Carnton

This. This Dark Tower stood in the middle of a clearing. The trees stood back hundreds of feet in a neat ring. The trees adorned with different color leaves. Fall. A White House in the middle of the clearing. The trees stood back, afraid. His body was full of holes, cracked wood from the cannon balls. An old mansion, standing two stories tall, looked out to a small Confederate cemetery, unknown soldiers buried under concrete pillars. The gravestones worn from a hundred years of rain showed only the lightest of inscribed numbers, the soldier’s number. Number of dead. This one was 1039. With paper and a handful of dirt, he etched the number.He stood way back from the trees. Alone. Cannonball holes for eyes. His task was nothing. Here he was only observed. He stood, ominous. The trees alone validated his gravity. His days were gone. Vacant except for the fearsome presence of ghosts, the wellspring of childhood nightmares. A vestige of what once was. Blood in the soil.And here these children play among the graves. They don’t dare come near the White House. Once they came as children in a school bus, but that was a long time ago. A grade school field trip. Hidden on the edge of the field in the rows of trees was a gift shop in a trailer home. A gravel path went on forever and as the children exited the bus the hot Southern sun refracted off the white gravel blinding them all, forcing them to look up and stumble through the shifting rocks. The White House loomed before them, barely together, held by a century of hate and blood. The wood porch creaked excessively. He wondered if they would fall through. So many children. Leaning against the posts, pushing against the supports. Inside, no electricity but the dark light of outside filtered through warped glass, settling under its own weight. The old wood smelled like fire and blood, metallic and feverish. Clustered in every room, too much furniture crowding the walkways, so the children went through in waves, the rest waiting on the front or back porch. And then a door slammed. Children jumped, screamed. A door creaked. Keys rattled. And although everyone knew that it was some joker in the basement, there was no basement. No cellar door. Only a well, dry and filled in, and a lone tree. Then nothing for what seemed like miles to the forest.Running, the wind kicking the leaves around them, they ran like new lovers, for they fell in love that day. Chasing one another in the leaves and the smell of all things slowly dying before the winter killed them. And here between fistfuls of leaves throw and random full body tackles in sublimated erotic desire, full of fear and trepidation, their hearts went forward. Her eyes looked into his eyes. He looked deeper still, looking into her eyes. They saw each other for the first time. They saw each other in terms of what they wanted to see and the Other agreed.The Other always agreed in these sweet moments. Before the sun went down. Before the winter came. Before before before. And then racing again, hysterical in lust and possibility of flesh that they never turned to see the White House staring down at them.Cannonball holes. Two black, empty windows on each side. A roof against the sky.It was then that everything changed. The unknown soldiers went on forgotten and the White House drew their energy into His chaotic wound of discontent, His war wounds – never healed. Always vampiric, never enough.Even the trees knew not to grow too close.Too late for these whimsical lovers whose lives and love, born in a graveyard, born in a field of blood and war and lust and Erlebnis, doomed to search inexhaustibly for the Other. For the Other had sealed their bond with lust, driven by the absolute need to invent themselves in each other.They drove. Wildly smiling, gripping each other’s hands until they reached a house, a room, and sank deep within their body.