Viral

I can hear it again. I can hear the whispering in my ear. The devil has come to lure me away. He speaks of comfort and peace. He says there is peace in the water. There is peace in drowning. It will burn and I will choke, but there’s peace there at the bottom. It’s dark and cold, but predictable. Come into the water, the devil says. Lie beneath where there is peace away from your chaos.

Fuck off.

I tell him to go away. I tell him I don’t need him anymore, for the problem with no solution has found the answer at last. He tells me it is an illusion. He tells me it is a deception. The chaos runs deeper and that which is seen to be true is nothing more than a multi-layered elaborate chaos. It is the next step. Chaos runs deeper.

I shake it off. I look away. I do the devil’s game of selective detachment against the devil himself. It does not work. It is the devil’s game. Further his claws sink into my skin and crawl into my head. I focus across the river seeking and searching for her. She must be there. I see her. I see her there, behind a tree looking away. I see her there back from the river behind a tree looking away, but I see her. The claws loosen. I breathe.

Greeting Farewell

The cup dropped to the ground lifting the smallest of clouds of ash that drifted and separated. Her pale ashen hands were shaking. Tears of black ash slipped from her eyes. She leaned forward further and further toward the river. Her knees dropped forward and her body teetered forward as she collapsed forward into the river. The she within the river drifted forward, pushing the living she, lifting the living she, shoving the living she. She was screaming water into water. She was too heavy. No...No...No....NO. She kicked with her legs desperately trying to find the leverage, the strength, the hope of getting her out of the water. She was crying water into water. The living she fell forward into the she within and they embraced. The living she wrapped her arms and legs around the she within and hugged her tight as they both drifted downward. The light was growing dimmer as they sank further and further, deep into the river. The failing light was no more as they sank into complete darkness, and the cries of the she within had faltered and left as she embraced the living she back as they became a single she. She was lost, a drowned one, drowned in the river. She slipped and drifted along the bottom until the water became ash, and when she reached the ashfall, she fell through the ashfall, spinning and tumbling with the other lost souls. So she greeted farewell...

Fading Away

She is watching herself drink her own ashes. How could this be? She had been maintaining the living she. She made sure not to drift so far that the living she would fade. She made sure not to sink so far as to darken too much the living she. Yet, there the living she sat drinking her own ashes.

She watched as tiny dark roots slowly grew down from the eyes of the living she extending downward over her cheeks and under and down her neck. Her ashes had powdered her face with a thin layer of gray that darkened into tiny roots from the tears trickling from her eyes. The living she was fading.

The paleness of the living she had become such that her face looked like a china doll with the tiny cracked lines of age. Her small pale hands lightly shook as she lifted the cup to her lips and tipped and lowered and lifted and tipped. Such a sight was horrifying to the she within the river, not only that the living she had faded so far, but the attention it would most surely bring.

She needed to comfort the living she. She needed to break the surface of the water, breach the boundary between water and air, and touch the living she. A simple touch was sometimes all it took to refocus the living she. The touch was simple. Breaking the surface of the water was not. She could not. She would not. It was too late.

From dirt to cup, from cup to ash, from ash to mouth, it was too late. It was far too late. Had she seen another beside the river suffer the same fate, she could have done something. She would have known. She would have seen sooner. It would not have come to this...

‘Now that I've decided not to stay
I can feel me start to fade away
Everything is back where it belongs
I will be beside you before long’ nin

Ashes to Ashes

She sits by the river there, a chill air lightly lifting her long flowing golden hair. She has the stare—the stare of one who is not so completely there. She lifts a cup to her lips and sips. She lowers the cup down from lips ashen grey—ashen grey from the ashes she has been drinking. She raises her cup to her lips and sips her own ashes...

Someone walking by would most likely pass her by, as such a sight such as she would be most avoidable if possible. Such a person would pass her by possibly noticing the grim reflection thought to be upon the surface of the river and notice nothing more. They wouldn’t be likely to see, even if pausing but for a moment, that the reflection is not so much a reflection, but rather she, she within the river.

Just below the surface, she watches those who pass her by, confident they don’t see the actuality, for the reflection is far more she that sits by the river than she who lies within the murky water, skin as pale as pale can be, hair drifting, slowly sifting with the light current. She drifts within the river confident that her illusion will hold, fooling those who might linger.

She tries not to look at the other she—the other she that sits by the river drinking her own ashes. She knows the truth. She knows that the she sitting above her is the living she. She doesn’t wish to see what she has become. She doesn’t wish to feel what she has become. It would break the balance. She would break the surface of the water. She would break the surface and either be with her by the river there, or pull her into river with her. To leave the water means to suffer. To pull her in means death.

She looks away, above, beside, beyond her, and dreams a dream of being upon the dirt among the leaves under the trees within a warm comforting breeze...