The inherent menace of silhouette was apparent everywhere. A corner's shadow, red. The corner itself, too - red. Shadows of shadows, an extra layer protruding inches more, where the light was blocked just so. A weaker gray that escaped its object and hovered above, taunting, 'I've ascended!' though still it clung to it's own earthly benefactor. A drowning crimson light filled all view where blackness did not shrowd reality. The colour of blood curdling, it was enough to make blood curdle. Which would be a compliment to the room, he supposed. He, small for the room, with his own tiny red silhouette pushing at the wall as if to escape.
That entrancingly frightening red light was so familiar, it had been seen a million times before. In spots after staring at the sun too long, when the effort of holding that staring contest with the sun became too much and you'd have to hide and seek away with your eyelids. Pouring from seemingly nowhere, like powdery sugar crystals dissolved into water and then, drop by drop, spilled into whatever container. And whatever container it was, a liquid would fit.
It almost seemed to emit from where the walls met the roof, as if little cracks allowed the glow passageway. However, the roof was far above his head, and in the relative dark, it was impossible to tell if cracks were or were not infact present. If there were cracks, would that mean the sky were itself red, shining down? The sky, blood red... he hoped that was not the reality.
Shifting chin, neck and all of his facial features, timid and withdrawn features as they were, from their hold on that tenious bit of maybe-sky, the one with the short shadow readjusted his eyes. Even those eyes had turned red, from exhaustion or refraction, or just because the allowable colour pallet was slimmed down to variations of flame and repressed grayness. He did not know this, of course. No mirror existed here. Those eyes turned once more to the two other gargantuan figures that existed in collective confinement together. But not really together. Those figures, gruff, vaguely authoritarian. Intelects blazing, as if to channel their surrounding. Never since the time he had found himself here had they glanced down. Their eyes always fixed into the pupils of the other. Even then, the one did not seem any more connected with the other than they did with him.
They almost seemed a fog in the form people, more that than Human Beings. The little one had never reached out to test this theory, but even if he had, he could scarcely remember what happened when one dipped their fingers into fog. Did it ripple out, in waves? Did it block movement? Did it give a sensation? He tried to forge back into the past, but failing in that, could not recall. The most likely seemed that he would slip right through, as he did through those memories, and feel as if his fingers had been in a refridgerator. That's what it was like, he was sure of it, but yet not sure. He could not even recall his own name at this point, so how could he be certain of any memory?
What a refridgerator did was only on the farthest torn fragments of his imagination. The end of atmosphere and the beginning of nothing. This border lay firmly in the centre of his mind. Memories were sugar crystals slipping away even now into infinite space, loosing gravity forever. No, he could never again know for certain what a refridgerator did. But he knew what a refridgerator was, because he could see one, in this very room. Along with many other furnishings. A chair, a tap - the tap never ceased to drip, it's a wonder he had blocked it from his mind. Sparce echoes filled the room, of nature meeting metal, as water splashed, out of sight. This offered some hope that the outside was not now a desolite wasteland of screaming sun on parched earth; the water had to come from some place, hadn't it?
The two men - each standing perfectly, mathamatically parallel in relation to the other; an x and an (n) - offered no such hope. One leaned with a certain casual style, his arm against a tabel, but this action clashed with every other trait he expressed. It was that one and only betraying factor that made him Human in some way. The men, each one, was spouting off some rhetoric, a meaningless parade of words at the other. Distressing words, words that held under them a seething, crawling, brooding meaning, like maggots fighting against one another for a bit of flesh without at any point realizing what exactly it or the maggot it was fighting against was doing. It was instinct that drove them. Ghostly bitter-sweet red lips from the right would say, "...was often used both to test new designs as well as to send political messages. Other nations also developed..." A vapid emptiness of phrases dropped in larger conglomerates of words, where half a paragraph would be lost among the shuffle and none of the audiance nor the speaker would recall them later on. Shot back, with the same grim, educated sensibility, "...as fusion reactions release much more energy per unit of mass than fission reactions."
