Alysse Aallyn

Category: #Nightmare

  • Becoming a Goddess – the Goddess Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

     Chain Goddess – Conquering Addiction –

    Uh oh. You’ve become too attached. Remember, Goddesses Rise Above – Investigate. To … what is the addition exactly?  Take it slow.  How is your attachment harming your principles? Values? Relationships? Carefully map it out.

    The Goddess’s Fiercest Battle – Do you dream of imprisonment? Blank walls? Chains? Our neurocircuitry mandates habit-making behavior, but our intelligence recognizes entrapment, and our dreams send out distress signals. If you’re human, there is no way to avoid addiction. Welcome to the Club!

    We Are Wired for Addiction – If there’s no escaping it – that means you will have to fight this battle. But the good news is, this is exactly how you become a Goddess, and Goddesses are Free. Anyone who hasn’t done investigated and broken the chains is still a slave to “factory settings” – hormones, instincts, patterning – just as animals are. Here’s the very challenge you became a Goddess for – your best chance to develop a free will and a free soul.

    Study Your Opponent – Turns out we have tremendous choice over what we become addicted to. Some addictions are less corrupting than others. Visit an AA meeting and the consumption of sugar and tobacco is outright alarming. Are you addicted to gambling? Do you work in sales? Were you raised in a ritualistic faith? We easily become dependent on praise, on safety, on gratification, and our brains (and our general health) show our dependency. These very brains threaten and panic when the “treat” is withdrawn.

    Goddess Challenge – This parasite doesn’t care if it kills the host. If you fear you are approaching a cliff-edge, you probably are. One test is to go on a “retreat” where your customary gratifications are not available, and attempt to form new, healthier gratifications, like sleep, prayer, meditation, the arts, cooking, sports, friendship. See what happens! Is your personality threatening to disintegrate?  Good! Let’s build a new one!  High time to ask yourself: who am I really? This is such a good idea, we should build it into our lives, periodically. Just to keep us recognizing that recurring cliff-edge where Soul and Self are lost.

    Goddess Danger – Free Goddesses live with the possibility that we will lose our autonomy. Most people want to evolve, know they SHOULD change, but fear they CAN’T.  There’s no shame in needing outside help. As we pointed out under “Cooperation” and “Alliances”, Goddesses need teams. This is the purpose of interventions, to demonstrate to our eyes and ears that we are harming ourselves and our relationships. Denial is a powerful defense mechanism, especially when we think we’ve finally found a substance/process that “magically” allows us to live on our particular cliff-edge – a dangerous job, risky sexual behaviors, risky recreational behaviors.

    Worst-Case Scenario – is that an addiction becomes our identity. We always have the choice of refusing to change – giving up focus, goals, principles and relationships to keep up our self-abuse. Some hardened wretches will tell anyone who listens that life itself isn’t worth it without their life-threatening self-abuse. They are choosing to die as slaves.

    Goddess Opportunity – You not only CAN free yourself, you MUST to deserve and preserve your Goddess Status. It is your spiritual obligation to live this territorial existence as an enlightenment opportunity. Familiar with the saying, “Live simply so that others may simply live” ? That mandates sharing. That means ALWAYS studying your consumption, NEVER allowing yourself to turn into a greedy pig and scheduling time to be alone with the universe and with God.  To check on the hardiness of your Soul.

    Models & Mentors – “You can’t defeat the darkness by keeping it caged inside you” – Seth Adam Smith

    “All addictions are ways to not feel our feelings”

    – Ellen Burstyn

    “Sometimes you can only find heaven by backing slowly away from hell”

    – Carrie Fisher

    “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out”. – Robert Collier

    “The most common way people give up their power is thinking they don’t have any” – Alice Walker

    #Haiku: The Columbine – Addiction

    Brain cells beggared;

    Lovelorn

    Oxytocin receptors misfire:

    “Feed me!”

  • Becoming a Goddess – the Goddess Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

     Dreams – Imagination

    Should You Ever Wake up? The first thing that is obvious to an incipient, infant goddess is that Reality is often abhorrent, that everyone knows this and that they are not doing enough about it. Everyone insists they are just too small to tackle or challenge this massive Thing. And yet the incipient, adolescent goddess notices the Power of the Idea. Particularly the Self-Fulfilling Notion of Self-Determination. It’s not easy to become whoever you want, but it’s impossible to become anybody without wanting it. Your dreams “know” everything before you do.

    Do you long for caretaking? Are you eager to give over the reins of your life to someone else? If so, you are not a goddess. The deepest desire of Goddessing is not being interfered with on out majestic passage through Eternity.  But people will keep trying to take charge of you and redefine you. They will tell you ridiculous things – such as, Imagination is Bad, or it’s a waste of time. Remember – As Goddess, you’re the Pilot. 

    Are Your Dreams Scary, Unmanageable and Unsatisfying?  Then it is time for you to take charge of your power – to admit that you are in control of your own brain.

    Look forward to dreaming. I like waking up in the early dawn because when I go back to sleep I can set an intention for dreaming – all the best dreams (and the most memorable ones) happen at the very end of sleep while you are coming up through the layers of sub- to semi-consciousness.

    Goddesses Are in Tune With Their Inner Voice – Jung tells us that in your dreams, you are everyone. Every life you have ever lived and every life you will ever live comes to you through your dreams.

    Goddesses Are Seekers – We are self-defining. Self-validating. We are on a quest. Goddess experience to the fullest the nature of having a self. Become alert to the possibilities inherent in this particular incarnation and explore.  Feel free to release your imagination.

