The Introvert Club
Listen just stay indoors
There is no more grating time of year than spring. All the things happy to be alive and feeling randy about it. The profane exuberance of it is just galling. Does nothing on this planet know how to be inwardly joyful? Too bright, too loud, the air is thick with pollen and spores… I hate it. And still, I feel the vernal pull, dragging me out into the world, into the soil, with its sun-kissed grappling hook.
Such ballocks.
In other words, I’ve been planting: seeds, eggs, bones, severed hands, beetles, a man’s head, jars of ill intentions, all the various things that must be planted this time of year. Some I’ve watered with the blood of living, some with the blood of the Earth, some with tears. I was, in fact, watering the new poison ivy vine I’d planted for a garden trellis when I felt a dim presence wandering up the hill. I walked to the steps and looked down. A figure seemed to flicker below, growing more solid whenever a cloud covered the sun, then vanishing again in the spotlight.
Almost no energy wafted up to me, but there was enough to catch some hints as to his troubles. Namely something about Christopher Marlowe, the old English playwright. I hadn’t thought about Kit in years. I knew him, back when Elizabeth I was queen and things were- well let’s just say she ran an excellent surveillance state.
Odd though, this shifting figure making his way up to me should be so consumed with an old Elizabethan writer that he had lost his very substance to him. Or to someone else obsessed, perhaps. I was beginning to piece together a theory. By the time the poor specter of a man had finally made his way to me, I knew exactly what had happened, but as usual, I’d need to hear it from him. Difficult as that was going to be.
“Come in, please. You’ll be more substantial inside,” I said to the middle-aged man, so diminished in energy that I could see the forest through him, like looking through cheesecloth full of entrails. His voice was a mere whisper, he hung his head as he shuffled past. Once inside, he gained a little solidity and I could actually hear what he said, although just barely. I sat him down with a cup of strengthening tea for the story I required of him.