There he stood dressed in the trappings of natalitude, the gleam of his chest, shoulders, legs, and torso unburdened. The eddied trails of dark hair sharply defined as he remained stood, leaning forward and backward occasionally onto and off of the tips of his toes. Ligaments in his feet rose softly beneath the skin like piano wires and subtle indentations creased his thighs as he adjusted his hips over his stance. I took in his body as though carving it. The striations running parallel down his abdomen, the way the muscles there bunched or swayed as his shoulders tilted only the slightest amount. The naked valley of pale skin along his waist, the plunging grooves of his Adonis' belt, the taper of him, the clutched softness of his pudendum, the way that it lay. The flesh there dark and flush, as though dipped in wine.
His lips remained parted with only enough space for his breath to pass, his eyes intense. Pools of green—oak leaf, mint and grass. His pupils hovered near me and I found myself drawn into them until I noticed only the motion of their saccade. What was it like to share yourself as a vessel with others. Allowing oneself to be deconstructed. Reduced and remade as form, shape, color and sound. Parsed into long strokes on newsprint or thumbed and smoothed into clay.
What were god’s tools of life. His medium of creation. It is at times, when I am both witness and student to the coiled and bare mortal frames of man. Fidgeting and brave against their shame. I wonder if we are not simply a dense collection of sunlight. A sharply-skeined knit of unknowable order and complexity. We are woven dolls, lithe and flexing—bundled energy and capricious spirit. A kernel of curiosity and acuity placed within the furrow of our minds to furnish thought enough to pursue novelty, abstraction, surreality, war, leisure, and love in equal measure.
This begs the question, what am I? An observer? Yes, undoubtedly so. But why am I viewing this young man? 18? 19? I do not know. Why is he here? Where is here? An orchard perhaps? I look down in search of fallen apples splayed out in the shadow beneath rows of trees. I look for the green of grass at his feet. Verdant light bouncing softly against his calves. The soft blue of the sky touching over his nose and collarbones. I’m not sure I see anything at all. There is neither light or darkness here.
Then it changes. The man takes soft cautious steps across the top of a stone wall. The curves of the blue and red stones pressing into the arch of his feet with a dry sound. His pelvis locks, the length of his torso rises, the muscles of his stomach deepening towards his spine and thrusting the edge of his hipbone forward into sharp relief. His naval pinches closed and the column of his neck turns on its axis. His head tilting, locks of hair falling over his ears into new shape. The line from the back of his knee to the top of his buttock looks like a simplified spoon in profile. The arc of his glutes solid and limned in golden light.
The triangle of his elbow draws my gaze. The bone beneath so evident. The skin taut and pink. The creature’s steps grow more able and confident along the wall. Legs pump and swing. Muscles bunch in his thighs, the flesh sways with each impact as his feet strike the stones. His toes press off like hammer strikes as he bounds forward, the void static and immobile behind him. A wind, unfelt and unseen, flutters the bristles of his eyebrows and the vellum of his cheeks and the rims of his ears. His chest falls and rises. Sweat glistens along his arms. He is structural, his body in tow to his leg’s bursting speed. I wish to feel his pulse. I think about it instead.
Veins tunnel and wind beneath his skin, they branch and scion to the smallest of capillaries, every cell desperate for the oxygen of his blood. If I looked close enough would I be able to make out the sunlight. Folded endlessly into ribbons of gold and music? Or would there simply be the drudgery of atoms? Small machines locking and pressing against one another in a dense jungle that had a bottom and a top. Everything is just a box inside of another box. A pie crust which when removed offer only new vantage on the filling, sweet and scarlet, beneath.
If given an implement, like God’s own hand, would I be able to finely cut this man open, bloodless as clay, and squash and refine the peels elsewhere. Could I cut away all the waste of a man? Vestigial and wasted, and create something that redefines the beast of man? A leathery lash of tail? A barb at the heel? A new entry of human pleasure that reaches heights great enough to frighten and snatch away one’s breath. Would these be blessings or incommodities to overcome?
I stripe the man with all manner of modification. The clay of his limbs and back and skull slough and reform in my palms. I push life back into his lungs. More jaguar than man now. Hearing sharp as pins and the round sway of its back disposed to prowling low to the ground. The tail is thin as a whip. It dances in the air as he lunges forward. Claws slide free. Its body is an arrow poised. I interrupt the motion on a whim. The contraction of its dagger sharp pupil stills entirely. The jaguar is breathless as I observe what I wish. I marvel at the velvet darkness of the fur looking disheveled by fingers. It looks polished and smooth along its back and shaggy on the inside length of each limb. Happy with the details of my creation...My creation? Am I the god of this void? Is this who I am in this elsewhere? Not just an observer but a creator?
I feel no presence of body for myself. I feel no pain nor any itching here. A sanctum? Mine to roam and sculpt?
