Disarmament (Part 4)

March 21, 2015
by Michael
comments 25
Christ / Creative / Fiction

This is Part 4 of 5.  One more to go…  Part 1 is here, if you wish to start at the beginning.

* * * * *

He must have gone for help, the little junco, because when I awoke there were two of them.  One on my side of the window, inspecting the sill– making those erratic steps that come in packs of four or five– and the other one outside, moving only its head, looking around for the entrance.

It made sense.

I was too delirious to understand that it didn’t.  Too delirious to comprehend the magnificence of the white-chested bird.  The one inside.  So much mystery hides under cover of the explainable, we just miss it.  We’re drunken with explanations.  There was obviously a hole in the bedroom large enough to accommodate a big-horned sheep.  Case closed.

I looked across the room.  Still one step behind myself.

She was gone.  My messenger.  The hallway was just a silent opening, a shadow falling across the room.  Nothing more.  A solitary sob chortled through me.  The afterthought of a choking engine.  Where had she gone?  Had she ever been there?

Was I even wounded?

The answer shattered the question.  The pain ambushed me like a line of pointed-teeth thoroughbreds released from the gatehouse.  The starting bell was throbbing in my ear.  Ringing within its ringing.  My mind could block it out for a short time, while I was elsewhere, but the opened box of memories always pulled me back.  The horn sinking into my flesh.  The dull feeling of the couch at my back.

I turned back to the window.  The outer junco was gone, too.

I wanted to consider carefully my condition.  To reflect upon things.  To organize my resources.  Maybe if I rested, and gathered my reserves, I could navigate by the stars when night returned.  Maybe I could tease a junco into delivering a message for me.  It seemed possible.  Never mind I didn’t know what to say, or where to send it.

Or did I?

I decided if the junco landed on my shoulder, I would sing the shape of the tree I used to climb in the backyard.  Probably he would know the one.  I could hum the tones of the knob near the bottom of the trunk, of the lowest branch that was always too thick for my hand to clasp, of the spot nearly halfway up where three limbs sprouted in quick succession.

Come here little friend.

The pain intruded again as it made the far turn, a seething crowd of teeth and hooves and dust.  I watched expectantly as they came down past the grandstands.  It was going to be close.  A photo finish.  They swept across the line.

Where I had placed it anyway.

I watched in disbelief as they swept across without even slowing.  They dug in, and pushed the pace instead.  The bell was still ringing.  Their eyes were wide, their pupils dilated.  Their lips slack.  Their hearts afraid and hungry.  It was a race to the end.  I felt myself being diluted thinner and thinner.  I wanted in that moment, more than anything, to set them free.

I began to hum the notes of that tree.  Mercifully, I drifted towards sleep once more.  The last memory that came was of his eyes.  The dancing flames.

–  –  –  –  –

Next time I came to the surface I was reaching instinctively for a prickly sensation at my side.  I searched tentatively with one hand until I felt something sticky and stranded, like cotton candy.  There was a fibrous cord protruding from my wound.  Soft moonlight from high in the sky was spilling onto the window and dropping straight down onto the floor.  Poised on the edge of the light were the shadowed silhouettes of three juncos.

They were inside.  I could hear them cheeping to one another.  Raising valid questions.

The silk wire ran from my wound, down my leg, onto the floor, and then across the room to an electrical outlet, where it ended in a weblike cocoon.  Prickly shapes were commuting up and down the outside of the wire like ants making trips downtown for supplies.  I thought maybe this was it.  The way healing came.  I wanted to be grateful, to let them put me back together just right, but the spiders unnerved me.  Their eyes were bright green dots that leapt from the darkness and stung my eyes.  Red ones.  Yellow ones, too.  Like lasers.

But my pain had subsided.  I was being sustained in some way, and my bleeding had stopped.  My side was plugged by what seemed an infestation of cotton balls, and inside of that mess was the wire.  Its electricity was cool and sugary.  It even tickled a little.

As if responding to my attention, images began arriving, one after another.  Flowing down the wire.

They were the answers we needed.  The right ones.  How to solve the political game.  The key to ending poverty.  In one, I was up at the podium, pointing to the slides.  I was explaining the proper way to plant peas.  To breed sheep.  Most people know that chlorine in the water is bad, but they didn’t know the real reason why.  I could see why.  I was explaining this, too.  I understood the punchlines to every philosophy.  How to mix and match them like metal alloys– into lightweight, flexible structures– so that things worked.  So we could get along.  So that it could all make sense.  And finally, people were listening.

These were good things.  Needed things.  These were the gifts I had earned.  They were mine to offer.

I was at the beginning of an insight about solving the energy crisis when I saw his eyes again.  Gentle and clear.  Why was he interrupting me now?  Couldn’t he see what was happening?  I wanted to whisk them away.  I glanced up towards the window.  The juncos were trapped between the glass and the web.  Nearly ensheathed.  Their cheeping had changed into staccato clucks.  My breath froze and broke into a thousand glassy fragments.  Something inside of me– my best intentions– collapsed.

How could this have happened?

Across the room, the spiders were already working on the hallway.  They were about a third of the way up the wall, covering it over with a silken sail.

What was going on?

