dreamer

Horror wells up inside Zov's mouth in muffled gurgling sobs, strangely familiar.

Jellied eyelids pried open, he sees blobs bathed in a faint yellow light overhead. Tears streak across his temples and congeal into pendulous imps swinging by his earlobes whispering foul secrets. His tongue rolls up like a slice of dry cured ham and pushes back against his throat.

“H-e-l-l....”, he draws a sharp breath and tries to scream but merely intones in the manner of a mute.

“Feeling a little tongue-tied, Master? Might you be that randy little dandy that stole my tongue-twister?”, a gravelly drawl crawls up from the miasma. 

As Zov rolls his eyeballs, his eyelashes fizz into his sockets like soldering irons.

"Well, well, ma' deah boy, we all want free speech, don't we?", the voice now resounds clearly before bursting into menacing mirth.

“What hell is this, Macabre Punster!”, Zov demands.

Or so he would have as he attempts a gut utterance after the guttural fails him, half-hoping a flourish of indignant characterization might resonate with the jesting knave's heartless wit. An instant endowment of ventriloquism by the Lord's even-handed ways (as they are rumored to be) he reckons would make two-bit counterpoint to the amorphous malignity that holds his body captive and tears at his soul, but a counterpoint nevertheless. Yet not a squeak escapes his corporeal innards.

It strikes him then that even the most desperate entreaties of the conscious mind (that naive moribund sailor whose charmed odysseys atop torrential undercurrents lead him to be enamored of his own illusory powers of navigation) would never appease the Ambivalent Dreamer Who Knows And Yet Doesn't...

hear, tortoise.

Sully once told his favorite tortoise to shut up.

The tortoise kept quiet and crawled on, poise being one of her strong points. Besides, poor Mrellis hadn't really said much at all.

The one sign, quite likely reflexive if so, of any displeasure was an imperceptible hiccup in her shuffle. Other than that, she kept on keeping mum and trudged on.

Sully was a curiously spoiled man-child. His mum had never really taught him (or quite possibly herself understood) the value of squelching one's fantastical notions from being given voice at all times. He would on occasion slip into the wildest of reveries (if one could call them that; most of which were anything but pleasant) and to everyone's dread, enact them out in a manner far more disgraceful than the previous one.

This one personality tic, to put it gently, alone guaranteed that “Silly Sully” (thus went the unimaginative nickname) was regularly avoided in polite circles. Not that he took much notice of it.

His only company, however indifferent, was the band of tortoises with whom he regularly took (mostly silent) “walkabouts” along the wooded outskirts of Dervishire. It wasn't such a terrible arrangement, for the man's proclivity for what one might conceive of as part-perambulation and part-circumabulation kept him roughly in pace with his unidirectionally-slow fellows.

Tortoises tend to be excellent listeners – they like to keep to themselves most of their long, rarely tonous lives.

One of Mrellis' few social graces involved rolling her eyeballs while yawning throaty grunts of a very low frequency, inaudible to Sully or any other human. Sully however took that to be a case of reptilian sarcasm in response to his one of his spirited soliloquys, which if he had bothered to enquire, was decidedly a laughable proposition if there ever was one.

Strictly speaking, not entirely improbable. Scientifically speaking however, it would classify as a non-starter and dead-end rolled into one within the narrow confines of zoological research -- the unstated dogma being that tortoises are incapable of irony. One can safely say that it will likely never be conclusively proven or otherwise (that would require a cross-disciplinary study backed by equally improbable funding).

But then Sully didn't think much of science either – not in a particularly critical way, he just never thought about it...

light matters

Pics are picky,

fickle to flickers.

or, for that matter,

so are flickers in flicks.

as they are, lightly put, impressions

of light on matter

of light ejected by matter

projecting light on matter.

so do they enlighten, matter, or even impress

if they enlighten impressions on matter?

or are they simply matters of impression,

a bit light on matter?

is there matter in light?

does it even matter?

whether we call them particles or waves?

particular waves or wavy particulars?

a particularly wavy one,

waved off by particular ones

who are “wavy wavy” particularly “wavy”

of dualities in thought.

thought to be dubiously duplicitous

by many a thoughtful one

and singularly single-minded

by one thoughtful duo too many.

unique reminders that

to be doubly mindful

of the multitude of minds

the thoughtless wave off

as light-minded

matters.

kindred spirits

“Suffering has no limits, comrade but could one say the same of drunkenness?”, the man in the dark suit almost whispered as he poured.

