It floats in front of you. Literally. Floating there. Clear as day. The words and sentiments etched and scratched into the air. The equation to life, to happiness, to peace. The answers to everything. It’s so beautiful you feel unable to move, are unable to speak, become unable to stop the appreciation streaming from your eyes.
“Look,” you eventually manage.
The people there, they don’t look.
“Look,” you say with more urgency and point to the equation hovering solid.
They turn to you with mouths that smile and eyes that don’t. Words pour from their lips, but they’re not really for you, they’re for each other; they would never waste time telling you things you don’t understand. They should know better by now.
“Stop,” you say. “Look.”
They continue to speak and their sounds disturb the air. The equation flickers and ripples. You panic and clutch at your face. Your heart beats a tad quicker, the thump-thump mirrored by a beep-beep.
How can they not see it? The equation. Everything they want is right in front of them. Everything anyone from the dawn of intelligence has wanted is right. There. But they’re just not paying attention.
Sounds get louder. Louder. Louder. You press your palms against your ears, not daring to tell them to be quiet for fear that your own voice will be too much for the equation, the final straw blowing it away with a last exhalation of breath. It hovers and shimmers on the edge of oblivion as it is. You go mad with the terror of losing it.
Your heart beats faster and faster, the beeping, mimicking it and tracing it perceptible for human ears, heightening. Like a drum roll. Dum-dum dum-dum dum-dum dum-dum.
“Dum-dum dum-dum dum-dum,” you whisper to block out their voices, ever concentrating on the flickering equation. The beautiful beautiful meaning for cosmic everything. “Dum-dum-dum-dum-”
The quicker the drum roll the more frenzied the people become around you, dancing to a disco beat. And the more they dance, the more the equation begins to fade.
“No!” you shout. “No! Stop! Don’t let it – don’t make it – ”
You move to get up but things tug at you. You’re entwined, captured in a net of unrelenting ties that burn when you pull at them. You fight the bindings off to go to the equation but the people move in, don’t let you budge, sabotage your escape.
You’re hysterical. They swarm around you, the people. You’ve disturbed their hive and they’re bees amassing an army to protect it. The equation. That’s their hive. They’ve seen it all along and they don’t want you to take it from them. They think you’re trying to steal it.
“No,” you protest. “No! I swear! I promise! I’ll be good! I don’t – you can – ”
But the bees won’t listen. They swarm they swarm they swarm and they crowd your vision. They sting you in the arms and inject their poison. The equation is almost gone. It struggles to remain but it’s a losing battle. You desperately try to stay awake, both you and the equation slowly sinking into darkness. You can’t lose it. You can’t lose it. You can’t lose it…you can’t…lose…
Your eyes shut the moment after it disappears for good.
* * *
When your eyes open, you see the room you’re in. White and chemical green. The machines are there. The medicine is there. The doctors are there. But the equation isn’t.
“I…” you struggle to say. “I…”
A nurse comes over. “Hi, honey. Are you feeling okay?”
“I knew.”
“What did you know,” she asks, checking nonentities off on her clipboard.
You shake your head and let the pillow absorb it, let yourself fall through the bed into the floor into the earth into the planet’s core where you burn and let your flesh evaporate. You can’t remember what it was, what was in the equation. You just remember the feeling of knowing.
“I just knew.”
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6 comments:
I am sad now, Marta.
This is so poignant, so beautifully written, and I love that. I love the delirious descriptions in the first half - there are too many lines to copy them all down - and the idea that the answer to everything is an equation, a formula. It reminds me of the Pythagoreans and their worship of numbers. And I'm still loving your second-person narrative - it makes everything so much more personal, so much more impactful.
Love.
You have a great knack for heartbeats Marta. I liked the comparison between the doctors and bees, and how the patient's perspective shifted from one hallucinatory conclusion to the other.
"tracing it perceptible for human ears"
wonderful.
I don't have words for this. I'm compelled to say: stunning. But then, that doesn't really do this justice, does it?
It feels like a dream where you can't scream even though you desperately need to, and then you wake up with that silent scream on your lips...
I thought it was beautifully written Marta.
Emlyn's got my comment down.
I see it as really symbolic, actually. I mean, it reminds me a lot of an abstract painting. Sort just stuck in this really (once you think about it) disturbing reality with faceless people who are more creature like than humane (Dali?) But it's a lot about being on the verge of death, I saw, being tempted by something so beautiful, in a way?
Um. Also like that The Answer itself. That you want to share it, yet you want to keep it for yourself? That it's indescribable? Seems right that it's just too beautiful to describe.
I love the feeling at the end. You pretty much got the last paragraph down pat. "I just knew"
I really liked the image of the bees, the hive, the chaos that erupts once he seems to understand what he's not supposed to understand.
You know?
And I loved the twist, him waking up in the hospital, being insane (or is he?) and clinging to the fact that he knew something, that he knew.
Just knew.
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