The nameless old man wakes from mortal sleep for, he knows, the last time.
He is a normal old man. He lives alone, and has for many years since his wife died. He has worked all his life as a toiler on another man's land. He has lived free otherwise.
The view on his back through which he sees the ceiling of the shack he built himself becomes a prism as he begins to sob, his throat filling with regret sprung up from the last spewing geysers of his tired heart who weeps at the Docks, whispering her final goodbyes to her dearest of friends.
He is not surprised to be leaving the Mountain, the meeting-place of the Multitudes, the Otherselves (as he calls them), in the morning; to have walked the upwards path and come to the front of the eyes to see the Ferryman bent and tying a loose knot to the Dock.
A man of symbols, he knows he has lived well. "You have lived," he is told by himself, and he nods slowly with the fall of his breath.
He sits up slowly, aware of the ripples his body makes through the stillness; but Death is sometimes patient, and the old man is grateful. He laughs, a rare summer storm breaking; and the tears rain from his face, powerfully tranquil drops, landing on his white beard and hands and bed like children giggling—like the happiest fools on the right hand of the King—thrown by their father into the lake. And that is how he feels, as if time has slowed and he pauses in the middle of the air on his path back into the River. Glory, glory and joy, hallelujah, praise and praise and praise!
He waddles his way to the door of his shack and beholds the mountain and the lake which sits as intermediary between the other mountain reflection extending down, but up to some greater and stranger heaven...
Death leans against the shack, waiting.
The last day does, forever, last in the mind of a consciousness which cannot comprehend the ending of existing along Time; and so the nameless old man comes away from the front of his eyes again and dives deep within himself as Time widens like the pupil of a colossal god as they fall asleep into some divine vision...long he can hold his breath in the pools of Memory...
*
I am the man. If it is so, as it surely is (I think), then, poor lady you'll soon meet, she'd better love a dream.
YOU ARE READING
Pale Fragments
Science FictionAn alien Robot came to me before she left to die. She sang to me the stories of how her ancient world and species ended, how she was created to travel through Time, how (in the far future) she met an essential boy named Anders, how she named herself...
