Swollen, bloated, satiated, inflated, distended, appended and then relenquished of it all. Unfettering tool; seppuku without the autonomy. Mmm, yes that is what awaited me.
Dilated sum (£), 4am in the evening (not slept, only see morning out the sheets of my bed), we were being led through crevice antithesis’, up the winding trail where both sides of steep death could slot nicely into the peripheral at once. Single file, naturally, conquering each cobblestone or piece of quartz or non-cobbled, really existing through its own merit stone.
– I have to say I am excited
The courier was a sailor who docked all the way down below the mountain spires in precarious shore (many jagged rocks, little inverse crevices in of themselves; sliced through the horizon to land here) and unlade. Then, proceedingly, had transported the thing for which I had paid without aid ascending this razor pathway, where they lay in wait of the dense packet of *everything & anything* I had stuffed into my slim inner jacket pocket. It bulged like a brick and swung like one attached to a lenghty piece of wire (string would surely not suspend such a weight) against my ribs. I chimed like a xylophone
– Really excited
Howling wind and, oh, despite the innate & inevitability of festering nature of the purchase, no sign of the traversings of the merchant. The cliff precipice we saddled was clear as though just whet. No bother, a skilled and reliable courier. Nothing lost. Maintained excitement from the conclusion, more to savour. My Duenna, who was leading me through the new territory (and, I suspected, chanced quite strongly at a few pebbles off the clanging thing at my breast) gave me lectured, retrospective remarks.
– Are you sure,
and
– This is quite the task I hope you realise the gravity of what you have done
or even
– Life is a precious thing, you know
Most of my response was lost to the breeze, though some words snuck through and ultimately I expressed continued satisfaction and assuredness. She never turned round to me once.
Well up we continued rising like prophesised, dead beings. Nimbly navigating the knife edge with the balls of our feet, careful enough not to ribbon over it, in pursuit of my agent. It occurred to me only that one could only be so cautious with bartering these goods due to legal implication so as to only agree to meet shrouded by cloud. And only once.
I was not disuaded by the meticulous staging of the trade, though had thought, admittedly, that it did not necessarily seem worth the hassle for them (for me, no question – any requirements were worthwile – perhaps their sentiment was the same?)
– Do you know how far?
Same earless non-response. How beautiful her shawl was, swaying and lapping at her back. I was amused to think of Joyce’s assertions of the inelectuble modality of the sense, and gently smiled to myself. How might a writer capture this wicked scenary? I suspect in reference at least to the surface of Venus. Pleasing simile, empirical, blessed thee mechanised missionaries {Hubble, Kepler, Fermi, Veneras}. Had the sailor/courier considered orbital surviellance?
I was anchored to my thoughts, as one might expect, in de facto solace, eyes mostly pivoting about the circumference of her footsteps. On occasional glance up, endulged in a sweet ponderance of the glimmering, sable night, bareness of the stars, and their unknown-to-me constellations, before conceding again to the pull of my head.
It was like this, until she unearthed me, for we had arisen to
– Here
Finger like a tree limb, uncompromisably pointed across a low ebb of flatter, more expansive concourse ahead. It was the crown of the summit, ringed in metamorhipic palisades. The air fell poisonous in colour, though breathed placid and thin. Lashings of it had begun to deliver pellets of rain, though amenable, the type that might make you scrunch your cheeks and not much else.
And so it must have appeared like I smiled, because transposed from me at the opposite edge of this circle waved the antecedant climber. I shortened the length of our cord piecing together their silouhette, turning briefly to fall on the realisation that, against our agreement and against the materialistic postulation made prior, the Duenna had left. Mentally shrugged, the journey albeit was easily done, and realigned with the figure, continuing to justify her departure despite my apparent indifference with conceit like ‘well a tango is best reserved for two’ and ‘good riddance’.
The sailor was indescriminate in gender and wore a wrought grin, unveiling just a few teeth, which held somewhere between being actually smug and feigned confidence. I could not distinguish, nor bothered much, because at his feet was the culprit of my own livening lips. The ascension there fell entirely from my consciousness.
– Oh you devious thing
The words slithered, as I fixated on a slumped dustbin lining the exterior of their trouser leg. We exchanged glances, possibly for the first time, and I drove my hand into jacket inside, pawing at the supple contents, producing an envelope, held out in reverence. Drizzle bounded the gesture.
The courier untied the sack and, momentarily, in the powerful thrust of a starving inhale, my perception dilated. As though the bounds of the senses are confined to neural coding, I went quantum. Cascading stimuli met my new gaze from the sky. I gave superpositioned responses. My vision resembled a fish lens which had the unique ability to transition through tenses, gayly surveying the peaks and troughs, picturing my favourite birds of prey, thinking again of the satellites, undulating with the pulses of elevation and depression as my heart picked up the rhythm of their contours. And just as manufactured intelligence might drift too far from the boundaries of orbit, phasing suddenly out of gravity
at once I capitulated back, and found myself staring directly at a rotting, seeping corpse. They motioned the bin liner at me implying ‘get a good look’. The scent was otherwordly, hot; red suffused into my cheeks. They extended an arm, shyly peering at my stunned expression, letting the open rim slightly deform, and made bare my hand, claiming the universal catalyst. I didn’t flinch. It was the right cadaver alright, but now stood before it … uncertainty pervades.
A voice deep in the chasm of my subconscious motions forth, it reminds me that some things are unable to be reversed. I register my surroundings once more and quickly realise I am truly alone. Wind whistles through forks in the crown, I’m its wearer, standing at the hull of nirvana, my body wrapped in disposable plastic, oedematous.