If one didn't know that this endless cycle of calculated, calm words with evasive horrid meanings were infact an argument, as was evident from watching the men for an unimaginable amount of time, one might suppose that they were starting a sentance on the left mouth and finishing it on the right. Left: "Rise, let us go! Here comes my betrayer!". From the right: "Everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial." Binal words. Syllables without meaning. But even as they spoke them, with a dull monotone of disinterest, of simply regurgitating facts as a means with no end, there was a restrainted energy, a thrill hidden under the drawl. Maybe more to push the other to some critical point where a resolution, yet unknown, is discovered. Where they brew long enough that the neglect to the fact they are brewing results in a spectacular over-flowing of bubbles and steam and scalding water. That forever chilling red light brings out the sharpest of their already sharp features. Noses with points and oddly eerie curves that don't compliment Humanity in any way.
Profiles and stark silhouettes; on this side of the room, where the little one stood, it was impossible to make out details. The light was spilling from the opposite side of the kitchen. The man on the right was infact standing in a kitchen, he realized. Refridgerator, Tap, Tabel: It connected, thought the connection was a wire concocted of fog. The floor was patterned tile. The man on the left stood on ruffled rug (red tinged, of course). Somewhere behind him stood a couch, and a coffee table, and several lamps which were not and would not ever be turned on, all bathed in red. Now the right man spoke of the benifits to society of legalized prostitution. At first the man on the left spoke in words like 'pride' and 'intergrity' and 'right and wrong' and 'faith', but eventually he did conclude that what the other said was infact true.
Something in their intonation become more fierce and pointed, as if it had gained sight of a far-off destination that they never really hoped to reach but now were atleast striving towards.
Left, "Darkness there and nothing more."
Right, "the enterprises by the wise Red-haired One."
One foot on carpet, one on tile, the little one spun himself, the feet changing places. Smooth cold exchanged with a soft tickling surface, that probably had a million micro-organisms hiding in there ready to latch onto the new flesh. Soft, gruff surface turned to slick, sure ground that held no life. The men took no notice, they continued on. More feverish and at once more deathly willless than ever.
Left, "...is best used to point to conscious and systematic attempts to gain transcendent insights."
Right, "How do you know these phenomena actually exist?"
Looking in the opposite direction from them, gazing off into the dark, he once again surveyed the place. Oddly enough, the whole structure seemed shaped like a key. They were currently in a large rectangular room, that part of the key you'd put your fingers on. Straight ahead of his sight lay a long corridor, unbending. Strong and menacing and willful. Off of it, in alternating direction and in alternating frequency, jutted small rooms. The small rooms were especially frightening, it was impossible to tell what lay within them. None of the red light reached there.
Left, "If personality is an unbroken series of jestures..."
Right, "The old man's memory was nothing but a rubbish-heap of details."
He turned back around. The light seemed dimmer, something had changed. That realization was immediate. Something had changed. The bleak fog forms were even more poorly illuminated. The corners of the room filled in, their contents becoming some far away rememberance and the walls closing in just a little bit.
The little one, who suddenly felt he had grown a small amount taller in relation to the world that build itself up around him, spotted a new source of light: a kettle on the stove provided it, now. The red light emited from an overheated burner, and from nothing else. Yet it filled the room enough to still make out the two men as clear as they had ever been. And the table corner still fell on the ground, protruding in ways that bent his mind backward and contorted it into some unfamiliar form. Now more than ever, he wanted to run down that hallway behind his back. But a thought cometed back into his memory, one last fragment of crystal sugar that had mistakenly fallen into his atmosphere, crashing catostrophically into the Earth and flinging nostalgia up everywhere. Red meant stop. One clear thought, then gone. So he froze in the flame.
Left, "Greene lost her hat shop and suffered poor health."
Right, "YOG-SOTHOTHERY"
A shout that was not a shout.
