FlickerFly
I knelt on the floor, running my fingers over row after row of DVDs. "Whaddaya wanna watch?" I called, on reflex, to the man draped on the couch behind me.
"Seriously," he said, because he had not five seconds ago told me to make the choice for him.
I rolled my eyes, sighing to myself at the grim reality of decision-making, and leaned in with renewed determination. What was I in the mood for? "Something /gory/," I muttered aloud.
"Please," I muttered, staring at the ground. I was on my hands and knees, could only see his feet, and a little voice in my head whispered that I was being stupid, that I looked like and idiot. "I deserve to be punished."
I couldn't see it, but I could feel my superior tilting his head - something in his stature, his footing. I half hoped that he would reassure me, tell me, yes, I was being silly. But instead --
"Yes. You do. We execute you tomorrow."
My throat got clogged up with tears and I couldn't speak.
The windscreen was cracked. The crack was small, roughly the size of a dandelion, and flower-shaped, too - spreading out from a single point, like something had been thrown at the glass once upon a time.
"What happened?" I asked the used-car-dealer, putting my eye up to it like a telescope.
"Hell'f I know," he responded, and although I doubted the story was interesting, I felt mildly dismayed at the fact that I would never find out.
The room was clean, medically sterile - the only hints of colour seemed red-on-white, too bright and artificial to be real. It certainly seemed to contrast with myself, blood seeping through the cracks in the mud coating my skin. It seemed even more to contrast with what had just happened - like a bomb going off, everything going wrong in just a couple of moments. Now, I was just sitting in the waiting room, too shaken to do more than wonder -- if the other patients were staring, how the hell she could have done that to me.
I adjust my coat, peering at myself in the mirror as if I were the one person on the hiking trail who had bright pink hair. It has been so long since I've had to act the gentleman, I'm not entirely sure that I can do it any more, and waves of nervousness were rolling in my belly in a way they never had before. At least, not when I was wearing a suit - I recognised it as the way I had felt when I had first had to start letting go. The pains of adjustment.
Although, to be honest, I'm still tempted to just say 'f--k it' and wear a skirt. A bright orange one. See what they think of that, eh?
The grove seemed altogether less defined than I would have imagined a 'grove' being. A grove, after all, sounded like a single object - like a hard pill of plants, six or seven trees so close together that they looked to be one, that I would have had to struggle through the undergrowth to find my way. This didn't look like that at all. It was more just... a smattering. A smattering of trees.
It stepped closer to it, tilting my head curiously.
"Go on!" The man cried. I glanced back to look at him, perched unsteadily on the brink of the ship, through the sheets of rain, before looking back on the rocks. I hauled myself onto one of the sharp columns, blood dripping from my hands and mingling with the water. The rope trailed behind me, swung by the wind just as I was. If only I could find a steadfast place to secure it, perhaps everyone else could climb down along it.
At the moment, though, I heavily resented being the best swimmer on crew.
It was cyclical. Thought to action to thought to attempt to break the cycle to failure to thought. He was just like this, he knew. If this wasn't how it was meant to be, then why should it be so hard not to follow his imperative? Why should he be the only one that had to fight this every second of every day? What made him so special that the *world itself* tried to hold him back with thoughts of death?
The answer had to be: nothing. It wasn't 'holding him back', he was holding himself back. By not giving in.
I'm not attuned to anything right now. I'm disconnected. I don't know what to write, and I can't reach the part of me that does. I can't see, but that must mean there is quite a great gap between all of my pieces.
I pat my stomach, my skin, check that I am all there and all here.
I seem to be so. But, hey, size is relative, and most of an atom is void. The gap between nucleus and electrons might as well be the English Channel, and me with no damn swimming experience.
I felt my step falter. I had been moving evenly - left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, left, right, left, left. I glanced back at my followers, at my friends, and their eyes went a little bit questioning, as if they hadn't noticed a thing, and they were wondering why I looked at them so alarmingly. But was that it? Was it really?
I shrugged, turned back, and kept walking.
I was their leader. I couldn't be weak. No matter what.
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