    Dream Journal – Start a dream journal. Date it, and write, “I want to dream about…” Fill in the blank. Be as detailed and specific as you can manage. It is OK to allow your waking mind to construct desirable dreams – great works of art got their start in just this way! You may hear a voice… someone from the past who discouraged your “day-dreaming” and wanted you to focus on your work, on the present and on them. Explore this memory fearlessly. It is not rejecting or “hating on” that person to disagree with them – there are certainly times when the priority is to focus on other things – but right now you are exploring your own brain and testing out its powers. Clearly that’s an important and necessary project. Gently take control from this Remembered Forbidder and say, “This is my time now. I am in charge.”

    Goddess Danger – We all know the cautionary tale of Scary Guy Who Lives for Video Games and Doesn’t Have a Life. Do you secretly fear that the power of dreams and the pleasures of daydreaming will suck you away from Real World Competence? They won’t – so long as you are reality centered. You will become a  fount of different outcomes and speculative futures with a gift for turning powerful desires into workable avenues of growth and advancement.

    Positive Dreaming Deepens and Enhances, doesn’t evade reality. It’s just that reality is so much wilder – and we are so much more powerful than we can credit!

    Dream Group – Reaching out for allies is always a good idea. Form a Dream Group with others to share the content of your dreams and listen to their fresh interpretations.  You can even try Group Dreaming. Lie on the floor holding hands in semi-darkness playing drowsy music. Share whatever comes up. These are models for your future. Goddesses believe growth goes on forever – even after death. But this path must be chosen.

    Models & Mentors – “I dream things that never were and I say, “Why Not?” – George Bernard Shaw

    “A dreamer finds his way by moonlight…sees dawn before the rest of the world.” – Oscar Wilde

    ‘You have within you the strength, the patience and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world”

    – Harriet Tubman

    “I’ve had dreams, and I’ve had nightmares. I overcame the nightmares because of my dreams.” – Jonas Salk

    #Haiku: Human Clay Sculpts Angel Wings

    We’re all

    Dirt:

    Humble beginnings launch

    Celestial imaginings

  • Becoming a Goddess – the Goddess Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

    The Shadow – Dissonance

    Why Become a Goddess? – Innocents assume that being a goddess means being the center of continuous adulation.  Although people do admire you, competitive pushback is much more common. This alone is usually enough to encourage most women back into the fold. Why ever leave the Approval Matrix and strike out on your own? 

    Dissonance is why. As William Penn, (1644-1718) founder of Pennsylvania considered pacifism, he asked the great Quaker philosopher George Fox (1624-1691) how long he should wear his ceremonial sword, and Fox answered: “As long as you can.” In other words, until you can bear it no longer. When the dissonance overwhelms us, then we must act.

    Goddess Are Sensitive Instruments registering seismic shifts and deep tectonic disturbances below the threshold of consciousness. Something always IS “going on” and you have studied long enough to be alert to the many warning signals! This can be exhausting. We long for relaxation, peace and quiet, a clear blue sky without a single cloud.

    Goddesses’ Feet Find Their Own Path – Enviable, maybe, but scary also. We consider the unseen. Dreaming of reversals?  Sudden surprises? Creeping sense of unease? Upsets? Do you wake with a sense of having forgotten something important you almost understood?

    Who Approves the Approvers? – You’re just not comfortable in the Approval Matrix. Possibly you don’t like or trust the people whose approval you supposedly need. Getting that sneaking suspicion you’ve wandered into a masquerade? You try to learn the rules, but the rules keep changing. You can tell they’re moving the goalposts but no one’s allowed to comment. By the time you arrive, the “promise” has mysteriously “expired.”

    Impostor Syndrome – Are we the fake, or is it everyone around us who’s faking it? “Fake it till you make it” seems to be the rule. But is the game worth playing? Goddesses step away into an arena all their own, where they find the freedom to uncover their true selves. Your Goddess Journal reflects the Goddess Reality. Meditation will reveal your wholeness to you.

    Activate Your Spidey Senses – First, uncover your real self. This ought to be the easy part! Everyone has a self – right? If only! From our earliest memory, not only was “love” conditional but ALL rewards were. We wanted to find out who we really were and what we were capable of but it never seemed the right time. 

    Be the Person Not Determined By An Algorithm. Let’s start by taking our suspicions seriously – you’re not paranoid if they’re REALLY out to get you.

    Goddess Challenge –The key to intelligent management of dissonance is to think of the world as an orchestra playing a symphony. The more able we are to distinguish the varied instruments and musical lines the more we will appreciate and enjoy the experience. Schedule regular periods of rest, rebalancing and renewal.

    Goddess Danger – Avoid a “bunker mentality.” You’re not looking for a hidey-hole. The universe has many bunkers, but is bigger than any single one. Goddesses belong to eternity – that is the whole point of Goddessing. We must cultivate a hierarchy of response. We get out of bed in the middle of the night for a fire alarm, not a phone notification. 

    Loneliness Is Not Required – Don’t allow yourself to become dismissive and numb but seek out like-minded souls.  You will recognize who can provide advice and encouragement and a healthy growth process. Curate your group to promote intelligent awareness in an atmosphere of hope. Dissonance and dormancy are not doom.

    Resistance Is Never Futile – We each will be given a chance to spend our night on the watchtower, but you don’t need to spend every night there. Consider dissonance and discord invitations to accept maturity. We are putting away childish things. The sky is NOT falling, but the climate is under legitimate scientific threat. Strategize ways to take useful action. This is an opportunity to show self-love, as well as love for the group, the environment, the world and the future. The attitude, “I care about you so I’m going to take care of you”,  keeps us sensitive to the message of Universal Love that is always waiting breathlessly to embrace us.

    Suit Up for the Long Haul – Goddesses increase their peripheral senses. Learn how to check for honesty. Test for reality. Check past accounts. Interview friends AND enemies. Is somebody pushing too hard? Trying to “sign you up?” How do they treat wait-staff? Do they speak disrespectfully of others? What’s their philosophy of life?

    When It’s Too Good to Be True – That often means the trap is just about to be sprung. Goddess think for themselves.

