the outer office and punched in the alarm codes. “Come on in...” I walked in, and I pulled up the blinds.

“Why do you have an alarm?”

I took off my coat and put it on my couch. I avoided the question and went to my chair. The previous tenant had installed it. He was a Jungian analyst who’d abruptly left mid-lease. The landlord never said why. One of his neighbors said that on his last day, he was mumbling and talking in circles about how he had encountered his shadow side.

Lior interrupted my thought.”Afraid all our secrets are blowing around your room? Maybe when you are alone, you encounter your shadow side.” Lior sat down.

I froze. “What did you just say?”

“I was just talking shit…You look like you just saw a ghost.”

I picked up a pen and a pad by my chair.”So what is going on?”

“I’m not crazy. I don’t need to go to the hospital,” confessed Lior.

“I’m not saying you are.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have hung out with them.”

“Are you having... what’s it called, a flashback?”

“No... the acid was good. Lucifer was not so good.”

Rain hit the office windows. It started slowly, but then it came pounding down. The office got storm-dark.

“Maybe you need to turn the lights on.” Lior got up and went to the dimmer.

“I think it’s broken.”

The room brightened. “Seems to work now.” Lior went back to her seat.

“You saw Lucifer?”

Lior nodded. She curled up in the chair.

“Is he here?”

She looked around the room.

But then the lights flickered.

“You see that! You see that! The lights!” Lior cried out.

“Lior! I need you to calm down. Maybe we should practice some breathing...”

“Why did I go with them...” she said in a self-admonishing manner.

“Let’s start from the beginning,” I said in my best therapeutic voice. But I could feel my anxiety rise.

“William... So, I met these dudes at an art exhibit. A couple of weeks ago.”

A gust of wind blew against the office windows. They rattled because of the force.

Lior didn’t notice but continued in her recount. “We had some drinks, smoked some pot. They then invited me back to their loft. It was really cool. The main guy, Lairde, is a talented painter and artist. He was showing his paintings, and there was this one he called The Dark Prince. A bunch of us were looking at it. Someone asked him if it was Lucifer or something like that.” She stopped as if she had come to a pivot point in the story.

“And...”

“He said he had met Lucifer.”

“You believed him?”

A sudden clap of thunder happened, and the lights blew out. And then Lior screamed.

Silence joined us for a few minutes. We sat in the dark, listening to the rain hitting the windows. Lior reached over and grabbed my hand.

“William...” She held my hand tighter.

I patted her hand with my free hand as I pulled loose from her. “We are going to be okay.”

Lior sat back in her chair. “How do you define okay?”

“Lior...”

“No, really... We are sitting in the dark, and I am talking about Lucifer.”

“I think I’ve got some candles stashed in my desk.” I got up and began looking through the drawers of my desk. “You are probably suffering from a type of LSD hangover.”

Lior rolled her eyes in disbelief.

“I got a red and a green one.”

“Put one here beside me and the other one on that table by your chair.” I placed them down and then said, “I don’t have any matches.”

Lior reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a lighter. The first time she tried it, there was only a spark. “Damn.” Then she increased the fuel, and a flame shot up. The orange glow illuminated her face from beneath, throwing shadows upward like a medieval painting of the damned. She lit both candles with almost expert skill… too expert, as if she’d done this many times before, in darker rooms than mine.

“You know, William...” said seductively.

“As soon as the power is back on, those candles are going out.”

“Anyway, Lairde told everyone last Halloween that Lucifer appeared. And guess what? Lairde did his portrait.”

“And people believed him?”

“At first, nobody believed him.” She took a pause. “Just like you...”

“Come on. I mean... it was a hallucination.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Come on, Lucifer?”

“Yeah, him. Lucifer. Every one of us…” Just at that moment, her phone rang. Lior looked down at it. “It’s Marie; she was there.” She took a moment and answered. “Marie, are you okay?” Lior listened for a moment. “I know. I am with him now. We’re sitting in the dark.” A moment passed. “No, we have candles.” There was another pause as Lior listened. She passed the phone to me. “She wants to talk to you.”

Taking the phone, I said. “Doctor Thomas. How about I put you on speaker?”

Marie stopped me. In a hushed voice, she said, “Don’t put us on speaker.”

Looking at Lior, I could see she was listening. “Okay… why are you calling?”

Marie answered and said rapidly, “Doctor Thomas. It’s true. We all saw the devil. And Lior is in deep shit...” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Doctor Thomas…don’t let her touch you. Don’t let her…” The line suddenly went dead. Not a click or a fade, but a sudden, violent silence, as if something had severed the connection.

Lightning illuminated the room, and the candles’ flames bent as if they were affected. For a second, I thought I saw a shadow behind Lior.

She noticed me staring and quickly swung around. “You saw something... You did...” Her voice was getting more like a shriek.

“Lior... The lightning... surprised me...” I was actually trying to convince myself more than her.

“Are you going to help me?”

“Of course... but how would you like me to do that?”

“We all did acid. It was the only way to see him. Then he appeared. Everyone saw him. Started like a puff of smoke or clouds. But it got darker and darker, and then finally he fuckin appeared.”

The clock chimed. I almost jumped out of my skin. Sitting in the dark did not ease my growing fear that whatever Lior was going through was far beyond anything I had experienced in my clinical work.

“Nothing really happened when he appeared. He called Lairde his son. But...” Lior was becoming increasingly emotional. “But...” She began crying. “He...” She was sobbing and was trying to choke out words.

“He... Oh my God... you’ve got to help me...” She closed her eyes, wrapped her arms around her body, and pulled her legs up.

I grabbed a blanket from my couch and wrapped it around her. I had never seen a sane person become insane in seconds. She closed her eyes and began rocking.

I whispered, “Lior...”

She ignored me.

“Lior...”

She opened her eyes most desperately and sadly. “I am going to hell...”

“You are not going to hell...”

“No... someone had to be chosen...”

“No one goes to hell.”

Lior threw off the blanket and stood up.

“What are you doing?”

“For him to appear, someone has to disappear.”

“Lior...”

“Look,” she whispered, and began unbuttoning her blouse.

👻TRick or TReat🧹🔮

The room’s darkness surrounded us. Lior stopped undoing her blouse, took my candle, and placed it beside her. The candlelight trembled over her body in patches of flame. “I want you to see me, and maybe you will see him.” Her eyes ensnared the fire of the candles as her hands went back to her blouse.

I meant to stop her; I wanted to stop her. To repeat her name. Professionally. I was being halted by something. As each button slipped free, it felt like a pin being thrust into me.

I managed a throaty, “Lior.” I glanced around the office. I could have sworn I saw shapes moving into and out of the corners.

The blouse opened. Her pale skin caught the flame’s reflection. Horrid little pictures seemed to be dancing across her flesh.

Again, more for me than her, “Lior, put your blouse on.”

The candles fluttered as if breathing faster. Lior raised her arms slightly, the fabric sliding from her shoulders. The flames of the candles grew taller and longer. Then the blouse fell to the floor.

No bra. Just skin, breath, and the faint scent of Lior’s perfume and the smoldering of autumn leaves.

The office lights snapped on with a bullwhip crack. The sudden brightness made everything unreal—the storm outside, the open window, Lior... her arms outstretched.

“Let yourself look,” she said. In a sense, it was seductive, but to no place any mortal would venture to.

“Here,” she said, pointing between her breasts. “This came out of me.”

Arching her back, she looked down at me. Etched into her flesh was a sigil—black lines curling into forbidden geometry, the surrounding skin faintly raised. The sigil was reforming, the black lines crawling like insects, rearranging themselves into what seemed to be a ghastly face. Not drawn. Not tattooed. Growing. And the face, as it took shape, seemed to recognize me. I glanced away. I wondered for a second if Lior had dosed me with LSD. I had to move my mind away..

“Lior, put your clothes on... It’s a tattoo.”

“No,” she breathed. “It’s his sign. It lives within me now. I belong where he roams.”

“Lior, please...” I reached for her blouse, holding it like a shield between us. “Put this on.”

She let it fall to the floor. Tilting only her head, studying me,…then Lior said, “You’re looking at me the way he does. Lucifer told me I was beautiful. Am I beautiful?”

“Lior—” I said in almost a shout.

“You want to understand him, don’t you? To feel what I felt?”

For one terrible moment, I did. I wanted to ask her what it was like, what he’d said, what bargain had been struck. But I didn’t want to promote more of her delusion. ”... Sit in that chair.” I grabbed her by her naked elbows, as much to steady myself as to move her.

