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Xenia Nostos – (5517) P.
ARTIST NOTES:
This work is accompanied by a chapter of the Book Enclosure Fathom: Picnics at Midnight – The Candles Made Me Do It – part 1
By day 21 he was ready to give up. THEN it happened. He prayed for strength in his mind and body. His family came from old religious tradition. He did not how to address God or whoever it was who mismanaged the earth, like he had always told Helena. Except once when he was in real trouble and was prepared to make a deal with whomever was UPSTAIRS.
She was in the small Le Châtelet-sur-Meuse, a commune in the Haute-Marne department in north-eastern France, where he had found her.
She was busy having a picnic with an old lady and an old man. He was greeted with hospitality and grace by the elderly
couple.
The tablecloth was deep purple, with white stars and moons decorating it, with small cut frills and silver beads at the
edges. There were lilac and white cups with squares and white dots, a lilac tin with white squares and cookies and other
delicacies inside. Each cup had a white paper napkin on its saucer inside a purple knitted napkin ring, decorated with a
white rose on top.
But Helena could barely disguise her irritation and anger. The elderly couple left for half an hour to fetch the lunch meats and bread in a basket.
They left Helena and Flyboy to talk.
“You should not be here in this kind of weather, you got to take care of yourself.”
“I’m not an ice cream baby. What are you doing here?”
“Not exactly welcoming are you?”
“Show me your breasts. Here watch.”
He started to take off his polo neck sweater, just as the first wack landed on his
bottom. He turned around in shock.
The old man held his walking stick threateningly.
He was over eager to prove to her how far he had come and was over excited and butchered the moment completely.
The old man, who’d forgotten something, looked furious, when he reached the picnic space.
“That is no way to speak to a genteel lady you punk.”
By then, despite even Helen’s protestations, Flyboy had to leave.
She wasn’t prepare to loose the elderly couple. They were completely unaware of her background or job. They were just, kind, generous people whom she’d known for a very long time and loved them with abundance of spirit and self. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for them. She carefully partitioned her life, in order to stay sane.
Forensic psychology and psychiatry and physics held its own type of PTSD, especially in the paranormal field.
Besides working at the château she was counseling a group of top military officers of whom each were unquestionably psychopaths, but then that’s what their job descriptions called for. Those who weren’t psychopaths, were sociopaths at least.
She thought her own mind’s holographic memories must look a mess. She called the group ‘2nd Hand Gargoyle Shop’.
She thanked God on more than one occasion for her parents and grandparents. She somehow could rise above it all.
She was an empath, who had to practice daily, day after day after day, year in year out, to stay out of the nets of the gory details of their recollections. She had a high rate of success with the members of the group.
She got into the small plane weekly. She would glide over the water and break free into the sky. But her pets Wally and Sally (two dolphins) saved her well-being more than once.
She helped clear up bloody, gory memories of those necessary evils on the right side of the law, but just in retrospect.
She was fed up. She wanted to be part of the pre- emptive force, not the cleaning up crew.
That is how she ended up in Switzerland. But she still had to toggle the counseling group.
The Dean saw her that Friday afternoon, after, the weekend before, when Flyboy had tried approaching her.
The Dean made an appointment to see her at the château’s private dining room.
He was in love, plain and simple. She was more mature with eyes breaking with the sorrows of the world. Her body
became even more attractive and all the work in the kitchen gave her upper arm muscles just enough workout to bulge lightly.
She wore a long maxi dress. It was made of the finest chiffon. It was sheer, with a very fine apricot and white pattern on
and a long white dress beneath. The chiffon flared like chutes, where they reached her pulse on each arm and formed
one fluttering flute on the floor.
In the centre of her breasts, there was a round ring. It was made of seashell grounded to a smooth mother of pearl sheen.
There the material tightly hugged the pearl, leaving barely half a centimeter open in the middle.
As he pulled out the chair for her, she thanked him and sat down. His eyes trailed her left leg. He was right then. Her leg just went on, and on and on. As she put her foot down he saw she did not wear shoes.
He could not help himself.
He took a step back and leaned his head to the left, and adjusted his glasses.
“They are exquisitely beautiful are they not?”
He stumbled into his chair and sat down hastily, trying to space out his limb, shocked by her words.
She pushed back the table with a heave of her hands, it was very heavy but gave them both instant respite.