    Models & Mentors – Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to fads, trends and popular opinion”

    – Jack Kerouac

    “Better to fail in originality than succeed in imitation”

    – Herman Melville

    “If you don’t fit in, you’re probably doing the right thing” – Henry David Thoreau

    “Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth” – John F. Kennedy

    #Haiku: Depth Psychology

    Substrata

    Dissonance?

    Game on!

    Unearth yourself –

    Transect core

    Meanings

  • Becoming a Goddess – the Goddess Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

    Duality – Ambivalence

    Some People Prefer Risk.   They don’t feel alive unless the situation is dangerous. What kind of goddess are you? The dangerous kind? Can you rush eternity? A hastened Immortality might not happen. More typical is ambivalence. We both want and don’t want – at the same time.

    How Many Different Goddesses Are You? Sometimes we dream disturbingly about things we don’t want and people we aren’t. Feminists dream of rape, vegetarians dream of meat, pacifists dream of fighting.  It’s confusing. What gives?

    Language Isn’t Subtle Enough to Explain You – Your personality manifests all feelings, all thoughts, all ideas, rippling through you in a vast subconscious river. Everyone’s does; not only those who choose to be Immortal. Your unconscious connects with the “collective unconscious” of all other humans – dead, alive, even fictional. They ripple through you regularly. That’s where all your ‘strange thoughts” and “other personalities” come from.

    Why isn’t “hate-love” a word? You experience that regularly. How about “fear-attraction”? Common! What I’m suggesting is that we need to accept the fact that a “personality” is a dynamism, not a label.

    Goddess Challenge – Facing your own fluid multiplicity might seem the toughest part, but it isn’t for artists, who routinely “play” along their edge, peeking over it and imagining life on the other side. Art is the best way to express this, an enormous relief since it’s non-committal. You can stop experimenting any time you choose. It’s a goddess power also. Of course, you’ll have to face the surprise of your relatives when your work becomes public: “Where did THAT come from?” But if truth be told, we’ve always been surprised we’re related to those people.

    Goddess Danger – Society seeks to label, limit and stigmatize. Everyone is afraid of becoming what they fear but Goddesses need to explore and ultimately manage our fear. A simple safe word won’t work when people – bankers, politicians, therapists, employers – are so fundamentally untrustworthy. That is why our identification of ourselves as Brave Goddess is so vital. The vastness of our potential can never be controlled by language. We will never be butterflies pinned down in a museum box for the instruction/curiosity of others.

    Goddess Opportunity – Appreciate your Multiplicitous Self.  Don’t slam the door on any of your potentialities too soon. Sometimes the worst labeler, the most determined jailor, is our own punitive psyche. We are deeply afraid of wandering in the forest and losing the way to get home safe. But Goddesses carry Home within them. As Nelson Mandela used to quote from his prison cell, if we are the captains of our  souls we can be the masters of our fates. (Henley.) We can learn to tolerate a little ambiguity/uncertainty/ambivalence.

    Goddess Tolerate Uncertainty – Being a goddess is all about balance.  The experience of balance-seeking is indescribable linguistically – it must be felt experientially. Goddesses learn to live in a world beyond language where we can savor uncertainty and foretaste eternity.

    Goddess Relish Paradox – Two contraries not only exist together but empower each other – that creative tension is the lifeblood of emotion, imagination and personality.

    Goddess Coast on the Knife-Edge of Ambivalence – The desired is undesirable, the only possibility is impossible and the act of wanting forbids getting. In the Multiverse (Eternity) all your impossibles are actually happening. Goddesses must become comfortable with the pleasures of this dance: “My future dissolves in beads of sweat, my present is my mirror, my past’s a shape-shifting whirligig.” (Aallyn)

    Even Leaders Must Contemplate the Power of  Surrender – We contemplate Everything. Physics is magic and dreams embody history. This quantum world of “spooky entanglements” is one in which we goddesses become expert. We accept not only that the cave we fear holds the treasure we desire, but that we are both cave and treasure, indeed, fear itself.

    Models & Mentors –  “It seems we are capable of immense love and loyalty and as capable of deceit and atrocity. It is this shocking ambivalence that makes us unique.” – John Scott

    “Ambivalence is a wonderful tune to dance to. It has a rhythm all its own.”

    – Erica Jong

    “The Simpsons is about alienation and the ambivalence of living with a family who you love but drives you crazy”

    – Matt Groening

    “Poetry is the home of ambiguity, ambivalence and uncertainty.” – Billy Collins

    #Haiku: Yin/yang

    Inclined to spring forward

    Fade back; yin;

    Urge to return?

    Float forward;

    Yang.

  • Becoming a Goddess – the Goddess Oracle

    1. Danger – Risk –

    Do Goddesses Worry?  Are we anxiety driven? Haunted by nightmares and worst-case scenarios? Do you wake up gasping and trying to forget what you’ve just experienced?

    Goddesses Are Prophetic – Nightmares mean you’re paying attention. Being a goddess doesn’t mean you’re controlling events, it describes the type of human you aspire to be. Life is scary, but we need to grow, and growth requires we learn to cultivate risk if we are ever to expand and venture outside our comfort zone.

    The Number One Complaint About Becoming a Goddess? – Fear management. You will be a target. The only way to manage fear? Become a Goddess. In other words, accepting the Divine Mandate is growth – you are the green pushing up through concrete. You really have no choice.

    Can Goddesses Be Damaged or Destroyed?  Certainly! In a world of mediocrity, we dare. That make our takedown an inviting goal for jealous demons.

