Chapter Text
How long?
A minute..
Had it been?
An hour...
Since his arrival?
A day...
How many weeks?
A month…
Had passed?
A year…
Since she appeared before him…
A decade…
fleeting siren of mirage…
A century...
Higgs Monaghan was not a man who valued time. At least, not in the ottomised architecture devised by his fellow man.
Past;
present;
future.
Every second, an eon. Every digit, an absolute zero in the fractured thermometer of stillborn space.
Time was a frozen conceptual in the womb of a styptic, existential void. Empty and attracting only of despondent things. Dejected, wretched, beheaded things. Things that were ineffable to human optics. Concealed and cowered beneath thickened brush of consciousness. Things conceived of abstraction, to be sure. As abstract in comprehension as the words that here illustrate his predicament.
To escape the punishing compression of bruised lungs, the only respirations to afford egress are by inquiry. Where population was simplified to the punctuation mark of a sole survivor, the only remainder in the equation was yet an error through input of calculation. When did the expansion end and the contraction begin? There would always be a question to rebel against these unspeakable seeds of sentience. Sat along the Stygian shore, Higgs ponders these ‘things’. Wonders if his (and their) suffering would ever find footing in this treacherous terrain.
Empathy was, hence, a fickle thing.
Namely, a Beached Thing.
Here, it swims, stranded in lotic waves, suffering to ponder with the sage at sea. Here, there is no need to question why it stands alone, loafing about the flat, roiling tar, feet threadbare. From the head descending, an eldritch fusing of man and foetus. A single tear, kissed by the sting of chiral density, traces a strand of its own, asymmetric and disconnected along the zygomatic contour, scarred and marred by the essence he submits to kneel for. To whom his prayer concerns is yet prey to deaf ears. Yet to decide if sensitivity should be sentenced to guilt opposed to the allergy of chiralium.
It was his “fellow” man who were dogged in attempts to make common sense of time. From 60 seconds, to 60 minutes, to 24 hours, to a mean of 30.4 days, 365 a year, unraveling to illusive thread of circadian rhythm, each fabrication of clock was endowed by insouciance.
Time was no friend of Man. Why should he deign to reciprocate? To reaffirm his standing amongst the transience of their frangible value. To identify as human meant submitting to the infirmity. Accepting the regression of mind, body, and soul as incontrovertible sacrifice for reasons untold. Reasons largely inconspicuous to the psyche’s hidden depth of processing. And, to quote an ‘Ancient‘, certainly he could agree that, in a world governed by singular perception, there existed no facts; only interpretations.
It had been ages since he last visited his Beach. The memories of these sparse ventures were scabs best left unpicked. As such, it was only fair that he expect the unexpected. As if the grip of desolation couldn’t be more grimly mocking in texture. To give sentience to his alexithymia, he begins to sympathise with the scourge inflicted upon his proclaimed victory over nihilism. ‘Meaning’ was yet a sickening aftertaste seeping into the gums, irritating the throat screamed raw. Futility was his drug but withdrawal had conquered the bloodstream, just as ravenously addictive in recovery.
Hourglasses, suspended in the air, tethered to the beast of no man’s land.
There was no mistaking the chronometer’s shattered surface. How could his ego ignore its faint tick? How could he be so helpless against the modest grist of unresponsive tenor? Of still winds diverted by a foreign body. He wonders how his Beach could bear any significance compared to the thousands of tragedies connected in relativity. Why does his liminal headscape of recurring pain deserve to be injected in the same vein of infected strain? Perhaps his questioning of the elusive matter would only affirm him as selfish. Like all else who share the burden of extrasensory perception, via DOOMS or repatriation, Higgs, indeed, felt acutely punished by the clarity of his haunting history.
The past did, here, evoke sleepless limbs. Devoid of hand to feed the glass with sand. Here, it glides, idle wraith dressed by contour of silicon skin. Tangible in appearance. Deceptive and cursory in substance. Her body, a rustic, ferrous vehicle. Submersible and vulnerable to the harsh elements of brine. Reduced in presence to a murky trick of mind in shallow tide.
Perhaps, he could invite the frigid, ominous zephyr, sluicing through his mask, penetrating gold, rubber and ageless flesh. Zeitgeist’s curvature of a circumzenithal arc, colours abound to paint the monochrome. Maybe his understanding was a mere stripe missing. Ergo, he might begin to understand why. If only he could just…
“ Sea .”
Approaching from behind, easing, eavesdropping. A frosty timbre that complements those gelid moans of spectral entities: maternal and devastating to the lonesome boy deserted to a beach of shoals. Yet, this tone of feminal build was different than expected. One that invited a stranger‘s dulcet taste of reassurance. Alone was the last description to be used. Redundant in the grand scale of a severed lizard’s tail. Even for a place as hermetic as one’s own Beach, ‘alone’ was hardly the staple that embeds deep into the banks of its quicksand.
