Awake

Well, hello my mystery. Today I awake again. Sleep slips away as I emerge from the waters, salt-stained. I saw the age-old rocks, cuddled together like hot embers beneath the waves, burning unabated. Warm-heart, warm-centre, a heat to bathe the creatures. No science has breached the foam, the fury of waves, the heavy calm. The weight of the ocean holds me. Oh, the tenderness. There are no sharp edges in Eden. But it is the shore, the meeting place of your choice, where we make a fire and eat fish. I am eating with you now. I am with you now. It is you now.

Fire Hydrant

That sun, too bright, tracing destruction through the fibrous strands of his iris. Laying prone in the sand, wide-eyed and gaping at heaven. When horror comes, it chases you subjectively. You run, but it’s carried along inside you, so the epicenter of terror remains confusingly close and curling at your sternum. You think it’s out there, in the world, and if you can just get around the next corner, the next edge of whatever that large object is ahead, you might just be able to duck low and hide, quietly. But it’s not out there. It wasn’t outside of Ryan, either, not outside.

So he let the light in, the bright roaring sun. It could race through him and burn it out – the gut-fear, black and popping epileptic. But something else happened.

The searing rays of on high found the wide open compartments of his mind where meaning was kept. Meanings so full and young, unfettered and let free to roam around where they would, unprotected. They could not withstand the photonic flood, and they sang sharp and high choruses as they sintered out of existence. Ashy cinders collected in the dome of his head, piles of spent carbon.

When he woke his body remembered all the things it should: how to stand, to walk, to understand space. But his head had no binding reference around which to chain all of the objects appearing before him. There was only space, and places where space was not – curiously shaped bundles of occupied space. This is what happens when you lose meaning.

But the fire hydrant changed all that. It had a symmetry. And a hardness that was pleasing to his hands, a coolness that comforted. It was a beacon of promise, of greater things behind, and beneath, and maybe even above. He clutched it like a child, traced its shape with his fingers and whispered foreign syllables to it like an old wizard calling to life a breathless golem.

In time, strange occupied spaces that moved much too quickly came and took him away. No one ever could regain contact, though they tried, his brothers especially. If they knew, they would bring in the fire hydrant and begin there. For in a small dark room near the base of his skull, cuffed and bound and protected from all that could dare harm, is a little ember of meaning, glowing and alive, alone, full of potential.

Business Man: 7

In a meeting. Taking the minutes. I’m writing these words instead of “Mr. Firewell inquires about a new lunch hour directive,” or “Ms. Claire shows her report for monthly profit – what’s that yellow stain on her sleeve?”, or “Bob chews his gum like a mad cow”. We’re sitting in the boardroom, which rests at the northwest corner of the building. Glass circumferences us, from floor to ceiling, and we have a broad view of the domain about us, the structures of power jutting up from the ground like quills, at their very tops antennae, syringes, pricking the sky with red and white winks. It is overcast. I hope for rain. Cathy smiles at me, she has told a joke, chuckles trickle out politely. She turns back to the overhead, her hair black silk swinging. Outside it is raining. I see the drops beginning to collect on the glass, peppering crystals. My daughter loves the rain. She’s running to the window right now, her finger touching the glass, her nose pressed up to the pane, she’s asking if she can go outside. The sitter concedes, and she puts on that pink outfit – pink boots, pink raincoat, pink umbrella. She’ll decide not to take the umbrella, and she’ll drink the sky with a tiny outstretched tongue, levelling her gaze once in a while to look at me and laugh. Look at the sitter and laugh. Chuckles offer themselves politely again, Cathy has told another joke, profits are up, the meeting is over, and the minutes, the fast-moving, slipping minutes are safely locked inside my laptop.

Kulkaran

Kulkaran? Bound, but just now let loose into the ball field. This is his second trip to the Great City, a prisoner of the cocoa masters, but his nakedness is all glory and jungle oil as he walks across the grass, wooing the eyes of the crowd his way. There are other prisoners, but he does not look at them. He keeps his pantheric gaze firm on the team across the way: they are stone-armoured, feather-headdressed, jade-painted. At their feet, one ball. It might as well be the globe of the earth.

On both sides of the field high stone walls, lined with small loops, contain the players. Ball in loop, earth in void, and Kulkaran lives. Ah, but he is not like them, these stone makers. He has secrets collected in the net of his hair – caught as he passed through trees and under rivers and over mountains.

