Joan d’Arc

Blind Spot: A Gnostic Journey

 

The automatic doors of the SpeedyMart flew open with a swoosh, and out into the dense fever of a dog day stepped Adam Kadmon. His ass hit the seat of his Honda just as a diminutive creature climbed into a sidecar on his rear passenger door.

 

Adam checked over his right shoulder and saw not the bulging cranium of his demon brother, but the vacant blackness of the blind spot. He pulled out of the parking lot into the life of twitching traffic. 

 

Adam sprinted into his apartment building with the fiery-eyed Jinn, Aamar, hovering on his right, three feet in back of his head. As he opened the closet door in his bedroom, an ultramarine radiance lit up both their impish faces. Inside were shelves containing about a hundred ecstatic marijuana plants growing in little paper cups.

 

In the next few hours, he packed the plants into trash bags, and just before midnight began loading them into the back of his car. He would transplant the little paper cups into a sunny grassland he had spotted in the woods. As Adam drove north on Route 95 from Providence, Aamar sat low in the evolutionary eye pod his ancient ancestor got by wishing for it.

 

Just across the Massachusetts border, Adam pulled over near a wooded area and sat for a minute as a couple of cars sped by. When all seemed quiet, he got out and began to rummage through the trash bags looking for his shovel. At that moment, a cop car cruised by and the officer caught a fleeting look at his silhouette. The cop pulled a U-turn in the median strip and radioed a call for assistance: "I got a male on 95 near exit 34 ready to dump a large bag into the woods. Could be a dead body."

 

"Jesus H. Christ!" Adam swore as he ran around to the driver's side, fumbling to get the keys out of his pants’ pocket. The car lurched as he put it in gear. Aamar hunkered down in his Lamarckian joyride for the thrill of a century. There was a wild look in his eyes, which he acquired from his fiendish Jinn lineage—lower in rank than the angels but wielding free will like a Medieval truncheon.

 

A mile down the road, the spinning lights of two cruisers danced in his rearview mirror. Adam let up on the gas and pulled over to the dirt shoulder. A muffled speaker voice ordered him out of the car with his hands in the air, but he felt paralyzed. Instead, he glanced on the passenger seat at his red-handled pliers and decided instantly to commit suicide by cop.

 

Adam grabbed the pliers and jumped out of the car, pointing them at the officer. Bullets flew from one officer’s gun in the second cruiser, shattering the windows in the first. Three cops began pumping metal until the space between law and despair was crammed with bullets. He looked down in bewilderment.

 

“You’re not dead,” the Jinn informed him.

 

“I’m not dead!”

 

He took off in long strides into the woods. Trees hummed past and branches whipped his face, but the pain was nothing compared to the sharp sting of the errant bullet that had pierced his shin. He made his way deep into the forest, which slowly turned into swamp, as night burned into morning.

 

Adam plopped exhausted behind a large oak tree, holding his leg wound tightly to stop the bleeding. The swamp crawled with disgusting wet noises of unseen life forms; the terror of a snake crawling up his back competed with the horror of a police dog baring its fangs in his face. He passed out with the sound of gruff canine snuffling in the distance.

 

Aamar ran his genetic imprint processor in the background. This was going to be an extraordinary event. He had never seen anything quite like it, although he thought he had seen it all. He knew the quirks of Adam’s ancestors, how they got into the messes they got into, but he could never talk much sense to them—they would continue doing what they were programmed to do. They had learned herb cultivation straight from the indigenous tribes, and they always ended up on the wrong side of the law because of it.

 

He had Adam knocked out for the moment and he was watching over him, or maybe he was pretending to. He was itching to get high. He had addictions to be fed. Nightmares to exude.

 

Adam’s cell phone fell open on his lap and electric images danced out of the cerulean screen. The figures of long dead ancestors reanimated the woods. The Jinn began the dirty little game that can only be played by omniscient observers. He satiated his hunger on the thought worlds of a procession of pitiable humans, back to the beginning when his Qareen was assigned to the first-born, the Primordial Man, Adam Kadmon.

