Friday, July 13, 2012

Austere Memory


Good evening, world. I've found our protagonist in another situation here, one that is almost certainly a dream. The bad news is that I don't know where things go from here. The good news, which I would go so far as to consider great news, is that I'm finally able to see what he might really look like.



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"You've got a question; please, don't ask it."


He whispers these last few words to her, his voice a hoarse echo. He doesn't know what's coming exactly, not quite, but he's heard enough so far to know that something possessed of a terrible finality is about to escape his lover's lips. A lifesplitting pièce de résistance. He thinks slowly to himself,


This is how the world ends. This is how a man is destroyed and a phantom is created from his ashes. 


He doesn't know what causes him to think that. He suddenly realizes he doesn't know why any of these things are happening. He can't remember what came before this conversation, or how he came to be here.


She's dead, he thinks, dead and gone. She can't be here, and if she is here then I must be...


The thought is stolen from him by the quick upward turn of her face toward him, her eyes two shining jades. She smiles at him sweetly, and his earlier notions are forgotten. She is dead, and she is here. He knows both of these things, and the thought of their mutual truths causes a small pain to flare up briefly in the back of his skull. The world shimmers in his vision, an image in murky water.


Her lips part, he hears the sharp, quiet intake of air; she is about to speak. He stares dumbly at her, not understanding the things going on around him as he is swallowed wholly by her infinite sweetness. The pain in the back of his skull has wrapped itself around his entire head now, he sees bright explosions of color that overlap the image of the woman before him. He is on fire in the presence of the only truly beautiful thing he ever knew, and as the first syllable of the first word escapes her lips he remembers a moonlit night in early August, not long after they had celebrated their first year together.


"Who are you?"

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