Black Nether: The Book of Seth

By Michael Orona

The Black Nether novel series is the story of Seth: a man tormented by anguish, and an empty shell of a person. He had lived a lie for too long, forgetting who he was, and trying to live up to an image he could not maintain. As his life became an endless nightmare of loneliness, Seth forces open a portal, or rift, during a run in which he had lost all hope of ever being whole again.

Traversing the gap between realities by entering the Black Nether, the raw space of creation, Seth is sent into a fantastical world which was manifested through his own torment, driven by his shattered emotions. An alternate reality, Seth finds himself in a world torn apart by centuries of civil war. But a growing religion is extending its might across the land, lead by a self-proclaimed Prophet, Meledek, whose motives appear right and just on the surface.

Seth readily learns that the new religion and its Prophet is a terrible danger to the world, and directly to himself. With his new-found friend and companion, a brute of a man named Ottomandatius, they seek to expose Meledek for what he really is: a man bent on discovering how to open the doorway to the Black Nether and become exalted, which his religion dictates is preordained for the faithful by God.

Though Seth discovers his own strength and power in the strange universe by manipulating the Black Nether, his troubles are not limited to the Prophet trying to kill him: a shadow stalks him, awakened during his brief travel through the black nether, waiting for their inevitable meeting in which Seth must die.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Orona
• Release date: Mar 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476210049

Michael Orona

Michael lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, Jennifer, her daughter, and near all four of his sons featured in his novel series, 'Black Nether'. He has been a professional writer for more than 15 years, but his previous work has been in television and independent film. When not spending time with his sons, he is writing the book series and practicing his obsession: traditional Shaolin Kung Fu. Every character in his book is inspired by real people that have been instrumental to his story, both past and present, in this world.

Book preview

Black Nether

The Book of Seth

Book One

By Michael Orona

Published by Michael Orona

Copyright Michael Orona 2010-2012

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or

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your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedicated to Jake, Jordan, Hunter and Luke. You have made me the wealthiest man in any universe.

Table of Contents

1

Stolen

Endless Nightmare

I Run

Black Nether

The Way

The Fountain

The Map

Nexxestus

The Challenge

The Beginning

A Shadow

The Source

2

Prisoner

A Meeting

Last Meal

Endowed

Awakening

Stealing into the Night

3

A History Lesson

Harvesters

The Farmer

The Brother

The Ar’el

The Port of Sans

The Blood Rock

Rock and Fire

4

Blood Rock Crew

The Quanshu

Shipwreck

Woe stick

A Storm

Captain Seth

The Bet

Ash

Tithing

5

Hate

The Vaults

Decision

A Name

Jaya

A Fool’s Errand

Warship of a Prophet

Fear

Son of Perdition

Escape

The Swell

Dreams

1

Stolen

My name was Seth. It was not the name I was born with, but rather, the name I was given once indoctrinated into the Church that would rule my life for fifteen years. It was this same religion that would bring me to the edge of ruin, and destroy all that I had. I can only speculate at how much that ordeal was to credit for what was to occur only a few years later: my discovery of The Way; the path through the black nether; a world not our own, where an alternate reality existed in an impossible way... foreign, strange, surreal, unbelievable.

It propelled me through my mind's eye into this self-created opening to an alternate reality; the other world, Aevum. My head was not set right at the time; depressed, lonely, helpless, so it could have been simply emotional trauma of my suffering that allowed the discovery of The Way: the place between this universe, and all others possible. It’s ironic if that was the case; that the turmoil of the events in this existence would be the spark that allowed the opening of the other. It’s believable perhaps that it’s a power all my own: to open a place of creation through need alone, through willpower only, and then discover a manner to transverse from here to there through that power. I'm not sure if I will ever know, but I suspect that it’s within all of us to do so: to escape, to make the leap. Escape... it's strange that I would call it that because escape implies safety, or freedom. It was everything but safe. It almost killed me. Perhaps I am the first to survive it though. Maybe. Regardless, I was able to transfer into a world so fanciful, so amazing, that it’s difficult to accept it for a reality, though I am positive that it’s completely real; that it exists not out of my mind's eye only, nor the formulation of some illusion or dream.

My entrance through the portal into that place was sought out, as a need to flee the conditions of my life. It was not by chance; it was by will. Prior to the opening of the portal, the door or breach … The Way, as it is called... when I was fully involved with the Church I mentioned, some members of the religion often said I was a visionary man; someone given the gift of personal revelation. This would explain much. Not because it was true by any means. I'm not some type of prophetic visionary. No, on the contrary; it is really because I have always had the capability to manifest whatever desires or needs I may have at any particular time into moments of opportunity that can be interpreted by those around me in any fashion I desire them to perceive. A good salesman, in other words.

They had called me a visionary man in the scope of the religion because it’s what I had wanted them to believe. It was a simple task, really: a few prayers evangelized, with real zealot vigor, on Sundays and such, sounding inspired, profound and glorified in the name of their god. You see, this was the capability I possessed of selling an image; a persona of spiritual importance by seeding minds with self-fulfilling religious doctrine that I neither believed nor cared about. I desired a perception and, therefore, I was always viewed as somehow being gifted with visionary purpose in the name of their doctrine; a spiritual leader with potential for a position in their hierarchy. But it was just an act; a horrible play with an unwilling actor and unwitting audience; puppet emotions when called upon and danced about the stage on strings as was expected, to hollow applause and politician smiles.

