The Fountain of Eden: A Myth of Birth, Death, and Beer
Page 11
Chapter 11
An Eerie Encounter with Exquisite Evil
Sitting Lotus walked down one of the nature trails that wound their way like verdant, blooming veins through Tranquil Forest Park. He had chosen to use his morning break from the rigors of monastery life to do some walking meditation in the midst of nature’s wonderland. There was nobody around but the birds and the bees, and he could use some alone time to untie the countless tangles constricting his thoughts like a mental Gordian knot. His thoughts had not been flowing and ebbing smoothly since Master Mirbodi had told him that he had drank the Water of frickin' Life from the Fountain of frickin' Youth!
The news had been a shock, even though Sitting Lotus was a ten-year-tenured Zen novice who was well-versed in the art of meditation and well aware of the illusiveness of so-called “reality.” But Sitting Lotus could not shake the terror that came with the knowledge that he had, through some unbelievably stupid coincidences, attained Eternal Youth.
(Cry, Cry, Cry,
Why? Why? Why?
Die, Die, Die,
End of Time—Time—Time!)
Living forever meant you had to watch everybody you had ever known die—friends, family, your children, your children’s children, on down the line, forever, entire civilizations, entire races of people, endlessly—while you aged not a single day. He had read those ancient Japanese tales where those who attain Eternal Youth grow tired of it after a few centuries and start practicing death cults and trying to kill themselves in inventive ways that never work. Sure, he enjoyed reading those old myths, but he did not want to be a main character in one of them!
(Cry, Cry, Cry,
Why? Why? Why?
Die, Die, Die,
End of Time—Time—Time!)
He pondered how he would do it if it became too much to deal with. Should it be painful, like slitting his own throat? Or painless, like swallowing a bunch of painkillers and drifting off into oblivion? Should it be quick, like a bullet to the head? Or slow, like by self-inflicted Chinese water-torture? Which way would best suit him? He couldn’t decide. It was like picking the one flavor you wanted at an ice cream shop with one hundred flavors. Did he want your standard suicide-vanilla, or did he want to give the triple-fudge-nut-caramel-swirl-cherry-cheesecake-crispy-waffle-cone-gruesome-death-crunch a whirl?
(Cry, Cry, Cry,
Why? Why? Why?
Die, Die, Die,
End of Time—Time—Time!)
When he reached the summit of Lookout Hill, he walked up to the rickety wooden fence barricading the overhang and observed the breathtaking scenery with glazed eyes. The rooftops of downtown Eden were just visible over the treetops to the east. He looked down at the Jims River and its southern bank, adorned in greenery two hundred feet below, and decided to go ahead and get it over with. Down there his body would rest, submerged in the wetlands, until somebody found it, perhaps weeks later since no one back at the monastery knew he was out here. He kicked outward with a sandaled foot—once, twice—and the fence shattered. He took a step forward. Two steps. Three. Sure, it might be painful for a split second, but it would be the end of suffering.
(Cry, Cry, Cry,
Why? Why? Why?
Die, Die, Die,
End of Time—Time—Time!)
He took a half-step closer the edge, his thoughts filled with death—and then a certain, resounding assertion broke through the despair and madness assailing his mind. It will not be the end of suffering. And will it even kill me now that I've drank of the Water of Life?
Sitting Lotus stopped. A footstep from plummeting to his perhaps-death, he stood poised between two . . . somethings. He gasped, his breath rattling in his throat, and shook his head to clear the suicidal tornado howling unabated through his thoughts. And then he really heard the mantra that had been playing over the jukebox of his mind, stuck on repeat, for the last several minutes.
(Cry, Cry, Cry,
Why? Why? Why?
Die, Die, Die,
End of Time—Time—Time!)
The voices had passed themselves off so well as being from his own subconscious that he hadn’t noticed they came not from there, but from somewhere outside his mind. Now, the suicide-song echoed off the walls of his brain like the malevolent national anthem of Hades. The babel of screaming female voices drowned out the sounds of the forest and the hum of his thoughts.
Sitting Lotus shook himself, attempting to dislodge the spell cast upon him by whatever was reciting the words of power. Straining against a psychological parasite lodged somewhere deep inside his mind, he managed to turn away from the cliff.
As he rotated on his toes, the warm air grew freezing cold. The green, brown, living scenery drained of color and went to black and white and dead, and time seemed to decelerate. He looked upward, and everything but the vision before him melted away to nothingness.
The being sitting like an empress on a towering golden lion was the most beautiful figure Sitting Lotus had ever seen. She was naked (thank Buddha), and he knew that nothing ever would be or could be as right as this immaculate vision. She appeared to have been chiseled from a stone unknown to Earth, polished, and coated in slick glaze. Her skin was an incandescent purple, like a neon eggplant. Her blue-black hair was intertwined with hundreds of purple lotus flowers, and fell well past her feet to disseminate upon the forest floor, where it snaked about with a life of its own. She had four arms, three of which held bouquets of purple lotus flowers, one of which held a massive sword.
Sitting Lotus gulped. After one last slice of crystallized, frozen time—during which it seemed nothing in existence moved or stirred—the exquisite, evil one and the golden lion wavered, flickering in and out of existence like forest mirages. She smiled down at Sitting Lotus, and her sensuous lips puckered as if to give him a kiss he would never forget.
Instead, she reached up, plucked a purple lotus bloom from her hair, and flicked it gently towards him. The flower, touched by a goddess of death, floated to Earth between his sandaled feet. She and the lion flashed in and out of existence one last time, and disappeared.
Reality snapped back into place, and Tranquil Forest was back as it had been before Sitting Lotus had seen . . . her. He took a deep, calming breath—and screamed his lungs out to high heaven for two minutes straight before gasping for air.
Sitting Lotus decided to forgo his walking meditation for the rest of the morning. He picked up the purple lotus by the stem like a dead rat by the tail and took off in a sprint. And he ran all the way back to New Shaolin Monastery as if the hordes of hungry ghosts that populated the billions of hells invented by the human Mind were nipping at his heels, hunting him down to feast on his soul.