“Everything above hip level is fine, but I have yet to find a table which can accommodate my legs. And you Sir. I cannot
imagine having to wear a prosthesis which cannot bend properly and even then. If you were at my home we could just
have thrown it on the extra chair over here.”
Helena suddenly stopped. The hand holding out her bag to her, held it so tight the skin tinged yellow, with white spots, mottled with light pink.
She recapped in her mind. Her hands flew to her mouth. She held them across her mouth. Her eyes immediately teared up. She sat like that for 2 seconds. She touched his arm with her left hand taking her bag from him with her right hand.
Her apology was stifled upon her lips in the exact moment. She dropped the hand.
The strong gaze held her eyes hostage. It wasn’t the eyes of embarrassment or shame. It was a sharp look, gazing right into her soul with pure desire to make her his, mind and soul.
He put his hand over her right ear, holding her lightly under her chin.
“Careful Helena, you cast a dizzy spell.”
“A man of my background finds the truth very appealing.”
She blushed and then some more.
The waiter discreetly presented the drinks list.
But he only gave one.
He simply asked Helena, ‘the usual mam?’ The concoction came. Dry cherry for him and a Dom Pedro glass filled with a mixture of almond juice, blackberry juice and strawberry milkshake, filled with ice and mint garnish. It looked such a mess he was too scared to ask.
His breathing became thick despite his best efforts. She was just looking down sipping her drink every now and then, too afraid to make eye contact.
He sat close enough to look at her left ear. Right above her ear were two tiny holes, as if there needed to be studs or
some jewels missing in action.
Next to her nose, high up, he saw another tiny hole, one in the very center of her chin and one further up the side of her face on the right.
He knew she had one on her chin, but the others were news to him.
She suddenly glared at him. “These are for the tech Sir, when we go to chamber.”
“But about these others, heaven only knows.”
He waited until after they’d finished their main meal.
“Helena I am going to have to transfer you. The last mess at the chateaux almost had you completely decommissioned.”
She was furious.
“Why me?”
“Why?”
He knew what was coming, the more she looked at him with dreamy, glittering furious eyes, the more he wanted to kiss her, until she held onto him and begged for more.
She suddenly stopped and just looked back at him.
“If I took you back to my bed tonight. Would it cure this shallow, gaga, googoo, kissy, fishy shit SIR?”
It broke the spell, for then.
“Did you know I get paid to see that group nobody wanted to sign up for?”
“The “tree” group.”
“You mean, the monsters?”
“That was uncalled for. What about the monsters piggybacking you Sir?”
“He hated her in that moment, wanted to grab her and shove his tongue down her mouth, kiss her into submission.”
She grew even more pale in that moment, if it was at all possible.
She said to him, ‘I was talking about the crocheted wear with the gold and pearl beads on my feet, earlier on, not about my feet. I am hopefully not that fickle yet, or won’t ever be.’
“I once traveled 24 hours on a bus to the edge where Turkey and Iraq’s borders meet. I was late. As I eventually got to
the small village at the bottom of Mount Ararat, the personnel at the hotels had all left and gone home. There was a taxi driver. As we approached the hotel double doors, we saw all the furniture draped with pure white sheets. As we walked back, only our own footprints were there in the thick snow.”
She kept quiet for about 5 minutes.
“I asked the taxi driver if I could perhaps stay with him and his family.”
“When he dropped me off, I met his lovely family.”
“He had to go back to work. But his wife was so stressed out with a foreigner in her house, she was shivering with stress.”
“Every night I would go to sleep in their huge double bed. It was as cold as ice, to the touch. I slept inside it in my sleeping bag. They slept with their two children and a baby and kept each other warm in the sub zero temperatures.”
He knew better than to stop her. Something was happening. She was talking about her own affairs which was a rare
enough occasion.
“I had a pair of powdery blue and white and silvery cameo earrings. It was a very special gift, to me. It was very peculiar.
The women were different sizes. I kept hearing I had to give them to her.”
“She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.”
“They each had only two pairs of clothes.”
“Her name was Berizaman. She would take off her headscarf at night. I washed my undies by hand and would hang it on the rope above the wood stove through the night. Their clothes for the next day one side.”
The Dean politely gestured for the waiter to afford them more time, before taking the remainder of their order.
“She would always hang her scarf in such a way so as to protect my honor, nobody could see my undies past her scarf.”
I took her an envelope with the money meant for the hotel and gave her the earrings saying I hope she would always
think of me, when she saw them.”