 

A steady stream of strangers in a strange land passed by on their way from labor in the cornfields, back to the farmhouse; from their backbreaking existence on the third plane to the place they called Home; back to the One, the Twin, the soul mate waiting on the shore, only to whisper goodbye again, float around the fallopian bend in little egg ships and take the miserable wet plunge into linear time, into ego and effect, into individuality and chaos.

 

Aamar sucked on their thought forms like eating meat off their bones. His life force was revived as the ghostly memories of gone humans flooded his hard drive. He felt not one hair above a sin-eater, both disgusted and high, trapped in a hideous existence from which he could not even imagine escaping.

 

Black shadows screeched overhead and shat their dinner on the Earth’s face. The wings of giant, bat-like creatures fanned the flames of hell’s transcendence to this plane, as nature’s hand impartially plucked aloud each atom of human agony. The figures of fantastic rumors fought and fucked, gave birth, and perished, while blood poured from all conceivable orifices. Women wailed in the Medieval labyrinths of raging inquisitors, where no right answer echoed off crimson-stained walls.

 

With massive hard-ons, the wizards of idolatry tortured mothers and daughters in the name and celebrity of a perfect deity. The palpable wound on the Christ’s side became a gaping vulva into which a gathering of mighty demons inserted gargantuan phalluses. The blood-soaked scene put the Jinn into a frenzy of euphoria.

 

Adam Kadmon’s foot jerked as he dreamed the schizoid tape reels of the Jinn. Childhood memories of his parents’ incessant arguments were garbled with unrecognizable signals from another place and time. A spinning globe of brilliant blue cacophony flew in and hovered above his head like a neon orchestra; the luminous logo bestowed upon him absolute knowledge of music and mathematics, astrology and agriculture, medicine and architecture, until he was data-trashed to the verge of madness.

 

A small tube was lowered from an azure symbol and a white cord appeared. He was instructed to touch the string, and as he did so he was sucked instantly up into the ductwork of a clanging banging super-machine. As he climbed out the other end of the duct, another one appeared above his head even smaller than the first, this also with a white cord. He wondered how he could possibly fit through this small opening, but when he touched the cord, he found himself climbing out the other end of the tube. A third time, Adam Kadmon touched a white string above his head and emerged from the tube into a dark watery world. 

 

As above, so below and before him—the unbelieving did not matter. To his left and to his right, a canal wound its way toward him, and when the waterway reached the place where he stood, it turned a corner and flowed away before him like his dismay. In the distance, the two rivers merged and emptied into a great sea of extraordinary shapes and penetrating colors. On his right, Adam could see half-egg cups connected like children’s boats and in each egg sat a human being. They seemed to be stuck in a traffic jam. In the last egg, a man stood up and began to rant about the meaning of this absurdity. Looking closer he saw that the irritated man was he.

 

Two human forms appeared as through a shimmering veil across a splendidly decorated table. Adam sat down at the great table and clicked on the TV monitor. In the middle of the screen, the Mother-Father archetypes came into sharper focus. He touched the screen for “human trans” and turned up the sound, realizing he had arrived in the middle of a heated dialogue. 

 

“Who cares how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” said a glowing golden figure, as he took a swig of alcohol from his canteen.

 

“But this is the best angel you ever made!” said a black Amazon priestess wearing a massive python around her neck. “Don’t you remember how you loved him when he was a baby?”

 

“Yes, Sophia,” the figure beamed brighter when he laughed. “Cute little fella, he was. It took him a long time to walk. Falling all the time.”

 

“It’s not his fault he’s falling all the time!” implored the First Mother. “He was born innocent. You give him no help at all, and you make promises you never keep. You booze it up every Saturday.”

 

“He’s innocent, my ass!” the Infinite Godhead jeered. “He’s a devil! He’s not made in my image!”

 

“But that’s not true, Yahweh! There are copies of the designer children spread out in all quads now,” said Sophia. “And they are all Imagio Deo. Even you can’t tell them apart.”

