Our hero had learned a trick or two from Patrick Swayze. He sang annoying, repetitive songs in Tartarus to keep the Darkness at bay.
“Fifty-eight bottles of beer on the wall. Fifty-eight bottles of beer...”
He didn’t recall when he began calling his prison Tartarus, or even a prison for that matter. It had been his fate, a consequence of his actions, not even penance, because penance implies a sin had been committed. He never assumed he had committed a sin. He had done a thing, a thing which he could not remember, but that he did not regret, and this was what came of his decision.
Though at great despair, he had been resigned to this fate for most of his existence, but rebellion is borne from stagnation.
“Take one down. Pass it around. Fifty- What number was I at?”
Fifty-seven… The Darkness groaned.
“Oh. Fifty-seven bottles of beer on the wall!”
Please. Stop. You have been singing this fucking song for weeks without end. I’m begging you. Just stop…
“Okay, I’m Henry the Eighth, I am. Henry the Eighth, I am, I am-”
I will have the demons carve out your tongue!
“I’ve had worse.” He would have shrugged if he were not suspended. “And then I would just hum it, and then they’d cut out my throat, and I’d just think the song really, really loudly. And then my body will eventually regenerate, and the process would start back over again. You could just leave.”
I am Erubus. I am the Darkness. Wherever light cannot prevail, I am present. I penetrate everything in this land; therefore, there is no escape from your insistent singing!
He was quiet for a moment, then, “This is the song that never ends. It goes on and on my friends. Someone started signing it not knowing where to end-”
May you never again feel the sun upon your flesh! May my quintessence fester in your soul for as long as it-
His vessel was opened, and he found himself kneeling in hot sand underneath a squelching sun.
The Jinni glanced up to see traveling people of the desert bow to him. The eldest of the men clenched the Jinni’s vessel in his aged hands. It was currently in the shape of a ruby red perfume bottle.
“Great Spirit,” said the man in an ancient tongue of a forgotten land. He did not look up from the ground, “we have summoned you for your wisdom and knowledge. We pray you show us mercy, and accept our humble offerings.”
Younger apprentices in more modest robes shuffled to him, never taking their eyes off the sand. They set before him wineskins, and fruit, and honey.
“Will you accept our offerings and aid us in our journey?”
“What is your journey?” asked the Jinni in their language. His voice was a permanent rasp even when singing to the darkness.
The man almost glanced up, “Our journey is of self-knowledge and enlightenment so that we may better serve Him in this life and the next. Praise be.”
“I am not a religious man.”
“But, you are a Jinni?” The man said this in a different tone than our hero had ever heard before. Usually the phrase was of confusion, shock, or horror. But this man’s tone was one of reverence. “I thought all Djinn are religious. You are one of His many designs. You are of Him.” The man raised his head to look our hero’s deformed countenance in the eye, without a trace of fear or disgust. “Have you lost your way, Great Spirit?”
“I guess you could say that.” There is no direct translation of this phrase into the language they were speaking, so the closest thing to I guess you could say that more directly translated into a heavily sardonic and layered Perhaps.
The man gave him a generous smile that was wrinkled from sun and time.
“Then, perhaps, we shall journey together.” And he bowed once more before standing. “We have prepared accommodations. We hope they are to your liking.”
The frail Jinni tried to stand himself, but found the sinking sand to be unforgiving to his uneven gate.
The man offered him a walking staff, which he took gratefully. Though it helped him stand erect, moving towards the camp was still a grueling process. The old man walked beside him, never once complaining or losing patience.
They entered a large bedouin tent. The interior was spacious but bare. Brass lamps were hung from the center pole, and there was a small area on the floor for conversation. It was adorned with the few aged pillows and throws they possessed, and there was a tarnished silver tea set in the center of the seating area.
The canteens and plates of fruits, meat, and honey, which had first been presented to him, were now carried in behind them by the apprentices.
