Detective Casmir was a tall man with an odd greyish complexion and dull green eyes. He always wore a grey trench coat and a long brimmed hat to match. His face looked old, lines on his cheeks and under his eyes were deeply embedded into his long face. He looked human but like a race of man, yet with features odd enough not to be of any possible mix of any known demographic. He was a necromancer and a detective, he solved crimes and fought black magic... makes sense right?
Probably the second most reoccurring character I have seen the world through the eyes of in dreams. I don’t know why I thought him up, or even when, he made an appearance in a short story I wrote in grade six English class so clearly I have been thinking about this character for a while.
I remember the first dream I saw the world through the eyes of Detective Casmir, even though it must have been so very long ago now. I was searching for Damien, child of Satan; yes that Damien. My journeys had brought me to England and I searched the magic in the air to hunt down the devil child. Interest fact about Detective Casmir he has limited ability to read people’s minds, this is a very good skill to have when you are searching from someone, being able to pick their thoughts out of a crowd, or sense where they are when in hiding, made Casmir the perfect candidate to hunt down Damien.
When I write about mind reading magic a lot of my ideas stemmed from this dream and others involving Casmir, the first basic problem with reading minds is that can you sort through the crowd of minds in a crowded place but can you tell whose thoughts are whose?. Second problem is the resistance of the human mind, not only do people keep others from reading their minds naturally people actually keep themselves from diving too deep into their own consciousness, large in part because people lie to themselves and project an image of who they think they are to themselves rather than a objective truthful image, this makes picking out peoples thoughts incredibly hard to find, let along manipulate. Lastly people don’t think alike, and this is true, some people think in images, some in numbers, some in words, most in a mix of everything, just like how some people naturally pick up on algebra and others understand the abstract people’s minds are a mess of highly personalized and complicated thought patterns that could easily make no sense to an outside observing looking in. So even when you are reading the right persons thoughts and you are reading them correctly you may not understand their thoughts.
Upon landing in England Casmir found refuge at a hotel room and opened his mind to the entire area, he began hearing thoughts from as far away as France and Scotland and the pain was terrible, until a collection of hideous inhuman thoughts came across his search. The devil child’s thought were very unlike any human and this made finding him easy for Casmir. Damien was attending a private school out in the country and he was graduating soon and just so happened to be the Valedictorian, Casmir knew this since Damien was thinking about it.
Detective Casmir had a few days to plan but he wasted no time getting to the school. Carefully asking around he was able to determine where the graduation ceremony would be, a great courtyard/garden in the center of the school, surrounded by the academic buildings. Casmir waited until nightfall and with a sniper rifle strapped to his back he climbed the scaffold of one of the buildings to get to the roof, the building he had chosen was due to the old fashion chimney, carefully Casmir slipped into the chimney stretched his legs our to brace himself as not to fall, made sure he was completely out of sight to anyone looking towards the roof of the building, and waited... until afternoon the next day.
The long night and uncomfortable position Casmir was in made for an unpleasant experience, but the pain in his/my legs was a necessary suffering, Damien must die. Casmir was nervous about the coming assassination; if the devil knew what the detective was about there would be hell to pay... literally. Then a calming thought came to me, the element of surprise was mine. There was no way the devil or his son Damien could possible know I was coming for him; he was not of this world.
Yeah an interesting side note, even though I saw the world through the eyes of Detective Casmir the idea that he was from another plane of existence or planet whatever the specifics were I never knew, I just accepted the idea that whatever Detective Casmir was, it wasn’t human, or at least not earthling human, and because Casmir was not of this world there was no way the demons of this world could prepare for his presence here, and there was no way they could hide Damien from his physic powers. A very calming thought indeed.
The thought kept being repeating in my head, the devils of hell never encountered the likes of me, they won’t suspect that I’m lying in wait to assassinate the devil’s son, this plan is going to work, all I have to do is wait a little longer, just a little longer.
The sun came up and even then I refused to move from my chimney hiding place, I waited until the sounds of the stage being set up was over and the sound of a crowd gathering late in the day before I peeked my head over the rim of the chimney. A crowd was there, but which one was Damien? I searched their thoughts the demonic presence was easy to find but he was mingled in the crowd, and if I were to miss my shot and Damien became aware of my presence his powers may prevent me from getting a second shot, so the solution was obvious wait until he gave his Valedictorian speech when he was on the stage in front of everyone, it would be the easiest shot. So I waited a while longer in my chimney hiding place waiting until the name “Damien” was called out and applause greeted the young Satan child. Swiftly and quietly I leapt from my hiding place and readied my rifle for my kill shot. The young Damien whom I had never seen with my eyes before was a handsome young blonde boy dressed in the school uniform, he seemed happy, and innocent but he couldn’t hide from my mind reading powers, so even though I saw a young boy with my eyes my mind saw him for what he really was a demon of hell. Damien said only a few words before my sniper sights were upon him, and then just as I was about to pull the trigger Damien stopped his speech and looked directly at me, I could see his eyes looking upon me through the sniper rifle. He only looked upon me for a second as soon as he saw me and I knew he had seen me I pulled the trigger.
