Apocalypse of Jude

Mae concentrates on breathing and loosening her body to languid movement, preferring to let her emotions be expressed in her breathing than in her mind for now. She has disciplined herself well. She runs her hands back through her hair, interlocking her fingers with its black strands, and feels the surface-settled wetness of millions of water molecules soak into them. The misted roads are still quiet when the yellow globules of street lamps flicker and are gone, their parallel disappearance coming as a series of distant rolls of thunder rumble somewhere over the ocean, seemingly content in its own wrath. Her mind wanders to the tarot reading her mother gave her the evening before.

{“Here is the wheel, inverted, the cycle of the seasons turned upside down with the waters rising as if to flood the world, drowning those that rule and freeing those that are oppressed. It is a time for changing the set seasons. The crowd of people in a ring around the wheel are what is emerging into this world, but also being destroyed from it. On top is the man with three staves, someone with enormous powers of fertility. Enough to crush the Empress here under the wheel. She is one who is decadent and is a lady of Rocks and situations. To her right, and about to be crushed, is the one-eyed merchant, or whatever is myopic and profit-driven. But the blank card that follows him is something forbidden me to see. I do not see the Hanged Man. The time of crucified religion is no more. Fear death by water. But here, ascendant, on the left, is the drowned Phoenician sailor, coming to resurrection. Reproductive and spiritual regeneration is strong Mae. These are your cards. This is the world you are about to inherit.”}

The hope of the new vision moves her to ecstasy and she breaks into a skipping run, then spins her body through a series of turns down the wet shining street, her silk black hair flailing around in gravity’s momentum. As she comes to dizzied halt, she hears the earth ringing with fresh birdsong and the awakening sounds of people’s lives beginning for the day. The mundane has left her. Rather, she walks bright-eyed and eager down the sloping grass field through which the river burbles. Its surface sheen, continuous flow and murmuring movement mesmerise her as she stops to take the shoes from her feet. She enjoys the cold sensation of running across the grassy slope. Then without giving it thought, she lies down in the field. Her clothes start to soak and her skin shivers but she stays, just looking at the misted sky burning away. She throws out her voice from the depth of her stomach in one monotonous sound, then lifts a tone and lets her voice sound again. She does this seven times such that the sound and sight of the world around her become purified in clarity. Nothing can stop her giggling now as her blood fills with hysterical drafts of oxygen.

“I’m mad.” Her voice is laughing loud.

“I’m maenad.”

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 21