NEW WRITING: rocking.

 

He sat in the chair - rocking - backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. Then he would stop in mid rock - his knees tensing, as he held the spot. He looked down at his large hands as they spread out on each of his locked thighs, spread out as if giving mock comfort to a body that had slid into being, as if from a space that was nowhere, nothing - a void. And then he would start to rock again - backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. And in this semi-catatonic state, this act of defiant doing-nothingness, he would let his mind wander. There was no point in being focused on thinking, that had long passed. His mind could do little now but wander, so he wandered. He went to one of the places that was always open to him, always inviting, always his.

He was standing on the side of an empty, dusty road. He was naked, so his feet stood flat on the earth, while his toes began to curl, taking in the feel of scratchy grass and thorns - half-dead life that clung to the edge of the road. He looked down at himself and saw that this time round, he was covered in tattoos, moving tattoos of spiralling life - of moons beyond description that revolved around luxurious planets that suckled on his pale chest. There were trajectories of intent across his thighs, journeys beyond the ellipse of man - way beyond. He had written scripts that he couldn't understand - scratched into his groin. Number systems, dialled in repetition, shot up his arms in a pulse that had rhythm with no purpose, number systems for creatures that had not ten digits, but hundreds, thousands. Life pulsed through him in a swirl, he was orgasmic, in ecstasy at a cosmos without limit, without purpose, and without meaning.

And then everything shifted once more - quickly and without warning, like a last breath with nowhere to go. He was no longer within the cosmos, but without, as if he had flipped, inversed. he was now a gap, a vacuum, a void in space itself, and then as if nothing had happened, he was back in his chair, rocking - backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. He looked down at himself - his body was smooth, pale and skinny - no reputable lure for man or beast. His ribs poked through and his gut sagged, his limbs were thin and his feet blistered. But as sad as it appeared, as he appeared - a faded youth - long gone - it was his.