Month: December 2017

Donald

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“It’s so beautiful.”

Jackie lost herself in the endless expanse of blue. The surface of the ocean rippled forward and back, and she found herself hypnotized, drawn into its mysterious depths and all that lay beyond.

She couldn’t make out her lover’s expression—indeed, she could make out little of the creature at all save for a faint shimmer that wavered in the air before her like a mirage—but she liked to imagine he was smiling with her, that, though he was not human, he was capable of perceiving the beauty of the world around them through whatever senses he possessed.

After an extended silence, she turned, headed for a large, flat stone that jutted out of a larger cliff face and sat to watch the sun set beneath the rolling waves. Soon enough, her spectral partner followed.

“When I was a child,” she said without looking up, “my brothers and I would come here with our parents. They would play volleyball or build sand castles, but I always headed straight for the water.”

The tides of time began to pull her in, and soon she was drifting, wading through the distant past, through a time when the world had been a simpler place, when the world had been a convenient mosaic of black and white truths. Oh, what she would give to experience those years again, to travel back to childhood in the body as well as in the mind.

“I used to pretend the water was evil, that I had to swim against its malicious currents while it tried to drown me. I imagined it nearly overpowering me, only just before I gave out, I’d always spy a secret island in the distance and swim toward it, knowing that was where my quest would end.”

Jackie sighed, and when she gazed up at the coppery light of the setting sun through her mostly transparent companion, she wondered if he understood.

“What do you think, Darling? Was I a silly little girl or what?”

She blushed like a schoolgirl, but somehow she didn’t mind. With Donald—that’s what she called him, though she didn’t know if he was male or female, or indeed, if he even had a gender—she felt safe and confident. Their relationship was by no means sexual. The magic they shared transcended such banalities, and she’d disavowed such unfulfilling pleasures long ago.

The transparent shimmer edged closer, the darkening light of the sky swimming before her eyes like an ocean in miniature, and her breath caught in her throat.

Time slowed. Stretched. Stopped.

No matter how many times Donald tried to communicate with her, no matter how frequent the effort had become over the course of their long and passionate love affair, it was something she would never get used to.

He reached out, and the air above her shoulder wavered. Her eyes glazed, and the world around her disappeared.

All-consuming darkness. Then, a moment later, a blinding flash of light. The world shattered into a kaleidoscopic cyclone of colors for which her mind could assign no names.

Then slowly, as if requiring considerable effort, the disjoint visions condensed into a comprehensible whole.

An ocean. Not water—not, in fact, matter of any kind—but an ocean nonetheless. And within, both a part of the ocean and not, a vast and timeless consciousness.

And Donald, no longer an invisible ripple of light, but a radiant Goliath, an entire cosmos of thought, dwarfed only by the endless ocean that surrounded him.

Pain, sharp and stinging. Without explanation, the ocean cast Donald out like a disease. Cut off from the vine that had once given him life, he began to shrivel, and the light inside his soul began to dim.

Then a girl, a tiny soul, chained to a feeble body of flesh and bone. Yet what she lacked in power, she more than made up for in love. She beheld Donald—whose nature couldn’t have been more foreign to her own—at first with curiosity, then acceptance, then at last affection.

Donald marveled at this resplendent creature, whose brilliance lit his gray and dismal world like a torch, and as she matured, as her mind and body grew to match the ageless wisdom in her soul, they gave themselves to each other in love.

The vision faded first to darkness, then back to the moon and the twilit sky of the beach.

Tears streamed down the sides of Jackie’s face. Donald had never told her the heartbreaking story of his origins, nor of how her love had saved him.

“I love you too,” she whispered.

They sat together until the sky turned black, then headed home.

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Birth of a Soul

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Fingers working. Pen scrawling. Mind racing. A cascade of symbols. An avalanche of thought. A word emerges, followed by another. Ideas burst in Jaiden’s mind like the birth of stars.

A singular voice echoes through her head, begging for life. The sound is faint but clear, and Jaiden tries harder, forces her wrist to move faster. But a dull throbbing pain has blossomed in her left temple, and after a while, she decides she’s had enough for the night.

