Chapter 6
There was a crackling under Marcos’ feet and then an odd swishing sound as a gust of air brushed past his ankles and his legs lifted from under him; folding against his body like the legs of a stroller.
He thrust upwards then towards and through the thick canopy, smacking his head against bullish branches that stuck out like a giant’s arm, lathering his skin with the sticky white webs of colourful spiders as upwards he went, so quick and like a flash, careening like a rocket into the sticky morning air. His breath shuttled directly to his gut as his conscious state defused; dancing with shock, surprise and disbelief.
In the upward inflection, his thought fell away from his current absence of self and he landed with a thud inside a dream; again awake inside the repression of his mind, in the body of a man. He woke in a delusional memory unbeknownst to him of which he had; for an eternity, pleased to keep blind and mute.
There he stood, staring out through his eyes at a woman who looked upon him with affection. It was her again, but this time she seemed more humane, less directed. She seemed delicate and dangerous, as a woman could be.
There were no cold eyes.
Instead, she stood before him; her naked body and welcoming his wanting stare as the dim light snuck out from the folds in her arms, slipping over her tender skin. Sexuality was her voice and Marcos stood speechless, forgetting of the murder of his own self and the thoughts of faithlessness that had been corralling in his mind.
As she slowly crept towards him; slithering from the light with her slender fingers outstretched, the shadows embraced the round of her breasts and the cold hand of the dark pressed upon her entire body as she coiled herself around her lover’s body. He was so tense, fraught with some negation in his mind, something of which he kept entirely to himself.
As her soft wet lips touched his; a spark ignited in his mind; a small fire that would build to a raging inferno as Marcos and The Woman made love under a dressing of shadows in a half dim light and as their bodies melted in a torrent of passion, his mind burned and a rage ignited the gasoline in his veins.
He felt less like a man and more like an engine. It was all so procedure like. In and out, in and out, like a piston. He lifted himself from the pull of her body watching her face as she writhed under him and as he looked at the pained expression on her face, followed by the smile that shone so bright; he felt trapped.
“That must be it then,” he thought, “I am in love.”
He returned himself to her body, but his mind wandered farther than he cared to be. He thought of everything other than the gentle touch of his lover’s body as she writhed below him in ecstasy.
“I feel wrong,” he said.
“What are you talking about? Shut up and fuck me” she moaned.
Marcos pulled away from The Woman and sat pensively on the end of the bed; his desire slipping through a crack in his consciousness. The Woman pulled the sheets to her body angrily, exhaling in great volume, her dissatisfaction at her lover’s destitute affection.
Neither spoke for a moment; he adrift in an uncommon disillusion and she completely absorbed by rage; entrapped in negation for this new state of being by her lover.
“Don’t you want to know what’s wrong?” said Marcos.
“No. I know what’s wrong. You don’t want me. You’re bored” she said.
“What? This is not about you. Why do you have to make this about yourself?” he questioned.
“Oh, so now it’s my fault. It’s my fault you don’t fuck me right. It’s my fault you think I’m ugly” she said.
“I don’t think you’re ugly. I want you, I do. I don’t fuck you right, what?” he said.
“Then why did you stop? Why do you want to make me feel like a whore?” she said.
“I’m sorry. I was thinking. I got distracted” he said.
“You’re thinking about someone else while you’re with me. I knew it. Who is she?” she said rightly.
“It’s not that. I just, I can’t stop thinking about my investor” he said.
“Oh, that’s better. You’re thinking about a dead old man while you’re making love to me? What’s wrong with you Marcos? What’s wrong with me? Did I do something? It’s always my fault, isn’t it?” she said in a teary defeatist tone, sulking to herself as she slipped into her clothes and left Marcos to himself on the edge of the bed.
Marcos sat with the image of the old man before him on his knees begging for his life. If The Industry didn’t make mistakes then why would it put him in that room? The Investor didn’t deserve that end. He didn’t deserve that fate and Marcos too, should not have been dealt that hand.
Never before had he dealt with a feeling such as this; questioning his own choices; questioning The Industry; questioning his faith. Nothing about this seemed fair, but he knew that the rule of right and wrong must be maintained within the theatre of chance, regardless of how he felt.
“All we know is what we have been told. What the Industry says is true. What if what we were told was not exactly honest?” he asked.
“What is honest Marcos? You have to accept one truth to believe in one lie. All things can be one or the other; it doesn’t mean that they are one or the other, just what they can be. I can change the order of things and swap the names like a wardrobe, but it doesn’t change my direction. It is honest as long as we accept it as a truth and what fact do you have except for a bug in your stomach to paint a different picture?” she said.
