The Tale Of A Violet Mind

Part IV- Dawning Of A Greater Thing

When I awoke, I could hear someone knocking on my door frantically, with each bout of knocking there seemed to be less and less time between attempts at knocking down my door. I hadn’t the slightest idea of who would be calling on me on a Tuesday morning. As I neared the door to exit my bed quarters, I was met with a crippling pain in my stomach; it was as if I hadn’t eaten in days! I know I had an exhausting night coupled with an exhausting nightmare, but why do I feel as though I’ve been starved? Not to mention the persistent pain on my leg, perhaps in my plunge onto that shrubbery I had sustained a minor injury; maybe a branch had cut me. As I stumbled to the door, the knocking got louder, quicker and I became more irritated, after all I was in a very deep sleep. When I swung the door open I filled my lungs with air so that I could relay most definitely my utter dismay to whoever would dare disturb me at such a random, nonsensical time.

Ms. Vanderbreght! Dear god, what do I have to endure now? Why could it not have been some traveling salesman? It had to be this dreaded woman.”Yes Ms. Vanderbreght?”

“I’m hear for yer weekly cleanin’ ya know”

“But isn’t it a little early in the week for you to be cleaning? I understood our agreement to be that I would pay you after each cleaning which would be undertaken each Thursday from nine A.M. until noon, is that not what we agreed on?"

“Why, I believe you’re correct by sayin’ such and I believe I’m correct by showin’ up on yer doorstep at just such a time, now if it ain’t gonna be too much of an imposition, I’ll just be keeping my part of the agreement, that is if you’ll be lettin’ me in.”

A pushy old hag she was, one of those individuals just a bit to far into their own realm to see the danger just outside of it. I both pitied and despised this old woman for being such an individual. Annoying it was, annoying indeed. She would have been such a sweet old lady had she only kept her annoying, big, ignorant mouth shut! Wait! Why was she so insistent on being here if it weren’t Thursday morning at the hour of nine? Nine A.M., perhaps, but on Thursday, impossible!

“Ms. Vanderbreght, I must insist, come back Thursday, this house needs no attention of yours, besides I’m sure you’ve plenty of cleanings to tend to, I’ll see you bright and early on Thursday, good day Ms. Vanderbreght”

“Hold your tongue young man, I don’t know what manner of joke you believe to be pullin’ on me but I haven’t time fer it this mornin, I’ve lots to get done today”

No! It was Thursday after all! As she negotiated her hobbling mass of a body through the doorway she handed me the paper that she always agreed to bring so that I was at least sure to know of the happenings in the town ONE day of the week. An unnerving sensation chiseled it’s way through my entire being as I read the date of the day’s paper; I had been asleep for over two days! No wonder I am famished, and what about this curious pain on my leg?

I escaped to my quarters where she was forbid by me to ever enter to inspect my leg while the old buxom hag scuffled her way through my home. As I shed my trousers and sat on my bed I laid my eyes on a deep flesh wound that was very recent, but around the wound was the sight of burned flesh. This, make no mistake, was a mark of hell’s fire! The guide had left his mark upon me as well, that was no nightmare conjured up by a guilty conscious nor was it some dark fantasy realized by a man slipping away into madness! That was a real place and a real visitation. I had escaped the linear pace of time to discover my fretting of the manifestation of my hatred toward Amelia was all in vein.

No, this simply could not be! Surely that was a rather haunting dream, indeed, but so many things could have caused this flesh wound the night of my action, I was so fueled by a passion constructed of revenge through hate that my natural feelings of reality, skewed as they were could have easily left this gash undetected. No, this was simply a mistake on my part, a painful one, but not one that could deduce completely that I was the culprit of the happenings of the evening.

I changed my clothes and headed back out to prepare my breakfast. I now had to pretend that I had nothing to do with Andrea’s demise, that I have been buried in my work and that I was NOT running from the scene as Ms. Vanderbreght let out that blood-curdling scream of shock.

“Well, Ms. Vanderbreght, it seems I owe you an apology, I’ve been so overcome with work I had lost track of the day.”

“I see then young man, so it may not be so far fetched a thing that you have not heard of the poor girl being murdered in her own house?”

“My dear, ma’am whoever do you mean? Murdered, in this town?"

“Oh yes, it was that young beauty Andrea, the girl whom you used to call on, I just hate to be the bearer of bad news, but…”

“Oh don’t you blame yourself Ms. Vanderbreght” I exclaimed over her voice as she began to choke up. “That’s a most terrible thing to happen, terrible indeed, but you mustn’t be concerned with my feelings, that girl and I had come to a mutual understanding and have long since parted ways, and as It is with any existence, as precious as they may be people will come and go, out of both your life and theirs, at one point. Do know, I whole-heartedly agree, that is quite the tragedy though! This town? Such a young woman! Beautiful she was, inside and out, I must say through my experience."

