ALEPH

Dawn rose again for what seemed to be a lot of mornings. A lot of mornings where fingers of light climb up the eastern horizon to signify to all sentient life that could see, that they had survived another night and now was a new day to right all that was wrong and begin the rest of their lives.

An old raven flew in a window of an abandoned church, waking it's one occupant. Others, however, continued to sleep.

Sergeant Hardwick regarded himself in the mirror and reminded himself....

"It's a jungle out there, so be careful." He took one more deep breath, just as he did every morning, grabbed his badge and gun and went downstairs.

"Claudia!" He called to his only daughter "Your Mother should be home by the time you get out of school. Now don't be late for the bus!"

"Dad," Claudia quietly replied to her father who was already in the cherry-topped sedan. "Put the gun away when you tell me what to do, okay?" Still, she had to begrudgingly respect his position, just like anyone else. In an attempt to calm herself, she made fists with her eyelids and inhaled the morning air as if for the first time, and caught just a whiff if sulfur; exhaust from the city's finest still hung in the breeze.

It was too nice a day to go to school, let alone actually go to class. Claudia didn't understand what could be so important about the past that she had to study it as if she could do anything about it. Jennifer and Elaine were only too eager to find something else to do. Little was needed in the way of persuasion. It was more important that Claudia could find an easy way to sneak out of the building without being seen. Claudia was good at that sort of thing.

"Let's get high." Jennifer suggested as soon as they were off school grounds in their favorite hidden field.

"Bust it up, bitch." Elaine giggled as she started the ritual of their habit. The two others tucked themselves next to her underneath the tree that they had smoked so many joints before.

"God, it's a beautiful day." Claudia remarked looking skyward as if she were giving the big guy her personal opinion. As if in answer, a raven landed in the tree above them and called to his flock.

"There goes the neighborhood." Jennifer joked. "It starts with just one and the next thing you know," As if in illustration, the flock caught up with their scout and filled the tree.

"You better shut up before they slap you with a civil rights suit." counselor Elaine advised her "The S.C.L.C. has no sence of humor." Elaine took a long drag on the joint, which burned unevenly, and handed it to Claudia.

"Hey, he's got his story too." Claudia defended the bird and then took her own long drag off the joint. It was just like her to consider the other creature's feelings and take a stand on it.

"Oh sure," Jennifer dripped with sarcasm. "Hard day flying around, eating worms and shit."

"Dealing with aviation authorities..." Elaine added.

"Finding the best sports cars to shit on..." Jennifer continued.

"Oh come on you guys," Claudia broke in with just a taste of exasperation. "There's more to being a bird than just eating and shitting on cars."

"Luring innocent cats into trees...."Jennefer added as if she hadn't heard Claudia.

"I wonder how often they collide with each other in the air." Elaine injected.

"They don't! That's what I'm trying to tell you!" Claudia declared. "They're smarter than we give them credit for." Then Claudia took the joint and allowed it to interrupt her tirade.

"Oh come on Claude." Jennifer countered her "They're just birds, how smart can they be?" As if in cryptic answer, the scout jumped from his perch, fell just a foot to let his wings fill up with air, and a split second later his wings ripped through the air taking him onwards over trees the girls had never ventured toward.

"So how come the rest of the birds don't follow?" Elaine quizzed Claudia.

"I don't know." Claudia answered tiredly. Then she noticed a roof just past the trees where the bird had just flown. "Hey, what's that?"

"What?" Elaine echoed as the joint, now just a roach, came to her.

"It looks like some kind of house over there." Claudia theorized.

"Yeah,..." Jennifer started absently as she saw it too. "It's like an old mill or something."

"There's no river near it." Claudia pointed out.

"Yeah, whatever it is..." Jennifer thought out loud. "It does look kinda pretty" She said in a tone that undermined her statement.

"What did they mill there?" Chaudia enquired.

"Dead bodies, Claud. What's the difference?" Elaine said sarcastically.

"Let's go look at it." Claudia said indicating she had not heard Elaine.

"What for?" Jennifer asked.

"There probably are dead bodies there." Elaine added.

"I don't believe you guys, it's just an old building. What the fuck can be so scary about it" Claudia blew up at her friend. Silence and sheepish looks were her reply. In typical Claudia style, she had shamed them.

"All right, goddamit. " Elaine conceded.

"You suck Claude." Jennifer felt she had to add.

As they approached the 'Old mill' the trees that stood between them and the mill exploded with a flock of black birds. The girls recoiled with surprise and then giggled as if in unison. The black birds made twisting shapes in the sky.

"This is creepy." Elaine reported.

"Way." Jennifer echoed.

Silence. Claudia felt the blood in her veins throb and beat as if for the first time. It excited her.

"Wow..." She said just above a whisper. "Let's go."

"Claudia, you're crazy" Jennifer told her.

"I prefer stupid, what the fuck is in there that you want?" Elaine asked her.

"It's so cool looking."Claudia defended her quest. "What can be in there that is so dangerous?"

"I just don't like it." Jennifer injected.