In one very intense second I saw Damien fall lifeless to the ground and it was over. The crowd yelled in fright and now many eyes were upon me, but that didn’t matter I know I could escape, the people in the crowd were not my concern it was the demons of hell I need to worry about. Damien’s death would reach the notice of his father instantly and his wraith was that of hell... literally.
The crowd never had a chance to react to the disaster that followed. The earth opened up and walls of flame and lava covered the entire courtyard in seconds, there was a few screams but they were quickly drowned out by the sounds of raging flames and shaking earth. I saw glimpses of demons made of fire and others made of red flesh move among the lava and fire they stood well over thirty feet tall, some taller than the buildings. I didn’t look at them long I knew a sniper rifle was useless against such fiends. I turned and ran. I leapt from one building to the next, I heard the sounds of the buildings behind me burn and collapse as they were dragged deep into the hell pit. I leapt from the top of one building into the surrounding forest, it was a multiple story fall, I remember landing and rolling forward to lessen the damage of the fall. My legs and hands hurt from the fall but I didn’t care I could still stand and I could still run, and run I did.
I never looked back I just ran and ran, my heart screamed in pain and my legs began to quiver under my weight. I ran for hours. As the sun began to set I glanced back and I could still see the smoke in the sky from the hellfire. The devil, like so many evils in the world, did not want the world to know he existed, so as much as he must hate me for what I’ve done, he would not chase me through the country side of England with hell fire and demons, it would garner too much attention and he would lose what I possessed today, the element of surprise.
I took a brief moment to feel sorry for all the innocent people killed in the demon fury that followed Damien’s death, and rationalized it as worth it knowing how many more would have been killed had Damien been allowed to live.
After my legs had rested I began to walk again and I thought of something far more alarming, the demonic forces of evil now know Detective Casmir exists, I will have to be very careful in the future, this world was no longer a safe place for the necromancer detective.
That’s about the time I woke up.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
Falling
I remember falling....
I know why so many people fly in their dreams, you can’t feel the ground beneath your feet so your brain makes sense of the situation by convincing you that you are in the air, only when you don’t land your brain responds by assuming that you are flying. It’s that simple really.
In most dreams I do not so much fly as much as I make long leaps, glide, or levitate, usually it’s a glide. I try to move, actually twitching my legs in my bed, and since every step I take results with no ground beneath my feet I begin to make long gliding steps. That’s how it usually happens, though sometimes I make long leaps instead, sometimes I remain in one place levitating, sometimes I’m falling.
I have had so many dreams where I am falling, off of buildings, out of airplanes, in outer space and the planet’s gravity pulling me back home. No matter how preposterous the circumstances the falls are always long, and I mean impossibly long, sometimes the fall consumes the entire dream.
In a short fall, like out of building I always get to see the end of the fall, but the time it takes to land is unrealistically long. They always say you awake right before you hit the ground, but I guess I’m an odd sort of dreamer since I never awaken at that point, I always look down upon my fate and have one of two thoughts; calmly I contemplate death, I’m not kidding my exact thoughts are typically something to the effect of “well I had a good run,” or “well this is going to hurt, there’s a chance I’ll live,” the other thought is an almost arrogant declaration of invincibility where I am completely certain that this fall could not possible kill me. Regardless of my mindset I always survive, sometimes I’m surprised, sometimes not so much. Once I’ve hit the ground I get up and continue whatever adventure I was on in the dream, oddly surviving a fall that should have certainly killed me never registers as strange to me, and I never wake up because of it. That says something about me doesn’t it? A girl I like likes me? Impossible! This is a dream. However surviving a hundred story fall and walking away from it? Sure why not?
In a long fall, like the lost in space kind of falls, that stretch on for what seems like hours, those are the interesting falls. I just fall and think. I think about how I got into this situation and every dream it’s a new situation. I think about where I will eventually end up when I land. I start to look forward to the crash, cause by this time I have grown confident that I will survive because of some kind of dream logic, something like my spacesuit could probably keep me alive assuming I fall into water, and since the earth is two thirds water I got a two in three chance of surviving, or re-enter has burned me asunder yet so clearly I’m invincible, logic that makes no sense in reality but in dreams are quite compelling.
