The Red Spiral

Chapter 1

Joshua laid on his back resting on the red rock at the gate staring at the swirling motion of pink shades under a burgundy sun and a blood moon. The sky was a poisonous shade of green forming a brightly deathlike canvas to which this moment was painted.

He saw many things when he stared for long enough, especially when the sun and the moon shared the same space. Tonight, he could vividly see the arching back of a woman, the mother of the universe, whose skin is the night time sky. He tried to find her shoulders, hoping to catch a glimpse of her looking back at him upside down, but they seemed to be obscured by her long black hair.

Joshua was excited for the night. He'd waited so long for his lover to return to him. His anticipation was almost uncontrollable as he imagined her rising from beneath the vortex at the flat red rock, her presence melding the two worlds of which she walked. He imagined her dozens of times as her reddish brown skin began to distinguish her boundaries from the mountain, as her body glistened from the hidden fresh water ocean that housed another world only a few feet below. It is a forbidden place to someone like Joshua, who was born to only walk on one side of this plane.

So he waited, trying to stay awake for long enough to see her transformation. He waited until he could no longer resist the soothing temptation to rest. As his eyes began to flicker, he could see the trees and the bushes nearby reach out and curl like dying fingers. He felt the solid, red rock beneath him soften and swirl. The wind walked in circles around his motionless body and the sky whispered to the earth. When he awoke, she was in his firmly coiled in his arms as if she had already been there for an eternity.

Chapter 2

"How long have you been in my arms?" Joshua asked.

"Always!" Nephthys replied. "I never leave. I only appear more real in a dream."

He understood her words, but could not comprehend the meaning. She says the same thing whenever they meet, but she always ignores her absence. She had been away for a very long time. How could she suggest otherwise? And yet, there was a truth in her most perplexing statements that resonated deeply inside him. His beautiful red rock never vanished. It stood for countless centuries and will stand for countless more. She is the rock.

"I am not the rock. I am merely the red." She whispered in his ear.

"How can this be?"

"How can it not? I am as I appear just as you."

Their bodies began to intertwine into a more complex coil. Their eyes fixed on one another. They began to ascend to the top of the great red mountain effortlessly. Joshua mused in his mind that an ascent like this was so much easier when she was with him, but at the moment the thought crossed his mind, she smiled as if to remind him of what she said before:

"I never leave. I only appear more real in a dream."

Chapter 3

Joshua stood at the summit overlooking the area below as Nephthys coiled around him in a haze of shimmering red smoke, her glowing eyes and melodic voice emerging from within her spiral cloud.
Below was an imprint of another world, an ocean of life that had once coexisted on this plane, but had been pulled under by an earthquake long ago. At sunrise, it was possible to view the fault line that pulled the other world under the ground.

"Would you like to travel underneath all of this?" Nephthys asked.

"I would. I do. But I don't belong there. I cannot walk two planes."

"Have you ever tried?"

"There are many things I've never tried that I don't need to explore in order to know I shouldn't try them."

"How can you be sure this is one of them?"

"I can feel it. Every bone in my body begs for me to stay upright."

"You'd be surprised to find out you're just as upright below as you are above. Everything corresponds." She said as the mountain began to absorb into a red mist and the green sky grew brighter pulsing in rhythmic fluctuations.

Chapter 4

"Come with me, Joshua. Walk with me on the other side. This world will still be here. It will exist long after you’re gone. Look at how the sky and the trees and the bushes coil, shimmer, and flicker. They’re telling you it is your time. Why hold on to this place? It is literally dissolving under your feet!”

“I hold on to this place because it is my rock. It is everything I know and love. It is everything I hold dear.”

“You know me. You love me. You hold me dear. Am I not your rock? I will still be with you on the other side.”

“But once I’m there, I can never leave.”

“You’ve never even been there! How do you know it isn’t better than anything you’ve ever experienced?”

“Does it matter? This is my home. This is where I walk. This is where I live.”

“It doesn’t seem as if you’re living at all. Rather, you cling to the safety of what is familiar while you deny yourself entry into paradise.”

Joshua looked at the soft swirling mass near his feet. All he needed to do was take Nephthys’ hand and step through, but he hesitated. He looked at her glowing eyes, he looked back to the valley, then to the green skies, and then he backed away, and bid his lover a temporary farewell. Nephthys smiled and wished him goodbye telling him not to wait too long before the dog and the horse claim him.

“You would do better to enter at your own free will, my love. But my husband and my son will take you by force if necessary. Rest well for now, but don’t tarry.”

