As to whether there has really ever knowingly been wickedness in my life, well, that was theirs to decide. And, chance was presented before this was over…

I had, at the moment of waking, been wrestling my alter-ego, a nasty little psychopath, and who, but for darker the features, and wilful of manner, resembles my in every way. He commonly rules in the space to my Left, or behind at the shoulder; for he favours I don’t see his face. No matter, I can see well enough.

If fact, he is not one, but …many; a steady, inexhaustible supply, that so should a first prove ineffectual, or the second, then another will shortly apply.

And, always …to fight. No remarks or discussion; just straight to the hand to hand business.

In strength and resolve, though perhaps no surprise, we are matched – as though right and left arm were decided that once and for all they should settle the dispute, and were locked.

So, to call on reserve, or pin all one’s hope to a strategy, bears very little to outcome – so neither prevails; after all, we have only one ‘well’, and from which shall both draw the same inspiration, so frequently quarter is given, and swiftly retaken.

In the end, it is not that defeat was forestalled, or a victory deserved, but that exhaustion, to win by default. so heavy the toll,

Even so, what I would call ‘wrestling’, I think should be better it followed some rules. And, of action, or excitement? There is barely a movement.

_____________________________

Here is what happened. Sitting cross-legged – in the loft, on the end of the bed – and ready to wake, when who should arrive to prevent it? I presently find myself pinned; arms have me locked in a stifling clinch; my leverage is feeble and vague… the angle confining, as usual. The dead weight a burden.

I bite down …hard… jaw clenched on flesh; it’s a thumb, my teeth feeling fibres of muscle, and a sinew being crushed…

He starts to relent, pulling away to the left… That could have hurt. Is he …leaving?

But, wherever he’s gone, I am following, …toppling backwards into emptiness – I must have been using his weight as support.

The floor is a lot further …down ..than it used to be, coming unstuck, and it slides away under me…sickeningly backwards downhill

No. That isn't quite it. The floor wasn't moving. It is… ..us! I am still in the clutch of those perilous hands, …and seized to inviolable forces, …we skidded for one …backward instant … …to the edge… …and teetering, we both of go over ….together… still locked to each and plummetting, …doowwwwwwn …to an in-spinning tapering geometry, …squeezed through the top of a tube-like contraction of space … squeezing …and sucking us through….

Until, I am hanging suspended, in state, and grandly alone, slowly revolving within the palatial and aerial caverns of Hell.

A vast and bewildering cavity of arching mezzanines enclosures; hallways, and vaults under platforms to catacombs where the fair-less are abandoned to stale suffocation, confined on the verges of the precipice to despair overwhelming to the to the hall

Absent of portal, or opening, or cleft; this is not a ‘place’, from whence one arrives or departs; having thresholds and brinks, to receive, or expel.

There is from here no going forth or returning. No glimpse on approaches or views of afar to farewell.

You are either simply ..elsewhere, …or here.

Above, and below …ends in wall.

For here is Interior, and all leadeth inward.

A vast and overwhelming cavity of solemn arches and curvature surrounds and encloses an atmosphere of pity and sorrow. Absent of portal or opening or cleft – this is not a ‘place’, from which one arrives or departs, having thresholds and brinks, to welcome, or expel. You are either simply ..elsewhere, …or here. There is no going forth, or returning.

Above, and below, ends in walls. Here is Interior, and all leadeth inward.

I can feel the evil …and punishment, radiating up like screaming, from below, it’s too warm, I am faint and exhausted; afraid, with a sinking in the pit of my stomach.

Do they …want me? It is airless and warm. I am faint, and afraid. Worn from exhaustion, and a sinking forlorn.

Held equidistant, yet uncomfortably close, from all place and surrounding, a conspicuous debutante – perhaps all newcomers dead centre while… punishment, measurelessly slow, and distant like screaming, waves up from around and below.

Then, soon will ‘they’ come… and in wailing denial, shall I too be fetched and informed that my fate has begun…?

Here was contrition laid open and bared… to the slumber of blame.

"Did I …so much wrong?" And I grieve for so sudden and contemptible an end.

