melancholia

The Caterpillar is smoke and fog. Smoke and fog, smog. Portmanteaus. Exactically. Smoke and fog and dreams and nightmares. Because the smoke chokes anyone that comes near, but him, because he is used to his mind's pollution. He has created his mind's pollution.

The Caterpillar needs his fog, to hide him from the curious eyes of Wonderland. No one can see through the dark smoke from his hookah except for the Caterpillar. The Caterpillar's eyes pierces through everything (smoke, fog, lies).

The air is heavy with lies and nightmares (sweetened by fairytales and childish wishes) and the Caterpillar just keeps breathing.

Oh! How the Caterpillar wishes he could be left alone! He scares away everyone with questions they can't answer ("who are you?") and finds a new place for his pipe. He doesn't mind, though, when they answer honestly (like a small little girl-I don't know who I am-At least I knew who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then...). The Caterpillar gives Alice a clue, because she is trying hard to find herself. But the Caterpillar hates the Cat (Oh! And how!), who does nothing but answer his questions with questions of his own (Who do you think I am? Who are you?). The Caterpillar can tell that the Cat knows exactly who he is, he just won't tell. Lies and secrets, lies and secrets like the blackest of smokes (still the Caterpillar sees). The Caterpillar thinks that the Cat is worse than tobacco. But the Cat laughs and still vanishes in the smoke.

The Caterpillar sees through smoke and mirrors, because he knows how to look. He gazes with obsidian eyes, bottomless, calculating and seizes the actual from the realm of possibilities.

The Caterpillar knows more about death and darkness than he'd care to, but he smokes anyway. It's all fine by him. When the Caterpillar disappears, he turns into the very smoke that he breathes (the very same smoke-the very same air-what does it matter?). The Caterpillar is never going to evaporate, he has too much substance, sunlight won't break him down, and moonlight will only help him shine anyway.

There used to be a time when the Caterpillar didn't smoke. What was he then? He was not what he is now, or perhaps in not being what he was, he was exactly what he is. Quite right. In fact, the Caterpillar is always right. And he knows it. He has never been wrong, not even once. He only changes his mind.

The Caterpillar doesn't care for tea. It's such a bore, and chamomile is hardly as soothing as his pipe. He'd rather not go to unbirthday parties or jubilees anyway. He has his own fireworks.

He knows which side of the mushroom makes you grow and which side makes you shrink, but he shall never take a bite from either. The Caterpillar is perfectly fine being just three inches tall. Just because he is a caterpillar doesn't mean he can't reach the sky. Just because he is a caterpillar doesn't mean he can't have wings.

When he is twelve years old, Tom Riddle discovers that loyalty could be bought with a symbol and a smile. He's from the Muggle world; he knows the story of Adolf Hitler, unlike the elitist pure-bloods within Hogwarts' walls. They worry endlessly about Grindelwald, but Tom scoffs at the name - it is the Muggle war that ought to be watched and learned from with fascinated interest.

He collects pictures and articles, all written on cheap Muggle paper, and eventually knows enough to turn that knowledge against the flimsy wizards he lives among. They are like paper themselves: all creamy parchment with expensive gold borders, and Tom can write on them with ease.

A symbol and smile, because Hitler is a captivating speaker and Tom has that talent too. Even the professors stop to listen when he speaks, hanging on his every word. They are both charismatic enough to draw attention, make people believe that they are special, favoured, wanted. And even though Tom has no need for friends and doesn't really want them either, the charade is useful and he keeps it up.

Unlike Hitler, he discovers his talents early, makes good use of them while young. He has no father hold him back, after all, unlike Hitler who lived under the thumb of his own father for sixteen years. Tom has known all along that he wanted to stand out, unlike the Austrian man who languished in a prison of unused talent before finally finding the key.

However, in a way, Tom has been living within his father's shadow, haunted by the man who never wanted him for sixteen long years. And this is why it feels so good to raise his uncle's wand and say coldly, "Avada Kedavra!" and watch green light engulf his father's body, sending him crumpling gracelessly to the ground. His father's heartbeat ceases suddenly and the shadow is gone from Tom's life.

The sunshine feels so good.

He wonders whether Hitler ever felt that way, whether the killing was what made it all worthwhile. But then again, aside from a brief stint as a messenger during the Muggles' First World War, Hitler hasn't seen front-line action. It probably means nothing to him, Tom thinks with some disappointment. It's probably nothing more than a set of numbers and statistics in sterile reports.

Tom prefers the feeling of being properly involved, feeling fear and pain well up in his victims' minds. Legilimency is a drug and the exhilaration he feels from knowing he is in control is the soaring high.