"It's probably nasty in there." Elaine prophesied. "There's no road, really, look!" Naked eye inspection did bear out that there was little in the way of pavage going toward the stone brick 'mill'. It looked perfectly ancient, as if cars never meant to go there. Claudia turned to face her confidants.

"It's just a mill." She whined.

"Yeah, exactly, it's just a mill, so why go mess with it?" Elaine rationalized.

"Don't you have any sense of adventure Elaine? Don't you ever get so curious about something that you just have to get closer?"

"Is this a trick question?" Elaine answered.

"Oh quit with the jokes and get into reality for a change. You do nothing but hang out and watch T.V. Why are you so hardened and bitter that you can't move an inch out of your normal routine?"

The resulting silence was peppered with the idle chatter of birds.

"I can't believe you sometimes Claudia what is with you?" Elaine nearly stuttered.

"You know I'm right Elaine." Claudia continued. "You use that cleaver little joke machine to hide your fear of the world." Elaine shook just a tad and her jaw hung quivering just off the main part of her skull. Jennefer stood by in mute horror fearing Claudia was ready to eat her alive next.

"All right, bitch." Elaine managed to get out fairly coherently. "We'll go look at your fucking mill."

The walk to the mill seemed to take forever, as if each step taken carried only a few inches. Reality can be strange, especially for young girls that smoke primo weed.

"You bitch, Claudia." Elaine muttered.

"This is for your good, Elaine." Claudia stated. "You need to look at parts of the world that aren't shopping malls..."

"Lose the soapbox." Elaine growled. "You want to do this, you just don't want to do it alone." Jennifer was also quietly furious and frustrated at the same time. She hated that Claudia had badgered them in this 'mission' and herself had complied without an argument. Jennifer knew what Claudia was capable of when she felt provoked. There was an understanding in their circle that to play idly with Claudia would soon find one's self the worse for it. Yet Jennifer was still a close friend of Claudia's if for no other reason than that she knew where to find decent drugs. Claudia, it seemed, had spent a great deal of her adolescence unsupervised in large cities. The rest was the cunning of a cat thirsty for some really nice milk. Finally, they reached the door. Claudia tried to turn the ancient knob that refused to yield even a little play.

"Claud," Jennifer finally worked up the nerve to push air through reluctant lips, "Why are we doing this?"

"What is this place doing here?" She answered the question.

"It's an old building Claud, what the fuck ever it was, who cares? Fuck this!" Elaine implored.

"If it's just a building, what is there to be afraid of?" Claudia countered on Elaine's injection. She tried the handle again, it didn't move, but the door popped open enough to see dark shadows just inside.

Jennifer and Elaine turned and sprinted to more familiar territory.

Claudia felt her face flush, her pulse quickened and she liked it as much as it caused her anxiety. She pushed to door just a little more. The resistance was not more than a few stones and some trash. Inside was what looked like an anti-chamber. She was sure no one could live there because there were large cracks and breaks in the plaster on the walls, the floor was covered with debris so old and foreign she couldn't identify them.

Now she heard a voice. She froze for One hundred and forty heartbeats, she knew this because she used a calming exercise to slow it down.

The voice neither came nearer or went farther away, it just seemed to drone on and on. Eventually, Claudia worked up the nerve to push the door all the way open and step with catburgler stealth into the room. She snuck to the door and looked through it.

The Voice was a man lying casually on scaffolding as he painted the wall. She now realized she was in the main room of what had been a church. She couldn't see the huge and beautiful stained glass from the school's perspective. A dramatic cross surrounded by scenes from the life of Jesus. Maybe there was a road on the other side of it. But the more Claudia looked at the sight before her, the more it seemed impossible for someone to live there. The floor was littered with the most bizarred collection of trash she'd ever seen, and that covered a lot of ground. It was worse than the fraternity house where she got so drunk she forgot how many guys she'd had sex with. Empty paint cans, half-burned candles, miscelaneous pieces of hardware mixed with bits of animal bones. Light fixtures were in disrepair. The floor was splattered with spots of paint and birdshit. Her eyes followed the wall up to a shelf by an open window. There were three big black birds pacing back and forth and looking very intently at her. How odd she thought it was that the ravens had made eye contact with her before the man.

She started to try to see what the Voice was painting, it looked important. All she could determine for sure was that it was a very large mural covering a large portion of one wall.

"To be admired, angel girl, I hardly care, but it's not polite to stare." He said not looking at her. Claudia swallowed hard. It was probably the first thing he had said that really made sense. The words themselves jumped out from the rest of the babble.

"Who are you?" She stuttered. He looked at her for a long time, as if studying her by looking through her.

"I am Venus in Scorpio, and my stinger is deadly."

Claudia did the only smart thing at that point- she turned around and left. It took her twenty-three minutes to catch up with Jennifer and Elaine. They were hiding by the bleachers, watching boys in tights fight each other.

"There's someone in there." She caught herself gasping as she told them

"What?" Elaine refused to believe the words she had just heard come out of Claudia's mouth.

"It's an old church and there's someone in there."Claudia repeated with confidence.

"You're fucking Crazy Claud, you don't have any business being there, you could've been shot!" Elaine stressed to her.