Any civility Higgs could muster to his bitter expression had vanished to a strand in this barren wasteland. Any trace of patience rivalled the concealed radiance of sun. What shines in its place is a sardonic chuckle. Weak in tone. Too defeated to challenge with any beat of defiance. Single is the strike of query, spiking ever deeper in intensity. A perfect circle of questions leaving answers out of bounds. Answers that, by nature of incomplete thought, deserved to be restricted access.
Every word was like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness. But, then there lies the antimatter of contention.
Words were the clothes that thoughts wear.
“Stripped me bare without even touching me.”
The period. A strangely erotic blend of clinical and sensuous.
“I’d call it kinky…”
The manifestation of amorphous entity is, at once, given a fleet and disinterested, scrutinising glance.
“But, the tone just don’t sit right.”
Shooting the crystal orbs with a knowing glare.
“Not here.”
Gaze hooded, brow relaxed.
“Not anywhere.”
Gluttonous quiet translates to incentive. A kick of stimulus needed to spur his perversion.
“ Well, sweetheart …”
The aftertaste of sardonic teeth, more bitter than sweet.
“You once asked me if I believed in God.”
Honeyed voice muffled behind metallic barrier.
“If you’ll pardon my blasphemy… I reckon authors to be deities in their own right.” A response that is ambiguous as it is arrogant. An indifferent yet courteous diversion. “But, you’d be hard-pressed to find a religious man in ‘I’.”
The undead chorus belts a growling hiss. Sprinkles of dew spreading evenly along his cloak. An almost, very nearly, conscious dance of bullets streaming. Pauses in the deformed, analog hands. Intimate echoes of the unexpected...
“ Would you kill a man? ”
Higgs takes visible confusion to this belated inquiry, contemplating the question thoughtfully with a sneaking glance to the cadaver adjacent, riddled through the torso with bullets engraved by his name, caught between the viscid web of sinking and floating. He tries to ignore what he witnessed moments after. To erase clean from his still innocent memory, a nightmare devouring dream. A sweeping, nebulous substance. Grey clouds racing above to deliver omen disguised as heavy rain. His conscience weighing just as heavily upon his shoulders. The line between dream and reality becoming indistinct. The rain was but a metaphor for his guilt.
Or, so he thinks...
Amelie has yet to unmask her authoritative pretense. To assure Higgs that his actions up to this point were nothing more than coping tactics fabricated by the breadth of a troubled mind.
But, no…
“Not this one.”
He does well to deceive his nerves into a state of numbness. The inclement weather, the necrotising body, the muted oscillation of waves before them, blackened impossibly further by stalking tinge of sinister atmosphere. Despite the dread of it all expressing a tangible, if not inescapable, caress of something real, he feels the knees of fate kneeling by his side, reluctant to grip his gloved hand. To inch closer to his covered ear to soothe him with the toneless musings, the sinless pleadings of….
“A boy.”
Now, it was Higgs’ turn to feign insouciance. What was man if not a boy redefined to a mean median of its mode? The sum parts of its immaturity. The muscle convulsing with false profundity. Far too obscure to say, but having voice to be said. To be dealt in deafening hand to the living and the dead.
“Sacrifice is necessary for evolution.”
To acknowledge the truth of another day would be one millennia closer to his escape.
“In the landscape of extinction, precision is next to godliness.”
In the midst of grim scrutiny and thunderous applause, she smiles. Sounding pleased with his lethargy all the same. Since the beginning of their engaged time, her purpose had always been evident. She existed to consume and destroy.
“You learn well, Higgs.” The betraying age of her smile falters a wrinkle before reaching her eyes. Synthetic corners bearing a taste of reluctance.
“How hapless your formative years must have been…”
Higgs grimaces, tempted to unscrew the bolts of his second face. Her guileless expression flutters from blind eyes. His frown and clenched jaw unrecognised. Static in tandem, the tension of a deity’s cry in the sky.
“No child should have to endure what you have.”
A broken record.
Ancient; defunct.
Broken ...
“But, I’m afraid…”
Of entropy. Commencing operation. Ocean blue succumbing to pitch black. Ascending from the briny depths, tar rising in strands, stretching towards cimmerian shade. The sun, a shy relic of a promising yesterday. And yet….
“I still haven’t made myself clear.”
The last thing he sees. Permitted to see in suffocating absence, semblance of light a distant hover, signalling the wrest of lucid allusion from corporal conception. Before the final gasp, the gas mask lifts from clammy flesh.
Behind closed lids, the flickering layers of inverted rainbow deprive him of oxygen. A luster of dull rays in the span of drumming impatience. According to the primigenial dial, rest was just a fibrillator’s jest away from obliging the patient’s request.
“ Higgs… ”
Three seconds…
“ Higgs ?”
Two seconds…
“Higgs!”
One.