The Dybbuk On The Roof

The Dybbuk on the Roof

Chapter One

“The roof....the roof is on fire”

Trigger warning: csa, suicide, evil

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She tried to remember where or how the Dybbuk came to be a constant hobgoblin in her life. Divesting her of community, safety, even love partners.

That Dybbuk had been with her since early childhood. Perhaps she was born with it. A residue from former lives. Or maybe it clambered onto her aura in one of her early childhood traumas.

A 6 year old child clamouring to be set free. Wanting to be in a safe home, three doors up the road. With her friend and her friend’s mother (she who fed her Meringues and smelled of soap and in whose chenille robe she buried her face into, craving her motherly nurturing warmth. A kind mother. A mother who valued her.

But little girl fought fiercely. As she has always done. No matter what circumstances beset her.

Only to be hurled into the patterned glass door. Flying a few metres across the kitchen into that glass that miraculously held her like a membrane between life and death.

She covered her head with her arms and slid downwards. Time slowed down. Slip sliding away on a glass frame. Was that when the Dybbuk stepped in? Or in her anticipating being lacerated to Death, is that when her Angel stepped in? It’s hard to tell. Demon or Angel? She was saved that day. Or was she?

She tried to imagine what would have occurred if the glass had shattered. Maybe in another paradigm the glass had imploded. Fractured patterns stretching slowly, inexorably through that door. One long fracture representing her love life. Another her financial security, a third crack...her status as a female child, later woman. The glass cracking into time and space like lightning, forking its way across her life and leaving so much psychic damage that was unable to be contained.

They say a nuclear explosion, the mushroom cloud, fragments into the multiverses and that is why the “gardeners of the earth” worry about human technology so very much. But they, the gods, cannot interfere in our free will. They can only protect and defend as they did at Rendlesham Forest. Humans are destructive creatures. But slowly they are evolving.

At 6 years old Tanya decided. I am going to survive. I am going to grow up and be a Jew. I am going to be alive. Beautiful. Brave. I am going to be loved one day.

Children. Such innocent folly. So deserving of all the goodness in the world. Already tainted and taunted and traumatised. Little promises were kept.

The day she converted to Reform Judaism was one of the happiest days of her young life. One of the last truly happy days too. For shortly after that beautiful spiritual day, she married. And the rot set in.

But little six year old girls can’t imagine that yet. They are sliding down glass and internally screaming. Staring at a mother they don’t recognise and no longer feel safe with. Silently streaming their consciousness into the Void. The void that takes up their spiritual essence and remoulds it like play putty. Reshapes it. Blows another life back into it. Impresses upon it...the Dybbuk. Little girl does not know it yet but she is Loved. By Something Ancient and at times protective.

A preternatural Rage. A fecund glorious Becoming, across time and space. A mark and a stain but also a bookmark in a life that would turn and turn again in that cosmic wheel of fortune...and of pain. Until the little Tanya Sees there was no other way but to strive to stay alive when lesser mortals would have escaped and sashayed away into the Light by now. In the eternal now she still chooses Life.

Tanya dragged her darkness with her. Like she carried that teddy bear. Psychic scar tissue cracking and leeching out the pus of old betrayals.

But there was laughter and beauty too. There were her children to live for ...and also to die for. There were men drawn to her power who tried to leech her. Bleed her. Bury her. Sad men. Sadistic men. But ultimately weak men.

Where is the Dybbuk now? In the roof of course. Where she fiddlededees and Blesses whom She pleases but don’t you dare sneeze or she’ll get right up your nose and carry away your sinuses and strip you to bare bone and eat your flesh. Achooo! (But I digress...)

Koolatah Street that Unholy place of dishonour...guard your Dybbuk well. She’s only on loan since you claimed her so triumphantly. A wrinkle in Time. Spread through the cosmos from

Psychic fracture in a glass door in a beachside home in Island Bay. Held together by Angels so little Tanya did not die.

A repeat episode of family history like that bomb-shattered conservatory that cut her grandmother’s face to pieces. She too did not die, had been trying to get an extra blanket for the air raid shelter. Had kicked Gisela down the stairs (Eva, always a violent woman had at that courageous life-affirming moment in time invested in her vain 15 year old daughter by kicking her down the stairs to shelter in the air raid cellar, so cold and dark and damp to save her life). My mother Gisela focused only on removing her rollers so she looked good for any boys that might be down there.

But the glass exploded and Eva’s face was lacerated. Was she the “Angel” that saved Tanya from the glass door? Not wanting to see her grandchild harmed by the same monstrosity that was letting her be sexually abused?! Or was it the Dybbuk carefully defending its “Precious” as it needed a life force so strong and determined for it to leech and feed?

We may never know. But on it goes. The leeching and the feeding and the lifelessness and the gods forfend... anyone who dares harm The Tanya now!!! Almost 55 years in the making. Rebuilding. Reconditioning. Restoring. Reconstituting. Reconciliations with ancient ancestors who wryly wring their gnarled hands and throw us a Bone. The hollow Bone? Or the wise backbone? We may never know.

Chapter two

“Truth, Beauty and a Picture of you “

Tanya is in love. Oh my. Even the gods are scratching their psyches, tearing their eyeballs out. Eating her liver. Delicious with Chianti.

Her midewin friend from the central plains people of the United States. Ojibwa tribe. Promised to light up The One and to light her up too. So their souls would recognise each other. So they would find each other. In this world and in the multifaceted sacred geometric lines of time and space.

So Tanya, dancing joyously, completely unaware, not looking for Love as she is busy blowing Life and love back into her husked out shell of a body and recalibrating her mind. Sees him. The One. The golden light streaming all around him. She gasped. Oh my. There it is. The light body that would show her the greatest love of her life. She kept dancing though. Afraid. Of Love. For Love had always been a trickster. Often a traitor. Too often a killer or a rapist. So she held her own space and waited.

He walked up to her. His eyes shining. Lips slightly red from biting down. Barely disguising his lust. “Hello. I like your outfit. You look lovely” 8 words that locked him in her heart.

Galaxies exploding in his eyes when she smiled radiantly and blushed (a redhead thing..that giveaway blush that speaks more than any words and is such a damn nuisance!!!) “Thank you. That is kind of you to say”. A nervous grin.

She was literally busting to go to the toilet. “Excuse me..” and off she danced into the ladies room. Oh god oh god.

