Alien Heat

Something strange is happening to me.
It started last week. It was hotter upstairs than the surface of our sun. The air was more still than the absence of time. Night had fallen, but there was a strange ambient glow from no sources I could readily identify.
Instead of turning on the AC and drawing the curtain, instead of firing up the fan, I laid down on the bed. I stayed there just existing in the heat and absence of oxygen, enjoying the way it felt, so real and tangible around me.

Tonight, driving home in the Civic with the arctic a.c., I shut it off and rolled down the windows. It was the darker end of an inky dusk, the humidity was building and a storm growing around me. Night was coming, I felt it in my blood. I had a Rainbow CD on, playing Street of Dreams. I didn’t feel like me, I felt like someone inside of my skin was taking over.

Food I normally like hasn’t tasted correct, or at least not as expected. I’m not listening to my normal tunes. I’m moving out seeking something intangible, subtle, indefinable. I keep hearing undertones in music I’d never noticed before. Lyrics that were once obscured or blurred, or not worthy of notice, are now clear as bells. I’m craving deep, dark heat and charged, disturbed air. I keep thinking I catch motion in my peripheral vision, but when I turn my head I find nothing but what should be there. And I’m left with a lingering sense that something or someone lurks just a half a step behind the normal range of conscious awareness. This is not me. This is SO not me.

I’ve checked my basement and garage. No alien pods. Not a one. Not even in the crawlspace.

I keep thinking of Rob Halford’s song Nightfall and this one line: ‘The spell you cast inside is stabbing through my heart. It reaches deep within, it’s pulling me apart.’ That's kind of what it feels like right now, something inside, filling all the spaces, emerging: an alien consciousness that is wholy different from me. I keep craving fresh mango slices, aged brandy, shrimp, dark cherries, and sweet, soft caramel.
I think this is the next book. More specifically, it's Mad Jack.

I couldn’t connect with writing new work as Mercury was retrograde all through July, so I didn’t try. Just kept up the meditation and tossed it on the back burner.

Then the veil lifted Sunday night. Perhaps it was parted. I feel this creature inside of me that I believe is Jack. He's so different from Gideon. Gideon was all heavy metal and hard edges, concrete thinking and decisive action. Mad Jack is smoke and mirrors, moody electronica, the whisper of fine, black silk caught in the caress of a sultry desert breeze, the urgent, near frantic current that charges the air before a storm breaks free. He is the time just before night, when magic gathers, and anything is possible. Jack is on the edge of the world, watching. And, he is all the secrets you've sought to hide, preparing to break the chains of shadows, hell bent on vengeance and retribution. Nothing falls outside of his gaze, but he can’t touch, or chooses not to touch. Not yet. That’s why the heat and the charged storm winds are so important, they connect him in ways he can’t connect himself. They carry scents and energy his way, and he gets to sample the life that he’s withdrawn from. He's very sensual, able to appreciate pleasure on levels most mortals can only dream. I can’t get a real handle on him yet, but inside me he rises, and it’s kind of frightening. I don’t think I’ve ever ‘felt’ a character this way. Good thing madness and I are old poker buddies, otherwise I might be a little nervous.