The Ouroboros
The Ouroboros
The Ouroboros
ou
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(ôr?ə-bôr? əs) n.
The
tail-biting snake, the eternal
circle
of disintegration and reintegration;
it
devours, fertilizes, begets, and slays
itself,
and brings itself to life again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
They say that in death all things become
clear.
Such as the looking-glass stillness in
Remus? eyes when they found him ? or so they had told her ? lying face
up in the snow.
The winter sun glinting off a blanket of
white on that Sunday morning, deceptively bright on a day that should have felt
bleak if only in homage to the man they were burying.
They also say that violence is reserved for
only the physically large and violent. If so, then violence should not have
been begotten by the slight man whose only crime against the world was to have
been bitten by another unfortunate, the cycle repeating itself into untraceable
oblivion, lines crossed and snarled in the complexities of forgetting.
The long hours working together towards the
Dark Lord?s downfall had forced Remus and I to become?less antagonistic towards
each other. After a fashion. Enough so that I did not feel the need to snipe at
him as much as I felt he deserved.
Oddly enough, it was his death that brought
us together, coming together in a violent conflagration of frottage and
fucking.
After which, she left. As they always do.
As they always have done.
In the quiet despair of the night, whenever
it becomes dark enough, the dungeon chiaroscuro wraps me in its indiscriminate
embrace. Only then with the firewhiskey flowing freely through my veins will I
perhaps muster enough courage to actually think of her. To visualise what I
can, or to the extent that I allow myself to the intricacies of what made her.
Inside my mind, buried within its dark recesses, in the storehouse of memoribestbest forgotten are images of her; arms splayed outward as she writhed beneath
me, the sweat-slicked bow of her body stretched taut ? the calm before the
storm.
So, during those moments when I do try to
remember, the images are presented as a warped daguerreotype portrait; sepia
toned images bleeding together. Hazy, curling in on itself like the worn edges
of a photograph. And these images in turn, are viewed as if through a thick
layer of stained glass to which I press my face against to no effect. I suppose
this is due to the fact that I am, in many ways, a victim of my own past,
having conserved those recollections precisely as they were received. A
triptych of time twisting, twining like so, that the images become lost within
the garden of the hurricane?s eye.
I am not attempting to describe to you the
Hermione the world knows now, that is, Hermione as she exists today; a woman I
do not know, a witch of incredible power and determination stalking back and
forth in front of an apathetic Wizengamot, her words uttered in a voice of
organised passion. To be more precise, I am talking about Hermione then; a
person whose very essence has been distorted by my dreams, very much like the
words obscured underneath the teardrops on a piece of parchment.
Thus, recalling her exactly is a struggle
with my intractable brain. She is there, though. Someplace, drifting in through
the synapses and spread over a barren landscape fraught with despair and
speckled with the hope that she, for a time, brought.
&nbs[end[endif]>
And then she left. As she always did. As
she always has done.
It seemed she loved me most when we were
apart.
However, absence does not necessarily make the
heart grow fonder. If anything, it only serves to fuel bitterness and imagined
scenarios of abandonment by the absent party. I would see myself apart from my
body through the eyes of a madman.
An excerpt, written in lust and frustration
from one of those moments:
&nb>
With each chime of the hour from the
clock in the living room so does his imagined acrimony grow. He wants to hate
her, forces himself to open his eyes to her so-called true character. But all
he knows is her body above him, weight pushing down hard in an entirely
pleasurable primal rhythm. The body of a lover. Her cologne, a common,
unremarkable confection of mechanised mass chain-store production. He imagines
he can still detect it in the spot where the collarbones meet at the hollow at
the base of her throat where he knew she loved to be kissed.
In many ways, ours was not a love story.
And yet in many ways, it was.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fin. Prologue of 13 chapters
?in the garden of the hurricane?s eye? is
John Ciardi?s phrase and the title of one of his poems
Please R/R. I need to know what I am doing
wrong and how I can correct it. This has not yet been beta-ed and English is
not my first language. Any offer of beta-ing is welcomed. My e-mail address is
on my profile.
Please, no flames. Remember, you catch more
flies with honey than vinegar. The story?s continuity depends on you,
dear reader.