Deceptive? Perhaps. But before you judge me, please understand... I don’t consider this manipulative in the least. No, it was not lies I weaved and propagated for malice or selfish gain: it was for survival. I provided them with inspiration to justify their membership in the sham of a religion, and in return, it granted me the ability to function on a level with some basic acceptance in their presence so I could maintain my marriage. She was a devout follower who believed unwavering. She had faith in the carnival of lies. I did not.

Faith. There's a complicated word and one I will speak to in time. But if they only knew how the pseudo-preaching always rang hollow with me, and that I had filled the congregation and prayer circles with what they wanted to hear, not what I truly believed. Perhaps they would think differently on the moments of spiritual wisdom they thought had come from God. Blasphemy, no doubt. Apostate. My revelations, prayers and envisaging would be considered coming from a different source by their account, I am sure of it. Son of Perdition is what they called it; cast in the outer darkness. One of the many titles and conditions they use to keep you in line; force beliefs upon you that can't possibly be accepted with logic otherwise, but by which you are far too afraid to denounce in case there might be a hint of truth in those shallow beliefs. Religion is such an odd practice in this way. We need something to fill that mystery of what we don't understand, or cannot bare to consider. I was no different. I wanted to believe, needed to believe. And in the face of all the evidence that proved the prophets in that religion I followed were charlatans, I still held on for as long as I could, until the weight of who I truly am pulled so greatly upon me, that when I fell from that self-righteous perch, it would nearly kill me. And then The Way was discovered in the process, and it changed everything.

The mind is a strange mystery in these matters. Dreams, revelations, epiphany's... they tell us so much, but leave so many more questions to be answered. The mind's-eye, or whispering of the soul, I have heard it defined. The ability to look into the subconscious to discover what is troubling us, or what our true heart desires. They are at times fantasies, but at others, a real look into who we are, or at the least, who we think we are. I am no psychologist. I only know what affects me and what my immediate response to that affect is, after the fact. Emotion. Basing actions upon gut instinct. Having the ability to stop a reaction based on an initial rush of emotion; to be able to calculate a response, is not an easy task. It takes concerted effort on all of our part. And that is what I tried to accomplish after the emotional stress of my divorce and the fall from the religion. My fall from the religion, however, may very well have been the impetus of the beginning of the end of what I was trying to hold onto: Seth. It was also the defining moment that allowed me to begin the search for true clarity into what I am: a glance into what dreams tell me. Seth is the person I’m not: the name was assigned to me, and one I no longer carry. Only the memory weighs upon me, but I have learned to carry the burden, and it becomes lighter each day, now that the ordeal of my journey is done.

Seth. When indoctrinated into the Church, I had been told I was part of the tribe of Ephraim, a descendant of one of the twelve tribes of Jerusalem, during one of the many ceremonial practices of the religion created by men to fabricate meaning to things which cannot be explained. Ephraim. Special. Chosen in these ‘latter days’ and ‘last dispensation’. They liked saying that. It made them feel special and above all others. Elitist. I had been told all of it by a 'man of god', the Patriarch; a man appointed to a title meant to garner respect in the religion. It was a personal blessing I was given by this man, this Patriarch, intended to give me value, or worth. It was one of the many tools used to keep you in their circle of faith... belief. But it was a lie. I did not realize it at the time, but by accepting the name, Seth, through a ritualistic practice founded upon deception... ordained and anointed in one of their temples... it would nearly destroy all I had, all that I valued... all I am.

I was only twenty years old when I was endowed with the name, and youth can cloud judgment. We think we know so much at that age, how everything is figured out, the paths falsely clear before us. We learn what is expected, what we are supposed to do, presume to be. We go to college, get jobs, find a wife. We are told to live a normal life, and do normal things, be around other normal people. I had no idea the odyssey I was about to embark upon would lead me to the brink of utter devastation, both spiritually and emotionally.

It is important to note that the slide into oblivion from that day at the age of twenty, when I had become Seth through a process of the religion, was not sudden and did not happen at the moment concluding the ritual. No, it took more than fifteen years for the process to complete, but when the end approached, the fall accelerated, rapidly. So incredibly rapidly. And within a matter of a few hours, after fifteen years of struggle as Seth, my life as I had known it was ruined, gone, destroyed. I remember it so well, and the day is burned into me.

A brand. A scar.

It was a day I will never forget, when I came home to an empty house, the silence deafening, my soon-to-be ex-wife that I never really loved fled with my sons to another state; and all I had known, the only thing I valued, were gone: my sons. It was the day I died in heart and will, and in the months following, my life became ashes. Then the divorce-war that raged after... more puppetry, danced before an indifferent judge, an unsympathetic court of law, and the financial ruin that followed in the torn path of shattered lives. And then the few years that followed the horrible day were a blur of emptiness I can hardly remember. The sun rose and fell, as it always does, but without meaning or purpose… until my journey began. The Way. The black nether.

My name was Seth. I’m still alive. I still breathe, and that’s saying a lot. This is my story.

Endless Nightmare

Two years after my children were stolen from me, but before the discovery of The Way, through the black nether, my life had somehow just moved forward in a constant nightmare. What would happen next became a path into somewhere else; the reality of a creation of what I had wanted, desired, wished for: an escape from the world of where I was and where I came from. But it was also filled with my fears, my hatred, my pain and anguish... all I had endured through a terribly bitter divorce and fifteen years of membership in a religion that was false, deceptive, manipulative. I have heard of how post-traumatic stress can cause mental ailment and harm deep in the far reaches of a person’s mind. Nightmares, visions, hallucinations. I had always felt, however, I was immune to such things: maybe someone else might be affected by this sort of thing - depression, emotional trauma - but not me.

