Softly Comes the Rapture

Under the title 'Hotels, Homes and Heaven' a magazine was to be born, with all manner of stories, illustrations and photographs.
Whilst we are waiting for it to be completed I thought I'd post my contribution on here for all to read.
Thank you.

Softly Comes The Rapture

This room has seen all manner of death. All faces and facets of evil. These four walls reek of death and decay, the dying and the tortured. These four nicotine stained, cancerous walls that if home to eyes and ears would be struck blind and deaf from being witness to underhand wrong doing and pestilence and plague. I lay here on my sheet covered coffin, not a headstone by my crown nor earth and spade at my feet, cushioned by red pillow and satin and comforted only by a feline companion by the name of Fragrance. This room that has become a home for the deathly and a hotel for the vampiric living. The God of light in the far right spews out it..s daily serving of unjust law and reportage, documenting the lives of the normal, the lives of the carefree, the lives of the respectable, the lives of the living and I just float here upon my coffin, silken shawl draped elegantly over skin and bone. But how that shawl would shiver and shudder and oh how that shawl would shake and surrender to the bedroom floor if only it was made privy to the secret my corpsicules and vessels hold. That dark truth that is shared only by my body and mind, that rancid knowledge which eats away at my conscience just as I..m eaten away physically by the Rapture made real by either needle or men.

I do, I lay here and I dream. Images that gush upon me like the rays of the sun, I bathe in them and let them envelope me like blankets of bright beaming tenderness caressing my broken body and giving wings to my feet. I dream that it..s not a death cot upon which I doze but an elegant four poster that flourishes with all kinds of wild flowers up and down it..s structure, filling the room with a different kind of fragrance to that of the pet with the same name. Yet Fragrance would still roam this lush, deep carpeted palace, mewing drunkenly with excitement at the many extravagantly shaped birdcages set with precious stones that seem to drip from the ceiling and the ceiling itself adorned lovingly with intricate hand painted murals of cherubic figures and angelic faces. The tiny wire doors to the cages that once upon a time would have been under lock and key swing freely by their hinges, filling the room with hundreds of tiny birds of all colours singing their tunes of freedom and frivolity, painting the ceiling once again this time with flashes of the greens, reds and yellows that make up their wonderful plumage. Windows would burst open and soft fingered breezes from every ocean would each carry a single petal of apple blossom and place it next to my lovers cheek which sleeps soundly next to mine. He would stir at the sound of Fragrance..s purring and he would embrace me.

I stir at the sound of Fragrance..s purring and once more I am cast asunder, back into dank reality, my dreams which the future could never birth, for my future has been written, are cast to the floor and lost beneath the sorrow and carelessly spilled alcohol that the carpet holds over it..s dark blue face for comfort. The carpet hides itself from the sickening trade that it..s forced to be witness to every day and were it not for adhesive, tacks and a sense of cowardly duty would contort itself out of the room and away into the night. The large wicker framed mirror on the wall above my head would leave with it if only it could. The images of brutality and degradation that it has to recreate churns it..s stomach and were it not for the laws of physics would close its glassy eye. Mahogany bedside table, filled with treasures of hairbrush, money safe, candles and oils, well, it too would be gone were it not for the bedside lamp that sat upon it, keeping it pinned to the floor and illuminating the tomb. The lamp wouldn..t leave. The lamp is a lamp.
Neither half asleep nor half awake, inanimate objects make troublesome thought. Fragrance..s whining and prowling however are as real as the Rapture and act as door bell and alarm.

This tomb contains no clock, no time piece, there is no use for such thing here. A clock here would point to no time. It would stand as still as the dead that it served and no second would pass, no minute would be created and no hour visited. The hands would tremble and point outwards toward the door, toward the exit. Time doesn..t exist here as it does out there, time here is told in inches and sterling, in perversions and stamina, in sweat and in blood.
Time here is told by the Rapture.

Oh what a princess prowls this room! My emerald shawl moves like a perfect skin, like water, around every contour of my body, over my magnificent breasts and ..tween my Rapturous thighs! My sunburned strawberry flowing mane in ringlets and pearls cascades down my cheekbones and settles by full bodied plump lips in deep red!

