Fiction Fragment 2.2
Here's latest short installment in this ongoing work of indeterminate length. The previous fragment is here, and you can find links to the first chapter there as well. Please forgive my melodrama.
The shining beacon was so bright that I had to close my eyes, stinging, wincing and wet. In closing them though, I found myself opening them on a quite different scene. Here it was dark and damp, and something cool, hard and flat pressed against my back. A bright light still shined in my face. Even though I could see very little around me, it all seemed far more substantial and detailed than the shore with the lighthouse. And here there was pain: a blunt, pulsing pain that filled my skull and overflowed into my very fingertips.
I closed my eyes again. A far-away distress, nothing to do with my head or the pain, crept closer in my heart until it loomed blackly over everything. I had forgotten something -- something terribly important had been forgotten by me. It felt like realizing that I'd left my wallet at home, if my wallet had contained the world and all I loved. It felt huge, hopeless and vague, like a starless night sky. Was it my throbbing brain which kept me from thinking of what it really was, or something else? I turned away from the shadow; I opened my eyes.
My surroundings were clearer to me now. I was on my back on a wet concrete floor. The bright light was above me, a hole in the ceiling where the sun shined through. It was a dozen yards up, maybe two. It was hard to tell. I tilted my head to the left, ignoring how the pain sharpened as I did so. To my left was just a blank wall of the same material on which I was lying. On the ground beside me, limply wet leaves were scattered around something flat and slightly darker than the floor. It was maybe two inches thick, with parallel lines running along its length. With labor, between the pulses of the blood in my brain the memories returned. I remembered the brick pillar, the hunger, the hare, the pit. I remembered these things and it slowly dawned on me that I had fallen through a shoddy grate from a considerable height and injured my head. But even with this light cast on recent events, the darkness of a thing forgot still towered over my soul.
The shining beacon was so bright that I had to close my eyes, stinging, wincing and wet. In closing them though, I found myself opening them on a quite different scene. Here it was dark and damp, and something cool, hard and flat pressed against my back. A bright light still shined in my face. Even though I could see very little around me, it all seemed far more substantial and detailed than the shore with the lighthouse. And here there was pain: a blunt, pulsing pain that filled my skull and overflowed into my very fingertips.
I closed my eyes again. A far-away distress, nothing to do with my head or the pain, crept closer in my heart until it loomed blackly over everything. I had forgotten something -- something terribly important had been forgotten by me. It felt like realizing that I'd left my wallet at home, if my wallet had contained the world and all I loved. It felt huge, hopeless and vague, like a starless night sky. Was it my throbbing brain which kept me from thinking of what it really was, or something else? I turned away from the shadow; I opened my eyes.
My surroundings were clearer to me now. I was on my back on a wet concrete floor. The bright light was above me, a hole in the ceiling where the sun shined through. It was a dozen yards up, maybe two. It was hard to tell. I tilted my head to the left, ignoring how the pain sharpened as I did so. To my left was just a blank wall of the same material on which I was lying. On the ground beside me, limply wet leaves were scattered around something flat and slightly darker than the floor. It was maybe two inches thick, with parallel lines running along its length. With labor, between the pulses of the blood in my brain the memories returned. I remembered the brick pillar, the hunger, the hare, the pit. I remembered these things and it slowly dawned on me that I had fallen through a shoddy grate from a considerable height and injured my head. But even with this light cast on recent events, the darkness of a thing forgot still towered over my soul.
posted by Matthew at 4:04 PM
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