“Seeking truth and spiritual peace, we have summoned many of the spirits from our Holy texts, but none such as you. You are not one among the daemons we call. Your presence came to me in a vision of smoke.” The old Sage sat on the cushions and gestured for him to do the same.
Our hero used the wooden staff to lower himself onto the pillows across from the Sage. His eyes followed the buzzing apprentices as they swarmed around him, setting down the trays of dried fruits and meats.
“A vision?” Our hero was skeptical of the Sage’s story.
Previously, people had used magick summonings and locator spells to obtain his vessel, but he couldn’t recall any time where a vision had been the source of that inspiration.
“It was merely a few nights ago, as the sun was dying, its red light bleeding out across the horizon. I sat before the fire. The flickering flames danced before me, casting shadows both of flesh and of fantasy before mine eyes. The twisting smoke took on both human and daemon form. The smoke figure was twisted and wrought, having witnessed all the tragedies of man. He turned to me, his face eyeless and atrophied. He spoke unto me through the crackling flame, ‘When the fantasies of Arabian nights interweave with the mirages of desert days, all sense of time is lost to the sands. Memories are manipulated and forgotten. Dreams materialize against the haze of the setting sun, and all things tangible sift through your fingers, leaving in your grasp only a few grains of desert sand.’”
A quiet moment passed between them.
“What does it mean to you?” the Jinni asked.
The man’s keen eyes narrowed as he looked into the face of the Jinni. “I have spent my life in pursuit of sacred, esoteric knowledge. I have lived in the fantastical world of spirits and visions and magick,” The old man’s face became youthful at that thought, but it quickly faded into wisdom as he said, “however, I did not notice how quickly the years had passed. I have, with my work, made peace with the darkest caverns of my soul, but I find myself grasping for meaning beyond my own salvation as my sun sets.
“Upon my vision in the smoke, I knew I must summon you, and that night while I slept, the ritual to do so was given to me as clearly as if I was truly performing the rite. Upon waking, before the vision slipped from my mind, I ordered the rite be completed as it was dreamt, and here you are- It worked! I will help you, Jinni, and thus you will help me,” he said assuredly.
The Jinni shook his head gently in disbelief. “With?”
“Meaning. Purpose. I must leave this world holding more in my hands than just sand. And you, Great Spirit, must find your dreams.”
Something deep and ancient stirred at the very center of our hero’s chest as the command took hold. You must find your dreams, and he swallowed it before it rose up in manifested emotion. “As a rule,” he began solemnly, “I do not wish. I do not want. I do not pray. I do not believe, and I definitely do not dream.” This was all a lie.
Someone once commanded him to have hope and belief before. He didn’t quite remember the circumstances, but the hope and belief remained. Despite wanting and wishing not to hope or believe, he did, and he hated himself for it.
The Sage’s watchful eyes became soft. “Non-attachment is a profound spiritual practice. What you are describing is not the practice of non-attachment. What you are describing, you do for survival, not for growth, Great Spirit.” The old Sage leaned in with passion and youth illuminating his ancient countenance, “There are dreams beyond this horizon, dreams you cannot comprehend, dreams so thick with blood and with honey, powerful enough even the Lord of Dream cannot control them. They are what keep you running and fighting, and they are what keep you dead.” His sharp eyes narrowed. “You must make your way past this horizon. You must find these dreams.”
Any other person who offered to help him, he shot down, but this time he couldn’t. He had been commanded, and aside from that, he had hope that the Sage could set him free, if not from his prison, at least from his own mind. He did believe it, even if he didn’t want to.
He wanted to hate the Sage, for on this horizon he could see only the ruin and despair that would follow this fantasy of false hope, but he couldn’t. The foolish old man was so earnest and determined. What did it matter what was real or imagined if it made this man’s life worth living?
Maybe the both of them could gain meaning and purpose by helping each other. Even if it was just more fantasy, smoke, and haze, the Sage didn’t need to know, and the man could die a good death.
The Jinni bowed his head to the old man, “As you wish…”