As the treacly gracefulness of Fragrance slinks between wall and wardrobe the lumbering ink smudge of a man bowls between corridor and here, clattering the door shut and impregnating the happily stale air with the stench of many a drink and lonely night. A hulking shape in the shadows full of grunts as gesture and unsteady steps. What the night may blow in to your home may be often strange, but here in this hotel the strangeness is apparent when nothing comes. This night is not strange. This night is as any other. Such as the last and more than likely the next, this night is repeated and I may give praise to the Lord that it is, that I do the work of God and He shall save me. My slow death is placed upon me by the Lord and I see that it is done so that I may act upon His word. Sinners and the sinful shall come to me seeking forgiveness and shall be cast down with affliction whereupon then can they only repent and be forgiven. I am their confessional and the Rapture is their penance.

Money box once again secured and the garments of a man scattered hither and tither, I sit like a proud majesty, no longer feeling the weakness or sickness, upon this hulk of blotchy mass, him covered in thick wiry hair and I as though beautiful as a red tear from Christ himself, writhing back and forth consumed by the all white light of the Saviour, the Holy Trinity, the Madonna, the One True God. The stairway to Heaven is one littered with thorns and poison teeth, scratching and tearing at the heels and ankles of sinners, but to brave this assent is to be accepted into the arms of the Lord. The decent to fire and everlasting pain is a path of simplicity and ease, a path taken by the cowardly and false prophets. To be absolved and cleansed first you must be tormented and broken.

Thrown from him like rider bucked from stallion I embrace the floor as my faith is tested by the devil and unholy fists kiss my lips and temple. With fiery hair clenched in his hands I..m brought up to face him and once again I..m tested with a kiss of saliva spat from his drunken mouth. Naked like Greek warrior and goddess, the narrow bridge between my eyes now shattered to represent a drunken bolt of lightning and milky white skin tainted and stained the colour of my lipstick. Forced once more by strong arms and powerful willing upon the bed I close my eyes and think of Pan. With my wrists held between my shoulder blades he shudders to fulfilling climax and I shudder to God and he is engulfed in the Rapture, unaware that the seed of forgiveness runs through his veins.

Clothed and spent he leaves with the staggering lethargy which brought him here. Whether any of them know the forgiveness that streams through them I shall never know, the Rapture is a silent hymn that finds voice at times most unexpected. Dozens upon dozens of sinners and ungodly creatures have been cured by my holiness and then only those that I know of! Oh Fragrance, how many more have heart and pulse that sends the Rapture dancing around the veins, for only I have felt her presence but a short while? How many more have been drenched in the white light and cured by holy fingers? How about Bobby, Fragrance? Bobby, such a wondrous lamb, trembling hands taken in mine and comforted like only one with wisdom to impart can. Eyes so innocent and artless, a face that expressed such wonder and naivety, yearning to taste and know, dying of thirst for the coming of age. Oh Fragrance what of Bobby? Could one such as he yet to be foul to this life? But for sure, he was born was he not? There Fragrance lives the answer, for this life we exist in is far from blameless and for everyone, be it judge, preacher, maid or lame, we are born into sin and in sin we shall wallow lest we be saved and born again.

All sin passes you by does it not my love? Ah and the sin of the flesh is second only to the sin of what else money may buy. Is it a sin to devour and bury your pain? So say the lawful, the so called lawful and lawmakers, so lawful they return home at night to there wives and the memories of no more than an hour before are washed away with the odour of passion and lingering ignorance of Rapture. The lawmakers whom frown upon us Fragrance and what do they know? They know how time flows. But they don..t know how it feels to see the branches of turquoise beneath skin bulge and strain, flex and contort with the knowledge that in seconds all pain will be eradicated. Sometimes, moments before the sliver of cold and steel scratches the surface, you can see the Rapture gathering, arms to the heavens and the Lord..s face in every cell. Tiny rivulets of deepest love settle, just as I lay back and settle, the faces of those who enter jaded and fogged, swirling and dancing, finally coming to rest in the form of a one true love. All limbs awash with soft flock and cotton, from toes to lashes waves and waves of numbing beauty. The faces of the lawmakers and the lawful. The faces of the healers and helpers. And you Fragrance, hidden in fear, but fear not for this is not the Rapture, not for me, the Rapture lives on many times over. Lifted from coffin to coffin and laid at the feet of the Lord.

I do, I lay here and dream. This final dream. One of cages and flourishing birds. Of open windows and cool breath. Of blossom and serenity. Of Rapture and light.