the alive

Terra

RETRIBUTION

Consciousness was like crawling out of an unmarked grave in the very middle of nowhere and waking up without a soul or a brain. Suffocating. Unreasonable. Nystagmus sleep twitches. The body somehow tries to squeeze its heart and remember how to breath through bags filling up and forcing air. How does a body remember to breath? Why does it remember? For what? Life? How does a body forget how to breath? Death? How does a body come back from the dead? Breathing? Maybe she's from Al-Eizariya and has been smelling up a tomb for four days and knows a dear friend who might come to see her.

Like water in water.

Screams in the sunken below. Crawls out of the dark depths of the stagnant mire. Flesh and mud. Feels the warmth of Old Sol heat her skin. A feeling like that of a saurian sunbath upon a gambrel hot asphalt rejuvenation. Fibreglass lambency of a memory come back to life. A memory that tingles. Pours a topography of heat into the tenebrosity of the cold afterlife that was.

Terra Coal shivers. Not because she's cold. Because she knows the difference. Knows how it feels to be warm again.

Depth comes back to vision. Control over physique. Control over a body that crawled out of the mire with a mind of its own. Maybe a different mind than her's. Maybe a mind within her mind. Whatever the theory, an uncertain other gives way to this particular Terra and what she thinks is her consciousness. Tingling pins in certain places distinguish numbness from other spots. Goosebump arms and a wobbly crawl of mud cake legs. Pointy water rock paper cut elbows and knees. Mire sludge black hands and feet. Between fingers and toes. Frozen joints thaw back into rusty bending. Movement becomes natural, second nature to accompany the imaginary first nature. What first nature? There's only the interpretation of something imagined as a first nature. Second nature. Math. Lineal. Observations biased by ideology.

Terra smells herself. Defecate grey water of the mire. Drys crusty upon her haunted dull sky flesh. Smells like death and shit because she's been marinating in such rankness. Vomits the leaden liquid until dry heaves. Crawls further away from the wretched mire water. Frail body, or so she presumes. Joints still ache. Maybe she's the tin man who's been rained on. Needs a Dorothy to come along and oil her crevices. Oil her memory. Can't remember where the yellow brick road is supposed to be. Can't notice anyone else tread such an ancient path. Maybe such direction doesn't exist. And maybe she should stay where she is. Thinks she doesn't want to be here and doesn't want to leave. Maybe nobody else wants to be here and nobody else wants to leave.

Dazing. Breathing. Infirm. Crawls further away from the defecate smell of her recent birth. Rests in the bluegrass and lakebed soil and Old Sol heat of melt and crust crack lip weather.

Sleep. Dreams of eating the heart and brain of a sister she never had in a fetus made of wood. Tasty treats. The Christmas and Halloween of an anthropophagist funeral.

Startles. Feels something kick her between the ribs and belly. Hurts. Steel toe of a boot. Someone falls over her. Broken glass sound. Thud of a fallen flesh tree's mirror. Language of vulgarity. Watches the yellow humanoid thing with purple hands and a weird haircut. Purple gloves. It takes the haircut off. Haircut was the top of a mask. A gas mask. Broken. The thing is a man. He looks at her with dark brown eyes and a surprise upon his countenance. Not a shadow from the depths of the mire. Looks at her with unmistakable wonder. Stares back at him. Licks her lips. Crawls onto him as his yellow torso tries to back away.

Terra says, "Judith."

~*~*~*~

Terra's mind stumbles through realities of consciousness. Stumbles through the portal with a blue exit sign above the double doors of sleep. Opens her black malachite ring windows like dying in one world in order to wake up in another. Soft bed. This reality is a catheter. Wrists and ankles bound with aluminum bracelets to thick metal pipe bedsides. Can't really move. Might try to escape. Thinks about such action but everyone's calm around her and positive in their tone of voice and movements. Many others in the room. They don't seem to mean her any harm, except for the catheter, which only feels weird. Seems like they're helping her. But why is she bound to the bed? What for? Maybe they're lying to her.