“She never even took notice of the money. When I handed it to her she shouted and started crying like a banshee. She was out her front door like flash. Her daughter Sultan came to tap my arm about 20 minutes later to go and see her.
As we opened the front door, all the women of the village were there. She wore the earrings.”
“They all started to greet me by hand. I stopped counting at 130. She brought a woman with black short hair and spotted teeth, who wore a neon yellow jersey with no bra, and a black skirt.
She could speak broken English and could translate to the women.”
The Dean followed the trail in his mind. She opened up so seldomly he did not wish to interrupt anything.
“Berizaman came out to bring me HER gift. The women all shouted. It was a pair of powdery blue crocheted sandals
which fastened up the legs, just under the knees, decorated with tiny pearls and colored and gold colored beads in front.”
“Aha, so thaaat’s where your dainty footwear comes from.”
“Yes, but that’s not all. She had a dream two years before that, that a strange woman would come and give her a present.
A pair of earrings that were not equally alike. They laughed at her dream. They came to see me, seeking my blessing
believing I was a guest sent by God. “
“Were you?”
” What, Sir?”
“Sent by God?”
“Well, I hope so. I did not have the foggiest idea consciously about the earrings. I helped to teach the children to brush
their teeth with saltwater and or lemon juice.”
“I did hear a spiritual message. I taught them how to use the Golden Triangle Method when an earthquake would come.”
“Did one occur?”
“A year and six months later, more or less.”
“They fled, to the place I had told them to go to.”
“They were saved.”
“I could see why God value them so, or a Higher Power than all of us then, if that’s not part of your belief system; Sir.”
He sat quietly and after a period passed by, which he had felt, would not affront, he signaled the waiter to bring the menu.
When they were alone, he approached her again.
“You told me this story, so that,….. can I make a guess?”
“I hope it’s a good one Sir…”
He started laughing. “Always direct.”
She was too stressed to even work up a smile.
“Okay….”
“You are angry at me and the group and management, because you are being victimized, because you are just you, and because the aftermath of your rebellions bears awkward fruit, then we punish you!”
She wanted to shout “Daaah” at the top of her voice.
She kept quiet.
‘‘Aaaaha, nobody on the director’s board here knows you are the one giving the counseling to the “tree” group, because the knowledge is just ‘need – to – know’ but if they knew they have to let you stay? Because by, just that fact alone, you would be qualified.
What about flight hours. How would you manage that?
The only spot open the board would even be remotely interested in giving you and would enable you to still be working in the chamber is with a tiny group; new personnel.”
“O my soul.”
She knew immediately, what he meant.
“What are your views on homosexuality Helena?”
“I was informed to make you this offer discreetly, but it is their ONLY offer.”
Helena took a deep breath, trying to override the onset of the deep set anger rising up, deep within her soul.
“My anger says, I would like to see one or all of these board members in a room with one of the men I counsel, they so
greatly esteem themselves, when they loose first base. They will loose more than just a cup and a toaster Sir.
But to get back to your answer. Please spare me the grace to answer you in as frivolous a manner, as the question, you
have just asked me;
when you go to the garage to fill your car with gas do you fill it with gas through the exhaust or does it have a petrol
tank?”
He frowned. “The petrol tank off course.”
Then it was his turn to blush.
“Helena!!!!!!!!”
He was a bit slow.
“Well Sir the biology of the allotment of holes and protrusions tells us broadly by its dispersement whom we tag on this planet as male or female, not true?“
“Now the software; the tagged ones land here in this reality with, that actually controls the programming of all the
protrusions, holes and the psyche of what we call humans here, now THAT Sir is a totally different ballgame. When I walk past a naked girl with her protrusions, my body also gives a sympatico response, though I don’t have the faintest interest in her, the same if it were to be a man. It is the dilemma of the magnetic field fork.
But if my body could be trained to ignore it, then so can everyone else’s.
The software programs, now THAT, is like trying to say Apple or Open Software or Microsoft is the same.
We have no idea how these people get it or where it is managed from or have the luxury to hate or mistreat them. Like
you and I, they just live in a body computer with lots of programs, filters, screens and partitions.
I don’t know what else to say, except that it renders them particularly vulnerable.
With these men running around like Neanderthals, trust me. I know what that feels like.”
Much as the Dean would have liked to, he could not fault her or find fault with her reasoning. It is just that she did not use anything to soften her point of view, which worried him immensely.
