Monday, 27 January 2014

Lime...Life Burns (A Short Story)

There is a force that I can’t name, depriving me the air. All I’m sure of is that it squeezes me so tight; I’m strangled, I’m unable to breathe. It’s like a molted stone has coated my heart then got subjected to liquid nitrogen, crystalizing it. It’s unable to beat; still and dead. My heart is dead and burning; it’s white as pure lime in water.

There is no blood pumping but I’m moving though. I can control my body and my gestures but there is no blood flowing in my streams. I try to hurt my fingers to see if there is blood running in my veins but there isn’t any. There is no flesh that I can cut through; my body is like a moving statue made of stone. The only way to see what’s within me is to smash me against sharp rocks and I’m not even sure if I’d be cracked open or the rocks would. It’s like I got carved in the mountains then brought accidently to life through a thunder storm that struck me. It feels that there were no prior intentions to my unintended existence.

I wander in the place; it seems familiar. I’ve had visions of this place ever since I can remember. I’ve always been part of it that was suddenly torn out. I live here, or I think I do, I don’t know. I have no memory of anything. I have no feelings toward anything. I don’t know the name of the place I am at. I don’t know what I am or what the things that are surrounding me. I look at my hands and I look like me, the thing I’ve always known I am; I’m wood. I’ve never walked or talked before. I was always standing in my place, motionless but so much alive. I never walked around the place before, but I’m sure it was never this ugly. I can’t recall seeing these tombstones here, as old as time. I can’t recall any of this; the river, the dead daffodils, the red moon, the castle that is covered with spikes, none of it. I can’t recall this abhorring sight.

I used to be a motionless tree but now I’m moving. Maybe that’s what happened with those things, maybe they too had a sudden moment of movement?! But if they had, were they just as confused as I am?! But I’m not a tree anymore; I have no roots, I have no branches, I have no bird nests nor do I have my leaves and fruits. Have I gone barren, or have I died and that’s what is left of me! I have no clue what is that for I’m in or what are those things and why have they changed. Or maybe they never changed, I have no concrete memory of anything, I know that I was a tree but now I’m not and I don’t know what I am so how can I know what they are or were. There is just this realm of uncertainty. It feels like walking on water. Maybe I was curved or drawn onto something, or maybe I was a part of something else that I don’t know. All I can remember is that I am brown, I’ve always been.

I saw this flash last night, bright and stinging. It was like a burning rage falling from the blue roof hanging above my head. It seemed like the moon was crying, no wonder, I’m wet. It was hurt, or maybe confused just as I am now. I can remember seeing this flash coming towards me. It was a tremendous, blinding light targeting me in the middle, somewhere here beneath my head. I can remember feeling a burn, an enormous pain, a choke and a squeeze and then I fell to the ground unconscious. That’s all that I can remember. Since it struck me, there must be a scar somewhere here; it looks like it hit my heart.

A moment of epiphany, a pause, a flash back like a video rewinding, it’s all here in my head now; all my memories. I was a part of the tree; I was the tree. I’m a girl that was once carved in this wood, now alive, by the hands of a little girl, a girl that always had this calmness in her eyes; a calm spirit that can be mistaken with sadness. No wonder she was calm, just like her name; Serene. She was the graceful spirit giving life to us; her woods. One day she stopped visiting, it’s the moment in which time has stopped. I used to see the world in her eyes but with her gone, there was no world to be seen. She died so young that they dug her grave beside the running river, watering the daffodils that died before their time, just as she did. She was the breath of life given to us, the motionless nature, unsympathetic to her pains. That explains it all. That’s why I was choking, having a stone coated heart. That’s why I’m bloodless and beat-less; I have no heart. No wonder it was still and dead, burning like lime in water. The lightning struck the heart that Serene drew for me, it is not a real one but it feels the pain nonetheless. Like a combination of lime and water, this burn I feel in my shape is the burn she felt and we were unsympathetic to. The moon was angry that it cried and struck me dead to only come to life. Just like lime gains life as it touches water, life burns. It only makes sense now, you have to die in order to come to life, the disdainful existence of humanity and nature alike. 



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