The Book of Josiah - Chapter 23a

The Five of Cups reversed, gold on black.
    He is in a car with her, and they are driving down the road. The top is down, the wind is in her hair - God, she looks beautiful today, eyes like black on gold. And they are laughing so hard, though he can’t say why. They laugh and laugh, as though this could never end. And then he looks at his hand, and sees a trickle of blood - why does it not hurt? He stops laughing, and so does she. They stare at the trickle of blood, confused, as it traces a red path down his arm. And then the car is out of control, and they go off the bridge. For a moment they are suspended in empty space but then they fall. And somewhere distant, a girl is crying.
    The Six of Wands reversed, silver on black.
    On an ocean, rocking back and forth with the gentle waves. It is night, and the moon is full, silver on black. It is so peaceful here, with the gentle rocking of the sea. But the sky grows darker, and one of the crew is not who he seems, he is an outsider, a traitor, but which one? Perhaps they should draw lots. But the lots are not fair and he draws the short straw - no! I am not the traitor! - but no one will listen to his cries, and they prepare to throw him from the boat before all is lost. “Pray to your God,” they say, “perhaps he will hear and save your life”. But he does not believe in God and so all hope is lost. For a moment he is suspended in empty space but then he falls forever.
    The Fool.
    How should this dream go? I shall toss a coin to decide, I cannot control a dream. Heads, we shall all go home and live beautiful lives, and the dream shall end happily ever after. Tails, we shall never go home, and the dream shall end in fear and pain. He tosses the coin, watches it spin, round and round. For a moment, it hangs there, forever revolving, but then it falls. He reaches out a bloodstained hand and catches it. Tails. Best of three, he thinks, and tosses the coin again and again - and every time it comes up tails.

    The World reversed. Failure.

The Book of Josiah - Chapter 12 - JOE

 

Chapter 12 marks the half-way point for the Book of Josiah. We've heard a lot from Josiah and Jos, but what about Joe? We last saw him in chapter 6 when an old friend asked him to help terraform the moon.

    Joe had already been awake for nearly an hour when his alarm went off. He had barely been able to sleep at all, his mind full of niggling doubts and vague worries. Today was the day.
    He had gone to bed early, to be at his best, but sleep had deserted him. For hours he had tossed and turned, unable to hide from his memories, unable to slip into darkness, away from thought and fear. When he had finally drifted off, sleep had been capricious. He had woken more times during the night than he cared to remember. No, it wasn’t his sleep, it was his dreams that had betrayed him, over and over again. And then, at 6:34 he had woken and that was it. Since then he had done nothing but stare at the clock and replay his thoughts.
    It was 7:30 am. There was no real need for Joe to get up quite this early, but he had been anxious that he might not have enough time. He didn’t want to be late, nor have to rush. But now, in the harsh light of day, Joe couldn’t bring himself to stir. It had been too long and he wasn’t sure he could trust himself. What if he failed? This was a big chance, an opportunity to do something and leave a mark on the world. What if he said something stupid or irrelevant? How long had it been? He watched the seconds and the minutes ticking away and couldn’t muster the will to move his legs. Today was the day.

The Book of Josiah - Chapter 5 - JOSIAH

Not sure what this is about? Here's my introduction.

Chapter 5 is the continuation of the story of Josiah begun in chapters 1 and 2. But you might meet some characters you recognise from Jos' storyline...

