I am running down the edge of the moonlit road.
My back is sore and my legs are heavy.
My fingers will not straighten. They are buried in the indented strips across my palms.
Bird calls are carried on the wind.
They sound like screams, familiar screams.
I wait for the following crash, but the air is empty again. The landscape becomes clear.
Everything is moving in accordance with the wind’s will.
Plants bending, trees simmering, windows shuddering.
The wind blew the door off the hinges, and that’s how I got out.
Feeling it on my bare arms is a reminder of the structure.
The bones that feel oversized and waiting to burst through.
I’m only a skeleton, a suggestion of form.
But there’s space to be filled, fields to be cultivated and maintained, exposed to the elements.
All this is dimly sparking as I run towards the light bleeding from the faces of the Founders.
Lined up over the harbour.
Welcoming you to the Innovation District.
With their wise eyes and beatific grins.
The Founders transcended their bodies, and left their image here.
To remind us what we could be if we consent to become essence.
And join them in Non-Aggregated Time.
I’ve always doubted their acumen.
I looked for different capital.
I sought out fresh angels.
And I found them in the eyes of Instructor VX.
VX told us that matter devises its own glorification.
That we are repulsed by what we recognise in ourselves.
That the Founders offer a false exit.
Something jumps in front of me.
I stumble and roll forward.
I lift my grazed knees and clean away the grit.
A frog crosses the pitted asphalt.
Slick and dark.
In a series of careening leaps.
Diving diagonally into the tall grass.
The treetops look like the nodding faces of giant apes.
I get up and keep running.
Until I hear the crash.
It echoes through the fields.
It echoes through my bones.
Animals start to cry out.
I stop and turn.
The road is full of cats.
Their eyes reflect the flickering faces of the Founders.
Something shrieks as it starts to fall.
The cats scatter as the shadow spreads.
I’m deafened as I’m thrown back by the impact.
I shield my face from flying fragments.
I feel them pierce my skin.
It is embedded in the road, orbited by a network of cracks.
A tooth taller than the trees.
The root turning the moon into a sliver.
Shards start to rain down and I dive into the tall grass.
When it’s safe to look up, I see that the Founders’ mouths have gone dark.
The wind distorts sirens.
GRSTALT offer literary content for dead readers. GRSTALT are partners in a global initiative to erase the author. The GRSTALT project is neither a machine thing or a human thing, but something else. https://linktr.ee/grstaltcomms