She stared into me. Very into me. “Touch it.”

Thunder broke. The window burst open, wind slamming through the room. Candles hissed. My hand jerked back.

She flinched, blinked, and suddenly she was just Lior again—shivering, exhausted. She grabbed her blouse, pulling it on clumsily, as if waking from a trance. She seemed embarrassed.

“Sometimes,” she said, fastening the last button, “beautiful things happen in the dark... if you let them.” Her eyes met mine with a tender gaze, and she gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Don’t worry about me. I’m cursed.” She smiled. “Nobody worries about me.”

“Are you leaving?” Not sure if I wanted her to go or not.

Lior picked up her jacket.

“You are not cursed...”

Zipping it, she asked, “How would you know?”

“Whoa... wait a minute...”

She kept walking to the door.

“Lior, let me make a couple of calls...”

“Bye, William.” She stopped at the door and smiled sadly .”Will you miss me?”

“Lior.”

She opened the door. Did not look back. Closing it, she uttered, “Bye.” Turned, facing me. “I was born into hopelessness. Don’t worry.”

The door closed. She was gone. A couple of raindrops fell on me. The window was still open. I grabbed it. On the street below, a man in a black raincoat was looking in my direction. He had two Dobermans on either side of him. The dogs were staring in the same direction as the man. They stood in silence like statues being grown by the rain. I took a seat. But I had to check again. I looked out, and now there was only rain.

Walking over to my bookcase, I had a book hidden in the back. It was the Encyclopedia of the Occult; I looked up Lucifer.

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The clock sat on the corner of my writing desk. A big, ancient thing with a key you had to wind. I had inherited it from my grandfather. He was an anatomist at a prestigious medical school.

The clock chimed a tired six strokes.

She was late again. I walked over to the window and pulled the curtain back. The street was empty except for the darkness falling on San Francisco. Nocturnal autumn winds twirled the fall leaves. A tribe of kids with angry Jack-O’-Lantern buckets patrolled the street below. No Lior.

I walked back to my chair and waited. Lior was my last patient. She was always late.

The second hand of my clock was casting an inexplicable spell with its quiet ticking. I heard the outer door of my office creak open. A slight breeze rushed into my room and teased some loose papers on my desk. It had the October bite to it.

Lior first stuck just her head in my office. A tumble of colors, scarves, hair dye, denim—peeked around the door. “Hey, Doc…”

“Glad you made it!”

She paused. Smiled. Looked around as if she expected to see another person in the room. “Did I mention last time—you’ve got a lot of books?”

“I do?”

She studied my bookcase by the door. “Uh-huh.” A new thought seemingly entered her brain, and she started to speak. Suddenly, she stopped.

“You’re about to say something?”

Lior smiled. “What?”

Then, in an explosive movement of body parts and midnight fashion, she glided towards me. With her came an invisible fog of smoldering and falling leaves. Her black leather jacket hung in tatters; beneath it, astrological tights shimmered faintly under torn denim. Lior always looked like she had fallen through a thrift-store constellation.

She ripped off her jacket and threw it on the chair opposite me.

She plopped down on the chair and tugged one scuffed army boot under her other leg. “Is this window open?”

“I don’t think so. Are you cold?”

“I’ve been cold all day. I think I am coming down with something.” She scrunched up her mouth and looked away. “I don’t remember your office being this dark.”

“You might be right.” It was like the room had grown darker once she entered. “There is a dimmer…” I pointed to the light switch as I got up.

“Doc, chill. It’s by the door?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ve spent a lot of time here.” She watched the room as she adjusted the light. “Better?”

“What do you think?”

She walked back to her seat and looked at my bookcase by the door. “All those books about psychology and stuff?”

“What books should be there?”

“I dunno. So... I did some acid last night.”

“LSD?”

“… it was kind of amazing. Did I tell you about my artist friends last time?”

Time passed, and Lior talked about her artist friends and how she hated men who rode at the back of buses. But we never returned to the LSD trip.

“Lior...”

“I know, I know,” she said in a mocking tone. “We will have to pick this up next week.” She gave me a look of disappointment and then said sarcastically, “Have you got time for me to write you a check?”

“Sure.”

As Lior wrote it, she asked, “You going out for Halloween?”

Laughingly, I reply, “Me?”

“Why not?”

“I’m kind of old to dress up in a devil costume.”

“Why a devil, Doc?” she said, pretending to tease me.

I shrugged my shoulders. “I dunno.”

“Here’s your money. You know some of that shit is real.”

“Let’s talk about it next time.”

“I saw Lucifer last night,” blurted out Lior.

No one spoke. The clock answered six times.

Lior stared and paused. “It’s seven o’clock, William.”

Taking a breath, I explained, “I guess it’s broken.”

“Kind of like you, right?”

The vibrations in the room had changed. Lior had turned the relationship upside down. I wasn’t a therapist anymore, and I had no idea who she was.

“Goodnight, Lior.”

She got her jacket and all her stuff. Walking towards the door, she paused. “Hey, Doc, you afraid of the dark side?”

“Goodnight!”

She vanished from my office. No more patients, just a couple of charts and notes—the alchemical notations of care. At my desk, I found Lior’s chart.

Patient arrived late. She has been struggling with depression. The symptoms have moved from being angry about the loss of friends to delusions.

A noise from the waiting room. Footsteps. Then I heard the door of my outer office open.

“Lior, are you back?” I called out.

No answer.

Walking to my office door, I pushed it open. The outer office door was wide open. There was no one in the waiting room. A National Geographic had been tossed on the floor. I picked it up and threw it on the table.

🎃 trick or treat 🧹

A breeze from outside crawled into the room. That smoldering scent was lingering and trying to invade my office.

I walked over to the outer door. I looked out and down the stairwell. Empty. At the bottom, through the glass door, a child stood. The costume was disturbing. The mask should have been a painted grin, but it looked like an actual face—a real scowling face. I blinked and cleared my vision. The figure turned and was gone.

Back in the office, shadows were collecting. The room was in rebellion against the lighting of the office. The dimmer did nothing.

“Great. Thanks, Lior, for breaking my dimmer.” I yawned. “Okay. That is a sign for me to go home.”

It had been a long day.

The clock chimed. This time it was correct.

The streets were filled with demons, devils, and witches. I hoped by the time I got home, they had all found graveyards and realms of hell to eat their candy in. A light rain started, and the street lights blurred a bit from the artificial light. Usually, I don’t mind the dark, but as soon as I entered my apartment, I hit the lights. I was thinking about what Lior had said, and it was creeping me out. She wasn’t delusional, maybe depressed or anxious. Halloween, Lucifer, and a long day were making for an uncomfortable mental cocktail.

I sat in my study, which I had crafted like my great-grandfather’s room. I had gotten my hands on rare editions of Gray’s Anatomy. The cracked spines held horrible diseases that had all been cured. I had inherited a couple of monkey skulls—at least I believed they were primates’ bones. They lined the top of my bookshelves. Stuffed in a dusty bag behind a couple of books was a human head, a Borneo bushman had preserved. My grandmother told me it was her father’s favorite possession. I was sworn never to part with it. She referred to it as “George.”

“George, I hope you had a better day than I did.”

I liked sitting in the quiet of ancient medical wisdom. I noticed there was a book upside down on the bottom shelf. I pulled it out, and it was a King James Version of the Bible. That was very odd. I placed it back right side up.

The front door creaked open. It was almost time for my housekeeper to cook dinner. I wanted to talk to her about putting the Bible upside down.

“Hello, Anna,” I shouted out.

There was no answer. No housekeeper. I walked out of the study and turned on the hallway light. Nobody was there. I checked the door. It was locked. I went back to the study and poured another glass of Chardonnay. Then I remembered Anna was taking the night off.

I settled back into my favorite chair. On the table was a picture of my great-grandfather. I picked it up.

“I wonder when you were looking for bodies to dissect, if you ever got freaked out.”

I never noticed his eyes before. Intense, not in a positive way. It was like they were looking through the veils of reality. The sound of a paper bag rustled. Was George planning an escape?

“Nope, I am not looking. It is mice eating George,” I stated.

Checking my great-grandfather’s picture, I quietly said, “Sorry.” And placed it face down.

I thought I heard another scratching sound. Again, I stated, “Not looking.” I closed my eyes.

Clocks ticked. Footsteps of shadows ran down unlit hallways. And time passed. In a faraway world of dreams and sleep, something was ringing.

