| Dahlia sits cold and motionless in a shallow grave. Her arms are bruised from the thin rope that had bound her and her skin is illuminated by the not so distant moon. She feels for the tape residue that is on her lips and then the mortal laceration that is still on her neck. Ensuring that what had happened was not a dream. With dead lungs she takes her first breath of the canyon air, with dead ears she hears the motions of a river sounding from the distance and with dead legs she rises to her feet. She rises and the moon smears across her face. Then it drips into the texture of her hair. She remembers a young man named Joshua with a gentle voice. He had a soft smile that seemed to always brighten her eyes. She remembers him aggresively chasing her in the back yard. Seemingly insane and violently pursuing her. She remembers him falling and crashing his once warm and loving face into the glass of a patio table. She remembers him subduing her. Black hair sways in a light breeze and covers her breasts like the velvet curtians of an opera house. There are loose clumps of grave soil clinging in patches over her nude body. Her pale lewd figure, glowing under the full moon. On fire like a terrible blue dream, explicit and beautiful. She was always so beautiful. She holds a bouquet of white roses and keeps her eyes to a canvas of stars, the underbelly of the night. She plucks one petal from the largest rose and places it on her tongue. Then swallows. She hears the sound of water in the distance and catches the aroma of damp foliage. It is maddening. The scent reminds her of her mother when she would water the garden. It reminds her of when she was alive. The river sounds from the banks and through the thicket and then to the lunar embers of her soul. It is growing louder. It sounds like it is drawing closer and moving in for the death of her human form. She slowly opens her mouth and then pauses as if to stop from speaking. Breathing deeply and slowly for a few moments. Her eyes are one with the night sky as she begins to imagine the moon in crescent form swallowing the stars. Like two companions strange and in love. Dahlia begins gashing at the bouquet with her teeth. Tearing leaf by leaf and stem by stem. The thorns begin cutting the insides of her mouth. she bleeds down her chin and then onto her body. But she doesn't stop. She swallows every last rose. Devouring, consuming, destroying. There is a noise sounding from her left. A loud machine rumbling in the quiet wilderness. A car passes by from the top of an embankment. Probably and older sports car. It reminds her of how she got here. It reminds her that there is a road that winds and weaves through the canyon pass. A road that leads to the city. A road that eventually leads her to Joshua's House. Dahlia drops her once beautiful bouquet of white roses and begins up the embankment to the road. She walks slowly and calmly until she reaches the darkness of the asphalt. There are a set of lights that are peering from around the bend. A car approaches at a steady pace and she knows that they will see a nude figure strolling the shoulder. She knows that they will try to stop her. She knows that a lot of people are going to die. But she walks. She strolls calmly and knowingly. She knows that there will be nothing beautiful anymore. Everyone will weep for the passing of the world. Her world that had passed with her. The car passes her and then comes to an abrupt stop. The tires grind against the loose pavement and the red lights illuminate the paleness of her back. It is a sedan. A Buick. Like the one her grandfather used to drive. He used to take her to the market on the weekends and she would help pick out the finest fruit. She remembers how he would always have the most fascinating stories to tell. It's been at least five years since he's passed on. She remembers the little fox that he had hit one afternoon. She remembers how blood smeared in streams up the windshield of the car. A man rushes from his car and stops within a few feet of Dahlia. She notices that he is wearing a blue polo shirt and has straight black hair parted on the side. He looked neat and clean cut. Like her ex-boyfriend from college. He asks her if she's ok, he asks why she is bleeding and nude and he tells her not to worry and that everything will be alright. ...Everything will be alright. Ev-er-y-thing-will-be-al-right... His words spin and spiral in her head. Teasing and taunting, convulsing and distorting. Always reminding. She remembers how he broke up with her just before summer. And just after she had given herself to him for the first time. She tells him about the horrible accident she's had. She tells him that she hit a fox and that her car is down the embankment in the river. She tells him that her grandfather is hurt and trapped in the car still. She tells him lies and lies and lies. But he listens. He rushes down the embankment and searches for her ghost of a car. He reaches the river and notices a faint light illuminating from the depths of the water. It must be the headlights of her car. He dives into the water and swims towards the beacon. It glows like a firefly in twilight and fills him with hope that he might not be too late. It flickers and then dims like an old lamp in an old park somewhere in an old town. It speaks to him in Morse code as he begins to realize that he is not drawing any closer to the light and he is running out of air. He abandons the rescue effort and makes for the surface. Swimming steadily and quickly. Minutes go by and he feels like he is begining to drown. He realizes that there is no surface anymore and that the light is just an instrument to the measure the darkness he is in. His body goes limp and begins to feel envenomed, arms outstretched towards where the surface should have been. Have I died? He wonders. Then curious white petals begin to dance around his body. They are flowing upward and twisting with air bubbles. They are illuminated in the darkness. He is not drowning anymore. Then suddenly... He sees the stars. He sees a man approach and eclipse the moon, He sees a kitchen knife in his hands. He sees everything she saw and he feels everything she did. He experiences pain. He feels hands wrapped around his neck. He feels the blade of the knife disappearing into his throat like a sinking ship... or a sinking body on the river. His beacon begins to slowly fade. It fades into the darkness, slowly, quiet now. It feels like somebody's lips on his neck. Maybe a kiss. A thin stream of cloud is moving from behind the hills. It begins to cover the moon like the smoke from a horrible wreckage. Her wreckage. Dahlia is crouched over a motionless body in the water. Blood still running from the wound she had put on his neck, blood is still flowing through her dead veins and blood is still dripping from her chin onto her breasts. She can feel his soul moving inside her body. She wipes her chin and then dips her hand into the river water. She scoops out three white rose petals. Her hands are so cold and frail. Like the petals of a soft white rose. Soft white noise. She finds his car keys and begins up the embankment. The moon is gone now. It was swallowed and consumed by the smoke in the sky. The earth is motionless and forever as she starts up the car. There was a rumble that echoed through the quiet wilderness. But before that there was the sound of coyotes gnawing on the bones of a corpse. . But even before that there was the sound of heaven burning and collapsing in the wake of the world... Joshua surely rests in his home by now. Dreaming, breathing... She knows that his mind is wandering where time does not exist. She knows that everything is beyond the reach of God. Beyond the devil. She knows that everything will be alright and that Joshua is going to die. She will go to him. She will press her lips against his and she will embrace him like a hostage. She will torture his body. She will remove his eyes. She will find him strange and in love. |
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| The light is an instrument to measure the darkness. |