    Study risk intelligently. Are demons symbolic? No. I’ve personally met several. They are worthy of study. Where does your fear come from? If from an outside force, study him. No point being “afraid” of “foreigners” if the man telling us to be afraid has a reputation for befriending people and then fleecing them. If the fear comes from your gut, treat it respectfully. Read The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker. (Public Library)

    Managing Fear:

    1. Don’t rely on rumor and innuendo
    1. Dangers must be proven Real
    1. Dangers Need to be Historically verified by data: “How likely is injury?”
    1. Assemble likely risk-avoidance strategies that have performed well for others in your situation.
    1. What exactly is your situation? Quantify.
    1. Know who your allies are
    1. Be prepared to alter strategy to maximize success and to learn from mistakes

    Goddess Training – Goddesses study, identify and rise above the challenges. Learn to make sophisticated risk assessments and pick your battles cleverly. To do that, goddess need a Purpose. Your Immortality if offered in exchange for you operating as an enlightening force in a dark space. 

    Unexpected Benefit: Fair-weather Friends Scatter. Friends respect and want the best for you, but the relationship must be reciprocal. You agree to have each other’s backs. But some “friends” are attracted only by your light and when that is threatened, they either hide or assist the attacker. Know the difference between a Team and a Gang. Gangs work to suck power from individual members and concentrate it in one individual. Teams work for the success of all. Coach can’t win if the team doesn’t win.

    Goddesses Enjoy the Test – Goddesses relish testing their and mental physical abilities constantly against life’s games & mazes

    Goddesses Transform – The physical pleasure of meeting the moment cannot be overstated. Soon the training itself becomes a rush of joy. When you are making love to the universe you can feel the universe loving you back. This is what immortality feels like.

    Can Goddesses Be Defeated? – There are no defeats, there are only lessons. Everything is practice for The Greater Contest.

    Won’t You Ultimately Lose? Truly, we all die, some sooner, some less dignified. As a Goddess, this is where your purpose upholds you as you transform into your Immortal Incarnation. What this will be, none of us knows. Study your models. What allowed Nelson Mandela to be “captain of his soul” after more than 20 years in brutal captivity? Are we just bodies? Or are we also souls? Are our souls so easily defeated? Can we also train, test and transform our souls?

    Remember –  a caterpillar’s “defeat” is a butterfly.

    Models & Mentors – “Extreme Fear can neither fight nor fly.”

    – William Shakespeare

    “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear” – Mark Twain

    “If you try to get rid of fear and anger without knowing their meaning, they will return stronger” – Deepak Chopra

    “We’re more often frightened than hurt, and we suffer more from imagination than reality.” – Seneca

    #haiku: Everything

    Everything you’ve

    Ever wanted

    Is on the other side

    Of fear

  • Becoming a Goddess – Claiming Your Superpower by Alysse Aallyn

    The Storm – Conflict

      Something’s Always Coming. Are you having bad dreams? Of natural disasters like storms, volcanoes and  flooding?  Do you fear war, robbery, violation, home invasion? Or do you dream about your loved one’s face turning bitter and their words cutting sharply?  Conflict is inevitable.  It is even necessary – birth pangs seem terrifying. In dreams we rehearse our fears until some of us fear to dream.

      It Always Comes Before You’re Ready – Here it is – the reason you become a goddess. You must always be larger than the fight. You must embody the meaning of the fight, and to do that you have to discover what the meaning is. You represent the Principle of Life and have committed yourself to its immortalization.

      Battle or go under. It’s not pleasant under there. The force against you is superior – unthinking – inhuman – so you will have to be wily and know when to expend energy and when to conserve your strength.

      You are a Force Field.  You are a magnet for desire, change, for evolution itself. This comes by virtue of your goddess decision making. Others may tell you to stand back, take your place in line or wait your turn but your appearance into this chaotic universe triggered no such guarantee. We are here to learn to use our power.

      Conflict Makes a Goddess – Force stirs up resistance.  Actions create re-action as we swing back and forth in our determination and direction. We clash and crash.  Sometimes we regret it bitterly, “why did I do that?”  Sometimes we fear loss or harm so much we become immobilized.  The challenge is to assume your stride, elucidate your goals and plan a direction.

      Goddess Danger – It’s all too easy to make others fear you. The one with the biggest weapon THINKS she the fight. But what looks like compliance to you could be revolution – you will be toppled and lose your heart’s desire.

      Goddess Opportunity – Learning to use conflict constructively and creatively is a Superpower.  Other people are force fields, too.  If there is any way to blend these powers and head in the same direction, we become invincible. Welcome the knowledge provided by Storm.

      Study Your Opponent – Some clever scholar has separated these opponents into groups & classes. Read up! Some opponents – physical contests, weather conditions – don’t even have a brain. So who – or what – are you playing against?

      You Are Playing Against Yourself – your own fear, incapacity, beginner status. Seek mentoring so you have advice along the journey. Who is the sensei who will guide you? Someone who desires both your safety and your growth.

      Reward Yourself – The best place to do this is your training journal. Think hard about every contest and how you performed.  Assess your challenges and accomplishments. Way to go!

      Models & Mentors –  “I used to tell myself, boy, if you can survive this, you can survive anything” – Tom Lichtenberg

      “Laughter is the proof that our tragedies don’t define us. Laughter is the survivor’s language” – Josh James

      “Cancer didn’t bring me to my knees, it brought me to my feet”

      – Michael Douglas

      “If you want to awaken humanity, awaken yourself. If you want to eliminate suffering, eliminate what is negative in yourself. Your gift to the world is our self-transformation.” –Lao Tzu

      #Haiku: Sleuth

      Named is

      Tamed.

      Brainstorm:

      Exceed

      Outstrip

      Surpass

      Unveil

      Lay bare

      Prevail

    1. Animus – a ghost story by Alysse Aallyn

      SIX – FISHBABY

      Those who sleep alone risk scarifying dreams. I dreamed I’d had the baby, and it was some kind of hideous ordeal. Call it a “trauma trigger”. I came back into myself hospitalized, bandaged head to toe and in traction. At first I was so disoriented I thought I was upside down, floating on the ceiling, but the ceiling was stainless steel and it was my reflection that I saw. The nurse approached from a long way off, carrying something in stiffly held out arms. That nurse’s face was so familiar, but who was she? I had only seen my uncle’s housekeeper once so why should it be her and not merely one of those recycled faces that haunt our dreams? The bundle offered was a fish.