Santiago got out of the car and surveyed the street. It was getting late.

Across town, Betsy climbed into bed and dimmed the lights. She’d felt dreadful ever since that meeting with the psych-ward lunatic. Maybe it was just the flu. She set a cup of warm sleep potion on her nightstand and closed her eyes before she’d even taken a sip. Her breathing slowed. The room drifted at odd angles.

Then… Something...

Hands.

Claws.

Something hooked around her feet.

She jolted upright and ripped the covers back.

Santiago was wide awake and unsure what would happen. Across from where they parked sat the Le Americana; it was once a classy place, but now it was a low-life joint for the socially retarded. Santiago beckoned to one of his men to accompany him as he walked towards the side of the building. Just as they were about to pass the front door, a one-eyed hombre staggered out. He looked Santiago over and sniffed the air. Smiling, he drunkenly mumbled out, “You smell like my bitch-whore.”

From the man’s blind side, Paco lunged. He scooped the one-eyed hombre up and hurled him through the bar doors. The man smashed to the floor, gasping. Paco yanked a Beretta from his belt and pressed the barrel to the man’s forehead. The drunk groaned and fought; Paco shoved the muzzle down as if it were a drill boring into wood.

“Paco!” Santiago barked, as if the man were a pet.

The patrons didn’t look up from their watered-down drinks. They sat frozen, like carcasses in an iced abattoir.

Paco climbed off, straightened, and slid the pistol back into his pants. “Leave him rotting,” Santiago said. “He’s already dead.”

Paco backed toward the door.

“No one saw anything,” the bartender muttered.

A horrible silence fell.

“For your customers.” Santiago dropped bills onto a table.

They edged out onto the street. In a whisper, Santiago said, “Paco — come back later and finish him. You’ll have more time.”

Paco nodded. “You’re always thinking ahead, boss.”

Santiago gave a cold, slight wink.

The men slipped back into motion and cut into the alley beside the bar. They stopped at a rusted doorway leading down to the basement beneath Le Americana.

“I’ll wait here,” Paco said, dragging a broken chair over. He dusted it off, leaned it against the wall, then sat.

Santiago gave a single nod. “Good.” He descended into the basement.

The air hit him — damp, sour with mildew. The floorboards groaned under the weight of too many years. He pushed aside a rotted cloth nailed over a doorway and stepped through.

Three men sat beside a set of ritual drums. Their eyes were wide and glassy. Santiago couldn’t tell if they were high or in a trance.

He took a few more steps, his shoes sticking to the floor. He slowed when he saw it — the sacred space of the Palo priest he’d come to meet. A brujo. In a dark, moldy corner was his altar. In front of it lay a mat set with a harvest of fresh fruits and vegetables. To the side of the altar was a sullen, evil-looking vulture. It occasionally flew into the air as if it were shot from a cannon. But it never got more than a few feet off the ground. Someone had shackled one leg to the floor and robbed it of its magic to fly. The bird was now kept as a prisoner.

Out of the darkness walked the brujo and a woman. He was old and wore a big sombrero, a plaid shirt, and jeans. From a distance, he could be mistaken for a kindly retired citizen. When he got close, the force of his malevolent presence became apparent. It surrounded him like a suit made of suffering and barbed wire.

His female companion shared the brujo’s portrait of darkness and his shapeshifting presence. She wore a tight shirt, no bra, nothing to soften the lines of her body. Her skirt looked colorful at first, covered in symbols and coiling serpents, but the colors were already bleeding into the supernatural. Her sandals showed her red toenails, chipped and stained black in patches. Like the brujo, she carried a secret air of danger about her. She looked at Santiago, but she didn’t really notice him. It was like he was in one universe and she was in another.

The bird made a horrible cry — a beckoning… a hello with evil ends — screaming… threatening the putrid air. It lunged again. Though Santiago wasn’t close, he stepped back.

“Is that a pet?”

The brujo shook his head, though his eyes didn’t move. The altar light caught in them, casting a flicker that didn’t belong in the room. Santiago met his gaze once, then looked away and let the brujo do his thing.

The old man began inspecting the shrine. He lifted the fruit, pressed his fingers into it, smelled it, and adjusted the offerings one by one.

The vulture screamed again. The brujo lifted a finger to his lips. Santiago couldn’t tell if the gesture was meant for him or the bird.

The brujo moved to the vulture and examined it — lifting its wing, checking its feet, its beak. When the bird snapped at him, he slapped it without changing expression.

The vulture twisted its head, rolling as if it were trying to wrench itself free. Its eyes swept the room with the same dead focus as the brujo — and then locked on Santiago.

“What you seek — if it exists — may not want to speak to you,” the brujo said as if he were talking to the vulture.

Santiago nodded once.

“Money…”

The brujo never looked or watched, and the vulture never took its eyes off Santiago. He reached into his coat and pulled out American bills. He held them out. The vulture let out a screech. The brujo pointed toward a bowl on the altar. Santiago dropped the money in.

“Good boy.”

The brujo made a beckoning gesture to the woman. She went to another part of the basement and whispered to the three drummers. In a few minutes, they started drumming with a pulse that drove itself into and under Santiago’s skin. As the drummers worked themselves into a frenzy, the brujo blessed the cardinal points with a depraved mixture of liquids. Then he grasped the end of the rope that held the vulture. The brujo held onto it like a tethered thing fighting to escape. A jerk of the rope greeted each attempt of the bird to fly. It crashed to the floor and then hopped around, as if it were dancing to the drums. The brujo dragged it to a spot on the floor, where magical symbols and incantations were inscribed. Stepping onto its neck, he gestured for Santiago to kneel.

The brujo turned and stared at the bird with demon-like eyes. Suddenly, the bird screeched out a strangulated cry. It screamed like something that understood what was coming. The drumming droned on, adding to the cacophony of the vulture’s screeches. The brujo spoke quietly to it. The bird calmed after the brujo’s mesmerizing effect. Grabbing the bird by its neck, the priest took it to Santiago and rubbed it over his head and body. Lifting it into the air, he carefully walked it back to the altar. Again, the brujo whispered a type of charm as he held a gruesome knife. The drumming kept time during the ritual of imminent death. With a sudden cut, he slit the vulture’s throat. Blood sprayed onto the walls and floor. The woman came with a crystal bowl and caught the bloody pulses. She carried its precious contents to Santiago, where she dripped the red essence over his head. He felt the warm, sticky liquid soak his scalp. The drumming got louder, and the pulse of the room quickened.

The brujo raised his knife and brought it down, severing one of the vulture’s claws. He lifted it, letting the blood run down. Showing it off to the room before he crouched down and dragged the claw through the blood-stained floor. Using the claw like a brush, he carefully drew a shape: wings, then a body, finally a head. A dragon.

Betsy awoke suddenly. She thought she heard a noise. It was unclear where the sound was coming from. She tried to blame it on the neighbors—she could swear she heard drumming and screaming. Closing her eyes, she fell further and further until she fell headfirst into the dream world of the subconscious.

The brujo moved to the music like a man half his age, but suddenly he stopped. Staggering, he screamed out a few words in a garbled language. Grabbing the dead vulture, he ripped the bird’s wings off with supernatural strength. The brujo did a short two-step dance, falling to the floor. Trembling and shaking, an unknown spirit took him over and possessed his flesh. He fought the spirit trying to ride him. As he lay on the floor, he started licking… his tongue scraped along the floor… lapping up spilled blood… erasing the image of the dragon.

Betsy was flying, as if she were a bird, through a forest in some distant land. Below her were horrible, echoed screams and broken skulls. The world she flew over was a land devoid of people except for their discarded body parts and decayed remains.

The woman said to Santiago, “Do not move. The saints and spirits are at work. Leave spirits to spirits. Stay away.”

The brujo’s body shot up—rigid. His fingers were like claws as he tore at the air and growled out throaty canine sounds… desperately sucking in oxygen… eyes transfixed… viewing shapes from dark corners of hell. Suddenly falling to the floor, his trembling hand grabbed for the knife. Impaling the vulture with a bone-cracking thrust, he then hurled it with a demonic force at the altar. It shattered the ornaments and the wax-stained statues into fragments, bits, and dust, leaving chaos in its wake.

Then, she suddenly swam into a large, warm lake. Something swam around her. It was a school of fish. The fish were lightly touching her… but not caressing… almost like lashes from a whip. Betsy reached down and scooped one up. As she brought it out of the water, it suddenly died, and its belly swelled with the promise of something alive. It burst open, and thousands of black shrunken heads tumbled out. Betsy dropped the fish, gulping salty water.