“Young man you DO speak the truth, it is just as well, I have to be cleanin now. It’s just, just that, well…”

“Yes Mrs. Vanderbreght?"

“Well, I found her layin’ there, musta been not long at all after the evil deed. Found her layin’ with throat slit and face all cut open and her hair wasn’t even golden anymore. You would probably think me of Ill mind but she was, she…"

Mrs. Vanderbreght began to choke up even more and studder as she bowed her head as to hide the embarrassed, pudgy face, almost as if she were ashamed of some thought she’d had.

“Mrs. Vanderbreght, you must confess, what is it you mean to say, I shall not judge you if it is odd.”

The first four words were whispered softly and drawn out with an end as the last three began, loudly and as haunting as the whole experience until now had been-
… still beautiful layin’ there, in bloody repose!”

As she uttered those last two words, still in shock and fear,she looked at the ground for a long spell, I assume to escape the physical confines of my home by looking on once more in her mind to the mental images that had most assuredly been seared into her mind before returning to her work.
In my usual taciturn manner, at least, as it is with the old woman, I left her without words and retired to my library to process the past few days’ happenings.

I felt a compelling force bring to my attention one instance of my vision that I’d failed to recount. It wasn’t just that I had not recounted the experience, but that I could only vaguely recall its occurrence. This vexed me to an extreme degree. It was as if the underlying motive of some seemingly irrational but extravagant display of madness was lost in the translation from subconscious to the conscious state of mind, therefore losing significance, which was associated to all of those imperative details that I so lacked.

After breakfast, I ventured back to the quiet recesses of my bedroom. I thumbed around aimlessly in my journal, which was always kept at bedside. I discovered an entry that I had written several months before and had I not been disconcerted from the week, I may have not been of the mind to fiddle through my things in so random a fashion.

“I must concede, the longer I dwell on the recent happenings of my life and my life in general, the more it has become clear to me that my dabbling in dark things has taken over my life and also my will for what I seek to become an avatar of my existence, never more than now have I desired my life to serve as admonishment to mankind in regard to the manner in which one would treat another as well as something more, [that ‘something’ more, I cannot name at this time, for it is but an elusive entity lurking within me that has yet to reveal its full self and this, since childhood, has left me in torment.]

I admit, it has been far more than a dabbling and also, at times, I feel regret approaching the mind and the only way to stave off its force is to revisit such crude memories as Amelia, or perhaps other sad events in my life that invoke similar feelings. I would not be entirely accurate in saying I have reached a point where I peer backward through time and crave the ignorance I once had for this practice, likely because I cannot ignore my adeptness in this art. Although I do wish to proceed, perhaps this notion will not be so casual a one in days to come.

When I reflect upon my childhood, I am able still to recall those nefarious visions from below, is it so that every child sees these things and dreams in such morbid detail and so becomes infatuated with the dark corridor of a life made by the curiosity of death and all that abound? Surely not, but just as surely as I had made light of these facts of myself as a boy, I would have been stricken with shame; left with a stigma; condemned by the very same man that I, myself am; sentenced to a life, or subordinate form of existence by the very same curious, self-righteous heathen of which I walk alongside the earth each day.

This quandary leaves me in wonder for what I may achieve while following this path and also what destruction may lie ahead. Alas, as permanent as I would wish this comfortable life to be, I also cannot help but give mind to the possibility that there are worlds beyond that cause one to do things for a reason, regardless of whether they are right or wrong in this world.

So the question is, which is of more importance and is that importance to contend with a present happiness?”

I sat back and sunk deep into my reading chair, it was as if pieces of a puzzle began to come together in revealing the purpose for my existence. Many fulfill their purpose or purposes in this life, some I believe, do not. Where does that leave me?

I am finding that there are few things able to be experienced in this life more powerful than a pure faith in knowing for what purpose one exists. I, obviously had written this passage, and read it to myself before, although this time it carried some inexplicable form of authority; a message that I had not intended upon writing it to convey, rather it was more of a verse of mental illiteracy vomited uncoordinatedly onto paper. Now though, now this had proved to be a piece of my mind that struck a light illuminating a whole world I’d been treading upon since my birth, but only now have I realized the fullness of such an existence.

Through the course of my pondering, it had become clear to me that most, if not all of those whom I dwelt with on this earth were in fact not sitting, contemplating what mental tools to use in an order to fully grasp what I presently was and most likely had not and would not do so. Perhaps my vanity had afforded me a full fairy ride into a hallowed land of madness, or perhaps I was more right than ever I could have been in life.