I had always believed I could handle any level of pain the world could throw at me. I’m a man. Men tough these things out with no room for falling. Strength. Always strength and the cold emotionless face of just taking the hit. I was very wrong. The ordeal was unlike anything I could’ve been prepared for. It became a battle for life, and my sanity. It almost killed me physically. And I did die emotionally and spiritually the day my life had changed from everything I had known. And somehow, someway, I made it back and exist once again. It was The Way. Finding it was not by chance; it was meant to happen. It was to give me an opportunity to survive, to be reborn... or at the least, die fighting. And that is what my story is all about: finding the will to live once more, in spite of the horror the world will throw at you. And I did it in spite of the people that belonged to that horror; the lies, surrounding me and my family and life, heaping upon me their desire to break me completely; attempting to destroy all I am, all I had, all I could become. I lived. And that was the victory. They tried to destroy me, in both worlds, but I lived through it all, and I take a deep satisfaction in knowing the people in this existence are aware they failed in the attempt with weapons just as lethal as the razor-sharp blades I avoided in the other.

The Way. Black nether. They became known to me in the strangest of ways.

There was a deli across the street from where I worked. This small deli was my vacation, my retreat, for one hour, away from a dead-end corporate job that had no value except the steady paycheck and the intangible profits for the anonymous stock holders or executives I never met, would never know, nor really cared about. That’s the nature of a job you take for need rather than desire. A paycheck... steady, reliable, imprisoning.

Just get to noon.

That was my mantra. If I could get to noon then the day would finally be closing in on a merciful end, leading to the golden moment when the phones are pushed to voicemail and any emails received could be ignored until the next day. On this day (like so many others), when lunchtime finally rolled closer, I needed to get out of that pit of lost hope before it consumed the last of any spirit left within me: those gray walls, the ringing of the phone, endless corporate cliché’s spewed by middle management clones.

God. How had my life come to this?

I didn’t normally go to my rescue deli on Mondays. I'd save it like a special treat for mid-week, usually Wednesday: a prize for surviving so long at a job I hated. I'd hold it tight against my chest; a trump against a horrible day; a declaration of the soon-to-be realized slide toward the last days before the weekend. It was a chance to pretend I was somewhere else, someone else; sitting there trying to leave my body behind and drift into the oblivion of daydreams. It would never last, but at least it was something to look forward to; something to get me through the rest of the week.

Rarely, I'd have to make the escape early, maybe Tuesday, after a particularly bad start to the week, unable to hold out until Wednesday. And sometimes, when the taskmasters beat my spirit to a pulp after dragging myself into the office following a weekend that lasted only long enough to miss the freedom… when hope failed... I'd have to pull the safety cord and claw my way past the bland grey walls of the office on the first day, on Monday. It was one of those days. It doesn’t matter what typical corporate grindstone nonsense led up to noon that day, when my heart was screaming for me to run to my sanctuary. It never matters.

When I walked out the door, at exactly twelve, with not a second to spare, seeing my destination within reach, my escape across the burning pavement, like a walk across the desert of the Sahara, within reach of my oasis, my sanctuary, I remember closing my eyes and taking a deep breath of the Texas summer heat.

Jesus.

I said it out loud, to no one, but to everyone. No one heard me of course. My fellow inmates in that office were all headed to whatever temporary rescue awaited them. To park benches, or fast-food; maybe a few precious moments at home... whatever... no one to my deli. Though we were brothers-in-arms at our hell-hole of a job, this was the hour of respite that isn't to be shared; a silent understanding passed between prisoners that the ground I was walking to is sacred, and mine alone. I sat down after ordering the usual, mouthing a forced hello to the deli employee who knew me so well that I really didn’t need to speak my order. It was always the same, and they expected it, and me, each week. I then did what I’d always do: slip into the calm place at a table under the shade of one of the pseudo-tropical garden trees, taking in each and every second I could of the precious hour, like drops of honeydew and crystal-clear water to parched lips, again begging time to slow and last a little longer just this once. A slight breeze was blowing to keep the heat hairs-breadth above bearable, and I closed my eyes, letting the hot air wrap its arms around me like a welcomed friend. Normally at that point I would slip into daydreams of better places, or think about what I would do when I returned home in the evening, or perhaps forget I was still days away from the weekend and strategize how it would be spent; each planned moment a treasured uncut diamond.

But sometimes the substance of my situation... my job, my life… would weigh so heavy upon my consciousness, other thoughts, darker and less desirable, would steal in; the recent memories and cause of my condition, polluting my few precious moments through-and-through with the misery that had become my existence. This particular day, I could not chase those thoughts away, and like a sickness, they spread until I was diseased with incessant feelings of sorrow and regret. All that had transpired during those terrible last few years of my life pressed down upon me; the loss, the ruin.

How did it come to this? I have no idea. This isn't the way it was supposed to be at thirty-seven years old. Was it? Shit, I wasn’t even born in Texas. I moved here three years ago, from Los Angeles. I’m a goddamn surfer from the beaches of Ventura, for chrissakes. How the hell did this happen?