Joshua felt his entire body spasm as he jolted awake in his hospital bed. His head throbbing as he recovered from the surgery to remove fragments of his skull from his brain. His legs and arms unable to move, showing atrophy from almost six months of paralysis. He was utterly broken. He couldn’t even breathe on his own. In the mirror, he could see the awful tube pushed through a hole drilled in his neck hooked to a machine that pumped air into his lungs. He couldn’t remember what happened, but his family informed him he’d been in a car accident and had a long road to recovery. If he had the ability, he’d have shouted obscenities at all of them for ordering the surgery that kept him alive. He felt cheated and now lived on the fringes of life and death strapped motionless to a hospital bed unable to move on his own, depending on machines to keep him alive and to fight the agonizing pain he was in. When he attempted to speak, the voice he heard was not his own. Rather, he sounded like a punch drunk retired boxer, slurring every sentence, barely able to string along a few short words.

Chapter 5

Joshua vaguely heard his father arguing with a doctor about rushing his release date. He was too hazy to understand his medical insurance shut down at six months and without long term care coverage, there would be no possible way to pay for his hospital bills. He didn't understand the specifics, but he grasped the notion he was about to be pushed out of the ICU straight into living at home with his parents. A few years ago, he pictured himself married with a beautiful wife and child living in the suburbs in a two story house and representing the American dream. Now he was slowly coming to terms with being divorced, quadriplegic, brain damaged, and dependent on 24 hour care from his parents for the rest of his life. The sickest part of it was how his parents seemed to be excited to change their sons diapers again. He'd have to be fed, washed, and given naps like a baby from now on. His feelings of hopelessness were suffocating.

He laid on his back, red faced, tears streaming down his cheeks, and sweating from a low grade fever brought on by several infections related to his surgeries. He desperately wanted someone to rub ice on him, but had trouble communicating. An evangelist named Jerry sat next to his bed reading scripture to him and praying. Joshua had mostly tuned the man out, but he wanted ice badly.

"You gotta accept Jesus' healing powers, Josh. Do you accept it? Do you know God will heal you? He will take away your suffering. Do you accept it?"

"Ice?"

"Do you hear the, Lord? Your son Joshua accepts your healing powers! Halleluja!"

"Cah-nie-hab-deh-ice-pack?"

"Oh! You want ice, brother?"

"Yeah."

"I'll bring you some ice if you pray with me."

"K."

"But you gotta receive it this time. God can't heal you if you don't receive it!"

"K."

Inside, Joshua wanted to ask if Jerry really believed it was somehow his own fault for being hurt. That God's healing powers were right there. He just wasn't accepting them. He wished Jesus would show some mercy and kick Jerry square in the balls for being such a tool. But more than anything, he wanted someone to rub an icepack on his face before he died from feverish misery, so he prayed and did his best to receive God's magical healing power.

Finally, he got his ice pack.

Chapter 6

The red mountain was snowcapped when Joshua returned. A sharp breeze chilled his cheeks to the bone and the falling snow around him shifted in color like a floating sequined rainbow. The sky was a light shade of aquamarine, no longer poisonous and threatening. The sun and the moon no longer appeared as blood, rather they mellowed to a golden brown. The mother of the universe looked down on Joshua and smiled.

"Oh, little one who suffers torment, walk away from the pain you feel. It is as simple as leaving this mountain and walking into the valley." She pointed to a trail that led away from the mountain into a densely wooded area of magnificent silver and purple trees with a river of molten platinum flowing at its side.

"He's even more afraid of the valley than he is of the vortex. Aren't you, my love?" He heard Nephthys say from behind him. "It's OK. My mother and I won't force you to go anywhere. We're here to guide you. All we can do is offer advice, but if you don't choose, the other forces will eventually make that choice for you. No one is meant to stand at the top of the mountain forever."
Joshua understood this and had no desire to continue feeling suspended between two realms, so he grabbed the hand of Nephthys and walked to the spiral without hesitation. He fell into the vortex terrified he was making a horrible decision.

"Focus on me, love, and I'll get your through this." Nephthys said as their bodies became smoke and swirled together as they passed to the invisible world under the vortex, but he was unable to comply. At the last moment, he gazed out and saw a dark, translucent, winged form with glowing white horns peering into him. The form reached forward and snatched Joshua from the spiral by the nape of his neck and flew upward away from the red spiral, away from the mountain, deep into the blackest place in the sky.

"Welcome home, my brother. I've waited an eternity to bring you back." Samael said.

Chapter 7

“You're killing him!"

