Second Thoughts

I’m going through it right now.  I know I’ve been pretty quiet for about a week.  I pushed myself to be more social than I have been in years, in the hope that it might buoy me from what felt like an imminent major depressive dip.  Thanks to the combination empathy and introversion, what might have been just psychological became physical, and I ended up catching yet another cold.

An unexpected expense wiped my account during my absence from Teh Intarwebz, so I’ve been subsisting on four cans of soup, and a box of cereal during all this.  The financial scare and my shite health made my dip probably ten times worse than it would have been, had I just kept to myself.  I know now that the whole social thing is going to have to come slowly for me.  I can’t just fall back into it, because I was never that social to begin with!

 

I’m afraid I won’t be able to afford any of this.  I’m adrift in a situation where my travel options are very limited, which cuts into any monies I might need for basic things like, oh, food.  If you have $20, but it’s gonna cost $10+ to get to a store and back, you’re not going to have money to buy much of anything, and then you’re screwed for food and transportation.  I have to admit, my thoughts are bleak at the moment, and my vision of even the near future is clouded with worry, fear, and loneliness.

 

But at least I’m in a clean place for now.

Before Cadmus, there Was Cadmar Goidelica

After a long absence, Rob Dougan's Clubbed to Death decided to make a special appearance on my iTunes.  Where Rob Dougan goes, Cadmus Pariah follows.  That said, this drabble fell out.  I still feel horrible about his childhood, but Cadmus wouldn't be Cadmus, were it not for Nissius of Rome.

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The young Gaelic Tarma kept his dark head bent in silence, his hair hanging in his huge liquid eyes, as they shimmered like stars from the agony. He would not even dare a single tremour of any muscle in his frail, white body. He knew that this, just like everything in his life, was a test, a trial, and that every tribulation he survived would make his small body impenetrable to any ill, and would sharpen his mind to diamond precision. When the time came, all this woe and horror would transform into a glorious power, and that power would be all his.

The strap drew another red gash across Cadmar’s exposed back, the fourteenth one.  Just six more to go, and Cadmar would be left to his own devices for the rest of the night, to hunt and replenish his strength.  That is, if he did not lose consciousness.  Should he succumb to the pain and blood loss, he would go hungry that night, and receive 25 lashes at sundown the next sundown.  Each night he could not withstand the trial added five more lashes the next night, until he hardened to it, accepted it, welcomed it.

 

Cadmar welcomed the night when his power would eclipse that of his master, Nissius for, on that night, it would be his head bowed in silence, awash in the ecstasy of suffering known only to the Elect.The old man spoke of Hell in the after life, delighted in promising Cadmar an eternity of what the Elf already had a bellyful of on Earth.  But Cadmar did not believe him.  Cadmar was learning that you create your own hell, just as you create heaven, right here, right now.  And he believed his current hell was well=deserved, for Cadmar was not yet strong enough to remove himself from it.  Once he was, Cadmar planned to create his heaven, awash in the blood of this filthy creature of the Apostate.  And he would continue to build his heaven on Earth.  His bricks would be bones and his mortar the very marrow of the creation itself.