This is installment #16 of a sci-fi serial. Installment #1 was posted 1/23/21; appropriately a numerically-ordered palindrome. Follow the links forward from the last sentence and backward from the first sentence of each post.
Shadows and mirrors and mist and ever-changing gravity; the feel of spider legs – hundreds, then just one; the taste of hot copper; the smell of sulfur and sewage and socks; floating precariously, falling, then pinned down – trapped; claustrophobia and unable to blink, or breathe; drowning, from the inside; and scorched by super-heated desert winds and blasted by icy-frozen arctic winds and peppered with their respective attendant gritty shards; screams and shrieks, not mine; then nothing; no sound, no sight, no sensation at all except a lone drawn-out whisper, barely audible; “wait…”
For what? For who? I wait, and I wait, and I wait… the spider legs; again; I can't move; a loud piercing shriek, here; right here; I can feel their breath, on my cheek, then my neck, my bare shoulder… and though I can't see I can see, maggots roiling as they are expelled on the swirling tide of effluvial exhalations. Is it a beast? A monster? A demon? Another prisoner? Is it me? Am I trapped above and beneath and beside and behind and beyond my self? Folded and unfolded; stretched and bent and crumpled and warped; unrecognizable, even to me? And again, the whisper…
“Wait…”
I think, for when. I think I am meant to wait for me to once again flow with when. Somehow we got crossways. And here I am; in all my confusion and uncertainty and nightmares and fears; alone, yet surrounded; everything and nothing; never and always.
“Wait…”
Here we go; again; buffeted about, hard against what feels like the knots and bark of a tree; no a stump; a huge stump; fingers, palms impaled by ragged needles of wood and tiny splinters as I grab at the top, as I work to pull myself up, as I hold on; try to hold on; but no, I am ripped away; ankles jerked and twisted; pain: physical pain, somewhat comforting; closer to reality; I am tossed aside; giant, booming footsteps, receding; trees falling, broken, splintered, roots and all lifted from beneath, and hurled across the unseen expanse; then stillness; I cannot see, but for the moment I have control of my movement. As I carefully thread my way through the bleakness and blackness of the strewn and fallen forest, I hear someone following. Not the giant, booming footsteps. No, this is stealth; following; stalking; surreptitious, but unafraid; wanting me to know I'm being followed; mimicking; echoing; playing; teasing.
Out of the forest. Again I am floating; eyes still on me; teetering; fingers of gravity tickling, poking, pinching, tugging. Strobing light, then flashes; mirrors reflecting unbearable brightness that then softens leaving momentary images; mostly shapes; the light stays dimmed; the shapes resolve, maintain definition; circles, ovals, squares, rectangles, triangles; some trapezoids, hexagons, octagons, pentagons, and the occasional slight-angled rhombus; all moving, circling, dancing dizzyingly fast and agonizingly slow. An oval enlarges and approaches stretching its ends and it’s sides to hover over my length and breadth; a rectangle does the same beneath me; they come together; a cocoon; a womb; at first warm, comfortable; then texture, like an egg carton; then it hardens, roughens, like a rocky shore; coming together; squeezing; crunching; I feel smaller bones give; fingers; in my hands; my feet; then an arm; my lower leg, splintered.
I am released. Pain. So much pain. As badly as I want to, I am unable to pass out. Still floating, in the mirrors; all the mirrors; odd angles; oblique, warped, impenetrable, yet sharp and clear. More images, this time in the mirrors; this time people; people I don't know who are familiar; people in pain, in fear, in despair; grimacing, flailing, catatonic, sobbing, screaming, withdrawing, trembling, reaching; people alone.
Again, the whisper…
“Wait…”
Pain. So much pain. I look at my arm, just above the break. A single pore, enlarged like it had just been emptied of pus, begins to weep, blood; thick, viscous crimson; it widens, edges almost imperceptibly folding back, pushed back by the slick, shiny head of a hairless grey grub; it plops out making its way down my arm; then another; and another; horrified, I can't not watch; then a long, slender, black antenna comes feeling its way out; no, not an antenna; a leg; a spider leg; they come pouring out; ten; twenty; I finally pass out.
When I come to, the spiders are gone; the pore is closed; the pain, still unbearable but obviously not as I continue to bear it. Disoriented; I see my reflection; my reflections; or is that me? Am I the reflection? The mirrors are gone; the reflections remain; but it's not me; it's the others; their screams, their shrieks; their heaving chests and stricken looks; coming from them; it can't be me; I can't be me; I can't be here.
I find a way in; or out; I find a way away; a pore I can slither through; my hands and one arm reaching up and out, or in; one arm hanging limply by my side; my shoulders, pushing through; being pushed through; insistent; like birthing myself. Will I find when? Will I reconnect? Pain. So much pain; but finally I am through; breathing hard; hurting; afraid. I look around and there, above me; another pore. I lay back, resigned to, (Oh My God!), resigned to wait… Is this what the whisper means? If I go back? …I can't go back. If I move ahead? Through the new pore? Will I just find another? And on and on? But what if the next endeavor leads to when? More work; more pain; more fear and despair, yes; but I am compelled…
…I have come to believe that when, as I thought it was, is a myth. Five times, I have crawled through; onward and upward. Five times I have emerged into very similar barren, desolate, red splotchy tomb-like enclosures, with walls, floor and ceiling like hard rubber; just a little give and only a single beacon centered above me; a small, crusty, uninviting hole, inviting me to crawl through; encouraging me; even pushing me.
“Wait…”
I wait. And for the longest time, nothing. Still, I wait. …nothing. Still, I wait. …still, nothing. Wait! Something! I can move my hands and feet with less pain! I wait. My broken arm; coming around. I wait. If healing is what this is, my leg is healing badly; but even there, progress. In the thrall of this wait, all other bodily functions, (eating, excreting, even sleeping), have ceased to matter. It seems only pain has been able to carry its load. But this is something; a connection; a bit of flow; a small anchor tying me to when; a before, an after; not alone and surrounded, and everything and nothing, and never and always, all at once. Order? Control? Hope? I find the strength to pull myself through the opening above. I emerge…