A gatherment of shorter tales, clustered together for their own protection.
She waits alone at the end of the platform, her arms resting on the fence that marks its edge. No breeze stirs her hair. There are no stars, no clouds, no sky above her. Only blackness. The night air is not cold, and yet she shivers.
Her gaze is fixed back the way she came, a wasteland of jagged grey stones and rusted iron. All paths delineated by bars. There is light to one side, harsh and orange and masked by trees. It does not illuminate.
A wind rises now, blowing in from the wasteland. The shadows of trees dance in front of her like the ebb and flow of sunlight over the sea floor. She trembles, her expression momentarily ecstatic.
Two lights approach from the distance and she finds she cannot look away. A train, dulled steel making its next stop. She knows how easy it would be to step off the edge. In a moment, in one trivial action she could place herself in its path. She has no desire to do so and yet, because it is in her power, she is tempted.
Her hands grip the fence tightly, in case, and she sobs. Just once.
Doors open, time to go.
What if forever were a day, I thought. It was somehow what I always thought heaven, or the afterlife, were like...
A blue sky, white clouds; that was the first thing I saw. The cool breeze ran through neatly trimmed grass like children on a spring day -- happy, with all abandon. I lay in that grass field until the realization came that this was not some image I'd imagined. Sitting up, I could hear the nearby stream and the whispering echo of it off of the underside of the wooden bridge nearby. There were flowers, tall and aging trees still cloaked in new leaves.
There was also a small cabin. Square and pale brown, the color of cut logs only weathered slightly, a warm orange glow within. The small entryway porch reminded me of something from half forgotten memory. It led to a tall ceiling, a round table of sofas and chairs, and small kitchen in the back, and a second floor secluded by a thin network of wood guardrails.
My mind seemed oddly empty of thought and memory; turned in-side-out filled only with the scene before me. Then I heard someone.
Many friends, each individually, came to visit. We ate, talked, laughed, and cried, until there we no more words. A simple glance away, a moment of distraction in that state, and someone else was in their place. And I would eat, talk, laugh and cry once more. Shadows among the glasses and plates grew imperceptibly longer with each friendly face I saw.
Until then, it was around 3:00.
I turned, and found myself alone. None of this gave me concern, all seems so natural and serene here. I gathered the remnants of conversation, cleansed them, and put them in place in the back kitchen. Much else happened: I walked the grass perimeter, placed my feet in the stream and let cool tendrils of water slip between my toes, weeded and planted in my flower garden, and even replaced that cracked window pane I'd been meaning to get to.
On the table I found a pen, and a few sheets of parchment. And there, I wrote my last journal entry placing the last period of the last sentence on the very last line of the very last page. It was evening out and I could feel the stars and night calling.
I could see. The dim crescent moon not overtaking the blues and purples of the galactic disk or the endless pinpoints of light. One was brighter than the rest -- my star. Then I knew my choice, the one the universe had given: The moonlight reflected off of the surface of the stream; I ran my fingers across, dissolving and indiscernible from the light. I spread myself on that surface gazing at the only star seen, thanking it with a modest smile.
I heard footfalls on the bridge...
To think of that needle in my arm, draining - my integrity violated. Watching it with dispassion as if this were happening to another. And yet I imagine I can feel it entering me. A flow, a presence, slow, slow pulse of change.
Body will change, ok. Mind too? Doesn't matter, doesn't matter. Each tick from then to now, now to later, I am still I, every step of the way still say I'm me - if I can say. Still have a mouth? Think loudly. Nothing seems to happen at first. Don't panic, be patient. Days first, and longer before anyone will notice. You have all the time you could want.
It does happen eventually. Becoming. They don't understand what I'm doing, this realisation of being, and that's okay. I do look different now. There is no denying it. Mind is changing too, I don't mind. I'm still me. That is who I was yesterday and where is the gap between then and now?
Thoughts slow, find some space to think. Quiet place, where I take root. The world goes by, leaves me be. Caterpillar through pupa into butterfly, they sparkle so prettily. I sparkle too, like a crystal tree.
Thoughts slow, yes - I remember. Roots down, in the ground. Feeling their way through the world, reaching out. Feeling my way. What I was is left behind. Not shed, no, it is little, like one flake of the skin I left behind. I'm not in there any more. Spreading out, through my roots. I am in the world, I feel myself spread to fill it.
Thoughts slow. Yes. Rock is slow, ice is slow. I must be slow too. Slowing down because I must to become. But so beautiful. They don't know - how could they know? - they don't know, but I feel it all. All about is void, but I am vast. Like the needle in my skin, seeping in, that's what I have done. I am become my world and I am all about and I can feel it all.
Fuck, asteroid.
The weather phased in and out of rain all day.
Lucy pulled the hood of her anorak tighter, glancing briefly up at the mist-shrouded sky. The rain was thickening again, the sky fading. She ducked under a tree, not quite low enough, and for a moment droplets rattled in her ears.
Another quick look showed her the sky was still darkening. Lucy ducked under the fence, really no more than a metal bar meant to keep people like her out of the park, and tried to make a short cut across the corner to Liege St. She was halfway across when the rain came in again, surrounding her. Her foot slipped on grass already slick from earlier and tipped her onto her rear. Water smeared her glasses and dripped into her mouth.
She pushed herself back to her feet, swallowing and wiping grass and soil from her pants. Lucy was careful not to slip again before reaching the opposite corner of the field. The rain continued to thicken, until it would have been almost impossible to see even without water smearing her glasses, and the only sound was the rattle of water on asphalt, leaves and concrete rising in sweeps with every gust of wind. She unchained her bike by feel. There was no chance of riding it in this.
So she walked, bicycle by her side, rain pitter-pattering all around her and the chill wind blowing through her clothes to lay its touch against her skin. She walked quickly and encountered no one else in town.
The rain faded slightly as Lucy passed through the outskirts of town, enough to make her destination faintly visible. She smiled to see the familiar vine-draped structure atop its hill.
By the time Lucy reached the path to her door the rain had faded as much as it ever did. It still fell, continuously, transparently, a dozen faint drops passing through Lucy's hand when she held it out a moment. It was possible to see, now, out past the aging tower Lucy called home and far, far over the edge of the world until the rain turned everything to grey haze. Only the merest hint of movement at the edge of her vision suggested something might swim this endlessly falling sea.
If she had waited and sheltered beneath a shop awning she could have ridden home now.
I had come to the cafe looking for someone, but what I had found was just a toy.
I realize I had loved this person once, in that leap-of-understanding way so common in dreams.
So this is how it ends, huh? I thought, leaving the cafe. Not a name or a memory of your own. Not even a gender. Just a bit of human brain in a grubby plastic shell and a painted smile.
I had failed to see the small portrait on one of the paneled
columns. Two figures, myself stood in the upper right looking dour yet
somhow happy. The other was the person I had loved when they were still
human. She was smiling broadly and happily.
Who put up that photo? Did the toy stare at it after-hours thinking Those two look so happy, not realizing it used to be one of them?