What is the Square?
    A geometrical object. Neat and precise, two-dimensional and utterly regular. Existing nowhere, if not in the mind.
    Josiah had come to realise that it was also a place, a group of people, an ideal. And more than that - for many souls who had lost their faith it was home.
    For Josiah however, it was an opportunity, a door opening before him. He could almost taste the success of his time machine, as he sipped on a black coffee and relaxed in a chair of real brown leather. The smell of cured animal skins was a real pleasure, as was the feeling of the chair beneath his fingers. Without a doubt, this was the most comfortable chair in the room - and there had been no shortage of choice.
    Josiah had to admit that the Square was both exactly what he had hoped for and more, but also very, very different. The lounge of the Elegant Head summed it up completely.
    The first thing you noticed upon entering the Elegant Head, as Josiah had noticed not a week earlier, was the sheer number of chairs - chairs of all varieties. There were sofas and armchairs, rocking-chairs and stools, fold-out chairs and inflatable chairs. Chairs made of wood and iron, of green plastic and animal fur, a chair made entirely out of human bones. The only thing there wasn’t, was a chair made of steel.
    And that was the second thing that Josiah had noticed. He had been so accustomed to seeing them, he felt their absence as something palpable - there were no fists of steel on the wall, no boxes for Church offerings. Even the Provider was free from iconography - the sheer blasphemy still thrilled him as he drank his unblessed coffee.
    After that, the details of the room came thick and fast, broke across his mind like waves across a boat, too much for your mind to quite take everything in.
    The sheer vastness of the chamber, open to the sky above, with the bright light of the sun shining down upon you like summer. But between the Square and the sky were many metres of concrete. This was a false sky, reading off the ambient emotion of the room and setting itself accordingly.
    Set into the regular walls, at irregular intervals, were small shaded alcoves, capable of being curtained and soundproofed off for private conferences and meetings. And other forms of experimentation. Sound could not escape but odours lingered in the red, velvet curtains.
    The cooling remnants of coffee, cups of tea and smashed liquor glasses dwelt on some of the tables scattered about the room, alongside well-worn books on higher mathematics, spectral physics and biochemistry. There were books everywhere. They seemed to grow organically from the walls and were spreading towards the rather plain Provider in a menacing fashion.
    And no matter the time of day or night, you would find the scientists. Some sat silently, reading huge volumes, sipping from whiskey glasses. Others smoked long brown sticks and paraded on the chairs, weeping softly. Josiah had even seen a grown woman dance into the room naked, screaming ‘Eureka’. No one batted an eyelid, and Josiah was trying to learn not to respond to anything he saw.

The Book of Josiah - Chapter 3 - JOS

The Book of Josiah, chapter 3, and this is where things get complicated. Remember that there are 3 parallel timelines, Josiah, Jos and Joe. Chapter 3 we meet Jos for the first time. To try to keep things clear, each chapter will be labelled with the name of the character in the heading, and will be given different colour and font wordles for images. Chapter one is here and chapter two is here.

    The dream sucked him in. He tried to fight it but could not - there was nothing to hold onto. Jos was pulled into it.

    When he next escaped the darkness, Jos stared up at the unfamiliar ceiling. Semi-conscious, he contemplated the dream. He knew where it was going - he had dreamt it before, many times. He did not want to see the end of it, not again. When he returned to sleep, he would dream of something else. Something nice.
    Having resolved the issue to his satisfaction, Jos rolled over, fell asleep once more, and returned to the nightmare.

    Jos’ eyes snapped open, a cry of terror forming in his throat. Then he stopped himself. Just another stupid dream, he thought, another stupid dream. Pushing aside the unfamiliar sheets and rough blankets, he sat up and looked around. The room was very dark, with only a trickle of light from under the door and the glitter of distant stars beyond the porthole.  A sudden and violent cough seized him and shook his body. Was the water in here drinkable? No matter, he had to drink something, quell the scratching in his throat. Jos swung his legs out of the too-soft bed and started to stand. A noise to his right stopped him dead - a soft moaning, a small rustle of the sheets.
    Eyes half-closed and burning with exhaustion, he could barely see a thing. With a gentle thought command, Jos brought the lights on to low. And had to stifle a cry of surprise. There was someone else in his bed. A woman. And it was not his wife.
    Half out of bed, Jos stopped, his mind simply grinding to a halt on a single question - what had he done?
    The very question betrayed himself. He knew what had happened and yet resolutely refused to move his thoughts back to the night before. Still, the harder Jos fought not to remember, the more the details flooded into his mind. The smell of her perfume, exotic and tantalising, like nothing Ammi ever wore. Snake skin shoes, daringly unethical. Long fingers caressing a flute of champagne in the bar, as everyone had gathered to watch the news. Her lips, so red, so intoxicating. A glorious body, wrapped in strange cloth that shifted from brown to gold, a neckline so low it was almost indecent.
    All evening they had been making eye-contact, her green eyes coy and smiling; they promised everything yet gave little. He had been drinking like a man who arrives at a party and finds he doesn’t know anybody there - drinking to fill a hole in his life. From the moment she walked in he had been enthralled but tried to deny it, to pass it off as nothing. So why did he offer to buy her a drink? He was so cold and she had said yes. He had never dreamed she would want him, not with his muscle turning to fat, his hair receding, becoming grey. But she had said yes, smiled, laughed, played with her silken hair. When she invited him back to her room, was it just the alcohol that made him go?
    And after that he had no memory. Had they had sex? That was the crucial question. Since he was naked in bed and his clothes were lying around the room in small heaps, he could only assume the worst. Had he at least enjoyed it, this betrayal? Why couldn’t he remember? All that was left a growing sensation of guilt and shame. What had he done?
    The only thing he could do now was run.
    As quickly and as quietly as he could manage, Jos gathered up his things. The cough returned a couple of times, seizing his body with tremors. He held them in as much as he could but the noise seemed unbearably loud in his ears. Each time he glanced furtively at the woman - he didn’t even know her name - to see if she was stirring but she never moved. All he wanted to do was to get back to his room, have a drink of water, and go back to sleep.
    He was dressed in under a minute and quickly searched for his keys, all the time trying to avoid looking at the bed. Eventually he found them, lying underneath her blouse in the corner of the room. He moved to the door.
    “Jos?”
    Damn, she was awake. What should he do?
    “Yes?” he answered quietly.
    No response came.
    Jos hardly moved, straining to hear any kind of noise.
    A moment later, a soft snoring told him that she was asleep once more. He turned off the lights and fled.