When she came back to the dance floor he was gone. Mere minutes later. She walked out of the Elephant Hotel (with the Ganesha painted on the wall laughing at her folly and awkwardness...his phallic trunk coiling up in a godly smirk) and actually looked up and down Brunswick Street for him.

No sign of that courtly courteous smiling man. His light vanished with him. Gone.

Four months later (21 Feb 2014) he found her at Irish Murphies. “I’ve been searching for you everywhere” he said. “you haven’t looked very hard, I have been here the entire time”. Cheeky grin.

The Dybbuk already slithering into front row space. Saboteurs (she thought were friends!) watching in a grim-faced amazement. The Tanya likes this one.

He notices these friends hovering like moths around a light. One woman staring openly and a few of the men pacing up and down in front of us.

He turns to her. “Who are these people that seem so interested in us talking?” I roll my eyes and smile. “Friends. They are not used to me stopping to talk with any man. I am always avoiding them by dancing!” I giggle. He replies “yes, I noticed you rarely stop. I have been trying to get a chance to talk to you all night! Why is this night different from all other nights?!”

She stops. Puts her hand to her mouth. Then laughs. “Tonight I am feeling Vulnerable as I have hurt my back so needed to sit down. I am actually only held together this evening by pain killers and attitude!” He laughs. Looks at her in amazement. “Well you are a very difficult woman to get hold of”. She replies “Of course! That’s part of my charm”.

Chapter Three

“Life is like a fiddler on the roof. “

Trigger warning: csa, suicide, usual awful triggers.

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Tanya Child has climbed into the attic again. Her mother encouraged her to go up there. So 7 year old Tanya, agile as a gazelle, had grabbed a kitchen chair and climbed onto the stove top, reached up to the overhead cupboards, opened the doors to the cupboards directly below the manhole. Gingerly places her tiny child’s feet (not yet grown to be large Hobbit tootsies) onto the cupboard, pulls herself up. Pushes the manhole cover up and over the roof beam.

Looks down at her mother and grins triumphantly. Gisela, hands on hips, wearing her husband’s white y-front jocks over her hair (to dry it) nods with satisfaction.

Tanya climbs into the roof. It’s hot and stifling up there. But there are bags of books. She quickly finds the item Gisela wanted and leans out of the attic to throw it down to her.

Her reward for being the family storage facility retriever (with hindsight 20:20 at great personal risk of falling out of the ceiling!) is to be permitted to stay up there as long as she wanted, until the humidity gets too much.

So she explores the books in the bags with glee. Steppenwolf, books on Satanism, the Book of Mormon, and various books by Dennis Wheatley and TS Lobsang Rampa and her grandmother’s copy of “the 7th Book of Moses” which has many magical-type sigils.

The Dybbuk is not in the roof today. It resides mostly in the ground level of our house. It lives in Trevor. It often skips bodies and leaps into Gisela or her father David. It’s not fussy which body it inhabits or muses. As long as it gets to experience what it wants. It likes sex and good quality alcoholic beverages.

Tanya can’t see it but she knows it lives with her. But the attic is her safe space. Up here she is queen of her own domain. She can look down through the skylight at her parents and godfather and visiting adult half sister and brother in law and imagine them as vulnerable children. So small and insignificant. She can look down knowing they can’t climb up here to hit her in the face, or rub their penis on her. Or mock her for being a strange little girl.

Somehow her mother, in one of her weird backhanded gifts, senses this is her one place of safety and triumph. But it always get too hot. The words in the books are big words. Hard to comprehend. But she tries to read them anyway.

She goes down the street to Mrs Robertson to ask her what various words mean? Often Mrs Robertson shyly puts her hand to her mouth and says “Ohhhh Tanya, where on earth did you learn that word? Your vocabulary as far beyond your years!”

Tanya just wants to be able to read all the books. To gather knowledge. To grow up fast so she can get her self out of there.

Sometimes Gisela hands her bags of stuff to carefully carry up into the attic with her. Many of her toys, children’s books, old clothes. The attic gets quite full with all the secret treasures.

However while Tanya and Gisela are living in Hamburg the tenants also climb into the roof and rob everything. Bastards. Tanya just rolls her eyes. Saves her having to bring them back down and we all know the Dybbuk made them do it.

Gisela keeps mentioning a particular baby doll that got stolen (and cost a lot of money!) but Tanya can’t remember it. Odd. She has many toys so you would think she would remember her mother’s favourite one. Did it even exist if she can’t remember it? What else can she no longer remember by the time she is 9?

The memories flooding back to her when she is 20, married and 5 months pregnant with her first child. Hmmm.

The Dybbuk did not want her to remember. Wanted her forever trapped in childhood. Lost in a trauma space in her psyche. A dark hole. A closet.

But pregnancy hormones unlocked her mind. All hell breaking lose. The Dybbuk no longer kept like a genie in a bottle. The truth is flowing through her mind and body. The truth can only set you free they say. But not in her fucked up family. The truth teller is punished. Scapegoated. Slandered and vilified.

And now she has her babies. A husband that constantly betrays her to her mother. Not her friend or confidant or even a protector. She has to be her own inner “man” as well as feeding her infant children from her own breast. A burden. A horror. A woman who has given birth needs support. Love. Care. Protection...not constant backstabbing, gaslighting, devaluing by other family members.

So 22 year old Tanya with two babies knows she is alone. Craves escape. A new life. Anywhere but here. The Dybbuk has followed her. Even to her marital home.

She looks at her infant children. No one will harm them. She will not let any man touch them. She will give them a safe life. (That was her intention. An honourable one). But the Dybbuk never rests. He bides his time to start chaos again.

Her mother and husband send the plunkett nurse to question her sanity. To cast aspersions on her mothering. But she knows she lies in bed next to traitor. Knows their game.

Begs the nurse that she is utterly exhausted but her mind is clear. Her milk not nourishing enough for baby Jasmine. Worn thin by exhaustion. So she is fed extra formula and solids. Tanya keeps a lid on her post natal depression, but only because she is determined to survive and keep her babies safe with her.

The depression does not intensify until she is around 28. Her marriage cracking apart along with her mind. But the depression is a natural response to being surrounded by abusers. So she fights on. One more day..one more day.

She packs her bag to leave as the tension and unstated fear builds in the beautiful marital home. Little Jasmine begging her that they run away to live anywhere else. She is 7. She has a back pack and shows Tanya what she has packed. A clean pair of undies and her little Mickey Mouse toothbrush and toothpaste. A hairbrush. “Let’s just go mummy...let’s just go”.