"We're not killing him. We're trying to get him to start breathing on his own again. We can't send him
home breathing through a hole in his neck and you can't afford to keep him here past month end. He's going to struggle, but he has to start breathing on his own. There is no other way."

"How long will it take for him to re-learn how to breathe?"

"Hopefully, by week end."

"And if he doesn't?"

"Don't worry. He will."

"You're looking at a big lawsuit if he dies."

"A lawsuit? Over what, exactly? Your son should be dead. His skull was crushed. His spinal cord was nearly severed. His body was almost completely destroyed and you ordered the surgery to save his life. Do you know how much he is suffering right now because you couldn't let your son die? There are worse things than death and right now, he's living one of them."

"You said you could save him."

"I said we could try, but at best, we were only prolonging the inevitable. I also explicitly advised that I felt life saving measures were wrong and cruel."

"Jesus will save my son. God will grant us a miracle."

"Sir, I respect your beliefs, but you're putting your son through a living hell over your inability to accept that maybe it is God's plan to take him from you."

"Why would God take my son from me?"

"I don't know. Why don't you ask Him? And while you're at it, ask the Almighty if He's OK with artificially prolonging life via machines and medicine. I'd be interested in His thoughts."

Chapter 8

The shimmering, colorful waves of light were gone. The sun and the moon shining in unison could not be seen. The valley and the red spiral were so far in the distance, they were barely a horizon. The mother of the universe was hidden from view at this vantage point. And Nephthys could not guide him. The only things visible were the glowing white horns and red eyes of Samael which vaguely illuminated the rest of his sleek, winged form.

Joshua hanged upside down like a bat next to the dark angel, clinging for dear life, constantly slipping, readjusting his grip, nervously holding on.

"If you stop resisting, you can hold on comfortably forever. Don't fight it. You don't need to struggle."

"I'm terrified."

"Of course you are, but you don't need to be. Where you once walked is just a shadow. Now you no longer need to walk among the shadows. You can hover above them. You have the power to fly from any problems. Sorrow is obsolete in this place. Fear serves no purpose. Have no fear. We've come to raise the shadows. Long have you walked in darkness. You can finally quit the night and seek the day."

With these words, a light appeared in the midst of the darkest place. Joshua looked around and saw winged creatures of all types, a winged lion, a winged man, a winged bull, millions upon millions watching as he first felt a sharp pain in the back of his lungs and then became aware of a protrusion of a pair of bloody eagle wings spread from his back. His audience applauded.

"Does it hurt?" Samael asked.

"Worse than anything I've ever felt."

"The pain you feel is your liberation from all the terrible things you've suffered. Embrace it, or it will take a more painful form and consume you." The dark one replied. "Look out into the vast lands below. See? It comes for you. There is no escape. There is only release and change."

Joshua looked down and saw a massive, shifting spiral moving directly toward him. He panicked, let go, and used his red wings to glide as far from that monster as he could. Samael didn't follow, but instead offered this advice:

"What exists above corresponds directly to what is below. Nothing is meant to remain in between forever. Find your place in the universe, my brother. Glide on your new wings. But as ever, it comes when the shadows are raised. It comes to pull you back."

As Joshua attempted to fly from harm's way, he was caught up in the spiral and pulled down, crashing on the red rock, shattering nearly every fragment of his being, awakening once again on his hospital bed, tears flowing down both cheeks, he looked around his room. It was night time and but for the trickle of light under his door, his room was black. He noticed the tube in his throat was gone and realized he was breathing unassisted with his lungs again and no longer through a machine. He'd never realized how much effort and pain breathing required. It was something he hadn't considered but wouldn't take for granted again.

Chapter 9

Joshua felt something he hadn't felt in a long time. Rather, it was an absence of feeling: his fever was gone. It had tortured him for months, cooking him from the inside out, adding to the delirious, drugged up state he'd been in. It brought on panic attacks regularly. It had been utter misery. But now, his head and his face finally felt like they weren't on fire anymore. If not for the inability to move, he would have felt normal. This was the new normal he'd have get accustomed to. Joshua didn't know if he could ever truly forgive his father for not letting him go, but like it or not, he was going to have to get used to this new life.

"You're going to be released in a few days, Josh. I can finally bring you non-hospital food. Is there anything I can bring you?" Joshua's dad asked.

"Hash brownies."

"Eh? I don't know how to make those and I don't know where to buy hash."

"I have a stash in a humidor in my bedroom closet."

"You do drugs?!"

"Yup. Sorry to break it to you like this, pops, but I've been smoking weed since I was 14. You never noticed."

“Why are you telling me now?"

