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| Alarmingly Strange Stories |
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From An Inverted Existence |
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| . There was moisture in the air… everything was so unreal. Yet I've always felt at home there, somehow, with the familiar feeling of countless ethereal fingertips gently poking me from all around. A yellow haze hung in the air. In most places it was thin and gentle, and the air smelled sweet. As I walked along, I did pass through a few areas where the fog thickened. There, the air was angry. Constant pressure would push me along hastily, and tiny objects flitted by almost too quickly to see. They had tiny extensions, like tendrils or insect wings, flailing about, ragged and battered. I kept walking on for several minutes, wondering if they were alive or not. Then I wondered what life was in that place, with everything seeming so obviously connected. Was there anything there that wasn't alive? Could anything ever die? Eventually I reached the edge of a small desert, and felt sand flow over my toes. The sand flowed in waves. Like an ocean, it had patterns of motion in which waves of sand would flow out towards a border of the desert and crash back into a state of tranquility. Unlike an ocean, the solid sand never returned back to the deserts' center to be thrown out again. It stayed, and the entire desert, I deduced, slowly wandered around, every day of it's existence. I walked out further; there was a purity to the sand between my toes. Under the surface, it wrapped itself around my feet like an affectionate blanket. It clung on and I, encumbered but comforted, continued through the strange landscape. I happened to look up as I walked along aimlessly and was alerted to the sky above me. It rushed by overhead at a constant pace, as if it were hurriedly performing an important job. It was mostly red, but with several layers. Each layer seemed to be liquid, but they did not mix. The sky was like a bloodstream, and on occasion a white light would flash, casting trails of lightning across the sky horizontally, but never down to the ground. The frantic, yet intricately ordered movements of the sky fascinated me, but I sensed that it was aware of my presence somehow, which made me uneasy. I continued on to deeper areas in the desert, confident that the sand would not allow me to fall uncontrollably in. I spotted trees and went to approach them. They were truly regal; their branches were very smooth, with shining sequins adorning them. Intricate leaf patterns formed emblems that were both vague and intricate, filled with curious symbolism and unknown purpose. The leaves were many bright colors, each stiff and outlined in a silver or gold border. The trunks were perfect cylinders; the branches constantly shifted around, trying to reach a comfortable position. I noticed one of them uprooting itself from the desert floor. It used its roots to pull itself along, finding a somehow preferable spot, and dug its' roots back in. Then it paused for several seconds before continuing to shift around its' branches. I would soon see other trees replant themselves in the same fashion, although each one appeared to be blind to my presence as well as to each other's. The trees seemed to have no quarrel with living in a desert. Perhaps they too liked the feelings of the affectionate sand under the surface. . |
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