It was a rhetorical question I asked myself as the last hope of chasing those thoughts away fluttered somewhere into the breeze passing by me. I knew the answer all too well. I had just endured tribulation for the past few years; a gradual decline into the situation I had found myself trapped within: a divorce, a religion turned against me, and a slow slide into depression and endless pain.

Emotional trauma is like that. You cannot purge your mind of it though you realize no matter how many times you go over the ordeal, minute by minute, like an impossible puzzle you are trying to solve and understand and to move beyond; it will change nothing. It happened; it burned the memory somewhere deep into the recesses of your brain, and you run your finger across the scar over and over and over, as if by doing so, somehow it will eventually disappear. At times, you touch it lightly and then the moment passes as you are able to grasp the understanding that nothing can be changed; a moment in the past now gone, and you simply acknowledge and remind yourself it did occur, giving it pause of recognition, and nothing more.

But sometimes, you rub it hard until it hurts. Pressing and pressing, trying to erase the thoughts completely. You relive each moment as if at some point you might have the ability to change the direction of the past; reshape the scar, make it disappear. And when you get to that point, pressing the scar harder and deeper until it fills every crease of your mind, you are on train tracks through the memory, speeding toward the end of the line. You know you are headed to a terrible wreck, but can't slow down. While you do this, the past comes at you with force as you grasp for anything to stop reliving the moments; every tiny detail of the painful memory assails you. The remembrance comes so hard and fast, jumping from one wound to the next until you now have more than one horrible past memory to battle. And you want to scream for them to go away, or crawl into a hole and die, or maybe laugh a maniacal laugh, giving into the insanity of the pain. That is what I was doing once again: fighting the urge to become lost in the agony. I was scarred far deeper than I would have admitted. And at that moment, I was on those rails to a bad place, and picking up speed quickly; I was leaping from pain to pain, and slowly dying inside just a little bit more.

The negative and painful thoughts were slashing and cutting a path through my mind quickly when a small but distinct throbbing surfaced in the base of my neck. It began as a slight headache and I attributed the discomfort to a bad day, a hot day, a typical day.

Stress most likely. Just stress. Let it go, Seth. Let it go. Maybe accelerated by the heat. God it gets hot in Texas. It’s so goddamn hot.

I ignored it at first, took another draught of soda, and tried again to push the thoughts of regret from my mind; the last few years on a collision course to my decaying condition, fighting with me there as I sat at my table.

But there were so many recent memories to repress, to sort through, to attempt to chase away, and impossibly change... they kept coming in waves, one after another, and I was drowning. I don't know what triggered the first memory; something harmless most likely such as a fleeting thought born from a visual coincidence somewhere nearby on a hot summer day. But it transformed in an instant. I began thinking, reflecting, then agonizing about the most recent two years I had just endured.

Fifteen years of marriage. What a waste of my best years. Raising four sons together had been the only thing that mattered; the house; all of my savings. Gone. Almost half the years of my life. Lost. My friends. Friends? None. Dedication to a religion. A lie. My identity. Gone. All lost.

I started remembering how she had fled the state with my sons; the day they had suddenly vanished and I scrambled to find them, desperately driving around town looking for any hope.

My sons. Where are my sons? Please, God. Please, no. Just keep driving. Just keep looking. Maybe here. No. Nothing. Please God no.

I was on those railroad tracks of regret as I sorted through the memories. And there was no stopping that train speeding into the sorrow and pain, rubbing the scar with intensity, trying so desperately to erase it from my thoughts. But the scar was still there and my pressing upon it was as forceful as it had ever been.

A sharp twinge pinched the base of my skull at that moment, a minor discomfort but more concentrated than before as I fought with my own thoughts. Another wave of emotions hit me when I remembered those first ten days of not knowing where my children were.

My sons, my perfect boys, the core of who I am. My life's blood. Please no. Why are you doing this to me? Why dear God, why? It’s Tuesday. October. Stolen from me. The football field. It’s game day. Where is my son? He was to play. He isn’t there. What happened? What is going on?

In this fit of memories, I started to really take notice of the building pain in my head.

Maybe some food will stop the headache. Maybe hunger with the stress of the morning is the cause of all of this. Yes. It's just hunger. Stop remembering. Stop thinking… just breathe. Keep breathing.

I tried to convince myself, but could not seem to pick up the food that sat on the table before me. I stared at it and it began to lose focus. And still the memories came at me, a bit faster then.

A family emergency. Is that what the coach had said? That’s a lie. Another lie. I would have been called. Why is everyone lying to me?

I remember the panic, the feeling of loss that was about to come crashing down upon me. Line the memories up. That sometimes worked, so I did it quickly, believing that if I could run them through my mind like dominoes falling one by one and rapidly, I could get beyond them, and finish my lunch. Okay. Line them up. I had raced home, looked for them there. I remember noticing some clothes missing, and small things. I tried to focus on just those memories, but the pain struck me again and my stomach tightened. The dominoes went on and on and there was no stopping the cascade.

Where is Luke’s favorite stuffed animal? Jordan’s night-pack is gone… why are Jake’s school books set on the kitchen counter neatly in a stack? Hunter? Where are you?

I had called out running from room to room, begging for them to step out from around a corner with those perfect faces that always lit up my day.

Nothing. This isn't happening. Stop it. Stop these memories! Push it out of your mind. The memories. Force them out. You're killing yourself again. Get off this goddamn train, Seth!