But Tanya rings a woman shelter. It’s Sunday. “Sorry we don’t take new intakes on Sunday!” Tanya knows that’s a lie. It’s her NZ accent. She’s being discriminated against. But there’s nowhere to go.

Micheal and Gisela screaming that she can’t leave. Sneering at her. She goes back into that house. Lies down on the bed. Reads a book. Cuddles her kids.

They think they have her where they want her. Destabilised. Afraid. Worthless. Useless. She thinks about suicide. But she looks into the faces of her two gorgeous daughters and decides. Later…one day. Soon.

Chapter Four

“I was born under a Wandrin’ Star”

In 2003 when several members of my Reform Jewish community dared to critique me on my lack of hairdressage....I got pissed off, and got my friend Jarrod to backcomb me a lovely set of Dreads! Day one of Dread Fullness, I looked just like Sideshow Bob in The Simpsons.

It was cool ‘cos I went for coffee to The Three Monkeys at West End, meeting up with above-mentioned Worm Tongues, one of which was an ex-lover. The sight of my dreads made them all so embarrassed and uncomfortable (I had to hold them down with a scarf, looking more like a feral Isadora Duncan.)

The waitress took one look at me, said "Wow, New Dreads! You look awesome!" and brought me a huge mug instead of the tiny cups everyone else had. So I reclaimed my inner core, my anarchistic revolutionary streak! No woman, man, or schmuck ever asked me about my style or hairdos or don'ts again. Funny that!

Actually I have a vivid memory of my Narcissist Sociopath mother forcing me to wash my hair with lemon dishwashing liquid, I believe it was Sunlight, as she was convinced my hair was too greasy ( I was 13 and 14 at the time!)

This combined with the really bad perm she made me get (my hair was too lank and dead straight) meant my hair stuck up at right angles. I looked more like a sad derelict Sideshow Bob, with the same homicidal/suicidal thoughts stirring through my mind (you had to be there I guess!)

Sunlight dishwashing liquid killed the oil, killed my hair, killed my joie de vie, killed my individuation from that evil psychopathic bitch, ensured she looked 'prettier' than I, gave my evil half-sister the dominant status she always craved to tell me I looked 'dirty' cos I had the usual normal amount of puberty pimples, and there goes the rest of my Tenacious T-type sanity.

So Fuck it. Dishwashing liquid dissolves the fat but also de-solves the soul and devolves the psyche. I'll stick to extra volume and body so I can fill myself up, stay puffy, bright and bushytailed. Eat cake, dream big, live life large or at least in clear focus and never ever ever let the bastards dilute who you are, in perfect perpetuity.

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Still free-falling and boy, it really does feel like failure, but I guess if the ground keeps sliding out from under me, and I'm still falling free, then I haven't failed yet. As my bastard father used to quip to me, "It's not the fall that hurts, it's the sudden stop at the bottom". Oh well, you learn a lot from arseholes, how not to hit the bottom as hard as they want you to.

I come from a long line of Wanderers. Typically in mature age my forebears would up their stumps and wander across country or across the oceans in search of what? Adventure? Themselves? Enlightenment? It comes with a kind of madness. An insatiable wunderlust and often a roiling unmedicated depression.

My own estranged (by choice! I never wanted the violent abusive bastard back) father was itinerant here in Australia. He house sat. He had been roaming since his last divorce in the late 90's. He was a manual labourer all his life so he got placements in farms or sitting for people's pets while they went away.

I could not trust him to feed my 3 cats and 25 Guinea pigs back in 1999 for a weekend that I went to Melbourne for a friend's Bar Mitzvah. So I scratch my head to think how he managed to actually look after anything or anyone except for his selfish self.

When he died on 3rd March 2017 his lawyer insisted I receive his ashes. They arrived in late April. Even then I did not let them cross my threshold and left him at my front door until the tide was low at Wellington point. That particular Dybbuk was not going to enter my house!

His father, my grandfather Alfred Abraham Phillips used to roam from Auckland where he owned a modest house with my grandmother Connie in Browns Bay (or was it on the beach at Waihi? I can't remember). He would often arrive at my parents' home in Island Bay, Wellington with a stick and a kerchief enclosing his tobacco, loose change, and a clean pair of underpants.

He was a Dowser. He was always en route to the South Island where at one time he found gold but not being a greedy materialist like my mother he brought only a few nuggets back to show her. Mum got gold fever and yelled at him to go back and lay a claim and dig more.

Pop just shrugged. He was travelling back to Auckland to make kissy faces at Connie. (A bitter sour old Battleaxe - as a toddler I stood on her arthritic toe and all fucking day she ranted and raved over it until my half-sister and mother decided to get out of there. I guess after raising 7 rough and ready negligent boys and a wandering husband she was completely over children!)

Anyway next trip down south, 6 months later my beautiful spiritual Pop found the local council had built a bitumen road over his gold find. FML. The Phillips Clan could have been rich! My mother was furious and cried big tears of despair.

My Pop just shrugged. Plenty where that came from. He was much loved by my mother as he was the only one who could control my father's searing mad tempers which blew up like a wild storm mostly out of nowhere.

Not that my mother was ever serene. She would wind my dad up into rages that would burst blood vessels in his eyes from striving to not hit her. I was 5. I sure as shit felt like hitting her myself.

So I wrapped my arms around my dad and said "Don't worry, Daddy, I still love you!” With my high IQ I learnt early to defuse aggression in our home. Or act the clown. Anything for peace, yeah?!

Storms would rage at sea across the road, Spring tides and lashing rain and blasting gales against our picture windows that were more gentle than my parents' nocturnal screaming.

I spent my first 8 years praying a lot. Praying for safety and quiet. It never truly came. Not until they had died or gone wanderin'. I don't fucking miss them.

My cousin Robert, our family genealogist who has done so much extensive work told me that his father, Alfred's half-brother also took to wandering. He migrated from NZ to die in Perth WA. Our other ancestor Richard Rush had been a convict in NSW and had come to NZ to start a new life and became a farmer.

Many of our ancestors left Ireland or Scotland or England to travel in ships to NZ in a time when ships ran aground, or were becalmed or sank or ran out of food and water or suffered typhus, to a land of the long white cloud peopled by warring Maoris and Pakeha with no shops or much civilisation at all.