      I knew she expected me to reject it – call the maitre d’ it and demand a replacement, but I don’t do what people expect. Besides, it had very human eyes, big and sad, with tears woefully a-boiling in its depths. With great effort I wrenched out of my bandages and out of my traction, grabbed my baby and ran away. Obviously this was a terrible hospital, where people give birth in traction and your baby is a fish. A carp, from the look of him, and

      not the lucky kind.

      He said, “Mummy, mummy,” but whether he recognized me or commented on my bandages I couldn’t say. Hard work running through sand, because that’s where I bogged down. A bunch of golfers grabbed my baby, tossing him into the air with jeers and screams. The baby looked at me imploringly with its chocolate brown eyes, but what could I do? They had cleats and

      clubs and all I had bandages. And I was losing strength, keeping only just enough to wonder, why golfers at the seaside? They tossed my baby in the ocean but I wasn’t having it. Waded right in after him but to my shock I soon was drowning. Can’t swim in bandages. You’d think the fish would return the rescue favor, but no. He was nowhere to be seen. It seems you can’t rely on anyone.

      When a dream becomes this disgusting you know it’s past time to wake up. I was fighting my way out when I encountered Arnold’s eyes. Looking at me as if I were loathsome.

      right.

      help me.”

      “You’re all over blood,” he said. And he was I said, “That blood was our child. Help me, But it had been too late from the first. The

      hospital had a stainless steel ceiling; how could I have guessed? Time seemed to loop; there was a panic-driven moment as they wheeled me conscious right to the operating table. Is “awake till the end” the punishment for being a bad wife, bad hostess, or bad mother? Behind the anesthesiologist’s mask I thought I saw my uncle’s eyes. I was out before I could ask what “D & C” stands for. Diddled, then cauterized?

      SEVEN – HAUNTED

      Arnold was enormously relieved that I was no longer pregnant. I was enormously relieved that Stan and Willette went home. Arnold was further relieved that the satellite guy installed the dish the day of my return; I was relieved that without a special dish it seemed we could get no local stations. Bait and switch, said Arnold.

      But it meant I could pretend I was no longer here. Didn’t matter that this was my own ice floe; freely chosen. Somehow, even dead and stupid, my uncle had won and I had lost. Money meant nothing. The stupid dead had scored again.

      “We played strip poker because you went to bed so early,” Arnold defended himself. Thus the guilty flee where none pursue. “Jealousy does not become you.”

      But had I become jealousy? The better to consider this possibility I turned down the sound on the plasma TV, then finally the picture. It was more fun to watch the raindrops slide together. Raindrop sex. Boy drops and girl drops, maybe even gay drops. Meeting and joining. Becoming one.

      “You know it takes a village to maintain a marriage,” huffed Arnold. “Bartenders, bankers and stand- up comedians.”

      And pretty, pretty grad students? He didn’t say. I ignored him till he said the magic word. The magic word was “drink.”

      He said, “No reason you can’t drink now.”

      Over a baloney sandwich and a glass of Chianti I began to feel forgiving. Someday I would have to go on a diet, find out if my body was still there, but not today and not tomorrow. Percocet enhances Chianti wonderfully. Without that dualism, if you scrape away the op layer of pain, deeper pain just bubbles up from underneath.

      “I’ve seen your ghost,” said Arnold. “It’s a guy in a lumberjack shirt.”

      But he had never seen my uncle. Not even a picture. “Describe him.”

      “Hair the color of driftwood with a widow’s peak, and olive drab pants.”

      “Did he look at you? Speak to you?”

      “Looked through me. Came right into the study when I was working. I think he was looking for

      you.”

      That was just mean. Utterly uncalled for. He was punishing me for my jealousy by making all this up. Why would my uncle’s ghost appear to him? I bet Arnold read my diary while I was in the hospital, helpless. It was just the kind of thing that he would do. People without gifts batten on the bounty of others.

      “That diary is private,” I warned him. “You’re the one saying married people don’t share everything.”

      “Bet he thinks that this is his house,” mused Arnold, relentless. “Since you bought it with his money.” He rose, whistling cheerfully at freedom from the sickroom. “I’d better get back to work if I want to have something to show my agent.”

      “Leaving me, are you?”

      “Just a day trip to town on Friday. That is, if you’re feeling better.”

      He didn’t bother to invite me. Me, who had done so much for him!

      “You be careful,” I threatened, “You’ve got “Not me,” he sneered. “I’m a modernist.” Could it possibly be that easy? If

      “modernists” were truly ghost-blind, maybe you need a conscience to see ghosts. He should at least be haunted by his fishbaby. Find the meaning, the challenge was always the same. Without meaning everything’s just another trauma trigger. What do refrigerators and meatsafes have in common? They slow down time. If Time truly has no meaning, don’t you see? It means we are free. We always have been free.

      I climbed out of bed, awkward because my limbs still belonged to someone else, and checked my underpants. No blood. Maybe all my blood was gone. If I was a ghost that explained everything. Arnold couldn’t see me because he was a modernist. So it was up to me to tell him what we all had suffered. Being ghostly gave me such a rush of power I finally understood how hard it is for them to leave.

      I took time to gather flies’ wings as I walked. Little boys tear the wings off flies; ask anybody. I thought they’d stir to life beneath my hands, but they stayed dead, so perhaps they’re only unshed tears. I’m a beginner at this. What do I know?

      I pushed open the door to Arnold’s study. There was a bad smell in there and it was Arnold. He hummed Wagner as he worked; a classic song of triumph. On the wall were blow-ups of my diary, in my private, loopy handwriting, my private, private words. Tabloid articles he’d pasted to the wallpaper; “Mom Kills Twelve”; “Satan in Miami”, “BatBoy takes a Bride”.

