[[THE ANNOTATED DIARY OF KEZIAH MORGAN (PUBLISHED WITH THE COOPERATION AND PERMISSION OF THE DARE COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE AND MORGAN FAMILY) -EDITORS]]
First funeral I’d ever gone to was mom’s. August’s dad, this weirdo hippie fuck Urbain Archer, was the minister at the time. Real bad scene. August was kind of a weirdo hippie fuck, too, but he knew how to be a decent dude. Anyway, he gave this whole long spiel about dad that sounded like it was mostly made up but whatever.1 It’d been a while since we saw each other, figured I could hang around the compound for a bit and catch up. There were a few old people that actually came up and seemed to genuinely express condolences, which was alright. I’ll cop to being pretty broken up about dad at the time so actually hearing someone say “hey, man, sorry your dad died” was cool. Would’ve been cooler if it weren’t coming from these assholes, but it was a nice break from the dickbag being all “yeah right your dad died, show up and wrestle for me or fuck you” or Lilith and her bullshit about “hey, go to the church so one of us shows our face so they’re not mad that we just took off with dad’s body.” Or Alicia and whatever shit she’d be on, I dunno. Probably something. Always fucking something.
I was just about to decide I’d waited long enough for August to soak in all his adulation when he finally showed up around back.
“G’mornin, Flower.” Called me that since Jr High. Never seemed to have a reason, just what he decided to call me. Fuck off.
“August. So was even HALF of that true?”
“Oh, you know me. I’ll read the best into someone and tell that story any time I can. ‘Course I’d be tellin’ the stone cold truth every time if I were talkin’ about you.”
He took me by the hand and started to sway a bit.
“I’m not dancing with you, August.”
“In this light? How could we do anything else?”
“For one thing there’s no music.” Also why would we be dancing, but weirdo hippie fucks are like that I guess.
“Oh, now, Flower there’s music everywhere you are.” Leaned in close and started singing in my ear. “Floating outward, trying to reach you. These reflections will turn my thoughts to stone for you alone to see through. Your dreams have grown wild. You’re an electric child. You’re a time traveling witch, I summoned you and you smiled. Through the mirror of night. In the conjuring light. You reached for the switch and made everything alright.2“
I’ll admit to grinning despite myself. Whatever, can’t be a hard cunt all the time, right? Still pushed him away and called him a fucking dork.
“I s’pose I am at that, but nobody ever riled me quite like you.”
“Very soft way of telling me you always had a big rubbery one for me when we were growing up.”
“Now what boy of growing urges and discerning taste doesn’t feel a rise in spirit when faced with a strong willed preacher’s daughter type?”
“Gust, do I look the fuck like a preacher’s daughter type?” I don’t think he knew where he pulled that from either, aside from out of his ass. Didn’t even try to not laugh it off.
“While I do believe Llewyn was more of a preacher than you may realize, I’ll admit that no. You don’t look like a preacher’s daughter type.” He gave my chin a little pinch and winked at me behind his sunglasses. “You look like rain.”
Yeah, his lines tended to work on me. Fuck you, I guess. Anyway, he left and I had to head down to the island. On my way past I saw the churchyard and remembered I promised Lilith one more favor. I went to the back row where all the mortsafe plots were and found mom’s. Sure as shit, someone pasted a little cheap placard with her maiden name over the ‘Morgan.’ So I tore it off the headstone like I promised and took off.
The body was already wrapped and on the wood pile when I got to the old family house. Dad wasn’t from Kill Devil Hills, his family was from Roanoke and he just relocated the half hour north when he met mom. But he kept all the old Morgan family property and made it REALLY clear that this was how he wanted us to deal with his dead body: Take it to the family estate and burn it. Don’t bury it in the fucking churchyard.
Alicia looked rough. I mean, she kinda looked like the oldest of us even though she was the youngest just from having to keep up with dad running around with all his craziness and running the Charenton and whatever else he had a thumb in. But the last day or so probably sucked for her. She’s the one that had to find dad, make the first calls before Lilith took over, apparently she went around taking care of all the stuff dad needed burned or shredded or bought off when he died, I imagine that was a shit show.
“Hey, kid. Holding up?”
“Well enough. You?”
“Shoulder’s crap and I need like sixteen hours of sleep but whatever.”
Lilith came around and pulled me in for a hug.
“Thank you. How was the service?”
“August talks like he worships his own voice, the usual.”
“You say that like you’re not a fan yourself.” I knew it was a playful dig, so my “fuck you” was said in jest this time. She knew the difference.
“Is everybody ready?” Alicia sounded like she wanted this over and done with as much as I did. Lilith nodded and went over to a little makeshift altar by the wood pile and came back with three glasses of some real rancid as fuck tea or something. Tasted like I was eating a garbage truck’s ass. But it wasn’t there for the taste.
We drank the drinks, said the words, did the whole funeral like dad wanted it3, and when I knew what the fuck was going on again, I walked over by the trees and threw up.
