"For the religious man, space is not homogeneous; he experiences interruptions, breaks in it; some parts of space are qualitatively different from others" - Eliade
Scraped out of prehistoric rubble by the cosmic snow plow of time, the rocky fields, untamed woods, and decrepit old structures of Desolate, Vermont had been deposited, finally, in vast, solitary expanse surrounded by dead Elm trees and stoic mountains.
In town, people scuttled about on daily errands, moving quickly, wrapped in multiple layers and fluffy, shiny jackets. They all walked with the same stiffness, as if bracing against something unseen, heads tipped toward the ground, shoulders slumped forward, arms and legs locked straight and rigid. All the actions of a given day seemed scripted, to have specific purpose and all, as far as William could tell, were devoid of joy. He knew his were.
On this night, a full moon peered down from above, bathing the town in a strange silver light. Icicles hung from road signs, and clumps of Elephant grass huddled in the frigid night, dark shadows graphically intensified by the strange glow.
William was home now, sitting quietly at his desk, and a bottle of hard cider rested half-empty next to his X-Files mouse pad. He had just finished his shift at Emery's Hardware, and the store had been busier than usual. Of course, busy was a relative term in Desolate, and most of William's time was spent stocking shelves and sweeping aisles. A handful of customers visited the store that night to pick up this or that or chew the fat, like old Stevie Warner, who talked about catamounts and sasquatch.
These interruptions in the repetition of his job helped break up his shift, but, still, he was more tired than usual and had looked forward to closing his eyes for good. Of course, it wasn't always that way, and he smiled as he remembered his wife. She suffered from chronic insomnia, which resulted in debilitating migraines most of the time. She was addicted to sound, as William put it. Her only relief seemed to be to fall asleep on the couch, tucked in under a nest-like pile of blankets, like a cat, with a television show softly prattling on softly in the background to keep her company (usually a documentary or some other such nonsense).
A tear crept to his eye, as the pictures flooded his memory. She had told him once that the trick was to find a show with an even sound - no screaming or loud music - that was only marginally interesting and with a predictable ending. Yeah like, "Law and Order," "CSI," or anything on the Lifetime Channel, William once quipped.
Now, he could not stand to think of television and had sold his shortly after she slipped away. He lowered his head further and closed his eyes hard, squeezing tightly, to clear his head. He was at home now, alone. It was nine in the evening, and he was exhausted. Moving was hard, even harder after his stroke. He was exhausted much of the time, only pushing through the onslaught of life because he knew she hated a quitter. She was so confident where he was certainly not. He felt another seizure coming on, a routine to which he had grown accustomed. Though the doctors had never officially called them seizures, never found their empirical proof, but it was assumed by all parties that they were yet another byproduct of the stroke.
Thinking of her now, he remember her perfectly colored, soft olive skin, her tight ringlets of chestnut colored hair, her touch, and the comfort of her grounding presence. He smiled and the thought, and he soon began to slip in and out of consciousness, without any desire to linger too long in either place. He allowed his head to slump down to his chest at first, and, then, gently onto the keyboard in front of him. The computer screen began to dance and flicker rhythmically, spinning images and letters together in a dizzying soup of light and energy. William closed his eyes a final time, just as the frenzied movements seemed to generate so much intensity that they might knock over the monitor. Then, suddenly, and for no reason at all, it all stopped. A silver, opaque background color filled the screen. Like plasma, it began to pulse and glow, and ripples formed every now and again like the kiss of an intermittent breeze on an otherwise calm lake.
It was hard to say how long this went on for, but it seemed that something on the screen was desperately attempting to break free from its 42" frame. William was witness to all of this, in his mind's eye at least, as if in a trance, not possessing the ability or desire even to blink.
"voluminous oblong thoughts, like mercury or white elephants, began to flow out of the screen and into right ear, coming out the left ear as silver droplets and landing onto Artemis' open pages... sometimes the thoughts would not fit through the small holes in William's ear, and he had to shake his head hard to one side until they dripped out... sometimes, the light hit the droplets just right, and they revealed encapsulated panoramas of glacial peaks, abominable snowmen, dragons, and mystical lands... as they swirled and churned with magic possibilities, fairy dust, and nymphs, they soaked many notebook pages... sometimes only fragments passed through William and dribbled onto Artemis. Sometimes nothing was revealed at all, as if the silver substance would become trapped inside of William ears forever...
"at one point, the energy from the screen became too much for William to take in, and pale, drawn shades began to form up from the floor like a reverse drain typhoon... shimmering, and metallic, they looked like vampires but less real and were graceful like swans, they were blue like cigarette smoke and spread about the room translucent, dancing, twisting, congealing, and then separating again... some came up to him and stared into his face, searching... he leaned back in chair... one had no face its head was white and egg-shaped but not like an egg at all, more like milk... another was black and only highlighted by a silver wash... it had his face but the face was contorted and had no eyes just deep black sockets... its mouth with no teeth opened to consume him but disintegrated at the last moment...
Then William's eyes shot open, and he closed his eyes and cried. A final, silvery droplet rolled out of his ear and onto his notepad. He was exhausted, and his body ached. He thought about going back to sleep for an instant, but instead he collected his thoughts in his notebook a final time and tried to make sense out of what had just happened. He wrote long into the night and felt good about what he had written, as if he was getting somewhere or heading in a different direction in pursuit of meaning. It is difficult to tell, you see, what he was exactly thinking or what he had experienced - because of who he was and what he saw - but at least you have an idea now.
When he did get into bed, he fell asleep instantly, feeling a glowing energy throughout his body that burned the tips of his ears and made his toes tingle with the feeling of red-hot needles. When he awoke a few hours later, he remembered very little of the previous night's events. He felt drugged and groggy, yet struggled to rise and walked over to his desk, opening Artemis. Despite his physical and mental exhaustion, he was excited to find what he might have recorded this time. To his disappointment, but not a surprise, there were some scribbles, some doodles, and a cloaked figure floating above a dark forest. Scrawled in the margins of the page were the following words:
"We forever see meaning over the next dark hill... as we approach Her, She retreats behind another... we give chase until she finally disappears into the dark forest we did not even realize was there... and then we are left grasping at something we thought we knew and now makes no sense..."
Exhausted, disappointed, and broken, William fell back into his bed, consumed by its consistent comfort and warmth. A full moon peered down from above, bathing the town in a strange silver light. Icicles hung from road signs, and clumps of Elephant grass huddled in the frigid night, dark shadows graphically intensified by the strange glow.