Calliope

  Calliope

  Divinity Series Book II

  (Revised Edition)

  Brandon Berntson

  Print ISBN: 9781500966393

  ebook ASIN: B00JXZG7G4

  Copyright 2018 (Revised Edition) by Brandon Berntson. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be copied, sold, or distributed in any way.

  Cover art by www.derangeddoctordesign.com

  This is a work of fiction. Any reference to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, places, characters, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Author’s note:

  The Divinity Series comprises the story arc of the child, Divinity, beginning with All The Gods Against Me and continuing on with Calliope and Worlds Away. It is a series of darkness to light, beginning with the raw, adult-themed All The Gods Against Me, and becoming more redemptive by Worlds Away. You can read the complete cycle of darkness to and light in order or as stand alones.

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  For Christopher Elias Finchum, and his brother, Kenneth Jim.

  The deep sigh and the shake of the head do not exist on the other side.

  Calliope was one of the Nine Muses, who assisted all writers and elocutionists who sought to express themselves in words. She would bless those who created for the sake of passion and destroy those who created for profit and gain. In this particular tale, she is neither woman nor god, but an actual world . . . a different sort of Mother Earth.

  CHAPTER I

  Mason Loveless took a drink. His wife, Geneveeve, stood outside the study, down the hall, making the usual sounds of protest: crying, shaking her head, a hand to her brow. She’d had enough. Mason understood. She’d had enough for a long time now. Life with an alcoholic.

  It’s always bad, Mason thought. It’s always so fucking bad.

  Despite the drunken haze, it was clearer than ever. He had the study, the house. He’d paid for it with the success of his first three novels. The study with its wood-paneled walls, the black oak desk, and the green-shaded lamp was bliss, the perfect place to lose himself in worlds of his own making and drink, drink, drink.

  The study was paradise.

  Beyond it, however, the world unraveled, emotional turmoil, havoc from a crumbling marriage. Mason and Geneveeve had ripped and torn each other apart until there was nothing left. As a couple, it was obvious. They’d grown apart. They didn’t share the same beliefs if they ever had. They’d been attracted to each other physically, and even Mason, at one time, believed he could’ve gone to church and made her happy.

  But he couldn’t go to church, and he couldn’t make her happy. Trying to make her happy only made him miserable. You couldn’t compromise your beliefs for love; otherwise, it wasn’t love at all. He didn’t believe in conformity. They’d compromised—because of their naïveté—the attraction for love. They’d been married for three years now.

  God, just make it go away, Mason thought, staring at the computer—the last words he’d written staring back at him—but not really seeing them. He paid more attention to the cocktail glass. Lots of ice, V.O, and a splash of 7-Up, his favorite. He could drink them one after the other, feel the drunkenness hitting him like a cannonball roughly fifteen minutes into it. The goal was to get there quickly.

  Just end this nightmare, he thought. The reason the drink tastes as good as it does today.

  What more could he do? What more could he say? He’d said everything, and nothing mattered. Words were useless. He could pour out his heart for over an hour and she’d just sit there, not saying a word. It drove him crazy! Why did he bother talking at all?

  Geneveeve was going to live with her mother, she’d said.

  Live with Mother, he thought. Mother always says the same things I do, but because the words come from Mother, you actually listen to them. I’m only the husband. I’m good for carrying packages to and from the car, making the house payments. Not good for much else. Remember the honeymoon, Geneveeve? Remember how scared and frightened you were, how difficult and patronizing? Marrying a virgin. Spent five nights on a boat by myself watching the band play. Someone asked me if I was single. Said I was on my honeymoon. Although, I had yet to sleep with my wife. Remember that Geneveeve? Of course you don’t. You got seasick the whole time. You were on Dramamine. You slept the entire honeymoon away while I watched the band play, and all I could think about was how I married you, how much you needed to be coddled, and how fucking sick it made me. Married to a twenty-eight-year-old bawl baby. Do you remember that? Do you remember how painful the honeymoon was? I drink to forget the honeymoon. I drink to forget I live with you. I drink to celebrate my success.