When they parted there was a moment when he had to fight the extreme urge to kiss her again. But a strong thought crossed his mind.
Don’t become the group. Rise above other men.
He stood quietly for some time, politely greeted her, then he left.
Copyrighted By the artist SHARM.T.P 2001
Music:
Omar Akram Dancing With The Wind, “Free as a bird.”
The Belt of Ajax A Trojan Horse ‘Tail’ – (5517) Q.
ARTIST NOTES:
This work is accompanied by a chapter of the Book Enclosure Fathom: Picnics at Midnight – The Candles Made Me Do It – part 2
The grounds were flush with greenery and the exotic smells of Frangipani.
There were beds full of pure white and dark red and purple tulips.
Other girls would have taken a Frangipani. She cut/stole a white tulip from the grounds.
The dress swirled in the moonlight. Inside the sheer chiffon fabric were fine silver and gold threads.
She stood in the wind and started to sway slowly to the music.
The extended version music of Bryan Adams started flowing through the night air. Please Forgive Me floated past her.
Jovan was there. Suited up. As she twirled by herself he caught the tulip in his mouth and held her and twirled her again. It was done with such stylish power and elegance that he had managed to hold her in check, just long enough, she allowed him to twirl her twice before she fled away from him.
“You can’t be here. You will wreck everything.”
He slipped as quietly into the night as he’d arrived.
She was emotionally exhausted when she reached her room.
It was late. The staff in the dining room played music which softly reached her room as well. O Sole Mio by Bryan Adams and Pavarotti filled her mind.
She opened her bedroom door. The beautiful smells of vanilla and apricot flowed through the air surrounding the candles on her balcony.
He simply held out his hand. When she did not respond, he walked towards her in a very slow non threatening way.
She grabbed her neck and head and sank into the easy chair. After some time. She pointed to her bedside table door.
He gave her a small bag. She wanted him to leave, but he refused.
She took out a syringe with a strange shape. It looked like an old fashioned multi needle vaccination injection case of old.
She stuck it against her leg and gulped and moaned in pain as the meds punched into the soft tissue of her upper leg.
Then she administered two other injections. He just gave her what she needed and paid close attention.
He timed her. It was ten minutes before anything approaching normal occurred.
She groaned and whimpered in pain from something inside the right side of her neck and pain.
The more she suffered, the more he wanted her.
He picked her up and laid her out on the pure white duvet with the golden bedspray at the bottom of the bed.
The lamp basked everything in a golden light. Above the bed was a mirror with Mother of pearl shell and copper
resembling gold. In each corner with an embedded exquisite Lapis Lazuli rose.
She was tall but suddenly looked very small to him.
She burst out into racking sobs.
To hear his real name from her lips, filled him with immense joy.
She grabbed him by his cufflink and said his name again. He bent his head forward to hear what she said.
“Ad… Ad”
He did not understand.
She pushed him away through her moans, tried to grab the phone. He held her back. “Just relax Helena.” Then she passed out. As he leaned forward her hand fell backwards just far enough for him to see the word: Emergency
extension, crashcart/BP Drop.
“Shit!!” “Shit!!” “Shit!!”
He grabbed her right pulse and with left hand called the extension.
“It is room…. No I don’t know. Wait yes.. It is… I don’t know, not strong. Passed out. Orders.. He swore and swore again.
She said Ad… Ad.”
He was still on the phone when the door lock turned and a card got swiped.
The ER guy walked in. “You again.”
“The nurse behind him, took everything in with one glance.”
“Helena, Helena, can you hear me?”
The ER guy shouted into the passage. ”We have to get her out of here.”
He looked at Flyboy.
“Get that shit out of here, she’s highly allergic you moron.”
He punched Helena with the adrenaline.
“Oh she’s gonna hate you for this pal.”
Flyboy removed everything, the candles the fragrant oils and rushed downstairs to the E. R. He felt extremely foolish, and sad.
It was the morning after. The Dean had to return to the chateaux half way to his own hotel, to sort out the mess.
Nothing in his life was ever simple:
Someone had tried to poison Helena’s food.
Flyboy had the candles and fragrant oils going on her bedroom balcony table, which Helena were highly allergic too. It is where Flyboy broke in again, the night before, where he wanted to make a better job of courting Helena.
