Her Name Is Stella

Her name is Stella, and she calls to me.

I started hearing her four years ago after my accident. She never spoke her name, but somehow I was certain she was called Stella; so that's who I thought of her as.

I had been climbing without a harness; one of the greatest thrills imaginable. I died that day. I trained for over a year, and I died. I had almost reached the top of the cliff when I slipped on some loose shale.

Suddenly there was no solid life supporting ground beneath my feet. I was falling. I don't remember hitting the ground, but I do recall the sound of shattering bones upon impact. Then I died.

My name is Gregory Slom, Greg for short. I am twenty-four years old, and a medical miracle. I am also terrified of heights.

The first memory I have of after my accident is the sound of her soothing voice. It reached deep into my coma and pulled me like a rip tide to the surface, towards my conscious life.

I awoke with her heeding calls still ringing in my ears. I don't suppose the doctors expected me to wake, and I'm sure they were truly surprised when I opened my eyes and groaned. I was in the ICU at the time, lying face down on an operating table with a scalpel in my spine. I then felt the icy kiss of a hypodermic syringe, and darkness returned with Stella's voice riding hauntingly atop the waves of sleep.

I don't think I could have made it through the healing process without her. I felt I owed it to her, as though she'd been there all my life, calling my name in her lilting voice. I had to relearn how to walk, and after many weeks in physiotherapy with her gentle coaxing in my ear, I was nearly back to my healthy self.

She never spoke anything other than my name, but it was comforting to know she was there - that she cared. Around this time I began to doubt my sanity, as any sane person would do. As it turned out, Dr. Harper doubted my mental stability as well. After a period of observation I was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder, and send to a mental institute just off the coast of Ireland.

The island was... green. As the ferry approached the shore I was able to discern a series of jagged bluffs on either side of the landing. Terror raced through my entire body as a bolt of lightning through a glass of water. My already weak knees crumbled under my weight as I relived the past four years of my life at a glance.

"It all happened so fast." I stammered, "I haven't been near a cliff for the past four years, and I just- I didn't expect it to have that effect on me." I finished meekly.

"That's perfectly normal after the trauma you experience; Christ son, that fall killed you! Your heart was stopped for over an hour, it's a miracle you're even here to faint at all!" My psychologist exclaimed. Great two days in and everyone already knew my life's story.

As my papers ordered I was assigned to a room with no windows on the first floor. They claimed this precaution was to keep my vertigo at bay. My suspicions told me they thought I was suicidal and at risk of jumping. Either way I was grateful.

Stella's summons still grew stronger, in spite of the doctor's claims that I was getting better. She began to contact me through dreams. She showed me pictures of ocean spray and high rolling clouds. Though pleasant they still gave me an eerie feeling of being watched. My sleep grew restless as I struggled not to cry out as she showed me the bluffs at the edge of the island.

The reoccurring dream haunted me for over a week.

"Gregory Slom" the shadow presence of Stella called. She then turned into mist shrouding the cliff. I understood she wanted me to follow her, and it was painfully obvious she wouldn't leave me alone until I did.

Many of the other patients either kept to themselves or kept away from me. Word had gotten out that I had died several years before, and those who knew kept a fair distance. Perhaps their medication addled brains concluded that death was contagious; I'm not too certain on that subject myself.

The dreams had changed into strange and exotic sights. Beautiful gardens, bountiful orchards, clean streams, a snake, my name and then the cliff all rotated through my subconscious. Everything- as strange and random as it seemed- was completely familiar and well known to me. I decided it was time to find Stella.

Leaving the institute at night was easier said then done, so I waited until after my session to depart.

It was raining, as per usual, and the clouds hung low over the verdant fields. I zipped up my jacket and bowed my head in order to shield my eyes from the persistent downpour.

"Gregory Slom." Stella's voice urged.

"I'm coming."

"Gregory Slom." She called again.

"I told you already, I'M COMING!" I shouted impatiently into the gloom. After having your name called in your head non stop for four years, you begin to lose patience and get snippy. It's human nature, another few minutes couldn't possibly make a difference.

I approached the edge of the cliff and recoiled. There before me lay my entire dream sequence from a bird's eye view. The mist swirled about the bluffs as the ocean crashed forcefully against the jagged boulders. I shuddered at my next thought. I was going to have to go down there. I despised the idea with every fiver of my being, and several fibers of my clothing. This was to be unpleasant at best.

The slope was treacherous and slick with rain and wild ocean spray. I' not even sure what compelled me to go down there. I think I may have been desperate. Desperate for peace of mind, there's a new one.

Clinging to the slippery face of the cliff I peered through the fog, attempting to distinguish shadow from stone. To my left there came the sound of metal on rock. Shocked to actually discover life on this inhospitable frontier I quickly climbed towards the source of the motion. I had found Stella.

She was nothing more than a skeleton really, with a few scraps of clothing hanging from her narrow frame. She stood on a six inch ledge and her arms were shackled above her head to keep her from falling into the ocean.

