a short story i wrote:
Your broken leather boots plunge from puddle to puddle, the droplets of rain providing shiny solace from the dirty, grey streets you’ve been walking for what feels like eternity. A fat pigeon breaks your pensive mood. You drop the cigarette you can’t remember lighting into a puddle. Looking up, you notice people surrounding you, rushing hurriedly up and down the street. The smokey, charred walls of the city begin to glow with bright neon colours, and flowers bloom from potholes. As you gaze intently at a now emerald cathedral, it grows into a quadrilateral obscenity. Your surroundings turn to abstract shapes and you look with panic at the pigeon, hoping to find familiarity in its wings, but it has contorted into a plane and glides away through the sky full of figures.
Your legs have been moving without your permission and as you look down you realise you’ve been tirelessly trekking on a treadmill, whose screen has symbols you can’t comprehend dotted all over it sporadically. As you lean to peer closer at the hieroglyphics you trip and fall, melting into the screen like a droplet into an ocean.
Tumbling down and down, your head spins and twists, the walls of mud around you become more apparent. Veins of roots adorn the tunnel. You land with a thud. A glass table sits in the centre of the room and you notice a heart shaped sweet on top. EAT ME is engraved on its surface. As you lift it, you are hit with a not-so-distant memory.
Loud music plays as you stumble into a dimly lit room with a stranger. She kisses you and hands you a tablet. You grin and swallow it dry. The little source of light in the room is quenched and the memory ends.
You place the heart shaped sweet in your mouth, following its commands, and chew. The world goes black again.
Opening your eyes, you groan. Your muscles are cramped from lying in one position for too long. You try to stretch and fail. A cloak of darkness covers whatever claustrophobic container you’re trapped in. Always a quick thinker, you reach into your pocket for your cheap plastic lighter. Lighting the flame, you realise how suspiciously coffin-shaped the box is. Fuck, you think, what did that girl in that one movie do? You grab your trusty blade from your pocket, probably one of your only belongings with real value. You set to work carving a fist sized hole in the ceiling of the coffin. You hit it until your fist bleeds and it begins to give way. Dirt falls on your face, covering your eyes and it cuts to black.
Sick of opening your eyes to new horrors, you feel around first. Soft. Warm. Smells like home. Home. That word doesn’t seem to belong in your head. Certain wires aren’t connecting. Giving in to curiosity, you look around. Sure enough, it’s your childhood bed. You roll out of it, staying vigilant for your next mission. In your eye-line is the top of the radiator and the bed frame. You notice how much lighter you feel. You remember the broken mirror that used to be in your landing. Jumping to reach the doorknob, you enter the hall and look in the mirror. You sigh a defeated sigh. Just my luck, you think to yourself, I’m a fucking six year old. Having learned from the absurdity of this world - or whatever is it you’re experiencing, you touch the mirror. It moves like mercury. Of course, you think, why wouldn’t it(!) A gust of wind pushes you through and the pool of silver-esque mirror gloop clears to become water.
The streets around you are grey once again. The dirty puddle still holds your cigarette and you ponder whether you’ve imagined it all. You stand under a nearby building to shelter yourself from the rain.
Once again, the fat pigeon waddles by. It cocks its head at you. You move your head in response in a fairly pathetic attempt to intimidate it. In return, it intimidates you. Opening its beak, it speaks. “I can fix this.” A rather towering voice for such a blob of a pigeon. It hops forward and pecks you. Memories rush in.
Laughter. The room explodes after you make a snide comment. Someone slaps your back as they wheeze. The faces of the people around you light up. A familiar warmth fills you.
Hurt. You gaze down at your wrists in disbelief. Blood oozes and yet you can’t feel a thing. You collapse back into your bed and let out a raspy sigh.
Excitement. A grin is etched on your face as you hand over a wrapped box to a woman with blonde hair. ‘But first,’ you beam, ‘your card!’ Passing her an envelope covered with glitter, you feel yourself being embraced.
Loneliness. You pull your head up and look yourself in the mirror. Wipe your nose. Sniffle a bit. Finally a kick; the words echo in your head. Music reverberates through the bathroom as the band begins playing next door.
These images flash through your mind, only glimpses of moments, never full memories. They feel like clothes that don’t fit anymore. You’ve grown too high and too wide for such fanciful things. Realising what just happened, you look to the pigeon for answers.
“I can take you home or free you,” the bird says. Consumed with confusion, all you manage to utter is a weak “Who are you?” The words feel too small for such a heavy question. The pigeon, now gazing into the puddle, replies.
“I am everywhere. Omniscient. Ever-watching. Never stopping. I take form as whatever I wish to. I am Death, pleased to meet you.” Noticing your hesitation, he continues. “I have taken pity on you, which I rarely do. But your soul is built with material too highly coveted, I couldn’t take you without asking. I can take you home or free you.”
The doors to the building behind you swing open. One emanates a strong perfume of roses and dry ice, or fog.. You don’t know which. Inside is a bed laden with black linen and covered by a veil, accessorised with mesh pillows and white petals. Following your eye-line, Death says; “this is the doorway to death. I prefer the term ‘eternal peace’.” Curious now, you look through what you assume to be the ‘Life’ doorway. A rough frothy ocean and a shoddy rowing boat. Sounds about right, you think, glad that you’ve kept your sense of humour. “Over the horizon is Joy and Laughter,” the pigeon seems to examine each word carefully before committing to speaking it aloud, “but you’ve got some Loneliness and Hurt to navigate first. But that’s Life.”
You let your heavy heart and aching bones collapse onto the floor with you for a second. “No time like the present,” you begin, and the birds proverbial face lights up, hoping to see a sliver of resilience in you,“for a cigarette.” Not what the bird expected to hear. You pull a slender cigarette from your bruised packet. It’s seen better days, you suppose, but so have you. Lighting it with your almost broken blue lighter, you laugh, realising you still don’t know where you are. Purgatory, maybe? God knows. If God’s even real. After a couple minutes of painfully tense and overly long pulls of your cigarette, you stub it out on the wall beside you and throw it into the puddle.
God, life is pointless.
You stand up and glance between doors. The sea spray hits you and the sickly sweet roses implore you to choose them…
You kick off your shoes. “When you’ve lived the life I have,” you say to the bird, your eyes still darting from door to door, “you learn pretty quickly how to swim.”
Memento mori.
