Ephemeris

23 : We are All Monsters

A sea of clouds threatened to engulf the entire town of San Maler. It was many moons ago since such clouds wandered over the crust of the Earth. When the thick, glorious fog touched the verge of the elevated ground, shorn of any reluctance, its smoky talons clawed the rock face. It started to give lavish smooches and ravished the silence and innocence of the small town without mercy. Finally, the corrupt clouds invaded the precipice, sat tranquil over it, and made it vanish off the map.

Under the dense devious fog, the pastel paints of houses, fences, post boxes, and even the leafless trees had corroded. Their colors changed into shades of loneliness, gray and white, an eerie ghost town. Visible at the cliff's edge remained erected were the ruins of a house of a crumbling family.

There was a rumbling sound under the garden. It looked as if something was underneath the withered lawn, desiring to crawl out from the underground dimness. It yearned for surface light. The rumbling intensified and shook the ashen soil, rattling the integrity of the nearby house. After a minute, it stopped, then there was stillness.

Checking the ground in the middle of the garden was a prominent protrusion that was likely part of a plant. A silvery shaft of light from above breached through the impenetrable haze illuminating the protuberance brilliantly. Beneath the limelight, the green protrusion sprung slowly beneath the surface, arising from a long period of dormancy. It was a giant peduncle of an acaulescent plant—a tulip. The pointy ovoid bud at the terminal end of the stalk sucked up the silvery glow. Then, graciously, the bud opened its snowy petals, revealing a full blossom.

Lying on the flower's inner whorl of the perianth was a lady dressed in a lacy wedding gown. She opened her eyes. The blinding light from above, the light from the remarkably undamaged moon, stabbed her ginger corneas. The woman shook her head in utter disbelief, bringing it back to mind the second she cuddled her pillow inside her sunless room. She sat astride and let her pale palms caress the velvety patterns of the corolla.

After tarring with the thought of waking up inside a giant flower, she realized she was out of her room. I never go out for the longest time, even to set a foot out of the four walls of my room, she thought. She tucked some of the dangling tendrils of her hair behind her ear and believed that perhaps she was somnambulating.

In some way, the lady seemed pleased with the world of a fairy tale she was about to discover. But a pain throbbed inside her bosom, a feeling of repugnance from the moon shining above. But her attention was caught by the silvery radiance of it. She felt a sudden headache when she harked back to the cosmic event, seeing the backwater of memories of the moon disfigured its face by a blinding collision.

Tipping her head back, she directed her irises above, looking for the white orb caught in the canvass of the black dome. The moon's light was hypnotic. Its mesmerizing beauty arrested her eyes, inviting her to stand up. She stretched an arm aloft, reaching the shiny celestial object. Her palms blocked the light, creating a shaft of shadow. The shadow cut through the misty mid-air, landing upon her freckled cheeks. She shut her eyes and furrowed her brows, revolting from the grace of the heavenly orb.

Tears from the corner of her eyes streamed ceaselessly. She didn't know what triggered her lacrimal glands to produce clear saline fluid. She placed her palms on her belly, thinking about the bundle of joy she had been carrying for months. But there was nothing inside of it. She craned her neck further, wilted her head beyond her shoulder, and let the rush of tears fall into the perianth's surface. She didn't stop crying, lamenting, soaking the furry center of the tulip.

On the spur of the moment, the flower's insides moved side to side with a very short, quick tremor. She was shaking with fright. The cradle she was sitting on absorbed her tears, sprouting some flowers. They were not blossoms but filaments with stamens. These anther-bearing stalks of stamens were towering, enclosing her on all sides. She sprung up, and glittery specks of dust sprinkled from above. With her supine hands forming a cup, she tried to catch the golden powder and studied them carefully.