Odyssey

Perhaps you cannot hear anyone scream in space, but the silence that fills that void is deafening. An assault upon the eardrums greater than any high pitched expletive or mighty cannon roar. My head reverberated. Blood pounding twin staccato against my temples, rushing through the migraine narrowed passage ways with a ceaseless pressure born of despair.

I watched, as seers do, measuring time by the miniscule movements of sand particles in an unforgiving desert of emptiness. Shifting contours of identical particles, possible of treatment and shaping to be beauteous creations of dazzling cut glass but in this raw state barren unyielding of anything but torturous monotony. The southern dunes of Gallifrey lay open before me. A seeming endless labyrinth of klik after klik of wind sculptured nothingness. Large enough to swallow some planets whole, it was still small enough to be but a dot on my multidimensional paradoxical home world.

I was born midpoint between this place and the Citadel, half way atop the tallest of the Mountains of Solace. My father had been president of the Academy, a scholar beyond parallel but for all that a fool. Unable to dissect ideal from reality he had watched the blossoming rivalry between the High Council and Skaro but had failed to see the concluding genocide for both planets ruling races.

I watched our second sun slowly clear the horizon and was as always was filled with wonder and awe. So close as to seem impossible her orange glow filled my world with light and color, the very soul of Gallifrey, touching every molecule with ambient warmth that made this place magical and seeming indestructible. If only Lords of Time were so easily transmuted by her majesty to Lords of Light. Within our hands we held the tools to fill this galaxy, all galaxies with peace, knowledge and happiness to overflowing. It was the very crux of our uniquely improbable existence. Having power beyond measure to create harmonious union and yet to be unable to raise one finger in that noble cause.

Looking south, always south, my back firmly planted against the horrors behind me. I had returned to this spot, this exact moment in time perhaps a hundredfold and never in all these centuries dared to look north. What point such misery? I knew what would confront me, had heard the account of all and witnessed each monumental blow from the perpetrator of the final solution, brother mine. The right hand of deity, as much as mine was the left, he had taken the responsibility that no other might and in a moment doomed us all to memory.

I hoped he yet existed, still traveled through the same endless tunnels of futures past as I. Space doomed our meeting again as a forlorn possibility, a mere figment of chance in a casino neither could control with any predictability. Indeed the very dangers of our crossing in the time space continuum were fraught, causing a rift that might describe some permanent damage to that delicate veil. Yet I would risk such for a glance at my blood, just one last reminder that purpose outweighs ultimate action.

Bare soles crossing the narrow distance between the TARDIS door and the rocky outcrop that was my chosen throne. Twelve short steps, gliding almost imperceptibly across rapidly heating grains that in a few short minutes would burn bare skin on contact. I knew the sound, recognized the swaying hipped stride, measured the weight to a gram and felt full.

"Hatter, the whole world behind you is burning."

Instinctively I went to look but stopped myself just in time.

"It has burned for eons now and will continue till all has been consumed to the last molecule."

Gallifrey was burning, plumes of smoke rising endlessly to form billowing clouds around the once proud planets equator, yet I could smell her scent now as distinctly as earlier upon our tussled pillows.

"I feel a fool!"

"Why?"

The itching started in earnest, burning sensations of irritation crawling through my skin from neck to ankle, the physical symptom of an endless psychological turmoil that tortured my existence without relief. In the quiet of night I would flay my skin with unforgiving finger nails in an effort to quiet the screaming from within. On waking I would find careering tracts hewn across innocent epidermis, exposing dermis in weeping streams.

"I cannot help tend the wounds I do not see."

Simply put and total truth. As ever she captured the very core of my torment yet could not understand the impossibility of my answering. How does one prove the reality of interdependence? What words express the nature of a need so fundamental to my being that its lack extinguishes the flame of existence in any but a purely inconsequential form? A thousand years of continuance and I was as much the homeless parasite crying silently for a host as the viscum album that waited for the oak seed to germinate and offer a welcoming limb. Ten days till January fourth, the anniversary of my final regeneration, when once more my existence would hang by the thinnest of threads, undecided betwixt life and death.

