Anonyma by Farah Rose Smith

Author:Farah Rose Smith [Smith, Farah Rose]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780359239481
Published: 2019-01-24T05:00:00+00:00

XII.

Pink dust looms on high over the treetops. Lie down here, the wind whispers. Sleep. Sleep! Lie down here, be lulled by the leaves. Lulled deeply into sleep, pleasant sleep! But what do they want of me? Why did I go in? I have only the knowledge of partial death, tied to the sad living world by spirit threads I cannot cut.

How I have come to be here—beneath branches of lavender, roots of gold, I have no recollection. Granite eyes extend to the lord’s constellation. Glorious vanity, shuddering on moist shoulders in the last known place before the woods. I mark the mangled mess of dreams and wonder.

I take pleasure in absurd insomnia, as one takes pleasure in a fine, weightless disgrace. Incapable of the fullness of life, I am only a witness to the artifice of the woods. The riverbed breathes. Blue lightning breaks the sky in pieces. Strange slurring words of untraceable language travel from the deepest reaches of the land… and human skin in piles, feast—bait for something lurking beyond my senses.

I lower my head to the emptiness of my convulsions and think, “What do I fear?” Floundering through the brush, slicing lengths of flesh- as violent and as wistful as in life. The rigid air clouds over, alien and diseased, in a matter of moments. Panic-stricken, I amble through thick, metallic mud as blackness spreads over the electric sky. Plunging into the protection of the muck as the strikes shake the treetops, I taste the insidious liquids of the forest. Alien scents shock the senses. As I emerge from the mess, I notice countless scrapes from submerged tree roots. My belly bleeds the dark wisdom of the woods.

Nicholas is out there, somewhere—spirit mandibles at the intersection of horizon and hell. Viewing restraint as silk, black hair as velvet, brilliance as precipitation. I wonder if he has taken me from the bath of blood. If he has even found my body shriveling there—the quiet aftermath. The sky bleeds its silver magic, hardening men. Horrifying me. I allow myself to be seen by this unsacred darkness, through the frigid air and firmament. I feel a kick. I am being twinned in this fragility, as hollow as the deepest mold of the earth.

The mud fades from the deep stink of metallic fumes to a frothy pink scum. There I find other men, other women—bodies soaked and sunken, in and out, tear-salted eyes glued open. My stomach, scabbed and bruised, retracts at the sounds of death emitting from their mouths.

Here drown the first subjects I will witness. My mind holds a glittering memorial to all once seen and felt outside of the woods. On approach, thirst becomes insatiable, but I know this: drink from the stream, and I will lose my mind in the erotic anguish of these vanquished spirits, soaked through with the dark dreams of deceit. Twilight urges me toward dread. Towards faintness of will. I walk forward to mourn the mob of bodies in the froth, who, without sight or hearing, will not know me.

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