The Unbelievable Death of Joseph Goldberg

by Oliver Franks

  As I enter the forest beyond, I realise I am trading the freedom and comforts of the technological world for the dangers and exhilarations of life in a chaotic realm of destruction. The leaves scrunch under my feet and the trees close around me, creating creaking walls and dripping ceilings that resonate with the beating of my heart.

  I walk on and on, deeper inside. I pass branches, bushes and ponds filled with strange life forms that I can only dimly make out in the shade. Water trickles, birds chirp and monkeys howl. The trees rub up against one another in the breeze. I struggle to comprehend the size of this noisy, lonely place. It is immense, perhaps never-ending. I could be walking to oblivion.

  I have an unstoppable urge to know its boundaries. I come across a bent old tree, leafless and seemingly dead, yet strong enough to hold my weight. I climb up the easy path it presents. No squirrels emerge from its trunk, there are no birds twittering in its arms. I brush aside the leaves and branches of the living woods surrounding it, pushing through the canopy above.

  Finding myself atop the highest perch of this lifeless tree, I am in awe. I have a clear and spectacular view over the thick forest. It extends into never-ending, sunless distance. A blur of white cloud covers the entire infinite green expanse with thick blooms and cotton-wool bands, a giant dome of cloud rimmed only by an infinite horizon of countless trees.

  Again, I feel trapped by this wilderness. It seems I could walk for decades in its tentacles and never find my way out. No part of it is alien to me, it is all natural, yet I feel that I am alien to it.

  A thought strikes me. What I need is to fly to the clouds, to puncture them. Only then will I find my true bearings.

  The idea consumes me. I must figure out a way! I look around, desperate for inspiration.

  An eagle soars high above, flying gracefully on wide wings.

  I know what to do.

  I climb back down to the forest floor and search for dead branches. These will serve as the backbones of wings. I sharpen a stick and catch animals. Their skins shall be the membranes. When I’ve gathered everything I need, I finish the construction and tie the wings to my arms with reeds.

  Now all I need is to climb up to the treetops again. There I shall launch myself. I walk in silence, searching for an accommodating tree, yet neither a suitable one or even an opening presents itself. I consider looking for the one I scrambled up before, yet in all my hunting and wing-building I have lost my way.

  After hours of fruitless searching, ploughing my way through shaded undergrowth, I hear a faint voice in the distance. A woman is singing words I can’t make out.

  Something in her honest and pleading emotion attracts me, and I begin jogging in her direction.

  As the volume increases the words become recognisable.

  “Where is he? Where is he?” she is singing. “The man I long for who I must kill. Oh, where is he? I can see his handsome face, feel his heart beating next to mine that I shall rip from his body. But, oh, where is he?”

  I realise she is sobbing as she sings, pained yet entranced by this man who she must kill. I am not sure if I am that man, but I feel I must reach her in any case.

  Within minutes I find the woman sitting on a rock in an unshaded area of soft green grass surrounded by low-hanging willows. Her long, auburn hair drapes down to her waist. As I walk into her sight she immediately stops singing.

  “What have you done?” she looks at me, at my wings, rage in her beautiful amber eyes. “Those creatures, murdered! Who are you to do this terrible thing? Tell me at once or I will run and tell my father. He’ll string you up for sure. Tell me!”

  “I am no one,” I say, at a loss. “I wished to reach the clouds. And while I was wandering in the forest I heard you singing. I thought I might be the one you were singing of.”

  She laughs. “You’re not the one I sing of. But I will surely kill you, for you have taken the life of my forest. Make no mistake, you will pay in kind.”

  She pulls a dagger from a pocket of her white dress and rushes towards me. I begin to flee but realise that in paying attention to the woman I ignored the fact that her singing has led me to an opening from which I might take flight.

  I flap my arms. Air begins pushing up from under my wings. I begin to rise from the ground, but far too slowly. The woman grabs hold of my leg and begins stabbing. Blood rushes from my thigh. She holds her grip firm, but I am too enthralled by the thrill of flight to let anything stop me. I keep on flapping, and still she holds on. We rise higher. Soon we pass the low branches of the willow trees.

  “Put me down!” she screams.

  I look away from her. We have reached the level of the treetops. For a moment I consider shaking her loose, letting her fall to the ground. Yet her stabs, shocking though they were, have inflicted no pain, no lasting damage. I feel disgust at myself for even considering causing harm to this entrancing maiden, this vital life force.

  We fly on up and she quietens. We soar into the windless void, up and up towards the dome of clouds.

  “Father…” I hear her mutter sadly.