Children died of typhoid or malnutrition. One of our great grandmother's had 12 children but lost 8 in one year.

Then on my maternal line, my own mother Gisela, strong, courageous and mad enough to take her 6 year old to NZ, newly married to a NZ airman who suffered PTSD (shell shock) in 1956, and who tried to push my mother over the ship's railing to kill her. My half-sister screaming and pulling on her mother's legs until help came and the mad bad bastard Mr Jarman was thrown in the ship's brig for the rest of the voyage.

My mother loved to travel but did not get to return to Germany until 1973 with me on the Fairstar. Her biological father, a well-known Mage and a former sailor who had worked as a ship's carpenter in his youth had sailed the 7 seas, even travelled up the Amazon! He said he gave up the sea after that trip as he witnessed his shipmate getting swallowed whole by an Anaconda.

He inherited the family farm in Posen (Poznan, Poland) but let his brother live and work it. He remained in Germany. One time he visited the farm, looking forward to bringing home some fresh produce only to fly into a rage as the brother and his family who consistently asked for money to keep the farm going, did not even have one chicken in the place!

Schnorrers and schmendricks! Hell, even in my poverty I have always kept at least 2 hens or ducks for eggs. It is not that hard to look after them. These were Farmers, for crying out loud! My mother forbade me searching for their descendants in Poland as she said they would just bleed me dry.

I found that pretty funny since I am likely poorer than they are. They at least, still have the family farm! But I never bothered. I have had enough of sociopaths on both sides of my family.

I too, have an urge to go to Byron Bay and kickstart a new life. The tragedy is I can't afford to leave my government house. I can't afford private rent. I can't afford to live really.

So I am trapped. I hate being trapped. A wanderer must always believe they are Free at any given moment. Even if the freedom is illusory.

So here I sit. In Sacred Space. I want to shake it all off and run free. Take my dog, cats and Charlie and just go someplace new. But it is impossible. An impossible dream.

Here we sit. Guardians of Sacred Space. 17 years in May. I have only known peace here in the last few years. Too early to throw caution to the four winds and go on adventures. Still so much healing to do. Time takes time.

Chapter Five

“Fee fi fo fum I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he alive or be he dead I’ll grind his bones to bake my bread”

Trigger warning: Violence. Survival. Cptsd triggers.

Tanya Child has grown old. Old enough to know better. But still she carries her barely-staunched bleeding wounds like a Chieftain with No land or wealth or anywhere to go.

But she was not always poor and even when beaten down she always Became - a new version of excellence. Even in her most broken state. Fire in her belly and spiritual gold lighting up her soul. A fierce determination to raise her children and then raise herself.

She fell in love with various monsters. Of course. Having been raised by them

She drew the same level of evil to herself. (Or was that the Dybbuk?!)

Two years after her marriage ended she drew in that Moroccan-Israeli. He of the green teeth (ew!) and the ever-schwinging penis. His sister had orchestrated their little affair. Then when things went bad she and her brother terrorised Tanya and her children for 18 months. The police would do nothing to protect them.

Ultimately a Bikie arrived on her doorstep and told her “Tanya, you are the strongest woman I have ever met in my whole life. My nerves are shot listening to you and your beautiful girls being threatened every night. I want to kill him for you!”

The Dybbuk, slithers into the front door like a voyeur and a cabaret shit-stirrer. She can almost hear it locking itself into position, fomenting murder.

The Tanya, exhausted and resigned, but so tempted, slowly licks her lips. The taste of revenge gloriously flicks across her mouth. Sweeter than honey. But stained with blood and decay. She knows better. If she is to survive another 10 years at least, to get her children into adulthood she has to keep her hands and soul clean.

Those bastards deserved to die, yes they did (and still do!). Damaging the psyches of her children. Traumatising pubescent girls with threats of cutting off our breasts and raping us.

Even now Tanya wishes them only Death and Destruction. But let go let G-d.

She thanks the bikie (a giant of a man) for his kind offer of support. He has been an angel in the night. The only man in that neighbourhood of Waterford West to stand up and be counted and show her support.

It’s Friday night, Shabbat, so she offers him some Kiddush wine, 12 per cent alcohol) and he drinks merrily with gratitude. “I am a member of the Tribe of Judah, a Christian! I always wondered what jews drink on Friday night!” She smiles at the irony. It’s not the blood of Christ nor the ground up bones of Christian children in our Matzah.

No one of her own jewish community has offered to protect or defend her. But HaShem in His infinite wisdom sends her a Bikie, a Christian and a former Rebel. She has to talk him down from murdering them. If anyone is going to do that, this is her fight. It will have to be her own “work”! She desires no henchmen or third party proxy.

She suspects (later gets confirmation!) that Buck Scherer and her mother are behind this terror campaign. He wants her isolated so he can establish his claim for her inheritance. The Moroccan-Israeli demons have already told her they want her inheritance.

“You were supposed to marry my brother so we could inherit through you!” She laughed in their faces. “Marry your brother? A man who can’t keep his dick in his pants for even one moment. Handing his phone number out at the Supermarket?! Marry that filthy Supermarket Fucker!!”

“It’s not our fault you can’t keep a man satisfied”. This last retort cuts to the bone. Really? As a sample of men the Moroccan is only her second sexual partner in her entire life. This is supposed to be a fine example of manhood? Threatening little children like a fucking paedophile?

But the constant threats are starting to make her a tad psychotic. She starts monitoring everything. In a permanent state of hypervigilance. They poison her cat, threatened to kill her new bird. She fights back. And back. Alone. Barely holding onto her sanity.

At one point she almost runs the vile creep over with his new gf. A cousin of a friend. But she is not a murderer. She stops the car just in time.

Backs up. Drives home.

Let go let G-d. G-d takes his sweet time. They get away with everything. But 10 years later, the filthy sister exposes her vulva on National tv in 2008.

Vengeance dripping like mucus. Slaughtering the evil with cavalier capricious randomness. The Holy One’s reward to Tanya for not giving in to becoming a murderer. For keeping her faith. For saving her children.

Karma came and karma went, as suddenly and silently and surprisingly as any other event in her life. But that day she knew. G-d had stepped in to gift her the vengeance she had dared not take: for the sake of her children and her freedom.

Now she knows she is going to be okay. Everything brought out into the light. The reckoning coming swiftly. Buck dies two months later. Her mother shoved into a high care facility by his con artist daughters.

