The Sock Drawer - 1. Ill or nothing

Ill or nothing

I remember how I used to look up at skies red like bloody sick. So crimson, and glowing like a pest blain, it seemed to call out to me in a fever, waiting for death to cut open its skin and release the blood and pus to spill out over the whole world. When it looked like this it never rained. My eyes would droop and my mouth drop open, and smoke and sweaty steam would creep into my nostrils until their tang began to sicken me, and all I could smell was that rotten grease. The entire city was coated in it. The grime, and sick. And the sky even was sick, we’d damned the sky. I waited for it to die.

That was why I never smiled. The city was a stinking pit of darkness. The people there were pitted black strips of tar smeared with ash, and filled to the brim with despair, and fear. They lashed out at anything blacker than they, slunk into darker shadows when night fell, and devoured everything that smelled clean and innocent enough to not give them smallpox. Everyone, and I was no exception, lived in fear and futile anger. I was too calm, too reserved, to succumb to the fever. I only watched. And waited. For the sky to break open and drown us all in purulence and wound water, I used to think. But no, I didn’t really wait for anything. Now I think, would it have been better if it had stayed that way forever?

Smiling used to be impossible and now I can’t stop. The sky is dark blue and clear, with white stars brilliantly blinking down. And the occasional wisp of a cloud is ghosting swiftly across that vast noble space. My smile began today. Today began a year ago, or an aeon back in the past. My serene and stony face never moves. Now I know. I know I could not have known better. I exchanged fear of the future with the knowledge of nothing more to come.

Under the red sky time seemed tedious and endless, now it does not exist anymore. My eyes never close, my mouth never opens and my nose is a pit with ragged edges, and the long slender curved blade that I hold up by two handles throws a dull slash across the empty sky, forever.