Tales of the Other

Mystery of the Cliff

We were told not to look at the cliff, and most children obeyed it until their final moment on the death beds. My grandfather forbade me to do the same, because everyone who did went mad.

-

My father was drooling again. Sitting on a rocking chair on the porch of our house, he was catatonic ever since he accidentally laid eyes upon the bottom of the cliff. He used to be a history professor at the university downtown, cleanshaven and immaculate in his suit and tie.

Now, he refused to be shaved, and his eyes were vacant and hollow orbs staring to something that is not there. It was like he was staring beyond the opaque barrier.

"C'mon Pops, let me wipe your mouth," I softly told him, wiping the drool on his chin. Father did not respond, but he let me do my job. I felt his gaze lingering on me, but I just pretended not to notice.

"I saw wisdom back there," he told me in a sane tone. I stared at him for a long time in disbelief; he had not spoken for a long, long time. "I saw wisdom, but the world was too naive to understand what I told them."

I did not reply, for what he was saying does not make sense, and there was a strain of curiosity I want to oppress.

-

"He's talking again, isn't he?" Lolo told me while we were playing chess on the porch. Father was soundly sleeping on his room. "I pray that you did not inherit my son's unquenchable curiosity."

"Curiosity brought us outside the planet," I quipped. The older man shook his head. "Fair point, but there are some things that we cannot understand, that are not meant to be understood."

"Like the bottom of the cliff."

"Maybe your father found something there, and his mind simply cannot process it," he continued to talk. "There are limits to our intellect."

He moved his bishop, ending my chance to win. "Keep your feet on the safe zone, kid."

-

My father was trashing on the bed. He was shouting incoherent words while the doctor's staff kept him restrained. Lolo was nursing the bruise on his face when he was punched by his son.

"Silly fucking nutter," one of the nurses commented under his breath. "Runs on the family, I bet."

They may have believed that I did not hear what they were saying, but I did. There were other voices chiming with them too, voices that were not in the room.

Following its source, I started the car and drove towards where the voices are the loudest. The speedometer reached 180, but I was too lightheaded to notice.

-

The Cliff.

Now the voices were at its strongest, and I stared to the cliff, I saw nothing but the abyss.

Wait.

There were two neon orbs blinking. It stared at me like a giant pair of eyes. The strobing lights became faster and my head pounded painfully.

I lost my footing and fell.

Death clung to me like air resistance, but I later felt myself suspended mid-air, standing before  a glove-shaped boulder glowing in the middle of the dark. The thing was throbbing and covered with veins. Instinctively, I touched it.

The surface was soft, like a newly-born cow covered in membrane. I closed my eyes and felt the tingling sensation in my body, seeing the eons of history of the world in one minute.

Flashes of images, sounds, and dead languages filled my head, and red liquid poured from my nostrils. Unspeakable truths were revealed at once, and tears and mucus and shit and urine and semen and fuck all came in one outbursts as my body kept up with what my mind was processing.

The gigantic brain transferred the information to my brain, then I was sent back to the top.

-

I was on a daze, and somebody told me that my Lolo died a month ago, and my father committed suicide in a mental institution and I disappeared for five months, and God was not real.

Sitting on the earth, I stared at the confused faces before me. These ignorant fools whose eyes are waiting to be opened.

I stood groggily. Raising my arms in worship, I shouted, "I MET THE WORLD! I MET THE WORLD!"