Mannequin: Chapter 1.1 – “Ceiling”

It all started on the day I died.

I woke up that morning to the wail of sirens, as I had for the last six months.  Lee Barker Memorial, the oldest functioning hospital in the state, spanned three city blocks and serviced tens of thousands of patients annually within its weathered granite walls.  A relic of grandeur in a city that had been dancing on the edge of disrepair for decades, the hospital stood as a testament to human perseverance and ingenuity.  The hospital processed hundreds of cases every day, from an infant’s stubbed toe to a construction worker’s severed arm to the occasional case of lymphangiomatosis or Antley-Bixler Syndrome.

It also happened to be a stone’s throw away from my kitchen window.

I groaned, sat up in bed, and promptly slammed my head on the low ceiling of my “bedroom.”  After six months of living in the cheapest studio apartment I could find, I still couldn’t remember that falling out of bed was actually preferable to suffering a minor concussion every morning.

Twenty years ago, the building was a story taller.  Sometime between now and then, someone thought it would be a good idea to have a romantic, candlelit dinner involving massage oil, incense, and liberal amounts of petroleum jelly.  This had the predictable result of ensuring that the inhabitants were blissfully unaware when a gentle breeze tipped over an ill-placed candle.  Rumor has it that the offenders survived only because they were able to greasily wiggle  through a stuck window onto the fire escape.

At any rate, the landlord decided it would be cheaper to erect a new roof instead of rebuild an entire collapsed floor.  The result was an odd, slanted number that started out even and tapered gradually to become a wall.  Take a cross-section of my apartment, and you wind up with half of an isosceles trapezoid.  My bed is wedged at the point where the ceiling meets the floor, not due to choice, but because it would double as the centerpiece of the apartment anywhere else.

I groaned again for good measure, and shuffled blearily across the cold tile floor in search for nourishment.

I was halfway through a stale croissant when my world shattered.

Mannequin: Prologue – “Something Missing”

She was nearly complete.

I couldn’t remember when I had stopped referring to her as “it.”  When had she so completely enthralled me, thwarting my senses and sensibility alike?  I had been so careful.  When had she become more than an object, more than a mere sum of her parts?  When had she become my masterpiece?

Looking back, it was all but inevitable.  I knew full well how abominable my task might become when I first started on her.  Perhaps if I had not kept her hidden for so many years, those closest to me would have had a chance to save me, before she had consumed what remained of my sanity.

It was too late for that, now.  I could not be redeemed.  I did not want to be redeemed.

And yet, looking at her now, lying there with a glow that only my gentle, caressing hands could give her, I felt something missing.  Something gone, or something that never was.  One last shred kept her from true perfection.

Eyes.  She needed eyes.  Eyes full of passion, full of intelligence.  Eyes as deep as the ocean and as clear as the night sky.  I needed eyes to give her life.

I felt a slow smile creep across my face.  Eyes.  I knew exactly where to find them.

Swine Journal 1

Thursday, April 30.

Didn’t think.  Had a bacon and ham sandwich for lunch today.  Feel fine for now, but you never know.  They say you can get infected just by being in the same room as one of the little buggers.  And now, there’s a piece of them in me.  It’s probably nothing.  Probably.

Benches: Chapter 1.3 – “The End”

“I’ll have to call you back later, some creep on a bench is staring at me.”

Fin.

Benches: Chapter 1.2 – “Deepening Shadows”

“It’s not what you think.”

The voice is faint, barely a whisper over the breeze.  It sounds strangely warbled, as if listening to a phone conversation over a particularly poor connection.  My pulse quickens as I am struck with the distinct sensation of being not alone, of someone else’s presence sharing space with mine.  Imagine sitting in an empty room, completely engrossed in a good novel.  It’s the feeling you get when, for no reason at all, the hairs on your neck begin to prickle, and you realize that someone has been standing in the doorway for quite some time now, watching as you read.  I stiffen, and carefully open one eye.

“It’s not what you think,” the voice repeats.  The voice is tinged with sorrow and resignation.  Out of my peripheral vision, I notice a dark silhouette partially obscured by the shoulder-high hedge, a slightly darker shadow against the deepening gloom.  I focus on the silhouette, and the accompanying voice abruptly sharpens, taking on an almost urgent edge.