      The wallpaper was so beautiful in this room; it was the best in the house; a Morris pattern of leaves and mulberries and I hadn’t grudged it. It was priceless, probably irreplaceable; and this what I get. Anger postponed becomes rage and rage is truly liberating. I picked up the scissors from a pile of newspapers. Stupidly he’d placed his desk in the window embrasure, allowing me to walk up behind him. “Modernists” are ignorant of fear.

      “So what’s it called?” Peeking over his shoulder.

      He jumped a mile, scampering to close and save, frantic, busy, ineffective. But the printout lay right next to him. MOODY BITCH SEEKS KIND, CONSIDERATE MAN. I laughed because it was funny.

      “It’s a comedy,” he said defensively.

      “Aren’t I laughing?” I agreed. The cold fire that doesn’t burn consumed me. I opened my fist to shower unshed tears along his keyboard and he saw the scissors. He went so white. I loved that finally he saw me as someone to fear. Now I knew what turned my uncle on. I opened my mouth to speak but my uncle’s dust boiled out of me and I can’t remember what I tried to say.

      That I had bled and now it was his turn? That it only hurts for the first five seconds? That the living are as deserving as the dead? I should have told him it’s the little things…the glasses of wine, the band-aids, the unshed tears – still breaths of life that spark the dying air; these are agents of the dead rescinding time and looping it backwards. Back towards them. Because time’s the thing they’re so jealous of, the only precious thing that we have left.

    2. Animus – a ghost story by Alysse Aallyn

      FOUR – IS THAT YOU?

      The phone man said the best that we could get was a party line. No real privacy – ever. I was dumbfounded. “There’s no real privacy on them other lines neither,” said Mr. Sterling, the phone man. “You just think there is.”

      “Don’t sweat it,” Arnold told me, right in the phone man’s presence. “We’ll get our phone through the Internet like all sane people. The land line is only for emergencies.”

      Sometimes when the phone rang we weren’t supposed to answer it because it wasn’t our “ring”. Maybe Arnold can ignore a ringing phone: I can’t. Especially if it goes off in the middle of the night. No counting a “ring pattern” there – not with the echoes of sleep rattling through your head.

      “Who could be calling at this hour?” I demanded of my husband. Rhetorically.

      But he said, “Cows. Bears.” In his dream or on the phone?

      As usual it was up to me to answer it. “Hello?” I quavered.
      A sharp intake of breath but no one spoke. I

      had played this game before. Could we have brought our own ghosts with us?

      ‘That you, Gayle?” I boldly inquired. “Just checking up on us? We’re fine. The baby’s fine. Arnold says hi.”

      155 – Awake Till the End – Stories by Alysse Aallyn

      It was only afterwards that I wondered if the caller was my uncle’s “housekeeper”. The unpaid one he swore would be compensated in his will. Who else would be angry enough to hound us? And there was always the possibility that it was my uncle himself, wanting to complain about the way I’d spent his money. It would be just like the stupid dead to initiate calls they can’t complete.

      FIVE – MEATSAFE

      Our first visitors came when before we were ready (as visitors will). Before the cable was connected. Willette had streaked her hair with an unbecoming dissipated rock star red which, considering her coal black eyebrows and pointed chin made her resemble Sarah Bernhardt in her coffin. She had two legs, however. Willette had always been High Maintenance. Compared with her, Stan, a little plumper, somewhat balder now, seemed refreshingly cooperative and easily amused. In honor of our upstate move he wore a sweaters with a vaguely Chistmassy theme.

      “Snowflakes! Moose!” he genially exclaimed. “What’s not to like?”

      “You’re not missing anything in the city,” said Willette. “We’ve been burgled.”

      take?”
      Stan.
      “Better glasses don’t help.”

      “Omigod,” I sympathized, “What did they “A Cuisinart and my reading glasses,” said “Those instructions are rough,” I agreed.

      “We told the cops to be on the lookout for a bandit with severe left eye astigmatism,” Stan joked.

      “Not that they’ll look,” said Willette gloomily. “They never do.”

      “Until the guy kills somebody,” agreed Arnold.

      “They don’t even care about that now,” asserted Willette. “They bargain murders down to “accidents” just to skew their crime statistics. Fighting crime from a desk chair.”

      “Nice work if you can get it,” echoed Arnold, a sociable host refilling wineglasses.

      They had been stuck in traffic so we were dining at nine-thirty, a distinct hardship for anyone with my raging metabolism. I had eaten the cheese and crackers all by myself and was forced to smack together some distinctly unappetizing crudités. Zucchini slices with sour cream, anyone? Fortunately it didn’t matter. They wanted dinner and dinner itself hardly mattered because the dining room was so dark. Without windows, but six doors, there were constant and mysteriously unaccountable drafts; the candles slanting first one way and then the other. Over Martel and coffee conversation languished. No Martel for me. No wine. I was trying to be good. Trying to be good does not a dinner party make.

      “I know,” I roused myself. “Let’s play

      Icicle.”


      “Icicle?” they all wanted to know. “How do you play that?”

      “One person hides and everyone goes looking for him. When you find him you have to squeeze in as close as you can get. Last person left is the icicle.”

      “That’s sardines!” scoffed Arnold. “I’ve played that.”

      But Willette was intrigued. “Good game for this house,” she said. “We’ll find cubbyholes and corners even you haven’t seen.”

      “I’m warning you, I’m the world-class champion sardines player,” said Stan. “I once won hanging for an hour in a garment bag.”

      With a challenge like that, he had to go first.

      “Basement off limits!” shouted Arnold. “It’s dangerous down there.” Was that an implied waiver of danger elsewhere? We listened to his footfalls clatter up the stairs and wander overhead.

