Scarleton Series I : Before the Cult

by Sandy Masia

  He cupped my face and had me look him in his eyes, I felt his warm breath on my face. Then he coarsely whispered, “You are insignificant. Am I wrong?”

  I just gazed at him, unable to make a sound than cry even more.

  “Am I wrong?” he said, his voice soothing and coaxing like the clutches of sleep when one has to wake up and they are seduced into oversleeping.

  I nodded, then added with a whimper, “Yes!”

  As I dropped myself so I may slump on the ground he caught me in his warm vicious embrace. I made no attempt to stand, he just held me tightly as my legs dangled beneath me. I retched my sobs into his shoulder, an avalanche’s worth. Weakness hit as a stroke …

  My fragmented and demented thoughts screamed in layers upon layers of an elegant chaotic notes of discord. This discomposure coming with headache inducing throbs pulsing through my temples, alluded to what absolute weakness might feel like. At this point my rage was turned inward, crushing the very chamber which once produced it. I was collapsing on the strain of my own weight and I needed an outlet, should have found an outlet, but this felt righteously directed. All logic and law agreed, I had no right to harm anyone anymore, I never had. Every breath I once took had caused nothing but suffering. A bomb explosion wave after wave and getting stronger with each explosion. Deceiving myself that I am the sufferer wondering why everyone takes a shot at me or flees over the horizon. My feeling of misplacement is the calling telling me to stop the pain, end the suffering of the true and accept my place as an anomaly. This was the answer… to everything. The crop, the calling and deathlings. We are death and we should become death… and death is home, death is the crop and the calling is the instinct to death.

  It was all a call to matter. I had to matter, become matter.

  Chapter 14

  “You are not real right?” I asked. Leaning on the wall of the bar. Not as cold and cosy as I was before. There was a sense of being transcendent to where I was. Lifted out of the confines of the universe, just a tinge. A tinge was plenty. Lucidity inducing.

  A smile forged from the corner of his mouth, the kind that conceals a lot more than it conveys. The kind capable of misinforming and misdirecting.

  “I told her you are not real,” I said, hoping to elicit a response of any usefulness. For a person who always kept his emotions at surface like leaves floating on the water he was surprisingly and inconceivability calm. The person gazing at me now was of another transcendent nature, if men have seen demons taking over people’s bodies and minds that is what it would look like. It looks as though the person you have come to know is completely gone, another personality has taken over peering through the eyes. It dwelt in the little facial features, gestures and postures. Even the presence he emitted was foul and eerie, almost cold. He stood there unshaken like a portrait, spreading mystery and unrest to his surroundings. He screamed ‘See me and be mystified to ultimate concern’.

  I should be scared, I thought.

  He answered, “Real as a character in a book, real as the meaning of the words. Real.”

  My cheeks twitched. “So it does not matter you’re not a sack of meat like me or in any way material. What matter’s to you is that you make things matter?”

  He elegantly shook his head. “Which is more prominent, Sandy, me as the product of your imagination or you as a product of my actuality?”

  “What are you insinuating?” my heart suddenly pounded. Ramming the breath out of my lungs, and making breathing wheezy hustle.

  “What are you insinuating?” He returned. “Aren’t you revealing something to yourself here?” He smiled, obviously amused in a fatherly way. As if he trusted me to understand, or knew that I did understand. I needed him to say something, something that would make what was to come acceptable.

  “I don’t know,” I paused, “is it okay to call you an imaginary friend? Are you even just imaginary in the ordinary sense? You and Macxermillio?”

  “Are you actual in the ordinary sense, Sandz?”

  “Does not feel like it,” I shrugged.

  He nodded. “Well, there you go. We are both struggling to accept what we are fundamentally. You are just a material, an it, trying to pass by as person. And I am an idea trying to pass on as person. Now we see. Now we understand what she wanted us to understand.”

  “So that we would accept it?”

  He giggled. “I guess so. She wanted us to see it for ourselves. To see give in to the mystery. The details weren’t important.”

