I am not sure about time, things are slow and distant, faint traces of grey swirl through the air above me but there is no change in the light. It's thick and slow. I want to get up and again I am confronted with the fact that I am already up. I never sat down. I am and have been hovering by this statue leg the entire time. I hear a feint rustling in the water couple with a gurgling swish and another gondola that looks exactly the same as the first glides by as if they're on some kind of track or loop. Ducks in the shooting gallery at the county fair.
"I would not get too close to what sloshes beside you. Unless you wish to feel that light at your centre drain completely, refilled with the tears of all your loved ones. An unending misery, lasting forever. That is the River of Lamentation; Cocytus. There are mad souls in there that would see you suffer for their grief."
As if on cue to a summoning; grimy, clotted human heads began to emerge from the ichorous river revealing red banded eyes before sinking back down into the depths with a subtle shudder. Behind me in a slowly swirling eddy of grit is El. His voice settles upon me like a tectonic shift before his body hits the ground...
cracked / a fissure in a starless void; the mouth of eternity opened up and swallowed me whole, into flash-bang white
A blank space.
"Hello ?"
There is a shifting of focus, a circle of light expanding and contracting as if the cosmos is breathing deep, heavy, sighs. The darkness around the light squeezes in and then shoots off, stretching into infinity.
"Ahh... fuck,
where did you come from?"
"Wait without thinking, for you are not ready for thought."
I'm abruptly confronted by a withered old man standing right beside me. He's sitting on an old wooden kitchen chair. His ashen grey complexion belies the depths of his eyes. We don't face each other. Though I'm not really here. The place swings around like I am staring through another's eyes as their head turns. A camera, taking a panoramic shot. Now we are facing each other. He's bereft of energy, barely leaning his chin on his fist, elbow propped up on one knee. The top of his head lays at his foot like a spilled bowl, the white sky/ocean; what is up, what is down? This void we are in seems to meet the border that binds the conical darkness expanding out of his head. It's vacant and dark but just inside I see it all; the universe surrounding a solar system slowly spinning its existence.
"uhh, okay… who are you, and what is this place?"
"The darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing."
As the punctuation settled after the last syllable, vertigo hits and I wobble. Nausea and blurred vision wrap around me and squeeze as I'm sucked back into my selflessness. The yellow sky and the dust. El is floating there.
"I just had the strangest dream."
"You did not dream it. You left, disappeared. Popped like a bubble. Alas, now you are back."
"I met someone or thing. It spoke, in a sort of riddle, I think. Definitely went over my head. I have no idea. It was all white. Except for an old man. His skin was stretched thin over his bones and it was flaky like old parchment gone all grey. He was gross looking, actually. The top of his head was missing, and there was outer space inside flowing out into the white."
"Ahh the Grey man, he resides outside of time. A fixture in the nexus; the eternal blank canvas. Some call it the painter. She has been painting realities for millennia."
"whaddya mean?"
There is no response. It is happening again. I'm losing whatever bearings I was just gaining. Jolted. I'm out of sequnce; gulg,gulg gulp, lungs are burning under a liquid weight, my hands clench and squeeze as they burn; I'm stuck. Everything is light behind cheesecloth. All of a sudden I'm lunging forward, I hear the sloshing of the tub's contents as it belches me straight up and out, water splashing everywhere. I'm surrounded by mouldy green and black tile from bottom to top. In the middle of the room, from the ceiling, a swinging ivy chord tied in a noose hangs from a bowl around a single bulb that blazes far too brightly, tossing shadow after light across the tiny room. I'm sitting in rose water, and its cold, the gallow's shadows still accosting my sight. As I go to get up I slip, but manage to catch the rim of the tub to get my balance; there are old scars nearly faded now drawn along the radial vein of each arm. I don't remember ever having the desire to hurt myself. I don't remember ever having any scars on my arms at all for that matter. I manage to get my legs moving steadily enough to step over the lip of the tub and onto the putrid coloured floor. My wet feet slide a little as I scramble for balance.