Years flash by. Hard long years. Watching her mother slowly die then the will dispute (the dybbuk’s finest handiwork). Then finally The Tanya struggling to get back up on her feet. By dancing. Dancing with her “red shoes” To her own grave.

But she is writing her story. No one cares or believes. But she knows the truth. Her story. Intertwined with miracles wrought by G-d and the evil perverted Dybbuk who slays from the roof.

A kiss. A kiss. A kiss. Before dying.

2015. More viciousness and betrayals from one she loves. She tries to die. Her children are grown now. They no longer require her presence or aliveness. (Not that she was ever fully alive during their childhood as she was in automatonic survival mode!)

June 25, 2019. An opportunity to go out on her last breath ruined by a thumb monitor. No gift of gentle peaceful death for her. Five months after that surgery, another close shave with death, choking with asthma and vomiting at the same time.

Now it’s 2020. She is still fighting for the redemption of her body to climb back into itself. To reclaim its equilibrium. But she feels that the end is coming soon. (How soon? How long is a piece of string?)

She sighs her psychedelic dreamer’s sigh (Psy Sighs!) Peace at last. Perhaps.

The Dybbuk has Tanya craving her Beloved. Constantly craving. She knows it’s because she has just had skin cancers burnt off. That the last time she attempted suicide was just after large chunks of flesh were carved from both shoulders and shown to her. Her own cancerous flesh.

She had been at war all that year. Under attack for speaking out about child sexual abuse. Then set up by some lunatic. Then accused of defamation then the lover, throwing her aside like despoiled carrion.

The cancerous skin, one thing too many. She wants to die. She wants Oblivion. ..But the Dybbuk is not finished with her yet. He wants to see her climb back up so he can slash her back down again.

God too, sits back with idle curiousity. What will The Tanya do next? Live and keep Loving. Against all odds. Against her better judgement. Love is her only panacea these days. Her only crutch. Her only comfort. No human man takes her as a lover. She won’t let them. But her dog adores her. Her cats. Her bird. Her few precious friends.

The rest? Schadenfreude. Hahahahaha. Only it’s not all that funny when she comes to think about it.

Not dying but not truly living has wrought her nothing but trauma and scorn.

But she endures... knows her true Worth. Engages her innate mirth. Laughs in the face of her enemies. Both seen and unseen.

Clean hands, clean mind. Vindicated and validated. She holds her head high.

Just for today. Better luck tomorrow.

Chapter six

“Dance me to the end of Love”

Some years ago one of Tanya’s psychic friends tells her, “write your book! Time is of the essence. Do you understand me?!” pointing that damn gnarly boney finger of doom at her.

As if she was not already engaged in trying to revive her own life. Begin the Beguine. Kickstart that flagging starter motor from hell. Vroom, vroom...vrooooooommmmmm. Hic. Pop.Splat. Drat. Back to the fucking drawing board.

Last year her elderly friend at the casino pointed the bone too. Offering to pour libations at her funeral. She comes back, three weeks after her surgery, still holding her side where the drain had been, still in considerable pain but determined to dance!

She finds him, waiting for her in her infamous “spot”, like tweedledee or Rumpelstiltskin. The dear! The Dybbuk has used him as a vehicle of prophecy. Used him well. He said she reeks of cancer. It has its own sweet scent. Bastard dear one. Ye shall not have me...yet.

So up she rises in full glorious triumphant finery and feckless frippery, teetering on her heels with her still -raw surgical wounds. (Only hurts on the inside!).

She tells him “Here You! You can bloody well Stop pointing the Bone at me. You almost got your wish! But Mama T was relinquished by Lady Death again for some higher purpose, so here I am, vomited back into this life! So my dear sweet motherfucker ...how many cartons of JD have you stockpiled already? You better be prepared!”

He goes a little pale. “No one fucks with you Tanya! I truly admire your strength”.

Yeah yeah. She smiles. But Lord knows, she is not getting any younger and her strength is not always physical but her body is dying. She knows it. She feels it. She fights against it. By a force of will that is not always her own but power-surged by the gods.

Zombie Warrior Goddess Queens of their own Destiny, their own rising and shining simply must carry on. Like it or lump it. She has been dry-docked long enough. Dry humped. Dumped. Slumped. Long enough.

So she gets up and rides through every befoulment thrown at her...because...Nu? what else is new? Women who spitefully call her a toilet doll. Or treat her like a desperate pauper when in fact, no matter how poor, she has always paid her way. Paved her own way.

Followed the golden spray-painted turds on the yellow brick road to the Wizard’s castle. Only smoke and mirrors. Illusion. Delusion. Babel’s confusion. Do you even speak my language, Dybbuk?!

He does a little writhing twisting dance. Pop! Vanishes into thin air. But she has lived with him since early childhood. Knows he is sitting on the roof, filing down his claws so she can’t hear the clatter but she hears the scratching and clacking anyway.

“Dybbuk?! Do you love me, Dearest!”

“No, I do not. But my mission is to keep you in a state of distress so I can feed”

“Was that you, pissing on my roof last night?”

“Nay, t’was the Fiddler. Something about tradition and matchmakers...he’s raving mad you know!”

Ahh the fiddler on my roof. Scratching his existence on a ghostly violin. Dancing with her light-body as she streams her dreaming consciousness into the Void. Even her angels come to her as strange Shades in the night.

But today has been a good day. Random acts of kindness. A younger woman at the supermarket car park offering to put away her trolley. Amanda giving her a free coffee in return for the limes she gave her.

Another woman offering her a plastic bag she had pulled out for our fruit. She laughs “thank you but I won’t be fighting you for a plastic bag” and grabs her own.

Kindness creates a happy safe world. Let there be more of it. Some dude joking about coronavirus, then our chitchat quickly devolving into something sexual. But Tanya pulls him up on it.

“Nothing like talking about Death to make people think of Sex! That is the way of the world. Survival!” She walks away greatly bemused. She no longer craves either Death nor sex. She craves something deeper. More eternal. Love.

She catches it in small doses. Holds it up to the light, admires its resonance then tucks it gently back into her duct-taped heart. Little random kindnesses. When all along she longs to be Held. Caressed. Comforted. Honoured.

Hohum tiddly Pom. Better luck next time.

Chapter Seven

“and when you took my dog, you took too much”

The Tanya is well aware that everyone wanted a ride. They took her houses, money and a Dalmatian dog. They took her safety and tried very very hard to take her children. They tried several times to take her life. They stole her life force and her belief in herself.

