Where the Sky Meets the Earth

It's a wasteland.  It's all dead.  Thank God i can hear the wind howling or i wouldn't know i even existed.  But that's a bit of a lie, i always know i exist.  It's concretely self evident.  Well i don't know how i came to be sitting here but i'm starting to not like it.  The sky is a solid sheet of gray.  I can't see a seam, the stitches; i can't see a beginning or end.  I guess the only foundation is where the sky meets the... meets the...

I went to throw up but nothing came out.  I feel uneasy at having no foundation.  But... that won't hold me back.  I'm standing up and that is going quiet well.  I walk at a quickened pace and after some indefinite amount of time i have a hill before me.  And a tree is on top of that hill.  It's quite beautiful, to be honest.  I walk up to it and I decide to sit in its shade, though to be honest it doesn't have any shade because there is no source of light that i can determine.  I'm just saying that as a figure of speech.  There is a violin leaning against the tree.  I don't know what a violin is, i just know that it's called a violin.  Judging by its brown color, which matches the tree, and its location, i would infer that they grow on trees.  But there is only one and i would think that there would be more haphazardly gathered around the base of the tree if that were the case.  Oh well, this is beyond me.  

I am a fish out of water.  I don't belong here, the foreignness of this entire land is founded deep inside me.  I will climb the tree and find my way out.  Leaping to the first branch i begin my ascent.  Branch by branch, lifting myself higher and higher.  Absorbed in this activity i fail to realize how high i am.  I leap to another branch and i pull with all my might.  My arms strain and i pinch my eyes shut and pulling and pushing and pushing the door gives way.  I don't know why the thing wouldn't budge.  Here i am on the platform.  I pace over to the bench with peeling paint and sit down.  The train is taking forever to get here.  I've been waiting so long.  I thought i'd use the bathroom and read the graffiti in the stall and take my own sweet time and then i'd hear the distant echo of the arriving train.  But no, i get to sit here and wait another hour with the company of a this hobo saying, "the c**k crows once, the c**k crows twice, the c**k crows three times" again and again.  I also get the lovely company of stench.  The hobo stops shouting for a second.  In a deeply sentimental voice he groans, "I want proactive love.  Love to come out of the blue."  I turn to him and laugh.  "Proactive is an over the counter medicine, you nut.  But looking at your face, i bet you could still use some."

"Oh yeah... what was i thinking?  Love isn't proactive.  I've gotta get some heroine, man."  I turn away.

I begin to hear footsteps from the depths of the subway tunnel.  They echo out to me and grow louder until i see the head of a man emerge, his body concealed by the platform.  He centers himself in my view of the tunnel and turns to me.  "Come, sir."  I stand and oblige him.  I lower myself onto the tracks and follow him.

"Who are you?"  I ask. 

"I am from the future.  I've come to visit you because it is an awfully gloomy day in the future.  Technical difficulties you see."  We emerge from the tunnel to a view of a winding road meandering around mountains.

"Well i was under the impression that the future was not a place as it was a theoretical... thing."

"Oh yeah..." he looks around.  "Aw... we're back in America.  Well yes, we have put you under that impression."

"You who?"

"We the future."

"Oh."  To be honest, i have at this point concluded this man to be completely insane but the walk is enjoyable so i lend him my ears.

"Alright, listen, we venture throughout time arbitrating your conception of things.  Pick from your memory a  thing you do.  Anything."

"I... lay down to bed, go to sleep and wake up in that bed 7 hours later and get dressed."

"Yeah, you see, that makes  no sense.  It is completely absurd.  That series of events is completely aribtrary and we have made it so that it makes sense to you.  It's really out of the goodness of our hearts.  Well not really, because we treat you like guinea pigs.  Sometimes we even use you for war tactics in the future.  So when somebody gets hit by a car in your world (which, might i add, makes no sense whatsoever), we have really just arbitrated that so as to give you a little reminder of mortality and an explanation of their absence.  Even the way i speak is a different language.  The intonation and the timing and everything.  I couldn't express it to you."

"Okay."  Our walk brings us to a man peering under his hood with some smoke seeping out.  He steps back and coughs, rubbing his eyes.  He is wearing a blue sweater.  The man I'm with quickens his pace and grabs blue sweater's head and puts it under the hood and he proceeds the smash blue sweater's head between the hood and the engine with vehement force.  I rush forward, somewhat stunned by the suddenness.  "What are you doing!" 

"Don't worry!" responds the man.  "I enjoy this.  The hood isn't hot or anything.  And a little exertion is worth it."  He smiles.

"No, i wasn't asking about... you... nevermind."

"Care to go for a drive?"

"Um... is that car working?" 

"I'm from the future, i can get it to work."  He turns back to the engine and puts his hands towards it and fiddles around for a while and then, looking satisfied, he wipes some blood and brain matter from off the engine and then closes the hood.

"I'd say we are in order."  The man gets into the front seat and turns the keys to hear the engine start.  I get in as well.  The man slams the pedal and the car climbs over the corpse whose soul was probably still crying trapped under the hood.

"Souls aren't real," the man says.  The car speeds through the desert with the sun at the horizon.  The way the sand sparkles is very interesting as well as the way it sways like an ocean in the heat.

"A kid!" the man shouts and he swerves off the street to run down a child.  The wheels squeak in the rain.  The man is quite enjoying using the past as his sandbox.  But i'm getting angry.  The way he speaks, the way he does things and explains things pushes me to view him as something of a demigod.  His confidence and his matter-of-fact oratory.  But i'd say he's something of a psychopath.  I reach to open the glove compartment and i see a pistol in it.  I'm guessing some future person didn't like this man here so much.  Maybe i am a pawn.  I pick it up and fire it at the head of the man who swerves the car into a lamp.  The impact was hard and i gashed my forehead but when i got out of the car and felt the rain pour down my face it cleansed the cut.  I walked across the street and descended down into the subway where i saw the hobo sitting on his box with his raggedy coat.  I wiped the water from my face with my shirt and stared at the hobo who was now very quiet.  I slowly zipped off my coat and put it down on the subway floor and sat on it.  I put my arm around him and just leaned against the subway wall.

"Hey man," I said, with meaning, "We love you, God and I.  Yeah, man, don't worry."  I grip his shoulder.  "We do."  And through his beard he smiles.  The subway shakes as the train rides by and the blur paints pictures of Heaven.  The Sun is soft and we don't cringe in its heat.  Violins don't play a wrong note.  The fields continue endlessly because the sky never meets the earth but we don't need it to because we have better foundations.

 

And then the train was gone.