"Because I'm brain damaged and paralyzed. What does it matter now? No one cares if a cripple gets high!"

"Don't call yourself a cripple."

"Whatever. If I tell you how to make hash brownies, will you make them for me? I promise not to drive anywhere or operate heavy machinery."

"I guess so."

"Thanks, pops."

Chapter 10

Joshua sent his friend and roommate Johnny with his dad to collect the ingredients to bake the brownies. Johnny was a seasoned pothead. He introduced Joshua to weed at age 14 and they'd been smoking out together daily ever since. As teenagers, they often blocked Johnny's door with a wet towel while filling the room with smoke. In college, they filled their cars with smoke routinely. As adults, it was their after work cocktail. Some people drink for leisure. Johnny and Josh baked.

Harry, Joshua's father and a staunchly conservative Southern Baptist, was highly opposed to illegal drug use and were his son able bodied, he would have been furious at the notion of fetching pot to make hash brownies and even more angry his son had been using drugs under his nose for all these years. But things were different now. Josh was right. What difference does it make if his crippled son gets high? After the agony he was going through, it only seemed reasonable. Still, because of his religious and political convictions, Harry was conflicted. Harry, a child of the 1960's, did not participate in the drug use of the time. When fellow teens wore their hair long, his was high and tight. He never wore jeans and always covered his head when outdoors. And somehow, he had a son who was completely opposite. He never understood how this happened. Someone once told him "The children of Jazz musicians grow up to be bankers." In Harry and Joshua's case, this was true in reverse.

As Johnny showed Harry how to make the brownies, Harry confessed:

"I never tried drugs when I was younger."

"Let's have one with Josh!"

"I don't know. It wouldn't be right."

"Neither is giving your crippled son a pot brownie, but you're not letting that stop you."

Chapter 11

"Did you bring them?"

"We sure did!"

"Man, I've missed it. Wish I could burn one right here and now."

"Even with all the morphine they got you on?"

"I hate that shit. Does nothing but make me sleep and dream about dying. Kind of hoping this will
chill my dreams out. Every time I go to sleep, someone new tells me to prepare myself for the afterlife. Gets old. I'm not ready to die, ya know?"

"Well, hopefully the brownies hit the spot. Cheers!"

"Give me one, too."

"Holy shit, dad! Really? Haha! Cheers!"

"Cheers, son."

"Haha! Did you just pray before eating a pot brownie?"

"I always pray before I eat. Can't help it."

"God? Bless this weed. Let it make us higher than motherfuckers. Amen."

"Amen."

"Haha! Amen."

Chapter 12

Feeling mellow and a little giddy, Johnny drove home. He was happy to see Joshua in better spirits after all the physical pain, the horrible infections as he recovered from surgery, the anxiety attacks from waking up in a drugged state alone in a dark hospital room, and the confusion he’d been put through as he coped with the reality of never being able to use his body again. His heavy slur was decreasing and his wit and good humor was coming back.

When he first heard of the accident and rushed to the hospital, a part of Johnny distanced himself from Josh, believing his best friend was dead. When he saw him after several days of brain and spinal surgery, he continued to believe Joshua to be dead. He didn’t want to remember him as a brain damaged cripple. He wanted to remember the impulsive guy who never gave his problems a second glance. He was always focused on the positive. Joshua was the guy no one could keep down and suddenly, for all his optimism and positivity, his world and his body had been crushed in a very short time.

First, his wife left him, taking their child and now this. Johnny would never forgive her for what she did to his best friend. She took his goofy, fun loving pothead, hippy buddy and turned him into a cocaine addict, spending all his free time at nightclubs looking to hook up with powder. And when he started to come unraveled, when his finances hit hard times, she bailed on him and hit him up with child support. After his accident, she couldn’t even bring their son to see his dad. She was a completely heartless woman and after she left Josh, he went from carefree to careless. It’s no wonder he wrecked his car. He was probably driving like shit. The police said he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and when his car rolled, he was thrown through an open window and hit a concrete barricade head first. Johnny firmly believed no man was meant to survive such a horrific accident.
When Harry ordered the surgery and life support measures, it was Johnny who argued to let go and pull the plug. This strained his relationship with Joshua’s family, but Johnny was more family to Josh than any of them had ever been. They shared everything and he loved him as his brother. He knew the last thing Joshua would want is to be a quadriplegic, but ultimately, the decision to remove Josh from life support was not his. It was Harry’s and Harry spent too much time listening to idiot preachers promising God would give them a miracle.