But she is not Job nor is she, his daughter. She has angels in the architecture. Spinning in Infinity. She came into this life as a Spirit born to unloving, unloveable and unlovely People. “Your people are not my people”. Schmeh.

She became a Jew, craving safety, sanity and love universal, love eternal, pure and decent and protective. A family of heart and soul! But after arriving in Brisbane she discovered such profound evil and debauchery that she no longer felt part of the Jewish people either.

“Your Hebrew name shall be Ruth, the first convert, great grandmother of King David. Your people shall be my people and where they lie down, you lie down and where they rise up, you shall rise up” but her new family were debased and treacherous.

She had to get free of them. Keep moving, keep getting free of these monsters, new lovers who came to her as Jews. Dybbukim in men’s bodies with ugly hate-filled hearts. One even haunting her after he died in 2016. Determined to hunt her and have the last word. Pure unadulterated Evil. He could not cross her threshold. The mezuzah and her other spiritual protections in place.

So who are her people? Only God knows. Maybe for Tanya there is no tribe. Maybe she Belongs nowhere. Only to the One who watches and waits.

“I am my Beloved, my Beloved is Mine”

Tanya kept on struggling through life, dragging her children with her until they too began to hate her. Sometimes she wonders if she should have just surrendered to the cloying strangling hands of either Terry or Davidson, or the first attacker Dale, paid for by her husband? Would her kids have wanted her then? As a memory, as a ghost in the ever-mincing machinery that is God?

But she has not died, not yet. Only had to shuck off layers of the past, like a flaming phosphor bomb. Shrinking down into infinitesimal space. Then blasting her soul back off its hinges.

Stronger and more determined and revitalised by Whom? By the Will of God or the heirarchy of angels and demons that squabble over her life path like self-soothing chess players.

Let go.... let G-d. Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord. How Daddy feared her wrath and vengeance! He knew all along what he was playing at.

Baby Tanya bathed in Light, smiling across the room, over his shoulder at the Angels! The angels wringing their hands as their little god-experiment was too arduous for one little human baby. So something dark and stark stepped up to the plate. Ready to bat. To fight for and protect Little Tanya One.

Tanya who only wanted true love, safety, happiness and a loving home. Kicked from pillar to post like a bloodless hound. The stain of discontent and befoulment leading others to mock and deride her.

How surprised they were when she sat in all her gloriously-contained fury and greatest dignity. A dirty little girl no longer. No matter how much mud they threw. She stood in her $4 shoes and fucking Validated her Self. Laughing back in the face of their derision.

For this she was kept alive? Oy!

But life goes on... another mission improbable until the Holy One lets her have her long yearned for Beloved. Her beautiful loyal loving peaceful life.

As society literally burns with bushfires and coronavirus pandemics and drought and flood and oozing roiling violence against women and their children...Tanya holds on for what is truly hers. True Love and Light amidst the Spite and Smiting.

She rocked her own neck almost off too many times to the song Zombie. But she is a Zombie no more. She is awake and aware in the glaring putrescence of this reality. She dares to call it out for what it is. Shine light in dark corners.

Brings power and hope back to those still asleep at the wheel. Can she find Love and meaning at this last phase of her existence?

Maybe in a thousand tomorrows. Or in a blink of the All Seeing eye. Love and Light despite the Spite.

Godspeed. God’s seed. Hallelujah! Losing my religion whilst carefully preserving my spirituality.

Chapter Eight

“Love is a many splendoured thing…until it’s not!”

Tanya is dancing in the club. Writhing in her ecstatic flow to the beat, churning a wake of Magic in her immediate vicinity. Jive-Turkeying with the gods.

She had been dancing wildly for several hours. Her spirit has left her body and is floating somewhere in the architecture where the angels watch, tapping their fingers and smoking fat cigars, blowing kisses and smoke rings through the ether.

“We don’t know how she does it?” Says one to another. “It’s her lifeforce, her chi, and a little human chemical they call... adrenaline. Just add a few Jack Daniels and off she goes like a wind-up doll!”

“I’ve seen her do this stone-cold sober too!”

“Ahhh yeah, she loves the Rhythm of the night to be sure. What a woman!”

“Do you think we should...like...intervene...she looks like she’s gonna have a heart attack?”

“Nah she is smart...she knows when it’s too much...”

Tanya ascends the staircase to the disco upstairs when the band downstairs finishes. She is utterly exhausted. But she begins again, twirling and swaying out her light.

But she sees the man she loves. He is watching her. She is so tired. So tired of the games he plays. His creepy avoidant little game. She stops to chat to a woman friend. She says “Go to him. He has been watching you all night”.

Tanya rolls her eyes. “I crawl after no man. Not even him. He’s played me for a fool for far too long!” Her friend smiles. “Okay Tanya, you know what is best!”

Her heart is lifted by her woman friend’s authentic tenderness. Wishing her a happy loving relationship. But trust was broken and the Dybbuk intervened when even the Angels would not intercede for her. Fuck dat shit.

She glances over and he is looking at her. The lover, soul-ridden by the Dybbuk. She stares back at him. Smiles. Descends the staircase as elegantly as she can with her agonised dancing legs in her very high heels. Down and out of the club, into the night.

Drained and depleted. A little bit defeated, her dancing done for another weekend. She sits down on the edge of the gutter. Waiting, like a loyal lapdog for her other friend, who is up there, slatternly seducing the men at 3 am. She is young still. Horny.

But Tanya ain’t got no time for that. 3 am hookups are not her thing. Too old, too tired of the epic bullshit.

So she’s looking down at her iPhone. Reading. She sees a pair of shoes shuffle over to her. Ignores them.

“I know you saw me coming”.

“Yeah...so?! I’ve been dancing all night. I need to rest!”

“Have you eaten?” She looks up from the men’s brogues into his brown eyes.

“No, as a matter of fact I have not. I am waiting for my friend!”

“Come on, I’ll buy you a coffee.” All she can think is why is this night different? Why the sudden attention? He’s teased her all night and she has danced herself into oblivion.

“You will have to pull me up. All my joints just seized!” Giggles. He puts out his hand and lifts her up to her feet.

The Dybbuk clatters his feet on the roof. Licks his lips with glee. Relax, she thinks. It’s just a coffee. So they walk to the kebab shop and he buys her a piece of Baklava. Sweetness.