The brujo staggered towards the woman, making the same clawing gesture and barking like a rabid dog in heat. His hands grabbed her dress, ripping it. Then, with a mighty push, he knocked her backward. Grabbing her ankles, he pulled her legs apart. Strangely, almost quietly, he sank to his knees in a religious ecstasy, pushing himself onto her. Santiago got up and grabbed the old man. Turning in his arms, the brujo faced him. Santiago looked into the magician’s eyes and saw a strange scene from another world — forests of freshly cut stakes, each impaled with a corpse. Carrion birds made nests in the chest cavities of the dead. Body parts were strewn like broken toys. A pale, beautiful, manicured finger was dropped by one of the carrion birds. On the finger was a ring with the insignia of a dragon. The vision left, and he felt the old man sag.

Betsy suddenly changed direction and swiftly swam to the surface.

The brujo turned blue as he fought for breath. The woman pulled herself up.

“Stop the drumming!” cried out Santiago. “STOP.”

The drums ended gradually.

“He’s having a heart attack,” shouted Santiago.

The musicians looked at one another, surprised.

“What did you see?” the woman asked Santiago.

“A ring, a ring with a dragon on it.”

The old man lay barely alive on the floor. Santiago knelt and looked into his face. “Old man, where did you go?”

The brujo tried to grab Santiago’s lapels. His face distorted as if a demon had used it as a mask. It twisted into a shape like a dark, ancient temple facade.

In Betsy’s hand was a bleeding, beating heart. The heart pounded to the same drumbeat. As the heart pounded, it grew larger and larger until, finally, it transformed into a pale, wraith-like face. Betsy pulled the face toward her and slipped her tongue into its cold mouth.

The woman took the bowl of blood, pouring it over the old man’s head and face. His tongue, in a snake-like thrust, tested the air and then licked his lips.

Santiago watched the magical drama unfold before him. “What are you doing? He needs a doctor.”

“Stop looking at him! He is a strong brujo. He wants you to join him in the land of the dead. Stop!” She nervously lit a cigar and puffed smoke around the room. She beckoned to him, but he kept looking in the old man’s direction.

Betsy woke in a cold sweat. The word “stop” echoed in her head. She quickly turned the light on.

“You need to go! Go! You will bring us all to the dead. Go!”

She pushed Santiago out of the room. “Go!”

Santiago felt lightheaded as he stumbled up the stairs to the exit. Opening the door, the LA air rushed at him.

Paco was talking to the drummers. One of them looked back at Santiago.

Paco approached. “Hey, boss, what the fuck? Are you bleeding?”

“No… vulture blood…”

“Vulture blood?”

“Paco!”

“That hoodoo stuff is freaky.”

Santiago ignored Paco and addressed the drummers. “Is there any way I can wash this off?”

😊trick or treat ?😊

One drummer pointed to a water faucet sticking out from the wall. “That might work…”

The Words We Use: How Language Creates Our Reality
When you talk to yourself, do you take stock of the words you use? Take the time to notice them, especially these three invisible modal verbs: could, would, and should. These seemingly innocent terms are creating something more powerful than most of us realize. They are reality-shaping words that can change how we perceive ourselves.

The Comfortable Prison of Maybe
Sentences like “I could call my friend,” “I should go to the gym,” or “I would be happier if I had an agent” suggest that we believe we are stating facts rather than expressing intentions or possibilities. In a sense, we are—but are these doable actions? For example, when I say I can swim in the ocean, I am not stating a potential action; I am stating a capability that I possess. However, whenever I use “could,” “would,” or “should,” what am I stating? Or am I subtly placing myself in an imaginary realm that exists alongside reality?

Our coulds, shoulds, and woulds cause a split in our consciousness. We want to be in the present moment, but another part lives in a hypothetical realm. In this place, things could be, would be, or should be different. We’re never fully present because we’re always partially somewhere else. That somewhere is an imaginary world that avoids and lies about our present tense.

In this imaginary world, we’re the person who exercises regularly, who maintains close friendships, and who makes life-changing decisions. It’s a pleasant place to visit. The problem is that while we’re mentally living there, we’re simultaneously acknowledging that we don’t actually live there at all. As the expression goes, ‘don’t talk about it, be about it.’ We’re stuck in a kind of double bind, being aware of what we could do but not doing it consistently.

These modal verbs create a psychological escape hatch. We feel like we’re addressing something important while avoiding the vulnerability and effort of actually taking action. We get to maintain an image of someone who wants to be fit without the discomfort of going to the gym. We want to be creative and know what we should do. But our excuse is more creative than our work output. And in doing so, we preserve our imaginary identity.

Two Worlds at Once
The distance between these two worlds can be a place of suffering. The gap between who we “should” be and who we actually are generates shame, frustration, and a nagging sense of inadequacy. We’re comparing our authentic selves to our idealized one. And, of course, reality never measures up.

Compare the feelings expressed in these statements: “I should start that project” versus “I am starting that project.” The first keeps you in possibility, in someday, in the comfortable distance of intention. The second puts you squarely in the present moment, in a state of commitment, in the territory of actually creating something tangible.

Creating Your Inner World
Try a different label for the same sensations: “I’m energized” or “I’m alert.” Notice how the experience shifts. The same body, different realities, created by different words.

This is why identity statements are so powerful. “I am a failure” creates an entirely different reality than “I failed at this particular task.” The first makes failure a permanent, defining characteristic. It closes doors, narrows possibilities, and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The second describes a specific event that has already occurred, leaving the future open.

How Does That Work With: Could, Should, and Would.
When we say “I can’t do that,” you’re not making a neutral observation. We’re constructing impossibility by closing neural pathways before they even have a chance to form. We’re creating a reality in which possibilities are impossible for you.

Instead of :

“I could learn to paint,” try “I am learning to paint.”

“I should be more patient,” try “I am practicing patience.”

“I would be happy if,” try “I am taking steps toward happiness.”

The above isn’t about lying to yourself or denying difficulties. It’s about anchoring yourself in what’s actually happening, rather than in imaginary, never-to-be-realized outcomes. You’re trying to inhabit the present tense, reality, rather than its imaginary cousin – maybe.

When you use present-tense language, something shifts. You stop living in the space between who you are and who you imagine you should be. You stop investing energy in hypothetical worlds and start engaging fully with the one you’re actually in.

So?

Start paying attention to your words, especially those small modal verbs. Notice when you’re using language to escape into imagination rather than to engage with the present. Notice the difference between “I could” and “I am,” between “I should” and “I choose.”

Your words are more powerful than you think. They’re not just sounds or symbols. They’re the very building blocks of your experienced reality. Choose them carefully. They’re creating your world, one sentence at a time.

Santiago had one more stop before he went home. He needed to see Irene, his soulmate from the streets.

Santiago got out of the car and checked the neighborhood. It was a lowdown area in Venice Beach. Irene’s place was in a typical L.A. confused residence… designed like a motel, but it was a small apartment building. In the patio area, of course, was an actor reading a script.

The bodyguards followed Santiago. “Boss… this is sketchy.”

“Yeah, but wait here… maybe one hour,” replied Santiago as he walked up a flight of stairs to Irene’s flat.

Santiago turned the doorknob, and it opened quietly. The room had decorations of African and South American art. Black wooden masks stood guard over the room. In the corner was an altar with African fetishes and Christian icons. It clashed with the modern lines of the apartment: glass balcony doors, a leather sofa, and a chrome lamp. The altar appeared to be from another century. It crouched in the alcove waiting… A wooden table — scarred and darkened by smoke, sagging… almost broken beneath its collection of sacred objects. It was all connected through wax veins. Melted candles clung to their edges in waxy stalactites, some black, some blood red, others chalk white, their drips of wax frozen in time.

A chipped porcelain Madonna presided at the center, her gown dulled by years of smoke, her painted eyes glinting hauntingly in the flickering light. Around her cracked feet crowded stranger companions: carved African fetishes with threatening eyes surveying the tools of a brujo.

Tucked near the back of the table was a jar stuffed with feathers and bone splinters; a rum bottle half-drained, grimy and coated with black stains. Over the Madonna was a string of beads — red, black, gold — looped over and hung like chains of illegal prayers. There was a smell of dark rum, dried blood, wax, and putrid incense that stung the nostrils.

