Upaya to Pluto: Radiation and Nightmares

I’m standing in front of the house where I grew up and looking at the entrance of the house opposite, knowing every detail of the old, post-war windows and beautiful white stucco by heart. A May evening, the setting sun, complete silence and calm. I am pleased to be here, it smells of such familiar lilac thickets, tart tree resin from the small park nearby, and something else elusively familiar and attractive to me. I am walking down the street, looking around my house, looking into my window, which I left 17 years ago, and I decide to go into the entrance.

It surprises me. A large room, which has never been there, is filled with antique furniture covered with gilded enamels, ornaments and strange glass inserts. A man of about 40-50 years old leans his back against one of the chests of drawers, a kind of charismatic vagabond in a worn leather jacket and a wide-brimmed old hat. There are such faces, objectively ugly, but bright, memorable and as if screwed into your memory forever. He has exactly such a face. Rough, with a large chin and heavy eyebrows, a massive nose and small, surprisingly young eyes. The man looks at me with ironic curiosity, sipping something unexpectedly pink from a very old, cloudy glass bottle.

– Hello, Mylene. I am Domaha and I heard.

Fall. I wake up in my house. I wake up from the sound of the door opening. My first thought is that my husband forgot to close the door and it was opened by a draft. I need to get up and lock it, but I can’t move. Paralysis. I open my eyes and see that a neighbor has entered the apartment, famous in the house for having schizophrenia and strange fits of aggression. He sits down on the bed, strokes my cheek, smirks… A throw and I feel icy, hard fingers closing around my throat, and his face is very close to mine. Several small centipedes crawl out from under the neighbor’s collar, fall on my face and I am completely paralyzed, from the inside – with horror, from the outside – with paralysis, I want to scream at the top of my lungs, but only an inarticulate wheeze comes out.

And the neighbor suddenly says in the vagabond’s voice:

– Oh, look! Are you scared? But you have to lock the doors, girl, and not give the keys to just anyone. You gave the key to the house and to yourself to everyone who asked, and now you complain that they betray and harm you? Well, change your doors, review the locks and everyone who has access to them. Otherwise… – he doesn’t finish, and smirking, he takes another centipede out of his pocket, which is my number one phobia, and demonstratively places it on my neck.

I scream in disgust and fall back into the hallway. Domaha is still sipping her strange drink and silently grinning, while I sit on the floor and roar from the horror I have experienced. Finally, he places the bottle on the elegant table and says:

– Wipe your snot. What you’re asking for is real, but how can you pull it off if you can’t handle nonsense like a couple of spiteful critics? You’ll drown from a serious wave of negativity directed at you, girl. Think! Think and work, and don’t let just anyone into your soul, because you’re still far from my wrath. But this is so, personally for you… What did you want to know?

– You are a graha of Pluto, aren’t you? I wanted to know you…

– Know me? Well, that’s not hard. Look into the yard!

I look out into the yard and realize that the twilight is becoming more and more unnatural, inflamed red, with a yellowish-mustard undertone, as if a filter had been applied to the entire world – a reddish sepia. And it is crawling out of the very bottle from which the tramp drank. Somewhere on an intuitive level, I understand that this light is very radioactive and literally decomposes all living things, festers and, rumbling gutturally, absorbs the rotting masses.

Domaha suddenly roughly takes my hand above the elbow and we deliberately slowly walk along the rapidly rotting street. The paint on houses and garages is peeling off, they are covered with rust, the asphalt crumbles to dust, the trees turn into brown heaps of rot and dust. I’m disgusted and scared.

— And here I am! This is me. Do you know what an abscess is? It’s when something foreign and harmful gets into the body, and the body can’t force it out except with a bunch of pus. This place swells, hurts, becomes the epicenter of inflammation, but you can’t squeeze out the foreign thing until the abscess ripens like a ripe fruit, until the lower layer of skin rots enough for the pus to come out, opening a path for itself. It won’t come out before the time, later — it will be too late… This is how the filth is cleansed.