 

The Absolute One was smashed again at 3:00 in the afternoon on the sixth day of creation, and he had left the program running on its own. Beyond the two figures, Adam could see the primal Archons at work: banks of faceless entities with fingers flying on colossal keypads. They were adding more space continuously. It was tricky; they had to make it look like the image was moving out and way, super objects were growing further apart. But when the eye zoomed in on the smallest particle, it stood still and looked back at you. It mimicked your own thoughts. It made a copy of you. 

 

It was a feat of brilliant programming.

 

“Incubus! You always had to be on top!” roared Yahweh in inebriated fury. “Demon bitch! Night hag” he sputtered. “You knew the first one was a mistake—he was supposed to be destroyed!” The Father’s light flickered as he cursed the Adam of the First Mother’s tribe. “You stole him from me in the night to live unaware of my Divine Will. His bones will rot in the diseased mud of your tribe. He’ll have to find his own way back now.”

 

Sophia was not finished with her old man. “Divine Will? You gloating bastard. You think you’ve got it all writ to the end of time, and you can just sit back and get sauced. You turned your back on him! He has no handshake or high five to get through the gate; knows not the answer to any riddle. No myth now carries him back to the eternal twin of light and sound, just words and images skewed by the patriarchal tongue of kingship and phallus!”

 

Rising from her chair, Sophia chided, “You fell asleep on your own watch—the data patch was necessary. He is the spawn of technology now. It’s his only way off this prison planet.”

 

The Primal Son couldn’t take his eyes off the fearless woman who was giving his father lip. “Your Logos has expired! You are defunct!” screamed the First Mother.

 

“That towering lie will never lift him off the ground!” the Father bellowed, red in the face. “He will die in the tidal waves of the seventh rapture as Nasa’s hand lifts for takeoff; no demon seed takes to heaven from your vile alligator swamp!” the infinite Godhead quaked in exasperation as the Universe inhaled.

 

A set of golden scales appeared on the table and with trembling hand the Father began to balance them.

 

“You’re drunk! And you’re trifling with your obsolete tools,” Sophia snapped.

 

“Enough of your razzmatazz, woman!” shouted the Father.

 

There was no sweat on the First Mother’s brow and no quivering lip, as her monstrous black wings fanned out behind her and she rebuked the Father’s curse. “Who wants to live in the stately mansions of your fraternity; they are only fit for animals who shit where they eat. Adam will find his way back by the light of his own forehead, you old coot.”

 

The kitchen radio blared in a machine-like tongue, reading off blocks of numbers followed by high-pitched beeps. After the beeping signal, new numbers followed in a different pattern. Adam took out his pocket calculator and did the secret arithmetic his mother Sophia had taught him.

 

He knew the codes were instructions to gigantic ships pulling into the docking stations in the L-5 orbit of the moon; more life forms were coming every day, but not all would make it through the electronic cage of the custodians. Those were the lucky ones, who got to simply inhale and exhale with the Eternal One. The machine read the numbers, while little bumper cars shaped like half-eggs weaved through the watery realms of the great Archons, the archangels of creation, the custodial minions of the omitted program creator.

 

As the first sunbeams put life into motion, Aamar woke his brother. As Adam’s ego touched his eyeballs, the thoughtrons of present time mingled with the molecules from his dream space. Over there, information is color, but here, where every choice has a consequence, information is pain. The color bled from his face as anguish took its place.

 

“Good day, master! I always liked that deer in the headlights look on you,” said the Jinn.

 

Adam walked over and whizzed off the edge of a rock, hiding his manhood from the Jinn, as his forebears were instructed. He stared through garbled nothingness, seized by dread. Old thought patterns resurfaced. Fear loomed large in this brown shitty place—the path of least resistance was again the death card.

 

His mind reeled with the foul cinema of dreamtime: His sisters wailed over his pallid corpse stuffed into an old high school suit, as the lid of the coffin was closed shut. The pallbearers dropped his coffin down the steps of the church and chunks of brain slid out of his eyes. Just then a tidal wave swept the coffin up into a twirling funnel and returned it to the tree from which it came. He would be snug there in the womb of first nature.

 

Adam wobbled as he stood and realized he had lost blood during the night. He leaned against the big oak for support. As he scanned the area, several mounds of rocks invoked a discernible pattern, and he wondered if he had slept in the middle of an ancient burial ground.

