Three Tales of Hybromania

Three tales of habromania - (delusions of happiness):

1. In a deserted house at the edge of a dusty road lives it’s only inhabitants - a skeleton and ghost playing a game of cards, and the soul of a young man who would never do what he was told. The years of stubborn refusal to abide by the rules of his community led to his early demise. Nothing but love is tattooed in dried blood onto his sun-soaked bones; more blood shabbily hangs from his unkept shoulder-length hair. They clumsily buried him in a shallow grave on the side of a deserted hill. No one wants to remember him; he was guilty of an obscene obsession and slave to sensual vices. The villagers are too burdened in their haste of lifestyles to visit his stone, to place poppies there to soothe his sullen soul.

A battered acoustic guitar just retired from its final tour is being strummed by an armless figure. It’s still looking for more ears to please, chords hum across the sound barrier at breakneck speed, and idle bony fingers make haste of this soon forgotten instrument laid to waste because of its owners’ abrupt meeting with death. Sounds ricochet off the empty walls of the haunted mansion, the guitar wishing its master had committed more melodies to memory during his time in the land of the living. All that’s left to pass his long hours of solitude is to listen to the dull huummmmmm of these over amplified thoughts, and watch the skeleton and ghost play Black Jack.

"Won’t you allow a less than modest man one last chance to sing you the blues? If you do visit, don’t forget to keep me propped up on one knee; you’ll find me once again, playing a simple change of chords, frenetic grouping of auto-tuned notes materializing around the abiding bony fingers through which I breathe my confusion at being undead. My guitar sings a tale of woe, 'You always loved the most. Inside of my heart, you will always linger; I will hold you here in my arms the whole night through, slowly brushing the hair from your tear stained eyes. My hands are rough, but my touch is ever so passionate..." The melancholy of the melody swirls out the cobwebbed window in search of her, the reason for his abrupt end.

There are deeper notes slipping through the breeze, “I want to wake up with the rain falling through me, wake up to your body, my maiden of madness. I ask for a gentle reprieve from these moments of sterility, I am out of place, but not so much out of time; these simple rhythms carry in my mind, your hand in mine, our quivering voices singing out in shrill tones, off-key as need be; leave the verses to me my sweet surrender, my vixen, my intoxication...”

Finality has a way of lifting spirits to another dimension; gravity keeps pulling together, the lovers lie hidden away in the gentle silence before singing the final verses, lips locked in perhaps one last mind-blowing, passionate kiss.

Commiserations, man of dead, shot by the sheriff for intruding on his wife. A better man is always bested by the lesser man he was never stronger than. Flesh is flesh and you, young Romeo, borrowed what belonged not to you. Perhaps you have learnt something of the sins of salacious lust. Perhaps you understand the ensuing jealous rage, a result of your thievery. I pray you continue experiencing the physical pleasure of the beat and tone of your music, the shape, the whole intricate body of the sound, of spirit.

On stagnant nights when breathing is shallow and only the sound of darkness abounds, the village who buried his naked indiscretion listen to his songs; they cannot forget the young dreamer who stumbled into love with a woman belonging to the most powerful man in town.

2. Only in winter could the sunlight have been cut into strips like that, without melting together. I sat and watched the wonder of nature from my bedroom window, beginning to feel the slow relief at the return of spring, a spiky blossoming in my chest, smelling the fragrant perfumes that wafted lazily from the neighboring gardens.

Still struggling awkwardly with my internal self-esteem, outwardly I was beginning to feel a quiet comfort in my appearance. I had started looking at myself in the mirror, not like in the past as if crossing a busy street, looking left and right, hurrying across to get out of the way of my reflection, but now, taking time to reluctantly look at myself, a voice in my head saying, "What are you afraid of? Yes, you are beautiful, so cute, so lucky to be alive."

Everything was shifting, slowly. Ours had been a mix of lust and self-destruction, both of us smashing it to bits because of a father that had been so distant in our lives, because of a lack of respect for our own growth and journey. Falling in love had been a beautiful agony. I am that I am, an every spiraling body of skin and radiant spirit.

It was my first day back at home after my stay in the psychiatric hospital; I had tried to end my life, my brother finding me in a pool of my own sumptuous slow-oozing blood. Even after my return home, I still felt like a doll trapped inside the memory of being alive. It was the beginning of a new season, another cast-off leaf fell from a tree and daydreamed about drowning, the unusual seasonal summer haze hung with heavy humidity, giving a plastic sensation to the start of my new world.

