Alina

Our courtship of Alina waned when we left school to work for ourselves.

Our courtship had nearly disintegrated by the time Alina tried to kill herself the first time.

We had been too busy working, studying Sufism and Islam, and hanging out with our new friends.

We still loved Alina dearly, but out of context to high school there was littlle to help keep us together; also, Alina was withdrawing, hiding more and more of herself from everyone around her.

We trusted we would reunite with her in the fullness of time, and we did re-unite.

In truth, since our special moment of intimacy it was if we could never be parted from Alina ever again.

We had not spoken about this with her, we did not know then if she felt the same way, or if she did, we did not know whether this more elated her or more disturbed her...

We trusted Alina because we loved her and had faith in her love for us.

In all, Alina would try to kill herself three times...

On the first occasion Alina managed to conceal the fact that she had tried to kill herself from everyone.

We had heard through mutual friends that she had fallen near christmas-time and had to go on vacation with her family in a cast.

In fact, she had tried to kill herself by jumping from a balcony at the rear of her house.

The second time Alina tried to kill herself she became trapped by her fear of the pain of her previous fall.

This fall would hurt much more.

Emergency crews rescued Alina from the roof of her house.

We learned of this nearly immediately and went to visit Alina in her psych hospital as soon as we could.

We visited Alina regularly for several weeks while she tried to explain to us and to herself why she wanted to die.

This would be the first time Alina would choose to talk to us about her precognitive talent, or reveal anything about her earlier suicide attempt...

Alina described a frightening world to us, a world in which she felt terribly alone.

Alina described a world in which she sincerely believed there could be no free will because her wild precognitive talent was alwasy right.

We had observed her talent, we grew to take it for granted not suspecting how Alina would interpret it.

If Alina knew we were paying attention she never let on when she merged from her trances.

Alina explained that to her way of seeing things all people were automatons, chemical robots, executing their social programs and survival programs flawlessly, entirely predictably.

She had begun to regard all people as inhuman machines.

Alina had begun to explore a world full of machines, machines participating in the cybernetic consciousness of human worlds in strange ways she did not yet understand.

Alina despaired of ever being able to believe anyone was real, not even ourselves.

Had she not slipped into our body?

Was her own consciousness perhaps the only thing animating our love for her?

Alina was living in an extremely solipsist world.

We would later study solipsism at the Philadelphia College of Art.

Sollipsism frightened us to the very core of our being.

We understood much of what Alina tried to tell us.

Alina went on to talk about losing her tooth, losing her nail.

She meant her egg-tooth, a tool with which to open her cosmic egg.

She meant a nail as well but we did not understand this part so well...

A claw, she elaborated, to tear away the veils of illusions around her...

Alina was determined to find a more meaningful existence.

Alina was certain she would not find it on Earth, in her current incarnation, she was dismissing all of the world around her as unreal.

Another reality beckoned, a cybernetic reality where she hoped she migth find peace...

Alina did not talk about what might also have been driving her to feel terribly isolated, lonely and hurt.

Perhaps she never told a living soul before she died...

We cannot tell that for her here...

We understood Alina's situation, and her determination to kill herself.

She told us very plainly she would kill herself as soon as possible.

We did not try to blackmail her with our love.

We did not try to argue agains a pain we were only beginning to dimly perceive or understand.

Alina was the most beloved person in our life, but we knew then that she would die.

It was her choice, she was already determined.

We did not know what to say to dissuade her.

We went to Alina's mom and begged her not to allow Alina to leave the mental hospital because we knew she would soon kill herself.

Alina's mom laughed at us.

"Nonsense!"  she said.

"Alina will never kill herself, that was just a cry for help."

Didn't she know about her earlier attempt, if that was a cry for help, why didn't Alina exploit it then?

"Alina talked all this out with me and her father, we all agreed she could come talk any tme about anything, no need to wait or become so dramatic."

We could not believe what we were hearing!

What was she protecting?

Or who?

She was certainly not protecting Alina; she was content to bring Alina home, home to a home Alina wanted to escape so desperately she would kill herself.

We despaired.

Alina came home for the holidays.

We went to our father.

Our father refused to allow us to take Alina in to live with us, he wanted no part of a possible suicide.

We went to our friends, accompanied by Alina, introducing her around, hoping she would see what we saw in them, hoping they would reach out to her to show her a better world to explore.

We talked late into a cold, snow-blown January night, perhaps seven of us in a teepee, sharing a warm fire.

Our friends turned their backs, Alina disturbed them, she was not of the faithful, she did not seem to want to belong.

Alina responded in kind, turning her back on our friends.

We felt utterly lost.

Only the night before or so we had a prophetic dream regarding Alina's imminent suicide.

We knew she would die soon.

In our dream we chased Alina through Hades.

We both rode huge motorcycles, we were both much larger beings than our Earthly forms had been.