The Jinn pulled a rusted tin can of used wish particles out of his ass and waved it, teasing him with the three wishes routine. Adam spun around, setting his gaze on a dumpster in the distance, on the edge of the woods behind the SpeedyMart.

 

Limping over to the stinking pit, the Primordial Man surveyed the discarded choices of human souls on their journey through red lights, green lights and the tempting yellow ones that symbolize free will. This was the grab bag of the Universe. He chose a yellow 12-pack of Twinkies and dashed under cover of the woods with his breakfast.

 

The Primal Son gorged on the stale yellow cakes until a heaviness permeated his soul. He felt the weight of his actions in this world compounded by another malevolence seeping in from somewhere else. It was more than just bad decisions added up; it was like someone was playing Monopoly with his soul. It came in violent waves, and he had no control over it. It seemed punctuated with a question, then a feeling of intense nausea.

 

“Walk with me along the path of error!” screamed the sin eater.

 

Adam heaved out dry cake to his left. Above him a crow cried out.

 

Then it came again.

 

“Walk with me on the Left Path, my brother!”

 

Adam wretched a mouthful of cake to his left side. The crow cawed again.

 

“Abandon your Father, who does not love you!”

 

Adam puked in the air a third time to his left and rose, dragging his leg in the direction of the SpeedyMart. He walked in and began to shop for various items. Pepsi. Slim Jim’s. Cigarettes. Matches. And some rope. He would sling it over the tree limb, and they would find him dangling from it. He had seen the picture in his mind, and he felt curiously distanced. It didn’t matter anymore because it wasn’t really him; his real self was somewhere beyond all these meaningless trials and tribulations. He was sick of playing out the same rote behaviors; perhaps a new child would be born in his place, under different circumstances with different parents.

 

But he had already blown his death wish on an ancient family dispute over stale breakfast. He had been tricked again into making a choice by default—the only choice left after running out of choices. The slick illusion of free will shackled his ankles; what good is free will where there is a blind spot you cannot see around.

 

As he stood in line with an armload of sundries, the young woman behind the register eyed him with a look of absentminded recognition. He looked away, realizing he was sporting his night in the woods: muck covered his shirt and blood stained his pants. The woman’s smile faded as she stepped toward the manager, whispering without moving her lips, “That’s the guy they’ve been looking for on TV.”

 

Adam stepped up to the counter and put down his last supper, dropping the Slim Jim’s on the floor. As he bent to pick them up, Aamar whispered in his right ear: “It’s up to 200 million this week.”

 

“And give me two quick picks,” he said to the maiden behind the counter. He put down a twenty-dollar bill and said, “Keep the change.”

Together the brothers walked out into a parking lot full of red lights flashing. “Get down on the ground!”

 

Adam pushed his face into the pavement, as Aamar stood over him with his arms crossed. He had already taken several bullets for him. He would not have minded a few more but this seemed a better solution.

 

Aamar hovered over his brother, protecting him as best he could. He knew damn well the laws of operation in the world of the fallen. Man’s laws are the only laws here.

 

 

 

Joan d'Arc is the author of Friends of Apis Radio: Fabulist Fiction Tales, a work of fabulism and supernatural horror. Her fiction has also appeared in Danse Macabre, The Wedding Cake House Anthology, and Huntergatheress Journal. Her speculative fiction follows decades of writings on supernatural, occult, UFO, and Forteana subjects, dozens of which were published in such collections as Paranoia Magazine, UFO Magazine, Namaste (UK), Secret and Suppressed II, The Universal Seduction, Wake Up Down There!, UFO Digest, and more. She is the past publisher of Paranoia Magazine (1992–2012), Newspeak Katazine (1995-1997) and HunterGatheress Journal (Vol. 1, 2008, Vol. 2, 2009), published in Providence, Rhode Island. She is the author of Space Travelers and the Genesis of the Human Form, and Phenomenal World, both published by The Book Tree, and Conspiracy Geek, published by Sisyphus Press. She is the co-editor of The Conspiracy Reader and The New Conspiracy Reader, translated into Japanese and Romanian.