Literary Vignette - Tumblr Posts
In Silent Depths
The way was steep, descending in tight shafts through sedimentary layers into the pulse-haunted quietude of dark spaces below. I hammered my anchors and tested the protection before rappelling deeper. As the rope spiraled away like a thin snake into the aphotic throat of silence, I lowered myself down. My lantern glowed amber, creating a thin blister of light around me that swayed with each movement. Precariously, I dropped further into the depths. I was squeezed through a maze of tunnels, down broad fissures, and out of claustrophobic cracks into wet chambers. Limestone, gypsum, and dolomite took strange liquous forms, carved as they were by the slow flow of water over time. Occasionally, when I raised my lantern, strange fossils and ancient relics would cast worrisome shadows amid the looming stalactites and stalagmites. As my footfalls echoed into the shadowed stillness the warm glow of my little lantern was my dearest companion. In a place that dark and isolated, time passes differently. Without the Sun and Moon to pull one through their days, time vanishes into a permanent Night in which the only stars are phosphene flashes in the optic nerve, the false lights of the so-called “Prisoner’s Cinema”. But I was no captive here. I had come in search of something. Something lost. Something precious. After several cycles of resting and moving (what day was it?) I reached at last a vast chamber hollowed out long ago by heat and pressure into a natural cathedral. My lantern sent waves of light shimmering through a sea of dancing refraction. I shivered in the vaulted womb and listened to the sound of my breath. Eventually, I found it: a low mound of dirt on a bald island in the center of the prismatic chamber.
Though tired and sore, my heart fluttered in anticipation. I set down my pack, adjusted my lantern, and set to work with my shovel. How long I labored there in that crystalline abyss I cannot say. My face dripped sweat and strained muscles weakened as exhaustion set in. On I went, giving myself fully to the task, until at last I uncovered a feminine form beneath the moist soil of that secret place. I was struck with a sudden fear, and for a moment, I was frozen. I could hear the subtle sound of slow moving-water as I set to using my hands to clear away the dirt. It was then that I saw her face. How long had she lain there? Gingerly, I wiped the mud from her eyes, my hands gently clearing the muck from her cheeks and brow. When she opened her eyes I saw myself in them, and taking her into my arms, we wept. When at last she would emerge into sunlight, it would be without me. My body slid neatly into the impression. As I lay motionless in the mucky indentation, I closed my eyes. “I love you,” I said. “I know,” she spoke softly. I smiled as I felt each shovelful of earth add its weight upon my body. It was strangely comforting. Finally, I could rest. I closed my eyes and dreamt of her. © JM Tiffany 2024
Black Wings
I transformed myself into a murder of ebon birds, their tenebrous wings battering the air as we ascended in a burst of dark feathers.
Up we leaped past heaps of bones to soar over rivers of blood whose garnet depths coursed in jagged veins to a distant sea. We followed their branching paths to this sanguine expanse where we saw, amid the haunted waves, great skeletal beasts sloshing and wailing in the wine-colored swells. Raven-swift, we darted across the raw expanse until basalt cliffs jutted into view.
Beneath this chorus of giant knives, the Vermilion Sea was churned to an agonized pinkish foam, the coast’s tidal orifices flecked like rabid mouths.
Further inland we flew, crossing carnal fields of gnawing flowers whose narcotizing fragrance pulled at our desires and begged us to dream.
There, the tired wind’s laborious breath carried us slowly over the fleshy blooms to a forest of pale trees. Their ruby leaves glistened in the wan light like drops of crimson misery as the smooth flesh of their twisted limbs winked with eyes that bore witness to our passing. Beyond them, we crossed wastes that wept with milky marshes. Pumping our wings in a storm of black pinions we rose higher above their troubling miasma and rode updrafts that bore us toward the crooked shadow of distant mountains. These cut through the haze like a great carnivore’s teeth and gave the impression of being swallowed. Onward we flapped, coming at last to circle about a titanic edifice of impossible antiquity. It gleamed gun-metal-black in the cool, distant light of an indiscernible sun. Dark and ominous the tower loomed, its massive length driven like a spear through the world. We entered the structure in a whispering rush through an organically shaped window. Within was a spiraling labyrinth of iniquitous geometries. Insane corridors of pulsating flesh whose membranous doorways opened onto rooms red and glistening as fresh wounds.
The great tower’s lofty vertex was shrouded in the tattered gauze of lamentable clouds, yet at its peak, which rose just above them, was an open court surrounded by monolithic pillars. Near its center was an august and ominous seat of angular stone.
Upon it sat a niveous vision, her dusky eyes glittering in the anemic light, her full, wet lips the color of blood.
She reclined luxuriously there upon her monolithic throne, bare as a sword save for torrents of jet hair that issued from her exquisite head to coil about her pallid face like dark serpents.
A shadow of my shape surged out of the vortex of black birds who swirled madly, a cacophonous maelstrom whose mass then coalesced before her. Having robed myself in human form, I stepped forward and knelt humbly before her.
“Rise”, she said. I did as she commanded and rose to my feet. “Speak,” she said, “tell me your heart.” Trembling with fear and lust, I spoke, “I have crossed worlds of pain and desire to seek you. I have known you in the night as my lover and my mother. I have known your body in the hollowness of my form and tasted your mouth in the spaces between lives. I would know you if I knew no other. You are the chrysalis of doom, the womb of eternity. I will only to will your will, my Queen.” She smiled and beckoned me forward, “Come here and kiss me”. A storm of joy and terror assailed my heart. Nervously, I stepped forward, suddenly viscerally aware of her presence and the beauty and power that she commanded. Just as light falls into black holes, I went to her. Our lips approached, and, meeting, formed a singularity. Then, she gave me the gift of her True Name, but I found I could not utter it. I wanted to sing it, so glorious it was, but I immediately choked as I tried to speak it aloud. Gasping violently, I grasped my throat and fretted with my tongue, but I was struck mute and cursed to die.
Despairing, I fell at her feet and struggled dismayed. Then, suddenly, the universe seemed to tumble in on itself, as if suddenly unmade, until there was nothing. Not anything. Just absolute, unnamable, unfathomable formlessness.
I was no more. No thought was self, no such concept was there, nor need of it in that perfect aphotic eternity.
And then, suddenly, violently, I was torn from her womb and born into a flowering, effulgent chaos.
In horror and awe, I worshipped her, and she loved me, and by us worlds became.
From us sprang gods, civilizations, and countless empires rose and fell, until at last, all that remained was the glittering abyss and its endless cold silence. I saw myself reflected in her eyes then and knew us to be the same: a luminous self-reflecting void, a dreaming abyss of eternally self-annihilating beauty and terror. As I opened my eyes, space and time expanded, and the darkness laughed as I was filled again with light. © JM Tiffany 2024