Extract: Short Story

The Taming of The Ignoramus by Raeez Jacobs

Here is a piece taken from a story, that I am currently experimenting with. It has so much potential, to grow into a full novel, but I am not keen on the idea, since I don't feel that now is an apt time to be lending myself, to the arduous task of prose writing. The Black Crystal was the first novel I wrote, of about 29 chapters and I am still working on that, after writing the last word on the date of 21 December 2010. I wrote "When The Jersey Talks"-a semi-autobiography after that, and then "The Sex life of a Dreamer" (which has nothing to do with sex actually, but is the austere story of a demented, schizophrenic narcissist who becomes an enraged killer, but masquerades as a clinical pyschologist, being not only unusually intelligent, but also egregiously deceptive) I have deleted When the Jersey Talks, and "Sex Life of A Dreamer" which is being currently edited by my ex english professor, Dr. Michelle Adler, is also stored on my best friend's hardrive and then my sleezy ex, who I had to literally beg to delete...eventually. Trust me, it's deleted...I checked. I worked hard to get that out of the real prude of monstrosity who probably would have published my book whenever he thought suitable- when he needed the cash or something. Anyway, before I go off on a tangent...have a wonderful time reading this extract, while I work on the rest and most of all, be riveted by it.

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"Isis," Shiloh had said softly and surreptitiously, as if he was trying not be heard. "When the equinox starts, you must then make yourself ready; open up to the elements that will prevail before you. Now's the time to reflect on all those aberrations; why you despise your life-givers, why you can't live with your own image, and why your heart is not in its rightful place. It's not that you are special, or that you have chosen for anything, Isis, it's simply that you are begging of yourself, to bring about the change you consciously want, but subconsciously prevent, through meddling in what rarely should matter anyway." She felt her heart yelp slightly, as every word left his speech cavity. There was not much allure in his gaze nor his touch this time; now she just felt hatred and opposition- she felt like the other, in the world where not even Shiloh was someone she could call brother; all were enemies of her state, and her only allies were the shadows and the stark voices.
"What did Jung say about the self?" He asked her, casually, as if it were an exchange between two friends, ascertaining a fact just before an exam.
"That the self is not what happened to it..." she cleared her throat and looked out into the black city through the window behind her; there was only darkness, and a streetlight flickering, repeatedly like a frantic wire, on and off while the street remained unoccupied. She imagined a shadow egress behind a nearby building, but shook her head at the thought and continued to speak: "the self is what it chooses to become."
"Nice...Isis," his voice became stern, to which she brought all her attention; he was going to something worthy. "You are never the reason, and you are never the answer. It is not a consequence of your birth and it is not your birthright. Nothing you can see, feel, or touch belongs to you, and so how do you blame yourself for the effects you reap therefrom? No one preordained, and certainly you have not been cursed. You need to come to understand that life is a borrowed state of survival, whereby we are merely meant to survive; get by, carry on, live, try, achieve, fail, all those things that make us who we are inside. What we do on the outside is not so much about those aspects, Isis, it's about what we've seen done there and what's still being done there, that creates that very false impression within us. It can only feel ugly, if you take it in under that description. Don't be defeated by your own world and people, let it and them be..." He closed her palm in his fist and brought it to his lips. She was crying efficaciously and shaking like a wet pup. "Rule in your head, and be governed by your intentions, not the philosophies of others."
Candle-light burst into the room suddenly, upon the three candles that had just been novice and unlit, one between the two of them. He laughed at her surprise, and rose to get a decanter of whiskey from a nearby cabinet.

"But Shiloh," she began. "why do you think evil is finding me like this? Is it because I've been subjected to evil all my life, that it has made me a mound of fertile ground, in which it could just dump its fiery sand and watch me turn to a tree of thorns? Why am I paying for what I've despised in such an evil way, Shiloh?"
"The prophecy denotes us all amenable to evil, though some practice far more extreme types of evil, others simply entertain innately. On your hand however, is that the equinox coincides your birth, qualifying you amid the rank of celestial bodies still surviving on earth. On the night of your 19th birthday, two things happened simultaneously, your name was mentioned in the celestial vigil in the conclave of saints and then the first equinox of your birth was signaled- your star and your prophecy merged, meaning that you would come to possess the qualities of a celestial being, though you would never know this."
"Why would I never have known that?"
"Because Isis," he began patiently, pouring two glass of whiskey and placing them on the ankle-length table between them. "Your mother had been a celestial goddess, borrowed to this world, merely and only to give you off- to lend you that is, to what you and I are so very afraid of facing right now...the return of Geralia Epgutah...the single most notorious force of evil known to the celestial sphere. So much has gone into keeping this at bay, and power has been exhausted in like effort, but her evil before it is birthed in physicality, is stored within a cavity of imagination, because that is her element. And you Isis, you are the mind in which she is growing day by day." He looked relieved as he neared the denouement of his repartee, and she waited until she thought he was done, before addressing him again.
"So I'm her womb? That's what you're saying, Shiloh?" She laughed a little- surprised at how easily humor could still prevail, even in the presence of the most extreme or adverse situations.
"Precisely, but you are her tomb too, her final resting place."
"That is so mundane seriously, Shiloh. I'm sure you can weave a better answer than that- be direct." She looked at him imploringly, waiting for his eyes to glisten- his mark of knowledge.
"When the war was over between Esotetics and the Ignoramae, a single wish was granted, as was the order of the prophecy then, and your mother who was heir to the castle of Ignoramae, making her the somewhat first lady of the celestial universe, was caught in a situation of bitter indecision, when she was given two choices...you rested in her womb. They begged of her, "your life or this war." She could choose neither, until they presented her with the ultimatum; she could either annihilate Geralia on the eve of the 3999th night of the war or she could fall and risk losing you. The destruction of Geralia would not be easy nonetheless, because Esotets, after death claim the body of what had killed them, and since you were alive and growing within your mother's womb, Geralia would rather nestle within your soul, than your mothers because she herself, intelligent to the prophecy, could reason that she'd rather breed within you and return to shudder novice sovereignty and take revenge out, on who better than the yet-to-be-born daughter of celestial dynasty...you, Isis."