  Mason Loveless was thirty-three-years old. He’d been writing speculative fiction since the age of twelve. After his first sale in a magazine called “Cryptic Wonders,” at the age of twenty-one, his career had taken a propitious turn. He’d won an award for his short story, Everyday Dream. Now . . . if only he could quit drinking.

  He sat back, the maroon chair squeaking slightly under his one-hundred-and ninety pounds. He was an even six-feet tall with thick, dirty blonde hair and green eyes. He had a Roman nose and a broad chin, full red lips. The green-shaded lamp was the only light on in the study. The ambiance was comfortable and dark, the perfect mood to write. The perfect mood to drink. He lived in the study. The rest of the house was alien territory.

  He would rather have the maroon leather chair than the marriage, the black oak desk, the shelves of countless books, the pictures on the walls, some Michael Whelan prints, one of his favorite artists. Michael Whelan inspired him. A sense of enormity and scale filled his fantastic, imaginative landscapes. Mason had worked hard for the red leather chair, the black oak desk, and everything else surrounding it from here to the sidewalk. He’d built this world, he told himself, made it a reality with the dreams in his mind. For them, he and Geneveeve. He wished she understood what he’d been trying to do. He wished Geneveeve appreciated him as a writer. She loved the man, not the artist. Mason wanted her to love the artist. Who gave a shit about the man? She thought the writer was the one who drank . . . not the man.

  Mason opened his red-rimmed eyes, rubbing his fingers across the surface of the desk, not feeling the same as when he’d bought it. He loved the desk and the study more than Geneveeve.

  The desk has seen me at my worst, he thought.

  So has Geneveeve.

  Mason nodded and took another drink from the short cocktail glass. He loved the sound of the ice clinking together when he lifted it to his lips. A melodic sound.

  Nothing made sense anymore. Nothing made sense but the trauma and torture, the end of the marriage. Did it matter that he treated Geneveeve like shit, that when he was under the influence of alcohol, he was a ruthless bastard and a villain?

  She hadn’t given Mason the support he wanted, the support he needed, a wonder he could find any inspiration at all. This nightmare followed him everywhere. Despite her thoughts on his artistry, his creativity, she’d failed to see the beauty, why Mason loved what he did. In the beginning, she’d claimed to understand, even wanted to be a part of it. She’d read most of his work, but her replies were always short. Some “made her sort of ill,” she’d said. Some were just okay. She never said anything about the body, the structure, the writing itself, the characters, the storyline, the . . . quality. Maybe she just hated his work, and that’s why she said what she did.

  Nothing but lies. She loved him, so she humored him, and he believed her, the ruse that kept them together fo
r three years. But now it all came out. Now, it was different. The truth was out there in plain sight, and Mason’s heart broke. She’d lied. She’d never supported him. He wrote vulgar, boorish novels. It wasn’t the fact that he was an artist, that he created. It was what he wrote. Geneveeve was, after three years, ashamed of him. His stories were offensive to her. Around town, when the topic came up, she was embarrassed to admit he was her husband.

  It broke his heart and made him vindictive. He’d never hit her, but he had a sharp tongue, and he used it like a sword. He used his talent for words—instead of the page—to verbally lash out, and the things he said were like daggers of fire.

  “How can you call this art?” she’d asked him just the other day.

  She’d told him she’d felt like throwing up after reading his second novel, Blood and Fire.

  That’s because Geneveeve is evil.

  “You’re evil, Geneveeve!” Mason shouted from the study. “Make no mistake about it! You suffer too much in your own prison not to be!”

  He kicked the door shut and turned back to the desk. Alcohol and anger flushed his neck and cheeks. Let her cry. He had plenty of tears himself!

