I’m choking down those ashes again. Maybe I wouldn’t be so eager to shovel mounds into my serrated gob if only I could remember the taste of something else. I know I am missing something and it’s so close I can feel the weight of it crushing down upon me. I cram another handful and suck it down.
If you could crawl inside the windows, past the blue glass and peer down further into the ebon depths hidden, fold of a world. Press yourself against those frightening crags and move further down. Coming out of the darkness the light would blind and illuminate with such coldness that frigid still and smothered hangs the air. Wander down any path and the evidence of decay is heavy and thick. Remnants of a long forgotten glory smite the shite stained surface. This place has been dying for so long it doesn’t remember what life was. Hope is the white horse dying in the open court, eight shades of diseased emerald. The blood, however, is bright. Death imminent vivid in a washed out existence.
You could storm the creature without so much as a flinch. The eyes are dull and sticky, flecked with black dirt. Mayhaps death has already come and gone, but the rattling breath and consistent gush of blood communicate what is left of life in this being. Maybe it doesn’t know how to become dead, thus imprisoned in an endless state of dying. That could be one of your childish notions, easily waved away by the harsh stamp of adulthood, if only the horror of it was not so palpable. And as it consumes you, the realization that the entire world has been in this state long enough to see old gods overthrown while new ones were erected hits you like the moon crashing into earth. The vomit is hot and sticky on the back of your hands before you comprehend what has happened.
Your breath ragged the arctic air harsh in the back of your throat and you keep sucking it down – waiting for your heart to cease its frantic pounding, your head to cease its dizzy spinning, your eyes to blink back into focus. As this happens you feel it, the dread sensation of foreign eyes intense upon you, crawling – prickly sticky, like roaches – your stomach entangled and stone, your eyes follow the invisible path back to the voyeur. The white horse is watching you with those lifeless fish eyes and the echo startles you into actuality before your body has time to tell your mind that you’ve finished screaming. The world is blurring past you before you comprehend you are running, you gulp harder at the air willing your lungs to fill to bursting so you can run. Run run RUN RUN RUN RUN. The word is every breath, thought, sensation of movement, gush of blood from your heart; your body is screaming it so loud you’ve lost the feeling of movement and all you see is a world smearing past you faster and faster.
The pain is neon red, lancing through your arms and head. Panting rigid and callous, you are coughing before you notice you’re crying so hard you can’t breathe. You gulp down the air between sobs; sweet, cool and laden with soft hints of life collapsing to the ground you revel in the texture of the grass – the supple warmth and tangy scent as your weight crushes it. You stumble home; grateful for the mild chill the breeze conjures, eliciting goose bumps upon your flesh. Climbing the steps you’ve almost forgotten what you just witnessed, as you shut the door that eerie dread fills you; at the time it was so insignificant you had overlooked it, but now it is staring you down. That place held no sound; even the rattle of Hope was silent, only noticed in the series of bubbles in the bloody froth.
Your stomach churns but you try to disregard as you twist the knob and water rages downward sending a cloud of steam into your face, the adjustment and stripping are done in a haze. One foot follows the other into the glorious cascade that’s easing a chill out of your soul you didn’t conceive being there, and tragedy strikes as you’ve closed the glass door and managed to catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. It wouldn’t be so bad, if the blood staining your life toned flesh wasn’t a horribly perfect color match for the blood of the dying equine fit to match the dying world you abandoned for dead. The vomit sprays the doors and walls, retching between sobs you fight to forget, to leave the dead world behind, like some twisted childhood nightmare re-envisioned for one last haunt. Still hunched over dry heaving long after the saccharine hot water swept away the remnants of vomit and blood, you cling to the warmth of the liquid careening down your spine.
The light of midday brightens the room and you breathe deep, the air thick and heavy with early afternoon; and as your foot graces the floor you feel the wooden fiber of it, rich and earthen beneath you as your body moves from the bed to the window. As beautiful as this new world seems, the wind even seems to carry a soft lilting note – sorrow pressing hard on your mind and a memory you wish to forget. Shuffling back to bed you surrender once more to the glorious amnesia Hypnos grants; mayhap days pass and in vein the sense, as the clock betrays mere minutes. Peering up at the ceiling you fight between forgetting and scheming, torn betwixt the sense of guarding one you care for or of self preservation.
Waking to a new day, the weight upon your heart has somehow lessened, and the guilt racks you into a harsh sob; preparing for the task at hand while blinded by responsibility is swiftly done. Calming breath to steady yourself at the window overlooking that bright world you can see with such voracity, a vein attempt to preserve the sense of innocence. A sensation familiar crawls upon your skin and you look down to the sidewalk beyond and into the eyes of dull blue glass and the tears well softly in the corner, betraying you and your decision. You cannot save her, you wouldn’t know how - but if you remain friends the fact of this would drive you mad; abandon is written on your face as plainly as E PLURIBUS UNUM on the currency, full of sorrow your frown twists into that smile all the gods of pain and loss bear. As you bring up your gaze to meet her face, her piercing stare, your eyes convey “I cannot save you and I cannot stay” and this alone is awful, but the pain is sharpened by her soft smile and the ease of her body language as hers convey “I know. And I forgive you.”
Turning your back you slide to the floor and let the world fade away into the blurring tears and the wracking sobs.
I might notice I was crying if I could feel it and if I was accustomed to seeing where I went. I lived in your world once. I know this, but I cannot remember. Sometimes I think about it, but all reminiscence brings is pain. I feel the chill coming and sight relief.
Might not be death, but a girl can dream…
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