“Just a feeling,” he said.
“A feeling without fact?” she asked.
“The feeling is the fact. Nobody has ever lived what we lived. No product has ever actually contemplated Encounterance. The idea is absurd and as for a Collector having to liquidate their own Investor; having their obligation to their faith serve as the pastor of their sin, no Industrialist should ever have to comprehend this cruelty of chance. I had to kill my Investor. My test of my faith was to liquidate everything I believed in. What do I have now? What is existence without purpose and what is my purpose without the outcome of my decisions? What should I feel if this fact has never been felt before? This wrong that has bedded in my stomach since that day, it has been changing me. My faith is dead” he declared.
“There is logic to this Marcos. You have met with a new truth that you do not understand. Now, you are in negation. This feeling you have is just from an absence of information. We will speak to The Librarians in the morning and I’m sure they will have a record of this probability; this type of event and they will grant you normality. Once you get the information, that bug in your stomach will disappear. You’re not changing Marcos. We don’t change without dictation” she said.
“You’re probably right,” he said in passive acceptance.
The Woman tip toed out of the shadows; her long slender fingers pulling the fine thread of silk from the milky white of her shoulders, pulling the thread down so that it pressed against the bend in her arm; dropping the dress to the floor as her arms lowered. Her naked body shimmered in the dull play of light as shadows crept across her breasts and down between the length of her thighs.
A gentle warmth overcame Marcos and he felt stupid and in love once again; his desires flooding the conscious vacuity that had given rise to a questioning of faith. The Woman walked to where her lover sat and she no longer felt invisible in his eyes.
“I want to invest,” she said; the words sinking into his thoughts and seeming perfect and true as she writhed on his body; her arms encircled around his neck; her eyes making love to his.
He thought of nothing.
He abandoned his indecision and the feeling in his stomach. Instead, he became his rising sexuality; he became his lust and desire; outside of reason, deep inside of her.
And as he planted his faithless seed, a stinging open wound on his leg woke Marcos to his conscious real state, curled against himself; a prisoner high into the canopy of the forest with a net enveloping his body, tied off somewhere higher than from where he could reach.<
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He had been made a prisoner, taken high into the air and left dangling, caught in a web of suspicion, waiting for the spider to sense his trepidation.
He looked to his ankle and a small trickle of blood flowed down his foot onto the net and dropped far from his perch, falling down to the earth wherever that might be, somewhere below his swing of captivity. He stayed still, engorged in the emotion that had swept over him during his delusion.
He felt overwhelmed, but also, like he could accomplish anything, as if he had discovered some way to extend his stride, to carry him further than the tiny steps of his thoughts ever could. His delusion was taking hold. The wall he had built in his mind was collapsing and he was tearing at the foundation with his finger-tips, desperate to see what part of himself was kept prisoner on the other side.
‘She is the one. I need to focus on her’ he thought to himself, trying to clear his mind into a white canvas.
He knew he was travelling into a dream, something that had been but from where he was now, something that had been a long time ago and he thought to himself, “This is obviously someplace I need to get back to.”
The Woman was vitality; she was the key to filling the void in his conscious self.
The stains of his past were now seeping through into his conscious being and taking hold of his reigns. It was like trying to hold back a tidal wave with a single tissue.
His subconscious was becoming more greatly unstuck and fed by The Famine that now took its hold, being a force that he could not contain and one; as he fought to define his identity, he wouldn’t want to reserve.
“I need to know more,” he thought, but how could he do that?
He tried to will his thoughts to return to whence they came, but there was nothing. He tried to paint the image he had just seen, but everything fell apart in the construct of his mind. It was like trying to paint on a waterfall. Every stroke washed away from his conscious being.
He couldn’t piece anything together, but he knew his link to understanding who he was, who she was, where he was and what he was running from, was buried somewhere in his subconscious. He would have to find a way to unlock the door and enter at his own discretion.
He looked about him, to both sides of his body. He was high up in the air and trapped but the net was weak and the blood trickling from his leg reminded him of the steel blade that had been pressed in his numb hand that was now caught between his fabric prison and his bare buttocks.
He couldn’t move his body completely, but he managed to twist his fingers to turn the tip of the blade against the already fraying fibres of the tightly wound net.
He then wriggled his body back and forth and as he did, the blade rubbed against and slowly split each fiber. One by one and the more he thrust his body left and right; swinging his weight about, the more the blade cut and the more the momentum was taken in the swing of the net.
The tension broke.
The net snapped.
He fell.
He hit the ground hard.
And then everything went black.
Utopian Circus Page 7