This piece came to me in a series of images. Fun and challenging to write. It resisted me every time I went back to revise or edit, so here it is. Bring some water, it’s chewy!
Upon desiccated earth, a ramshackle stage supplicated earnest performance for the assembled royalty. Grand thrones stood in arrogant vigil at the periphery, regal and self-righteous, composed despite their near contempt for the humble stage beneath. An actor danced in the dim ambiance, culled from the spaces between stygian terror and the ambiguous mediocrities of existence. Its effigy a desperate prisoner, trapped within the reflection of the highly polished golden monuments. Distant mausoleums and tombstones flagrant on the horizon, epitaphs reciting the same obituary.
Oblivion.
One silhouette lazed through existence as a wistful mote of portent and opportunity. Its blurred aura possessed of a spectral afterglow, belying the limitless creation languishing deep within a sepulcher of ignorance. An effervescence of illumination diffused outwards, demarcating the fractures tracing tenebrous flesh. The metallic clacking of punched time clocks, and nominal cries of children echoed in this liminal space, reverberating across the veil through captured visions of a mundane life.
Authority sufficient to rend fortified illusion cannot arrive adorned in a gossamer shroud of meekness, or the well-intentioned seduction of non-confrontation. The toll of the threshold mandates an absolute certainty. The stuttering start may be tolerated, as long as beneath the intimidation, an aquifer of fire churns deep within the primus of self.
A purposeful grimace.
A breath held a moment longer.
A single tentative step.
The foreboding span of the bridge stretched across the great chasm, with its fractured slats and frayed rope guides like a ragged scar. Its length nebulous, seeming to simultaneously contract and stretch further as it swayed threateningly above the maelstrom. Lashed by gales that carried slivers of ash and the few remnants of hope that manifested as brilliant shards of starlight. At the precipice the lone shadow stood, a golden radiance shone from its broken skin, pulsing almost timidly before the magnitude of the task before it.
Purpose and release coalesced to become dangerous alchemy in the presence of momentum. Though the wan scaffolding of the bridge shuddered treacherously, the first foot placed with intent brought a moment of welcomed sanguinity. Before the witness of countless failed incarnations, long ripped apart by the tempest below, slow steps gave way to purposeful strides. The tremors of the traverse began to fade into irrelevance as the figure progressed. Nightmares wearing the garb of memory attempted to interrupt its journey. Wielding poisons of unworthiness, wings bladed with existential doubt and wickedly hooked uncertainty. Denizens of the chasm whose appetites could only be quenched by the ruin of a future dismantled.
True courage only manifests during tribulation, when both arch and buttress are torn away. Above the wrath of the tempest, the specter endured the onslaught on the bridge. Visible only in stolen glimpses amidst the orgy of envious blackened wings, a tortured yellow radiance. Irregular fractions of dark flesh were viciously wrenched off the specter’s body. Each terrific wound giving permission for more of the brilliance underneath to shine through. A golden brilliance that had distilled into an exquisite platinum glare that no longer accepted compromise.
What erupted from the dark mass of violence, was no longer possessed of the flesh that had carried the burden of generations within its matrices. Instead a joyous luminosity emerged from the depths with a spectacular incandescence that flung charred fragments of the enemy into the hellscape. No longer just a shadowed patchwork of anxious fragmented light, scintillating filaments unfurled behind the figure. Seemingly gifted wings of its own through its triumphant emancipation. In its wake, wretched wooden slats splintered, rope guardrails seemed to dissolve, and the threads of reality itself appeared to reorganize into patterns alien to this world.
There had never been a new day here. So when dawn arrived, an irreconcilable confusion spread across all of creation. Except for the glowing form that stood by the precipice of the chasm. Its light oscillated in the steady rhythm of an unconcerned heartbeat as it surveyed the world before it. Its eyes full of a pacificity it had never known possible. Whatever reward the bridge had proffered had been casually dismissed, deemed as both too small and too unnecessary. It figured that going forward, it would be the judge of what its own happiness would look like.
Never again would the fear of becoming stand against the demand of what must now be.
-KC