But now, comes an untimely intrusion – is it ‘they’ come to ransack my private sensoria, in a …slipping to awaken – a hand, firmly dragging me, like a drowned man from a pond, outward through layers of strata, grasping with serpentine arms, …and finally, flung, back, heaving and disordered on ground …wrestling my alter-ego. Faintly assuring, I suppose, though I do not owe thanks.

But where is this place?

A manicured, public lawn rolls in twilight beneath us.

Here, I remembered a warning – or memory, but of some ‘other’ past – of something which happened in ‘this’ world, (to me but before I was here) – of just such an encounter with my alter-ego.

So, this …is a prophecy fulfilled! Such a thing does not strike me as unusual, however – this place is built upon such ordinary notions.

For, I have been transported to a world of allegory.

Here, one struggles, not for preservation of the body, but of the spirit.

All the familiar metaphors – once faint and embedded – have now, in a manner of speaking, ‘…risen to the surface…’, taken Form, in the tools and furnishings of a tangible reality, …with which one might build, make secure, …to protect …or to tear down.

The quality of Valour for example, may become as a Sword that is placed in the hand of the Warrior. Tolerance Virtue and Discretion are as Spells to the Enchantress.

A Lantern ..to the Lost.

To the presence of Mercy and Temperance ..blood will not flow… cups shall not fail..

… Precarious perplexing elaborate entangled enthralled forbidding portentious condemn reproach convict rebuke

But, rising in mist to commotion, …to a perilous Maze of butterfly storms and sailing from afar to the black moats of Slumber, the unscaleable spires of Pandemonium, breed Bedlam and Panic and or or Walls, ,, – to waylay, confound, or bewilder the Foe – be they Seeker, …or Sage …whether forthright, or credulous, seasoned or wary. Aspire Venture

All that we take to be destiny’s chances – the random encounters and arrangements, the struggle and reflections, desires and estrangements – these are the tides, and inscriptions, borders on the windows to the world – of which the soul is citizen – finally clothed in the raiment of the senses, and raised to the standing of objects – with which to delight the sensations, seduce the addictions, or reach out a hand to the Attainable.

But, here, I have friends. We all share a bond and in faith we inherit that trust, which has closed us together, and my safely returning from a Dante-esque ministry of Hell, and the dark alter-ego, is met with the same jubilation, as I were it any of them.

I have woke to the place of my lot – of life in the circling tide. And many are the omen and signs we must know.

If a key is discovered, in the back of a drawer, then seek out the lock which it turns; so shall an impasse dissolve or a mystery be solved. By contrast a coin on the ground means a moment of loss; and is not a good sign, so should always be left where it's found.

To glimpse, in a mirror so angled, the face of another yet not see one's own, can mean there will soon be confronted some issues. Untidy, but only for one, not the other; a deceit, or duplicity, hoax, or delusion; for it signals a cheat, or illusion.

Nor must the last of a bottle go all to one glass; for that person is fated to drink on their own. And should someone be lost on the street after dark, well fetch them in haste, for soon they may well be alone for all time.

A gift from one who has borrowed your heart, will return you your sanity, at the least.

If fabric is virtue, then scandal a stain. As the cruel is to cut, then kindness will bathe away pain.

Of numbers, the ‘odd’ are preferred – the Pentagons, Heptagon one can steer passage both around or across, and escape without turning. But, a Square is a terrible trap that condemns one to wander its sides without ever coming out. and diagonals, a Hexagon merely two Triangles, but if one walks the first, then whoso the second shall never be met.

Beware then the Octagon merely two squares placed one atop at an angle.

So here, we may say, should these figures be noted with care, pathways that cross in the park, or thoroughfares occluded, may not be so easy to see, but wandering aimless will bring you a state of confusion – you must count off the corners while walking and step off before

can never visit all of its points without backtracks, There are three ways that point to a corner and each that you enter and leave must be also the last one to visit, and since all cannot possibly be last it is therefore impossible and a cursed.

_____________________________

But, now, with day at a close, the hordes of deception since taken to hiding, will again be upon us; and it cannot be long.

We decide to convene at ‘The Haven’ – the safe home of three in our group and our most common ground.

For evening is not an occasion to be out, or alone.

One of the residents – a girl, called "Try" within the group – has become a close ally and confidant, and for some while, we sat privately and talked about my encounters …with a copy of myself.