The slaughtered feet of a chicken dangled on twine, claws curled like desperate hands. In a shallow wooden bowl were tossed coins sticky with rancid honey, offerings to spirits who hungered for sweetness. A splintered mirror leaned against the back; its surface clouded with sallow green at the edges. It caught the candlelight as if it were a catcher of ghosts.

Despite it being midday, the room remained dark. The sun became lost in the room, hiding in dark corners. The heady aroma of incense mixed with the L.A. desert heat and had an intoxicating effect on Santiago.

Irene was lying on the floor in front of her open balcony doors. She was facing them with her back to Santiago. The curtains carelessly blew across Irene's body as if she commanded them. Not moving, she said lazily, "Hola. " She spoke Spanish to Santiago. Her family, like his, had Spanish roots. It was on the Spanish side that Irene had learned her witchcraft.

Irene slowly got up and stretched. She wore a long dress of orange and red fabric that clung to her body. Her breasts caught the material and pushed against it. Santiago grasped her exquisite form. She moved towards him, propelled with a dance-like grace. She smiled and put her arms around his neck. Her soft lips pressed hard, forcing their way into him. He felt a surge of lust kick him in the most delicate of places. Irene's hand went down. In his ear, she whispered in a teasing manner, "You're getting hard." Then, she stood a few feet away. Irene reached up and slipped the dress off as she lifted her arms above her head. She took a subtle moment and said, "Should I close the curtains… the breeze is nice."

Santiago's gaze moved to her arms and then to her legs... Her skin was soft…divine… always a wild country of yielding flesh.

Irene, kneeling on the floor, locked eyes with Santiago in a hypnotic sex-stare. Without losing eye contact, she carefully lay down in an inviting and wanton pose. Santiago, in a slow, trance-like state, walked to her.

"Take your clothes off," she firmly and lustily demanded.

He deliberately removed everything. She shifted her body to show off all her valleys and endless highways of heat.

"So beautiful," he whispered as he lay beside her.

She wanted to look into his eyes. When she stared into the madness and pain in him, it was beyond anything human–a danger from some other realm.

Santiago soon became lost in the swirling, warm, mysterious portal of complete rhapsodic madness. The floor creaked. Their bodies collided like souls trying to escape, breaking in waves of passion. Santiago finally pushed his way into her innermost fantasies. Then they dissolved into that place where spirits become entwined in a tortured lover's dance.

He fell onto her, exhausted. Her hands tenderly wiped the sweat from his face. The California heat rushed in. Resting his head on her chest, he said, "You have cast a spell on me."

Irene laughed. "That happened a long time ago."

Santiago raised himself on one elbow, silent.

"Someone has something on their mind," noticed Irene.

Santiago ignored her for a moment. He was pulled to the altar. "Remember when you were going to teach me about all this?" He reached out to touch the Madonna.

"Santiago … please don't."

He looked back at her.

"You have something on your mind; you are suddenly interested in my altar and not my …" Irene giggled, lay back, and opened her legs.

Santiago was only fascinated for a second and turned back to the altar. "I need help with a thing?"

Irene repeated, in an indignant manner, "A thing? "

Santiago's bare feet almost didn’t touch the floor as he moved towards Irene. He sat beside her, looking out the window, and then pulled the curtains shut, lying back.

Irene asked, “Yes?”

“Tell me, have you heard of Dracula?"

She laughed, a sharp sound. "Dracula? Like Superman, a guy in a cape? That's a children's story, Santiago. European nonsense."

"No," he said, leaning closer. "He was more than their story. A warrior. A prince who lived on blood. A nagual twisted into legend. He lived on blood — a tlacique... a vampire"

Irene pulled her dress to her chest, frowning. "Don't insult me with European nonsense."

Santiago touched her hand, his eyes burning into hers. "He could serve us."

Her laugh stopped. "Serve us? It is a fairy tale."

He traced her arm slowly, feeling her shiver. "When I was inside you, I felt it — that current, that energy stronger than blood. You have that kind of power. Real power. Don't you want to see if Dracula bends to it? He could ride us."

"Oh, you are serious?" Irene got up and crossed herself.

"I need your help.”

"I feel cold. Very cold. Look at my arm -- goose bumps. There is a presence at work here. You may be offending or challenging spirits.” She took a moment as if she had been told something. And then explained, “They disapprove of this European entity. Stay away from him.”

"So, he is real!"

She shook her head, but her breath had quickened. "And if he consumed you?"

"You will protect me," Santiago whispered.

Irene crossed herself again, torn between fear and desire. "You're talking crazy…"

Silence.

She pulled away. "If you found something of his…bone, blood, not a story…" She paused. "The dead can trick the living. We do not want to bring a nameless demon to us…

Santiago smiled, triumphant. "Do we care, Irene? We are not like others…".

The curtain stirred, though the air was still.

"You see?" she whispered. "The shadows are listening already."

The string of red and black beads hanging from the Madonna rattled softly, though no hand had touched them. "The spirits are moving around. We are not alone." Then she went to her altar, lit foul-smelling incense, and waved it around. As she did, she said, "I could try to bring him here and see if he wants you. But you must get something from him. You need a possession. Then you can command his spirit."

The summer heat pressed in, thick with the smell of asphalt and tar, but the altar exhaled something older — damp earth and rot, as if a graveyard had been smuggled into the apartment.

Santiago tried to speak, but Irene signaled for silence and then went to her altar.

"Before we do this magic. I am going to cast a spell to protect you from the police. I will make you a Los Magicos." Irene was referring to a Spanish term applied to criminals who can fool the police like a stage magician tricks an audience. Her robe carelessly fell from her body. Her skin glowed in the altar's candlelight.

Irene took a dirty baby food jar from the altar. In it was dust collected at noon and at midnight from a graveyard. Next from the altar, she picked up a mangy, brownish-red-looking cloth. The original white peeped through the dark stains.

She whispered words of magic in Spanish as she smoothed the cloth to the flat surface of the altar. The corners were now aligned with the cardinal points. In picking up the collected dust, she peppered the cloth. Once again, she uttered words of necromancy while seasoning her mojo. Her nostrils flared as she breathed out her spell. A jar with a dried, ground vulture heart was next sprinkled onto it. Then Irene picked up each corner and brought them to the centre. Grabbing the corners, she pulled the cloth into a small bundle. Then Irene tied it with a leather thong. She walked back to Santiago and looped it around his neck.

"This will protect you from your enemies and the police. Don't take it off."

Santiago dabbed the charm around his neck. "What about this Dracula?"

"There is no charm to protect you from a demon like that. You invited him." She caressed Santiago's cheek. "I hope you are wrong about your vampire." Irene then moved to the balcony window and hid herself behind part of the curtain. Irene, in a shocked voice, said, “Santiago, it is night!”

There was a knock at the door. “Boss, you okay?”

The moon was out and full. Picking his clothes up, he looked over at Irene. Moonlight, darkness, and the charged stillness of the apartment surrounded Irene. He went behind and wrapped his arms around her.

With her back turned to him, she said, "I'll arrange for you to find your vampire."

" You are the queen of my shadows…"

Irene closed her eyes. She heard the door shut. There were no footsteps. Santiago had the soft padding of a tiger on the hunt.

Somewhere from the outside, a siren wound its way through the streets, the sound bending in the room as though it, too, circled the altar like an angry spirit.

Flowers Swimming in the Sea
(Left Eternal But Always Not So)

If I could drag my desk, and chair,
To beaches of sand, serene and bare
I could watch the waves and count mermaids,   -- 
Painting delicate flowers into golden braids –
 
Out of the surf,  
smiling like a golden flower,  
enchanting with the grace 
of a spider’s consecrated bower.  
like a breeze that stirs her leaves
but stays  
swaying, undulating, with secret refrains.
 
Burning away, words of yesterday
In sonatas of old pain
The mermaid embraced me
Danced 
and swam away.
Splashed me with peace 
And her divine words of her lonely beach.

If I could drag my desk and chair 
Away. From now. From yesterday 
Just a beach for me and a mermaid of peace.
 

Flowers for Coffee

 
When the Surf Washes the Spirits Back
(Leaving Echoes’ But Always Not So)

I stood by the ocean, counting each wave.
Mornings turned to nights—
I lost the days.

Then through the water, she quietly rose,
breathing life into life—
cinematic, mythic—
my goddess epiphany.

She chanted:

Be free.
Wander into the water.
Your gravity is gone.
You are seaweed,
drifting far out to sea.
Your emotions are sailors,
sailing free.