It has begun. Day one and I am awake. Sleep is now an unnecessary commodity, a waste of precious time. My life will exist only of cat naps interrupting the frenetic search for an epilogue worthy should this be the time of times. I had forgot the tribulation. Some disjoint in my memory cells allows the frenetic-ism of these hours to dispel until the realization creeps upon me once more. Two hundred and thirty seven hours and counting, eyes wide open in fear focused on a spot in time that might exist but equally may only be an abstract eternal tomorrow.

I take my poison, both swallowed easily to jar my nerves and sucked in deep to rot out from within. No sedatives allowed, every nerve must jangle, every synapse spark, neurons flashing loud as Christmas lights in seasonal rejoicing. From impulse comes ideas and from their materialization a constant flow of indiscriminate data to be diagnosed and elucidated, then spewed onto a wanton waiting page. Endless pages, covered in spiraling patterns of characters that dance in unison to create recognizable form. Caffeine and nicotine, my bread and wine, served fast and plentifully to feed the firebox at the core of the engine that is my id.

I can hear you sleeping. Forty kilometers away and your breath still softly bathes my face. Sweet love, hope and destiny, cure and antithesis all rolled together in sublime union. You would not recognize me now, hair wildly unkempt, fingers moving in torturous spasms as they try to release rampant energy as controlled key strokes. I want to kiss you. Taste the bitter sweet pill of impossible dreams upon these dry and peeling lips. Eyes that barely should have missed your face want for the balm your visage brings. I am a fool, a guilty voyeur who misses happiness by looking too long and hard. You are the natural diamond cutter, who accepting my endless faults wielded a blade adoringly to allow facets of brilliance to burst from the otherwise dull and raw stone.

Yet for all my pessimism there is one fact that stands out alone in the logic of my life. For all my errors, for all the times my foolishness's have bought criticism or ridicule I still remain unbowed, whilst my detractors have found failure the reward for their unbridled criticism. I have never shied from the difficult, even the seemingly impossible, accepting the possibility, risking the probability of defeat as the price for challenging conformity to the rule of the lord of flies. One is only blinded by staring at the sun, not by following its course.

Suddenly I am very old. Realization rears her ugly face and my dreams are scattered like a handful of salt across the sand, indistinguishable and lost for ever. Cruel metaphor, not kind, a wild stab to the heart is kind, but a partially disguised incision sneaks into the psyche to burn like acid, eating away at thought in seeming unending torture. How many hours will it lay digesting, a cold lump of knowledge weighting my body and soul to sink below the water of life's surface, fighting for breathe but knowing it is pointless to struggle against inevitability. Day two of ten hovers below the horizon and I feel the cold hand tighten a little more around my throat. It is time to begin the tying of ends, the final casting off of stitches.

The leap to Trenzalore is momentary. Strange how the place of ones demise is always just round the very next corner. It is two generations and a lifetime since my last death and I have run out of options. I can recapture the feeling perfectly in my mind. It has always been so, always I have had the ability to see my next destination clearly and in a moment set the course directly for that spot. It is but a score paces from where I sit now. I see the rail I lean upon, feel the pressure in my chest and the breath sucked from my body with surprising ease. The whole day is picture clear, perfectly captured in my storage to be replayed with exact precision. Some things I can omit. I have lost the fear of it, shaken the need to cling to immortality for any further inglorious episodes. When purpose is out served then rest is obligatory, it is the Timelords law.

We live alone we die alone. Shadows of happiness may flow from one moment to another but at sunset darkness has to fall and the shadows vanish to find alternative places to play amidst a new light source. Whether I have accomplished anything apart from the notoriety of failure is debatable and in the final counting immaterial. We are given a hand to play and its value depends on pure chance and skill. I have been lucky to hold so many pairs but never filled the royal flush I sought. Such is the risk of any game, we are dealt what is given, we bet and bluff with all our thought and cunning but in the end have no control over the final turn.