Then Helena took to long to inject herself between meds. She was already in extreme pain during dinner, but decided to inject herself later, as she first wanted to at least dance by herself in the moonlight first.
When she had entered her bedroom, she had an immediate reaction in her head on her right side. A sharp excruciating, debilitating pain. She only got that on very specific occasions. They were like instant migraines, only much worse. She usually got it when she had met someone whom were repeating a timeline incident with her. It was brutal.
She woke up dazed with dodgy memory. She became aware that somebody was pinning her hands next to her head.
It was a soft but firm manly grip.
She could not focus but it felt familiar.
He looked into the dreamy eyes and her lips started forming the word ‘what’.
He could never explain to anybody how great the temptation was.
He let loose her left hand and bent slowly and intended to kiss her softly on her pulse.
“I am so sorry, I almost killed you last night Helena.”
“Well, you were not alone, we got the forensic report.”
“Now come on, give it a rest.”
The Dean firmly pulled him by his shoulder to get his attention.
“I shouldn’t be happy with you, but you saved her life last night.”
”The substance that poisoned her was probably on her napkin and worked its way through her clothes eventually. Highly poisonous. If she did not wear another dress beneath the flimsy part of her dress and a petticoat beneath the lot???!!!!!”
”You can think your lucky stars you did not also get it in.”
Security had found Jovan in the garden. He was on oxygen, BP dropping.
The Dean had a jaw-drop swearing moment, when he realized he was there too. Jovan’s clothes absorbed the most of the poison as he had twirled the night before.
“Unbelievable ……. ING……. Unbelievable.”
“You lot, we’re her miracle tonight.”
She woke up properly, much later, with a foggy but clear mind. She looked around. Jovan pulled through but was still asleep and on oxygen.
Flyboy watched her with a small smile and shining eyes and said, ‘it’ s about time’.
Her arms were free. She frowned and looked at him.
He just laughed and said: ‘now show me your breasts.’
He took out his crumpled white shirt and pointed with one hand at his private parts.
“You can only come out when Helena says it’s safe okay. Okay!”
He got up and said to her, ‘see no One Man Tent’.
She smiled, a lovely smile at him, with warm eyes.
He did not want to give up his newly found territory, so he’d left it at that.
But the man across had woken up, with feverish
eyes and he watched them both quietly.
Flyboy was back at the uni.
It was two hours later. Helena woke up with her arms pinned above her head.
It wasn’t firm, soft or merely an uneasy position. The person who held her arms in position above her head, was as strong as an ox. She grimaced.
“You?”
He flapped his eyes up and down. She got very agitated. He flashed his eyes again up left, as she pleaded with him not to do it. She suddenly realized something. The one unit across them, had no patient inside. It was a small ER room with beds and very, little privacy.
She saw a red flashing light. He gave her a signal with his eyelids again.
He could feel her labored breathing. He said loudly. Helena ‘don’t fight it I know you want me.’ On three he went in and firmly kissed her mouth and as he expertly rolled them both over the side of the bed, opened the top of her mouth as her mouth bumped his so hard both drew blood, as she ended up on top of him, her drip got torn out, blood gushing.
Three holes were up the wall where they were seconds before.
He rolled her over again and again. All the time making sure there mouths made contact.
Finally they were out of range of whatever device was shooting through the wall. The person with the remote could see just the bed and hear them still. But they could not hear or see a thing.
He had her rolled on her back, both were stuck between a wheelchair’s one flap down its front and a bed’s lowering
mechanism, half under a bed. His left hand was stuck beneath her. Both could not have moved, even if they’d wanted to.
His right hand was beneath her head.
Her eyes stared up dreamily at him. He tried his utmost not to crush her.
“If you do not marry me, I will kiss you until you say yes.”
She tried to focus in the dark. She felt disorientated. “Not marrying a crocodile.”
She said it ultra slowly.
He lifted himself up as far as he could go to try and give her some breathing space. The bed mechanism suddenly
snapped closed and he felt himself being forcibly pushed into her. He literally felt her rib snap. His right cheek was stuck against her mouth.
The Dean came through the door with a box chocolates in one hand saw, the holes in the wall and saw their legs. He lifted the bed with superhuman strength.
Trying to at least tip it on its side.
The Giant man rolled off her as fast as he could.
He opened her up there in the ER on a spare bed. It was an emergency and he was still weak.
She broke a rib and that got her lung and …….
Both men sat with her as she came closer and closer to parting this realm. Her BP kept dropping.