* * *

The Voice was once again alone. He rinsed out his brush in the thinner and climbed down the scaffold.

"Oh dear, I must remember to keep that door locked." He muttered to himself with conviction.

"Shouldn't that girl be in school? She can't be more than seventeen! What in Heaven's name was she doing here?" demanded the 'Great' Mother.

"She must be some kind of juvinile delinquent." judged the Jehovimental Father.

"She looked like some kind of bitch to me." annouced the Self- Hater.

"It might be nice to have a new friend, I hope she doesn't bring trouble. hinted the lost Sun. "I'm so lonely in this awful place.

"Oh man that little girl looked good, like fresh tender veal, only human." purred the Pervert.

"The last thing we need is some little trouble maker like that screwing things up." pointed out the Logitician.

"..And your sick beastiality reference is not appreciated." added the 'Great' Mother.

"My God, another young girl. I can't deal with being reminded of the trouble the last little girl caused me." worried the Voice of Guilt. "Why can't I just be left alone to die?"

"Yeah, it did look just like that bitch that got me locked up." growled the Bitter loser.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," the Voice paid lip service to the voices in his head that he had long since nicknamed "Legion" it was too bad they didn't always seem to be on his side. They just couldn't seem to give him a break. Always on him for one thing or another. Either his painting on the was artistically a disaster or the voices said he was bad for eating so many rats.

"You are bad for eating so many rats." piped in the 'Great' Mother.

"Hamburgers do not come to me." was always his response, and he knew it was a weak argument. Besides after all the fumes he inhaled while paining, rats just didn't taste all that bad, especially it you cooked them.

"Poor little rats."

"Fuck it!" He said to the nagging guilt that was always there about it. "Damn all the people buying steak at Kroger don't have to face their prey before they eat it. I face my meal in the eye and we both know how the story ends. That's how it goes, I could live on bugs and rainwater if I had to. Fuck a bunch of guilt. Fuck you guilt! Fuck you! Fuck you!"

The Voice walked back to the scaffolding and sat on the plank he had been lying on before he was so rudely interrupted. Suddenly he felt that all too familiar pain rise in his chest like an old enemy that reappeared whenever he was least expecting it. Mixing the paint calmed the Voice. His breathing slowed and became deeper. But his mind never bacame calm, never found peace.

"God, I don't even know who I am...I might have met my mother without ever knowing it...I wonder who she was, I wonder who my father was...

Not that the good Pastor didn't do what he could. Not that it wasn't a beautiful gesture and commitment to try to raise me as his son. But it didn't take too long to figure out there was a basic discrepency going on. Not that his assurances that I was "close enough" to being a "real son" and I didn't have to worry about it didn't make me feel as good as he probably could make me feel, but somehow I knew it wasn't quite right. I knew there was something somehow missing. I just knew.

* * *

"So why didn't you stop me, big mouth?" Claudia dug.

"Fuck you bitch, what am I your mother or some shit? Fuck that." Elaine protested.

"Both of you shut up." Jennifer implored. The other two took a collective breath in response.

"Oooookay," Claudia began to back down, "I'm sorry." The silence was deafening.

"So...what's in there?" Elaine finally asked.

"Oh man," Claudia began to hyperventilate again. "This guy in there, he's got long hair in a ponytail and he's real skinny." Claudia caught her breath and the other two waited for the rest. "He's painting on the wall and talking to himself. There's all these scenes and weird symbols like astrology or something."

There was a long pause that seemed interminable over the rhythm of the boys shouting in the intimate distance.

"Some guy lives there?" Elaine began.

"I don't know, I just saw him in there."

"What did he say?" Elaine asked her follow-up question.

"Something, about venus and scorpio."

There was another long pause. A far away whistle broke their concentration.

"No..." Jennifer doubted.

"You're lying. Elaine accused outright.

Claudia was outraged that her two best accomplices in the world thought she had made it up as if to make them think she was some kind of bad-ass or something.

"I don't get you guys." She said to them. "I tell you about this incredible discovery and you guys think I'm full of shit!" She took a moment to look them square in the eyes. "Alright then, since you guys don't believe me, there's no reason you should tell anyone what I've told you, right?"

It hit the other two at that moment there had to be truth to what she had told them. But, see, Claudia had this way of looking you in the eye and making you agree to things you knew were wrong, but, hey, what the hell?

"Okay," Elaine choked.

"Sure," Jennifer lightly sobbed. They knew that no good would come of this. But Claudia made them promise, promise with their blood.

Claudia made them promise with their blood. Then she turned and went back the way she had come.

* * *

Mrs. Paterson took the roll call for her home room class.

"Hardwick, Claudia...." The question called out like an announcement hung in the air, some of the children thought the walls themselves held their breath in the silence that answered. Mrs Paterson took a deep sigh as she made that little mark in the book that followed a most disturbing pattern. "Claudia." She admonished the name on her list. That girl has so much potential thought the concerned teacher, if only she would apply herself. But unfortunately, she would have to do the necessary paperwork. Calls would have to be made to her house. God forbid I get pulled over anytime soon.

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