Markov lifted his stolid gaze quizzically at the commentator and then cast heavy eyes back down upon the dark mahogany.

The flame in the last candle that still stood was bobbing in the ether and so was the brass candelabrum that held it. That's when Dmitri half-knew he had checked out of his senses.

“I had better go.”

“Not without some help first, comrade.”

“Care to know a little secret, dear brother?", it was Markov's turn to whisper in a mock conspiratorial tone, as he narrowed his eyes and gulped down the glass. "I'm afraid this comrade of yours cannot be seen with anyone tonight.”

“Fortunately for you, I'm not just anyone. Dmitri Rosporov, Chief Militsioner of the Mitino precinct at your service.”

“Ah the militsia! All the more reason to stay away, friend. I'm a marked man.”

“I could arrange for a safehouse tonight - we worry about details later as long as we slip out in the darkness. No questions asked. Moreover, your state does not offer much by way of confidence in your ability to defend yourself, Comrade Markov”, Dmitri offered with no hint of hesitation.

“Did I introduce myself tonight, Dmitri? I don't recall”, Markov said, not quite certain whether this was just vodka-induced amnesia or vodka-induced clarity of thought.

“No, you didn't, comrade. Quite remarkable, your presence of mind. You sound like just the kind of man that might interest us”.

“Us?”

“Never mind. Shall we step outside?”

At half-past-midnight, both stepped out hobbling together in each other's arms in a way one couldn't tell which one the drunk was.

The inky sky was covered with what could only be a thick shroud of clouds. The inching snow still reflected some unseen source of light in the darkness and steadily muffled their crisp footfall. An icy silence gathered around them as the feeble wind died down to a whimper.

The officer's white Lada was parked beside a half-crumbled brick wall, buried under the snow except for what looked like a retractable antenna that bobbed up slowly to peep as if sensing their presence.

“Nice camouflage”, the thought intruded Markov's sozzled senses as he attempted to get inside.

An unsolicited offer of assistance met with fumbling, grumbling resistance. Dmitri quickly relented.

They drove away after the officer played back recorded messages from his radio while warming up the engine. Markov could barely decipher the language of the bursts wafting by the rear-seat, reliably unsure of the alcohol's actual contribution to the garbling.

the altar

The Oracle stamped his feet on the parched earth, one after the other, raising hellishly purple dust from within the crevices. Then he carefully lay down a granite slab that passed for the Altar.

"This is it. We must begin here."

The paesanos dug and dug for hours but time after time, they came up high and dry.

"I am certain of it. We must not give up".

Thus they went on laboring under the high sun clinging to prophetic words. The day was slipping away -- yet little sign of the aqua vita showed.

The ditch grew wide and deep by twilight. Torches were lit against the brooding hills on the pitch-dark night.

One Ignatio unearthing the core uttered a panicked scream. Two of his compagnos (Antonio and Marco, cousins from the Monserratis) hurtled into the abyss, following the receding voice and little premeditation.

Within moments, it was evident that all three men were gone. The fellows standing around took turns hollering out the plungers' names in anguish and probing each other's eyes for signs of dash. Not one volunteer would emerge.

Ordained certitudes steadily devolving into blind hysteria, a hushed retreat to the village followed, heedless of the Oracle who thundered at the cruel cravenness of it all and hurled grievous imprecations at the decamping rustics.

At dawn, the entire village (save the infirm and old) gathered back at the scene. A glistening pond now covered the excavation. In the center, three white lotuses stood floating in full bloom.

The Oracle was soon summoned to sanctify the site. His lamentations at the sacrilegious hegira only hours earlier gave way.

"What glorious metamorphosis! Here lie the three brothers-in-arms -- the Fraternità di loto", proclaimed he with eyes to the heavens, lips trembling with a rapturous smile, hands gesticulating the consecration.

That night, all but a dozen-and-one denizens dreamed of silently opening lotuses.

The accursed thirteen, hereafter conferred upon who were the variously inglorious titles of "Band-Of-No-Bothers", "Cowards-In-Harms", "No-Moon-Poltroons" and "Lotus Retreaters" could not sleep at all (nay, not for the rest of their ignominious lives!).

Even as they were silently reclaimed by mortality decades into this singularly shameful incident, it is rumored that on black moonless nights still, the tortured souls emerge to tiptoe around their own graves. For those dreadful epithets followed them to their epitaphs (and that wearisome insomnia to supposedly supine non-existence).