Sometimes the sense of invincibility forces me to assume my black knight identity, that man who could survive anything, sometimes I don’t even need to don my armour and I convince myself that Colin Kelly himself is in fact the un-killable man. It’s in the dreams where I fall endlessly and accept invincibility for myself that my thoughts become very interesting. I start to contemplate my immortality and how I could last so long, and it’s only natural because I simply am not ready to die. Even floating in space looking at stars in the distance waiting for one to pull me close enough to drag me to a planet, I look forward to the new adventure waiting for me when I get there. Sometimes it feels like centuries and millenniums pass while I fall towards a solar system, and the adventure becomes being lost in space and I start to wonder how many times worlds will die beneath my feet and leave me floating in darkness waiting for the gravitational pull of distance stars to pull me to a new world where I can try once again to fit in.
I remember falling, I fall so often in my dreams, yet an end never comes. It’s like every fall is a failure in life and we must endure countless falls before we learn to fly. I think that’s what I’m thinking when my imagination conjures such images, some failures are so great it feels like the end of the world, but there is such great comfort in knowing that how matter how long you fall, eventually you land, and if you are strong you will survive, and if you fall long enough are you not flying?
I know why so many people fly in their dreams, you can’t feel the ground beneath your feet so your brain makes sense of the situation by convincing you that you are in the air, only when you don’t land your brain responds by assuming that you are flying. It’s that simple really.
In most dreams I do not so much fly as much as I make long leaps, glide, or levitate, usually it’s a glide. I try to move, actually twitching my legs in my bed, and since every step I take results with no ground beneath my feet I begin to make long gliding steps. That’s how it usually happens, though sometimes I make long leaps instead, sometimes I remain in one place levitating, sometimes I’m falling.
I have had so many dreams where I am falling, off of buildings, out of airplanes, in outer space and the planet’s gravity pulling me back home. No matter how preposterous the circumstances the falls are always long, and I mean impossibly long, sometimes the fall consumes the entire dream.
In a short fall, like out of building I always get to see the end of the fall, but the time it takes to land is unrealistically long. They always say you awake right before you hit the ground, but I guess I’m an odd sort of dreamer since I never awaken at that point, I always look down upon my fate and have one of two thoughts; calmly I contemplate death, I’m not kidding my exact thoughts are typically something to the effect of “well I had a good run,” or “well this is going to hurt, there’s a chance I’ll live,” the other thought is an almost arrogant declaration of invincibility where I am completely certain that this fall could not possible kill me. Regardless of my mindset I always survive, sometimes I’m surprised, sometimes not so much. Once I’ve hit the ground I get up and continue whatever adventure I was on in the dream, oddly surviving a fall that should have certainly killed me never registers as strange to me, and I never wake up because of it. That says something about me doesn’t it? A girl I like likes me? Impossible! This is a dream. However surviving a hundred story fall and walking away from it? Sure why not?
In a long fall, like the lost in space kind of falls, that stretch on for what seems like hours, those are the interesting falls. I just fall and think. I think about how I got into this situation and every dream it’s a new situation. I think about where I will eventually end up when I land. I start to look forward to the crash, cause by this time I have grown confident that I will survive because of some kind of dream logic, something like my spacesuit could probably keep me alive assuming I fall into water, and since the earth is two thirds water I got a two in three chance of surviving, or re-enter has burned me asunder yet so clearly I’m invincible, logic that makes no sense in reality but in dreams are quite compelling.
Sometimes the sense of invincibility forces me to assume my black knight identity, that man who could survive anything, sometimes I don’t even need to don my armour and I convince myself that Colin Kelly himself is in fact the un-killable man. It’s in the dreams where I fall endlessly and accept invincibility for myself that my thoughts become very interesting. I start to contemplate my immortality and how I could last so long, and it’s only natural because I simply am not ready to die. Even floating in space looking at stars in the distance waiting for one to pull me close enough to drag me to a planet, I look forward to the new adventure waiting for me when I get there. Sometimes it feels like centuries and millenniums pass while I fall towards a solar system, and the adventure becomes being lost in space and I start to wonder how many times worlds will die beneath my feet and leave me floating in darkness waiting for the gravitational pull of distance stars to pull me to a new world where I can try once again to fit in.
I remember falling, I fall so often in my dreams, yet an end never comes. It’s like every fall is a failure in life and we must endure countless falls before we learn to fly. I think that’s what I’m thinking when my imagination conjures such images, some failures are so great it feels like the end of the world, but there is such great comfort in knowing that how matter how long you fall, eventually you land, and if you are strong you will survive, and if you fall long enough are you not flying?
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