I am a Ruiner, Mylene. I am Decay, Decomposition and pus. But think about the fact that in this way the body is cleansed, cleansed of the old, sick, inflamed, unnecessary… The country is cleansed of the sick and old people due to the war. The pain of a tyrant gives revolution. The world is being cleansed of excess with disasters and floods. Consciousness is cleansed through pain and loss. Purity and novelty are worth a lot, as is strength, because every coin has two sides. I am a sick passion and jealousy, arrogance, despotism and desire for power, disrespect, bloody rebellion and sadism, vindictiveness and repression, where life is worthless, and everyone’s personality is insignificant before the crowd. I am this crowd! – He grins. – But I am the strength, a close-knit team and its leader, I am the goal and the strength to achieve it, I am the righteous anger and power over minds! Mars is my first face, the face of a warrior and leader. The Ruiner and the Destroyer are my second face, the face of an executioner, but also of a leader even higher.

He throws the bottle somewhere behind the garages, it shatters into pieces and the color of the air becomes completely red, I feel it as a mixture of radiation and electricity. The energy and essence of Pluto fly in the air like this mixture.

— Old connections are inflamed in you… — Domaha says thoughtfully. — Like dead snakes, they are stretched through your heart and do not let you breathe, these beloved dead and traitors of yours. And imagine that they festered and came out? Do you want that? A day of pain instead of decades? Ha! Look at that house! — his grip becomes painful. — Look carefully, don’t turn away, I order!

I obediently look at the house and realize that it is completely boarded up, even the chimneys. My gaze seems to fall into it, and I see how in every room, in the stuffiness, in the dim light of old, smoky light bulbs and radioactive cod, people are lying. Some on the bed, some on the floor, some on the chair… Some disgustingly fat naked man lies in an empty bathtub and shakes with a fever. They are all unconscious, but alive, as if in the deepest and most painful sleep. And I understand that they are rotting. They rot from the inside, turn black and groan from intoxication and pain, but do not wake up, but continue to lie in this nightmare house.

I feel sick, but a strong and cruel hand forces me to stand still and watch:

— Why is this happening to them?…

— They are already dead. They were weak and let in what rots the brain: fear, intolerance, arrogance, greed and cruel, black ingratitude. They let it in, but they don’t want to let it out! They treasure this shit, they treasure their grievances, claims, position and pathetic titles. They closed themselves off from the world and the new, they became fixated on themselves, not wanting to work on their cracks and let go of the old and harmful. Well, let them enjoy it to the fullest! And somewhere there is a point of no return… Look at the fat man. This man needs more and more, more and more! Luxury, money, power, food.

A fat man, crushed by his own belly, begins to writhe in the bath and moan. The disgusting, jelly-like, white belly swells with pus and turns black, yellow saliva with blood begins to flow from the mouth. Everything around has been red for a long time, like the light in a darkroom, everything is crackling from radiation and some white fungal spores that fly around the house and decompose people alive. I feel desperately bad, but Pluto continues:

— Death and rotting are part of the process of life, it’s just that someone begins to rot long before they are placed in the grave. For a new tree to appear, old plants must rot, for a new, strong person to appear, weaknesses and vices must rot and fall off, giving way to the new. Strength only goes to the pure. Power only comes to those who are ready for it. I’m not in a hurry. My power is power higher than Mars, it is power and strength of such a scale that it leads and purifies entire countries, continents, entire peoples prostrate themselves before this power. The weak cannot withstand it and will break, but to be truly strong, you need to be pure. Then the strength passes through the body and does not break its back, does not blow off its head, does not destroy its psyche… Do you want me to show you your main weakness?

— Yes, I do.

Fall. I wake up in my ex-friend’s apartment, lying on the couch. My friend is watching TV and is not very interested in my presence. Somehow I understand that in exactly 7 minutes the same rot will begin here as in the fat man’s house, and I can get caught in the crossfire. Panic seized me, with shaking hands I grope for my bag on the couch and run to the door. My friend looks after me melancholically and says in a colorless voice:

— Leaving already?

— Leaving, yes… —I fumble for the handle.

— Lock the door behind you. — She turns to the TV and forgets about me.

I lock the door, throw the keys to it somewhere in the corner of the entrance, and run away from this house, afraid to even look back. The feeling is that I am leaving everything that made me inflamed and hurt inside, all the resentments, pain, doubts, stupid claims… 7 minutes and it will all turn into pus. But I don’t need pus. Summer street, bright, clean street. The light becomes a little weaker and I understand that this is the morning light from the window in my apartment, and I am lying in tears. I woke up. I’m trembling, but I’m grateful for it.

(c) Mylene Maelinhon / Material of the Marginal Metaphysics project

Translated by Schwarzenstern

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