  I try to ignore the thought that I may have unwittingly taken her away from her home and family forever, that I have no idea where this flight will lead us.

  We keep rising and rising, until the largest trees look little bigger than blades of grass beneath us.

  We rise and rise.

  I want to see the edge of the forest. Yet I can see nothing but a fog at the outermost extremities, where the cloud dome slopes down to meet the treetops. I attempt to aim towards the edge, yet as I alter our direction I feel the grip of something pushing us inexorably upwards. I try harder to resist, to flap my wings and fly us forwards and not just up. The air around us responds with its own powerful gust of wind.

  Defeated, I let my wings sink.

  As I suspected, we do not fall. The hands of nature cushion us. We simply float, elevating, continuing our ascent.

  The woman lets go of my leg. We float together at an equal altitude, face to face, eye to eye. She is beautiful, truly, I realise once again. And she hates me.

  I look up and see a small dark hole at the very top and centre of the cloud dome. This must be our destination.

  The time passes slowly, with little headway in our ascent. I search for words to say to the woman, opening my lips, thinking to offer an apology, but she turns her head away from me in indignation.

  Then, resolving some inner question, she faces me again, her fiery eyes burning into my heart.

  “Why did you want to fly away in the first place?” she says. “Had you grown bored of the forest already?”

  “Not bored,” I reply. “Trapped. Inquisitive.”

  “If you really felt trapped you could have left any time you wanted. You didn’t have to go around killing things, making those awful wings. Now look where you’ve taken us! Do you feel any less trapped?”

  “Perhaps you know more than I. I only knew I wanted to do something.”

  “I will never understand your kind. Always running, aren’t you? Never satisfied.”

  “But satisfaction’s just what I am looking for. Only I can’t seem to find it.”

  I am suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to touch her. To embrace her and to kiss her. I find myself reaching forward, edging closer. She glares at me, her hate flaring ever brighter.

  Then I am surprised, for something seems to switch inside her. She softens, cocking her head to one side, looking at me differently, questioningly and perhaps even sympathetically. She places her fingers gently on the back of my head, pulling me toward her. Our faces our inches apart.

  Before I know it, our lips are meeting and we kiss.

  It’s a sensuous pleasure, but only fleeting. In full embrace, the unknown force pulls us up through the opening of the white cloud dome and to the beyond. Yet there is no heavenly playground, no fluffy white stairs, no hallowed world of the gods, nor even a sky full of stars.

  Instead we find ourselves thrown knees down onto a dark a
nd chilly suburban street.

  “What the hell?” I mutter, picking myself up.

  I look around, recognising the neighbourhood where I grew up.

  I see the long hair of the woman flying in the wind as she flees. She is running towards a bungalow with an unkempt law. My childhood home!

  Now, more shocking, I see my father opening the front door, beckoning to the woman to come inside.

  She runs onto the lawn towards him. Part of me is jealous of her. Why is he beckoning to her, and not me?

  Before she can reach him, a pulsating ball of light descends on her from high up above. She is instantly imprisoned in it.

  I run to her, but I am too far away. She turns to face me in puzzlement, surrounded by silvery brightness. I am running to her, watching helplessly as her atoms unlock themselves, ripping apart molecule by molecule. There is great fear in her eyes. I am not sure if she is being destroyed or merely being beamed to some other place.

  I reach her, holding out my arms, hoping somehow to grab her, to take hold of her being and prevent her precious living stardust from reuniting with the megatons of unconscious matter in the universe. She disappears before my eyes. The light fades and I am left clutching at thin air.

  My father strides over to embrace me. I can’t believe it! He is young, as he was twenty years ago.

  “Son,” he says. “It’s over. Do you still not understand? It’s over. We all lose the people we love. Just accept it. Move on.”

  “Dad,” I reply, feeling both inconsolable with the loss of the woman, and ecstatic to be talking to my father. “I know you’re right. I am so happy to have found you like this again!”

  His face is as it was. Contented, in the prime of life.

  “I will always be like this for you, son.”

  Then the same light descends and locks around him. It is swift this time, even swifter. He looks up, dissipating in my grip. Then he too is gone.

  I fall to my knees on the lawn.

  “Dad!”

  I recall the day he died, all those years ago. I’ve needed him badly so many times, and here he finally was! To have him again so briefly is heart-breaking, I can’t help but fall apart in tears.

  I let my grief runs its course, the tears flowing, the grass dampening my knees, my head hanging low, close to the green of the lawn. It is just grass, I think. It lives and it dies. The same as me. I have loved and lost, lived and died. And how many in my life deserved more love than I ever gave?