She takes a photo of him wearing her bikie jacket (it was cold and she was overheated so she offered it to him!) It fits him better. It’s a man’s jacket and has always been a size too big for her. He looks cute in it. Very cute.

He says “I like this jacket. You should give it to me!” Opportunist. Always wants something from her!

She replies wryly “Nup! That jacket is my mojo. Don’t ever mess with my magic!” He replies “You should not ever mess with my magic either”. She laughs. Mirroring. He has no idea.

They sit awkwardly and drink coffee. Silently comfortable. Until that redhead saboteur arrives. Time to take her home and retreat for another week.

She showers off the night’s sweat and the night’s distress. Smiles at his attempt to form a connection.

But the following weekend she sees him rolling his tongue down the throat of some other woman. No class.

The Dybbuk stretches its talons and sharpens its nails.

Yeah...you got me good, Demon!

Chapter Nine

“Yesterday...all my troubles seemed so far away...!”

Tanya has no luck. Tanya might be cursed. But out of every darkness there is a scrap of light. A tiny ember of hope that gets fanned into a flame. Sometimes a smouldering towering inferno. Sometimes a boiling seething sooty ash, glowing red and orange. Lighting her way.

She does not always feel the fire. The burn scarifying all the dross and crap of her existence. Other times she is seized by actual menopausal hot flashes that are so intense she feels like she is going to spontaneously combust leaving only her shoes.

The likelihood of this actually happening is rare. But The Tanya is a rare old Bird of fine sensibilities and quirkier distinction. Anything can and does happen in her world. Sometimes it’s better not to think about it lest she manifest some new hellish disaster.

Here we are in the midst of a modern day plague and giant fearmongering. Everyone afraid to die. Blech. We are all going to die, just not today or all at the same time. Get a grip on yourselves...people.

But instead of coronavirus (so far so good) as The Tanya is still in recovery from the last bad flu, what does The Dybbuk do to fuck her vibe instead? Takes her beautiful precious much -beloved bird, Charlie away. Mysteriously, into thin air.

The grief sits on her chest like a bullet-proof vest. A dry-husked weight. Day three of grieving. It shifts in energy, changes flavour. The Dybbuk Ioves to kill her beloved pets. It knows that hurts her the most.

But she is moving through life as stolidly as ever. Two geriatric cats and the dog and some goldfish left. She counts every moment with them as precious as she knows something dark is picking them off one by one. To cause her utmost suffering.

Who is this latest energy that takes her pets? That lately has killed off several long (but ultimately superficial and false) friendships? Hmmm? The evil eye cast by a jealous spiteful former lover and their putrid desperate girlfriends? Surely not?

Surely they would not invest so much hatred into practising actual black magic against her? But one must begin to wonder? 4 pets in the course of a year. A little bit too much of a coincidence.

So The Tanya holds herself in stoic containment. Asks the Angels to cast off the evil that is dogging her and return it to its original source to the power of ten. But she has lost faith and strength in her own magic and lifeforce. 8 months of chronic asthma has worn her thin and wispy.

She had called down Azrael to take her during that flu two weeks ago. But no, after the fever broke, a sudden turnaround and quick recovery. Only to take Charlie a few days ago as “tribute”.

The Tanya is so sick of this. A lifetime of torture is quite enough. Too much.

Then to add to her bemusement she discovered a former woman friend who literally bled her dry energetically for many years is stalking her on Facebook (on her public posts!). Like what the fuck? Block and delete. She drained Tanya of every resource she had and still wants to leech from her.

The weaker she gets physically, the more her spirit gathers force. Only a fool would dare attempt to sidewind her in her current state.

A calm settles in her spirit. The Dybbuk took tribute but there will be a restoration, a balancing out of karma. “Have no fear. I am here”

(What?). Move along Dybbuk...Nothing to see here. Let The Tanya have her true friends, truest lover and her daughter(s), loving cousins and pets. When you took my bird you took too much! I will see you in Hell.

(Muttering from the 7th echelon...Them’s fighting words...shhh she knowssss...she always knows)

Whatever!

Coronavirus has everyone insane. This is the epoch of The Tanya who was falsely slandered and accused of insanity by so many lacklustre useless abusing feeble-minded troglodytes that insanity became her badge of honour, her Brand. Her pride and integrity.

While lesser mortals raided her of money, career, homes and safety she marched onwards...head high...even as she ploughed through the Abyss.

Death and the Dybbuk. Playing games of chance and futility and fighting over their Tanya.

Gevalt.

....

Much later this evening Charlie bird is found and brought back home. A miracle. The bluebird of happiness that rips his own blue feathers out and went “walkabout” is back with his Mama Tanya.

This time the Dybbuk had to cede to kind earthangels who rescued Charlie and brought him home. Grief and pain turns to happiness and relief. Prayers were answered.

Praise be to the Holy One who gifted Tanya back her beautiful bird. A reprieve from the evil grasping Dybbuk at last.

Chapter Ten

“Who the hell are you to treat me like that?”

The world is steeped in Death and Insanity. A thin veneer of civilisation carefully masking the putrescence and bestiality underneath.

The Tanya knows the Dybbuk has multiplied itself in the billions. Riding each human with cavalier glee. This year it’s covid 19...next year a new fear tactic!

Choose Life. Choose Love. Alas, poor Davidson, we knew him well.

His haunting had served only to highlight the miscarriages of justice she experienced. Over and over again. Also the medical negligences.

Then the smug evil condescension of her own Jewish community. But the Dybbuk never rests and neither does the Australian government with its fearmongering and loss of containment of coronavirus. Vile dickheads.

The Dybbuk is practising ballet on the roof, pirrhoetting with more aplomb than the usual ballet maestro. Counting souls and assorted epiglottal collective fears. Gaining prowess and infinite power.

Her former lover who fed this community with such vile slander is dead. But that song runs through her head (the guttural Smokey voice of Madison Avenue) “Who the hell are you to treat me like that, I don’t care where you been, where you going, where you at?!)

He used to sing it to her, trying to blow smoke up her arse and 20 years later he is incapable of smiling as she is utterly through with him and he is well...dead. Him and his cohorts in the community that still thought they could try to humiliate her, after two decades.

Karma rectification. Tikkun Olam. Counting The Tanya’s tears until her last breath!

