Light of My Eyes
The shadow of the cloud fell across the land then darted playfully back across it like a young lamb for whom the world was new. It rolled across the hills with its sisters, roiling like potatoes in a boiling pot. She blinked, and looked again, and saw the clouds were great beasts of crystal, the complete fusion of the mechanic and the organic and a secret third thing she could not place, and whenever a great delicate crystal foot landed in a field it would raise a fireball and leave a blackness in its wake that would not be washed out by centuries’ rain. A third time she looked, and saw that there were no clouds and no fields but a great blackness filled with stars, dense and slowly twisting, glittering like the most beautifully ornate fabric cloth anyone had ever sewn.
She turned then widdershins thrice about the circular copse atop the rise. She paced slowly and methodically: the first time she walked she saw that she had no eyes and became afeared; the second time she walked she heard the distant rumble of trumpets and a great many voices like thunder a thousand miles away, and was reassured; the third time she stopped abruptly and wept, having left behind the world entirely, and knowing that she could not return, could never again feel the familiar touch of the sun on her cheek or the cold of rain trickling down her back or her mother’s cruel fingers twisting in her hair.
This, then, was the underbelly of reality, or the vastness of the sky. Her body had no feeling in it; her existence had no body in it. Her soul seemed a long way away from her reality, and she was disjoint, in a hundred pieces lying scattered on the floor like an uncompleted jigsaw puzzle. She could not breathe. It was strange, not to breathe, she thought, except thinking had no meaning, in this place. This was not a place of thought, nor of feeling, rather of pure existence. It could be neither quantified or comprehended, so she didn’t try.
The crystal clouds stalked across the backs of her eyelids and left fireballs imprinted on the front of her brain. Her vision was black and blue; she tumbled, unthinking, though her unsteady breaths. That this was a death seemed evident; that it was living seemed equally so. She could not bear it and thought she would scream, but no sound came out – she had no mouth for it to emerge from. A pain then solidified in her, a longing, stabbing at her insides that were plastered over her outside like a bayonet. Blood congealed in her straggled wet hair and she wanted to cry but no tears came, merely the strange longing twofold. A blackness encompassed her, an ink-black, oozing monolith that gently folded itself over her limbs as though it were a mother tucking her into bed. She thought she was suffocating then and thrashed her non-extant arms as though she could escape from the thrall of the world that could not be seen or experienced but merely lived. A being was not a being in this place, but non-existence was reality and reality was twofold. Veils of crystal fell over her eyes and she felt uplifted by the black current. She sailed in a barque of fire down the river to the sea where the great monster awaited her. She wondered if it would eat her. She didn’t think she cared much.
The monster was big and green and monster-like. It had sharp claws and sharp fangs and a funny little hat. Villages sprung like moss from its shoulders and carpets of forest spread lazily down its flanks like silk robes. A bionic eye examined her curiously.
Slowly, halting, she walked thrice about the monster, widdershins. The first time she turned she saw the intestines of the monster sprawled on the floor and became pleased; the second time she turned she heard a slow whistling like a boiled kettle and became confused; the third time she stopped abruptly and fell down dead at the gate of the orchard stitched with rotting apples and shining leaves.
Go back