From what she has told me, they were all, on this occasion, witness to the episode, and offers to shed what light she can.

It seems that to me what are prolonged and rarely decisive contests of attrition, engaged with an unruly and quarrelsome rival, appear to the onlooker quite different.

As nothing more, in fact, than me, fighting insubstantially with …myself. Or, an …imagined foe.

This was, for Try, just a case of conflicting, or contrary elements – viewpoints, and long-held beliefs of my own – fighting themselves and each other for dominance. We are never alone even with ourselves But each one with claims to the others unknown, and allusions to combat then merely a tangible form of something that otherwise passes unnoticed.

Such were her insights; remarkable and penetrating.

That view I obtain, through her eyes, as fruit on a ripening vine, that I now stand to gain, in future encounters ...with my-selves

_____________________________

Later – Try had left the room, and I was alone –something developed, an incident, suggesting that sinister elements had begun to regather.

A weird apparition – its form, a macabre, incorporeal skull, or a mask – had hovered just outside the window, and spoken or whispered – whatever the words, I was not meant to hear – they were carried off in the darkness.

And yet, I could not disavow an uncomfortable notion – that thing had …expressed or had framed some idea that I knew I did not understand.

Something, for me, out of reach. A glimpse to a cavern unknown – where the concepts existed for which I would never have symbols. More than confronting my ignorance – these things would always be hidden.

And now all I knew was the world had actually contained just a little bit more than I’d thought.

"I know of something you don’t…", was the taunt of its chilling disclosure, "…and even were I to then say it out loud, you still wouldn’t know what you’d heard it…", the wraith seemed to wave.

As I called to the others, the shadow had made a deceitful, peculiar escape; by two different paths. For it not only went by the side of the house to dart up the path, but I seem to have watched it make off across lawn, and recede in a lingering dark.

That someone bear witness alone was a game we were often invited to play. But whatever it was that had flickered from sight, I was sure at least one caught a momentary glimpse.

Yet, I full knew that not to be true. And so did we all. By the time they’d arrived, it was gone.

It is not altogether for the ‘legions of despair’ devise some uncommon affairs, or carefully arrange that each version be different – so causing accounts by each person conflict – and all in the hope it will nurture divisions between them.

So, the victim, (and here that was me) with fatal precision, haplessly asks over and over, "…didn’t you see it? … you must have …just over there!!", is removed from their place in the group, and hung out to dry.

While the rest, now appearing cool or too gracious, are forced to reply, "…No, ..but I’m sure you saw ..something…" or "…What did you say that it was, ..again…?"

And so on, with no hope of sharing some ground.

Not only that, but the solitary victim will quickly realize they can share this with no one – there is no one – and small as the burden may be, are henceforth to live with a lonely, and meaningless secret.

They have, inadvertently, stumbled into a room …and the door has blown shut behind them. It is a room that no-body else will enter – to those outside it simply doesn’t exist, and its sole occupant has inherited troublesome lodgings.

__________________________________

For the authors of such marginal follies, keeping things petty and shallow, does little to lessen the menace and danger. In fact, they prefer such diversions, which carry the seedlings of conflict for the least of their efforts.

A little ill-will, over something quite trifling – to nag away in the background, or crop up later, like a worn piece of gossip arrived at its final destination – this is, for them, to disrupt any smooth operations of common order.

Facts – on the other hand – however malignant or scandalous – are to them something barely of interest. Witnessed by all with consensus, it can hardly be used as a grounds for dispute, or the bone of contention

They are the simply consequence of Truth – and which, however hard to swallow, is a bitter taste enjoyed by all.

Mistrust, Suspicion and Resentment (the triumvirate of discord and strife), unlike the virtues delivered of truth, can never survive in the open …and so, crumble away.

_____________________________

But, all of the traps we avoid, and countless their number and form… are really the few …just those we can see.

Let caution the weary of vigil not stay their compassion, or sacrifice peace.

Though we stand at the ledge, weigh your concerns about falling, neither all on the centre, nor away to the edges.

…If the Feet be in danger of stumbling…

…’tis the Arms we must hold open wider…

That so, may you turn with Accord from the shadows of harm and affliction –through Poise, Equanimity …and Harmony…

There we to found an Eternal and innermost condition of Clarity …and Grace.