This body cannot last for long.
And if I ever need a reminder I need only look at the corpse of the moon,
burnt out with greed. But I don’t stare at its ghost light so much anymore; I
find myself drawn to the ocean.
The carnival rages around me. I push my way through the clamour of the
steel bands, the ribbons and streamers clutching at this face. I am surrounded
by flesh. I breathe deep of their sweat, listening to the demonic maracas of
their bones shaking beneath their garish costumes. I wander through the chaotic
flashes of a nightmare in a costume of my own.
And everywhere the colours; swirls of orange and blue and the red of my
dreams. Colours so bright, shouting, slicing into one another, sending up
coruscating shards that hang like stars in the night’s black maw.
I have to find him soon.
The swarm of people itches as it jostles. I could cut a swathe in the
blink of an eye if I wished, but I keep these eyes lowered. I don’t let them
see these eyes.
When the streets are empty I miss them, the echo of their footsteps
dripping like patient water. I hear their laughter in the bowels of the rock.
It gives me something to think about when I’m awake, and I’ve been awake for
such a long time now. I never speak to them, although I’ve often wanted to. My
language goes beyond time. They would not understand. I’d like to think when
this is over, they will not understand.
I run through the procession, pass a dragon float, as paranoia circles my
mind searching for a weak spot. What if he is not there? But already I
hear his song, a lullaby to calm these nerves. I hear it over the incessant
drums that urge this heart to gallop. I fall to these knees, gasping, at the
dock; the sea mocks the tiny storm on shore. The water, thick and dark, pulls
the night over it as if to warm itself. I see myself rippling on its surface
but I quickly look away. I can’t bear it. It’s the eyes; I never get the eyes
right.
Move. I love this freedom to move, to cut the air, to have a destination
instead of being one. I remember how much I used to love this; this fluid rush,
this novel haste. I feel dizzy as I move, everything is a blur. To live at this
pace is so tempting.
Somewhere the power lines are down. I hear them snoring on this skin,
feel it crackle with conversation. I can smell their danger and it makes me
feel alive, a rush that is part joy, part madness, the way it should be. The
way it used to be.
‘I felt it before I ever knew you,’ I tell the water. I know he is out
there listening. I feel his presence of absence like a hole in the night.
And there, drifting idly on the gentle wave of his song, is his
ramshackle boat. I wait a lifetime for it to draw near, but what is another
lifetime to me after all. I climb aboard, knock on the cabin door. I know he
senses me, is laughing at my politeness even now.
‘Come in.’ His voice as playful as I remember. He is sitting at a table,
the light lapping at his ebony skin as vainly as the water laps his crusty
boat; his obsidian flesh eats the shadows, permits no light to touch it and
live. He regards me awhile, as if he is unsure why I’m here, as if he doesn’t
know what I crave. It has become a ritual between us. He smiles at me, as bald
as the moon he murdered.
‘You look haggard my friend,’ he says. ‘How long has it been?’
I shrug. ‘Eighty years or so.’ It’s a guess; I’ve lost all track of time
since last we met.
He laughs at my attempt at accuracy. ‘You swore last time, never again.’
Why must we play this game? ‘You knew I was lying.’ The dark man could always
read my thoughts.
He rocks his head back and forth, keeping rhythm with the tide. His eyes,
sometimes white, sometimes yellow, flicker with the heat of an internal fire. ‘They
always come back to me,’ he says. ‘When the blood runs thin and the heart grows
cold, I sing to them and they come. They clamber aboard my little boat,
wherever I may be docked, for one last time. Always one last time. But still
they come back to me and they always look like you. Hungry.’
‘It’s the best body I could get at short notice.’
I’m wearing a homeless man, near death. I can never bear to house myself
within one with a future; it feels like such a waste, and besides, there is
more room in the old; vast derelict mansions, stretched by the knowledge and
experience that has blown through them leaving the accumulated dust of memory.
Youth is too constricting and too hard to steer.
‘Ah my friend, you forget, I see you as you really are.’ He is holding the
bottle.
‘Darkling Sleepmud,’ I whisper. I am almost weeping as I see it
undulating, hissing inside its glass prison.
