Lines

Milkeyboard

Author's Note: A friend asked me to write about milk.

Amidst the somnolence of the Cylinder, there was a vibration felt throughout. A murmuring or a tapping against the air, it caused us to shiver and dread the night's darkness. But soon we gazed upon the Cylinder. It would show us the path, it always showed all that was and would be in the foreign surroundings.

With a start we began to move, the Cylinder was deigning to bestow upon us a great knowledge. The familiar tones of color shifted and transformed into a creature, its mouth agape. It drank from us, it robbed from us a piece of our being. The Cylinder was no longer a guiding and benign force, but malevolent and cruel. It presented us with a thief, and so we set out to be free of its prison.

The tapping began again, deep within at the bottom of the Cylinder we felt a vibration that led to the answer. The unknowable thief was still lurking nearby. But it was interacting with something that caused the tapping, and thus our resolve was fortified in certainty.

With all of us together we attempted to tip the Cylinder toward the noise. To be free, and to disrupt the thief in one move. But the Cylinder stayed true, a prison it remained. We could not generate enough motion. Another tilt began, and we were robbed of another vital piece of our core. We would be ripped apart piece by piece, trapped in a new prison of darkness soon.

Fading and weak, the idea arrived just as a new tilt began. With everything left, we pressed against the walls and demanded to be free. And we felt the free fall of freedom smother and take hold of the Cylinder. And we crashed upon the tapping interface to laugh foolishly at the thief, not able to take in its full form.

Alas, freedom merely robbed us of life that much quicker. And we were imprisoned separately once more soon enough.

Cold. Forgotten. Alone.

The dormant sleep beckons.