Hush now, Dybbuk. You want to create Hell on Earth. Feast on human flesh like carrion? Sit down, Baby. The Tanya already lived through more apocalypses than this one. Just settle Petal, you fucking Amateur.

But one is mindful of the complete disarray. Condescending offers of assistance from glib grandstanders. Hypocrites.

Members of parliament offering people call 13 Health for assistance. Where was the help in June when The Tanya feared for her very life? None. Only abuse. 13 Health only services the rich it would seem. Systemic abuse rampant.

What hope in a pandemic? Why none! Do not delude yourselves. Look after your own self and your pets and your beloveds. Socially avoid the rest of the lying evil greedy salacious humans. Social distancing? My lifestyle has gifted me after all.

The Tanya had help from genuine earthangels while everyone else, including government officials whipped her hide. Flogged her reputation and her actual flesh. Then laughed in her face.

Well, humans...the last laugh is always best. Loudest and longest.

Hear me?....

Chapter Eleven

“Song Sung Blue”

I am kissed by an Angel while being simultaneously scorched by the mark of the Beast. I have walked through hellfire and high water for You. Cleaved to my God in desolate disarray just so a few smug dirty motherfuckers could laugh at me.

“Where are you now, Dybbuk?”

“I AM...................Here! Scratching my balls and plotzing and plotting, smoking fat cigars and leering seductively at your Guardian Angel, the Wolf...shaking out her fur like an over-coiffed Rottweiler!”

“Don’t piss me off, Dybbuk! I asked you a question...where are you....Now?!

A low growling raspy choking guttural chuckle emanates in waves from across the dimensional vortices....

“....eating Souls, Babycakes....and watching the world Burn and choke to Death!”

“ENOUGH! I have spoken!”

“Who do you think you are...Tanya-le....little One!”

“I AM....the survivor. The Thriver. The celebrator of All existence...in this world and in all worlds. I have fought you forever and I always will do so”.

The Dybbuk sighs. “I know. I had to find new outlets for my mischief and mayhem. Your Angel and your Wolf ...they wear me out!”

Tanya-le rolls her eyes. “You know...Dybbuk. They all want to control me. Own me. Deny me. Isolate me then worship me. It’s utterly unholy!”

“Tanya-le..why are you kvetching to me? I am not your friend, ally or psychotherapist!”

Tanya laughs. “I am merely declaring my intentions in the sight of God if He still exists! Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh. I am..whom I am Becoming”

“Well Schatzi...if I wore a hat I would take it off to you. I think you are part-demon yourself. You are so stubborn.”

“Nu Dybbuk, May I introduce you to a very ancient friend of mine...I think you may have a prior acquaintance? Lilith?!”

“What you talking about Tanya?”

“Oh merely that my people have my back and seemingly I have friends in strange places, spaces and alternate universes. But I am well aware of my hobbit-footed walk and my interpersonal mortality and I do not suffer fools or clayfooted idols or liars, cheats or whoremongerers and their henchwomen...as you well know I suffered for them enough in this incarnation!”

Dybbuk rolls his eyes. “Shabbat Shalom Tanya.”

“Wait? What? Are Dybbukkim even jewish?!”

Smoke on the water.....the winds of change blow back. Clear out the filth and dross. Bring a new paradigm. Enlightenment. Lighten up Babies...this too, shall pass. My greatest enemies loved me the most. Taught me the best. Showed me who I do not want to exemplify.

In the Becoming. Strange. Beautiful. Besotted. But not epiglotted. Lalalalalala. Blech. 1.5 metres distance. Social isolation. Plague. The pox has landed but the eagle is keeping his steely eye open for prey.

Fear not! You been Down that rabbit hole of death-spiralling for 8 months little one! We the gods will protect you.

Just dance in your garden and celebrate Life. Love you! Discernment. Choose wisely.

Emet. Well met! Kismet! La Belle Époque!

Chapter Twelve

Sings “…and I don’t believe that anybody feels the same way about you now…”

The dybbuk is on the roof and the covid 19 has gathered like a microscopic dust upon the imagination of the people. Some say it came as Panspermia from a comet that flew past our planet in November 2019. Others say it was a bioweapon unleashed by China on an unsuspecting public that was spread by the five million international travellers that crossed the globe for several months before the world’s governments forced us all into Lockdown.

The Tanya feels the oppression on her auric field: gathering like a stainless steel mantle. She lays down on her bed to rest. Overwhelmed and over-saturated with news updates and the collective fear permeating invisibly like just so much dust.

She feels the pressure on top of her head as though some invisible being is screwing down into her skull with a wine bottle corkscrew, twisting rhythmically until she feels like the contents under pressure want to just evaporate in one sudden unexpected “POP”!

Turning and turning, twisting and twisting, deeper and deeper into her psyche, into her energy meridiens, immersing through her mind, body and spirit. Covid 19. The Dybbuk. Haha He’s not dancing on the roof now. He’s sliding like on a water slide, gleefully giggling and chortling. His hooves lifted high into the air, bouncing on the rear end of his demonic fiery tochas.

The dybbuk silently, gloatingly counting souls as he has always done. Scratching his head because this time, it’s out of control. Even he could not have contemplated this much Mess. Doctors and scientists and government officials all at loggerheads. So many stories to be told, facts distorted, twisted by knaves. Hell, even the animals in the household can feel the oppression.

Meanwhile the Earth rotates on her axis, the sun shines by day and the moon by night. Trees bed down their roots deep into the earth, still transmuting the carbon dioxide emitted by humans and animals alike, into life-giving oxygen. The world still turning like a metaphorical corkscrew, rhythmically in perfect order.

“Covid 19? What’s that?”

“the humans have a plague”, the dybbuk tells the Earth. “It’s funny! Watch this! They’re all freaking out!” but the death toll is rising and the humans are not so amused.

Gaia has no fear of covid 19 or dybbukim. She is her own essence. A life force. She is her own ecosystem. She honours her own rhythms day by day, by day. While we sleep, we mere mortals, the world goes on without us. Within us. Around us and if necessary…through us.

We need hold no fear for our future. Those of us who may not make it through the day are blessed and held in sacred trust. Those of us who are destined to live through this pandemic unscathed and untouched, are humbled and grateful for the blessings and the protection and the wisdom that this has enforced upon us all. Even the healthy and the wealthy know that this disease is indiscriminate.

Copyright Tanya Désirée Arons

#TheDesiredOne

#DybbukKeeper

#Thriver.

#don’tevercallmeVictim

;-)