But Tom hides this behind a mask of perfect Prefect; brilliant student; handsome, charming sixteen year-old. There are always eyes watching, and they are piercing blue. Dumbledore.

But even Dumbledore can't stop the meetings happening right under his nose, can't stop the way they idolise Tom as the saviour of the wizarding world. The purifier. Just like Tom knows Hitler was idolised for his view on an Aryan race, perfect and unassailable. Tom has plans for wizards and Muggles alike, but they involve magic & blood and unfortunately blonde hair & blue eyes doesn't figure at all.

If Tom is like Hitler, then Muggles are like Jews and there can be only one Jesus in the end. Tom's collection of articles grows yellow and cracked with age. Hitler's face crumbles to pieces.

Dumbledore's eyes watch, bright blue jewels that seem to look inside Tom. But Dumbledore can't be everywhere and Tom has had his victories, the Chamber, the meetings and now finally the Mark.

Loyalty can be bought with a smile and a symbol and Tom has the former in abundance. He decides upon the final ingredient on his seventeenth birthday, snake & skull twining around in an eternal & perfect pattern. Immortality and Slytherin, bound together in blood and burns and promises.

And he stands in the centre of a circle, speaking softly, but he knows that they are straining their ears, desperate to hear him. It only takes a smile, calm and reassuring, to have them nodding in agreement to everything he says.

They all scream, every single one of them, when his wand touches their flesh and green fire twists around their forearm. He revels in it: like control, pain is powerful. Privately, he considers it part payment for the wrongs they've done him, the bullying, the taunts, the exclusion. It is deeply ironic to see them receive the Mark, on their knees before the penniless half-blood they used to scorn.

Being half-Muggle is a taint, he knows it is, but there are advantages to it as well. He knows the Muggles deeper and more intimately than the pale-faced pure-bloods ever could, knows their every despicable quirk and idiosyncrasy. He can hate them purely now.

He's heard rumours that Hitler was part Jew and it has that same ironic taste to it. Tom knows it's true - it must be. You cannot hate something from a distance.

And then of course there's the war that continues every day. Muggles and wizards, but death is still death no matter if it comes in the rapid-fire blasts of automatic weaponry or a green jet of light. The edges become blurry, like old photographs, or ink in water, or perhaps memories. It only takes a smile to have Slughorn spill his knowledge of Horcruxes to Tom and the taste of victory is sweet in the boy's mouth. Soon the memories and their blurred edges and sepia colouring are written into a black book, given life by his father's last breath. Tom finds this highly ironic, but of course irony is nothing new for him.

Perhaps it is because he is the mirror image of a man he's never met, not physically (because his physical mirror is dead) but in every other way. The dramatism, the symbolism, the small shards of coincidence that form the larger picture; Tom has lived with these for a very long time.

But of course, that all changes. Mirror images are not made to last - eventually the clone will fade away, disappearing when its counterpart turns away from the mirror.

Tom decides that Hitler is the image and that he is truth and 1945 proves this beyond all doubt. Because Hitler was only a Muggle, only a useless sack of flesh containing nothing more than bone and sinew; no magic to scour his blood and make it pure. His death proves that he is nothing but a reflection...or a prophecy.

All his life Tom has believed that there is nothing more shameful than death, and maybe this is what sets him apart from the Muggle. Tom would never choose to die. Tom would never die at all.

The newspapers said it was suicide, gun to the head, single shot. Tom does not save the article. Nor does he keep the collection any longer. They burn the next morning, spell-fire consuming them, and Tom Riddle has won the nonexistent battle of the purifiers. Hitler's face curls and shrivels and slowly becomes white ash, burning in the Slytherin hearth. Briefly, Tom wonders if it's an omen. After all, the punishment for breaking a mirror is seven years bad luck - and Tom has just smashed his own mirror image. But for now, the price is worth paying.

1945 - A mirror, and Tom was the one to turn away.

sweet soft spoken singer boy,
you polish your nails and keep
the feminine appeal on.
you were just as deceitful then
as you're a liar now,
and i wonder about the
other self you keep along side
your shelf of used pre-packaged condoms.

boy meets girl,
boy pretends to be with boy.
a gender garage sale that was
created with the bisexuality in
you and i.

they all loved Marilyn's sex appeal,
and Jessica Savitch was always willing
to put up a fight,
but she lost the battle to the golden locks
and her cocaine trail.

i know what you're thinking,
so don't even.

humanity finds God on the magazine aisle,
CD rack, our own American Idol.
you were always willing to sell it out,
spread your legs,
and pretend to be the new Messiah with
eloquent words written in praise of you.
all girls love to be whores in the bedroom,
Martha Stewart white linen table cloth
that was bought just for you.
we know men demand their virgins to remain tight.
but i'm still,
i'm still coming now.

