The Crossroads

By F. A. Aitken-Smith

I have succeeded in one thing at least. I have secured myself entry to whatever they want to call it these days; the nuthouse, the asylum, the treatment centre, the house in the hills. The destination that nobody wants to go to and that certainly no one ever speaks of having been.

I am being sectioned into The Crossroads

“Flick, do you want to really know what I think? I think you are telling the truth! I think you are right. I think if you could see more, you could work it all out. That life is nothing what we think it is. And what I really think is that perhaps, you are the bloodline. The fractal; like veins, roots and branches of trees, heart beats. For what ever reason...Flick, I think you may be 'THE HOLY GRAIL'.”

The Holy Grail. Ancient Egypt. The Future. Written in the stars and carved in stone. The hieroglyphics. The Gods. Enlightenment. Initiations. Higher awareness. Life. Truth. Will. Religion. Man and Woman. Creation. Consciousness. The Great Pyramid. The Sphinx. Pi.Phi

• Language: English
• Publisher: F. A. Aitken-Smith
• Release date: Jul 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301162925

F. A. Aitken-Smith

Faye was born in London, UK. She believes everyone's own life to be the greatest work of art of them all.

Book preview

The Crossroads

F.A. Aitken-Smith

Copyright 2013 F.A. Aitken-Smith

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission of the author.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

ISBN 978-1-3011-6292-5

For Mum

There is no place in the transcend consciousness for any baggage that you may be carrying, all the should and shouldn’t that may have dominated your consciousness, are to be released and left at The Crossroads.

CHAPTER ONE

It’ll break Flick, Dad correctly predicts as immediately, as if things are not bad enough already, my lucky blue-eye bead bracelet, that I had been running through my fingers like a makeshift rosary or set of worry-beads...snaps, spilling all the little glass eyeballs onto the floor, one by one.

I watch them bounce and roll around like marbles. A few make it down the cracks in the polished floorboards, never to be seen again. Laid to rest with all the thousands of tiny polystyrene balls that have lived down there for years, since I was just a little girl and used to empty out the beanbags to create ‘snowing’ in the lounge.

Told you!

Dad’s waiting, not patiently, jiggling the coins in his trouser pockets like he always does. I have already heard the church bells chime and my watch tells me it’s 11:11am precisely. We are running late.

I pick up the gold charm that was on the bracelet, the whole reason I had bought it. A gold circle with a pyramid inside and an eye in the middle. It matches the gold pendant of the necklace I always wear. The last present that I ever got from my Mum from one of her trips to Egypt, a present for my eleventh birthday.

She went missing not long after. I don’t presume her dead.

On my eighteenth birthday I got my peacock feather tattoo on the top of my arm in her memory and in the same tattoo shop I found the bracelet, the coincidence, I like to think, was a gift from her.

And now I have lost and broken that too. Nearly eleven years to the day since I last saw her. I realise that she has been gone half my life.

I don’t like saying goodbye but I seem to have to do it a lot. I say goodbye to Mum’s poodle, Anubis, I wonder if I’ll ever see him again. He’s an old boy now but he’s looked this bereft since the day she left. He won’t die, he’s still waiting.

And I wanted to be like her. Go searching for truths, solving mysteries, discovering the meaning of life and saving the world, but I can’t even save myself.

Born to die, I say in my head.

You ready yet? They’re expecting us!

His shiny car is already running outside, ready. Ready to take me away.

Just a moment. One more minute.

Just like her mother, he mutters under his breath.

I grab his newspaper and glance at the headlines. All the crimes of the day. A little girl has gone missing, feared abducted. People being killed and raped. A world at war. Soldiers killing themselves. Cities rioting around the globe. Financial crisis. A big bank caught laundering billions in drugs money, same bank that calls me ten times a day about my overdraft. It’s all a mess.

Is it getting worse? It feels like it. Like me, is it collapsing?

I scrunch it all up, the suffering on the black and white sheets and I throw them in to the fireplace. I strike a match, light a cigarette and I set fire to the lot. I throw into this little furnace all my self-help books. I must have read them all and these last remaining ones had always been my favourites. All those words on dreams coming true and synchronicity, love and absolute truths, and I watch them burn.

Born to die, I repeat to myself like a mantra. Born to die, born to die. It cheers me up.

"Francis! What the hell! It’s July! It’s summer!