The darkness drops again; but now I know that twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, and what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
This world is one of serene darkness.
I am nearly fooled into believing it is the end; that this is the after of all life had been, cool and noiseless, a comforting pressure all around me. I believe, when I regain consciousness, that death is not unkind—and my eternity could remain in this secluded alcove of time, in this comforting bed of forever. There are no thoughts here; no feelings. There is only darkness and pressure.
This epilogue cannot remain so quiet, so still, so comfortable.
There is always an undercurrent to life; the threads beneath the turbulent surface of what could have been and what should have been, versos what is. The things that were said or done or acted upon that prevented one result; or cemented another.
These threads are woven into lies and secrets, promises and happenstance. Sometimes, they are woven into fate. More often, the knots are somehow self-made—they are what occur when one lives too long in their own intentions and recognizes at the end, their suffering had been at the fault of their own hubris.
I realize this when I open my eyes.
Above me, sunlight pierces the surface of the sea. The light descends in a prism; refracted; glancing. I could still believe this was death if it were not for the way that the light moves, undulating with the movements of the water it pierces.
The silence is the water. My lungs are full of it. But there is no burning, no breathlessness; I inhale and feel the stretch of flesh over my ribs, the expansion of water pulled into my lungs, and somehow, somehow, it feels natural if not for the sharp stinging at my throat.
I am afraid.
It is a different kind of fear than I have ever felt before. It strikes me to the core. My mind is clouded with it; and might have remained that way, if not for the hunger that spears me next.
It is like a hunger I have known before.
It is as if it encompasses all of me, all of what I am, as if the “I” is separated into need.
I might have groaned—I don’t know. But when I shake my head in anguish, ripping open a line of scabs down my throat, the smell of my own blood in the water makes me salivate.
I might have screamed—I don’t know. But when my ears pop and I hear the ocean singing, it doesn’t seem to matter if I made a sound or not.
I do not know how much time passes before she returns to me. I rest, still, at the bottom of the sea where I first sunk; my wounds are nursed by the salt-sea and my turning. Yet, I am nothing but pain and hunger. I am not rational enough to understand this, however; what I understand is the hunger within me and the disjointed concept of what I have become.
When she descends from that prism of light, angelic with her grace and beauty, it is not to find me dead.
It is to find me ravenous. I am still and crouched; a coiling and uncoiling of powerful new muscles; of a hunger that she knows intimately. My eyes are closed. My death is a feigned (and this, later, I might laugh bitterly at—I, too, am surprised).
But for now I am not me. No. I am need, kept in a primordial, instinctual body. No. I am hunger, and angst, and the opening of an abyss.
When she is near enough for me to hear the way her body moves the water—a shushing, a shushing—my eyes reopen (pupils blown wide, irises vividly bright) and I lash out with teeth grown as wicked and sharp as a shark’s.
It is time for me to meet my maker.
I am nearly fooled into believing it is the end; that this is the after of all life had been, cool and noiseless, a comforting pressure all around me. I believe, when I regain consciousness, that death is not unkind—and my eternity could remain in this secluded alcove of time, in this comforting bed of forever. There are no thoughts here; no feelings. There is only darkness and pressure.
This epilogue cannot remain so quiet, so still, so comfortable.
There is always an undercurrent to life; the threads beneath the turbulent surface of what could have been and what should have been, versos what is. The things that were said or done or acted upon that prevented one result; or cemented another.
These threads are woven into lies and secrets, promises and happenstance. Sometimes, they are woven into fate. More often, the knots are somehow self-made—they are what occur when one lives too long in their own intentions and recognizes at the end, their suffering had been at the fault of their own hubris.
I realize this when I open my eyes.
Above me, sunlight pierces the surface of the sea. The light descends in a prism; refracted; glancing. I could still believe this was death if it were not for the way that the light moves, undulating with the movements of the water it pierces.
The silence is the water. My lungs are full of it. But there is no burning, no breathlessness; I inhale and feel the stretch of flesh over my ribs, the expansion of water pulled into my lungs, and somehow, somehow, it feels natural if not for the sharp stinging at my throat.
I am afraid.
It is a different kind of fear than I have ever felt before. It strikes me to the core. My mind is clouded with it; and might have remained that way, if not for the hunger that spears me next.
It is like a hunger I have known before.
It is as if it encompasses all of me, all of what I am, as if the “I” is separated into need.
I might have groaned—I don’t know. But when I shake my head in anguish, ripping open a line of scabs down my throat, the smell of my own blood in the water makes me salivate.
I might have screamed—I don’t know. But when my ears pop and I hear the ocean singing, it doesn’t seem to matter if I made a sound or not.
I do not know how much time passes before she returns to me. I rest, still, at the bottom of the sea where I first sunk; my wounds are nursed by the salt-sea and my turning. Yet, I am nothing but pain and hunger. I am not rational enough to understand this, however; what I understand is the hunger within me and the disjointed concept of what I have become.
When she descends from that prism of light, angelic with her grace and beauty, it is not to find me dead.
It is to find me ravenous. I am still and crouched; a coiling and uncoiling of powerful new muscles; of a hunger that she knows intimately. My eyes are closed. My death is a feigned (and this, later, I might laugh bitterly at—I, too, am surprised).
But for now I am not me. No. I am need, kept in a primordial, instinctual body. No. I am hunger, and angst, and the opening of an abyss.
When she is near enough for me to hear the way her body moves the water—a shushing, a shushing—my eyes reopen (pupils blown wide, irises vividly bright) and I lash out with teeth grown as wicked and sharp as a shark’s.
It is time for me to meet my maker.
