Ghosts (Book 1 Part 2)

Well, as usual, before my trip to China, I had to see Violet. I don’t really go anywhere of my own volition and I just let Violet tell me what to do. It’s easier that way.

I don’t know how best to describe the relationship between Violet and myself. I see the dead. I see them everywhere. I don’t always know what to do to solve their problems. Violet points me in the right direction. She doesn’t always give me the all the answers, but whenever I am stumped or have been out of work for a while she will appear to me and guide me where I need to go. Still, I think that she could give me more help than she does. It is not her way.

I had been staying in a shitbox in Bakersfield, California. Once I really get wound up, I unwind quickly and I often have a way of unwinding myself into some serious rut. I had been drunk for about ten days and I was a little bit hazy about the last time I had eaten anything. The last apparition I had dealt with was really nothing. When Violet or none from The Circle contacted me, I resorted to my typical behavior. I had a room with a bed and a toilet and enough cash to replenish my ever-draining stock of alcohol. Sometimes that is all I think I need. Violet cures me of that by her mere presence.

Often when I drink, I will sit in the dark and think. I need a safe location with no ghosts. I noticed a partial specter in the first room I was in at that particular motel and had to request a change of venue. When sober, I don’t sleep. The memories of all I have seen come flooding back. I’ll be the first to admit that it scares me sometimes, keeps me on the edge of insanity. When my eyes close I see them all. Some are so grotesque in appearance, utterly horrific and terrifying. I can’t escape them when I am all alone and nothing helps except booze. Maybe some more illicit drugs would do it, but I don’t want to venture into that territory. I get by with alcohol. The booze helps me sleep, helps me think, helps me forget. Liquid courage, there is something to be said for that.

I was alone, like I have been my entire life. We are all born alone and we all die alone. A Thai woman I had had a brief affair with had told me that once. The more the years fly by, the more I agree with her. Is anyone ever not alone? I think not. We only fool ourselves into thinking that we are not.

The room was dark and unusually silent even though it was a slightly rougher part of Bakersfield, and on nights before that I could hear the sounds of discontent people displaying verbally just how discontent they happened to be in an obnoxious manner. All was still, with exception of crickets, barely audible chirping somewhere off in the distance, signifying their loneliness as well.

My mind was off of the dead, as I was well into my drink. I sometimes can almost picture how most people think, when the other realm is entirely invisible to them. When I get enough into my spirits I can try to pretend I am normal, that only the world of the living exists and I can think about mundane and boring shit just like everyone else. I believe that I was thinking about failed romantic relationships when I saw the light. She always appears after the light.

The light is an agile blue, almost like the reflection of a darker shade of neon. It fades in, like a scene in a film where someone is regaining consciousness or something. It starts with next to nothing, then becomes brighter and brighter. Every time I have to cover my eyes briefly and every time I tell myself that I will not do that again. I want to miss nothing, absolutely nothing. I get so little of her that I crave every second that I am allowed to be in her presence. But always, instinctively, I cover my eyes as the light becomes brilliant.

Then she appears, soft and lovely. Everlasting; eternal. She is cold and warm, wicked and benevolent, beautiful and awful. The room does not get suddenly colder when she appears, like many things I observe. After the initial shock of beholding something of that magnitude, I become immediately charmed. I lose any buzz I had and for a period of time I don’t miss it, nor do I try to even reclaim it for a few days. She motivates me to be something better than what I have become. My heart always flutters, like some pathetic teenager who feels the first stirrings of a love deeper than that he has only ever felt for familiar and constant things before. It is exciting and always moving.

Words can almost not describe her. Those eyes, such a penetrating violet, lovely, sharp and intense look beyond my physical form. She sees my thoughts and soul. She pierces any falsity that I can display to mortals without any effort. Her eyes can rip down walls and lay waste to any fortress dreamt of by man. She is extremely petite, a tiny frame that holds such power. She always forms into my view in robes of the whitest silk, sharply contrasting her magnificent tresses and always hiding most of her appearance, but she cannot be even five foot tall. Long black hair, silky and pristine, hangs down beyond her slender waist.

Ulysses.

“Uh…hey Vi,” I stammered. She never speaks, or at least her mouth never moves. I don’t know if I hear her with my ears or my thoughts. It would be interesting to have a conversation with another mortal about that, but I don’t know anyone else who has seen her. The Circle has knowledge of her existence, but they are quite secretive and I have yet to meet one among them who has witnessed her absolute beauty and purity.

You must go to China

I was waiting for something like that. Her skin is as pale as the whitest possible white, but I always notice the almond eyes and the jet-black hair. I always assumed her tiny figure and seemingly acquiescent manner was possibly of some Asian descent, but those eyes just don’t fit, hypnotical and ostensibly transcending of all things they gaze upon and very much the wrong color.

I thought that perhaps I might finally be allowed to join her, or fix her, or just be with her. I always hope this will happen, but some obscure thought in my head really had me thinking that: This time might be the time I get to tell the world to fuck off and I can just be with Violet for all eternity. However, that hasn’t happened yet, but will hopefully happen soon.

She smiled and it must have caused a radiant and beautiful chasm in the universe for such a marvelous thing to occur. Yes, she knows what I think at all times.

If that is what you desire, Ulysses, it will be. Yet, you have more work to do prior to any such union.

Of course I do, I was thinking. I have more people to piss off, more relationships to destroy, more damage to make on the living. Really? I was so very tired of that, but at the time, I had to acquiesce to her wants. I never have much of a choice.

She likes to give me knowledge on occasion, maybe information that she deems unworthy of her thoughts or voice. She told me where to find my next lump sum of money. Well, she didn’t even tell me, but she put the idea in my head, yet I was not allowed to recall the information until the next morning. I suppose it is above her to speak of such human things like currency. But, I have learned to recognize the very sharp and sudden pain in my head that immediately disappears as one of her implants.

“Yes, always work to do for others, fucking living or dead. My curse.”

Your destiny, Ulysses.

That night, as a peace in solitude descended over me, as contentment crept into every fiber of my being, as I watched the piss-colored paint and noticed the strange patterns in which it peeled off the walls of the place I was temporarily dwelling in, as I watched with minor enthusiasm a cockroach scurrying about the foul and stained carpeting of the dank room, as I reminisced of what was once my life and my only living descendant being without his father, as I felt Violet’s presence give me peace, I calmly fell into a deep and wonderful slumber.

*****

Shanghai section to be finished later. I don’t feel my memory strong enough to the sights in Shanghai at the present, so I need to return to this section after I visit Shanghai again. So, this section primarily just describes Shanghai physically and in it Ulysses will sees many ghosts amongst the living, but it is hard for him to determine who is living and who is dead at times. I didn’t want to just quit this story for a few months until my return, so I am skipping it.