Xibalba

[Lia]

Thank you, Fallen Angel. Xibalba este o stea din constelatia Orion. As for the story itself, it ain't your particular one, you'll see.

The last man
Didyouevergethighonadream?

A swarm of whispers assaulted me as I regained consciousness, awoken to the feel of damp soil and sight of blinding lights that swiveled madly around my head. The inner workings of my mind seemed to step out of control and I couldn’t lift myself from the ground without some major effort to concentrate on what I was about to do. Halfway through I fell back again, unable to keep my balance; from the outside I probably looked like a retarded, third rate clown trying to set up some sort of scheme. Just that I didn’t find it hilarious, yet I was still laughing uncontrollably for some very odd reason. It seemed that I was acting contrary to how I felt, as if my own body told me I was doing it wrong.

The world started to fade in and I could make out the shape of a merry-go-round that was spinning slowly in reverse, its ponies grinning backwards at me eerily. The darkness covered everything else but my silhouette and the carousel, whose sinister rewinding melody was giving me the willies. I approached the rotating circular platform, drawn in by some bizarre attraction that made my legs move without actually being ordered by the brain to do so. A feeling of anxiousness mixed in with happiness was crawling under my skin, setting my heart into its right place, before I went for a ride. For a mere moment the looping circus music stopped and so did the flying horses, and I found myself staring at the peculiar design of the whole machinery. It reminded me terribly of a circular tin box whose walls were painted to look like a carrousel.

Cap ou pas cap?

I mounted one of the animals, one that resembled a crossbreed between a zebra and a unicorn, and waited for the curtain to rise so I could enjoy the show. Nothing seemed to happen, but before I could finish that thought, I felt moving counterclockwise on the rhythm of the same song that made my skin crease. The lights created a path and as the speed of the carrousel increased, the horse began to expand, its wooden legs cracking like ice revealing two pairs of real hooves ready to gallop as if the horse’s life depended on it. I raised my head a bit, only to find my face buried into a soft silvery mane, which under the winds of time looked like a flowing winter. I moved about in the saddle trying to get a glimpse of the Universe around me.

A gray smoke gave shape to video-like sceneries, which looked like three dimensional memories sprawled from one’s subconscious in a very random way, some better contoured than others. I took control of the harness and heaved the horse to stop so I could take a better look, but it only slowed the pace, enough though for me to make sense of the ethereal appearances. It dawned on me that they were oddly familiar, somewhere deep inside I had already made the connection, yet it still had to surface for me to realize what they actually were. I caught the sight of a smile with the corner of my eye and turned in its direction to see the scene unfold. Somebody was getting inside a taxi with a regret and sadness that sunk in my soul like an echo, oscillating in the rhythm of a clock in pendulant motions. She put her palm on the window looking at him through the cold glass as the sound of the engine came roaring. The focus shifted to a close up on him and he smiled, using his fingers to form the shape of a heart. Without any warning her heart went thumping and I put a palm to my chest feeling mine beat in the same exhilarating way, pumping enough endorphins to make me feel like I was floating heavily on a sea of sand. Just like that the wind blew away the smoke, the flimsy image disappearing without a trace in the night sky. Whatever it had been I was sure I wanted to know more since it had something to do with me.

Continuing to ride through the vast pace that was filled at every pace with shifting grayness, I kept absorbing various emotions with each vapor that dissipated, emotions that filled me to the point where they were streaming down my face like fused rivers. I couldn’t make sense of what I was feeling anymore. But by then I knew well that those were partly my memories and the rest, imaginative scenes of what I wished would become things that I would cross over later in life.

There was me, then I met you and then it became us; with all the good times and the hardship, the sorrows and joys and everything else that merged into our love story. The white nights when I felt like only seeing you would make me fall asleep into a very sweet slumber; the sleepless nights when I would lie awake to watch you drift into dreamland; the feverous nights when we’d make love and then fall asleep together. The long stories of days and distance and words and breaths, dreams and desires, grins and deviousness.

The link.

There was one last vision waiting for me right ahead so I nudged the horse gently to keep walking calmly in that direction. It snorted and I could not help but smile, anxious to feel my own legs again. It stopped a few inches away and letting go off the hinges I got off, setting my feet on the infinite blackness that felt so light and deep.

You were standing there, smile on your face, your lips moving even though I could not hear what you were saying. My eyes were wavering, yet I came even closer to shadowy form that was you, one hand already reaching towards your face, fingers about to touch your skin. It felt so real, yet it wasn’t, it couldn’t be, you were so far away…

I couldn’t resist and jumped to embrace you as tightly as I could, knowing that you would disappear like all the other mists have. Your arms came closing me in, and I looked up in the kind of wonderful shock and buried my head in your chest.

Blue and orange flames entangled us and the entire world faded away again.
The surroundings transformed into something that looked like the Arrivals part of the airport. We were holding each other for real.
That single moment was perfect.

Slept so long without you…