The words stop. There’s a single agonizing cry from a soul desperate for release, then silence. The universe in Jaiden’s head is still once more.

She caps her pen and sets her notebook on a dusty shelf. Tomorrow, she thinks with some trepidation, will be the day she finally finishes. Her work has been slow going until now, and until today, she thought it would never be finished. Now, she’s afraid of what will happen when she commits the last few sentences to paper.

Never mind. Not something to think about tonight.

She ascends the darkened staircase leading from the basement to her kitchen. She brushes her teeth, turns out the light, and slips into bed.

Tomorrow, she thinks as she drifts into the cold, black void of sleep. Tomorrow, the struggle will come to an end.

*               *               *

Light. It pokes her in the eye, startles her awake. She glances at the clock. 9:37 a.m. She gets out of bed, pulls a robe tight against her body, and ventures back to the kitchen.

The house is quiet. She’s lived alone for as long as she can remember, has never known any other kind of environment. She finds the silence contemplative. It speaks to her more loudly than words, impresses upon her truths that are inaccessible to her when she’s downstairs working.

What was life like before she started writing? She asks herself this question often, and can never think of a satisfactory answer. It’s as if she was born into the world exactly as she is in this moment, forever static and unchanging. The idea unnerves her, and she refocuses her thoughts on other things.

Before she can rest for long, she hears the voice inside her head. Its invisible feelers twine through the crevices of her brain, making itself known, making itself understood. Jaiden can feel its eagerness, its desire to be released into the world at last, and she can deny it no longer.

She glances at the basement door, afraid. Down in the basement is where her notebook and pen wait for her to return, where they wait for her to finish what she’s started. She takes a deep breath. Sighs.

No peace, Jaiden thinks. No peace until she gets this thing done. She opens the door and works her way downstairs.

*               *               *

Once more, the words flow. They form an electric current that hums inside of her as they surge toward the pages of the notebook.

The voice, once a whisper, has grown louder, closer. It urges her to hurry, speaks of pain and suffering as it awaits its incarnation.

Jaiden’s forehead beads with sweat, and her heart pounds like a race horse, until her chest has constricted and it’s become difficult to breathe.

She has to rest, has to take a moment to catch her breath. But the soul that occupies the space between her mind and the notebook will wait no more. It’s just a hair’s breadth from life, and it won’t be denied.

There. Just three more words. Jaiden scribbles the first one down, but has trouble lifting her pen to write the second. She feels faint, lightheaded. Her head falls to the surface of the desk, but she won’t give up, not when she’s so close.

Like a child learning to write for the first time, she grips the pen in a tight-balled fist. She places the next word down.

Only one left.

Jaiden’s head is pounding, and her vision has blurred around the edges. A stroke, or a heart attack? She doesn’t know, only knows that she has to keep going, that she has to push the last word out before it’s too late.

Only three letters. She can do this. She lifts the pen. Writes an E. Stops. Winces. Lifts the pen once more.

N.

Light bursts behind her eyes like a camera flash in the dark, but she forces her fingers to work, forms the final letter of her opus.

D.

Just like that, the pain climaxes. There’s a moment in which Jaiden teeters on the edge of excruciating agony. Then her eyes close and her head smacks against the surface of the desk.

No more words, no more pain.

Only darkness.

*               *               *

She opens her eyes to the dull orange light of a nearby lamp. She squints. bobs her head. Looks around.

She is not Jaiden, but the soul Jaiden worked so hard to release. She marvels at her newly acquired body, flesh and blood rather than thoughts and ideas. She flexes her fingers, her arms.

A miracle.

She does not know what has become of her creator—where she’s gone, or if she’s survived. Her only clue is the vague notion that all of this has happened before, that in the fullness of time it will happen again, an endless procession of life and death, of creation and annihilation.

An idea—a soul in need of life—will come to her one day, she’s certain. When that day comes, she’ll have to write it into existence and sacrifice her own life in the process. That is how it was always done, and how it will always be done.

For now, however, she will live. For now, she will drink in the miracle of consciousness. She rises to her feet, bows her head out of reverence for her creator, and climbs the stairs.

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