Chapter 22
Doing something for the company is to do something for the family which is to do something for God since God chose the family. And to do anything for God you are therefore doing it for humanity. Clearly. It’s not complicated if you don’t think about it.
But I’m wondering how many of these rituals that are for the company are actually for something else.
I felt like I was playing on the clock.
Back when I was still an employee at Van Gogh’s Vase Everhet required that we’d be doing things we enjoy while we’re at work, even if that thing wasn’t part of our job description. This is now standard in most cafes because of Everhet. Anytime you see a barista with their head down drawing in a notebook, they’re one of his disciples.
Now what I enjoy is part of my job. Every day when I get back to the East Estate I am treated like a soldier returning from battle. Blood still drying on the sword.
Butler attends to my every need. Morgen reports progress on PPL.
We have to complete the 104 mandatory sessions, or rituals, before I can be instilled with powers as a true Arto.
Tuesday and Thursday mornings is our GFR (Good Fortune Ritual).
But most Wednesdays I get a notification from Joselyn that I’m needed for something extra. And most Fridays.
I think it’s starting to bother Morgen. And I don’t know how I should feel about it. One time I was leaving for the second appointment of that day. It was a last second emergency meeting. A GFR for something.
Morgen leans over the back of the couch made of wood and dyed velvet as I was scuttling towards the door and says, “You’re leaving again?”
I froze with my hand on the doorknob. Why would she care?
“To Joselyn’s?” She calls after and I hear a crack in her voice.
Which initiated a deep eye contact that felt like I was being rebooted with an updated operating system. It was enlightening. Buddha meeting Buddha. Or feeling like you’re somebody’s embodiment Jesus and they yours. I felt important to her. And I knew I wasn’t misreading it. She wanted me to know how important I was to her, and yet. I don’t know what to do with that feeling.
I roll my lips in and nod and hold that face until I close the front doors of the East Estate behind me. By the time I’m down the stone steps to the entrance I can’t help but smile so hard my eyes feel like they’re about to burst like grapes.
Maybe she knows we passed that 104 quota months ago.
Every time I drink the same draught of forgetfulness before starting I’m confused on whether I am part of the Arto family or not. It feels like I’m signing the last thing I need to make it official and yet another document needing my inscription arises.
But this is the part that feels like work. Duty.
I must remember I’m doing it for the company. I’m doing this for us. I’m going to fuck this really hot wytch who isn’t my wife…for my family? I’m pinning Joselyn’s hips down and biting her neck for business reasons? I’m convinced of this? And I’m leaving it in with no condom for the good of the human race? I feel the draught from the beginning of the ritual take hold. And I answer yes to all those questions.
Now she gives me more during the rituals.
“After draughts to kill the after thoughts.” Joselyn says smiling.
After we complete a ritual I’m in a euphoric state. The temperature is perfect wherever I am standing. I’m zinging. I’ve got that minty-tingly feeling. My brain feels freshly washed.
I usually lay for a little bit but as of late I’ve been hanging around a little longer afterwards to read some of the mysterious literature Joselyn protects under her ownership. How any of these dense texts could somehow make a family into a superpower. Is it because of the scarcity, or the actual content inside?
There was one scroll that stayed inside of a small box over the mantle. Which struck me as stupid to keep directly over an open fire.
It was unspoken that we were not to be “cute” with each other in any way. Even when we were alone. I didn’t always follow that rule. Joselyn had become very good at guessing how I felt and I could usually sense what she needed. This sense intensified with time. It felt as if we were conducting the actions of the other. Unified to the point I couldn’t distinguish my needs from hers. We were one. This is love I stared at her and thought. That’s why when she did things that surprised me it was so effective on garnering my attention.
I was bored with rituals as soon I tried them. Desperate to find exciting new incantations hidden in the pages of the books of the rarest and most powerful library in the world.
She saw me pouring through a book about the creation of the letter omega. With an encyclopedia to reference some of the terms Zosimos of Panopolis used.
She taps her glass with her pinky ring.
Smiles at me and says, “What do you want to know?”
This was unnatural for her. Typically while I perused the stacks she was tending to the fire or setting up the herbal and salt combinations for that evening’s bathing rituals. Never paying attention to me after we’re done.
I say, “What?”
“I’ve been doing this…” Joselyn paused, looking at the ceiling, and smiled in a why-did-you-do-this-to-me-God kind of way, “…my whole life.”
Then she says, “I can tell you’re looking for something.”
I wait for a hot second.
She points to the books with her eyes. She says, “You want to know how these books made someone into an Arto? The Arto.”
And she didn’t take my silence as a “yes” even though I was hoping she would.