Radiance 6 - Whose branches climb over a wall

The second section of Radiance begins today. I would love some comments as to whether I've explained the background well enough - I'm aiming for brief but comprehensible. More details will emerge as the story continues but I want this to feel satisfying.

Yesod - Foundation

22 Joseph is a fruitful vine, a fruitful vine near a spring.
Whose branches climb over a wall…
25 The God of your father who helps you
And Shaddai who blesses you
With blessings of heaven above,
Blessings of the deep that crouches below,
Blessings of the breast and womb.
26 Your father’s blessings are greater
than the blessings of the ancient mountains,
than the bounty of the age-old hills.
Let all these rest on the head of Joseph,
   on the brow of the prince among his brothers.
    -Genesis, Chapter 49

15th Shevat 5776
    They sat below Grand Central, in seats arranged to resemble a train carriage, passing through every major destination at once. This was the gate to everywhere.
    Asher sipped a hot chocolate, while Virgo was tucking in to large, violet cupcake.
    “Do you want some?” she asked, spotting him eyeing it.
    “No thanks,” he mumbled.
    “It’s good - and hechshered” Virgo added, as if Asher had been holding back wondering whether the cake was kosher enough for him or not.

Radiance 4 - I opened for my beloved

15th Shevat 5776
    Asher sat in Starbucks, and vaguely stirred his double shot cappuccino with a wooden spoon. He didn’t bother to drink it. It was too hot. No, more than that. It simply wasn’t fun anymore - coffee just didn’t taste right. He still drank it every morning, not to mention several times during the afternoon - it was, after all, something to do - but all the flavour had somehow left it. And so he sat here, more for a change of scenery than anything else, flicking through web pages, and stirring his coffee.
    And it wasn’t just the coffee. Mechanically, Asher found himself eating toast and jam every day for breakfast, a tuna salad for lunch, bolognese for dinner. He drank water and coffee, sometimes eating an apple around 4pm. Sitting on the sofa, letting daytime TV drift over him, cycling through Reddit, Facebook and the BBC. Somehow he was stuck in this same rhythm, following the dirge beat every day. He hadn’t spoken to any of his friends.
    It was six months ago that his father had died. Six months since Asher had that strange waking dream of devils and warriors. Sometimes he caught himself about to call his Dad for advice - he would have known what to make of the king of the demons, the symbolism of the gold and silver figures. But Dad was gone, and his mother would be no help at all.
    They had spoken just yesterday, early afternoon for him, late at night for her. His mother had shared some gossip from her synagogue in Netanya, talked about their young rabbi and repeatedly asked him if he was okay. Asher had said that he was fine, and perhaps he was.
    He sipped at the drink, scanning monotonous job sites that all promised his dream job faster, easier, cheaper. Sign up now! Asher had already signed up but it wasn’t getting him anywhere. The night of the dream he had quit his job with the Midnight Astrological Hotline. It was a student job, really, not something to do with bills to pay and a life to lead. It was time to grow up and get serious - he heard this in his mother’s voice, not exactly scolding him but still difficult to hear. He had no real experience, no plan.
    And so Asher sat in Starbucks, and stirred his coffee.
    His phone rang. Asher ignored it. It was probably his mother, checking up on him again. Asking when he would start work. It could wait.
    It stopped for a minute then rang again. A glimmer of irritation appeared.
    Asher got out the mobile but the number was unknown. Strange.
    “Hello?”
    “Do you believe in fate, Asher?” A familiar voice asked him. “Because destiny is knocking.”