Wednesday, April 15, 2009

And Then He Awoke : Part 2

Second story in this collection. I've labeled them the true stories of fictional events. This particular story is different because it seemed in my sleeping imagination to be in a series of short acts each dedicated to a particular color. The players in the story are only marginally aware of the color of the act, and they themselves behave as though the pervading color was normal, as though they were used to the entire universe commenting upon their lives.

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- 2 -

The World is: Green.

He watched her with admiration. The World seemed to flow around her feet. For her, with her, through her, and she seemed only semi-conscious of her effect upon it. She smiles.

The grass grew for her pleasure, he was sure of it. The birds flew and lit upon her fingers, simply because they knew she would enjoy it.

He was deeply in love - hopelessly adrift in the river that is her beauty. He felt himself moving in the general direction of the rest of the world: following her and doing things simply to hear her laugh and see her smile.

The World is: Blue.

They are in a car. She is driving and smiling and laughing and for some inexplicable reason he is in the seat behind her. They are on an off-ramp or a roundabout or some long curve. She is taking it fast. Very fast, and laughing as she does so. He is in the seat behind her. He can feel the mysterious forces of the speed and the curve pushing - pressing - his body against his door. He can feel his facial muscles ripple with the flow and a sudden tremor in his heart. She laughs.

The World is: Red.

Autumn Red: warm and peaceful.

She has brought him to her home, and, seeing it for the first time, his admiration and love for her only grew. It had no roof or walls beyond the leafy canopy and branches and trunks of oak and fir. Fallen leaves and grass served as the most costly of persian carpets.

But, beyond the natural beauty of her home, what interested and delighted him the most were the things she had brought here to decorate it. The bed, although man-wrought, seemed almost to grow out of the ground. The silken panels above it, which drifted in the wind, must have been woven by fairy hands. Animals from the forest were here and shells from the distant sea. Glass orbs and fanciful puzzles lay scattered across bookshelves, themselves a work of art. Everywhere the eye rested, there rested also another trinket or toy to gather your interest until your eye found the next shiny bauble.

He notices now that she is watching him with delight in the delight she is giving him. He attempts smile, but suddenly finds his expression unresponsive to his will.

The red has deepened without his noticing and saturates everything like a fog. Almost dripping.

His heart, swelled with joy, breaks. With the last of himself he realizes he is becoming, has become, a hatbox. She stoops, and lifting, places him delicately, lovingly, in her collection, between a perfume bottle and coatrack.

And she laughs.

Then he awoke.

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