The water lapped the shore, causing the lilies to dance in its wake. The breeze smelled like flowers too sweet, a bouquet meant to mask the scent of another woman’s sex.
I took a step towards the water’s edge, and as my toes met the ground, they appeared. Pure faces, devoid of color emerged from the shallow depths, hollow eyes staring at me. Trapped in a state between life and death, this lake was their purgatory.
I tried to take a step back, but the path behind me had burst into flame. The heat was a terrifyingly intensity, and the dirt glowed white hot. The only chance of escape I had was through the water in front of me.
The girls watched me make my decision. Their faces made no expression, but a hungry intent cackled with the flames behind me. Hesitantly, I took a step into the shallows of the pool. As I did, the heads slowly lifted from the water.
It was a hauntingly elegant movement, like a ballet in slow motion. As they lifted their heads, the rest of their bodies slowly emerged from the water. Their eyes continued to look at me, to look through me.
The flames reached the edge of the lake, and I had nowhere to escape. The bodies moved towards me with a lifelessness that was almost robotic.
There was a sharp ripple in the water, as three fingers fell off the girl closest to me. From another, an arm dropped, and a third had her eyes burn out. But despite this, their bodies continued move forward, towards me.
I tried to turn, to run back into the flames. I knew what awaited me if I stayed in the water. I felt a wet sensation all over, and I realized that my legs had become bound.
My fate had been decided, and I could do nothing but lay afloat in the shallows, and wait for my judgement. The girl with the missing fingers reached me first. A tender look came over her face, and she took my hand, caressing it softly. I hoped this was mercy, but I knew it was not.
She kissed my hand, and her lips made their way down to my finger tips. It was almost erotic, the way she worked her mouth around my finger. I let out a sharp cry, as I felt her teeth rip through my bone. The blood pouring from my stump swirled about in the water, creating luscious abstracts. Another cry erupted from my mouth, and a third. All the delicacy was lost in her actions, as she amputated my other fingers.
She let out a giggle, and flexed her hand. Where her fingers were absent, I saw my fingers attached. The seam between her flesh and mine was as apparent as night and day.
She walked into the fire raging on the shore behind me, leaving me to the remainder of my hell.
A second girl made her way to me, and with the same faux eroticism took my arm as hers, before embarking into the inferno.
Girl after girl followed, taking as theirs my arms, my legs, my ribs; each in a more animalistic way than the last.
Before long, I was just a head attached to a heart, still beating.
A final figure made her way to me. She took my head in her arms, and gently afixed her lips to mine, and I recognized bliss.
My fiance, taken from me many years ago. Her very presence turned hell into heaven, and I felt whole, despite the incompleteness of my being.
As our lips parted, I looked at her again, and I realized my sin. She was not as I remembered her.
Crude stitches held her arms and legs to her torso. Crude stitches affixed her fingers to her hand. Crude stitches in her abdomen indicated the presence of bones and organs that did not belong.
She looked at me, and smiled. Her hand grasped my heart. A gentle tug tore the last heart string. Her smile turned cold, as she plunged my heart into her chest. Color quickly returned to skin.
The avatar I had sewn in the image of my dead fiance now left me, and was devoured by flames.
Entry for the sixth teleprompter, the theme of which is “second wind”.
My idea going into this was trying get a progression and melody that sounds like freediving, and to go from there. Ended up being an Fmaj7#11 chord moving to Cmaj7/E and Cmaj7/G, with a B section that’s just kind of everywhere, before moving back to the original progression.
Rationale behind this: Freedivers talk about how, at about 100ft, the water pressure compresses their lungs enough that it feels like they took a second breath, allowing them to comfortably make their way back to the surface. So yeah.
The bell is ringing, however I don’t answer.
It’s almost midnight, and the bell has been ringing since sundown, but I don’t answer. I don’t even look up from my book.
They told me when I took this job that, during the entire 50 years that this institution has been established, the bell hasn’t rung once.
The bell continues to ring, but I ignore it still.
We keep the bodies for 6 months at a time before they are finally put to rest in the ground. Their families pay us to keep the bodies, in the case that they only appear to be dead. We’ve never had a live one though.
The constant chime of the bell makes it hard to concentrate on my book.