      “Sounds like there are three of him,” said Willette. Of course we weren’t bothering to count.

      “I wouldn’t be surprised,” I teased. “Real estate agent says this house is haunted.”

      Willette seemed unintimidated. Stan I could have impressed.

      “Our refrigerator tried to eat the delivery man,” said Arnold, getting into the spirit. “Both recovered and doing fine.”

      “And there’s kind of a bad smell coming from Arnold’s study.” I suggested.

      Arnold gave me A Look. Ooo, snap! Talk about burning with a cold fire! I pulled out the Big Guns. “Oswald Pewlett saw a fireball.”

      “I feel a fireball coming on myself,” said Arnold, shaking the empty Martel bottle.

      “Maybe it’s an animus.” said Willette. “You know, like a malignant spirit that attaches itself to unfinished business.”

      I didn’t know. Upstairs a door slammed. Hard. We took that as a starter’s pistol. I let the others rush straight upstairs, elbowing each other like a middle- school recess, pretended at first to follow, then ducking behind a door.

      World Champion Stan could not make it this easy for us, not even in an unfamiliar house. If it was me I would make a lot of noise going up the front stairs and then sneak quietly down the back. How he slammed that door I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound difficult with our drafts. If you balanced something on it and opened a window…

      Outside had to be off-limits. I heard an unpleasant rustling in the rhododendrons. Think far enough outside the box, fall off the edge. I allowed myself to be seduced by the kitchen broom closet. It’s as narrow as an ironing board but runs the depth of the room, thus making an ideal crawlspace. And there was someone in there. I could hear him breathing. “Is that you, Stan?”

      The shadow rippled towards me. “I’ve missed you, Sharl.” That could have been my sigh, me just talking to myself. But then the voice spoke unmistakably and said the most surprising thing: “Time has no meaning.”

      That’s not a message I would ever give myself, and it was my uncle’s voice, I swear it. I backed out in a panic, slammed the door so hard the doorknob fell off. The ghost was locked in, ha ha. Serves him right for refusing to play dead.

      Willette and Arnold were upstairs together, looking equal parts smug and guilty. Like I couldn’t figure out what was going on. And they couldn’t say exactly where they’d searched. “Please yourselves,” I yawned. Maybe if I found Stan, he would show a sudden yen for pregnant women. Unlike everybody else.

      “He’s not downstairs,” I declared, so it was time to inspect the attic. My flashlight revealed footprints in the dust along the steps. I pursued a faint tapping sound. In the dark, Stan had locked himself in the old meatsafe. Dumb place to hide! And he wasn’t happy about it. Like it was our fault. Willette, feeling a bit one down after the exposure of her skirmishes with Arnold, seized advantage like a wolverine protecting its mate.

      “What if he had an asthma attack!”

      Then you’d be a merry widow, I thought. But honest Stan said, “I don’t have asthma.”

      “But an experience like that could give it to you,” said Willette. “Trauma triggers, they call it. “Traumatic inception”. Someone needs to take that door

      off at the hinges.”

      mandarin .”

      “Don’t look at me,” said Arnold. “I’m a

      The game was over. “Maybe in the morning,” I told Willette. “I’m gravid and I need my sleep.”

      When Arnold finally came to bed – could Stan possibly have agreed to a threesome? I refused to let him in. “You’re the icicle,” I told him.

    3. Animus – a ghost story by Alysse Aallyn

      TWO – THE OLD CHASE PLACE

      When I discovered one house on the list was haunted I gave the real estate agent no rest until he took me there. Honestly I had to do that man’s job for him. It was raining so heavily that morning that his car was like a bathysphere.

      “I want to at least look at it. Cheer up; if there are leaks we’re sure to see them.”

      “That’s it.” The agent still seemed very depressed as he reached for his golf umbrella. “It’s been empty fourteen years. No modernization whatever.”

      Better and better. The bathrooms and kitchens I’d been seeing were like lip-sticked hogs in toe- shoes. There might even be original paneling. Peering out of the window I could see nothing through the darkening rain. “What’s it haunted by?”

      I saw his wattles quiver in battle with his chin. Was I interfering with the real estate agent’s code?

      “Various things.” Unadroitly he tried changing the subject and actually selling. “It has a view of the river. And it’s a real bargain.”

      “Like what things?” Not reaching for my own umbrella or putting up my hood might tempt disclosure. I saw him wondering he could talk me out of going further.

      (Sigh) “Oswald Pewlett saw a fireball.”

      I was entranced! Had he searched his memory for the spectre least likely to queer a deal? “There

      was a fire?”

      He hastened to reassure. “A green fire.cold fire that doesn’t burn.”

      A Delicious! I had to see it now! I pulled

      galoshes over my ivory heels. “Let’s go!”

      Perched above the road, the house was reached by a corkscrew of steps. The porch was an addition, so it was full of leaks, but the house was solid as a rock. Silent. High ceilinged. Original paneling. One bathroom for seven bedrooms, a marvelous thirties kitchen with no appliances, and a single light bulb in the exact center of every ceiling. This could be fun.

      The real estate agent ensconced himself by the library window with its view of the river and refused to go upstairs. “I’ve seen it,” he said, pulling his fishing hat down over his ears as if assaulted by inner rain.

      Upstairs there was no fireball, but the floors were littered with little glittery shards that turned out to be flies’ wings. No flies, mind you, only their wings. Thrifty spiders, I suppose who dine on all but isinglass. Is that how fairy legends started, I wondered. Fairy wings and flies’ wings – hard to tell the difference. I’m on the side of spiders. They can have all the flies they want.

      And that’s how I bought The Old Chase Place.

      THREE – DELIVER US

      I should never have told Arnold the place was haunted, but I couldn’t resist bragging. “It has everything,” I sang.

      “Air-conditioning too, so it seems,” he groused. He was always out to ruin my good time.

