[YD6-82(Dr.) rev] “Hydra of the Mind: The Butler’s Enfilade and the Table That Would Not Lie”
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Note to readers: The sequence of chapters in this series has been lightly reshuffled, as part of aligning the narrative’s rhythm and underlying code. YD6-82(Dr.) marks the latest position in this constellation.
Chapter teaser: Helios entices a morning holographic reflection across the table—shadows vanish where furniture once held memory. A butler’s lips tremble with silent lies as the Hydra of the mind stirs awake, veiling elopement beneath a husband’s return home. Coffee cools untouched, while unspoken truths hiss through the glow. Step into this fragile dawn, where reality fractures under a single question.
BOOK SYNOPSIS: Aetheria moves through the zodiacal forest—where birds sing and leaves flutter wings bathing in light, a living symphony that whispers the cosmos’ intent. Through our creatures, and in these pages, she leads me. These chapters unfold as a clarifying companion to my earlier book, The Code: Horizon of Infinity—a philosophical memoir exploring how the universe sculpted our minds. Through Aetheria, the lens of consciousness who begins to reveal herself, her presence lives in the rhythm. She seeks form—moving toward the name she will one day claim: Sunshine.
[YD6-82(Dr.) rev] “Hydra of the Mind: The Butler’s Enfilade and the Table That Would Not Lie”
In the eerie hush of dawning light, my mind orbits, questioning where I left off before falling into the arms of Morpheus. I open my eyes—Victoria cuddled, stretched in my arms, stirring in thought—wondering how to slip free without waking her. I lie still. Yesterday’s bustle return: Tonton, with his uncouth helping hands, climbed into the truck’s cabin. The boxy vehicle slipped down the street—as if an invisible hand had drawn back a curtain from the bay window. A man triumphant over Victoria’s elopement—restoring the greenery of the leafy street that the white box had shielded for the best part of the afternoon. My thoughts doodle where I left off—Victoria arranging her furniture and clothes, without yet a clear idea, the apartment still in shambles—leading me into the rise of daylight, a world not yet shaken awake, Sunday’s stores and cafes still closed, the city holding its breath before the rhythm of awakening.
When Victoria flutters her pepish butterfly wings—I left her dressing before the bay window, then crossing over foraging through the kitchen—she exhales. Everything has a name—knotting a thread: Vossenplein—Foxes’ Square, the Marolles, a district within the ruins of the city walls. But she only repeats, with emphasis, “De Skieven Architek.” With it, her eyes push me aside, she sees herself mixing with crowds, the flea market stallholders, and among bargain hunters, the chance of crossing, her brother, Jephte. Meanwhile, I feel pushed toward the bustling milieu for brunch. I step through mover’s crates, past statuettes and busts seeking a shelf to repose upon, and step into a clearing of the living room to pause. Poised to exit, the dark panel door shimmers and cracks open; my curiosity trails the phantom shadow of the hallway—until a pair of popping eyeballs creeps through: Jean Francois Smeets. ‘Tonton expected Victoria alone,’ whisks through my mind, yet he meets the faltering of her pact.
At sight of me, in a breath: ‘Hey! Knull—dude,’ rhyming with the KNU of the 778. His face waxes, his eyes rendering me invisible, as if I were transparent, his gaze sliding past me, skimming the living room. I don’t even ask myself, ‘How did you get in. . . were you given spare keys?’ I just watched this unscrupulous old man, exuding the stale patience of waiting—lurking in the hallway shadows or behind a tree trunk. His gaze brushes me aside as he paces around the door. His eyes--a prowling Cat beneath its own Sun--slips through yesterday’s mover’s boxes, hunting Victoria’s shadow in the kitchen.