That’s when I heard the soft, tremulous braying.  From the bedroom.  Her call wobbled, like a shaky leg, and then gave out on itself entirely.  As if the very effort to sound her voice had sapped her reserves.  My heart flared with an urgency I had never felt before.  I crawled to my feet gingerly, nearly falling back to the floor with dizziness.  I took a step towards the spiders in the hallway, and searing pain exploded in my side.  The sensation of something tearing.

The wire wasn’t long enough to reach her.

I spun around and reached for the snips.  My actions were coming swiftly now, unquestioned.  The couch was covered in webbing.  I grabbed hold of the cord and yanked it once, as hard as I could.  The fibrous mass pulled free, but it was like being stabbed all over again.  I nearly passed out.  With one hand held to my side, pressed against the blood, I kicked through the webbing and staggered down the hall.

25 Comments

  2. smilecalm says

    wonderful dreamy
    entanglement mind
    weaves around
    heart’s vulnerable
    connective longing!
    grateful to read
    wounding not fatal
    in these characters
    as real as those
    in new testament
    Bob Dylan tunes 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • Michael says

      🙂

      You are most kind, David. Your poetic responses leave me feeling you are close by, despite being miles away.

      (The historical ordinance was safely disarmed… I think…)

      Michael

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
    • Michael says

      Thanks, A. Me, too!

      Am enjoying reading of your plunge into hostel living. It reminds me of how much is probably lying in wait for us to discover, if we just give it a try. Wishing you and Don peace on this spring day–

      Michael

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
  5. Karin says

    Holy cow! It’s not a cow but a big-horned sheep. I wasn’t aware that female sheep can have horns, but apparently some really do. Thanks for solving that riddle already in part 4.
    For the rest of the loose ends and riddles to be solved , I am waiting for the next part.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • Michael says

      Yes! I actually did some research into this one as I was writing, because I wanted the horns and the feminine both. It was pretty interesting to read about the different bovine species in which the females have horns. I was actually astounded by all the different shaped horns you find in sheep and antelope around the world. There are some real daggers out there… 🙂

      I will do my best to pull this all together in the final round… Thank you so much for reading, Karin!

      Michael

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply
    • Michael says

      Your honesty is so appreciated, Hariod! I’m doing my best also… I think the short path took a detour. It was down for maintenance or something. 🙂 I’m not sure the point is to know exactly what’s going on at this point in the narrative, so on one level I’m okay with this. On another, well… I’m toying with the idea of absquatulation. But I think I’ve got to take my licks and keep on tickin’ as the saying goes.

      You should know: no animals were harmed in the creation of this narrative.

      Michael

      Liked by 3 people

      Reply
      • Hariod Brawn says

        Well, at least getting lost has never been so much fun. Actually, it’s a little more like being led blindfolded by a benevolent guide, all the while trusting that wherever we end up, things will be just as they should be. And of course, knowing what’s going on is hardly the point in a work such as this; it’s more about imparting feelings at this stage is it not?

        Absquatulating with tired eyes here in England at midnight.

        Hariod. ❤

        Liked by 2 people

        Reply
        • Michael says

          What a lovely description, Hariod. The blind benevolent leading the blind benevolent.

          You’re right. Knowing what’s going on, while obviously the point of life, is not perhaps the point of this work. At this time. Or ever. Maybe. 🙂

          Much Love
          Michael

          Liked by 1 person

          Reply
  7. Andrea says

    “So much mystery hides under the cover of the explainable, and we are drunken with explanations…” That is one of the most powerful sentences I have read in a long time. Well sir, you have impaled us with an unexplainable tale, and I am deliciously drunk upon its twists and turns. This is lovely. This is romance and bravery. This is a fairy tale for all of us sharp edged grown ups gorged with logic and starving for magic; afraid of discomfort and sacrifice and the sharp purity of the unknowable. That purity will pierce s, impale us, if only we will let it come. And the cotton candy spiders? Holy smokes!! Holy snips.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • Michael says

      Your comment is absolutely perfect, Andrea. The magic that peeks through life always seems to me, when I glimpse it, to be simultaneously both richer and simpler than whatever it was I was previously contemplating. I so appreciate the way you respond from the heart, and recognize what is moving through the prose.

      Pierced by purity,
      Michael

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      Reply
  8. Harlon says

    Smooth, very smooth. There is so much in this that “sparkles”, I could readily cut and paste the entire thing – and say I like this, heck, I could cut and paste it and tattoo it on my forehead, but for now; I loved this: “So much mystery hides under cover of the explainable, we just miss it.” Harlon

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • Michael says

      Thanks, Harlon. I love the way you think. If you tattoo it on your forehead, thought, it just becomes so much more fine print… And no one needs that. I think we’re both better off tattooing the wordless place that inspires us on our forehead. Bit cleaner that way. Then we can have a secret head nod, too. 🙂

      Peace
      Michael

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  9. stockdalewolfe says

    Still free-falling in your wonderful images. Have no idea where I am but know your words took me there. Feel very much like I have smoked something powerful though that is not something I do. Don’t need to with your narrative. Love the visions being a visually minded person. On to part 5…

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • Michael says

      Part 4 was where we hear the Twilight Zone music, and wonder where we took the wrong turn. Thanks for hanging in there with this, Ellen! Sometimes writing has the effect on me you are describing, like a dilation of awareness. I think it is settling into the full sensations of being. A joyous feeling. I’m grateful for your sharing these observations, Ellen.

      Peace
      Michael

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