When she eventually came back to stay, both men were raw with fears and guilt and questions.
Flyboy found out at 3am and made it there, just after 6am. He was livid. Everything pointed to Jovan. It became clearer
by the hour. He was the real target not Helena. The enemy looked upon her as mere bait.
He wanted to know everything about Jovan. Meanwhile Showboat also arrived.
Jovan thought he would have to at least give some leeway.
He informed them that Helena actually used to work under his command wherever the heck, like Flyboy put it, it was, that he had come from. You could have pushed them all over with a feather.
“Don’t look at me!!!”
“That is above my paygrade too.”
The Dean was as shocked as Flyboy.
“So what’s it with you two anyway?” Showboat couldn’t stand the guy, but looked at him with way more respect.
Jovan couldn’t resist telling them about the pen incident with Helena.
The Dean just dropped his chin and looked over his glasses.
“Now I am going to put the three of you on notice. You lay a finger on that girl in there again, and forget sorting out your own shit or transfers. You can forget the chamber. I’ll make sure you are kicked out the program.”
Men know when they are suddenly outranked.
He had held back his own power until then. They didn’t have the foggiest idea who he really was or of what or how capable he was.
He would work with Helena for many years to come. He loved her with great depth and commitment, but never once
dropped his guard , in years to come except on that same day.
When Helena woke up, he had orchestrated the others out the way.
They spoke for some time.
He took her to the safe place, where he could be sure she would be fine and was sure that nobody had followed them.
She was dressed in a white lace gown. Under it there was a plain white long dress thing. It seemed to be a particular style she liked. She also wore appropriate undies.
Her slippers were white and soft velvet.
He was dressed in corduroy trousers, slip – ons of Italian make, a leather bespoke jacket and a casual dark purple shirt contrasting the gold brown jacket. His neck scarf was gold and purple patterned.
The room was pure opulence.
She looked at ease in the room.
He invited her to sit in the round soft cream chair.
He got up and took a chair and sat very close to her for their formal debriefing session.
She signed her name shakily and her hair tumbled out of the loose chignon. As she blushed and tried to pick up her
paper and tame her hair. He slid his fingers into her hand as her hand stopped in midair. She was still very shaky.
He pulled her hand up powerfully and supported her to get into a sitting position again.
When she had tried to pick up the papers, she had almost keeled over.
He kept on lifting her still in sitting position.
He went and set her down carefully on the huge double bed with the golden bed covers.
“You should rather rest. We are all so used to your strength that it’s easy to forget the ordeal you have been through.”
He held out a bag.
”Can I help you with this?”
She just nodded.
He put the beautiful silver engraved hand mirror in her hand. Could not stop laughing when she blushed deeply trying to put on lip ice onto her cracked and scarred lips.
He took out a stick lip gloss as well.
“Argh if I put that on, I’ll look like… ”
He found it unspeakably funny.
Her dyslexia stopped her from looking in the mirror and applying the lip ice to her mouth. He understood for the first time that some usual tasks must be a challenge to her.
He put it in her hand and guided her hand.
Her eyes were clear but held shock and fear still.
As they sat, he could see she was becoming sleepy. Both him and the house keeper helped her. He would guide her
hand and Mavis would hold the mirror.
Her head just tipped over. He quietly sat back and allowed Mavis to cover her. She slept for 16 hours flat.
They took turns, to sit with her.
She was still on two drips, one each side.
But it was in the middle of the night that Mavis came to call him urgently. She had scratches all over her arms. “That girl is in a right state Sir. She kept saying “get off me, I can’t breathe” Sir. I cannot control her.
He stopped Helena just in time trying to remove the drip.
She had a high fever and a dropping BP again.
“Blimey.”
He had no idea what to do. He had the chopper but was 30 minutes away from the closest private, safe hospital.
Mavis was there again. Perhaps you just have to talk to her some more Sir. Like this afternoon.
He gave it thought. OK order the chopper to be ready in 30 minutes, if things do not turn.
He walked back in. She was sopping wet and fighting her arm manacles which was made of soft sheepskin attached to metal.
“Don’t touch me.” It was irrelevant to her if he was there or not.
The Dean got on the phone. He ordered them to fetch a doctor he knew and some meds and to fly out and fetch Jovan.
When Jovan entered he felt like punching him again. He did not have the bedside manners of a sand flee.
He refused to let him see her.
