Dead Air

Rocking, crippled. A mouse caught in a trap. The battle lost, I have stopped struggling. Frail silence fills the cloudy air. Dead, fragile and defeated. I am filled with the direst spirits of antipathy burning beneath my flesh; tearing at my mortality.

Some weary ghost pulls my milky eyes. The water is unfeeling. It lies on its side with a cold, glossed expression. A look of pure horror has pierced its penetrating eyes, small and beady. The lucid fire withering away into small embers like weary fairies dancing and gradually falling further away from the epicentre of life and hope. The sound of the wind pulling one thin sheet on top of another is that of paper gliding across a grave in a chill breeze.

My eyes tremble, childlike, as they are orchestrated further. They land on the mountains. So far away but here they are now, close to my fist, beating on my mind. Beating on rocks and pebbles; breaking inside comfortable coves. Shelter from the grey rain, small hopes huddle. Shelter no more, as great undying titans become the earth and rocks perilously shaking with rage, striking at my fading liberation. Furious apes bearing teeth, snarling primal hateful scorn and unloving narcissistic, black strewn crimson fury animalism.

Eyes rise once more, back into my head and I am there once more.

“I don’t want an argument, I just don’t want you to leave me,” I clamour to old words, old pathways, perilous but well-trod and always giving safe passage and promise of the way things were, away than the present terror.

“Why are you always asking me that? What is wrong with you? Can’t you just shut up and bring about your own peace?” More questions than answers, his voice rises as his tone sinks. Two pawns have been played and he always like to play more aggressive.

“I just want you to stop drinking so much! Is it too much to ask for a man that can control his own life?” I look dismally at the words that I have carelessly jostled loose. A mess of lost puzzle pieces for a methodical and cold man to piece together into-

“Control of my life? Control of my fucking life! You half witted, twisted succubus, you look down on me? You did this to me!” His anger palpable, flaring in his red cheeks. His stature grows with every hair standing on knife edges and he closes the ground between he and him.

“I may be ‘half witted’,” I shrink backward. “but at least I have the clarity to see that you have lost it…”

Red blotches scattered like chicken pox. I huddle in my blanket, cradling fur that I wish had a pulse or mothering words to love and comfort me. My ivory apple is bruised. Bruises on the fruit. I don’t want sweetness so damaged.

Looking out across the cold water, I see its cold dead arms stretched out towards me like an involuntary dream of the warm-hearted lover.

I take one step followed by a second more arduous step. The ropes of my villainous life pulling tight on my features. The ropes crave me, claim ownership over me with no regard my bleeding heart dripping poison, seeping deep inside my drenched soul through open wounds.

I stagger on in a glory-laboured death march.

My foot touches the water. Though it is cold, it feels warm. The constraints loosen their grip. I venture deeper into the wholesome embrace of a swirling dark fog, white noise and high pitch alarms singing in chorus. Surrounding me with considerate and homely-lonely relief. I am slowly engulfed with-

Peace.