Happy with the details of my creation I snip away the tail and fold the clay back into a ball with my handless hands. I let the void choose its own form. An expanse of stars overhead. They glitter with enough light to see my clay be loosed from my handless hands in tendrils. Collecting into itself and forming a rough animal shape. It is not one I know and never one that either existed or has been dreamed up before. It is like a man but refined and cut more beautifully. There is a charge to its limbs, a kind of overcorrection from man that makes this creature look almost alien in its similarity. This creature is as though a circle inverted into something that is not a circle. It is the crescent of a moon and the swell along a river bank.
Perhaps I have dreamed for long enough now. Ivory hair falls in tresses along its back. Her back. It is as though a bird's wings were an animal all their own. Porcelain skin rises, toes small and heels collected together so that her feet together look like a spade. Her knees are shapely, her eyes are the same green as the man’s had been. The lips less understated. Her chest is smooth and rounded. The entirety of her is slender, and attractive and pleasing to witness. She is ample where needed, strong elsewhere. There is a comfort found in her form. Her ears are not like the man’s. Coiled softly like a long frond, tapered at the ends. Light glows easily through the thinness of their veil, crimson and softness.
What would this creature speak of given experience and life. Trepidation catches in my heart as the fingers of my handless hands reach for the line of her throat and the edge of her chin. I wish to brush against her cheek. I place my palm against her belly and press against it with deliberate slowness before removing my hand and listening for the bellow in her breast. There is a rush of air. A startle of life crossing her expression. I smile and watch as she leans back, her movements unsteady. Graceless without being ugly or cumbersome.
I taught her steadiness. I taught her to sit and to look. I taught her curiosity. I then built for her a waterfall and invited her to swim and lounge. The stars wheeled overhead the entire time. As she swam, I delighted at her animation. Her expressions. The soul in the shine of her eyes.
When she grew tired I laid her down and she closed her eyes. At that point I taught her the most important skill of all. With deftness and gentle prodding, I showed her what it was to dream. A blank canvas which she took to like wet to water. My muse.
// d a r k - i n t e n t /
Ella sunk forward on the balls of her feet, gripping her hilt tightly as Prava stepped into the light from within her granite den.
She looked like a silhouette as she prowled closer, her dress clinging to her hips and stomach like stripes on a tiger. She wore the gown like a sheathed knife. The wide strips of tar-black cloth shifting as she walked, flashes of pale skin beneath breaking through sunlight past a shroud of leaves. Scarlet wool divided the fabric into a myriad of slanting diamonds, the lines cutting across her form in a dangerous cascade of Vs and Xs. To Ella they just looked like hashed guidelines for where she should cut. The gown may as well have been a placard hung upon a butcher’s wall—lines sectioning beef.
Dead bitch. Prava’s eyes lingered, the black fabric of her gown splitting into windows of snow-white flesh as she bent forward menacingly. Foolish, stubborn, meat.
Ella’s thoughts swirled with revenge and death, Prava was simply prey and she was the
assurance of her death.
// r a n d o m - w r i t i n g /
3-17-2021
Baker was a stout man, black of beard and black of eyes, but not black of character. His face was pleasant enough from afar but if one were to see him close up they’d notice the furrowed troughs of his forehead and the lack of laugh lines in his jowls and the puffy pouches of his eyes.
However, for no real reason, on his forty-eighth birthday he had decided to find the green vigor of life for his own. Rounding into the last stretch of his life he had determined himself to no longer rest on the laurels on which he had. Every day would be a precious, and impactful adventure.
He went sailing, and took piano lessons. He even courted the idea of enrolling in night school though in the end the tuition proved too steep for him. He was able to turn his life around, and he was happy. The weeks went by and people began to notice.
Even strangers who he had known for nearly half a decade finally started to smile and even make small talk with him. He was a ruffian and a gentleman all at once when he would drink on the weekends at his favorite bar. A few ladies even began to chat him up and he would often take them home.
It was a shock then, when four months after his forty eighth birthday he died of an aneurysm.
Shatter-skull-schuck.
Life’s a cruel bitch that way. The few friends who came to the funeral made speeches and some highlighted the terrible loss of a middle aged man whose life had so recently found spark and caught flame, and pitied that it had been snuffed out so unceremoniously.
// n i g h t g l a s s /
On that black summer night, a whipping wind infiltrated my room through a crack in the window, bathing it in a crisp chill. Rain had just begun to fall as I jumped out of bed, sprawling out on the floor with a soft thump. I lay there for a long moment, listening to the house. Listening for the sound of footsteps. My small fingers clutched tightly within the shag as if woven into the fibers. My mind bounced with possibility as I waited to be discovered.
With the alacrity of a child, I sprung to my feet and raced to my doorway. Breathing dramatically, I leaned out and peered down the hallway. A wan light came from the cramped living room. I smiled to myself.