“I dreamt of drowning last night, you know.  Just sinking into the depths and never coming back up.  I knew I should have been terrified, but I wasn’t.  A lot of people think that drowning is a pleasant way to die.  That you just float away and never come back.  But it isn’t like that, not at all.  It’s more like… holding your breath while walking past a cemetery, but there’s no end in sight.  You want to take a breath, but you’re afraid of sucking in some poor wandering spirit if you do.  So you just keep holding your breath until your hands start shaking and your face turns blue.  And eventually, despite your best efforts, you gasp for a breath of refreshing, cool air.  Only now someone’s got their hands over your mouth and nose, and a pressure’s building up against your eyes and ears, and you struggle against your captor but there’s nothing to flail against, and all you’re left with is the overwhelming urge to breathe. Now imagine all of this happening while you’re gently floating in the darkness.

“There’s a sense of futility in it all, a sense of your body betraying you, forcing you to take that last killing breath.  I should have been afraid.  I should have been struggling for my life.  I didn’t.  I didn’t because you were there.  Maybe you’ve always been there, and I just never noticed.  It’s like I somehow knew you would be there to save me.”  The speaker’s voice cracks, and I notice a subtle shift in the silhouette.

“But you didn’t, did you,” the voice whispers.  “You let me go.”

The breeze suddenly strengthens, and I can barely make out the rest of the speaker’s tale.

“I guess all I’m trying to say is… Don’t let me float away, not yet.  Please.  Stay here with me, for a little while longer.  I…”

“I…”

“…”

Benches: Chapter 1.1 — “Through the Branches”

The harsh bite of winter is in the air. Bare limbs of an ancient oak shudder and creak in the breeze. Looking up, it is almost as if some maddened surgeon scarred the heavens in a delirium of despair and anguish.

Perhaps he felt the need to mar the pristine surface of those smooth nimbostratus clouds, I muse. Gently, I rock beneath the branches, watching the spaces between dark lines on a blank slate form and distort. Ethereal images of lamp posts, corals, and archipelagos flash by, all in the same shade of dull gray. I close my eyes and listen to the few leaves rustling above. Did his scalpel slip from trembling hands? Was he distracted by the distant rumble of thunder? Perhaps he was just having a bad day.

The last few rays of sunlight fall weakly upon my face, doing little more than to remind me that nightfall is swiftly approaching. Does the patient yearn for the cover of darkness to conceal her mutilated perfection? Does she weep silent tears when she realizes that she will never again be whole, not really; that once flawlessness is despoiled it can never be completely restored?  Poor Heavens.

I scold myself at the direction my thoughts have taken me. There is no such thing as perfection. To exist in this world is to be imperfect. I scold myself some more for coming to such a bleak, albeit true conclusion. I tell myself to stop before I spiral uncontrollably into an overly philosophical self debate on the obvious, yet depressing state of my life.

When a voice that is not my own answers back, I realize that I am not alone.

les branches by ~andrea-h on deviantART

Benches: Prologue

The harsh bite of winter is in the air. Yet there you lie, cold metal pressed against your back, gazing up at skeletal branches stretching to the slate gray sky above. You did not intend to linger at such a place. Yet here you are, hidden from many but exposed to some. You followed the seldom-traversed path you saw that day, a path that you had seen many times before but never thought to follow. Why does no-one know where you are?

Close your eyes. Listen to the whispers of the breeze rasping through the concealing hedge. Can you hear the rustle of the few dry leaves overhead, clinging desperately to the source of their nourishment, calling out to their fallen brethren crushed on the ground below? Can you feel the wan rays of warmth gently caressing your face as our dear yellow dwarf star bids farewell, à la prochaine and bon soir?

File it away. File it all away, just like you do any other hour of any other day. We live in the here and now, but you have no desire to participate in the present. The scenarios run through your mind, a constant barrage of those frivolous hypothetical junctions: what if, should I, maybe. Life will not wait for you. No one will wait for you forever.

Every moment of every day, you make decisions that will irrevocably and permanently alter the course of your life. Where we have come from, where we are… these are mere contrivances that allow us to see where we might go. Soon, you will come to realize this.

Open your eyes. Open your eyes, and see what there is to see.

Eye of the Beholder by ~RecklessConformity on deviantART