This is another response to a prompt from a journaling site. Like the last story, it's a little dark. I try to effect some redemption in the end, but I feel I failed on his account. In any case, here it is.
I pick up the phone to a crackling sound. Silent at this unfamiliar noise, I listen instead of speak and immediately notice a pulsation, a frequency that grows increasingly louder. I think nothing of it, but when I am about to return the phone to its receiver, I notice something more. Outside, it is day, but a sudden darkness falls on the neighborhood and is quickly broken by a pulsating light. I step back in fright, the phone now on the floor. The sound and light frequencies match.
Were this all, I would have remained still for a moment, but the sudden movement of earth forced a loss of balance. Recovering, I turned my thoughts inward, avoiding what I knew was true. I realized, then, that the trembling itself was a frequency and that it, too, matched the photophonic pulse. Taking to flight, I rushed the front door and opened it to a sight not familiar to me. It was no longer my neighborhood outside, but a field. In it walked a statue, moving slowly around this field, pieces of stone breaking off of its feet and arms as it crumbled under its own weight. I noted then-- and will notice in every dream for the rest of my life-- that this statue was not just a statue, but a recreation of someone familiar to me, a stone doppelganger whose intent was unknown to me.
The pulsation of light and sound and earth had slowed over time, in fact, to a pace noticeably slower than when I first encountered it. I had grown accustomed to its throbbing, at least as much as one can grow accustomed to something like this; and over time-- every day, in fact-- it was there, crumbling slowly away as it circumnavigated its field along its track of dirt. I stood long one of these days, peering at it, wondering why it never moved away from its place.
It wasn't until I watched it take its final steps and crumble to dust that I learned what it all meant. Finally brave enough to venture into its hearth, I stared down to find its remnants. Among them was the chipped face of someone-- my son, I now knew-- starting back at me. My son, mind you, had lived away for years, and I had not seen him since he was a child; but I knew that this thing was the clear imitation of him in those early days. Why it had paced around an empty field, I could not say, until I heard and saw and felt the pulsing fade to a dim, soft rhythm.
As the pulsation slowed, I felt a growing pain in my chest. It was not a physical pain, but the pain one feels after a sudden loss of something dear. I knew, then, as I fell to my knees among the now-shattered stone, that the pulse was my own heartbeat, dimming and slowing to its final end. I lay down among my memories, around the worn stone shards that began to dissipate in front of dimming eyes, wearing away as my own heartbeat flickered and slowed around and within me to an intermittent beat. I understood, then, that the only thing I had ever wanted, the only thing that ever mattered, lay in front of me in the form of a crumbled stone statue; and while I knew I would never see my son again, the final pulse of my heart was a happy one, because I knew that he was out there, looking up at the same sky under which we all lived. I knew that he would see in it the future I always hoped I'd see in mine. This, for me, was enough.
I pick up the phone to a crackling sound. Silent at this unfamiliar noise, I listen instead of speak and immediately notice a pulsation, a frequency that grows increasingly louder. I think nothing of it, but when I am about to return the phone to its receiver, I notice something more. Outside, it is day, but a sudden darkness falls on the neighborhood and is quickly broken by a pulsating light. I step back in fright, the phone now on the floor. The sound and light frequencies match.
Were this all, I would have remained still for a moment, but the sudden movement of earth forced a loss of balance. Recovering, I turned my thoughts inward, avoiding what I knew was true. I realized, then, that the trembling itself was a frequency and that it, too, matched the photophonic pulse. Taking to flight, I rushed the front door and opened it to a sight not familiar to me. It was no longer my neighborhood outside, but a field. In it walked a statue, moving slowly around this field, pieces of stone breaking off of its feet and arms as it crumbled under its own weight. I noted then-- and will notice in every dream for the rest of my life-- that this statue was not just a statue, but a recreation of someone familiar to me, a stone doppelganger whose intent was unknown to me.
The pulsation of light and sound and earth had slowed over time, in fact, to a pace noticeably slower than when I first encountered it. I had grown accustomed to its throbbing, at least as much as one can grow accustomed to something like this; and over time-- every day, in fact-- it was there, crumbling slowly away as it circumnavigated its field along its track of dirt. I stood long one of these days, peering at it, wondering why it never moved away from its place.
It wasn't until I watched it take its final steps and crumble to dust that I learned what it all meant. Finally brave enough to venture into its hearth, I stared down to find its remnants. Among them was the chipped face of someone-- my son, I now knew-- starting back at me. My son, mind you, had lived away for years, and I had not seen him since he was a child; but I knew that this thing was the clear imitation of him in those early days. Why it had paced around an empty field, I could not say, until I heard and saw and felt the pulsing fade to a dim, soft rhythm.
As the pulsation slowed, I felt a growing pain in my chest. It was not a physical pain, but the pain one feels after a sudden loss of something dear. I knew, then, as I fell to my knees among the now-shattered stone, that the pulse was my own heartbeat, dimming and slowing to its final end. I lay down among my memories, around the worn stone shards that began to dissipate in front of dimming eyes, wearing away as my own heartbeat flickered and slowed around and within me to an intermittent beat. I understood, then, that the only thing I had ever wanted, the only thing that ever mattered, lay in front of me in the form of a crumbled stone statue; and while I knew I would never see my son again, the final pulse of my heart was a happy one, because I knew that he was out there, looking up at the same sky under which we all lived. I knew that he would see in it the future I always hoped I'd see in mine. This, for me, was enough.
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