  Away with that dark hair, smooth face, and misleading eyes! You cry too much to be anything close to real; you put it on like a second skin.

  A silver liquor cart sat against the wall in the study. He’d always wanted one, a silver bucket full of ice, nice glasses. Always prepared.

  Mason tried to tell Geneveeve it hurt him, too. He wanted to do something special. He had some prospects, a major publication after all he’d put her through. Wasn’t that enough? He wanted to make amends, make everything better. Jesus, shouldn’t intention with action be noteworthy? Shouldn’t good intentions—despite the road to hell—qualify for something?

  Jesus, you’re just going to take half of everything when we get divorced anyway. Turn the money that comes from bad art into charity for the poor.

  Geneveeve said she didn’t want his money. She didn’t care. She wanted to go away and think about things. None of that mattered, she’d said.

  But it meant everything to him.

  Fuck it, Mason thought. Let her stand against the face of evil, owning her single-minded vision, hoping she’d live beyond the glory of a temporal existence, bathed eternally in arms of golden light.

  The golden light, Mason told her, was here. They lived in the golden light. You didn’t have to travel far, not if you looked hard enough.

  Mason looked at the books lining the room, few of them texts and volumes of information on wilderness survival, trees, and geography. Ninety percent was fiction: horror and fantasy mostly, classics, and popular titles. Geneveeve only had respect for Mason’s love for Dickens. Dickens, in a way, was fantasy, wasn’t it, a time long ago? He could put himself there. Thank God Dickens had been prolific!

  So, he thought, the books meant nothing, the sweat, the blood, and the sacrifices he’d made trying to emulate writers he adored. In every right, endeavoring to create his own vision, the labor, the time he’d spent trying to find the right agent to represent and believe in him. The tears he’d spilled over infinite piles of rejections, thinking his dream was only a dream, a vision, nothing more. He’d be the only one to understand the love he had for his ideas, the stories in his head. Only he knew those characters by name, could love and appreciate them.

  How many artists had suffered for their vision?

  All of them, he thought.

  Don’t you see that Geneveeve? It’s a miracle we have this house, this life, this dream. I can do anything for you now. Build you a coffee shop, a bookstore. Whatever you want.

  Geneveeve made him feel like his vision was pointless. Directionless. Mason’s ideas were not going to change the world. And that was fine. It made the throes of intoxication that much sweeter.

  His first book, Portal’s Entry had been very successful. He’d won the World Fantasy Award, did interviews in various fantasy magazines. Portal’s Entry had solved many financial difficulties, the debts they’d accrued as a married couple. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a box of macaroni-and-cheese, a PB&J for lunch. They went out to dinner, ordered Chinese. The furniture came from elaborate furniture warehouses. They weren’t pinching pennies. They were in a decent neighborhood on Corsair Street in Elk Ridge, Utah.

  But none of it mattered, Mason thought sadly. It wasn’t enough. In fact, it broke his heart. Geneveeve wanted him to quit drinking. Quitting needed desire, Mason knew, and he had no desire to quit drinking.

  “You used to go to church with me,” she’d said.

  Church was another galaxy—religion itself—miles away.

  No, the bottle was his god. Mason might’ve said that before in the drunken haze. “Just leave me alone and let me forget you exist, Geneveeve. You’re the darkest part of the world right now. Bright, perhaps, in your own. But you destroy everything I believe in. I’m not a real person when you’re around. I’m invisible!”

  He’d been different when they’d gotten married. Everything had been his fault. He was a demon because of it. The drinking, renouncing her beliefs, his poisonous tongue.

  “Following your own road is what God had in mind, I think,” he said once. “Following your heart is the road to salvation. Do you know heart, Geneveeve? Do you know peace? I don’t believe in a vengeful, angry God! Truth is the path inside each and every one of us. And for everyone, it’s different.”

