inkfilledmind

My thoughts are in agonised throes, semi-conscious shrieks of frenzied speculation and terror. I tear my gaze from the rollercoaster of flared cat’s eyes passing in the murky night, look towards the alien woman beside me gripping the steering wheel in grim determination, look down at the raw marks rubbed by the rough twine binding my wrists before glancing away as the pain is acknowledged afresh. The broken back window invites screams of chill wind inside the cabin, turning skin to gooseflesh, colouring bruises and half-healed wounds the ugly shade of the stale wine pooled in my cramped stomach. If there were a record playing from the silent speakers, it would be haunting, dissonant, soul-swallowing. I imagine, as I black out from force-fed narcotics-delayed exhaustion, a deafening crescendo arising from the swell of static.

In the middle of a gathered circle an old woman was speaking. Her arms were spread wide in supplication, her head was held high, bright eyes aimed ahead. Let it be known that her entire body was trembling with unidentifiable emotion as she assailed her peers.

“What distortion of the self. What debauchment of the goodness we say still remains. Yea, we have accomplished more than ever before – but have never been so aimless.”

And so Eliora bowed her head and whispered final words: “It is a cold sunset which falls upon the world tonight.”

And there was silence. It was short-lived and split by deep roars of laughter. And from the circle emerged a man, and he towered over the woman, and his grotesque face was twisted with amazement.

And he spoke thus: “Ha! Have you not passed yet, detestable deifier? Your words are ripe with overstatement like your walls with false hope; your entire purpose no more than rotted fruit, spoiled flesh for me to sow across conquered lands.”

It was at this point that Rano brought out his whip and drove Eliora to her knees as he shouted: “Taste my scorn, you who threaten my ascendency through deceit and weakness! Go back to your buildings!”

Another man broke the ranks of the circle to lunge in and pull back Rano.

“Oh, reproach yourself – bitter you bicker like you have burning hate towards the other, despite marching hand-in-hand for millennia. If there is hate, it is by me and for me: passively providing support for your pale games.”

So it was that Rano and Eliora stared in scorn at Valo as he continued: “It will be a deep night indeed; lit by my fire and your ire. What say you, Sama?”

For the crowds had parted, and it was the case that a small girl now sat cross-legged on the ground before the trio. She was known across the land as Sama, a revered speaker whose passions now arose.

“See the new world in front of us, for it is full of wonder. Put aside your grievances, your petty fetters, and smile at those who threaten collapse. The snow of our difference is nothing before the sun of our deference! This is the way forward.”

Then the fiery ring in the sky fell below the dark horizon, and the child’s words were pondered.

After the accident, his body was displaced, in and out of time. Maybe it was to compensate for how hard it had to work to keep him alive. Maybe it was something to remind him of who he had lost when it happened, those who hadn’t got away with a collapsed lung and bruised ego. Like he needed reminding.

His sense of hearing has changed. Really changed. He hears things five seconds before they happen. The prognosis of the doctor reached his ears while the sunburned lips were still forming polite pleasantries. It’s messed him up, psychologically. Lives life in a perpetual state of slow motion, always anticipating things, his body is exhausted from constant tension. Imagine watching a movie where the soundtrack was five seconds ahead of the action – would it drive you crazy?

It happened two years ago. Since then it’s been a constant struggle, he’s a hermit, remaining in his apartment for weeks on end and starving if his more-than-generous landlady has her own life for more than a day. He’s feverish, with food or without, and hallucinates on a regular basis. Conjuring vivid visions of the source of the demonic squeaking he hears before fainting onto the lounge with screaming springs. The nurse suggested earplugs but he said insanity was preferable to silence. He used to play the drums. He tried to play them again but it’s immensely difficult.

A few months ago he started going on weekly runs. He bought a portable music player. The song changes before he decides which to choose but apart from that it’s almost like old times, the happy period before the wild swerving, the crushed metal; before the shattered, splattered windshield and hoarse cries torn from torn throats.

Today, he’s looking forward to pounding feet and bass. If he could see ahead of time he wouldn’t be so cheerful. He’s going to hear a girl scream and car tyres screech and his heart speeding as he sees her on the road in front of him and he runs towards her but it’s too late and he ends up in hospital beside her. He has a relapse and she’s fighting to survive and isn’t life so dreadfully circular?

They are pale blue phantasms, floating in the air behind her, behind all of us; like little lagging balloons pulled by fishing line into otherworldly streamers – and she seems to be the only one that can see them.

She leads one life, and the other life leads her. It’s not troublesome, that is, she wouldn’t be in trouble if one life met the other. People would probably smile, shake with laughter. Their bodies would shiver and twist like the life-ghosts which flow excited through her grasping fingers as she tries to revive someone just fallen in a heart attack, an attack of the heart upon the apathetic city pavement; she tries pulling slippery soul pieces back to the realm of cold despair they’re departing in droves.

At first she didn’t know what they were. She still doesn’t know what they are, not precisely, but there are observable patterns. Newborn babies are surrounded by brilliant spheres of light, split from the mother’s shadows which aren’t shadows. Development ensues, of the child and its invisible legion, they change form and fade and never multiply. Hospitals are beacons in her nightscape, streaks of death’s gifts to the stretched velvet sky.

She’s depressed, awfully depressed. Uncontrollable torrents of tears before tossing sleep, that sort of uncomfortable affair. Perhaps she’ll learn to deal with the normal thread of life life life death, and then sweet silent oblivion, one day soon hopefully, before her own quivering friends leave without pausing for goodbye, come back, just briefly, let me end things properly oh please, oh, oh – it’s either that, or she’ll push them out the door before they are ready to leave. She’s going to end both her lives if she doesn’t end one.

The empty skyscrapers surrounding the harbour are always completely lit towards late evening. Tonight it is different. Oh, the towers are still torches in the sky, but there are people in them. They stand, row by row, clearly visible from outside, toy soldiers lining the shelves. They stand close to the glass, so close that it fogs, because they’re so cold on the inside and it’s burning, yes, it’s burning outside. The steamers near the shore are alight, the frigates are on fire and the trawlers are turning to ashes like the heroes commemorated on the melting metal memorials in the quayside fountains.

The politicians, the pundits, the preachers – oh, they said it would never happen. It happened. It happened. A terrible terrifying terrific catastrophe and they said it wouldn’t happen but it did happen, it did! The rivers are steaming, the land is dying, and the blue above is empty. Spin in a circle in a desert and craters surround you. Rocks on fire are falling from the sky. Trees are skeletal like idle spiders. Sheep lay dead on the fields in their rotting thousands. A lone shepherd walks broken through their broken ranks and kneels and weeps. A collective sigh of souls leaves the Earth to float towards another corrupted, make-believe realm beyond our imagining.

Or is this a daydream?