It seems more clear as the days, no, as the hours pass, that I carry some divine task on my shoulders but still I cannot see my way to understand in full faculty what it is. And what of that curious dream I dreamt?
At that, I scurried into my study to jot down some of the thoughts already becoming tangled in my mind.

When I turned the corner to the left from the short hallway dividing several rooms of my house, I entered the study to find a white candle melted into a puddle of wax on my writing desk, alongside the candle lay a journal of mine, opened many pages deep with pen still drawn from quill, holding the place of the last entry. As I crept upon the sight, a since of delirium and fright cradled me as I was now looking upon the very spectacle which I had left just before waking from my dream! It was no dream! it was not a dream?

“No you imbecile, it was not a dream!”

“Who said that!?”

“I did!”

“Who!?”

“You really are a dense one aren’t you?”

“I’m no such, who Is speaking to me?”

“Tis yourself, perhaps beginning to suffer from ah… amentia.”

“Who dare hurl such an insult, show yourself, I’ll have you arrested, or worse!”

“The face has shown all our life, dear self.”

This inexplicable bemusement sustained itself for some minutes before I claimed focus on the reflection of a distant mirror of which I stood opposite.


No, no no, this isn’t happening, I am of sound mind, strong will and pure of heart. I am of sound mind, strong will and pure of heart. I am of sound mind, strong will and pure of heart. I am of sound mind, strong will and pure of heart.

Of course it wasn’t a dream, I knew all too well that this was very real, very real indeed. I crept to and sat in my rocking chair next to the fire place full of ashes, revealing many cold nights in the recent past of which I had been up most hours of the night, studying. I stared into the nothingness that the room became, the candle, the pen, the cigar box, of which that ghastly character must have sat just to the left. My sight grew hazy and everything in my sight lost their edges and began to bleed together.

I began to remember random verses of what was spoken to me to write, I remember the flicker of light upon his pale, encroaching face, I remember the stench of his presence while looking past him to the window, wishing for childhood once more. After a brief period of shock, while my mind settled, teetering on the borders of disbelief and defeated logic, I stood up, paced away, turned and then once again approached the desk, sat in my chair and began to read carefully the nervously handwritten chapters of life that were yet to live. I flipped the pages back to the first, and read, as it was written, in chronological order the entries. It was as if each next page was a window boasting drawn curtains, clear for the peering through to a new world of destitute, abrasive, degenerate existence. If there was to be a life impoverished and hidden by prosperity, these entries were of that life.

Of those writings, I was clearly a dweller, but not in the sense that many written of were. This visitation had been something of a blessing to me; it had rid me of that torment I spoke of in my journal entry! It was then that all of those ‘pieces’ of life had come together in a divine coordination to me; I had feasted my eyes upon the very blue prints of a purpose in all ways superior to any I could serve here, now, alive.



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So it is, in my cell I sit perched upon my cot reminiscing the last several days, It has caused me to be most attentive as I pertain to the future that I now have made complete sense of the past few years of my life leading up to this event. Many diverge from the conversation of roaming spirits inhabiting this earth bodiless. Many a time, myself have I dismissed the notion as a fantastical delusion dreamed up of those gone mad. I must divulge my intimate most thoughts though upon the fact, now having met more than once with such a profoundly terrifying creature such as did visit me. My visions have employed my mind to establish an ever-definitive purpose that I shall serve, not in this life perhaps, yet in this existence.

The chimes sound when the storm approaches, until then they are only heard faintly carried with the subtle wind measures beyond our means away. Know now, the wind is blowing vehemently! This town is quaint and peculiarly settled, but a storm is rising up to devour the minds of those of purity as was mine and also the spirit whom I have referred to as the messenger. We have fallen pray to endlessly unscrupulous acts of hatred, each in our own time of tangibility to others.

I face death within the hour now, and it is said that our eyes become opened the widest just before we leave this body, this earth. Many would say I was a madman. Few, those who understood the levity of my disposition and the gravity of my hurt, would assert that it was in jealous rage followed by mild lunacy, still yet other critics of my abrasive organ would suggest my rearing was of questionable nature.

I write this now to let it be known, the truth follows no such discrepant notion. For those who hold me yet in reproach, allow me to advocate a free life, here on earth, in this human form you so fervently covet and let your mistakes run rampant and see where your fate falls, then we will speak of right and wrong and who will lay blame. For now my house will belong to the bank, my personal affects burned, Zurich will stray from his home only to be seen prancing about the streets in the early hours of the morning. My family will mourn, friends will become disconnected from the incident in all possible ways and my body will slumber in the cemetery half way down Craven St. in a plot strangely close to that of Amelia’s. But know that I will ever be following my commission from this flaming light that has already begun to consume my being, among you.