  He’d been lied to, deceived. God was cruel and ruthless. Mason wasn’t humble enough. God had a warped sense of humor. That explained everything. It explained what they were going through as a couple. It explained why life was the way it was now.

  Don’t lose sight of who you are. You belong to better things. These trials you’re facing are just trifles. The bigger picture is still ahead of you.

  He’d become a part of the fiction that lined the walls. He didn’t live in the external world if he ever had. He was a staple of imaginative literature. What more could he ask for? He’d waited his whole life for this.

  In that, was the golden light.

  The marriage had been a simple mistake was all. Two people that honestly did love each other, but had completely different goals. They couldn’t go anywhere together without getting into a heated debate over the most trivial things. When they rented movies, she always wanted to watch something bright and wholesome, even melodramatic. Mason wanted something dark and tragic. They couldn’t compromise. When he watched the lighter shows with her, he scoffed, making cynical comments, and felt his soul die a little more inside. When she watched his darker shows, she got up and left the room because she couldn’t handle them.

  He took another drink. He turned to the computer, looking over the words he’d written:

  He was breathless, looking from atop the hillside. The sight was a marvel. Dark clouds moved toward him over distant peaks. A large blue planet—not his own or the moon—was visible through breaks in the clouds.

  Is this what it’s like to live in a cartoon, Harris thought?

  He wasn’t dreaming. That was the beauty. It had always been here, waiting for him. Somehow, he’d obtained magic eyes to see. He’d never go home again. He didn’t know until now what home was.

  Mason looked at the words, puzzled. He couldn’t remember writing them. Was he that far gone already?

  You’re already there, soldier. Those peaks are not too far away. But you won’t be looking at them in awe. You’ll be looking at them in dread.

  Gooseflesh prickled across his arms, and he shivered.

  He and Geneveeve didn’t need each other anymore. Another reason for the divorce. What was the point? Shouldn’t you want the other person around regardless? Through thick and thin and all that crap?

  “And I always want you,” Mason said, aloud, but he wasn’t talking to Geneveeve.

  Had they ever really wanted each other at all? Geneveeve deserved better. She wanted a family, kids. She wanted it with someone more real
istic, someone who could take it seriously. Someone who didn’t drink so much, who believed in God, loved their family and wanted one for their own. Mason didn’t have a family. This was his family, the study, the words he wrote. He lived for that alone.

  Your stories are your children, he thought. That is your family. How can you ask me to sacrifice my children?

  “Mason, you’re like a child,” Geneveeve once said. “You live in this damn fantasy. It’s not even real. It will never be real. You need to grow up.”

  Mason needed this and Mason needed that. Mason needed everything but what he had, when what he had was exactly what he’d always wanted.

  “You need to take a vacation,” he said to the empty study, Geneveeve was—as far as he knew—still crying in the kitchen. “You need to go far away and never come back. The lesson has been learned. Nothing but regret, harnessed around the neck, tearing us apart piece by piece. Stars of a distant land, wrap your arms around me.”

  He turned to the bottle and filled the glass. Salvation was in the dark amber liquid over ice and, kneeling to his god, he took another drink.

  ~

  The courtship had been the only bright spark. If they could’ve courted forever, it would’ve been fine. The marriage had killed them, the vow. Cold space filled the distance between them now. They didn’t even sleep in the same bed anymore. The couch had become Mason’s place of rest, drink on the coffee table, television on, flipping from Sports Center to mindless sitcoms. Before she came home from work, he spent all his time in the study. Her days were long and hard, working at the nursing home as a CNA. When she got off, Geneveeve lied on the couch until it was time to go to bed, sometimes never bothering to say hello or goodnight. Sometimes she’d go out for something to eat by herself. The drinking put her off; she hated the smell, the way he acted, his red-rimmed eyes. And sometimes, he wanted to ‘make-love.’ Geneveeve had the sexual prowess of a meat locker. The longer the marriage went on, the more he couldn’t get past the irony. Who was getting the better end of this bargain?