–
1-
[[The following is the speech for Llewyn Morgan’s memorial service at the Holy Hermetic Revival as written by August Archer, obtained from the HHR’s archives. -ED]]
“Good morning, everyone! Today we’re starting off on a hard note. Over the last couple days, a man of some infamy has been lost, cause mister Llewyn Morgan passed on. Now, I’m a liar if I tell you all that he didn’t earn the sideways looks he got about town, and I can’t stand before you at this here alter of truth and tell you a single lie. Even if he didn’t clothe himself head to toe in controversy, it was certainly not a stranger to his wardrobe. And I know that a lot of you came up when my daddy stood where I’m standing now, and if that’s the case I got no doubts that you think of mister Llewyn Morgan as nothing less than the devil himself.
But I’m not here to think about bad blood or rumors about what he did or what went on in that social club of his, I’m here to talk about the man I knew. And if you know either of us you know the Morgans and Archers go back a whole generation. I’m here to talk about the man that when a knee high Gust Archer asked him about heaven, just smiled and said ‘if the meal is good enough you’re not thinking about dessert,’ because that was a man that knew above all else, he loved this life we’ve all been given.
(tell a story here, either about the cobra wine or the Christmas Eve story, whichever the spirit calls to)
So whatever you held in your heart for mister Llewyn Morgan five minutes ago, you can hold it five minutes from now. But right now, we’re gonna take just a moment and say goodbye. And if we can find some closure and some healing through that? Then I’d say that’s worth mourning this man, no matter who he was in your eyes.
With love from the Holy Hermetic Revival!
–
2- [[NOTES FROM THE EDITOR: Research into the lyrics Keziah wrote August Archer to have sang to her turned up the song “Electric Child Of Witchcraft Rising” by Outrageous Cherry]]
–
3- Alicia and I picked dad’s body up from the morgue in Kill Devil Hills and drove it home ourselves. Part of the money set aside for “funeral expenses” was exactly for things like bribing morgue attendants. For someone who professed a sort of agnostic hedonism, he had a particular way about how he wanted his departure handled. He had very little trust for anyone but us to deal with his remains, so instructions were clear that nobody but us would be acceptable to handle his body at any point.
When Keziah arrived from the memorial service we’d only just finished wrapping the body and placing it on top of the pile. We exchanged pleasantries for a moment, but I could tell Alicia was exhausted of the whole thing and the two of them were both ready for it to be over. I went over to dad’s altar and readied the psilocybin tea. A drop of my blood in each cup as per tradition.
We stood in formation around the pile and each drank the entire contents of our cups in one very unpleasant drink. First Alicia, then Keziah. I stood at the end of the trail of fuel. We felt loss, and would feel that loss as long as we were able to feel anything. But that loss wasn’t what this was really about. The loss only existed in us, and we were small and temporary. I drank the vile tasting tea as quickly as I could and said the only words of memorial our family truly believed in.
“Nature is not saddened.”
And my sisters responded in kind.
“Nature is not saddened.”
I lit a match and touched it to the igniting fluid. By the time the flame reached our father’s empty vessel, the tea had hold of our senses.
The cause of our coming together laid between the three of us bursting into light. Everything that was in our father clawed at the sky in heat and flame and burning embers rising into the night. I fell to my knees and basked in the warmth emanating from my father as if he hadn’t even passed. He enveloped me like he did when I was a girl. The flames obscured his body, but the body wasn’t my father. The flames were. He had always been the flames and now the fire inside his body had risen to meet the fire outside his body and dance in elation at no longer needing the vessel that housed him.
Without noticing, I’d doubled over, gripping the grass so hard I’d torn out fistfuls by the root. I let myself sink in to the warmth of the fire and the sound of my sister laughing. But when I looked up, Keziah was standing still, stone faced, staring into the light, and Alicia was sitting curled up, eyes closed, tears streaming down her face, and when I could finally feel my face contorted and smiling I realized the laughter was mine. I let the joy of seeing my father alive one last time overtake me and laughed as the fire slowly overtake the body and consume it to ash. I saw him for the first time. For the last time. He lived, and he lived, until the light of the fire went out.
When sense returned to us, what remained was smoke and ash. Keziah was throwing up by the trees. Alicia was sitting curled up where she had stood for the ritual. When I was sure I could walk, I went to her. Keziah joined us when she was done purging. We sat together and watched the last traces of smoke dissipate into the wind. I brushed my hand into the soot from his fire and rubbed it down my face. No cause, but my hand knew what it was doing and I had no reason to doubt.
As we sat, I sang our mother’s song4 to my sisters, and we waited for the sun to rise.
–
4- [[In researching what this may have been referring to, there were hardly any records of Grace Morgan tied to any particular song. However, in combing through archives and boxes taken from the remains of the Morgan house, a cassette tape was found that contained what is likely the only recording of Grace Morgan in sound or video. Much of the tape was damaged beyond repair, but a fragment of the tape was able to be digitized for posterity, and is likely what Lilith refers to in her footnote. Further research into the song yielded little results as to its origin. The melody appears to have been lifted from Thomas Haynes Bayly’s composition “Long, Long Ago,” but there is no lyrical match to Grace Morgan’s song and any version of Bayly’s composition on record. -ED]]
Things have already taken a sad turn. We knew what the last team was. We treated them as what they were. But what are you, Golden Boys? What are you but scratches down the walls from a man futilely trying to slow his descent? The air around you reeks of desperation, and something tells us it’s not coming from the overqualified muscle resigned to his station. No, it’s the funny little man who thinks there’s still time in the light for him.
