An Exercise in Living

not really a story, not really anything. Just a thought, plotted out with pretty words.

I once spent some time in a large room. There I watched a faux daisy shed a few tears. Honestly, I could feel no empathy for my plastic friend as her beauty was the reward for the pain she felt.
And through the vents I heard a voice, one I thought was that of my father. Though he sounded more like the fruit vendor down on Green avenue, but I trusted him none the less. The voice distracted me from counting the sparkles that littered the wooden planks that held the ceiling up. He said "You are so flawed that it's no surprise you're lying in a million pieces."
At that the daisy wept harder.
So I shifted my left leg to comfort the chill of the right, and outstretched my hand to reach the telephone. It was one of those glamorous old types that you'd see in a film from the fifties. The thing was possibly diamond encrusted, though worth counted for little in that room. With one finger I dialed the numbers that the man in the vent breathed to me, and I waited.
Tap tap tap� my boot on the concrete floor.
"Yes, hello?"
"Yeah, I need some help."
"Oh really? What can I do?"
"Well you see, I'm in a state of disrepair."
"Copy, no problem."
"Thank you."
And with a light click of the telephone on the reciever, the conversation ended. The far left wall began to hum. After about 15 minutes of that humming, and the light flickering from yellow to green, a shadow expelled itself from the glittery surface. With gangly arms and legs it strode towards me, my old friend.
I lit the tip of my cigarette and drew in a breath. My friend nodded. That meant he was well and the process would begin soon. Smoke billowed in Greek curlicues away from me and filled the room with a pink haze. As I reached to my right for the ashtray (a hollowed out doll head), the shadow reached out to my left with a coca cola bottle filled with something that was too busy shimmering to be concerned with its eminent demise.
I raised one feathered eyebrow and took the bottle from him. "This?" He bowed. That meant I was correct in assuming that the fluid in question would do the job. The drink was remarkably beautiful, more attractive than the tragic daisy. It seemed to be the blood of the angels who cry in secret. Or perhaps the earnest breaths of forbidden lovers. But that's beside the point.
A humming to the left.
My attention was broken once more by a cough from the vents, and when I peered up, my friend had already left me. With a salute I wrote in the air with my pinky "Goodbye friend, thank you. I hope to find you well again when I return." And I heard a smile from the phone. That meant he got the message. So with flamingo lips, I kissed the bottle and the liquid filled every pore of my body.

Silence.

I awoke from my sleep on a gargantuan mirror shaped like a human heart. A heart that was making love to a human brain. And I? Their child. I was completely naked, save the peacock feathers that were woven into an intricate blanket over me. I stood, with new legs, and stared at the void which surrounded me. Then I noticed, some words were staring back at me, and a shadow was disappearing into the distance.
So I turned my gaze downwards. Written in pink lipstick, between the heart and the mind, were the words "To truly live, we must die. And to gain the world, we must lose everything."

Then I realized, this void was the world and it was my job to create the soul of it.

Author's Note

I just wrote.
Give me your thoughts~

Reviews

[T.S. Rex]

I feel like my brain was just fucked by the end of the that story, but definately something I will remember!

[Trystan]

I like it. Definitely thought provoking, a little confusing of course . . . It reminds me of something out of Kafka a little bit, but with the surrealist element multiplied. I really like: "this void was the world and it was my job to create the soul of it." That has a ring of truth to it, don't ya think?

[Looouise]

Wow.
That was pretty impressive.
:]
Especially those last 2 lines.

[Bran the Broken]

wow. fresh, wild, rambling, chaotic, colorful, inventive....not really a lesson in story-crafting, per se, but brilliant in sheer creative ferocity.