Categories > Original > Sci-Fi
Prologue to my story. I was feeling abstract while writing this. Confusion abounds, but maybe that is the intention, dears.
--
His eyes are angry things, black and restless in the pale light. They twist about the room, sifting along the walls. Nothing moves and he sighs in resignation.
The door creaks open softly. “You called, brother?” comes a girl’s timid voice. She turns her face, calm quiet face, to his raging features. Words die like tired moths and swallows on her tongue.
He looks at her, or through her as she likes to think, seeing not who she is, but where what when she is. She cannot read the stories in his eyes. He has seen her birth and death a million times and knows outside the city crumbles a little more.
“Yes. I called, as always, I call.” The old man-child-brother splays his hands in fascination. “You would not believe what I have seen, my dear sister.” Giggling, he cradles his chin on cupped palms. “I saw the world die, I saw it burn and writhe and eat itself. The sky was brilliant. All the stars exploded.”
The girl casts down her visage. “I know you saw it. You told me yesterday, and the day before, and all this week actually.” Silently she moves to the sink and fills a paper cup.
He ponders that carefully. “I suppose I have said it before. Yes. But I do not know, is it the past or is it the future? Or is it now, is the universe caving in as we speak?” He chuckles and does not expect an answer from the sister passing him water and his pills. “You are a quiet sister. I have had many and none talked more than you.”
She tiredly smiles and pats him on the cheek. “You make no sense, you know, and yet you spill the secrets of the world to strangers. When was the last time you looked out the window?”
Diligently he swallows the medication, and he feels his stomach shrivel. “I am the window, I am outside the window, but really I am the space between the panes. Did you know, the world is a piece of glass. Yes, a window pane, a refraction of light against hardened sand. That is why we are so breakable.”
His black eyes begin to weep tears the color of coagulated blood, and he grins at her as she makes herself turn away. “I think I knew you once. Before the world shattered. We’ll all be broken splinters of glass in a few moments, anyway. Goodbye, goodbye, and hello. There is another Prophet being born and raised and beaten by the streets. He will destroy me, I hope. A new Prophet.”
“What?” She pauses at the threshold of the sagging white room, her voice a sick whisper. “A new Prophet? Where? How?” But he already heard her ten minutes ago and will not answer. Instead he twists and shrinks and fills up the moon, eclipses for eyes blank and bleeding.
“The Tower is falling,” he sings. “The middle is cracked and the top is peeling and there is no bottom. The Prophet is living, the Prophet is dying, the Tower cracks and destroys all and the Prophet laughs. The Prophet is eternal. The Prophet is the Tower, isn’t that right?” He murmurs the last question and the cosmos grin back at him. “I am the end of the circle, my sister, the point where the curve connects. When I die time will skip the hole I fall into. In the lapse, the world will break apart. The Tower is shaking, can you feel it?”
“The Tower cannot fall,” she whispers. The sister is shaking, herself. “Prophet or not, you are lying. The Tower will never fall.”
She drags her body through the door and is on the stairs when she hears her brother’s voice, ruined and infinite from his cell. “It did before. Once. Before time started.”
He closes his eyes and sees white stone and sewers and a child with a bitter face. “I stared Death in the face and Life stabbed me in the back,” he mutters to no one in particular.
The sky freezes and the sun giggles and space twists around his head. He opens his eyes and sleeps.
--
His eyes are angry things, black and restless in the pale light. They twist about the room, sifting along the walls. Nothing moves and he sighs in resignation.
The door creaks open softly. “You called, brother?” comes a girl’s timid voice. She turns her face, calm quiet face, to his raging features. Words die like tired moths and swallows on her tongue.
He looks at her, or through her as she likes to think, seeing not who she is, but where what when she is. She cannot read the stories in his eyes. He has seen her birth and death a million times and knows outside the city crumbles a little more.
“Yes. I called, as always, I call.” The old man-child-brother splays his hands in fascination. “You would not believe what I have seen, my dear sister.” Giggling, he cradles his chin on cupped palms. “I saw the world die, I saw it burn and writhe and eat itself. The sky was brilliant. All the stars exploded.”
The girl casts down her visage. “I know you saw it. You told me yesterday, and the day before, and all this week actually.” Silently she moves to the sink and fills a paper cup.
He ponders that carefully. “I suppose I have said it before. Yes. But I do not know, is it the past or is it the future? Or is it now, is the universe caving in as we speak?” He chuckles and does not expect an answer from the sister passing him water and his pills. “You are a quiet sister. I have had many and none talked more than you.”
She tiredly smiles and pats him on the cheek. “You make no sense, you know, and yet you spill the secrets of the world to strangers. When was the last time you looked out the window?”
Diligently he swallows the medication, and he feels his stomach shrivel. “I am the window, I am outside the window, but really I am the space between the panes. Did you know, the world is a piece of glass. Yes, a window pane, a refraction of light against hardened sand. That is why we are so breakable.”
His black eyes begin to weep tears the color of coagulated blood, and he grins at her as she makes herself turn away. “I think I knew you once. Before the world shattered. We’ll all be broken splinters of glass in a few moments, anyway. Goodbye, goodbye, and hello. There is another Prophet being born and raised and beaten by the streets. He will destroy me, I hope. A new Prophet.”
“What?” She pauses at the threshold of the sagging white room, her voice a sick whisper. “A new Prophet? Where? How?” But he already heard her ten minutes ago and will not answer. Instead he twists and shrinks and fills up the moon, eclipses for eyes blank and bleeding.
“The Tower is falling,” he sings. “The middle is cracked and the top is peeling and there is no bottom. The Prophet is living, the Prophet is dying, the Tower cracks and destroys all and the Prophet laughs. The Prophet is eternal. The Prophet is the Tower, isn’t that right?” He murmurs the last question and the cosmos grin back at him. “I am the end of the circle, my sister, the point where the curve connects. When I die time will skip the hole I fall into. In the lapse, the world will break apart. The Tower is shaking, can you feel it?”
“The Tower cannot fall,” she whispers. The sister is shaking, herself. “Prophet or not, you are lying. The Tower will never fall.”
She drags her body through the door and is on the stairs when she hears her brother’s voice, ruined and infinite from his cell. “It did before. Once. Before time started.”
He closes his eyes and sees white stone and sewers and a child with a bitter face. “I stared Death in the face and Life stabbed me in the back,” he mutters to no one in particular.
The sky freezes and the sun giggles and space twists around his head. He opens his eyes and sleeps.
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