Cheryl, a friend had been instructed to never allow me out of her sight - a 24/7 vigil the doctor had advised - but today she had given me space enough to take a bath in solitude. Left alone with only the sound of water filling the bath, I was consumed by my memories of him; I tried my best to push them aside, but the more I fought with them, the stronger they fought back. My heart was broken and would possibly never heal again. I missed him so darn much. I longed to lie in his safe arms, my head on his chest; longed to hear the steady beat of his heart. He had given his all to me, and I had thrown it back at him as if it was a worthless trinket. I was eighteen, supposed to be part of the grown-up world, and I had felt it the easiest thing, unzipping my veins, throwing my life away. Every minute and hour I was experiencing the saddest kind of sad. It was a sad that tried not to be sad; the ‘sad’ that tried to bite its lip and not cry or smile. How could I explain these emotions to anyone? How could anyone expect me to share the emptiness and black hole I had become?

I climbed into the bath and put my head under the water, waiting for the sounds around me to fall away. But the water only made them sound louder. It was a complete immersion of me:an apathetic, witless, fearful mess. Where on earth did I go from here? I came up for air. The doctor had spoken to me on the second last day of my stay in the hospital: "When you are fighting a mental illness, which is what you have, Savannah - it is like fighting a silent battle. No one sees just how hard you constantly have to fight; no one comprehends the pain and inner turmoil facing you each moment. You should be proud of yourself, even when you feel like you're failing. I think anyone fighting to save their life deserves a Medal of Honour, because girl, that fight is real and it's more difficult than most people realize." For a moment he was quiet, and then he took my hand and said, "Don't die denying your wounds, Savannah. I want you to start attending a depression support group." He took a small card out of his breast pocket, putting it into my hand and closing my fingers around it. "There's a phone number on there. The girl who runs the group's name is Joanna." He left. I opened my hand and looked down at the card. Along with a name and number, he had scribbled, "Savannah, your beauty is now up to you."

3. When I arrived for work the next morning, there seemed to be a bit of trouble. Everyone was standing in the street outside.

"Is there a fire?"

"No, Cecilia's gone mad. She's up on the roof."

I looked up the four stories of our office block. Cecilia was sitting with her legs over the roof wall. Suddenly she erupted, "I'm a-gonna jump just you watch me. I'm gonna jump off this one, I am." She almost sang the words, her voice reverberating off the opposite office-blockwindows. The crowd below groaned out loud.

"Come on, Cecilia, we've got work to do here. I'll give you that raise you've been harping on about." Lilian hadn't anticipated Cecilia coming undone on her watch. Lilian had a company to run and they were already twenty minutes into the work day.

"You ain't gonna tell me what to do, you haggard hunk of flesh. I lost respect for your games two years ago when you slept with the janitor."

Lilian cowered, went red in the face and then crawled away up the stairs, going through the front door saying, "I'm calling the police. And then I'm going to sack her."

We were a sight, if anyone had happened upon us: models were standing around, most fully clothed; a few in gown and slippers, a handful were barefoot in their underwear.

It wasn't long before we realized Cecilia wasn't about to come down.

"I'm a-gonna try my best to land on as many of you as possible." She said, letting out a long, celebratory wail, standing up onto the wall with her arms outstretched, ready to take flight.

"One day you'll be me, you lousy lot; all dried up like a raisin... Make some space down there. When I come flying past, I want to make sure I leave some blood on every last one of you."

This made the crowd suddenly scatter. The police started to arrive which signaled me into action. I was out of excuses to myself as to why I wasn't up there helping my friend.

"Cecilia," I yelled to her, "I'm coming up."

By the time I reached the top of the fire escape that led to the roof, two policemen were already tugging at the door. Cecilia had locked it from outside. They were threatening her with breaking the door down if she didn't swiftly surrender.

"If you gonna break down the door, you won't find me here. I'll jump and it will be on your heads." There was a feeling of triumph in the long pause as Cecilia realized they were listening to her.

"Ok, Harold," the one policeman said to the other, "we'll have to exit through a window just below her, and rope her down." Then they were gone, leaving me there alone.

"Cecilia, it's me, Samantha. How about you let me come out there and jump with you." A pause. "...Cecilia?" Suddenly the door unlocked. I turned the handle, opened the door, and stepped into the early soft winter sun.

"Well, come on out. Just be careful. The wind is a tad too strong for my liking."

I swung my legs over the wall and sat next to her, taking in the view.

"Hey!" someone shouted from the window across the street, "Now there's two of them. What kinda business do you guys run in there?"

The crowd had grown substantially larger and the communal groan was louder this time.

It felt as if Cecilia and I were the only two people left in the world. We sat there and said nothing, watching the horizon, the pigeons flying about pooping everywhere.

Finally, I talked. "Cecilia, what's this all about?"

She was quiet, thinking. Then she said almost in a growl, "Vengeance."

That seemed a good reason to me. I didn't have time to ask why because by now Harold and Stanley had managed to scale the wall and had crept up behind us, suddenly saying, "Sorry to end the party, ladies, but we gotta take you downtown." They didn't cuff us, so Cecilia was able to swat at them periodically as they carried us away. We were released the same day. Cecilia never got fired and I became the office adhoc emergency advisor.