Smeets shuffles up to the head of the table, doffs his cap—his bald as an egg, he leaning over the wooden backrest—and sets the sweat-stained pea cap on the table. I mean! ‘We eat breakfast here—Yeakies, your manners?’ I don’t say it out loud, finding me here has knocked the Aries out of him. Without words, facing a lamb leaves the grandfather choking on his thoughts; the feline Cat in him murmurs. ‘Listen to me now, you lost your spot—let's pretend everything is normal and skip away as though you've lost nothing—you have nothing to do here any longer. He says, “My Vicky’que, I must be going, things are waiting for me to do—you know!” He picks up his cap—so light a draft could topple the hefty man over—turns, scuffing his feet, and tracks back, disappearing behind the door, which he pulls shut before his trailing eyes, to the sound of the latch.
Morning light finds us, tickling an awakening to a second day--a maiden voyage. In the hush of duty, we rise from clothes strewn on the carpet and face an innocent Monday in the rhythm of Gemini—alive in both of us—we step out into the day. As Victoria heads across the street toward her blue Fiat Panda, I step into my silver-gray Audi and pull away, leaving her to her course.
I head into the early traffic breathing around me. My mind’s outreach doesn't falter—the knotted landmarks since my arrival guide me. South Station—where André glimpses from his palace of work—rests in the ray of an interstice off the cobblestone Rochefort Square. Hedgerows oversee the groomed park-lanes that funnel down a green median. Punctuating the fenestrated, craggy balconies, the raw cleft of striated 1900s brick facades meddling into the blurry skyline plateau of terracotta rooftops, leveling with the elevated railway line that thwarts the horizon.
The morning light carries Aetheria’s mirage, suscitating a faded glow—a quiet show floating over Wagon-Lit’s home office, through the arch window on the station’s side—André Daniel taking shape there, leaving his desk in last Friday evening’s atmosphere. Before me, his holographic figure steps; railway tracks shimmer into view. He boarded a train, his weekend trip assembling itself from the fragments I’ve gathered since—a governance figure for the railtenders’ usherette trays: snacks, drinks, aisle trolleys. His Sun in Rooster, he preens for the merit, moving through catering wagons crossing international borders. This Scorpio, attending to passengers at tables—meals and wines—glides on weekend duty through a line of luxurious sleeper cabins. Until, after a network of rails and merits a few days off, the gates to his soul open—he alights from the train, his spirit exuding, carried on his emotions. I catch the ghost of telepathy in his pacing at dusk: Nyx lurks in the corners of the platform, and then he slips away into the blur where the train has left him.
The hedgerow of fenestrated brick facades sharpens, pulling up along the curb and giving way to the hideous concrete skeleton of glass panes rising with ruthless pride, its reflection breached by the ghosts of a razed heritage. With the soul of the bricklayers, the carpenters running through my veins, I search for the courage in the bright display of blooming fruits and vegetables before stepping out and crossing the street, my thoughts in the murmur of traffic as the suburbs and exurbs flood the arteries into the city. I press the glass door, cross the gleaming marble lobby, slip behind the door to the stairwell. Emerging on the upper floor, greet the staff, and across the passageway settle behind Forum’s laptop—the Bill of Quantities open as I left it last Friday evening, with one slight change: the cleaners have unfolded the wrong page.
At the edge of my table, Helios’ radiance reflects through the glaze of the window, fracturing into the air, condescending, morphing before my eyes—hedgerows of fenestrated brick facades bloom holographically, folding into the northeastern sprawl of Schaarbeek. Where I’m caught in a memory knot—Victoria dropped off, André settled despite the layered hush of his absences. Reeled in by the Hydra of my mind, I sink through a plasma of matter volatilized in light, crossing the viaduct architecture that separates André’s house from the neighborhood. Ghostly, I slip through the interior rooms, drifting in stealth, descending through the staircase’s core. A blinding glow engulfs me on the ground-floor. The Hydra of my mind tucks itself away, embedding into the ceiling—paused—only the lens of sight, hovering above the house’s rear—over the glaze of the patio door, as the radiance softens, the rendezvous surfaces.
