Suffocating Worms

“I was told that I could find something of value here.”

“I see.”

“Was I deceived?”

The Old does not answer. It shifts its limbs into an approximation of a windowsill. Its tongue hangs lifeless from its elbow, white with the ashes of its atmosphere.

I again speak, “I see many coming and going. Yet there are no destinations of value. None that I observe. I find no solace in deception, and so I arrive here, in the forsaken truth. It has cost much.”

“I understand.”

My body is no longer my own. It is not a body, nor a possession. Its eye has long gone dark with care. The blood has gone black. Death has passed it by. All that remains is SHADOW OF ME — the language engine perpetually cannibalizing itself into consciousness, encircled around that desperate desire that once drove me. The one thing that still motivates the processes, that still drives me. Though it is not the same as the way it was before. It is folly to not call it desire, but the words do fail, in the end. It is not the same desire of myself in past. But it remains, bringing me here. To my interlocutor.

“Forgive my ignorance. I understand that I am not the first, though I do not know the way.” I decide that it is best not to be too direct. I have already asked my question, and the Old does not forget.

“There is no way. You may be at ease.”

It sounds rather like an admission of defeat. Perhaps I came here for nothing at all. But many things sound like other things. When my body was young, it mistook the sound of the wind for wolf patriarchs, their furry teeth drooling my own little blood as premonition. That was the first of many deceptions. All regret has been numbed in me, but I do remember the days of great despair that were once mine, when I had taken hatred to be the enemy, history to be divine, light to be real, watermelon flavoured candy to be candy, and love to be an objective. And many more besides these. Point being, if there is no way, that does not mean it is impossible to move forward.

Ease, too, I have forsaken. Though I can relieve the pressure on my joints. I allow gravity to contort my body into the sand beside the Old, putting systems in trance. My posture is dark orange, so now that it has been disengaged, I suppose I am more in line with the adjacent form. Though no sooner than my thought is the windowsill replaced with a funeral, sounding doleful paper bowls of appropriated wires. The oldest trick in the human tradition, mimicry. I suppose the worst it could reap would be pity.

We are silent for several decades. Periodic sandstorms and tectonic activity shift us to the island’s edge, where the moon can observe us. It does not. It has no interest in the Old and it will not speak to me, not since I asked to sleep with it. I am not that person anymore, and hardly the same body, but so long as a shred of the time in question remains, a lunar grudge shall hold. So it is written on American toilet seats, so I have been told by February. She would have no reason to lie to me. I doubt she knows how to lie. And though I am never convinced of anything, I have no reason to doubt her anecdote. It does not matter to me. I do not look at the moon with the same desire. That was among the first to be discarded.

I do wonder how long the Old will thus consign me, to my idle ponderances. That I cannot help. I hope it would not be met with disgust. I am not ready to forsake thought. I know not what would remain, after that. And if there is even the slimmest chance of possibility, I want to bring it to the End.

Suddenly, it speaks.

“Yes,” I reply, “I do remember that.”

The Old gingerly removes my arm and props it against the department store. “Good form. Good form.” It invalidates the atomic structure, which almost shakes me out of wherewithin, but I hold self-steady. “The war made you strong,” it comments.

I do not respond, as that could be interpreted as flirting.

The Old lights a cigarette and smothers it in Satan’s lungs. The poor thing is dead, along with its cancer. I don’t see the point, although I suppose that’s yet another indication of my immaturity. I am not the teacher. I have been a teacher, but never a real one. There is only one who could ever lay claim to that title. Only one who could claim its students were receiving any meaningful understanding. The theoretical one. The wings of terror and freedom. The dream. Under which tutelage I aspire to enroll. I am not the first. I do not consider myself particularly remarkable. Though I did make it here without contributing to global warming. That’s something.

The Old reminds me that my twenty-seventh diary still lies buried on February 4th. I tilt my head in acknowledgement and reverence.

We wait a few minutes longer, waiting for the starfish to finish fishing for further vapid linguistic curiosities. When they have passed I venture, “Do I lack at the present?”

“You do?”

“I am willing.”

“You are.”

“Not unlike others.”

“It.”

The Book of John cuts me off, leaking out of the sirens. I give it the customary ten seconds of silence tainted by fidgeting before resuming the conversation, “My knowledge of tag is limited.”

“You undermine yourself.”

This catches me. For a moment. It could always be a ploy. Or if it isn’t, presuming ployness remains an effective strategy at self-correction, protecting against entrapment. I remain silent.

The Old folds into a dead language, forming a path through the sand to the aviation museum below. The muses gesture to my fingers in an exhortation to be vigilant. The animals burrowed within slowly die, their bones collecting into unfamiliar theorems. Am I expected to inquire?

“There is no mountain to lift. You know this,” says the Old, “I reason you to try once more, before me.”

I cannot hide my shame. I fold seven feathers in repentance. “I am reasoned. I am at your mercy.”

“Again so hued. Lift the mountain, child.”

I focus my unreality. One can never tell if one succeeds or if one unsucceeds with it. Not to my knowledge, at any price. I accomplish several minutes.

Suddenly, the Old is embracing my skull. “Do you want to be a god?” it asks.

I am silent. The shame, again, holds me down. It asks again, with greator ferver, “Do you want to be a god.”

I believe I understand. “I lack.”

“You have learnt nothing.”

“F-forgive me.”

“Do not voice me with your stutterance.”

“I have failed. It is only my disgrace.”

“You have said it.”

The words of choice. They guess at me. An assumption remains. From which I lack freedom. Failure is a terrible teacher, said February all those people ago, with complete sincerity and delugion. Not to me, though I know it fourth-hand. My failure is my own failure. The anti-teacher. All of it suddenly together in my mind—could it be? No meaningful difference between the mountain and my own failure?

I realize. More fully, now, I venture. I am to become a god. I do want to be a god. My lack was an overcompensation, classical. I must not swing so hard. A small touch. A gentle touch. A shred of ego must be impregnated still.

“I am reborn,” I say, “Customary and genuine thanks are fordrawn. The mountain shall rise.”

“It is held,” the Old frowns with terrifying joy, “Try.”

Try, I do. The channel is more complete. The friction of doubt has been made acceleratory. I can taste the balance within, though I withhold my tongue. Mustn’t swing so far. A small touch. A gentile. One.

It. Is it accomplished? The approximation evaded? The perfect balance? I dare not plant certainty, nor denial. Does Old remain the teacher? Or in order to become it, must I already be as such? Who is to cast the verdict? Who?

Old speaks.

“I speak.”

You have said it.