The Cliffs of Insanity

Dear Lady, I can't believe I didn't post this here, but I can't find it, so apparently I did not. Bruce sent me the song "Phoenician" by Stic Basin. It's an early recording featuring Bruce, Barry, and Carlo Ascitutti. The later tracks are pretty much only Barry. Anyway, my first thought was Cadmus. Because the "historical" Cadmus was a Phoenician. Since this was a Barry-centric song, of course I went down that path and came up with this.



It's really quite a lovely song, so unlike "Pin."

Anyway, I garnered a discussion between the three of them, but this one was directed particularly at me, from Carlo. It was fascinating, and so well-told.

"Escaping the tyranny of her own Country, Elissa, an exiled princess of the ancient Phoenician city of Tyre, the future Carthaginian Queen Dido, commonly known as Alissar, founded Carthage, the "shining city" that ruled the Phoenician world.
Princess Elissa was the daughter of King Matten of Tyre (also known as Muttoial or Belus II). When he died, the throne was jointly bequeathed to her and her brother, Pygmalion. She married her uncle Acherbas (also known as Sychaeus), the High Priest of Melqart, a man with both authority and wealth comparable to the king. This led to increased rivalry between religion and the monarchy. Pygmalion was a tyrant, lover of both gold and intrigue, who desired the authority and fortune enjoyed by Acherbas. Pygmalion assassinated Acherbas in the temple and kept the misdeed concealed from his sister for a long time, deceiving her with lies about her husband's death. At the same time, the people of Tyre called for a single sovereign, causing dissent within the royal family.
Phoenician, a Canaanite caretaker previously working for King Pygmalion of Tyre, decided to move his residence to the mythical Carthage.
He also decided that, after so many years endlessly spent caretaking, he deservedly needed a loving bosom where he could comfortably rest his tyred body, i.e. a woman to cuddle, fondle and canoodle.
Not being satisfied with one, and wisely knowing that a bird in the hand is worth three in the bush, he fell in love with the whole lot of them : Elissa, Dido and Alissar.
As a result of too much stress and too much tyring caused by intensive physical labour, Elissa died. And with her, the other two readily followed.
Although some contemporary historians, as well as many modern scholars, think it might well be a typical Punic exaggeration, Phoenician, allegedly, cried so much for the loss of the threesome that his tears increased the level of the whole Mediterranean Sea.
(Legend has it that he might also have overflooded the Black Sea because of tears leaking through a strange hole in Costantinople).
Shocked, stunned and shattered by unbearable grief, Phoenician moved back to Tyre and decided to retyre.
All the rest is History.
The song "Phoenician" is a dirge built on this sad and true story centred on such a legendary and caretaking hero.
A Threnody, a Requiem, a Jeremiad, a Coronach, a Lament and an Elegy will be offered shortly.
Thee Caretakers will stay tuned to this Frequency for more happy-sing-a-long songs."

I replied with: Love how you tell this story. And..."A Threnody, a Requiem, a Jeremiad, a Coronach, a Lament and an Elegy will be offered shortly.
Thee Caretakers will stay tuned to this Frequency for more happy-sing-a-long songs." This is heartening to hear, being the carefree soul that I am. ;P

Of course, for me, it will always be for my primary Phoenician.

"May blessings be upon the head of Cadmus, the Phoenicians, or whoever it was who invented books." ~ Thomas Carlyle

<3 <3 <3

How I love these guys.

Yes, I am still writing. No, this has not been proofread/edited. I still wanted to put it here, in a kind of commemoration. It seems that the emotion for this particular Harming Tree short story is going to be lust, and that's why the words are coming so slowly, so fraught with difficulty. Lust is such an alien emotion, even to Cadmus, who is so endowed with the entrapments of both human and Vampire after the Augury incident. I just have a problem with emotion" when it comes to Cadmus, especially anything bordering on love or the entrapments of the physical body. Still, it has to be done if any sort of realism is to be brought to the character. Anyway, here's the continuance of the story I'm currently and will probably continue calling The Star Watcher.
( Cadmus meets Litania )

Righto, I'm posting this for the Tom Hardy fans here. Although I'm all about me some homo-erotic photies, this is really kind of disturbing, because Cadmus Pariah would never ever assume this position. He would slaughter everyone before doing this. Well, he would slaughter everyone anyway, but the character is just too dominant to be a bottom. Anyway, for all you Hardy aficionados, this picture may be sure to make your heads explode. You're welcome.

I'm trying to get my ducks in a row, gathering up various pictures acook will need for reference, as well as writing up what I envision for the cover of The Augury of Gideon. Then I'm going to tackle some other publishing mountains before me. That aside, though, I found this picture, and it perfectly represents the innocence that defines Faust/Kallum. Scottles is the other half of the Faust/Kallum character, but the picture that best defines that is not published and I'm not gonna be responsible for doing that now. Anyways, here's the James McAvoy picture.



Gotta get this, the Scottles picture, and the picture of B that best represents Cadmus in the third book (I have the perfect one), along with a picture of the actual Augury, and a written description of what I'm seeing, and we'll be good to go. ::crosses fingers::

After having finally gotten Word back, I was able to really trawl through The Waltham Phantom and see the mistakes and omissions I had made. I've set to righting those wrongs by, essentially, making part of the story more wrong. The most changed is the last part of Gareth Owen's final terrifying hours on Earth. I wanted to make it as profane as possible, in order to bring out the proper rise in Flint. He is, after all, a bit of an insouciant individual, and I felt that the story of his friend's murder and subsequent defilement did not go far enough, especially since we're talking about Cadmus' handiwork here. So here is the first edit of that particular part of the story.