I dropped to my hands and knees and eased out from hiding, shuffling slowly down the hallway, one measured step at a time. I turned into the living room, avoiding the TV tray with a stack of dirty plates stacked precariously on top and was surprised to see my older brother slumped on the sofa, his head snapped back—mouth gaping wide, his chest rising and falling slowly as he wheezed, accordion-like, with sleep.
I continued forward, carefully extracting an open bag of snacks nestled against my brother’s arm as plunder, and then stepped into the dark open doorway that led from the living room into our kitchen. My bare feet slid carefully over the scattered grit that had been tracked in without being swept up. The refrigerator began to shake and make grinding noises as I passed it making my way to stand in front of the towering glass pane of the sliding door.
I looked out at the blackness beyond, where our ill maintained and rarely used back deck was. I stood there—palms and forehead pressed on glass and listened as the patter of rain became a raucous and terrible entity. Wind tossed drops that streaked and spangled the sliding door.
I could hear the wind too, not just its mighty whistle as it raked against the house but also the groaning of the support beams of the deck and the shutters jostling and clacking outside. My breath formed a pale circle on the glass as I listened and looked out. The raindrops falling like speeding racecars past my eyes.
Then came God’s terrible white anger carving down the black canvas of night—I had never seen lightning and upon seeing it for the first time, without any understanding of what it was, I was terrified, yet I couldn’t look away. Veins of wild golden light careening from heaven down to burrow into the earth followed closely by the resonant explosions of thunder that shook the glass and throttled me so much that I fell backwards.
Scrambling, I ran back to my room and dove beneath my bed. Pushing the toys and crumpled clothes out of the way until I was flush with the wall where I remained until I eventually fell asleep.
My instinct to stay hidden in the refuge beneath my bed during thunderstorms like that stayed with me for many more years. Whenever a storm brewed on the horizon I flew off to my bedroom, terrified of the crazed lightning and thunder I remembered from that black summer night.
// w i n t e r ’ s - e m b r a c e /
It was winter. A dark night, deep snow, and branches swaying in stiff chill air. Quietly, I snuck away and made my way into the thicket tucked behind my house, just past the fence that lay twisted in disrepair. Each step found me stepping up to my ankles in a crisp layer of frost.
Eventually, I found myself within the grove, the trees gaunt and skeletal. I barely made out the path of mounded stones and iron tracks. I came to a stop now and looked up through the starfall around me, staring at the sliver of the moon not shrouded by clouds and wind-whipped snow. I lowered my chin to my chest and let my long dirty blonde hair fall down over my face and breathed out a large stream of coiling breath—thick as fog.
I smiled and felt my cold fingers. The moon became unveiled, and the train tracks gleamed. I inspected my fingers—even in the low light, I could tell they were turning rosy from the sting of the air. The numbness was like the edge of a knife on bare skin, something I focused on, and my other thoughts simply became hollow.
I moved my hands down to my sides and felt until my fingers found the button of my pants. I undid the fasten and then plucked the shoelaces of my boots free of the knots I had tied. I kicked off my boots and carefully pulled my feet from my socks while I balanced against the trunk of a towering maple. I undressed in this manner until I stood completely bare from my waist down. I felt the chill in the wind gently caress the warmth of my legs away from me.
I walked towards the rocky escarpment and unsheathed myself from my flannel jacket and the shirt underneath. The soles of my feet felt each rough imbalanced step up to the railroad tracks as the dark squared stones pronged my heels and toes. My feet touched the cold slide of the rail, and I felt the thin layer of frost hug the underside of my feet before melting away to nothing. The tunnel of leafless trees channeled the wind down the tracks and around me. My nudity was freeing despite feeling the air entombing my body’s senses.
I looked at my pale skin in the moonlight. My wide hips, belly still full from supper, and my thick thighs. I felt taller, I felt like I was glowing—looking back, I felt beautiful. I felt the stones begin to rumble and the snow dance with light before I heard the low belching whistle. Black as the devil it came, and I outstretched my arms and spread my fingers wide and cackled to no one.
The train came out from behind the trees, and I saw the first gradient of light jitter up onto the front of my body, glistening with small drops where the snow had landed and melted. I jumped off the rail tracks and noted how pink I had turned. I ran over the stones and stood hunched behind a tree, covering my ears with the flat of my palms. The locomotion passed in only a minute's time, though by the end, the cold had simply become pain. I gathered my clothes and put most of them on, opting to stuff my cold wadded socks and underwear into the back pockets of my jeans. My bare feet struggled into my boots, and then I headed back home.
Once inside the front door, I took all my clothes off again and folded them into my arms. The house was asleep, so I didn’t fear being seen. I dropped my clothes into the laundry hamper and set my boots by the heating vent. I slipped into bed still wet with snowmelt. The slow kneading sensation of heat returning to my limbs and eventually my fingers lulled me into a deep dreamless sleep.
The next day I kept smiling—a secret of my own on my lips.
a b o u t - m e
I like trying things; digital art, 3D art, writing, music, video editing, audio editing. TTRPG enthusiast.