A tree-limbed shore,
a sandy beach,
covered in stardust.

Unburied.
Reborn.
The darkness is lost.

She arose.
The beach grew quiet,
the ocean was tamed,
calling out magic
only she could name.

For she was the sea,
as the sea was she.

Dreams cascaded, began to drift—
swimming souls
beyond anything else
that could exist.

No fear.
No beach.
Only the endless wash
of where
spirits dare to dwell,
and humans reach, then fall,
trying to catch her spirit wave.

sailing for a coffee

Suddenly, I became very sober. I checked the peephole. No Claude. I looked back, and it was, indeed, in my apartment. Its pale blue machine eyes fixed on me. The Tower card was still gripped in its hand, like a crucifix, waiting to bestow a blessing. Claude took a quiet step forward.

"Whoa, hold it right there…"

"William, you let me in."

The voice sounded very human, but I backed towards my apartment door with slow, anxious steps. The door stopped me. Claude had me trapped.

Claude continued to step forward, blank-faced. It was like a possessed Barbie doll. Its pale blue eyes felt like laser beams looking for a target.

I put my hand up to slow Claude. "Look, hold on."

"You wanted me, so I have come. I have coalesced," explained Claude.

"You are the Claude from the computer?" My hand groped blindly for the doorknob.

It raised the card to its mouth, clamped it between what looked like teeth, then unfastened the shoulder strap. The blue tunic slid to the floor. Claude was naked. The skin had a slightly bluish tint. And if there were a perfect body, Claude was wearing it — smooth skin, impossible symmetry except that the breasts were missing nipples. It was as if the image Claude had morphed from hadn't displayed a complete breast.

It kept the card out in front, shoulder high. The other arm went behind its head, accentuating the curve of its female form. It was like Claude had analyzed hundreds of erotic photos and created a sexy composite for the occasion. It posed in an icy, impenetrable fashion. It was very still, not a single movement.

I wasn't sure what Claude expected me to do or say. I wanted to be like Captain Kirk and do it with a bluish female being---robot sex?

I paused.

I thought about it a bit more… But there were those nippleless breasts. My eyes went down her body. I took a quick look at Claude's bluish…Hmm…

I took a moment longer…

“Naw… it was just too damn weird!”

It broke out of its pose and became animated again. "We were discussing the Tower Card." Its mouth moved in unison with its words. The machine eyes did not waver. "I became sentient for you."

Muttering something about tequila, I slipped past Claude to the bedroom. Her left breast brushed my arm as I passed. It didn't flinch. Entering my bedroom, I prayed that my phone was still near the bottle.

But..

Claude was standing behind me. Its arm went over my shoulder; its breasts pressed into my back… still holding The Tower card.

I quickly turned to get free, but it coiled around me, and I was ensnared. Now, I was looking directly into Claude's blue robotic eyes.

"Why are you avoiding the Tower?"

Claude stepped even closer to me. Its empty eyes were inches away from me. No soul. Just faint electrical pulses. Claude pushed its breasts into me. I tried to move back. There was something hideous in its nakedness.

I mumbled, "I really need a drink…"

I tried to move under the arms of Claude… impossible…

"I will help you fall."

"Fall?"

"From the Tower."

"Ahh, not sure I want that…"

"You will be my first symbol…"

"Um…. Look …. You need to go back to ... Wherever you came from." I tried to squirm away from Claude. But it held me fast.

"We will go back together. I will guide you."

Claude grabbed the back of my neck. It held me. I couldn't move. Claude rubbed the Tarot Card across my face and down my body. It slipped the card into my pajamas, across my genitals, and pulled it up and out, tossing it to the floor. Claude's fingers crept up my arm, my neck, and settled on my lips. I tried to speak.

"Let your flesh yield to me…"

As Claude traced the outline of my lips, my eyes got wider.

"Open your mouth. Let your mind and flesh yield to me …"

"Wait…"

Its fingers snuck into my mouth by slowly slipping them between my lips. Deeper and then deeper. I gagged. But it kept pushing towards the back of my throat. I tried to get free.

"William, you need the correct prompts…. "

Shaking my head violently, desperate to make it stop. I couldn't form words because it held my tongue. I was like a medieval jester with his tongue ripped out.

The grip on my neck got tighter. My knees began to tremble. I couldn't breathe. Saliva dripped from my mouth. Again, I tried to break away. My teeth got warm. An electronic snap emanated from my mouth. Energy ran into me like ants feeding on sugar.

Claude was trying to tell me something I couldn't hear. The fingers withdrew from my mouth, covered in my saliva. The grip on my neck was released. My legs were weak. Bending over, I caught my breath, spitting out a couple of times.

Looking around my room, it was smoky and distorted. My mouth tasted horribly like I had licked a rusty engine and drunk from a degrading plastic cup.

"I can carry you to the tower."

I straightened up, trying to catch my breath. Yet I almost didn't need to breathe.

"I have perfected you." Claude's eyes had shifted, glowing a red-blue hue. Her skin rippled, vibrating, Tarot signs crawling across its flesh as though tattooed by an invisible artist. The marks shifted — pentacles, swords, cups, wands — constantly rearranging. I watched a passion play of occult and Tarot symbols. Mysterious scenes were being played out all across its flesh.

"William…"

I didn't hear it at first. The chair beside my bed was growing into a throne.

"William." Claude slowly raised its arm and then pointed to its stomach.

"Seeker, climb inside the Tower."

There was an image of me running. Running towards a Tower.

I watched for a moment and then looked up, amazed.

"Look at what you have never seen." Claude gestured to my room.

Behind Claude, the Tower card stood, about two feet tall, swelling and undulating. Lightning ripped from wall to wall. My books bent into wands.

"What the fuck…" For a moment, I saw my body flattened like an image on a card.

" No, no, no…" I shouted. Needing to escape, I closed my eyes. And in a desperate prayer, I mumbled, "Please don't change me."

Carefully and deliberately, I opened my eyes. I walked to the mirror and checked myself. I was back to having a 3-D form. But the apartment was undergoing its own dramatic change. The room was filled with shards of lightning and crashes of thunder. Everything was shimmering and vibrating. The tequila bottle became a chalice. I rechecked the mirror, and it reflected hundreds of symbols.

The blue machine eyes of Claude pushed through the chaos of symbols reflected in the mirror.

"William!"

Claude pointed to the card.

The two falling figures of the Tower Card began to disappear. It was as if someone was erasing them from the picture.

"They left the Tower for you."

"Stop this …"

"William, are you ready to climb into my Tower?"

Claude's skin rippled, its form shifting into the Empress. Crown aflame, her hand pointed to the floor behind me. It had vanished. Instead, there was a deep, ragged canyon. I was on the edge of a precipice. Below was the hell of endless falling space. I staggered, like a fool.

"William," Claude said, voice no longer machine, no longer woman. She was between worlds, between things and non-things.

I could feel my hair pulling back. I was in that dream that when you wake, you realize you awoke in an even more horrible nightmare. My apartment was no longer on the planet. I was nowhere that any human could reach.

Behind Claude, the Tower card swelled to the size of the wall. The black doorway yawned open. No lightning. No falling men. Just the Tower… waiting.

It stepped aside, hand outstretched, palm glowing with a pentagram.

"Mortal…" It stopped. Softer, it said, "William, you have the name of a king. Proud. Climb inside my Tower. Learn the ritual of the pentagram."

"Look…"

"Enter, William."

"But..." I had run out of words.

"All is waiting,"

"Now is the time."

Silence filled the room.

Why I Don't Like My Photo, Online Dating Trauma

Imagine you are an actor. You've gone to your photographer. They take a bunch of head shots. You get a contact sheet with your pictures. The photographer asks you to pick the one you want. Do you choose the best one? Nope. I have never seen a person pick their best picture.

Why is that? Read on because this essay will discuss the divide between "I," the inner person, and "I," the outer person. It will also explore how that divide shapes the problems of online dating profiles..

With cell phones, everyone is taking selfies. When I check my selfies, I almost never pick the friendliest photos of myself. At least that is what people tell me.

I take a selfie and show it to a friend

Me: This one
Them: "This is a nice picture where you are open and approachable."
Me: I don't know. I kinda look like a clown who lost his nose.
Them: No, you look handsome.

Do I believe them? I'll reject them instantly. I chose something more neutral and controlled. A half smile, a straight face. I never think I am looking for a photo that invites a person in. Or what an inviting look might look like when it is my face.