‘Do you think you make it safer by calling it by that childish name?’ he
asks, but his voice is kind and soothing, a sonorous rumble that promises rest.
I want to strike him, snatch the bottle; but this body is already
crumbling. This voice stumbles with emotion, with obscenities that burn. I
swallow them; I have to play his game.
‘You never told me its real name.’
‘You know its name.’ He smiles, his teeth as jagged as the rocks
on the harbour wall. He likes to act the enigmatic stranger, as if I do not
know him. I have known him from the depths of time; it was his song that first
awoke me.
‘I’m afraid the price has risen since our last transaction.’
‘Anything, ‘ I say. ‘I’ll give you anything.’
He laughs, drowning out the roar of the drums on the shore. ‘Four hundred
and sixty three.’
I think about the teeming masses dancing on the streets. I can afford
this.
‘Soon you’ll be looking more,’ he says. ‘Stronger, longer.’
But I can only think of now. He hands me the bottle; it burns and
sparkles in this hand. I feel this skeleton shudder under the force of my
desire. But I hang on, just a moment longer.
‘So what is it?’ I ask. He looks at me quizzically, but this time it is
no act. ‘Its real name?’
He grins, as if I’ve bought his disdain as well. ‘Peace. It’s an
expensive luxury in these dark times.’
I down the bottle’s contents, feel its blessed fire course through me as
flesh and bone explode, and I float away amongst the fireworks back to the
land, and into the land, to sleep once more and dream. And in my dream I raise
great buildings upon myself, sprout forth roads and trees and lakes. All manner
of clever diversions for my children; and my children call me CITY.
Once I was able to sleep. The cars running through my veins, the bustle
of the streetwalkers and traders, would lull me deep into the soil. But now my
veins are congested and the traffic crawls over me like carrion ants. I bathe
in the acrid smoke I cough into the chemical sky. Industry pierces my hide,
becomes my armour and my downfall. I choke on my own breath. They say the city
never sleeps, but sometimes I do; permanent reality can drive you insane.
Once, before I was shorn and concreted over, I was happy; happy in my
innocence. But the long, long years exact a heavy toll. It is hard to fight
with nothing in your belly, and I am a glutton for what will destroy me.
There is only one thing that can smother this pain, that can help me
sleep for a while. If you follow the treeless track marks they will lead you to
the sea, and there, like a distant siren, you can hear the dark man’s song.
I met him when I walked the earth. He told me of my family, grown so
large, and of the price they paid for their strength. My brothers in the east,
so restless they pay their debts to him in daily instalments; debts they’ve
been paying for thousands of years and will never clear.
And he showed me my hunger.
My hunger infects my children too; drives them to carnage and bloodshed
in the name of their gods; howling to the sky for mercy. But my sister Sky is
empty, a vacuous beauty borrowed from the sea she gazes on, the sea he crosses,
carrying it to me.
Peace.
His voice follows me down into the earth; four hundred and sixty three.
I want to sleep, rest in granite reverie, sink into molten slumber. But he will
sing to me if I do not pay, sing a song that that will split me asunder, uproot
my avenues and buckle my streets. I have heard tremors throughout the world;
rumours of bad debts and fault lines.
Once I asked him his name. He told me he was born before form sculpted
the void, when darkness was mother of the deep. He said his name was
conscience.
I feel my children dance upon me as the carnival blazes on. It is all
just a carnival, this brief mess of noise and pain they call their lives. What
do they know of time; what do they know of merciless unforgiving eons. They
have no conception of eternity or its cost. Their span is but the lapping of a
wave, the dropping of a leaf on my gentle sigh. Their kingdoms rise and fall in
the time I take to smooth a stone, raise a hill and cry a river. But still, I
love them.
If they knew…
But I don’t want them to understand.
I watch the sky and wait. A steel bird passes high above me catching my
attention. I pluck it down with a thought, send it plummeting onto my concrete
chest, onto my dancing children. I take care to kill four hundred and sixty
three, and four hundred and sixty three exactly.
This proves that even at the zenith of my bliss I am in control. I am not
a junkie. I am merely weary. There are prices all cities must pay for piece of
mind.