“I forced my fingers into Gareth's mouth, holding him still whilst taking my favourite knife, the one made from my dragon matrice's claw, out of the belt beneath my robes. So very slowly, which is the only way to do things such as this, if you want the blood to hold its gamey essence, I let the sharp point of the black claw slip into the aged flesh of your dearest mortal, my sweet Flint. You should have seen the look of surprise on his face, despite his already knowing that I was going to slaughter him. They never quite believe it, neither mortals nor Vampires, until you begin to take the life they had always assumed was their own away from them, one heartbeat's worth of blood at a time. He gasped for the breath he could not catch, with his throat so open to the air, and he moaned deep within the secret cavities of his chest as I let him bleed into my chalice.

“When the flow ebbed, slowing to a hearty trickle, I decided to let that remaining blood waste into the Earth. Turning the body of Gareth Owen upside down, I plunged an iron spike through the cooling meat's ankles and into the pike I had erected. I then finished its decapitation with my claw knife, and I secured the head to the top of the wooden post.”

Once more, Cadmus paused, letting a genuine smile spread grace his lush mouth, making his face shimmer in the moonlight like icy starshine behind a veil of thin clouds. He pulled the air in quickly through the nostrils of his patrician nose and he looked down at his captive audience.

Continuing, Cadmus purred the last of the cruel tale. “But I wasn’t finished exacting sacred atrocities upon this nonentity’s flesh. Oh no. I found a nearby branch and affixed it to the base of the pike and, taking Owen’s arms, I tied them to the ends of the rotting wood. He was a veritable English Saint Peter, he was. And I should know…my former master arranged for that apocryphal Jewish dissident to endure the profanities of reverse crucifixion. Despite what you may have been taught in whatever religious past you might have, it wasn’t Peter’s idea, that. It was all the Apostate, may his dessicated ashes never light in peace. At least you can take comfort, my odd little friend, that your mortal blood brother was quite dead when I strung him up like the meat that he was. Oh, and the way he looked hanging there, softly swaying in the cool country breeze! It was indeed a work of art, Flint. A true piece de resistance even for one so skilled as me. Moments such as these are the reason memories, and Polaroids, are made…to capture in the full magnificence of time that which might forever otherwise be lost.”

Cadmus allowed himself another small smile in mock honour of Gareth's gory memory, and in reaction to Flint's increasing anger. He lightly caressed Flint's cheek with his blanched fingers, enjoying the reprehension his act of pretend affection elicited. Looking down at his frozen charge, Cadmus wondered at the horror he found there, his expression filled with an angelic grace that was in no wise pretense.

“As I said, he was long past dead, by then, dear Flint. Long past it indeed. But the reflection in his drying eyes held a distant recollection of his most cherished friend, that of the Waltham Phantom, the soul he had all but given up in the last moments of his brief and sad wee life. The only thing he had not divulged was the name of the Phantom; however, had I found it important enough to do a little detective work, I would have easily discovered the name of 'Simon Flynt,' and followed the warm trail straight to your doorstep.”

Cadmus leaned down and kissed Flint on each trembling eyelid.

Far off galaxies were reflected, spiralling in the depths of Cadmus Pariah's obsidian eyes. He blinked slowly, allowing himself to go ever further outward into the cosmos, reaching out spidery tendrils of ancestral memory, where his ancestors had taken their first breath and sung their first songs of Creation. Across the multiverse he travelled, taking in each galaxy and naming it according to the ancient Tarmian ways. And he pulled to him the presence of the black hole at the center of each heavenly body, that inevitable dark matter that was the source of the life that chose to ignore its origins. Black holes were the realm of the Pariah. Surely the songs pulled into their ineluctable gravity fortified their existence, forging the event horizon that was the only indication of their presence amongst the vibrations of the living stars. It was at these times that Cadmus grasped at his philosophical apices only to realise that he could actually feel wonder and amazement without the assistance of his long-gone beautiful pets.

He shuddered in reaction to the moisture that pooled around his endless irises. Such emotion presented a kind of terror in Cadmus. He was wholly unsure what to do with it, and so he fought it with every fibre of his being.

He blinked again, his heavy lids resting at half-mast as he absorbed the light around him. The blessed dark would always be his primary realm, that rhapsody in which he could touch eternity by gazing into the impossibly ancient stars, and the dark matter that suspended them in time.

I've just finished a Cadmus story, but he is demanding more words. This is one of the reasons why I was awake all night. His vicious demands are incessant, and I wish there were some way I could silence his diabolical purr. Sometimes I get weary of the dreadful imagery that haunts my head. The thing I find most distressing is that this is a large aspect of who I am. I have no idea how I ended up with a morbid fascination with insane violence and unimaginable abuse. I always return to the visions of vivisection. Cadmus basks in what he perceives to be incredibly beautiful, to rip apart a Vampire and allow him to heal, just so he can do it again. What kind of deviance do I harbour, that I can immerse in such darkness? Sometimes I feel as if I'm going mad.

There are just way too many delish pictures that can be 'shopped to represent Flint. Here are just three, one of which portrays both Flint and his dearest friend Gareth.

Gareth and Flint were the closest of friends. Extremely close. It is because of Gareth's murder that Flint is now hellbent on killing Cadmus Pariah. That's a pretty lofty goal, but Flint isn't known for setting limitations on himself.


I love how the phosphorescence in his eyes is made all the more intense in black & white photographs. 'Tis mesmerising.