Two hundred and thirteen hours to go and still I count.

I have quite forgotten how to let go. My mind still creates, my body reacts, my senses anticipate but then, nothing. I had for the longest time considered perhaps the physical apparatus was at fault, that in some way my connections had been surgically misaligned or severed, but as each individual function proved independently pristine it pointed deeper and deeper into my hidden cortex.

She was beautiful. Perhaps not to everyone's initial eye, but then vision is often badly focused by preconceptions. Nervous, extremely, broken, most probably, searching for answers, definitely. I allowed her to sit, relax, shake the chill from her bones and feel the warmth permeate her skin to the flesh below. Conversation helps. Quiet and gentle dissection till the root of the unhappiness spills out into the open. I already knew that this would be a futile journey for me, that the chances of her being the inter-galactic ship I needed was so infinite as to be unworthy of consideration. I did see growth potential in her, a yearning for experiences denied thus far, imaginings beyond those feeble fumblings she had experienced as love making that might bring real and climactic ecstasy.

I led her to the bed. She showed shyness, timidity then in defiance of her imposed morals slid under the covers and waited quietly, trustingly.

I kissed her mouth and she reacted. Her kiss was not as I had expected, rather it was aggressive, practiced through mindless repetition, so I disengaged. Her breasts were large, bulbous mounds tipped with small but perfectly formed nipples. I cupped the left gently, allowing my thumb to brush across the hardening center and kissed her again. This time she moaned and responded with less obvious movement but more emotion. The buttons on her top were large and loose in their holes; I slowly unfastened each from neck to hem drawing the garment aside as I did. Lowering my head my lips closed around the left areola as my teeth gripped the hardened peak. Her head slid back exposing her neck and again she moaned gutturally.

My lips danced between her breasts and mouth for a while, tasting her mounting passion and reveling in her growing vulnerability. My left hand slid across her belly to find the waistband of her pants and from their continued under and ever downwards till my palm cupped her Venus mound, the finger tips feeling heat transferring from her awakening sheath. I dipped my index finger downwards, the hood instantaneously releasing her hardened clitoris and I felt hot sweet nectar on my skin. My fingers followed her moistness inwards, feeling her opening to my penetration and the muscles hidden in the velvet walls tighten and loosen in a frenzy of wantonness.

Her hips lifted as I slid the bottoms then panties from her form. My left hand retraced up the inside contours of her leg till finding its target slipped fingers between the swollen lips of her outer labia to caress her vaginal canals soaking entry. She opened her thighs wide and caressed her own right breast with her hand moaning gently.

As my fingers played her instrument of pleasure she began a monologue of lust.

"Been so naughty daddy; so bad, so bad. Want you to fuck me hard, hard and fast. Suck you big cock deep in my mouth."

She stopped just long enough to roll her eyes up in their lids and climax hard before continuing her verbal wish list.

"Fuck me now, deep. Roll me over please. Spank me, so naughty, need spanking."

I slipped a finger into her tight anal bud and felt her muscles spasm again in ecstasy.

"Yes. Take my ass. Fuck it, please."

I slowly slipped between her thighs and buried my face in her wetness. Taking her clitoris between my teeth I bit gently and she shuddered. I bit harder and slipped two fingers deep to stroke her urethra. The feeling of her cervix descending to meet the questing fingers then retreating in rapturous abandon bought my erection to full peak.

I love the taste of abandonment, tongue pressed deep into the open furnace of desire to draw out succulent honey. Running lips around the swollen edges nibbling, teasing the delicate texture between labia and ass before grazing across the tight bud, feeling that most intimate of entry pucker and quiver as I probe gently with insatiable inquisitiveness.

Watching her now is my moment. She is lost, plumbing depths never imagined or experienced, drowning in rapture, defenseless and I have the universe in my hands.