Smash. Like a broken crystal ball. Crush an eyeball in a fist. Splash. Tear a heart out in sacrifice.
The soul lives in a cave. It comes out at dawn and evening, to pick the bleached bones of consciousness.
Harker
Harker
Harker
Harker
Harker
Harker
At the end of a journey in aeonic time, hungry and thirsty, with faint heart and fading vision, I am an old man holding a jug, sitting beside myself. The shade of an oak tree protects both of me from the furious sun.
I am tired.
I am tired.
I the old man pours something from my urn into a china cup and offers it to me. I reach for it and find my arm too heavy to lift. All of me is very heavy, especially the old bones and the young head. I press the cup to my (other) eager lips, and I drink as deeply as I am able. As I tilt the cup, liquid runs from the corners of my mouth to stain my shirt and moisten the earth which feeds the oak tree.
“What is it?” I ask, for the draft is very sweet.
“Water,” I say, my voice like an echo from far, far away,
Harker
Harker
Harker
“only water.”
And the cup in the crumbling hand recedes from me into a giant funnel of forgetfulness.
Jenny
Harker
All around me the magnificent dark, empty and infinite. My kingdom and my joy. A curtain of hungry darkness, ready to take me in its fond embrace, to hug me, to cradle me, to love me. A deep, pregnant silence — a silence of waiting — a silence of anticipation. My empire and my pleasure.
I wait with patience, resplendent in the glory of my halo of light. The light is golden. I am a fly suspended in amber. A firefly, all around me the almighty night.
Afar off, the night splits to divulge a second glow. Tiny as a pinprick at first, it grows. Proxima Centauri.
Within its mute red halo is another man — taller than I and stronger. He is assured and arrogant. He wears red and yellow, whereas I wear gray and blue.
He is
Harker
and he hates me.
“
Harker
”he says to me. “You grow older each time we meet. I will win what you have, and one day soon I will drain you of existence.”
“One day!” I say, scathingly. “One day, and a sooner day than yours, I will succeed. I learn, in my between-times. What have you learned since last we met? What have you in real profit? Nothing. You have spent and you have wasted. You have not saved; you have not speculated. Your one day is a distant dream. Mine is numbered among the tomorrows.”
“You are mad,”
Harker
He comes forward, his chest heaving, his tongue between his teeth, his halo growing hot. But he moves so slowly. His eyes are like plates of glass. He is suspended for an eternity. He is afraid, and he is at my mercy.
“One day,” I say, mocking him.
“Tell me,” he says, recovering himself. “What next? What now, little man?”
“Look around you,” I say to him. “All around you is the dark. We alone, you and I, have light. The light defines the reason for our being. We are the light. We exist to scatter the light. And light we shall have, great blazing worlds of fire to flood the dark and force the blackness away. Turbulence. Chaos. Fight.”
“Chaos,” my accused
Harker
whispers, hating even the sound of the word. I can still remember him screaming.
“Your dreams can never come true,” he tells me. “You are mad.”
The bubbles of light pull themselves apart. My son recedes into the darkness.
He smiles at me as he goes, and says, “Good-bye,
Harker
We will meet when your lights go out.”
“My stars will never go out,” I tell him.
I stare defiantly into the lovely, maternal dark. I ignore the small voice which whispers within my skull and says, “You are insane. This whole universe, the dark, you,
Harker
your dimensions, they are your imagination. You created
Harker
in your mind. You make mad worlds, and justify them in defeating
Harker
And even then, who wins? Could you hold and humiliate a real
Harker
? Do you win your arguments only in your twisted mind?”
The dark is waiting yet. Still and placid. Welcoming and loving.
“Why?” I say, and I cover my eyes with my tired hands.
And the sky is full of the dust of distant stars.
Forever?
harker this is jenny
Is there an
answer
answer . . .?
please
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 1975 by Brian M. Stableford
ISBN 978-1-4976-3256-1
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
BRIAN STABLEFORD
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
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Man in a Cage Page 24