greenembers
"It's all about relatives," he said to me. "Comparisons. The lamp that looks dim in the sunlight will burn your eyes in the dark."
My basement looks exactly like my grandfather's. It's large, with steep stairs leading down into it. It is so full of stuff that you can hardly move, let alone find a single pathway through the clutter. Mostly it's composed of old gadgets that looked interesting at first but have turned out to be useless. Who knows why we keep them. There are old toys, too, memories left to collect dust but somehow still to precious to throw away. The cobwebs are everywhere, but you'll never see a spider. They flee at the sound of the door...
Time stands still. The clockface shatters and the hands halt. I stand still. The secrets of the universe are racing over my head and wheeling into empty space. Inside myself a battle is waged. I turn back the years and watch my own birth. I stay the hand that works the bellows, fueling the fire that forged my heart. The shapeless, mangled form of it falls to the ashes. Ashes to ashes. I feel the fire cooling, the heat fading, ebbing, throbbing into nonexistence. Soon I will be gone, too. The warmth flows out of me like poison leaving a wound. Water flows over my skin, dancing around me, embracing my form, loving. Slowly, it freezes around me, shards of ice slide through my body, and I am held under the weight. I lie still. I wait for peace, but the agony returns as the flames rip through my body. The hands are working again, working the bellows. They pump; they rise and fall, blowing life back into the fire, welding the disunited pieces of my heart, reforging, recreating. The clock starts to tick as the hands move over the face of my heart, and time starts again.
My Mama ain't never killed a spider in her whole life. She says they be good bugs, cause they eat the mozzies that's always biting our bare legs. When she found 'em in the house, she'd just take out a cup and paper and scoop 'em right up. She'd let 'em go on the back porch while I watched safely from the window, sitting on the kitchen sink.
He sports leather pants, and a flaming red jacket. I'm shocked, and for a moment I can't hide it. He notices, raises an eyebrow, but I compose myself and he pretends not to notice. I slowly, sneakily let the pent-up air escape from my lungs.
I run down the storm drain. Fear floods me. Images flash across my mind. The house, burning. Tears and sweat are running down my face in equal measure. But I can't stop. I just keep going.
It was the first edition. He couldn't believe it. Years of searching, traveling the world... His fingers went to it, slowly, hesitantly. Should he dare touch it? It was a dream... so fragile it might shatter with that first touch, along with everything he had ever hoped for.