I tried so hard to halt the rush of memories, but it was not working. The stinging visions of what had occurred only came faster at me as I sat there with my lunch, fighting a headache that just wouldn't seem to stop, hitting me with agony upon agony as my stomach ached.

Stop remembering.

It was a Tuesday. My life had changed in an instant. What hell it was. I remember calling everyone I knew, when she left with the kids, members of our church mostly. No answers had been found; some obvious deceit, some bold lies.

Christians. How could they claim such a title after what they did?

That’s what they claimed and it was what started this journey all those years ago. I had driven the streets after those failed attempts to get answers, tried to make sense of it all, hoping out of some strange luck I was wrong, that there was just some misunderstanding and they would be home when I returned. But they were gone, and my life disintegrated in a moment. I was slipping deeper and quicker into panic as these poisoned arrows of the past assailed my thoughts.

Stop this. Stop remembering this. It happened. Thinking about it won’t change a thing. Just stop it, goddammit. Reliving it is going to bring out the pain again. That familiar sting. The empty feeling. The loneliness.

I tried to stop it, but it was too late. I had arrived at my destination. I was fully involved in reliving my past… again.

I took a deep breath and tried to calm down to no avail.

Divorce is always a horrible experience. But within the experience, there are definitely various levels of hell. I have heard of amicable separations from some, where the parties try to keep the bloodletting to a minimum. Mine was far from that. If Dante's 'Inferno' and the nine levels of hell is based as comparison, the end of my marriage placed me in one of the three jaws of Satan, gnawed and spat. We didn’t just fight during our split-up; it was all-out war. Because it was not only her and I in the battle; an entire damn religion joined the blood-bath.

During that trip through hell, they helped hide my children from me. They stole them from me and then tried to destroy all that was left. Saints. The Chosen. The Priesthood. I had given them everything I could: my dedication in spite of the obvious ludicrous doctrine; my full support in the face of bigotry and patriarchal oppression; and my only valued possession… my family. Even though I had struggled with the obvious deceit and lies, the relentless feeling of something out of place, hating myself more and more every day for being involved in a society I knew was secretly corrupt to the core… still, I had tried to hold on. I had endeavored to believe regardless of the obvious snake-oil that it was, thinking maybe it was me that was wrong: feeling ‘unworthy’ and ‘impure’ because I dared to doubt the leadership of the Church and their fabricated doctrine. So many terrible things happened to me by those people. Brethren. But after all was said and done, the one thing that sticks out in my mind the most, oddly enough, is how never once was I asked during the nightmare how it was affecting me. No one came to me and asked if I was surviving. They just left me to die. They did not care. No, they just decided to crucify me and destroy my children's lives in the process. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, really, given what I know about their dogma. And yet it still bothers me how people can be turncoat like that. Especially ones who claim the title of saints.

God. Why had this happened? These memories, these thoughts... please... I can't do this anymore. I'm already dead inside. Please God, wipe my mind of the memory.

Usually, at that point, all of the experiences of the past would have run through leaving me feeling like an empty shell, hopeless, lonely, and emotionally dead. I would be exhausted from the exercise, and I’d just stand up and walk on, numb to hope. But that Monday was different. Very different.

The pain at the base of my skull changed once more. It spread in an instant like a spider-web of lightning, tracing a path from neck to temple, following what felt like every crevasse and ridge in my brain, biting, burning, killing me. I had never felt a pain like it before. On a positive note, at least all of those memories I was fighting rushed out of me in an instant like a blast of sweltering air as I felt as if I was about to vomit. The pain was incredible. I closed my eyes and pressed against the base of my neck, making what must have been a terrible grimace as every muscle in my body tensed in agony. I blacked out for a brief moment.

The light came then: a brilliant light that blinded me. It was a searing light and no matter how tightly I closed my eyes, it only grew in luminosity. I was paralyzed by the pain, and no longer knew if I was sitting, standing, or lying on the ground.

As quickly as the flash of intense agony came over me, it passed, followed by a calm washing through my body. The brilliant light shifted slowly into a muted gray. I waited for a moment before daring to look up. I opened my eyes and had my first glimpse at the black nether. The colors of my surroundings had faded. Time had slowed. I suddenly found myself looking out into an existence I did not understand. Everything about me had changed, blanketed by a cavernous sepia tone mixed with black and grey, blurred and translucent, faded at the edges. I was seeing a ghost-world that shifted in perspective constantly, but remained distinct in existence as frozen images of reality. The painting of this reality reversed from the multi-colored known light spectrum of red, green, blue into outlines like a pencil sketch on a white canvass accented with shades of black and gray.

All the colors had faded, leaving behind a grayish glow and charcoal world where the shapes of everything I perceived had taken on a spirit-like corporeal translucence.

I looked around me, almost drunk with confusion.

As I pondered what was happening, the canvas of our universe shifted again into changing shades and colors, revealing to me thin layers of design the deeper I peered into the mystery. As I glanced about me, clarity assumed a complexity of miniscule detail; every subtle curve and edge in all the objects around me stood out more vivid and crisp than I had ever considered possible. I noticed the drops of condensation from the humidity on a window pane, the breeze moving through the feathers of a gliding bird, and grains of sand speckled across the pavement a few paces away as large as boulders. I looked at my palm and the creases and ridges of my fingerprints were as cavernous as the Grand Canyon. The world had become a thing of my interpretation: my unwitting version of a reality that existed, or might exist, or could be defined with infinite possibility of any number of directions or outcomes.