It’s a good thing I get paid well. The ringing might drive a person mad. But that’s probably for the best. With only the dead for company, being able to create one’s own friends is probably better than sanity. Maybe I could even invite that obnoxious bell along. It might prove to be sparkling conversation, after all.
The drone of the bell grows louder as the hours pass.
For the entire 3 months that I’ve been on the job, I’ve heard that bell everynight.
But they told me there wouldn’t be a live one on my watch, and they’re never wrong.
As the sun rises, the bell stops. I never did make it much farther in my book. My replacement comes, a much needed respite.
“Any ringers last night?” he asks, like usual.
“Nope. All dead as a door-nail,” I reply, as usual.
They told me that there’s never been a ringer. They told me there wouldn’t be a live one. And they’re never wrong.
How could they be wrong? After all, the bell is attached to vault 208, and there’s no body in vault 208.
So how can they be wrong?
——-
One of my weaker ones, but I’ve had this idea mulling around forever, and I wanted to get it out, no matter how crappy it is.
spinor asked: Your only choice is to revolutionize the world.
Der Vogel kämpft sich aus dem Ei. Das Ei ist die Welt. Wer geboren werden will, muß eine Welt zerstören.
Once upon a time, there was a young girl taken by the stars. Their beauty was that of God, and she longed to be with them, and to be as beautiful as them.
She searched and searched for a way to be with the stars, but to no avail. So she prayed. She prayed for a way to be with the stars.
Much to her surprise, her prayer was answered. From the planes of Heaven descended a great red dragon, whose seven heads were adorned with seven crowns. His wordless voice penetrated her very being, and with a swoop of his tail, he drew apart a third of the stars in the sky, and cast them to Earth.
The girl, ever grateful for this chance to find her real self, set out to find the stars.
On the first day of her journey, the path the girl took led her first to a split between mountains, a valley much traveled by those previous of her. Following their footsteps, the path eventually brought her to a stream, the water clear and clean. While her forefather’s steps continued down the path unfaltering, the girl knew that the stars would not accept someone as dirty as she, and bathed herself. As she emerged from the stream, she knew that the path her forefathers took led them to their ends, and went a direction entirely her own.
On the second day of her journey, the girl encountered a boy, whose eyes sparkled like the stars she adored. He was beautiful, and she was much taken by him, and he was much taken by her. Offering her a life of happiness if she stayed with him. While the offer was tempting, the girl knew that she could not be happy if she could not be with the stars, as they were all that she had eyes for, and continued down her path.
On the third day, the girl was met by a group of those society had forgotten, and she lamented their state. Out of pity, the girl stayed the day with them, heard their stories, and saw how they had learned to overcome their hardships. She began to see the light of the stars in each of them, and in everything around her as the light touched everything. Rather than have the forgotten thank her for her ear, she thanked the forgotten for their wisdom and continued on her journey.
On the fourth day, the girl met the red dragon again, four crowns adorning his four heads. The dragon doted upon the girl, and complimented her on her form, and her cleverness for making it as far as she had. The girl laughed, and replied that it was not by her own graces that she had made it this far, but was thanks to the direction of the stars that made it this far, just as it was by the direction of the stars that the dragon had come upon her again. The dragon looked at the girl and laughed, remarking again how truly clever she was. Continuing on her way, the girl left the dragon behind her, his heads one less in number.
On the fifth day, the girl was confronted by a vagabond, whose greed took her belongings, and whose wrath was sated by the yield of her flesh. Undeterred, the girl progressed, penniless and bruised, and was much pitied by those that saw her. The girl, though, beamed as she knew what she had that, and the gleam of the stars acknowledged her bliss.
On the sixth and final day, the girl found the stars that had fallen to earth. In all her dreams, she had never imagined them to look such the way they did, with colors so intense their image lingered long after her retinas had burnt out. The red dragon made its final appearance, its single crowned head hungered, and it sated its gluttony on the girls limbs.
The girl, left without eyes, without arms, without legs, was with the stars at last. Cushioned at first by their soft figure, they melded into her, and she into them. Losing her sense of self, the girl rejected the instrumentality of the stars. Met with resistance in her struggles, the girl continued to writhe her ego away from the stars, which descended upon the headless torso of the red dragon in her place. The girl continued to writhe, and broke through the shell of the world.
