RDP Friday: ELDRITCH

For the most part, if people want to think happy magical thoughts because they think that will make the world a better place and if ONLY people who write dark scary stories would just stop being so spooky all the evils in the world would just disappear,  I just don’t get into it them.

I worked in a funeral home, my nephew died of terrible neurological disease and my favorite Aunt who was a talented singer and artist drank herself self to death in an effort to self medicate her way out of bouts of  severe depression. 

I know for a fact that shutting your eyes to horrors- both real and imagined and thinking happy thoughts won’t save you from the mean old world.

It also occurred to me that what was going on was also the reverse of ” The Opening of the Mouth” ceremony that the Egyptians would perform on the deceased.

The Opening of the Mouth (“wepet-er”) was the most important part of the burial ritual. It transformed the deceased into an akh, the reanimated and effective spirit that was one of the elements of the ancient Egyptian concept of the soul. The first references to this ritual are from the Old Kingdom, and it remained part of their burial practices throughout Egyptian history.

When performed on a mummy it allowed the spirit of the deceased to see, speak, hear, breathe-From Ancient Egypt Online

So I wrote a little spin on the ceremony here:

Sing to us of shimmering rainbows and golden sunsets

and people who smile and wink and squint with happiness and joy!

 

To you

we pray

may the darkness in your pen

feast on your heart- devour your eyes and silence your tongue

and drink the air from you lungs !

 

Leave us,

the clean, the pure of heart and thoughts

to our world of shining stars and singing birds and gardens and orchards

bursting with life and color.

 

Sleep! Be Silent! Be Still! Be dead dark author!

 

Leave our rainbows and sunsets alone foul beast!

 

And to that I say-

the next time you hear a creak on the stairs

or your bedroom closet door shuts

slowly in the half moonlight

for you I hope it was a sparkly fairy, a naughty nymph

 

But it probably wasn’t.

Not if I have anything to do with it.

.