  When the stream of tears slows, my vision clears and I begin to notice something beneath me. I see that same faraway, never-ending forest there in the grass below, the same forest I flew away from so majestically minutes before with that beautiful, nameless woman. The last tear drops onto the grassy soil and I see an even stranger thing. What’s beneath me transforms, the strands of grass twisting and contorting into new forms. In moments I am no longer looking at a simple lawn, but a forest city in miniature, a world of tiny people living out their lives!

  I stare over it all in wonder. Is this an undiscovered part of the same forest I left? The home of the woman and her father? Everything there is minute to me, a place full of tiny tree-houses and tree-bridges and porches, but I am struck by the thought that to all those miniscule people, it is exactly the size it should be. It is simply their world.

  I begin to hear its noises, its life and its bustle, the busy activity of families and lovers and drinkers, the chatter of stories and songs and arguments.

  Unable to take my gaze away from this teeming realm, I find myself zoning in on one porch in particular. A woman stands there, staring up, her eyes filled with the whiteness of the moon, her face brimming with hopes and dreams and desires. She smiles and my field of vision zooms right in to her face. I see beauty on her curving lips. She is toying with a delightful secret. Can she see me? Sense me?

  I look around me back in the ‘real’ world, at my old house and up into the sky where the moon should be. But there is no moon, only clouds deflecting the light of the orange-tinted street lamps.

  I return my attention to the miniature forest city. It is dark and obscure now, nothing comes into focus as I run my eyes over it all.

  Then, once again, like a spark in the night, the face of this girl flashes in the dark. I am drawn to look upon her. She is bright and pearly and beautiful, illuminated by the light of a moon that isn’t there. She is a beacon, pulling me towards her.

  Our eyes meet. She sees me!

  In this electric moment, I understand. I am not a figment in her imagination, and she not one in mine. Yet more than this, she is only there because I can see her. She is my creature and I am her God. I am the moonlight that illuminates her.

  Tentatively, I move a finger to touch her, even though her body is no bigger than my littlest nail. She smiles, lifting a hand to meet me.

  She strokes my fingertip, as faint as a feather, but we are touching. We make physical contact.

  And at this moment, everything falls apart.

  The heavens groan. Rain falls sudden and hard all around. I look up in dismay at the rumbling skies, my hair soggy, my shirt wet and cold on my skin. I hear the girl scream below. The storm is blowing havoc over her forest city, shutters clattering off their hinges, roofs flying off houses, bridges swinging violently. All around is the onslaught of rain, the crashing of electricity.

  There is a powerful clap of thunder. It rattles the ground, pulling at the grass underneath me. It roars, harder and harder, not stopping as it should do. It won’t stop, the sound is booming, overpowering. It’s like an earthquake now, the earth is turning now, groaning now. I can feel myself slipping, being forced over. If I fall I fear where I may slide to.

  I open my mouth to let out a scream.

  Lightning strikes, hitting me, catching me in its white-hot blaze of intensity. It is merciless, burning me, shaking me, searing pain into me. I am an insect juddering helplessly in its grip.

  Held by that terrible power, a booming voice rips through the air.

  “You are no God!” it roars. “You are a coward! I will show you what it is to be someone’s creature.”

  The flash of lightning burns still harder all around me, intense, golden, excruciating. I look at my hands and at my knees. I watch myself disintegrate.

  Then it is over.

  I find myself in a white room. Four shiny, translucent walls. It’s too brightly lit to make anything out clearly, except for the huge flat screen TV that hangs before me. Everything seems in perfect proportion, from the square walls to the rectangular sofa I am sitting on and the coffee table before me. Tired, I tilt my head forward to rest it in my hands.

  A bottle of Jack Daniel’s appears on the table, accompanied by a glass, bottle of Coke and ice.

  I feel there is nothing else but to make myself a drink.

  People enter and leave the room as I continue to drink. Items are passed round feverishly over the table. Candy, cigarettes, drugs, balloons. I try to talk with the people, but their personalities are ghostly, here one second, gone the next, revealing nothing. I drink and take everything they offer. I am losing my sense of reason, wanting more and more.

  A companion appears on the sofa, sitting next to me. I recognise the face of my best friend, Max.

  “Let’s go out and see what happens,” he says.

  I follow him through the door to the night outside.

  We walk in starlight, amongst unnamed thousands of revellers. They are smiling at us as we pass, and I feel the urge to talk to every one of them. I try, yet can’t seem to manage it, they all seem to be the same, at once there and not there, phasing in and out of existence.