Scraps of A Mind

Hands Over Eyes

The hands on either side of your face are hot, and a little dusty. They smell like earth, are rough and calloused. Roots digging themselves into your cheeks, past all that is you and into the sun as it melts over the horizon. They are old temper, trying to point you someplace.

You can't make out the face of he who wears these hands. A streetlamp glares down at the two of you, shadowing his face. All you can make out is the contour of his cheeks, the very tip of his nose. (Maybe a faint reflection in his hidden eyes)

Buildings rise up on either side like glorified stalks of corn. Brushing the canvas sky into a painting of inky storm that shifts with bolts of lightning. Lightning that crackles soundlessly, eerily striking the buildings as if some god was counting them.

Rats scurry hurriedly around booted feet, mud and plants caught in the worn laces. They're trying to tell you something, those hands and those shoes. But you can't hear it, can't see the words written so plainly.

The scene shifts. You are on a beach.

Copper sits in the air, tangy and warm. So thick you can almost taste it as much as smell it. It's cloying, like a sweaty shirt after a run, or the phantom warmth left by the hands on your face.

You stare out over the smooth sheet of grey water, trying to discern it from the sky. Your bones ache, a bug caught on a windshield being smoothed back and forth: secrets, heart, and knowledge, all spread out too thin.

"Look," he says.

You do, to your right. Right at his coat, his strange hair, not his face. It's still shadowed, like the darkness and the streetlamp never left. It's an awkward contrast, there are no shadows on his coat. But you can see his eyes.

They are old eyes, well worn eyes, cracked like ancient leather books. You wish you had eyes like that. Scoops of the infinite universe' wisdom conjured into little orbs.

"Do you know where you're going?" he asks, his stare steady and unblinking.

You frown, "No? I think I'm looking for the sun?"

He nods, looking up at the featureless sky, "Then I think you must change course, this is far in the wrong direction."

"Right..." you stare at your hands, unmarked.

"Better wake up now" he says.

You wake up.