We were being chased by a large gang all also on large motorcycles, chasing and being pursued through Hell.

The sky was a cavernous ceiling hundreds of meters overhead.

Utter darkness was broken by pools of fires and bone-fires scattered everywhere, a navigation hazard.

We slithered and slewed through the pools and bonefires beneath a smoke filled sky reflecting the lights of the bone-fires and liquid pools of fire back down making our path ahead scarcely visible as we sped over large stones, bones, skulls, and skeletons fleeing, and catching up with Alina.

We knew if we turned to look back the chase would end, we would be caught.

Alina stopped and turned to watch us skid into a halt besider her.

What had been hinted at unclearly in our mad chase was now revealed.

Alina's countenance was part hound, part human, with a dark black sinder-choked coat of fur.

Alna's huge head had many strong canine features, including massive jaws, her head also had a massive wound.

A huge gaping dark crevasse ran across her skull from her third eye to the back edge of her crown chakra.

A gaping dark wound with only black emptiness inside except for a very remote seeming, twinkling, shining, tiny light.

A tear rolled down Alina's left cheek, making a glistening trail.

The motorcycle gang surrounded us, throttling down their huge motorcycles.

We faced each other, a stand off of sorts.

Alina told us to go on our way, that she must follow with her friends who all resembled her, all canine-human crosses of some sort, much like werewolves.

We conceded.

Even in Hell, we could not choose Alina's destiny for her.

Three nights later Alina killed herself.

Alina hanged herself in the laundry room in the basement of her parents' home.

No longer Alina's home, and who knows?

Perhaps it had never really been her home.

Just as the home we grew up in was never really ours.

The moment Alina died we were suddenly unable to control our body for a moment, we felt her passing.

We got the news the following morning.

We did not understand about funerals.

We thought we must be invited, so we never attended.

Our prophetic dream continued after we parted with Alina and left her in the company of her new kind.

We saw a dim light in the distance, a dim light that was not the ruddy glow of molten pools and bone-fires.

A glow that was the light of the very sun itself.

We hurried off in pursuit of our potential liberty from Hell.

We arrived among the foothills of a range of mountains, the light we followed had frequently been lost along the way.

The light shone from a tunnel maw that bent to leave only a single straight and narrow path for the sun to shine through from wherever the sun was setting far to the west.

The curving tunnel went past a distant opening where we could now see the setting sun more clearly.

Deep within, just before the opening that revealed the sun there was a tower trembling as the earth around and above it shook violently.

We ran toward the tower, watching it crumble, determined to save it, albeit how, we did not know.

As we drew closer we saw the golden bricks of the tower falling to the sandy ground below.

The bricks all scrambled back up the walls of the tower, refastening themselves in place.

The Earth shook harder, breaking the tower more quickly, but it could not shake violently enough to stop the racing bricks rebuilding the tower even faster.

Then the Earth devised a new strategy, the sands arouind the base of the tower began to flow in a great river that swept along the floor of the tunnel deeper into the bowels of the earth carrying the poor bricks away faster than they could scramble home to their positions in the circular walls of the tower.

The Earth was now winning, the tower was now crumbling away.

We despaired we could not save the tower.

We carried on deeper into the tunnel to the opening in the wall to the west where the sun was nearly set.

A harbor lay below us with a single wharf.

A tall ship floated by the wharf, well moored, all sails nearly fully reefed.

An armored knight on horsback blocked the path to the wharf where wooden steps led up.

We no longe recall what he said then, but we believe it was something along the lines of "Pass in peace brother."

The ship would soon set sail for the west and our destiny...

How little we knew then...

But those are matters for other stories...

As for Alina, we never lost her, although she did kill herself at last...

Alina was connected to us in a way that already transcended physical reality when she chose to take her life.

Our connection with Alina only faltered at the moment of her death and then returned.

We were bereft.

We did not know how to mourn.

We finished our spring semester at Temply University with straight A's in all our architecture courses, A's in every class except calculus which we repeated for an A+ that summer.

We had argued with our calculus teacher over-much regarding infinite set mathmatics, we kept our mouth shut the second time around...

But by fall we were sliding into a deep depression, the likes of which had never arisen before, and we were skilled at managing depressions already.

Our grades slumped, we could not work or sleep.

We dropped out near the very end in late November or early December.

We would have to find a way to deal with our pain, our loss, Alina in spirit was not enough, not enough by far, or so we thought then... we woulds still like to have her back, and eventually we shall...

Set himself has promised, and Osiris.

We have tried to resurrect Alina several times now...

Until the day Alina is returned to us in flesh, we work towards that day, devoted to all, in peace...

Until that day, Alina lives with us, part of our collectives, mostly in great comfort and joy, but also in want, longing, and fear still at times...

But these things are yet more stories for another time..

Continued... 

Enjoy!

Parts of this story currently blogged on Temple Illuminatus...