There is a mirror above a basin in the far corner, streaked with grime and grease - looks like no ones been here in a while - I take tentative steps toward it feeling a little uncertain of my balance. My legs are stiff, but not in a I've been sitting in an uncomfortable position for too long and they're numb from sleep and lack of circulation. They creak like old rusted hinges. I stand their wiggling them and trying to shake out the stiffness for a couple minutes until finally I get going like an action figure with no bendable joints. Trying to grab the dirty white towel from the bar on the wall is horrifically difficult. I can't move, nothing bends or stretches. It's painful trying to do anything. I get the towel down with a struggle and try to wipe some of the grime off the glass of the mirror. It streaks but enough of a space is clear that I can get a look at myself. Those eyes. Deep set, black ringed baggage heaped high, aqua marine with flecks of gold glinting like sparks firing off in the night.
'My eyes are, or, were brown.'
I regret coming here. I should have listened to her when she said she'd take them if I missed one more game night, school show, birthday, one more anniversary… The hairs on my arms stand, my balls tighten and rise contracting into my body. The smell of her arousal, I can feel her wetness through the fabric of her panties, the taste of sweat… The images of two separate women sit side by side in my mind, and I know one of them is mine, and the other desperately wants to be. One, a barren and arid desert, the other an oasis; half mirage and half reality. A small island in the wasteland of the corrupted way I feel about this life. 'I don't recognize either of them and yet they are the most familiar to me. The gap between who I am and who I am now is an endless gulf.
These thoughts are like dark lines of taut rope tipped with giant hooks pierced through my intestines. They threaten to tug, to pull tighter, sink deeper and to rip through all that makes me, me. Cold ocean waves of remorse for these and similar mistakes pile up and up and up until I feel like I'm drowning in a black-ice lake in the middle of a lost forest of dead limbs, and fallen leaves; forgotten. As I straighten up from the basin I notice my arms again; the knotted white tissue that lost their lustre some time ago eats at me. Did I, or didn't I? I've never known this kind of regret before. They don't move freely. I have to will them to push away from the sink. To drop to my sides.
Who am I? Where am I?
The light isn't offering much up to the eyes. One thing is for sure, it smells worse than a slaughter house in here, like a mixture of meat rotting in a compost bin full of blood and shit. There is also something acidic aura to the place, I can taste pennies under my teeth.
I fall back against the wall and slide down it, unable to bear my own weight, there is a huge pressure in my chest and skull. My stomach flips as my thoughts turn back to the kids and the two women frosting the twists and turns of my insides. Whoever I am, could I really be so bad? Even when I feel this terrible? This is the kind of guilt that kills.
I look around the room scanning for a door or at least a window. Anything other than the ceiling light and finding nothing, not even taped up, newspapered, or shuttered. This is a sealed tomb. 'Just how the hell did I get in here?' Rocking back on my heels I let them slide out from under me and slip down the wall. It forces my hips to bend painfully when I reach the bottom, but I am sitting. The easiest thing for me to do right now.
After a time, the darkness softens a little, a subtle change settles over the room. A low rumbling in my gut that I mistake for hunger rolls through my ribcage, clicks in my jaw, and fills my skull. The dark thoughts residing there begin to swirl around creating a new sense of paranoia. I ask myself for the millionth time, 'how in the hell did I get in here and how the fuck do I get out?' These worries begin to coalesce, to form darkly bruised clouds that threaten to burst adding more ice cold water to the sick feelings already sloshing around inside me.
The rumbling starts up again, but this time I mistake it for a cell phone vibrating in the pocket of my jeans until I feel it in the floor and wall behind me as well. The whole place is swaying and quaking. The room grows a little darker as it begins to shrink, the ceiling shifts slightly, then slides down an inch or two as the walls begin to creep toward one another. It's getting hotter. I am breathing faster and shallower, gasping like a fish out of water. It makes me dizzy; 'I might faint.' The tiles in a far section of wall start to shake in their mortar which cracks in horrible eerie screeching sounds; and then they are moving, sliding around like some invisible hand is playing with a mystic square. The foundations are releasing dust and grit as everything reverberates. The noise is a crescendo of deafening clatter. As much as I can, I pull myself in tight. I'm trembling with fear. Finally, a large rectangle of black emitting tiny faint and flickering white lights interrupting the continuity of mouldy green tiles breaks open. No idea what is happening. I almost don't want to know. Terrified of what lurks disgusting place like this, petrified at might come through the space in the wall and all I can do is draw my legs into me and squeeze them, repeating 'I don't want to die.' Suddenly, a noise breaks through from the other side of the darkness followed by voices...