Moreover, it was surmised by a perspicacious few that it didn't help much that the headstones happened to be crushing reminders (nay exacting replicas!) of the Altar (nay spitting images!).

misanthropology

“That's way too loud, kid”.

“No, you're too damn old, gramps”.

Bezvan had been a regular at the Metrovomix for months now.

Within moments of entering the hall, he would still break into a secret, odorless sweat. Jaws clenching into a vise, his head would reflexively swivel staccato every few seconds towards the door, in the manner of a wind-up toy.

As the night wore on, however, and the lights dimmed gradually, the dull mechatronic beat had a way of nursing him into a state of shallow, joyless sublimation.

In his younger days, Bez, as he was known back then, had fancied himself a people-watcher -- voluntarily immersing himself into situations that would offer the slightest vantage of anonymous observation -- as a benign alien collector of human experience might.

Spiraling down the faces in detail, he would extract subtler imperfections with each sweep, with the intent of refining his physiognomic deductions. The initial appearance of an alluring visage would gradually devolve into little more than an aggregate of little deviations from the classic ideal – the faintest bent of the nose as it wound down the center of the face, the slightest disproportion between the frontal and profile diameters, an unseemly horizontal slope along the frontal plateau; not even a healthy asymmetry (to the casual observer) between the eyebrows was lost. There were the ears, of course – there was no other organ of such prominence glaringly grotesque variations of which in his judgement escaped notice so easily regardless of other more conspicuous defects.

Now, he found himself the subject of a collective, unwavering gaze wherever he went by the teeming, faceless, lustful vermin of youth. That look – stolid, yet not entirely innocent – it engendered in him a certain instinctive revulsion that to his eyes arose from the unreflective panoply of maya.

"If I were really that old, little punk, I wouldn't be complaining about my hearing. I bet you couldn't hear your floppy eardrums if they slapped your ugly cheeks!".

The kid stood there silently for a few seconds, with a vaguely amused look. Then he lifted both of his pudgy, hairless hands from behind his own head and raised a dripping, glistening, chalky mass into the air.

It quivered a little, as he gingerly lay the thing on the bar.

"Care to study it, gramps?" .

Bezvan's mouth curled involuntarily as his senses dimmed.

"Works like a charm with them old fogies", the boy's voice crowed.

A titter broke in the crowd that had assembled.

"Imbeciles", Bez mumbled under his gasping breath as his eyeballs rolled up.

The Inn At The End Of The Earth

Jamil glanced over his shoulder.

As far as he could see in the twilight, tufts of sunburnt, mostly dead grass cropped up like bad hair, windswept at an infinitude of angles.

“Amu was so sure it took him three hours... and he's sixty-five.”

He became aware of his pocket-watch ticking in the stillness that followed the odd breeze. He took it out and checked.

It read 7:37. He held on to it.

The sun had already sunk into the sands when he reached the sarai. Along the bleached mud wall outside, a shriveled figure wrapped in a white, crimpled turban and loose, flowing gown sat astride a sagging charpoi.

Clasping his smoke with sunburnt hands, he puffed into his sunken cheeks.While the low arch of the crumbling entrance swam closer, the old man appeared to spectrally levitate from within his ample garment, till he broke into a wide, toothless smile as soon as his feet descended into sight.

In silence, each held out his arms and embraced twice, burying chin into each shoulder, in effortless synchronism. The rustle of the nestle and flutter of the cloth that billowed across the elder's leathery legs carried into the passing breeze a peculiar hush.

Soon, both disappeared into the dark interior.

Jamil dreamt of sand that night.

High, chiseled dunes loomed on all sides. He shouted out his name several times, as if searching for himself. Then, as he shouted "Rimaal" and his own name returned as an eerily melodious will-o'-the-wisp, swirled around the crater he stood in several times before dissipating, mute horror passed over him.

As he wrung the cold sweat off the sleeves of his own caftan, his feet started to sink into the dry morass beneath him. He kept peering up at the bright ball inside the sun as he felt his limbs cocooned by the warm sands at first, then his neck swallowed whole by the bleached barren. A corona bobbed and slowly eclipsed along the edges of his feverish vision. And then the sieve filled up and couldn't sift anymore.

"In the name of Allah, rise, son.".

Sunrise peeped through Amu's eyepiece.