  “How sure are we of this. How sure are we of what we think we know now?”

  He shook his head, wide and slow. “Not that sure, Sandz. Does not feel right or wrong. Giving in to the mystery has been the theme of the night, and perhaps the theme of all the hustle we have had with the calling all of our lives. Maybe the point is we are not really supposed to know anything else than the fact that our pains and woes shall disappear.”

  He held out his hand so I may hold it, as if he wanted to lead me somewhere. For a while I did not understand the significance of the gesture or what it meant. Picking up on the clueless-ness, then he told me , “There is a truck coming from up campus. I think we should get closer.”

  I gave him my left hand, and we walked to the edge of road. Peacefully, we, my remaining imaginary friend and I, waited in the rain as the bright headlights approached from up campus.

  THE END

  Dear Reader

  Thanks for taking the time to read my book. I hope you enjoyed it. I love hearing from all of you and I take the time to read the emails and reply. Email me at macxermillio@gmail.com . Don’t hesitate. If you enjoyed this work please leave a review and rate it. Why? Because reviews help others find my work and that helps me continue writing. I love knowing that someone has enjoyed my work as well. Don’t forget to check out the Reading Club Guide for Before the Cult.

  Thank you

  Sandy Masia

  Other Titles by the Author

  Into the Grey (an anthology)

  Scarleton Series II : Pyre of Envy (to be released February 2016)

  Connect with the author for updates and more

  Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/sandymasia/timeline

  Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/macxermillio

  Facebook profile(will accept requests for a limited time only): https://www.facebook.com/Macxermillio

  Smashwords author page: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/Macxermillio

  About the Author

  Sandy Masia is currently a student at Rhodes University majoring in Organisational Psychology and Philosophy. He loves music, books and all things art. He usually spends his spare time with his siblings and friends. When he is not at university studying he stays with his family in Kutlwanong, South Africa.

  Reading Group Guide

  These are just some suggestions of points that could be discussed, they aren’t all there is to discuss. These points of discussion are designed to help you the reader better appreciate the novel, even at a deeper level (from characterization, plot, themes and more). This isn’t the definite guide and more reveals and discussions will be had on my platforms. Enjoy pondering and appreciating!

  Discussion Points

  •If Macxermllio and Macfearson are imaginary how much of the story has happened and what are the implications of this fact?

  •What does having imaginary friends reveal about Sandy Macxermillian’s character? Is he divided within himself, is this a helpful coping mechanism or does it worsen his delusions? What does it imply about his sense of morality or conscience?

  •What does the death of Macxermillio and the scene signify/mean to the character and to the story as a whole?

  •What does Kim Besert mean to Sandy and why did so much depend upon how she treats him as compared to Krissy?

  •Why is what happens in the bar so significant to Sandy Macxermillian?

  •In the end what is the most accentuated theme in the novel, the struggle against suicidal and/or hom
icidal urges, the search for belonging, social exclusion, trust/betrayal or death?

  •What aspect about death is mostly explored in the story? (E.g. it’s ability to bring solace and comfort, a bridge to other modes of existence, a tool of complete annihilation, the liveliest thing about life etc.) And why is that?

  •What seems to be the point of the novel?

  •What is the meaning of the calling? What characteristics/symptoms does it allude to about the nature of mental illness, especially about depression, and suffering from it?

  •What might have influenced the author to name the main character Sandy and what does it do for the novel?

  •The author has said in an interview, about the novel, “it reeks of my struggle with chronic depression, anxiety and inattentive ADHD” and, about the period it was written, he had “a couple of suicide attempts”, he was “in and out of hospital”, “had a near death experience” so “death and suicide were concepts that occupied my mind”. Does this translate into the novel?

  •What could be said the novel reveals about the nature of depression?

  •Does the novel provide a first-hand account of being a delusional depressive? To what extent and how? What do you think?

  •The end, Chapter 14, what is it all about or mean? How does it fit, if it does at all, to the whole story?