      “That’s just the wind off the river. A natural chill factor. And real oak, too.”

      “I’m not complaining.” He couldn’t help but warm to so much wood. In the city everything is “faux”. Alas the rooms were rather small, and in strange juxtaposition. Not a rich man’s house, you wouldn’t say, but perhaps the warren of a worrier.

      “This will be my study,” said Arnold. He chose the one room in the house that still had a working fireplace – the others had been fitted with hideous stovepipes. But I didn’t argue, because at last he was smiling.

      We were having a picnic lunch when the Sears truck drove up with the appliances. I didn’t see the accident because in my condition, meals are serious events. If I’m going to spend all morning nauseated then I’m going to spend all afternoon eating. (And all evening sleeping it off.) So when Arnold rose to show the hirelings what a forceful homeowner he could be, I pulled the fried chicken bucket closer.

      When I heard a crunch and a hoarse cry I did run to the window. The ramp had fallen off the steps, tossing the refrigerator and pinning a delivery man. His mouth was open – I could see blood – and he was gasping for air. He reminded me of the fish my uncle caught on his

      many unsporting ventures into the wild. He loved watching creatures die. He once presented me with a still- beating fish heart, saying, “It’s only the stupidest that go on living after they are really dead.” The fish, the headless running chickens — I guess the joke was on them, if they didn’t know they were dead. But the delivery man was not dead; we all affirmed the fact.

      There was a flurry of activity while the driver jumped into the truck to call for help – we didn’t have a phone yet and cell phones don’t work out here. The fire and rescue truck arrived after about ten minutes to take over. Arnold had to help the second delivery man move in the appliance. “Get a camera,” he hissed.

      He wanted me to take pictures of the ramp and the steps to show, although our porch was in sorry condition, it was the ramp anchoring that was at fault (them) and not the steps (us). That’s because it’s so important in life to figure out whose fault everything is.

      “He’ll be all right,” I offered. “He had a lot of meat on him.”

      “Jesus, Sharl,” said Arnold, “I heard his bones go crunch.” And that was the end of that picnic.

      At least I had a brand new oven, refrigerator, dishwasher and washer/dryer. I went back to applying the coat of dark green paint to make the room picture-perfect. Hunter green for Hunter (boy or girl); a super-infant guaranteed to make all his mother’s dreams come true.

    4. Animus – a ghost story by Alysse Aallyn

      Animus ONE – DEAD & BURIED


      Andrew looked up from the Food section of the Sunday Times. “Did he jump out of his coffin and give everybody the finger?”


      “No.” I sat down on a Brazilian leather cube impersonating a chair. “He left me a lot of money.”


      That made Arnold sit up straight. Finally I had produced something worthy to compete with three- melon risotto. “How much?”


      “A lot.” Two beats. “All of it.”


      I hadn’t seen Arnold this excited in a long time. “This is the uncle we never once went to visit, even though he only lived in New Rochelle?”


      “He’s the one.”


      “And there are a lot of other relatives…” I saw the penny drop. “Is this the same guy who used to feel you up when you were little?”


      “He’s the one.”


      Arnold whistled. “Wow!” he said, “Break out the champagne! Let’s drink to old fashioned Calvinist
      guilt!”

      But I couldn’t drink. “There’s an unpaid

      housekeeper who says she’ll sue.” I tried dismissing that

      ugly scene from my mind. But ugly scenes don’t go so
      easily.


      “Screw her,” he laughed, “Doubtless the old man did. To the one who got away!” he snorkled. “With…” drum-roll on the glass coffee table… “all the money!”


      “I could split it with her,” I said thoughtfully. “Except that I need it all.” And if I divorced Arnold, I’d have to split it with him.


      His eyes narrowed over my unusual decisiveness. “Sounds like you’ve made a plan.”


      “I have. I’m pregnant and I’m moving.”


      He rose to pursue me to the kitchen. I was the pursued one now.


      “Rich? Pregnant? Moving?” He banged his palm against his chest. “It’s a lot to handle for one afternoon. Where are you going, oh helpmeet?”


      “Upstate. The country.” There was no champagne. Of course not. There had been nothing to celebrate for so, so long. I poured us each an apple juice. “You could come with.” Two beats. “But you’d have to give up your girlfriend.”


      Surprise! I saw him try to toss it off and keep on dancing. “What’s that? Getting jealous are we? Symptomatic of your condition?”


      “Gayle.” I leaned forward, giving back the name. “She sent me such a charming letter.” In which she stated her utter non-comprehension of why the moody bitch wouldn’t just step aside and let the poor, kind,
      considerate man go free. Ugh. Apple juice is disgustingly sweet. I’ve never understood how adults can covet the provinces of children. Poor little sugar addicts, they are ruined before they start. I tried adding powdered tea from a mix. Still bad. The no-liquor lifestyle is a tough sell.


      He was sputtering like a damp firecracker. But it was not Arnold’s turn to speak.


      “Screwing students is the beginning of the end for a teacher. You’re lucky she notified me and not the superintendent.”


      Unfortunately I could always read Arnold’s mind. He really needs to get some more interesting thoughts. I saw him deciding he’d better stop aimless denial until confronted with the evidence against him.


      “Why upstate?” he bartered, testing me. “Why not, say, Europe?”


      “Because,” I answered, “I like to get something for my money.” That alone made me my uncle’s worthy heir. Glittering silver dollars lit the darkened rooms of memory. I persisted — for I’m nothing if not persistent — “Haven’t you heard of the curse of the lottery winner? They spend it all and then some. I want a property I can buy outright – debt-free.” Wouldn’t it be heaven owing nobody nothing?


      He toddled toward the window on his be- jeaned insect legs. He looks much better in big-boy pants. Was he trying to imagine life without me? Or without New York? So I sealed the deal with a siren song. “You could finish your screenplay…”