Dreamt Into Orbit

(Knock on door) 

I walked deliberately up the stairs, unsure who would call at such an odd hour.  I had recently made peace with the occupants inside my home, and possessed a hesitancy of admitting any more residents.  The door opened, and a pair of perfectly matched blue eyes gazed back at me.  "Follow me."  The words surprised me.  Unnerved me.  Why should I?  Wasn’t I comfortable?  At a (barely) palatable stalemate with life in general?  "Follow me."  Distinguishable impatience flowed through the words.  Well…maybe I should follow her.  Maybe she knows certain places I’ve never been to before, and perhaps these places could enable something wonderful, some sort of catalyst.  Wouldn’t that be nice.  I contemplated it.  She reached out and grabbed me by the collar, dragging me after her.  I followed.

The car sped noiselesly down the highway.  Sheep in their pastures stopped grazing, watching us nervously from the apex of their eyes.  The tunnel of trees above us shed their leaves furiously, cascading browned leaves about us.  I asked her, motioning towards the display: "Why?"  She shrugged, calmly stating the obvious: "All truths die suddenly, eventually, accidentally.  Incidentally, this world too shall pass." 

"Oh."  I shrugged, and turned my attention back to the scenery blurring past us.  The black sky peeked intermittently through scanning clouds of crimson, backlit by an axeblade moon.  I knew, and quite quickly, that the moon doesn’t work towards a full or new state.  It works towards that offensive tenuous state.  The cocksure statement of pure transience that defines the moon’s existence.  Too many times I’ve laid prostrate beneath that avatar of our star, supplicating desperately on the doorstep of the dawn for something permanent.  Anything, if only for some permanence.  Prithee, heavens, some permanence.

The clock of the cathedral above the velvet swain had stopped permanently yesterday, exalting 7:34 across the sleeping town.  We sped away, the obsidian flying buttresses and Romanesque arches left behind us.  The newly skeletal trees supported countless owls, red-eyed and tired of the night.  Vampires strolled the sidewalk beside us, fangs gleaming parasitic warnings in the deepening night: Beware of death.  You don’t want to die.  Not ever.  I tried to ignore it, sighing heavily, bowing my head non-commitally.  Yeah, yeah.  These are things best left ignored, and sometimes best confronted and refuted or accepted and then forgotten.  Forget it.  There are things you can’t defeat or understand or deal with.  Accept it, and then forget it.

The green gives way to desert tones, all yellowed and red.  The sun had yet to grace us with its bright smile, while the stars had gradually begun to wink out of existence.  The Get Up Kids played belligerantly daring on the radio:  And if the world is ending, can we toast to it?  I envied them then.  I couldn’t feet my feet, hands, or eyes.  The little fears that flowed through my veins had ceased talking, melting grudgingly under the heat of a righteously enraged body.  Fevers tore through our limbs, setting our hairs first on edge and then on fire.  The darkness above us changed to something other than empty air, a swirling liquid ink that buffeted the car accelerating wildly into a temperature dropping to impossible lows.  Faces materialized between us, old faces, forgotten faces, unsure, carefree, happy or sad, revolting and beautiful and confusing.

The road came to a stop, ending abruptly and emptying into the desolation.  The concrete conduit had dried up, and all those countless miles travelled simply no longer existed.  They were behind us.  Idling on the last foot of pavement, the car faced challengingly towards the cacti, the baking stone, the hungry vultures.  Fires burned on mesas, in pipes, in our brains, bellies, and hearts.  She looked over at me then, and breaking the silence asked, "Are you ready?"  Without waiting for an answer, she pressed her foot firmly against the gas.

We traded dying truths and wilting worlds for something new, never once regretting the dishonest lives now just memories on a different planet, an older place on a hackneyed orbit.

This is the beginning of the world.