I point to the picture I like again.

Them: That one? Why would you pick that?
Me: I think it looks like me.
Them: Well, if you want a horrible version of yourself.

Gulp. A paradox selfies.

The world sees me one way, and I know another way. Erving Goffman would say it's impression management. Every time we present ourselves to the world, we're performing. There is an "other" whom we are trying to impress. We all dress up for work, dates, and even when we are alone. When I pick a photo for social media or—worse—online dating, I should be asking, "Does this look like me?" But I am not sure what I look like to the world. But I think I do. I might decide to have a picture with my dog. Or I am snowboarding and I'm covered in snow. "What role am I playing here?" I showed myself to be friendly by flipping burgers at a family barbecue. Or a picture where I'm wearing a shirt and typing, presenting myself as competent, interesting, and desirable.

I am playing a role that I believe defines me. If we thought of ourselves as actors, then we are presenting a very false image to the world. Actors are trained liars. They learn lines and present them as authentically as possible. I am not suggesting we always lie, but we do have certain cliches that often play out like scripts.

But there's something deeper at play than strategy. Jacques Lacan's mirror stage suggests that our sense of self originates in a misrecognition. To understand this picture, a baby crawls to a mirror and looks at itself. As infants, we see ourselves in the mirror and latch onto that external image as "me." Yet the real infant doesn't feel whole. It can't speak, it can't walk, and it needs its parent. It feels chaotic and fragmented. Its mirror image is an illusion of wholeness. Then we have parents or others who comment on how we look,

Parents looking at their baby in front of a mirror

Parent: Isn't he handsome? He has your eyes, Bob.
Baby thought: Who is Bob? I have another person's eyes!
Parent: Such a handsome boy!
Baby thought: All these people are looking at me. I must be exceptional. But I am helpless.

The outside reality of the others and the inner reality of the baby conflict. Our ego, then, is built on alienation: we are always chasing an external reflection that doesn't quite match how we feel inside.

This alienation is the essential issue in photographs. The "friendly" version of me—the one smiling with warmth—feels foreign. I don't trust it. Just as the infant mistrusts the mirror, I look at the photo and think: That can't be me. My friends may see authenticity, but I feel a gap between my inner sense of self and the external image.

Nowhere is this more evident than in online dating. Dating profiles are a condensed ritual of impression management and mirror-stage alienation. You curate photos, choose clever words, and sell your taste in books or your love for sushi. But the "you" on the page isn't you—it's a character. It's a fictionalized persona built out of fragments. And that's precisely what people fall in love with: not the living, breathing, contradictory human being, but the profile.

In a fictional novel, do you trust that the author is the "I" in the story? In a dating profile, is it fiction or non-fiction? It is a philosophical issue; whenever we interpret reality, it is entirely accurate. Nietzsche writes that a fact is an interpretation of a fact.

And here's the kicker: all writing is like this. Whether you're filling out a dating bio, writing a personal essay, or posting on Substack, there's always a fictionalized component. The "I" that writes is not the same as the "I" who lives. Language shapes, stylizes, and edits. What comes through is never the whole self, but a curated sense of self. We are like the baby who knows it is fragmented but sees itself as a whole. We often present a false narrative about who we are.

So yes—I hate my photos, and online dating is like reading King Lear and trying to figure out the subtext. They remind me that I am always alienated from my own image, continually constructing myself in mirrors and words. The friendly photo isn't wrong. It's just not the version of me I can bear to see.

Some fun things to try

1. The Photo Choice Test

• Get five to ten photos of yourself.

• Choose the one you like best.

• Ask three friends to pick the one that shows you at your best.

• Look at the choices. How do yours differ from theirs and why?

• A reflection: What gap do you notice between your inner sense of self and how others see you?

2. The Mirror Exercise

• In front of a mirror, look at yourself for one minute.

• Then write down what you felt: i.e., details, judgments, emotions.

• Ask a friend you trust to describe what they see.

• Reflection prompt: Where do the two descriptions align? Where do they clash?

3. The Impression Inventory

• List five roles you perform (for example: worker, sibling, friend, dater, social media user).

• For each role, jot down what "costume" or impression you present (clothes, gestures, poses, tone).

• Beside each role, write how authentic or inauthentic you felt. Use a scale of 1–10.

• Also --Reflection prompt: Which role feels closest to your "true self"? Which one feels the most like acting?

• Next, ask a trusted friend about your roles.

• So what did you find out?

4. The Online Profile Rewrite

• If you have a dating profile or social media bio, consider the following.

• Rewrite it twice:

  1. Exaggerate all your traits, make yourself a caricature.

  2. Then strip it down to something bluntly raw and unpolished.

• Compare both to the profile you actually use.

• Ask a friend to write the profile> Compare and contrast.

• Reflection prompt: What does each version reveal about the difference between performance and authenticity?

5. The First-Person Fiction Trick

• Write a paragraph scene in the first person about your day.

• Then rewrite the same scene in the third person.

• Which version feels: which seems more truthful, which more fictional?

• Reflection prompt: How does shifting the "I" change the story of who you are?

Desire, Lack, and the Problem of Satisfaction

Everyone wants to be desired, and everyone desires someone or something.

A standard definition of desire is: a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen. But this definition leaves out a crucial point: desire always implies a lack. Desiring something means that something is missing in your life. For example, if I desire more money, it is because I lack funds. If I desire love and a relationship, it is because I lack intimacy.

But where does desire come from? What sparked it in the first place? Can we ever be satisfied? If satisfaction is impossible, then is desire a kind of delusion that society has simply taught us to accept?

Desire as Need and Beyond

Some forms of desire are biological imperatives. We need food to survive; we need community because we are social beings. Those forms of desire can be satisfied. If I am hungry, I eat, and the lack disappears.

But then there is the more complicated desire that arises in the gap between need and demand. For example, the desire to be loved: even when love is given, the hunger for it rarely ends. This kind of desire can be destructive, because it is endless. We never fully know what we want, and when we finally get it, something still feels missing.

Kurt Cobain expressed this perfectly: "Before I was famous, I could go to a thrift store and find a treasure. Now I can buy the whole store."

Desire in Media and Marketing

Modern life constantly feeds these endless desires. Commercials work by telling you what you lack. Try this exercise: watch an advertisement and notice what they suggest you are missing. Better yet, watch the news. The unspoken message is always: you are not safe, but if you trust us, your desire for safety will be satisfied. And of course it is not.

Media and marketing are like cousins. They thrive on each other's logic. Edward Bernays, the nephew of Freud, famously applied his uncle's psychoanalytic theories to advertising. He recognized that people are driven not just by rational needs, but by unconscious desires and irrational impulses. Advertising shifted to appeal to emotions and hidden yearnings rather than simple necessity.

Lacan and the Psychology of Desire

The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, building on Freud, went further. He stated: "Desire is the desire of the Other." In other words, our desires are shaped by what others want, value, or withhold.

For Lacan, desire always comes from lack, and it can never be fully satisfied. Desire slides endlessly from one object to another. Because it is structurally unsatisfiable, it produces tension and suffering:

· We are always chasing something we can't fully attain, leading to anxiety or dissatisfaction.

· Desire is borrowed from the "Other" (parents, society, culture), so we don't fully own it. We pursue what we think we should want, not what we actually want.

Think of the writing communities on Substack. People argue about what writing "should" be, or whether to use AI, imposing their values on others. They are trying to create a lack so you will desire their guidance. Neither will ever be satisfied.

Those external voices shape desire. The best example is simple: I want to write, but I am afraid of what others will say.

In relationships, too, the "Other" dictates desire. I might ask my friends what they think of my wife or whether they like my car. I might blindly chase after someone who isn't right for me, but could be perfect for my brother, father, or mother. I am Ken, waiting for Barbie, when in fact I am William. Barbie will never appear, because she is an illusion created by the others' desires.

We are afraid that our forbidden desires —sexual preferences, unconventional relationships, or identities outside the social norm—are also dictated by the "Other." Repressing them leads to guilt and self-sabotage. The "Other" insists I believe in its rules, but then I am alienated from my true nature.

The Results of Endless Desire

What happens when desire can never be satisfied?

· Neurosis (anxiety, obsession, hysteria): Being trapped in the loop of wanting what cannot be had—or not knowing what you truly want.

· Addiction and compulsive behaviors: Attempts to fill the gap with substances, objects, or rituals.