I looked across the street then, back at the building of my employment, and it appeared small, insignificant, a dark shade of gray-brown with those same lines blurred and incorporeal. It was washed away a few seconds later, replaced by a new color coming into view: a swirling whirlpool of black and purple. I watched it move and shape, as if struggling to exist; a living thing of rich color. The more I looked at it, concentrated on what it was becoming, the clearer it would take form. There were shapes in the vortex I observed, dodging in and out. They appeared to be human, but nothing I could pinpoint or completely realize. I could not tell if they were resisting my attempt to view their form, or if they were struggling with the shades of this painter’s pallet to leave the turmoil. I was not afraid of their visage, but perhaps I should have been. Some were horned, grotesque, though human in all other manifestation. They made harsh movements, violent, and the more I concentrated on them, the more their attention turned toward me. I was watching a parade of movement within a world that was ghostly and surreal.

I puzzled about this for a moment longer when movement out of the corner of my eye drew my attention elsewhere. The tables around me were gone, and the landscape had no concrete form. It was moving, not fluidly, but in erratic motions, unlike the office across the street, appearing as an image on a TV flickering in and out. That is when I first noticed the noise. It was voices, sounds, coming from all angles. I recognized them all. They were of everything I knew and had experienced throughout my entire life. Voices of those I had loved, those I had hated, and everyone in between. The sounds of every piece of music I had ever heard, every drop of a pin, rustle of paper... everything. It was the entirety, experienced or imagined, bound up into one noise. Though they were mingled together, each was as clear as a whisper in my ear, and I could select any one of them into full realization. All of this came at me in what seemed a few simple moments, and then, as quickly as they had come, they faded away and I found myself staring up at the clear sky that looked substantially different from when I had first sat at the table. It was blue; so very blue. It was beautiful. I had seen a sky like that before, years before: the summer canvas carpeting an ocean below, while I sat on a surfboard, gazing, peering into the heavens of perfection. I could almost feel the cool water on my legs as I sat upon the board, waiting for the slow rise of a line to appear on the horizon; a wave traveled a thousand miles, waiting to take me to shore. It was a memory of being at peace, and happy… and it stung my heart as painful as a plunged dagger.

You okay?

It was a voice that came from behind me. I lowered my head from my transfixed gaze on the sky above and saw a deli worker washing the table across from mine. My neck hurt, stiff, as if I had not moved it for some time. I was confused and looked around. I was the only one there.

Thought you were asleep. I said you might have died. he chuckled and I could tell he was joking with me in a friendly way, but was also mildly concerned at what must have been a bizarre scene for him; a man sitting at a table staring into the heavens. My mouth was very dry and as I tried to piece together what had just occurred, I realized then just how much the sky was changed from when I had arrived. It was later than I remembered, the sun no longer directly overhead.

I looked up at the deli employee as he washed the table and knew he was waiting for a response to either relieve his fears, or sound an alarm that there was truly something wrong.

Yeah. Tired. Bad morning. I felt it was a typical response he might expect, and it worked. He half smiled and went about his job. I was no concern, he must have concluded; just a guy relaxing in the heat of the day, which seemed to have gotten hotter in those few moments. I stretched and was about to take a drink of my soda. It was hot; the ice had long since melted. This was my first real indication that more time had passed than I realized. I stared at the glass for a moment before my senses came back to me and I looked at my watch: Half-past four in the afternoon.

What? It should be noon.

I knew it was around noon. I looked at the clock on my phone, expecting to confirm only a few minutes had passed, but it betrayed my expectation and verified the time. Half past four. I had been there for more than four hours. My mind began to swim.

There is that odd space in all of our minds between feeling something is wrong, and then knowing something is definitely wrong. Your thoughts race with lightning speed through all of the possibilities until reason can catch up and you slow things down to take inventory of where you are, what just happened, and what to do next. I was at a complete loss. I was left wandering in the space of confusion for several moments.

I sat there trying to piece together what had transpired, vision by vision, thinking through what I had just witnessed and covering every aspect of the incident in exquisite detail hoping to shed a sliver of light, a fragile illumination, as an explanation of the episode. None came. I was left more confused by the exercise and soon realized there was no immediate explanation. But what to do now? Looking back at the office, which would be wondering where I was, the place appearing only what seemed moments before as a whirlpool of color accented by shapes and forms I did not understand, I knew I could not simply walk back in and take my place at my desk as was expected of me.

I quickly dialed my cell phone and called the receptionist. I had to field a barrage of questions quickly as to where I was and if I was ok. I did not know exactly what to say, so I told her the truth: something had come up and I needed to go home and deal with it immediately. It was just about all the truth there was to tell, really. The details of any other explanation weren’t possible. I was able to dodge any further questions by telling her I couldn’t explain it right then; I wouldn't have the slightest idea of how to explain what had just happened if I had wanted to anyway. With the job settled, I went home.

I Run

I had never been a runner before my life was shattered. In fact, other than a game of pick-up basketball, I had ceased doing much exercise at all since my surfing days rapidly declined, around my mid-twenties, due to the responsibility of raising my children and keeping the bills paid. Even weekly basketball had become very difficult to maintain up to the time of moving to Texas and then the accelerated dissolution of the marriage. I had gained a few pounds as a result, as most men will when life takes on the burden of accountability which no longer affords time consuming recreations. I had to give up surfing completely somewhere around the age of thirty consequently. It was a price I had to pay to provide for my family though my marriage was really the continual living of a lie and a private hell during those days; it’s terrible to be alone in your thoughts and feelings while married. Raising my sons filled the void. So surfing, basketball... they just stopped one day.