This was different. This was exhilerating. The now-missing short stature still imposed itself on him. Tiny and insignificant he was. So were memories. Dust now, dust galaxy out there on the fringes of his mind. Minerals and nothing more. He forgot his place, he forgot the red light. He gave a shout of his own. A real shout, one the shook his chords to make a growl of a sound. One that distrupted the also-forgotten dripping tap and made its neverending water-on-metal symphony shift into a different sound. Even the men made a different sound: brief silence. Breath. They acknowledged him for a first time, looking down at the running figure. Running down the hall, out into the darkness. They gave pause and almost started after him, but then stopped. No. And they turned back to each other, eyes boring back into eyes, drill like, bringing up oil and spilling it down each others faces until they were both empty, crying mineral tears.
It was only later that he realized what it was he had said. "The Phoenix must be some relation of Mankind."
But that wasn't of imidiate concern. Charging from the cave, down the tunnel, this was his escape. A beat drove itself down on, in, his head. A drum. A car streaming down the street, purposefully blowing its speakers out with the Base knob turned all the way up. That was his heart as he plunged into the hallway, blinded suddenly. Trembling even as he strode forward, legs strong paddles in the river of the air and floor.
Then he hit Wall. Maybe he had hoped there'd be a door there, maybe that the passageway would continue on forever. But no, here was a Wall. It could not be bipassed, it could not be moved. It forced its reality onto him by way of its existance. Hands probed upward, then downwards. All flat, unforgiving surface. So he grudgingly turned back around... and there was another Wall. NO. That had not been there before. It couldn't have been there. He could not see it, but movement was blocked. His head reeled, dizziness overcame him. Thrashing out in panic, his arms smashed up against the plaster, or wood or steel or whatever these horrible things were. He was blind, he was confined. No no nonono ooooo! This continued for a long stretch, until it occured to him to stretch upwards... and, again, Wall. Or, rather, Roof.
He had some vague rememberance that it was the light in the tunnel you were meant to run to. So why had he run to the dark? Fool! Fool! Fool! He had trapped himself when once he was free!
Calm, now. It's no use. He consoled himself. Was he not blinded and confined before? Nothing had really changed. And perhaps it was a good thing he could feel the ceiling. If it had been ten inches higher, and even on the tips of his toes with arms flung out it was unreachable, that would not change the fact he was very much trapped.
Upon controlling his breathing, upon forgetting what used to be, upon forgetting the Walls and the fact that at all times they made contact with him, time ceased to exist. He had no thoughts or memories. He had no surroundings or stimulis. It was impossible to tell time without a sky to refer to, and so time took on its own mallible little form that could be toyed with, if there was any use in toying with it. And there wasn't. So he put time away in a box, and it ceased to exist. There was a moment of impossible length, of no length, where some wind passed through the particles of his body and he became eternity. Space - cold, bleak and endless.
Finally the hibernation ended, he awoke to find himself face to face with some gruff, intellectual, subdued individual. Gender was impossible to tell, as was race. Someone who seemed very much his equal stood across from him, eyes blazing but dead, as if the wood had already blackened and crumbled but still some residue remained to fuel the fire on. Half of the face was illuminated, the other half darkness; a saw had cut somewhere down the middle and seperated the two. This only enhanced the already apparent traits of his rival. Yes, his rival. It was apparent. It was speaking, meaningless words. Words with a hidden secret intent that was terrifying, that might have made him shake, but he held still. And so words spilled forth from him. A reply to the other. He was not aware of saying them, though he was aware they came out as a vapor from the area where his mouth might be. Naturally they came, he had heard them all before somewhere. The other would say, "Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire," and instinctively, all the answers ingrained in him, he would reply eventually with, "His eyes would be swamped by the darkness, and would take time to become acclimated."
The conversation continued, cyclical. We, together, made time mallible again, as we had learned to do, and spread it out forever. After quite some ages, I realized what the arguement was indeed about: each of us was hopelessly pleeding for the other to run back down that hallway, and see what would happen on this occasion. We hadn't looked, but we knew it still stood to the dark sides of our faces. Filled with cowardice, without the will in us to make a step towards that direction, still we urged each other on.
To the light side of us, a Phoenix engulfed itself in flames in infinite repetition. Somewhere in our maze-like, meandering conversation we ironed out that, when it burnt out its life and before it started a new, we'd take an intermission and have some tea together. It was an agreable proposition.
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