I don't know why I approached her. She was terrifying and repulsive, yet I could not keep from creeping towards her along the ledge. My mind screamed for me to stop, to leave, to even jump if that's what it would take to get away from her. Still I drew nearer. It was as if she had a grip on my very soul, and continued to pull it forwards dragging my defeated body along with it.

Six meters away- no movement. Four, two -- no movement. Closer she pulled me. One meter - her head snapped up. She looked up at me, two fading green eyes set deep within her hollowed sockets.

"Gregory Slom." Her mouth remained motionless as the words echoed through my ringing ears.

It came in a flash of understanding. The stream, the snake, and the orchards all seemed so familiar because I was there. I had been there before. I was Adam, and Stella, well, Stella was Eve. It was an amazing sensation, reliving a life in an instant. I looked into her dying eyes and I suddenly knew; this was a continuation of our punishment for the creation of original sin.

We were each to be shackled to the bluff, trading off once every five hundred years. It was impossible to die until the other had come to claim their position upon the smooth face of the bluff.

This realization came seconds too late, before I could protest I was shackled to the bluff and Stella was released. The last I saw of her was the dim glow of her green eyes thanking me as she plummeted to the jagged salt corroded rocks below.

Sometimes, as I hang here, I wonder if things would have been different had I died during my climbing accident. Perhaps I never did wake from my coma, perhaps this is my own personal hell, playing off my fear of heights. I have nothing left but my thoughts and pleas- always calling.

Her name is Stella, and I call to her.

Jeffery Castor

"Interrogate the prisoner by any means necessary," the man with the monocle growled through his teeth.

The prisoner, bound and shackled, was dragged limply by a man in a dark hood across the bare stone floor. The air was humid and the walls leaked in the flickering light of the torches that lined either side of the corridor. The hooded man lifted his charge off the cold stone and threw him forcefully against the chamber wall.

"What is your name?" He snarled.

"Jeffery Castor." The prisoner grunted, attempting to cover his weakness by leaning against the wall, only to fall to a heap on the floor.

"Pathetic," the guard laughed, "where were you last night?"

"Working alone by the old dam, I'm a miller." He explained.

"Fallacy!" he roared, "Where were you last night?!"

Jeffery regarded his captor with curiosity. He was a large man with dark matted hair coming just to his belt line. His jaw was square with a deep shadow of stubble upon his snow white skin; he appeared as though he hadn't seen the light of day for a very long time.

"Answer!" He shrieked, backhanding his prisoner and throwing him again to the damp wall.

"I told you already!" Jeffery screamed cowering against the wall, "Please! You must believe me! I'm a miller! My wife and daughter were brutally murdered last night and all you can do is beat me and tell me I'm lying. You're wasting time! Why don't you just catch the bastard who killed them instead of beating around the bush with me? Let me go! Leave me alone!"

"Prisoner is with holding information!" The guard called.

The door they had entered through opened and two similarly clad men carried in a chair, some ropes and a large array of pins and daggers.

"What are you going to do to me?" Jeffery stammered.

"I am referred to as 'The Impaler' for a reason." The guard smiled, hoisting Jeffery off the floor and into the chair.

Before he knew it Jeffery had been stripped and bound to the chair with his legs on either side leaving him horribly exposed.

"What time did you get in last night?"

"Nine - thirty, I was late and missed dinner."

"Missed the killing, missed the agony, the gore and blood did you? Then explain why your pans are soaked with sin?"

"I returned home last night, and the house was completely dark. I fell into a pool of my daughter's blood as I tried to remove the knife from her spine." Jeffery replied thickly through tears staining his grime encrusted face.

The Impaler scoffed as screams echoed through the dungeon. He admired his handiwork, two pins symmetrically placed in either side of the interior of Mr. Castor's pelvis.

"That's not the story I wish to hear. Tell me how you savagely raped your wife and brutalized your daughter."

"There's nothing to tell!" He raved hysterically. "I found the bodies, the next thing I know, I wake up here with you dragging me across the tomb." He writhed in pain as two daggers were shoved one at a time between his ribs, blood pouring down his sides and pooling heatedly in his groin.

"You beat her, why not just kill her? I know you'd have wanted to. Just admit it, you massacred your family."

"Never! I--" His protests were cut short by two pins being roughly shoved through his tear ducts.

"Say it! Tell me how you raped and tortured our wife, ripped out her earrings and stabbed her repeatedly until she finally ceased to breathe. Tell me how you turned half crazed upon your daughter and drowned her in her mother's blood before ending her life in he same fashion as her mother's."

"Enough! I can't take anymore of this! Stop! Okay I did it, I killed them, I - I - I murdered them last night. It was me! Just - just kill me too, I deserve to die!" Tears of blood cascaded down his cheeks already wet with tears.

"Oh, I'll kill you, there's no option there, but I want to hear it, every detail." The Impaler leered from under his hood.

"I - I came home early from work and... And I, I walked through the backdoor, with a knife in my hand, prepared to kill my wife, I then... tied her to the chair and raped her as she screamed and pleaded for mercy. For another act of measured cruelty I ripped her earlobes and then stabbed her fourteen times, until she finally died." Jeffery whimpered in pain.

