Fiction

I'm writing stuff for my Advanced Fiction Literary Topics class. A lot of it is single page stuff, just responding to a prompt, but occasionally one of them will grow out of control and so I let it go. I'll put a few here.

So it doesn’t really matter where it is. Lets say it’s in Mexico. Or Tibet. The important part is, people haven’t been here before. So you walk into this place…how about a cavern? Yeah, that sounds great. A cavern. Only, it was hard to get to. It wasn’t like a tourist cave, where the floodlights bolted to the dejected stone constantly pour light like sand into the cavern’s eye. It’s a hidden cave, a pocket of air tucked away from moth and rust. A lonely cave, and an old cave. This place has history, but not the history that culture births – it has the history that comes from being alone for a very, very long time. That type of history could never be known to a human, trapped in a time-bound sack of fat and flesh. That’s why you walk in and you feel your breath stolen from you, as if the room inhaled, craving the new oxygen you brought to it. Because this place is very old.

So you are alone on this discovery. Or you’re with one other person. Once again, it doesn’t matter – BUT – your friend/lover/hired hand is SILENT. There are no words in ancient. You cannot begin to mouth and sound this old magic, so fierce is its prehistoric tension. You are a vapor here. You are not real, because the hours and days you spend trying to osmose this ancient are pathetic, infinitesimal, microscopic to this place. You will come and go and never be remembered. You are nothing.

The high ceiling of the cave is a deep blue, like old glacier ice, but you cannot see this, because there is no light outside of your lantern. The auditorium of stalagmites is vast and immeasurable, not because of its size but because of your empirical shortcomings. This place is more than you. You are nothing. You are nothing.

You arrived here from water. Your scuba suit lies prostrate at the shore of the black-green pool. Barefoot, you stumble away from it, your arrival forgotten. That’s not all you have forgotten; you don’t remember who you are, or where you are. Are you in Mexico or Tibet? When did you get here? But you wonder only briefly because the echo of your thoughts begins to ricochet off the cavern’s walls. It is far too loud. You are disrespect. You need to be silent.

That divine moment when your hand reached the cavern wall, you fell to your knees, cutting on old mineral and mixed with cave water. Your blood is the biggest disrespect you bring, because it does not belong here. Silently, tearlessly, you weep in shame, for neither you nor any man is worthy to see the face of god. For moments or days you might cry, because time was left imprisoned in the oxygen gauge of your scuba tank. It is years until you begin to think.

This place has no life, you think. I cannot stay. You rise to your feet, your joints ancient and arthritic from your years. I cannot blaspheme this holy ground with blood anymore, you think. It is true, too: with you, you bring life, and with life you bring time and with time you bring death and death has no place here, and you know that, you damned fool. So out you go.

You retreat to the black-green pool, to your scuba tank and your bottled time, carefully smoothing over the footprints your wet flesh left. You turn off the lantern and sit. For a moment, you are mindless. You allow yourself this indulgence; there is no time, and so you are god, your hands and feet the size of kingdoms and coffee beans. And then, you accept the giftcurse of humanity and fall back into the black-green pool again.