As I approached the form, I was dazed as from it erupted a wall of golden light. From its figure branched many long, thin, stems that blossomed into magnificent flowers. I approached it slowly, shielding my eyes with my hands. I opened my mouth to speak, but I had forgotten all the tongues I knew.
The being did not move through space, rather, space moved through it, warping its glorious visage as it did. The petals of the blossoms peeled back, and from the stigma burst many eyes, their vision piercing my flesh and shattering my bone.
Letting down my hand, I looked into the face of a god, and the god looked back at me, through the me that I am, and all of the me that could have been.
Letting down my consciousness’s guard, the god entered me and spoke words incomprehensible to those that will never hear them, words leaving my memory as soon as they entered, and yet their geas embedding itself into my fundamental existence.
My mind seared with a pain, and an ecstasy, and the god left my mind, left my being forever changed. The gaze of the all seeing eyes was masked by hollow feathers of wings, many in number, all beating to a polyrhythm that I recognized as the heartbeat of the universe, and the god retreated to the corner of the center of the universe from which it came, its job done.
I heard a familiar voice, rooted back in my own world.
“DO YOU SEE THE LIGHT?” screamed the voice.
“What light?” I recognized the voice as my brother’s.
“HAVE YOU SEEN THE LIGHT?!?” shouted the first voice, in vigor.
“YES! YES! JESUS H. TAP-DANCING CHRIST… I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT! ”
I turned to my brother Elwood.
“WE’RE GETTING THE BAND BACK TOGETHER! WE’RE ON A MISSION FROM GOD!”
It’s one of those nights. The nights where it’s warm, and humid enough that sleep should be impossible, yet in the whole world, it seems as if you’re the only one awake. One of those nights, where it feels as time has stopped just before the date changes.
I thought I was hallucinating at first, when I saw her beneath the water… The highlights of her hair reflected the moonlight more clearly than the surface of the lake, and her smile reminded me of rose petals slowly wilting. She appeared to be a lingering reflection of something no longer there, waiting to disappear as the wind slowly disrupts the plane she inhabits.
I wanted to dive into the water, to approach her, but I stopped short. She was delicate and fleeting, like an ink abstraction suspended in a glass of water…. So I stood there and watched her, and she watched me.
We just looked at each other, until she suddenly turned, and darted to the middle of the lake. As she looked back at me over her shoulder, I saw streams of silver tears beginning to run down her face. A strong breeze blew, and a hump in the water was headed right for where she stood. I could only watch as she disappeared under it.
——
I convinced myself that is was a dream at first, though if it was a dream, it was the most vivid dream I had experienced. And of course, the next night I found myself walking down to the lake, hoping to meet her again.
As I got nearer the waters, I could see her figure. Just like the previous evening, she greeted me with a melancholic smile, and brushed a length of her hair behind her ear.
“Hello again,” I started. She looked at me, questioningly.
“I don’t suppose you can hear me, can you?”, I asked. Mentally, I was cursing myself. I don’t know why I started talking to something or someone that may not even be real.
To my slight surprise, she nodded her head in response.
“Do you have a name?” I posed, to which she nodded again.
I paused for a moment, wondering again, what I was doing.
“I suppose you can’t talk, can you?”
She shook her head in negative response, with a look of sorrow adorning her face. A lonely look.
On a whim, I began to talk to her, telling her briefly about myself. It was just simple stuff, my name, where I grew up. I knew that she couldn’t reply, but even so, she could hear me, and I wanted to do what I could to replace her expression with one more becoming of her beauty. I think that anyone would have.
At her prompt, I began elaborate more about myself, about my job as an accountant, about my hobby of amateur radio, about my cat, just anything that came to mind, no matter how trivial. I spent nearly an hour talking to myself, talking to her. She would periodically nod in response to something I said, letting her platinum hair dance around her shoulders, and it would remind me of something to talk about.
After that hour, she cut me off, and moved a little closer to the shoreline, reaching a hand out towards me, a new smile on her face. I reached out, and broke the surface tension with my fingers, the ripples causing her image to flicker in and out of being. When the water settled, she was gone.