"That's not the whole story," The captor sneered, "tell me about your young blond daughter." he added driving daggers into into each of his prisoner's kneecaps. " The law demands a full confession."

"Yes! Yes! Just please, please stop, I can't lose much more blood and stay conscious."

"Then talk faster."

"I pulled my daughter towards her mother and held her head to the floor, face down so as to allow her to breathe in her mother's blood and drown. I then left the knife in the base of her spine."

Jeffery looked to his captor once again. The Impaler had blood stains around his eyes which were ice blue, cold and calculating; easy to read. His smile could have made banshee cringe in revulsion.

"You missed the part where your golden haired daughter burst through the door screaming for her mother, only to find you there drenched in a crimson apron." The hooded man spat.

"Mummy's dead and you're next." Jeffrey hissed.

"My words exactly. Not a bad retelling for someone who wasn't even there. You even managed to get the number of knife wounds in your wife's back correct. You must be the real deal." Jefferey's captor grinned manically and leaned in closer to his prey. "I guess they didn't die in vain your family, they were bait to get to you."

"What do you mean, you filthy diseased husk of a man?" Jeffrey screeched.

"I know you're little secret now. No one other than I knows all the details of your family's murder, not even you. You read my mind to find out what happened, there's no other way you'd know. We've been searching for your kind for a while now, a bit of an extermination if you catch my drift."

"So you lured me out into the open by killing my family?! How many other innocent people have you done this to?"

"Reading minds is not innocent!" The Impaler shouted, "It is a breach of National Security. You people can hack into computer systems by simply plucking a password out of some one's head. It is not enough to simply incarcerate telepaths, we must burn them all and dispose of the remains in order to stop the spreading epidemic of psychic terrorism."

He then turned his attention to the cellar door and called out, "We've got another mind reader in here!" The two men who previously brought in the implements of Jeffrey's demise materialized at his sides.

"You left out one detail though," The Impaler whispered slyly, "you left out how your wife moaned in pleasure as I raped her again and again while she was bound to the chair."

Jeffrey's hands clenched in anger, and his face flushed hot in the dim flickering light of the torches. "Haven't you tortured me enough?" He spat, " She shrieked and cried in revulsion before she went unconscious." He sobbed uncontrollably, straining against his bonds.

"Proof!" Crowed the prison guard. "He is a mind reader! Burn him, and then throw him to the lake to join his wife and daughter." He ordered.

A year later the Impaler's wife gave birth to a baby boy. The midwife insisted upon an aquatic birthing for the wife was in hideous amounts of pain and agony.

The birthing was long and laboured, and as a result the child was mildly disfigured. He had two small scars on his pelvis, two jagged scars on both his ribs and knees, and he was also born blind. The Impaler decided to name him Frey.

The boy never said a word until seven days after his seventh birthday.

"Father?" He rasped, regarding the prison guard with his glazed dead eyes. "Who was Jeffrey Castor?"

"W - Why do you ask?" The Impaler stuttered, caught off guard by his son's sudden speech.

For the first time in his life Frey looked his father in the eyes as a smiled crawled across his face. "You just think about him a lot." He replied innocently.

B.C. The Fort St. James Experience.

Oh no! There goes Tokyo, go go Godzilla! Heeee eee eeee eeeee!!!

Mood: Estatic/tired.
Music: The Circle Game - Joni Mitchell
Physical condition: Almost but not quite sunburnt.
Current thoughts: I am hungry. Really really hungry. I want berries, berries are good, I wish I could speak german. Not like it'd serve any purpose. Egads, I should make this quick.

So I'm in BC and I'm enjoying myself. The car ride was tenuous, and I can't sleep well in cars... No scratch that, I can't sleep at all. There's a lot of weird stuff going on out here. The bottom of the lake seems to be alive, kinda creepy in a sense.

Also pictures fall off the shelves "unexplicably". Suuuuure, Imma believe that.

I went to a museum today, and I nearly threw up. Of course Fort St.James is a furtrade town. Euch. I can't do it. But now I'm really really hungry.

So some more songs got written for the musical. Sooo excellent. I enjoyed it muchly.

Katie and I actually get along really well. I'm almost borderline surprised, we always just went with casual friends, but a little bonding does wonders (plus she pushed me on the giant wooden swing as if I were a 3 year old). It's been really sweet so far. Tonight we leave her grandmother's though and head to the beach, and there we shall camp. I don't think her brother is coming with us though. Kinda a good thing. I'm sure he'll be happier here.

So I miss everyone on tour, and I miss everyone in town, but there's no denying it, I'm having a blast. I think we're going for lunch soon, and then fishing. I like fishing mostly because it's over the water and just really really nice. I like being on the lake.

Well I suppose I should end post here, and get back to my vacation type idea.

I shall write more if I get the chance, or if the off notion hits me at the same time and speed as a computer.

Farewell.