The Mindstorm
Chronicles:
Chapter Twelve
A work of fiction? A work of non fiction? The work of insanity?
You decide.
The Post traumatic stress doesn't often allow you to not think. Especially with so much going on all of the time. Around and around the thoughts go until finally I drift off to sleep, or get up to find something to distract my weary mind. It was always difficult, not just because of the sorts of worries produced by stress, but because the thoughts could be so intriguing and compelling, even if they were bizarre to say the least.
Having alter personalities seemed to make it especially so. I say seemed because it had been so long that I couldn't remember what it was like to be one person. Sometimes just one person thinks too much, but MPD/DID may have a whole tribe of people thinking too much in what merely looks like one head. And then there is that I would expend no small amount of energy analyzing all of those thoughts, and trying to hold multiple possibilities about them all at the same time. Thinking itself could become like an exercise in heavy lifting. Especially when it came to the deeply personal and emotional thoughts one was often forced to wade through. In my world, anything could be too much to think about, my mind was always so busy. Maybe that's why Einstein kept forgetting where he lived. There were always more important things to think about. Just that not everybody bothers to think about them. Not seriously, anyway.
Sometimes it doesn't matter how real or unreal thoughts actually are in order to get you really thinking. For me it was always seeming as though anything were possible, at least until proven otherwise. That's the only way to face a vast unknown. Especially when you can't afford to allow yourself to be fooled by anything, least of all your own thoughts and emotions. Anything was possible, no matter how improbable. And only a very precious few things were ever certain. When you're uncertain about so many things it helps to remember who you are at all times, your truest self. Thus philosophy had become my greatest love. "What is the good life?" was always the most relevant question to anyone's existence. It's what defines you as a person, defines your character. I'd narrowed it down to three interacting principles through which I examined every effort to subvert my mind. Through which I examined all minds and everything that they produced. Love, righteousness, and mercy. They played upon each other in principle as if they were persons. God is love, which is why there is Righteousness and Mercy. And righteousness and mercy, like two brothers, love one another.
Sometimes I think about my lion alter. It's a phenomena which apparently occurs naturally somehow in MPD/DID mind control victims, much like the angel Michael alter. There simply wouldn't be any reasons for the Nazis to program someone that way. All I can say about that is that it sure seems to be naturally occurring, and sure seems real enough. But explaining any of this stuff which became wildly metaphysical, even spiritual, was something that would be a challenge to anyone. Who would listen anyway? It all sounds too crazy. Even speaking to religionists about such ideas only ever led to arguments concerning their "yes, but" theologies. The word "but" in such instances began to strike me as merely a dishonest replacement for a punctuation mark, a period. So in my own mind I simply heard "Yes."
The lion alter was a sort of background feeling I had for the longest time that would sometimes produce insights into lions, or make me come up with wild tales about them in that Aesop's metaphorical lessons for slaves kind of way. Eventually though, as they tortured me every night and day I fragmented all the more, but sometimes in the most interesting ways. And at least the highly unusual thoughts helped to keep the torturers interested enough to let it go on without interrupting the stream of thought with more torture. And that was reason enough to pursue even the strangest line of thinking, which normally one would have dismissed almost as soon as it began.
In some of these seeming flashbacks the angel Michael had decided to live as one of God's other creatures, something he hadn't done since they were created. He chose to be born as a lion. He gave himself a little extra advantage since he wasn't sure just how it would effect him. He was born a very large lion. And the other angels, as always, would learn from Michael's experience, and make sure that Michael didn't forget himself entirely, but would be sure to remember who and what he was, so that he would be sure to find his way home again.
Those kind of memories were never complete all at once, but began to come in flashbacks, and sometimes there were enough of them to eventually put together a more complete picture. I say memories because they are entirely first person experiences as though they were actual memories from the day before. But since it gets confusing I usually refer to my alters such as the lion as if they were someone else. Though you only experience the "otherness" of it after the fact.
There was a large tree that stood apart from the rest of the brush in a large clearing. He was bothered that the monkeys would come over to the tree where the pride rested in the shade during the heat of the day, and so he would chase the monkeys back into their own trees whenever they became too brazen. "Stupid monkeys", he thought, "why would they continue to risk their lives this way?" There were always answers to such questions, "They like the fruit from the tree." Well, he did see them eat the fruit. It didn't smell like it was worth eating and like it might make you sick, but perhaps that's just what monkeys ate. True enough, the monkeys didn't present any real danger, although they had sharp teeth and it wasn't worth risking an infection to actually catch one since there was so little meat to them anyway. Which is why he tolerated them sometimes rather than expend the energy in the heat of the day to chase them.
During these sessions, which usually occurred during times of psychological torture, you could feel what it was like to be a lion. Not only to have teeth and claws, and immense strength and agility, but also a sense of real authority that came from knowing one's place in things. While some few humans might want to trade places with lions, no lion would ever be anything other than a lion. If I only had one word to describe their consciousness, their being, the word would be "clarity".
Lions are hugely telepathic, at least they are with other lions. When the drought came, hunting had become so scarce there was nothing left to do but to hunt a remaining lone rogue elephant or to starve to death. The pride had never hunted an elephant before, in fact it may have been the first time ever that lions hunted elephants, but it would leave an impression on the telepathic, instinctual memory of the species. It was just Michael's nature. He had always been a strategist and a tactician. Absolutely necessary for facing an opponent as large as an elephant, even if you are about a third larger than any African lion the world had ever seen. Michael also loves a challenge, but he could never really seem to find one unless he first found some way to handicap himself. It's how he learned, how he evolved, how he loved, just like everyone else. There were two things that Michael was always proving to himself. He was no despot, and he was no panty waist.
Following their lead lion, the pride spread out into an on line formation behind the elephant and began to stalk their prey. The enormous lion began, from behind, to challenge the elephant causing him to turn and threaten to defend himself to the end. Meanwhile, some of the more experienced lionesses and young males
moved up on the flanks until the elephant was surrounded. Encouraged by the display of their leader personally challenging such a huge animal, the most experienced of the female hunters played her own leadership role on command and began to attack from behind, the real target being the elephant's hind legs. Soon the elephant was spinning in first one direction and then the next, only to be attacked from behind in every instance. First, by the experienced ones, and then as the enormous prey weakened the younger lions joined in the attack. The hunt had begun during the night, but had lasted well into the day. By the time the huge animal had lost it's legs and become fairly defenseless, and then finally laid it's massive head down for the last time, the entire pride was exhausted. What lions had always known humanity would one day discover. That size and brute strength are no match for communication and teamwork.
He hated drinking from mud puddles worst of all. But a few weeks after the rains came life was good again. But Michael always had things to do, and so later the next spring he met his own demise when he was bitten by a hippopotamus while chasing it's young. It just seemed to come out of nowhere. As he lay dieing from a pierced lung he thought, "I should have known better". But neither Michael, nor lions, much question the mysterious rule of destiny. As his final strength was leaving him, he remembered all of the times the angels had spoken to him so as to remind him of who he really was. "No wonder," he thought, it was as he had always warned his pride. Take the older sick ones first, leave the young ones alone if you can. All creatures will fight harder for love than they will for anything else, even their own survival.
It had always been his fascination, even as a lion, why creatures behaved as they did.
End Chapter Twelve
