I wrenched open the sliding door and stumbled to my feet. The empty room was warm and sunlit but I had to get away. Standing on the lawn, staring at the trees and sky, I found that nothing in the everyday world could dispel the cold fear that haunted me. But that fear was absurd. These were not memories. Dreams, nightmares, the fabrications of a mind that would come up with any explanation to resolve anxiety: these I could accept. But memories of actual events? Never. Yet I found myself scanning the trees for broken limbs and peering at the ground for telltale holes and gouges. When I realized what I was doing I turned away in disgust. There had to be an explanation for the dazzling light, my wounded face, the lapse of memory. Had I been struck by lightning, had I wandered in a daze till morning? Or was isolation driving me to madness? Madness. A word I had avoided; there it was. I noticed the front door gaping wide: in my rush from the house I had left it open. As I went to lock it, that false memory of the door crashing open in a blaze of light nagged at me. Of course it was false. The door was undamaged; nothing had smashed it open. Then I thought of infinitely branching ropes, repeatedly splitting in two from the size of a limb to the size of a molecule; no lock would keep them out. But that was nonsense. It had to be nonsense. Two ravens leapt from the boughs of a cedar; I stood in the doorway and listened to their fading cries. There was nothing I could do but go home. Hemmed in by the trees along the driveway, I felt naked beneath that wedge of sky; I glanced away from the boarded windows of the farms along the road. On the other side of the mountain I looked down into the valley and saw my house standing like a target amidst barren fields, exposed on all sides to any shadows that might loom with evening. Yet the darkest were already there, deep inside my head. -- From Shadows in the Sunrise.
Posted on: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 08:38:56 +0000