Scales 030
Warning; Scales is a body-horror serial and, at times, terrible terrain for the mind.
Oh, good! You’ve found your way back. They’ll see you now. Tread carefully, though, the walls are a bit ‘thin,’ as they say. As is the lady of the house, currently, including the house. Of course, both seem to be getting better within their own adagio, pacing their partnering just so…
To be clear, I don’t owe anyone an explanation. I don’t owe anyone this, even. Whatever this may be. I owe not myself, not you, nor any-one who is already long-gone. I am alone. And I feel as if I am slowly being stripped of all the senses I once had.
The heat seeps in through the walls. Condensation builds on top of itself like overlapping conversations in Church. Impossible to focus on just one of them in a chorus of auditory and processing contradictions.
It is an ocean’s weight in humidity. Staunch, oppressive, unrelenting and gelatinous. Vile, in short. Putrid, certainly, if one could gamble their olfactory system.
Whatever power that was left, melted. There are no transformers to maintain, no lines to rewire. Puddles and deadened plots remain. No graves for industry.
Death came for the industrious.
Death came for any chance at a peaceful transfer of power.
Surprise, surprise, the labor does not carry-over into the next calendar year, should your boss choke on their own intestines as they writhe and colic against the air they breathe. The toxic blooms, the atmosphere’s distinct change in pressure and…feel. Sticky, nearly. Like heavy duty bug spray residue. It clings to you like a film strip. Thin and streaking, irritatingly innocuous, and entirely unavoidable.
Nothing feels right anymore.
As for what is left, I can only say:
“Do you see a ghost, Lily, or are you staring at the wall for a reason?”
Grateful for the instance to put Peter Pan down, my attention turns to my little brown companion. Her gaze, slightly off to the left, over her shoulder.
“It’s a wall, girl.”
She continues to stare.
It stays like this for hours, then days. Until, eventually, we both slipped into a deep summer coma staring at the wall. Entranced by what we saw, but avoiding it all the same.
A wall, it seems, that is moving independently. A shimmer, only slightly.
“What the actual fuck?” I asked Lily.
A huff was all she had to offer in explanation.
When folks think of “summer,” they may imagine a beach. There is a sense of freedom in the waves and the coastline mimics the expanse of time. The extension of our days stretch into our evenings, and even then, we light bonfires. Accustomed to the heat is an understatement. As the Northerners brag in inches of snow, I offer you not a bleak fever stuck in a cabin, I offer you hell.
Where others freeze, we melt. Melting, however, is not at all like going to sleep.
And I can still hear the screaming.
A cold nose reminds me of my rumination.
“Oh, sorry.” I exclaimed, noticing the damage. A silvery pile of bloodied scales shone back at me in a taunt. “I wasn’t thinking,” I said to Lily.
We both turned our attention back to the wall. The smallest glimmers reflecting back onto us, dappling us in a moment.
“Feels like glitter.” I laughed. “Do you feel that?”
Lily sneezes.