Obviously there’s no tongue lashing severe enough out there to bring you to your senses at last. Words alone never to the trick for people like you. No doubt you’ll just stay in your own little world and make more tired jabs, reaching for the lowest fruit on the tree we hang you from. But on the night, in our time together, we’ll show that you have your whole life behind you, a trail leading up to the moment we lift that painted veil and show that a perpetual smirk is no substitute for relevance.
But challenging your world view isn’t our job. It’s not our problem that you’re in a fist fight with the fog. Maybe that’s the question. What are we to you? We certainly don’t claim to be a reality check, or your inevitable doom, or any of the things that every wrestler in teams or singles could or even has claimed. We’re just… gravity. And whether you’re a rock like the Golden Boys or a grain of sand like Abby Normal, you’re all falling at the same rate. But we’re the force that reminds you that you all tumble through the air the same. Adam, Bison, we can’t promise that your descent ends with us, but when the hour comes for SCW to serve you up to us, we will see to it that you land hard and shatter like glass. Whatever happens to the pieces we leave behind is none of our concern.
So what are you, Golden Boys? It doesn’t matter. Because regardless of your intent, you are what Abby-Normal was after all. Let me be clear, we are not of the opinion that you’re on the same level as them. You and yours are not here for us to sharpen our talons on. But you are here for them to be sunk into. We are not refusing to acknowledge your merit above them, but regardless of the tiers on which you perceive yourselves to be, you are all on the same level to us. The next level to be claimed. When we’ve moved on, what’s left of you can figure out with what’s left of everyone else who’s the best of the ones behind us.
It makes a body curious, Boys. How thick does the fog get for you? Bison has the clenched jaw thousand yard stare of a man that knows exactly where he is and how he got there. Oh, but Adam. Have you well and truly convinced yourself of all these things you smugly tell us to believe? That you haven’t almost caught up to that setting sun we’re all chasing? Is there a part in the back of your mind running the numbers and realizing that the time between your best years and now is long enough for it to start a wrestling career of its own before too long? Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe your best years are a little more recent. You know, the years you spent away from the ring. We’re very curious, my sister and I, which is sadder? Or more amusing, depending on your point of view? That your best years are farther back than the birth of many of the people coming to SCW shows, that your best years were the ones you spent disappeared, or that you think this highly of yourself and are this deep into things and the height of your career was a few months with a title that wasn’t even the top belt? We don’t hold it against you that you lie to yourself. Reality can be a son of a bitch, and if you were honest you wouldn’t have any good options. But Adam, you never have to lie to us. In your heart, do you really believe that you’re not running out of time?
Now, my sister may not share my sympathetic nature, but my heart truly does break for you, Bison. Adam may turn his bravado up to mask the sound of the whimpering of a whipped dog, but you? Bison, we’ve been here for a matter of weeks and I know two things about you that I’m willing to bet most people you share a ring with – on either side of the ring – don’t know or won’t admit. You don’t belong where you’re at, and you really, REALLY do belong where you’re at. I can see the heights in your eyes. But I see how faded they are. I see a relic of murdered potential. I see that potential’s blood on your hands. Adam may be sad, but you are a genuine tragedy. The lofty days where you had that view… do they bring you comfort? Or does it make what you’ve let your self become all the more painful? When you think about how your chances of ending your days on your own terms are long gone, do visions of your tag partner Adam come to mind? Or do you only see yourself?
Maybe your time here can end well. Maybe there are revelries in your future yet. But you are not being booked in this match. You are being fed to us. There’s nothing for you here but what my sister and I have to give you, and you will most assuredly want very little of that. It’s an unenviable position in which you find yourselves in, and I would promise to spare you any extended suffering, but why end all this talk of honesty with a lie? I can only promise that we will try to leave you above water as we leave you in our wake.
Put the facade aside for a moment. On your best days, you were far from where you say you’re headed. And now you’re returning so late to the party and assume you’ll be able to take over the room? A man that clothes in delusion is met with pity while being shown the door.
This climb to the top of yours only exists inside your minds. Outside your minds, the lid to a coffin is starting to close around you.
And if it comes down to it, we will nail it shut.
Our sisters saw their new opponents.
A new… challenge?
A new match, anything else remained to be seen.
But they had jokes, they were in good spirits.
Not that spirits are real, of course.
But Lilith was glad that they had jokes. Lilith liked jokes. She would eagerly watch the Golden Boys tell her funny things and say funny words.
KEZ only regretted that she had no funny words to offer in return.
Our sisters are not so fun, you see. Our sisters do not inspire.
But their new opponents thought both of those things to be true of themselves. No matter what, they were clearly truer opponents than last time. Our sisters were grateful for it. Lilith’s fingers ran through KEZ’s hair and she began to think of all the ways they could show their gratitude.
lich house 