Exercise was elusive after coming to Texas and my muscles hibernated into a state of meager use for the most part. But during the first two weeks when my sons were stolen from me, not knowing where they were, I lost twenty-five pounds to stress and panic. I had trouble eating. I had no appetite. Food, water… they had no meaning to me and I could hardly stomach them. The silence. The horrible silence. Hours and hours would creep by and the absence of the voices of my sons left me shaking and manic. Why sustain a broken body when the soul is dead; when the heart is a dried husk, torn from a father and left to wither? I would spend countless hours pacing from room to room, almost expecting to wake from the nightmare and find them sleeping in their beds, safe, at peace… home. But they were gone. I left the sheets on their beds undisturbed, as I knelt far past midnight staring at the place they once lay. The covers were wrinkled and formed into the shapes of their bodies. I’d reach out then, afraid to disturb the place I last saw them, had stroked their cheek and said goodnight… My hand would hover over the empty bed, hoping to capture the last remnant warmth of their bodies. But the pillows were cold, and the night too quiet. There was no soft sound of the rise and fall of their breathing; no calling out to their father after a bad dream, with me sitting next to them and holding a hand or stroking their hair until they drifted back to sleep, whispering assurance that it was all going to okay; that their father was there, and the darkness of the night was held at bay by my command. It was gone. All gone.

I’d lay awake at two in the morning or later, staring at the ceiling, wondering why God had led me to ruin. Sometimes, I’d sleep on the floor of their room, as if I could will them home. It’s a horrible experience to break down so completely in the span of a few weeks. I was wasting away during that time and could not stop my slow decay physically as well as emotionally. That is when I started to run.

I did not do it for the exercise; I did it because it hurt, literally. The pounding of my feet on the pavement left my neglected muscles very sore, and my ankles and joints in particular hurt terribly, the years of disregard weighing heavy upon my body. But that was the point. With each step, the anguish and stress moved from mind, to lungs, through muscle, legs, feet, and into the street that welcomed my footsteps like broken sticks on a worn drum; each strike of sole to the pavement sounding as a desperate call to end the ordeal. I ran because I had to. It left me exhausted, doubled over catching my breath, drenched in sweat and baked from the Texas heat. It nearly killed me some days, and that was what I hoped for. I wanted to die. So I ran at the hottest time of day, during the peak of summer, when cars passing by must have wondered what sort of lunatic would be out running in that heat. I was crazy with grief, and I wanted the sun to take me.

Running for me was to find either death or salvation, and at the time, I welcomed whichever would claim me first. It worked perfectly. When the world was crashing all around me, when I could feel the clench of complete loneliness and despair gripping my heart, running sent me to the limit of physical endurance and the ache of my body through those runs overcame the mental and emotional pain I was being consumed by. When you are completely exhausted to the point of feeling like you’re about to vomit, you’d be amazed at how quickly loneliness passes over and all you can think about is the next breath and somehow making it the last hundred yards to a glass of cold water.

That is why I ran. I still run to this very day, but for different reasons now. Remembrance. Humility. Life. People tell me at my age it’s too much, that I should try the climate controlled gym or some other lesser impact upon a body approaching middle-age, but the addiction is in me, and it won’t leave me though I made it through the nightmare, and don’t need to medicate through the regiment any longer. When I started running back then, I knew I would never stop, though what was about to happen would change my perspective forever. Late that afternoon, when I came home from the deli, I changed into my jogging clothes, strapped on my shoes, and headed outside to run.

I’m not a marathon runner by any means. In fact, I have a terrible physical build for running. God gifted me with ankles as narrow as a bird's, and a chest that is broad, more like a linebacker than a runner: the perfect combination for disaster. So when I run, it’s all about pace and distance. Like a tank, I lumber along for five miles, setting no records, and almost breaking my feet every step in the process. I must look funny out there in the heat; a middle-age man with a body like an inverted triangle, moving with intent, but only gaining moderate stretches of ground. That’s not to say I crawl in my pace. On the contrary, I go as quickly as I am able, and I can outpace less fit members of the fraternal order of runners, including those half my age. Rather, I’m not concerned with time when I run: only purpose. I run those five miles only because I learned it often takes five miles to bring me to the edge where the emotional stress has been replaced by the throbbing aches and pains.

Only when my mind is beginning to clear do I turn around and cover the same distance toward home. By the time I would arrive back in my living room, usually, I could function again and at least sleep until the next day awakened the black emotional death within me. On that particular day, I could not get out the door and onto the pavement fast enough. Running evaporates the depression and I needed it more than anything else that hot summer afternoon.

My running ritual is simple enough: I have mapped out points along the way so I know the distance I am from home. There are times when I just cannot make the full five miles, so I have also marked three and four mile distance. In this way, I can achieve some measure of relief from the level of emotional distress I’m struggling with on any particular run. A three mile run means it’s a hard day, but one that’s manageable. When I push to four miles and then five, it’s one of those days the battle is raging inside; when the sidewalk can’t kill the distress and I need to push the limits of myself to an extreme until the agony of emotion is replaced by screams of the body. I remember knowing it was going to be a five mile day.

