If you don’t know what Gha’Cre Stoh Rage Haiku is, you shouldn’t. I invented it for my fictional multiverse.

Rules: Seven lines, each line no more than seven syllables, one line must contain only two words, the final line is a single word. Written in multiples (Gha’Cre) usually numbering seven, a final stanza (Stoh) is written using the single-word endings to the other Gha’Cre. Additional words can be used to tie the single words together and the rules of the Gha’Cre do not have to be followed.

Developed by the Cult of Gha, a fringe religious sect living in a habitat in the wilderness of Titan, Gha’Cre Stoh Rage was a trance the adherents to the Cult’s tenets aspired to achieve through extreme fasting and semi-exposure to the environment of Titan’s surface. It is considered a rage trance due the extreme pain the cultists inflict on themselves (exposing naked flesh to Titan’s air, suit-diving into methane lakes with minimal thermal insulation) during the creation and recitation of the haiku. The pain is met with rage, and a successful Gha’Cre Stoh Rage should erase the effect of the pain … eventually. Most verbal repetition of Rage Haiku is done so at maximum volume, nearing the level of primal scream, mimicking the likely original performance by the haiku creator. That particular vocal facet of the complex art of Gha’Cre Stoh Rage Haiku is, of course, lost in written versions.

—

PREFACE: Reach was one of seven men named as such who existed in seven separate universes as multiversally intertwined souls. It was impossible for them to meet; and though, theoretically, it was possible for Reach to cross over to another universe, the chances of encountering one of the other seven were ridiculously low. This was also complicated by the fact that any one Reach jumping universes was being mirrored by the other Reachs.

The origin of Reach is unknown, because Reach himself has yet to create his origins. Reach exists suddenly, and not due to any epic mingling of chaotic strands of eternity in well-defined intersections of “now”. Reach just was and just is – seven times over. He exists sevenfold in time and space, but lives in a dysphoric misalignment with the rest of the universe each iteration of himself inhabits. Frequently, the outsider’s presumption of Reach’s insanity serves only to further separate the heptaphrenic traveler from the only realities that could actually shed light on the purpose of his multifaceted existence.

To further complicate this already complicated tale, Reach does not know he is connected to six other beings and that everything he does is either influencing or being influenced by one or more of his other existences.

This is Reach Zero, the beginning you’re allowed to consider as such, but not the one that was.

—-

an arm’s length in

with punctures at the elbow

Reach was bitten

and in agony

considered the beast:

a Vurl

inconsiderate

***

a fly on the wall,

Reach became the jungle cat

springing from on high

and at impact

sank his teeth into

his wife’s

betrayal

***

“Mourn the undevoured”:

words offered by Reach

to the assembly who

in their wisdom

had eaten

their kin

alive

***

cyanide ran down

Reach’s dry throat

as he stared down

the long abyss

and saw

his mistakes in

akinesia

***

Reach mourned her,

the heavenly mermaid

who in her haste

had swallowed

the long hook which

tickled her stomach

wickedly

***

the dents in flesh

turned to pits

before erupting into

volcanic gore

while Reach continued

his self-cannibalism

undeterred

***

sweetened by rarity

the fruit tasted

like transcendence

from a world full of

blandness; and so

Reach, in digesting this,

escaped

***

after the inconsiderate betrayal

he was alive in akinesia –

comatose yet wickedly undeterred

he escaped into a void of his making