Every day starts with sheathes of silver plutonium raining down from the sky. It comes down in great pillars of silence. This morning was no different. The view, as seen through slats of consciousness, showed the weary masses under something that greatly resembled a psychosis, heavy under the spell of radiation, and they sat on their plastic seats as the dew condensed around them, on their glasses lenses, on their lunchboxes, car mirrors and picture windows, on their bicycle handlebars and movie marquees. They would start this day like the others and it was left up to them to shake it clean of the menace of idleness.
I made coffee. Then I donned the pair of pants I’d been wearing for some time and galloped out into the atmospheric glow. But I stopped quickly to watch the people gazing out at the horizon as it stretched back like an unzooming camera lens. And they sprinted to catch up as it ran away, hands grabbing and swinging at that unreachable thing like so many cephalopod tentacles, out there in the electromagnetic waves.
The sky-plutonium began to fall once more onto the shoulders of the masses and it left there bejeweled bruises, glittering white tattooes on the clavicles and scapulae. And then I thought of the metaphor again. Buzzing radiation, arms like tentacles, the mob clutching at the fading horizon up until the silence crackled in the twilight.
Good thing too, because I didn’t think I could watch the unpleasant scene any longer. Beauty comes without clutching. I don’t like shimmering points of sunlight anyway, dew lying on landscapes, glittering gemstones of sunlit pustules.
Photo by Jens Kolk.
A strange and eery quality about the above piece of writing. I really enjoyed reading it. Reminds me of Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas Sagas. The mystical, strange and mysterious are woven all through the books and you just want to keep reading them, as I did with your piece.
More please.