It was a little after five in the afternoon when I set out. The day hadn’t begun to cool in the brutal summer swelter and the Texas heat was over one hundred degrees and the heat index closer to a hundred and five; perfect conditions to erase the memories of the past few years for a few more hours at least. But it was not my intent this time to just replace the emptiness. I needed to discover what happened at lunch and, if possible, repeat the process to better understand what it all meant. The episode at noon had come about with a particularly strong fight against the memories plaguing me: the divorce, the assisted secreting away of my children by the church, the legal struggles to see them again and the terrible loneliness I was diseased with. If those thoughts were the impetus of the vision I experienced, then I would need to concentrate on them once again to bring about those images still appearing so crisp in my mind. For me, it was only an hour or so recent, though truly five hours or more had transpired since they had begun to slide across my vision. So as I ran, I tried to bring those same memories back into my thoughts once again.

But they weren’t the same this time. They were confused and disjointed, without proper organization, fleeting here and there, without concrete substance as they had earlier. I was not sure if it was because the run was serving its purpose, and the punishing, scorched pavement was working too well to squelch my anguish, or if it was because I was simply trying too hard. But the more I tried to recreate the scenario, the further from my grasp it became, unwilling to allow my thoughts to wrap around the memories. I passed beyond the two mile mark with nothing further gained and was approaching my turnaround point rapidly where I would need to stop and turnabout so I could traverse the same distance home and complete the full run. Still I fought and struggled to bring back the moments when I had encountered the vision, and still the attempt was met with failure. What was I missing? Was this just a one-time apparition shaped by imagination? Had I really peered into an alternate world or reality? Or was the pressing weight of sadness causing delusions, finally sending me to the brink of emotional collapse? I did not want to believe it was so I ran harder, faster, pushing myself further than I normally would have. I just could not believe what I had seen was by chance.

There must have been reason for what I witnessed and how it had come into my acuity. I understand sometimes there is an explanation for these things other than what we hope or expect; we project meaning onto small events in a way so we can partition them, make sense of them. But I was unable, or maybe unwilling, to admit the possibility.

As I fought with this reasoning, I finally came to the place where I had to turn around or risk exhausting myself too much. I was already three miles away from home, water, and rest, having gone further than usual in my state of frustration. I stopped and wondered what the hell I was trying to accomplish. It was a fool’s errand to look for worlds steeped in the imagination, running to some place which neither existed nor could be created. For a moment I stood there, hands on my knees, slumped over, feeling the heat irradiate incessantly from my body… I felt like dying. It was not the run that was killing me this time; it was this quest I had embarked upon, hoping beyond hope I could just imagine a better place than this, a better situation to live in and wash away the years of pain building within me.

I felt like crying, and I might have done so if the anger had not begun to rise from deep within. It was a small burning sensation in the corner of my mind that came on slowly at first, but within a few brief seconds, rose like a fire to burn away the pain. It was a familiar feeling, but still, one which always came without warning. I hated everything about me at that moment; my job, my ex-wife, the city I lived in, the house I slept in... all of it. But mostly, I hated who I was and what I had become.

I was empty of all hope and had resigned to defeat so completely I was not hungry, thirsty, nor knew if it was hot or cool outside anymore. Rather than turn around and return home, I stared ahead, and like an animal trying to find some place alone to die, I went on.

I just kept running, the rage burning all that was left inside.

I had no destination in mind at all, nor was I marking the distance. My eyes were set upon the concrete and all I could see was the ground passing beneath me. I would often listen to music on my runs, the songs exaggerating my emotions, inspiring hope or anger just the same. But on this run, I hadn’t brought anything but myself, my loss, the emptiness that was me. The sound of my breath was all I could hear, dragging in and falling out. The steady patter of my feet upon the pavement, in a rhythm, the miles passed behind me. I ran and ran and had no intention of ever stopping. First the aches of sore feet came, followed by the muscles in my legs screaming for relief. I ran until I was numb, having passed the place of warning, and I began to feel the tightening of my stomach, knowing I risked vomiting soon if I did not stop. And still I ran. I’d been running this ritual almost daily for two years straight, since the beginning of the end of that chapter of my life, so my body had grown accustomed to the distances I forced it to travel. I was fit by that time; the extra pounds long before burned away from two years of my ritual. Be that as it may, this time I went far beyond my capacity, far beyond my five mile marker, and was on the very edge of collapse and unconsciousness. But I did not care. I was running to die.

I cannot be completely sure of how far I had gone when I came out of the fatigue-fed, emotionless trance and realized I had run much further than ever before and I was not completely aware of where I was anymore. The rage had burned me over the added miles to numbness, dead inside, without hope. I recognized the general location of the road I was standing upon, but could not be completely sure if it was simply an extra mile I had travelled, or perhaps ten. As I suddenly came to this realization, standing there holding back the complete exhaustion enveloping me like a lead weighted coat, I took in a few emergency breaths to keep the rising bile at bay, and looked to my left by chance; or perhaps fate.

The road I was running along crossed a small creek which disappeared into some dense cedar trees off in another direction. Texas is like that; you can step only a few hundred yards off a road and find yourself in a small wilderness of brush and rock with perhaps a cave in the ground. On the outskirts of where I lived, it was not unusual to stumble across a small pocket of wilderness at all. But as I glanced at this grove of trees, it began to take on a much more different appearance than anything I had witnessed before. That is when the portal appeared, and vastness beyond it. The woods around the creek darkened suddenly until I was staring into a black abyss of space where trees, rocks and brush had stood moments before. The sky above the wood became indistinguishable from the void I stared into, as the green of the