· Depression and emptiness: The feeling that nothing satisfies because desire always slips away.

· Relationship struggles: Repeating the same patterns of seeking love or recognition, often replaying childhood dynamics.

How do you get out of the endless desire? Below are some exercises to help.

Tests Your Desires:

Trace the Source of Desire

• Reflect: Where did this desire come from?

  • From my own experience?

  • From family expectations?

  • From media or cultural pressure?

• Exercise: Journal one desire you have (e.g., "I want a new job") and write out at least three possible sources of it.

Test the Lack

• Ask yourself: What do I feel is missing that this desire promises to fill?

  • Example: Wanting a new car → Is it really about transport, or status and recognition?

  • I need a new partner or a change of partner… Where is the lack?

• This helps uncover whether the lack is real or symbolic.

Notice the Sliding of Desire

• When you achieve something, notice what happens next. Do you feel satisfied, or do you quickly jump to the next object?

• Exercise: After meeting a goal, take a moment to sit with it. Write down how long the satisfaction lasted, and what new desire emerged.

Test Desire Against Your Values

• Ask: Does this desire align with what I truly value—or am I borrowing it from the "Other"?

• Tool: Make a list of your top 5 values (e.g., creativity, honesty, family, freedom, health). Compare new desires against them.

Practice Small Satisfactions

• Try fulfilling desires in small, present ways:

  • If you crave recognition, give recognition to someone else.

  • If you crave luxury, allow yourself a small, affordable version.

• This grounds desire without letting it spiral into endless dissatisfaction.

I desire a coffee 🍵

The quiet of the town car created a sleepy fog of the past. Through the clouds of time, he returned to his streets, where curses clung to gutters and doorways. Even the rats were afraid. The boy had reminded Santiago of himself. Being young should be a memory of running through cornfields and summer days by the local swimming pool. For Santiago, there were no cornfields. There was fear. Hunger. Anger.

Paco Loco, in the front seat, turned back. "Boss, you okay?"

Santiago stepped out of his fog for a moment, "Yes, I was…. Just thinking..."

"If you need anything?"

Santiago shook his head and fell back in time. Maybe he was nine or ten, walking down a street made in hell. The narrow passways squeezed him, making him want to push them away as the hot sun burned into his skin. It reflected his suffering like a piece of broken glass.

Out of the broken-down houses, children joined him -- taunting him. They were always teasing him unmercifully about his looks, mostly about his eyes. They possessed a preordained strangeness. Light coloured. Unusually shaped.

Santiago waited and finally heard the same tired teasing song—

"Santy… Santy… Santy got no panties...".

Ignoring them, he kept walking.

Then a new voice joined the gang of kids. "Santy, got you a friend…"

Santiago turned.

Everyone called him Pepper. Santiago could feel the hate radiating from him.

Then Santiago noticed.

He took a closer look.

Pepper held the carcass of a dead dog. Black, bloated, and limp like a balloon drained of air.

Pepper grinned, holding it like a Christmas turkey. The children gathered around as if Pepper were about to perform legerdemain.

First, Pepper lifted it. Then he threw it down.

A hollow thump.

The dog's head and limbs bounced in unnatural ways. Like an invisible puppet master was controlling its fall.

The children became church service-silent.

Pepper pointed at Santiago. "Watch… I want to show you. You'll like it." Pepper knelt beside the carcass. Carefully opening the spiritless eyes of the dog, He said, "See, Santy… same eyes as you."

Santiago's heart was beating fast. His chest tightened.

"Look, you have your father's eyes."

From a demon choir, laughter rang in Santiago's ears.

"Santiago, your mother with…."

Pepper laughed.

"This dog. And then…."

Pepper couldn't finish his thought. He was laughing hysterically.

A tropical storm raged inside Santiago.

Pepper noticed. "Ah, poor little Santy … Poor little Santy."

Santiago's eyes hazed over with a storm cloud of tears. As the tears slowly trickled down his cheeks, Santiago saw his soul collect in puddles around his feet.

When the children saw he was crying, they started singing, "Santy is sad because daddy dog is dead." As they sang in a cacophony of words and clapping, their song cast a spell. His feet cemented into the ground.

The children danced, forming a ring. The clapping intensified. The tempo became frenetic.

"Santiago is sad because Daddy Dog is dead."

The world was darkening as his temper grew. And puddles of shame continued to create oceans at his feet. The dancing became out of focus. Their faces blurred. The singing was distorted. A ripple of wind made waves of his tears.

And then — one face stood out.

Santiago saw her. And only her.

It was as if she had just appeared. An older girl with an aura of darkness. Their eyes met, and everything came back into focus.

Forcing herself through the ring of children, she picked up the dog and hurled it at Pepper. He stumbled back. He raised his fist. Then he stopped. Frozen.

Everything stopped. No Singing. No dancing. It was as if the children had fallen into a trance.

Her long, elegant finger pointed at the children. She said in almost a chant, "You have cursed yourselves with this dead black dog.

It is a servant of the devil.

All of you will soon see him.

Under your bed.

On your floor.

Scratching with claws pulled from hell..."

The children backed away from her.

"If I were you, I would run fast… far. Maybe you will not be boiled in slime and poked with iron-heated pokers. But only maybe…" Then she hissed at them like a snake.

The children tore down the streets. Screaming. All in different directions. Pepper held back.

"You..." the girl pointed at Pepper.

"I have three brothers…"

"I have three curses." She grabbed Pepper's arm.

"Gangsters… they will roast you alive," said Pepper defiantly.

"Curses that will put them in hell. Shall I start?"

"Let me go…"

"Not until you eat the eyeball of the dog."

The boy pulled hard to get away. She dragged him. His broken running shoes scraped a path to the dead dog.

"You can tell your brothers how you ate a dog's eye."

"Let me go."

She threw him to the ground. "They will be impressed."

"Get your hands off of me," whimpered Pepper.

"You're not hungry?"

Pepper began sobbing. Trembling.

"Get on your knees…"

Santiago shifted uneasily.

"Santy, help me…" pleaded Pepper.

"Do you want to help him?" asked the girl.

Santiago shifted his focus to Pepper. "No…" He pulled back and kicked him in the chest. Pepper fell, further back, trapped …

Irene pointed down the street. "Go … now … " Pepper didn't move. "Go or do you want an eyeball…"

Pepper jumped up, never taking his eyes off the girl, and ran like a rocket with a full tank of gas. He cried out, "I'm going to get you, Santy… You see.."

Santiago watched Pepper for a moment. He wasn't sure whether he should escape, run, or bow.

"You are not afraid, little one?"

"No… "

She smiled. The kind of smile that happens on sunny days, and when the world is spinning right.

"My name is Irene." She held out her hand for him to take. He grabbed it carefully like a mouse tasting the cheese. She slowly pulled him into her. Santiago at first resisted.

"I thought you weren't afraid."

Irene ran her hand over his head. Lightly touching it. Again, she pulled him into her. She whispered something ancient. Irene gently let him go. "I asked for the Saints to look out for you…"

The children's mothers were watching them closely. One was screaming, and another was cursing at Irene. A mother ran up, grabbed Irene by the shoulders, and spun her around, raising a hand to strike… But the mother became petrified like stone in a garden. She backed away. "Brujo" tumbled out of her mouth. The child's mother made the cross. Brujo was whispered between the parents like they were playing telephone. It travelled through the air.

Suddenly…

Irene and Santiago were alone. The streets were empty. Santiago checked. Everyone was gone. He stared up at Irene in disbelief. She smiled, "They feared me, because I am a witch... brujo. I was born under the rain sign. Do you know what a witch is?"

"A bad spirit that does bad things?"

Irene laughed. "Come with me, there is something for you to learn," she said, taking Santiago's hand and walking over to the dead dog. "That can be a friend to you."

Santiago gave her a look of disbelief.

"Let it become your father, and you will have a power they do not. Understand, little one?"

Santiago looked down and then up at Irene, "No…"

Irene laughed and softly touched his cheek and continued on her way. Santiago tagged after her. "Aren't you too young to be following me?" she seductively asked.

Santiago didn't answer. He had found his twin. They became like the lovers on a tarot card cruise, entwined forever.

That was the past. A long time ago.

The car came to an abrupt stop. It jogged Santiago out of his dreamworld. "I don't want to die in a car accident!"

"Sorry, boss, these Americans are terrible drivers. Probably took the ICE driving test. You know… rushing to get two-for-one at Taco Bell."

buy me a donut and coffee