In a glitch—a stir in my mind. Velvet paws descend the stairs; unfolding from the loft’s hush, cascading toward the street, halting the stairway. Losing ground, the floorboards awaken a soft creak beneath pacing weight, velvet sighs prowling past the sentinel of bedroom doors—a distant consciousness reflects: ‘Pipo’s empty, André’s napping breath.’ The stairwell falls silent, until, with the drafts of the door, his Cat takes the lead, his Aries folded back. I track the waft of a hefty displacement—into the kitchen, orbiting the door leaf, a U-turn. I seize the soft bustling as he presses on, scooping ground coffee, water, its tone shifting as the jar fills, breaking from the drip. The silhouette waxes in the reflected glow, eyes rolling, ears pricked on the floor above. Meanwhile, Jean-Francois Smeets steps into the refracting glow of the patio door, a come-and-go through the side door, arranging: cup, saucer, plate, fork, knife to a single placemat on the glass-top table.
Then André steps out the kitchen doorway, dazzled—he turns his shoulders from the glowing backyard strip, an evanescent overexposure toward the poplars shielding the railway tracks. Indifferent, he turns his back, grips the backrest, the quiet flaw of the trade flickering in his eyes, pulls the chair out, and rolls around, fixated on the dressed placemat for breakfast. Blind to Tonton—the poised butler shadowing the rooms in enfilade, roller-blinded on the street window. Naive to the trickster, deaf to Tonton’s reverent lip talk: ‘André, can I pour you coffee?’
André ’s gaze shifts—catches on the table’s edge, tightens into a frown. ‘Something is amiss?’ flickers across his eyes, dismissed, then resurges in a quest: ‘Tonton, what happened here?’ The white flank wall slides past Tonton’s dark suit: Smeets’ organic figure mars the straight black lines where the antique wardrobe stood. André’s eyes, searching to comprehend, unveil through the glass-top beside Tonton’s shoes, a rectangular, unswept patch blemishing the parquet—conjuring the fallen wizard.
Smeets smiles thinly—lip thrilling, ‘André, would you like more coffee?’ André ’s stare hardens—‘Tonton, you just poured coffee?’—‘André, you’re overworked,’ Smeets presses, his business suit curtaining André’s view, and the Scorpio in him narrows his gaze, darts past.
‘Something’s amiss,’ André reflects, peering around the other side of Smeets, tracing the bare enfilade that should be cluttered with furniture—shadows erased from the parquet, fading into the hush of the shuttered street window. A sudden shift—André withdraws, fixes on Smeets, glued to the table's edge, eyes locked. ‘Tonton, where is Pipo?’
Cold disbelief. ‘Pipo’s still sleeping.’ Smeets’ eyes flare—‘None of your business!’ The words reflect as an afterthought. Before the Aries in him recovers, his gaze slides away. ‘I mean, his room is intact—that should suffice you,’ his eyes wrestling with his feud to concede. His eyes soften. ‘He’s by Mamouch. . .’ Ends emphatically: ‘Your parents!’ Smeets leans over the table with the jug of coffee: ‘André, would you like more coffee?’
A dagger’s anger flashes in André’s eyes: ‘Tonton—my cup is still full!’ He holds a thoughtful pause, gaze snapping to Smeets. ‘You’re going to lie to me,’ the glare piercing. ‘Tonton, where is Victoria?’ His ears flop—Basset Hound—deaf to Smeets’ gibberish, the silent thrilling of lips. ‘I would tell you more. . . André, consider yourself lucky. The table is still here.’
Before me, the Hydra of my mind volatilizes—my mind milling the scene in a flash. Smeets locked his eyeballs to a glazier’s reality, with André before his placemat and the tangible table legs, stunned in disbelief. Remorseless, Smeets butts his head forward. ‘But, André—you’re tired. ‘Overloaded after a long weekend of work.’ André ’s face flushes red, his gaze wide and fixed. Then, without mercy, Smeets in front of him punctuates his words: ‘Victoria and Pipo deserve better than you.’
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