The match begins, and they have weapons. Kulkaran is lake-weed, hovering at the edges. There are fonts of blood, and prisoners dying, and a ball knocking around in the air, spin-struck.

Kulkaran sees an opening, and he is yellow adder, fang-striker, snagging the heel of a jade runner. He clamps upon him hawk-swift and taloned, removing the headdress and the armour, smearing the paint on his own body. Foot-stomp, face-crush, he dons the stolen outfit. He remembers the sting of the tree ant, and becomes pincer-toothed. He bites, and bites, and avoids the ball, biting. He is killing prisoners. He is gaining trust. He is standing by the crowd, smiling, red-tongued.

The ball comes towards him then, a rubber sparrow of speed. Now Kulkaran swats away the tree ant, and is tender-foot, the puma. He turns and warps his way forward, keeping the ball from touching his hands, powering up on pounding thighs and curling shoulder blades. Trickle-step, stutter, and thunder rolling on the field. Kulkaran heaves the middle name of lightning and throws it into the ball, rage-wise. Through the loop spinning is freedom; sweet, sacrificial freedom, burning cocoa in the morning sky.

Business Man: 6

I’m in the kitchen darkness. The laptop is shouting light. My hands glow, tap-tap-tap. My daughter lies in bed, asleep, and I cannot describe the ache in my chest when I think of her. My suit is burning on me like an infection; I want to rip it off, get into some old jeans, into a t-shirt, barefoot, plain. I want to make Cheerios and waffles. I want to spill milk on the counter, I want to hear her coming down the stairs and saying my name. But there’s still four hours until dawn, when the sitter cracks the eggs and burns the toast, slides the paper in under the door, leaves. I’m the shadow-father. This is why my body falls only as imagination. I struggle to keep writing this. I stare at the last sentence for fattening seconds. My fingers are shaking. I’m squeezing them in, but they’re dripping, the tears. I’m in the kitchen darkness. She’s sleeping, and goodness reigns.

Fly

For sport, nothing beat cloud diving. He manoeuvred his twin-engine upwards, tugging on the throttle-bar. One hand flashed out to grab his sunglasses – big round reflective things – and he pushed them on his face. Up, up, pressed against the back of the seat, gravity pulling him gently, stretching his face. It felt as though he were pushing through something dense, like jelly.

A wall of white enveloped him and muffled the engines. So slow now, and the roaring, high-pitched and throated. He could see the iron pistons, hammering, the combusting gas an infinite stream of fire and vanishing heat. He punched on the radio and turned it up full blast.

When he broke, mist trailing off her wings, he let out an adrenal whoop of joy. For a moment he rose suspended, almost going nowhere, the engines beginning to stall. He pushed her forward and levelled her off. Out before him, forested, vast acreages of tumbling cumulus lay frozen in time, sun-sprayed. It was almost another land, and he could not help but thinking that there were indeed people up here, living in the slow-changing landscape, cloud-bound. To the left a great ridge of rolling puff could have been mountains or cliffs. Straight ahead were foothills and curling embankments, hiding invisible rivers of air, where those who lived here spent their days catching slippery wind-fish, or netting packets of flashing light. To the right a hallway of bursting trees vaulted cathedral-like, heavy-laden with sky-fruit, ambrosial, oranges of oxygen balling on branches of white smoke. And directly below – a field, ribbed into rows, hiding the seeds of heaven.

He prepared himself for a dive.

But just ahead something caught his attention. Two tendrils, maybe three, twisting on the field. They were moving quicker than the landscape, almost detached from the surroundings. He arced the plane in their direction, turning down the radio. As he approached they began to shrink, melting down into the rest of the clouds. Curiosity scampered up his shoulder, bit his ear, spoke sharp nothings.

And that! A shimmering flash of black! Almost mirror-like, a glistening scale. He dropped her into a dive, his heart racing. The tendrils appeared again, bobbing, then slipped back beneath the surface. “What the hell is going…” he spoke aloud, but his voice caught in his throat.

An impossibility.

Endless rows of jagged teeth. A wide and bottomless pink throat, billowing. A tongue, forked, lashing the air. Two caverns, nostrils, and above those a pair of reptilian eyes, milky and cold. He tried to pull her up, but the engines shrieked in refusal, and he screamed his way down into the end of the world.

Daily Roach: Mar. 29th

My half-finished world is full of four-foot doors and roads that end where, if I had gone but a bit further, may have run the earth through the iron mountains, beyond a craggy sea and towards the settled sun, into a home of warm lights and spicy meals.