“I only need to know what her real first name is. She is fighting you. YOU are her PTSD. You are NOT going to see her.”
He only gave in after a physical struggle. He refused to leave the premises.
The Dean was there next to her bed. There was just not knocking her out. She usually functioned on as little as 2 hours sleep.
.
He held her manacled hand softly in his big bearish one.
She was resisting sleep, and upset again. It came in cycles. Her fever would go up and her BP dropped dangerously low again.
Jovan stormed into the room suddenly. “I know what is wrong with her. She is not sick. She is seeing, crossing realms.”
But it is highly dangerous. She is stuck.
“Give me time with her.”
When the Dean was still hovering he started shouting, “Now!”
He spoke with such authority the Dean left the room and sat outside on a chair with the guards.
Jovan took her arms both and removed the drips.
Quickly pressed down to try and prevent complications.
He took her arms out the manacles which had her fight him all the way. He pinned them above her head with one hand and said her real name.
”WHERE are you?”
He called her by her real name and rank.
No reaction just her feverishly fighting whatever.
He made a cross sign. Her BP was dangerously low and still dropping.
The monitor sang like a budgie on steroids.
The Dean prayed.
Jovan swore…………
He grabbed her head and held his hand beneath her head and kissed her hard, just flat on her mouth. Then he kissed her softly and opened her upper lip like a purse by pushing her face muscles up. She became limper by the moment.
He entered her mouth and out of respect just started to kiss her upper swollen lip.
Then the bottom one. He started to cry. Come back to me……. He got angry and went in and really kissed her. He shook her head like a rag doll’s.
Her eyes flew open. She was in great panic. “Don’t go. Don’t go to Bosnia. You’ll die there.”
“Her BP dropped some more.
”Why?”
“Come back to me dammit.”
He kissed her again harshly, mechanically.
Great tenderness flowed over him, he kissed her softly, held the sides of her face with both hands.
She flickered.
”White Hare – Nelson Mandela Ear.”
”Everything Changes.”
”People get branches. Like reindeer.”
He kissed her face and eyelids, thinking they are losing her.
That’s when she sat up, smiled, touched his cheek, passed out and at the same time her fever broke and her BP slowly started to go up.
He suddenly saw a tiny golden old man and a huge angel, and then everything was gone. He heard her soft snores.
Jovan just left her and ran outside the door and grabbed the Dean. ”That was too fucken close man. Whatever shit is coming, has to big.”
The two men sobbed in each other’s arms. Their lives as well as the group’s were all changed forever. They would become life long friends. They never spoke about their mutual feelings for Helena but they both acknowledged that she was in a higher power’s service, than the pure earthly and the faster they acknowledged that, the easier things would become. But, it was only one of them that really got her essence as a spiritual person. She was here merely to serve.
PS. Later Helena refused to talk about what she had seen. She simply said, people’s teeth will start to change – bend inwards, as the earth starts moving. People’s teeth will start overlocking. The Dean and Jovan did not pressure her. But later people started writing about the so-called Mandela Effect and the Dean’s heart became very cold with fear.
Copyrighted By the artist SHARM.T.P 2001
ARTIST NOTES:
The two works are digital renditions of the original drawing of UVEA (5522) – which featured in Enclosure Fathom – Part-1 Exhibition, and are meant to be transferred to glass.
The Age Old Picnic: Deja, Deja – Lydia – The Odyssey – Spectral -Murex: Xenia Nostos – (5517) P was published in the Georgia Today newspaper and newszine on, 27 December 2018 as part of the article
A Gifted Foreign Artist Names Mtsketha Her ”Real Home” by Katie Ruth Davies
The artist grew up with many different perspectives and count the memories of two African ladies; Polly and Emma as part of her brightest and most beautiful memories and her struggle to be at peace with the challenges indigenous women suffer during menses monthly, her first visit to Soshanguve township and one of her earliest memories of her Irish Grandfather telling her never to discriminate against people on the grounds of their sexuality, age, family, physical attributes, monetary values, country of origin or religion. Though he had some choice pet hates about religious structures. Thrown in with that her own travels and experiences across Africa and the wonderful world of books she grew up with in which Odysseus and many a strange character had ‘’Xenia Nostos’’ against a background of Middle Eastern and European tales.
But it was .. ”the movie adapted from the book ‘’Color of Purple’’ a 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction that changed her heart forever.