“If God were to give us a miracle of any kind, he’d make them stop being so stupid and just let go, accepting Joshua has been taken from us.” He thought to himself at the time. But now things were turning around. Perhaps it was time to set all of that aside and be supportive. Josh was going to need a lot of support.

Still, there was a nagging voice in the back of his soul that told Johnny his best friend was little more than a shell.

Chapter 13

Harry didn’t react to the brownie as he’d hoped. He wasn’t even sure why he ate it. He nervously drove home praying for God’s forgiveness. The guilt he felt was unbearable. He couldn’t believe people consumed such a substance for recreation. He was thirsty. He was hungry. He was aware of every bead of sweat coming out of every pore, every sweat gland on his body. His heart was racing. His hearing was distorted by a pulsing in his ears. He just wanted to get home and go to sleep.

---------

Joshua had fallen asleep while conversing with his father and Johnny. The brownie hit him pretty hard. As he passed out, he thought of his son. He missed him terribly and wished Allison would bring him to see him. They weren’t on speaking terms anymore and she was using their boy to spite him, but if ever there was a time to set such thing aside, shouldn’t that time be now? He couldn’t understand her motivation. Sure, he’d made mistakes, but so had she. There was no reason they couldn’t move past their failed marriage and remain friendly for their son’s sake, but she seemed determined to cut him out entirely.

“Do you still love her?” Nephthys asked.

“Yes.” Joshua replied. “I love her enough to hate her with complete purity. But I love her.”

“Is she why you hold on?”

“No. My son is why I hold on.”

“You son whom you barely know? How is that worth holding on to?”

“Because he’s my son and I hope to know him someday. More than that, I hope he will know me someday.”

“I’m sorry, my love. It will never happen. My husband and my son are near and refuse to wait any longer.”

Joshua looked down to the valley and saw a man whose arms and legs were made of many varieties of poisonous snakes approaching.

“He is Typhon. He is your attachment to the world. He is what continually pulls you back. He was in the spiral that snatched you from Samael and his winged assessors.”

In the distance, another form appeared as a mutilated man with the head of a horse stitched to his shoulders carrying a staff with a pair of curved blades at the top.

“He is my husband, Seth, who carries a birthing knife. He comes that you made be reborn into this world, to cut you away from the fabric of your current reality.

Behind Seth was a third being, who wore the head of a dog.

“He is Anubis. He is my son. Once you have been removed from your attachments to the other plane, he will drag you down to the valley and into the world below. I’m sorry this will be so painful. I’d hoped we could avoid such ugly things, but you were unable to pass on your own and now my husband and my son are here to claim you.”

Joshua tried to run in the opposite direction, but the red spiral held him in place. He tried to fly on his red wings, but they had no strength. So he stood in horror as he watched the the men made from snakes, horses, and dogs approach.

"It will be easier if you don't struggle, my love."

Chapter 14

“What now?”

“I’m sorry, but an infection entered the hole in his throat when we removed the tube to get him to breathe on his own again and it’s a life threatening staph. We’re doing everything we can to fight the infection, but there is no telling what will happen.”

“He was just about to be released! How could this happen?!”

“I’m sorry, Harry. We’re doing everything we can.”

The red spiral burned deeply into Joshua first at his throat, then at his feet, then at his hands, and finally all over. He sweated profusely and screamed in agony.

“Don’t fight it, my love. It will all be over soon. Invite the spiral to take you home.”

He refused to follow her advice and instead fought harder creating more pain, screaming in a louder agony. Suddenly, Typhon was upon him and wrapped his serpentine arms and legs around Joshua, the poisonous snakes biting him at the nape of his neck, the venom rendering him immobile and the other serpents coiled around him, constricting his breathing. He was completely helpless now. From the corner of his eye he watched Seth approach with a birthing knife in hand.

“Shall we put him back on life support?”

“No. He’s suffered enough. Let him pass.”

The curved blades Seth slung at Joshua cut the serpents from him causing Josh to fall to the ground in a heap. The horse headed man lifted Joshua’s unmoving body from the red spiral, brushed the biting snake heads off him and dumped him at the feet of Nephthys and Anubis.

“I’m sorry we didn’t come here sooner, Josh. I feel really bad about it. But we’re here now and we want you to know we love you and we hope you find a way to pull through. Craig, this is your daddy. He’s very sick and he needs your love.”

“I love you, daddy! Please get better.”

As Joshua looked up at Nephthys and Anubis, he saw the faces of his wife and his son. Hearing his son’s voice, he said his final goodbye and an apology. He said his final I love you. Then he relented, offering his neck to the dog who took hold and dragged him down the valley and under the ground.




The End