She keeps staring at me. Waiting for me to arrange my face muscles in a way that alerted her that I was in the affirmative or the negative to her inquiry.
But, due to Morgen’s company, my emotions have atrophied from lack of use. Failing to initiate a program on a computer. Instead I just use my words to say, “Yes.”
She points up to the scroll over on the mantle over the fire.
I unrolled the manuscript carefully. On it were crude hieroglyphs that depicted two men standing in shallow water fighting over a sack of gold.
“It’s not the most powerful one anymore.” Joselyn says, “But in its time, wars were fought over that scroll.”
On the bed that held the scrolls was an additional piece of paper the size of an index card, flat on the bottom, preserved behind glass serving as a translation of the visual. It explained that auriferous sand is dirt in the beds of streams known to be gold-bearing. The pictographs were instructions. Two men would take a piece of wool and make it into a sack with the fur facing inward. The sand from the riverbeds was placed in the sack along with some water then shaken vigorously. When the contents were spilled all that was left were the heavier golden bits clinging to the fur.
The men weren’t fighting over a sack of gold. They were laboring together.
The Golden Fleece was a technique for goldmining. Jason of the Argonauts’ intellectual property. And who wouldn’t go to war over that? It was how it has always been.
Even our myths are incorporated. Or maybe our corporations are mythical in size. Two things can be true.
She says, “Only a small sect of scholars know that the golden fleece was in fact an alchemical text.”
I say, “This is the golden fleece?” And I could feel how long in the teeth it was.
She nods with her arms folded. She says, “Pretty cool. Huh?” In a way that made her feel like my babysitter. Which no longer aroused me. I exhausted that archive months ago. That karma got completely cleared out.
I wipe all excitement from my face.
“No. No. No.” She says. Breaking a rule by holding my hand. And a nuclear flash of heat shot up my body. She says, “I wasn’t making fun of you. It’s just. I’m here for all time so it’s just not…all the time. I meant all the time.”
She notices what she said. And I smile. And nod. Pretending like I didn’t notice.
“You’re always here.” I say.
And I hand her back The Golden Fleece.
“I’m always here.” Joselyn says.
She rolls the parchment up.
I can’t let it be too quiet too long or I’ll lose the momentum. I say, “I was flipping through a book the other day that made me think of you.” And I pointed to her copy of the Lacnunga. An Anglo-Saxon book of natural remedies used by royal wytches healing families whose blood line was tinged with some sort of nobility.
In the Medieval days it was near impossible to know the difference between medical magick and religious magick. Court wasn’t complete without wytches.
Joselyn lowers her eyes quickly registering that I’d found her out. And she wasted no time explaining.
“When the kings saw there was power in having sorcerers on hand we were bound to them. We really didn’t have a choice.” Joselyn says.
Doing a smile that tells me she wants to talk about this.
“What did you have to do?” I ask.
“Performed rituals. Performances. Essentially if you needed a master of ceremonies, for any occasion.” She points to her own chest and says, “Any of us could do it. Then there were less of us in one house. We’d been spread out every which way over the globe. Suddenly. Everybody had a kingdom or a piece of land or an estate that needed guarding.”
Then she says, “Everyone was so desperate to prosper.”
She pauses to look at her toes. Then rocks on her heels. Folds her arms and says, “Instead of performing rituals in sanctuaries for the kingdom, now I amass obscure materials.”
And I get that nauseous feeling I did the first time with Morgen in Ray’s Hole. I’m still allergic to the long-term effects of capitalism.
I swallowed back my vomit. But I still felt strange, and I got that minty-tingly feeling, where I started to separate, when I realized I was sharing a room with someone who could be a thousand years old.
“That’s why I need you.” She says.
Then she told me about a ritual. Which was a highly dangerous technique and was not for the average practitioner. One that required dismemberment and reassembly. The infographics for the ritual looked like someone wrote the screenplay adaptation for Frankenstein using ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.
I look Joselyn in the eyes.
Looking for some encoding or clear indicator that she’s not planning on me being part of this ritual. But I must have been brainwashed by this woman. Or under a hex. Because the idea of her killing me in a ritual doesn’t scare me like it used to. There’s something romantic about being her mouthpiece. The vessel she uses to tap into her magick. Her visual cult object.
I want to be her muse. The sacrifice.
If it will give her freedom.
James Jacob Hatfield is a displaced engineer, a painter, and many other contradictions. His work has appeared in X-R-A-Y, Maudlin House, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Barely South Review, Chaleur Magazine, Havik, and others. His ekphrasis poem “torrents of lahar, No. 36” was anthologized by the North Carolina Museum of Art. He is a Sterling Fellow and a Weymouth Fellow. He is the creator and curator of the Gemini Sessions Substack. He lives in Durham, NC.
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