Taking place mostly in rural Georgia, the story focuses on the life of African-American women in the Southern United States in the 1930s, addressing numerous issues including their exceedingly low position in American social culture. The novel has been the frequent target of censors and appears on the American Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2000–2009 at number seventeen because of the sometimes explicit content, particularly in terms of violence. In 2003, the book was listed on the BBC’s The Big Read poll of the UK’s “best-loved novels.”
She holds on to two things: if you had to present someone with a blanket for a picnic, whom would you rather invite, should you invite? Most important, where will you invite them to?
In her own life it would be to the city Mtskheta/მცხეთა/ a city in Mtskheta-Mtianeti province of Georgia, where she had found her own peace. One of the oldest cities of Georgia and its former capital, it is located approximately 20 kilometres north of Tbilisi, at the confluence of the Mtkvari and Aragvi rivers. Currently a small provincial capital, for nearly a millennium until the 5th century AD, Mtskheta was a large fortified city, a significant economical and political centre of the Kingdom of Iberia. Due to its historical significance and several cultural monuments, the “Historical Monuments of Mtskheta” became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. As the birthplace and one of the most vibrant centers of Christianity in Georgia, Mtskheta was declared as the “Holy City” by the Georgian Orthodox Church in 2014.
In 2016 the Historical Monuments of Mtskheta were placed by UNESCO under Enhanced Protection, a mechanism established by the 1999 Second Protocol to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.
It is also here that you will find the Svetitskhoveli Cathedral (Georgian: სვეტიცხოვლის საკათედრო ტაძარი, svet’icxovlis sak’atedro t’adzari; literally the Cathedral of the Living Pillar) which is an Orthodox Christian cathedral located in Mtskheta, to the northwest of the Georgian capital Tbilisi. A masterpiece of the Early and High Middle Ages, Svetitskhoveli is also recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. It is currently the second largest church building in Georgia, after the Holy Trinity Cathedral.
Known as the burial site of the claimed Christ’s mantle, Svetitskhoveli has long been one of the principal Georgian Orthodox churches and is among the most venerated places of worship in the region. Throughout the centuries, the cathedral served as the burial place for kings. The present cross-in-square structure was completed between 1010 and 1029 by the medieval Georgian architect Arsukisdze, although the site itself dates back to the early fourth century. The exterior archature of the cathedral is a well-preserved example of typical decorations of the 11th century.
The original church was built in 4th century AD during the reign of Mirian III of Kartli (Iberia). St. Nino is said to have chosen the confluence of the Mtkvari (Kura) and Aragvi rivers as the place of the first Georgian Church.
According to Georgian hagiography, in the 1st century AD a Georgian Jew from Mtskheta named Elias was in Jerusalem when Jesus was crucified. Elias bought Jesus’ robe from a Roman soldier at Golgotha and brought it back to Georgia. Returning to his native city, he was met by his sister Sidonia who upon touching the robe immediately died from the emotions engendered by the sacred object. The robe could not be removed from her grasp, so she was buried with it. The place where Sidonia is buried with Christ’s robe is preserved in the Cathedral. Later, from her grave grew an enormous cedar tree. Ordering the cedar chopped down to build the church, St. Nino had seven columns made from it for the church’s foundation. The seventh column, however, had supernatural properties and rose by itself into the air. It returned to earth after St. Nino prayed the whole night. It was further said that from the seventh column a sacred liquid flowed that cured people of all diseases.
In Georgian sveti means “pillar” and tskhoveli means “life-giving” or “living”, hence the name of the cathedral. An icon portraying this event can be seen on the third column on the left-hand from the entrance. Reproduced widely throughout Georgia, it shows Sidonia with an angel lifting the column in heaven. Saint Nino is in the foreground: King Mirian and his wife, Queen Nana, are to the right and left. Georgia officially adopted Christianity as its state religion in 337.
References:
Svetitskhoveli Cathedral – Wikipedia
Vanitas:
Program from the Woman Suffrage Procession, a 1913 Women’s Suffrage march.
Athena Revealing Ithaca to Ulysses by Giuseppe Bottani (18th century)
The Glory of Iberia (1880s), an icon by Mikhail Sabinin illustrating the legend of Living Pillar. Repost – copyrighted – The Bridgeman Art Library, Object 557603
Music:
Song: Queen Of Hearts
Artist: Bad Boys Blue
Album: Queen Of Hearts
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