Only Where There Are Graves

By C. Rommial Butler

Walking silently among the rows of unmarked white crosses, I feel something stir in my loins.

Have the spirits of these unnamed soldiers who have lain so long beneath the earth really gripped me in some sexual way?

I am tripping on LSD, after all.

Some believe psychoactive drugs open doors to other realms of consciousness. Some believe our minds are just blipping, conjuring hallucinations.

What is perception but a controlled hallucination determined by the needs that arise when we interact with our environment?

If all we know about our environment is filtered through the state of mind we call "sobriety", then we must indeed surmise reality to be twisted by the introduction of an intoxicant.

However, if I have inured myself to the effects of such an intoxicant, have I learned to perceive more reality? Less reality?

A new reality?

I'm an old pro at this. Tripping, walking through graveyards and ruins.

The spirits are very much aware of my presence, and they hunger for love.

They tug at my libido like a petulant child at the hem of mother's dress; seeking attention; seeking validation; seeking, searching, stretching out the will from eternity to eternity.

Are the souls of these dead soldiers lonely and waiting in their dark places for some promised passage to another world?

Or are they condemned to the darkness on account of their murderous ways, and just starving for attention, longing to pull any and everything they can down with them into the pit of their despair?

I have no problem with soldiers.

I understand that war happens. Well-meaning, good people get dragged into it. Then it's kill or be killed.

These rows of white crosses are a testament to the likelihood that those buried here were a party to both unfortunate outcomes.

However, I noticed over the years that only these dead soldiers pull at my loins. The graves of others do not affect me in this way.

Not all soldiers either, but something specific to these unknown soldiers whose passing is marked by the white crosses.

Unfulfilled desire or just the desire to be remembered?

Young men, taken in the prime of their lives, with hopes and dreams, maybe a lover back home waiting for them, a country that threw them to the slaughter in the name of a God who seems to have abandoned them in their most desperate hour—these are the men buried here.

I want to talk to them, to help them pass on, if that is what they desire to do.

That's why I keep coming back.

But I only get this feeling in my loins. That gentle but persistent tug.

The gentility of it is what makes me want to help. Perhaps they are like lost, scared children that just cannot find their way.

But horny?

Something Freudian there, I think.

No, dear, lost children, I cannot be your mother or your lover, and I certainly will not fulfill the Oedipal role of both!

I sit and cross my legs.

Lotus position, meditation time, eyes closed.

A kaleidoscopic array of colors and forms dance across the darkness of my eyelids.

Images form and dissolve too quickly to be understood.

I slow my breathing, making it more deliberate, hoping this will slow the rush of images too.

A single white cross, eight feet tall, emerges from the tumultuous waves of competing forms to take center stage in the theater of my imagination.

The landscape around it is a windless desert. The unshifting sands are off-white, speckled with yellow, as if sickened with jaundice.

I am on my knees before the cross. I cup a handful of sand for closer inspection, and realize it is not sand at all.

I know, somewhere in the unspeaking depths of my heart, in that dark corner where our inner child goes to hide in terror, that this decaying dust is all that remains of countless skulls.

Is this a vision, a hallucination, or have I truly crossed a liminal space into another reality?

It feels real.

I let the dust fall back to the earth and I stand so I can walk closer to the cross.

There is a man crucified upon it; but his entire body is as white as the cross, so that, at first, I did not see him.

He has no face, no defining features—save for that one which assures me of his manhood.

As I reach up to touch him, his hands and feet bleed a vivid stigmata, crimson roses blooming and spilling over to the ground in three streams that swell together, forming a raging river of blood that knocks me off my feet.

I fall forward, struggling to keep my head up so as not to choke on the thick, gushing mass as it carries me backwards, digging a channel into the bone dust.

The blood gushes over me, consumes me, lifting me as it invades my mouth, my nostrils, my ears, prickles my pores with pleasant pain, peruses my being like a well-thumbed tome of ancient lore.

It moves into me and invades me with precision and deliberation until, finally, it dissolves me, completely obliterating all consciousness, and for an indefinable moment I experience the original, primal, very first spurt of consciousness, the big bang, the creation of the universe, and I hate it and love it, I feel it as a welcome thrill and a deep, abiding torment, all the suffering it will cause, all the pain it will wipe away—one and the same, all the same, always, never relenting, again and again, it will all happen and it will never stop happening and I loathe it even as I cannot get enough!

My eyelids fly open and I once again find myself among the rows of white crosses.

In the real world?

I’m shuddering as with the aftermath of an orgasm, my whole body feeling like a surging fountain of delight.

I don’t know how I feel about this, but I don’t think these spirits need help.

I think they want to get laid.

We among the living have quite enough trouble solving the conundrum of sexual attraction without complicating it by consorting with the undead!

This is awkward.

When I can finally motivate myself to stand, my knees buckle, and I almost fall back down.

Did I consent to that?

I feel at once ashamed and flushed with pleasure.

As I move to leave the cemetery, the ghostly tug becomes more forceful, reluctant to let go, insisting, demanding, tightening its grip.

I struggle against it.

I tear myself away and run, but the magnetic pull of the unseen yanks me back, smothers me, makes it feel like I am running through water.

Or blood? I sob aloud. The blood! I cry. The blood is the life! Release me! Release me! I am alive!

The grip loosens and slithers slowly away like a creeping hand.

I sense regret, remorse, longing, pain—pain that never ends.

But I cannot be its balm.

I am not strong enough, and do not wish to be dragged into the pit with the putrescent souls of the forsaken.

They have let me go, for they seek one who is up to the task of appeasing them, eternally pleasing them, and who will ultimately be pleased in turn.

It is not I.

Weeping, terrified, I run.

I care not where, just so long as it is far from the desperate desire and lustful ministrations of the dead.

*****

C. Rommial Butler is a writer, musician and philosopher from Indianapolis, In. His works can be found online through multiple streaming services and booksellers. You can read much more of his works on his VOCAL account.