down the leg and to the bedpost,
with my ankle all tied.
twisted,
twisting,
the psychological frame work of your mentality.

and the world falls into silence when a
groupie bitch decides to speak her mind.
it was almost as intense as my date with Charlie,
but never as extreme,
never as passionate as your lyrical daily bread.
you as a Messiah never bled when you were
symbolically crucified on a St. Andrews cross
and asking God why the pleasure has to end.
maybe you feel too much,
maybe you feel nothing at all,
or maybe you're as spiritually elite as
Jesus, because you demand that your
followers are like Bartholomew
being skinned.

but you'll fail every time when your soul
is only captured in the remembrance of a limelight,
and the humanity you claimed would never die.

In a 1917 essay titled Mourning and Melancholia, Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis, began a career-long meditation on the manner in which the human psyche deals with loss. "Mourning," he wrote, "is regularly the reaction to the loss of a loved person.... We rest assured that after a lapse of time it will be overcome, and we look upon any interference with it as inadvisable or even harmful." This is grief at the "normal" register. By contrast, "melancholia", though sharing many of the surface characteristics of "mourning", is identified by Freud as a pathological illness, marked by an inability to recover from the loss, to "overcome" it, and to return to daily activities. Thus, "the complex of melancholia behaves like an open wound," a wound that refuses to heal, a loss that cannot be salved.

ask me who i am and i'll always answer 'anyone
else'. i aspire to anonymity.

iii. sometimes it feels like i'm too late, like
the whole world has passed me by. but even if it has
i'm still sitting here with my syllables and word counts.
i spend my time thinking about
all the girls i'll never be. i wonder what they're doing.

iv. if i were them i'd look at the world
through the electric eyes. live like new york city,
neon lights & showgirl shine. i'd wake up to the sunrise
and yoga and vanilla cappuccino: i'd eat candied apples
and wear my hair down. at night i would run the streets:
breathe in copper-teardrops breathe out indigo-anger.

here i am, sinning six ways to sunday and singing
in the shower. somehow i'll shed this scarecrow skin.

He is older than his father, taller and broader. Dad seems so young. It's just wrong, Dad being innocent and Mom being a hunter-his worldview is completely tossed upside down. Dad's got no clue what's out there, and Mom... she's not the angel he's always pictured, remembered her as. She's just a girl, rebelling against her parents, wanting out of the life. She's Sam, ten years before Sammy even exists.

They're so young. He towers over Dad, practically, and he could break Mom in half. He knows more than both of them put together-Mom may've been hunting from the cradle (and Grandpa sure is one scary bastard), but she's barely eighteen. She's a kid. Dad's been to war and come back, but he's still just a boy. He's still shy and awkward, stumbling through a courtship with the woman he'd spent over twenty years getting vengeance for.

Dean can't catch his breath. His parents, his grandparents, Azazel-all twisted together, blood and even more fucking deals with fucking evil. Even going thirty-six years into the past, to back before November, isn't enough to escape. Azazel's there, fucking with his family, killing his family... Dean's hands itch for the demon-killing Colt, the shining blade. He's the one that killed Azazel, Mom and Dad's murderer, and now his grandparent's killer, too. He's the one that got Sam killed, which made him responsible for Dean's deal-and he killed Dad twice over. He killed Dad to get Mom's deal, and he killed Dad as part of Dad's debt for Dean's life, and Dean wants to strangle the fucker with his bare hands, to rend him and tear him. Dean learned a lot in Hell, and he really really wants to put it to use almost-forty years in the past but Castiel's hand is warm on his shoulder and he's waking up in now.

He didn't change a thing except for the worse.

Dad was so young, so naïve, so hopeful. Mom saw a way out, a way into the life Sam still dreams about sometimes, the life none of them ever seem able to have.

"Why did you even send me back?" he demands. He wants to hurt Castiel like he hurts now, wants to make the angel cry-if angels can cry. He never played with an angel in Hell. Demons can sob oceans, if twisted the right way, and he found hundreds.

Castiel has no meaningful answer. His eyes are sad, unfathomably deep, with knowledge Dean will never be able to grasp. His eyes are holy, God's light shining out of the human vessel-a man who prayed for this. Does he regret it now?

The angel offers platitudes, the words with slightly wrong inflections, and Dean's anger just keeps spiraling. He gets so angry with no reason, and he can't lash out at Sam. Not at Sammy.

"If you don't stop him," Castiel says gently, "we will."

Dean misses the clarity of Hell. Life was so much easier there.