When I woke up the next morning, there was a dark crack running the length of the sky, distorting the clouds as they passed through it, and I felt alive.
It’s four o’clock in the morning. I sit up and reach for the phone ringing by my bedside.
“This had better be good,” I grumble at the intern on receiving end of the line.
“Doctor, we’ve done it. We’ve broken through!” he replies.
With those words, all of the sleep left my body. I jerk away from my mattress, dropping the phone and paying it no mind as I quickly pull on my parka. Normally, the walk from my quarters to the elevator takes fifteen minutes. I sprint and make it there in five.
We had been drilling for months, slowly making our way through the some of the toughest earth. It’s like Pandora’s Box for us. When the imaging machines back at the University showed us a glowing mass of several kilometers, we had assumed it was an error. We reran all of the procedures three times in the course of a week, with the same result. Nothing like this had been observed before.
Inside the elevator, my imagination cannot even fathom what is inside. The usual claustrophobia of the elevator fails to grip me in my excitement. It feels as if the earth is embracing me, welcoming me, instead of stifling me. As the heat seeps out of the elevator, the chill invigorates me.
The time in the elevator staggers by slowly. After an hour passes by, the air begins to warm as the elevator enters the mantle. Not much longer.
Exiting the elevator, my perception of time begins to blur. It feels like I’m seeing the entrance to the cavern before I exit the elevator, and it seems as if I’m forgetting something. The intern is saying something, but I ignore him, pushing forward through the cavern.
When my eyes adjust, I feel like primitive man contemplating the darkness of the heavens. Terrified, overwhelmed, and in awe, I step into the sky that greets me. As if reacting to my actions, clouds well up from beneath the invisible surface supporting my weight. Shifting, shimmering, shining, they swirl around my legs, softly spiraling around my figure before ascending into the infinite above.
After taking another step, the sky around me diminishes in intensity, and the nature of the cavern begins to show itself. More vast than my perception can allow, crystals the size of man and more intrinsically polished than the capabilities of the finest craftsmen allow line the edges and floor of the cavern. The mirrored surfaces reflect and amplify even the smallest pinpoint of light until the entire cavern is aglow.
Beneath my feet, I see that I am atop one of these very crystals. I am ensnared by my own reflection, as though I am the embodiment of Narcissus himself. However, I do not feel love for what is beneath me. My image twists and contorts the longer I look at it, until it is no longer recognizable as human.
I recoil, and force myself to look away. Suddenly, the wide open space terrifies me. I want to escape. I can feel the earth’s embrace tightening me, drawing me into it’s bosom and refusing to let me go.
The vision of an endless sky returns, and I am swept away by the clouds. They funnel me to the center of the universe. Spiraling down into the bottomless abyss, I hear the deafening roar of silence. Through the hole in the bed of clouds, I can see the world being created by the tendrils of 100 million rainbows. The multicolored light places every molecule of water, every blade of grass with aggressive precision.
Blinking, I realize that I have ventured farther into the cavern, and am staring into yet another one of the metallic crystals. In the reflection, I see empty space. It is the cavern as it was before me, untouched, darker than any dark created by man. Fleeing from the depth, I feel as if the eyes of the world are upon me, despite the emptiness of the cavern.
A multicolored finger points to the first human on the earth situated below me, enticing me to watch. For hundreds of years, I watch his every action. Every meal, every escape from death, every fornication, I watch how he closes his eyes at night, to escape the visions of the vastness above him. I witness how he creates civilization to distract him, and fire to make the pitch black of the night a little less grim.
I awake from my fantasy, staring into another crystal. This time, the sight that greets me is that of the time-hardened face of the human those millions of years ago, that braved the dark.
———————————————————————————————————————-
Author’s Note: This will forever be incomplete. I don’t know what I was on when I started writing this O___O
It has been reported that some victims of rape, during the act, would retreat into a fantasy world from which they could not wake up. In this catatonic state, the victim lived in a world just like their normal one, except they weren’t being raped. The only way they realized they needed to wake up was a note they found in their fantasy world. It would tell them about their condition, and tell them to wake up. Even then, it would often take months until they were ready to discard their fantasy world and please wake up.
