Quoted By:
You meant to read it aloud, but the words scald you, and you let them tumble, hot embers, from your mouth. Owwh! you say, Dahmmit! and watch those tumble too, trailing soot. Great. At no point have you managed to make any sound whatsoever. This isn't especially funny, but it has the shape of a joke, and you're desperate for relief; you titter nervously, hee-hee-hee, and those fly out from you like confetti. Hee-hee-hee-hee, hee-hee-hee-hee, hee-hee-hyurk— that is smoke wisping from your throat, yes, and that is the tinder-pile of hee-hees catching fire, and that is your sternum contracting violently, and that is your ribcage silhouetting the light. And that, below you, is the sliver of yellow grinding open; way, way, way, way open, so there's no more red at all. A continent of yellow, plus a glossy sliver of black.
An eyeball. This would be more of a revelation if you weren't twisting yourself around on the rope, wracked with contractions, burning to death, choking and spitting and sending choking-and-spitting noises raining down like gravel. You'd like to go back to your old opinion on the sun, actually! It sucks, and you hate it, and you—
—hack up a blinding fist-sized thing, and scrabble to catch and cup it in your hands—
—notice, for a fraction, the blackness widening, the words still hanging in place—
—are
<span class="mu-s"><span class="mu-r">SEEN
THROUGH.</span></span> Like you swallowed a hand grenade. The sun floats where you left it, rotating gently, as you're sorted and sifted in its orbit. Your bones are lined up by length; your teeth by use; your veins and arteries are bundled together, but your venom ducts are, with interest, laid flat and dissected. All of this crowds the edges. In the center is laid the rest of you: your wants, your fears, your dreams, your names, your vocabulary and dexterity and honesty and home address, your past and present and maze of futures, your heart. The sun.
You feel this as a vacuousness, primarily, and a dull ache secondarily. Later you're likely to have opinions. Many opinions. You're unlikely to look back on this with any fondness, really. But for now you are anesthetized and sprawling, a catalog of yourself, from a certain perspective— okay, a very certain perspective— beautiful. Or at least tidy.
>[END THREAD.]
Thanks for reading! Full spiel tomorrow. Also, before anybody gets tetchy: it's just a cliffhanger. You're not doomed (necessarily) (yet).
