Do You Want To Fly?

"How do I look?"

"Beautiful" Sara replied, not bothering to look up.

"You don't know the half of it" Matt retorted quietly, reaching out a long slim arm to touch her chin and lift her eyes up to his. In his other hand he was grasping the loose end of a piece of women's underwear; it was pressed firmly, and in a way alone to himself, suggestively against his chest.

"Wonderful." Sara said, shaking him off, "give me a minute, I’m just about done here."

"I can't-man-here" Matt tapped twice on his temples with the index finger of each hand "...fucking imagine why anyone would possibly spend this much money on this."

"What are you on about?" Sara inquired out of habit. Matt laid the undergarment down on the table, much to her dismay, and skipped a few steps over to a display. Beginning to fold and put it away, she watched Matt eagerly examine the nearest mannequin.

"Two hundred!" He nearly shouted. "Hundred."

“Tragic"

"Do you know how many movies I could go see with two hundred dollars?" Matt asked as if it were a rhetorical question and a concrete argument, neither of which Sara thought it was. "Or concerts...or, I mean, anything. An experience."

"Movies only last an hour and a half, Matthew." Sara shut the till and spun, starting to flick the switches to shut off the store lights. "Clothes are forever." She twitched a flirtatious smile out of the left corner of her lips and gently tipped off the last of the lights. Matt pressed his hand against his chest as though he had been shot, then spun on his heels and leapt towards the counter. Through the newly visible translucent light streaming in from the streetlights, Sara watched as he pulled himself up. He set himself cross-legged on the counter and motioned her towards him.

"Well, yes….but how long are you going to wear that?" He pinched the shoulder of her sweater, lifted it slightly and dropped it. "The films-honey-the films will be here forever." He pointed again to his temples. Sara slowly leaned in to kiss his forehead.

"It really is a work of art," she said, drawing back and untangling herself from the rough, strong hands now rubbing her shoulders and stepping gingerly around the countertop. She tapped the top of his head. "But one day you're gonna get old and sad and this won't work right, and you'll forget all these amazing movies."

"And then I'll die and you won't miss me, right? Lovely. On that note-" he spun on his ass, hopped down and started towards the door, "shall we?"

***********

Smoke sat heavy, drawing attention to the thin bands of lights pushing themselves through the off-white blinds. Sara lifted her hand to touch them and grabbed at a single rod of light. She twisted her fingers around it, taking hold of a small piece of the outside world. Then-floodlights.

"Fucking-must you?" She winced. "Can you turn it off?"

"Since you asked so nicely? Of course." The room snapped back in an instant. Matt sat down heavily on the bed beside her and flicked at his lighter. Sara watched as the small flame ate away at the end of his pipe and he pulled in smoke. Lying back, he held for a moment and then exhaled deeply. His strong right arm lay gently across his torso, and Sara watched as his chest slowly rose and fell back again. Not noticing her attention, he sat up suddenly.

***********

She felt gravity pulling and pushing in one consistent rhythm, at once drawing her closer into herself, and in the next moment threatening to tear her apart. She wanted to fall into her body and collapse.

"Do you want to fly?" It emanated in her, bouncing around her head, knocking her one way and another. Every possible light bore itself down into her. As if her eyes were expanding to see more than what was even there. She didn't hear the noise as much as she felt it pulsating in and out from her. Waves of energy rather than a radio transmission to her sensors. Falling forward. Her body. A wave of hands. She saw herself feeling it but didn't feel it. Then falling back.

***********

"Do you ever think about why we like the things we like?"

"God." Sara rolled her eyes.

"What?"

"You're so typical.” Sara smiled and touched his forehead.

"I mean it.

"What do you mean?" Matt leaned back slightly, still looking down at her.

"I mean exactly what I said. What is it about this you like?" The reverb-drenched drums of The Cure resounded low, the only frequency punching through the hiss of the air-conditioner and the noise from the street. "Why does it mean something to you? Like, what's enjoyable about it?" Sara laughed, exasperated, and ran her fingers over her forehead, as if searching for something. She sighed.

"It just sounds nice. I don't know-"

"What's nice about it?"

"His voice, I guess, and the drums, and-I just like it." She shrugged. "Can't I? Can't I just enjoy this?"

***********

For the first time, she considered a centre of gravity. An object-a sphere inside of her. She was spinning on its axis. Her eyes rolled back.

"Do you want to fly?" seemed to be the root of what had happened, and what was happening. It haunted her, the words could have come from anywhere, she didn't know. Right now they were coming from her own brain. Her own wiring. That which created the world she experienced had betrayed her into thinking that she made the thing that fucked with her. God. Damn. It.

The floor beneath her felt hollow when she hit it. Internally lifting off but trapped inside a vehicle that lay pinned beneath bodies. Moving bodies. Pulsating with human energy, frantic but by their own choice. She imagined herself as one of them, and them as her, perceiving from the outside. But she wasn't outside of it. Every layer of telling them what she experienced being in it, and knowing it wasn't true; thinking she was out of it but not, was added and stripped away like a feedback loop. Some looked at her, but she didn't see that they were. She felt it.

***********

"Yeah, but-" Matt shook his head. "I don't know, I’ve just been thinking about this a lot recently."

"Sounds dangerously like high school philosophy to me."

"It's just interesting. People say they like music because of how it makes them feel, or because it reminds them of a certain time in their lives. But, why do they feel like that? Why were they listening? Its just energy picked up by our ears and frequencies and whatever, right? There's nothing attached-it's nothing. There's nothing there. Why would we attach something to that? It's not really our nature, is it?" Sara nodded. She paused for a moment, mulling this over.

"I guess I get that. It's like preferring subtlety or good writing over just primal…whatever that hits you over the head with what you want. There’s not much stock in ‘clever’.”

"Yeah, I told you I’m not fucking crazy." Matt leaned over and kissed her.

"You actually didn't." She brushed him off and reached over to turn the music up. "But I get it."

***********

An O shaped fissure was forming in the back of her throat. Outside of its edges, she could not force out breath. Sharp and narrow was the air that came.

She reached out to the hand extending to her. She felt loose and limp, but squeezed her fingers together and was pulled up. A familiar face, but it looked different. Or felt different. Or she saw the same things, but felt them differently. She recognized the sound of her own name. Energy of concern, overshadowed by a thudding kick drum enveloping her ears, and the life energy exploding like fireworks out of the twisting, contorting bodies she was swimming in. She nodded, eyes wide, afraid that if she closed them she would miss something important. It all felt very important. She didn't want to miss anything. This was monumental. And she said she was okay.

***********

"I just think that maybe art and all that is a way we step out of ourselves and, I guess, see things from someone else's view. Or just a different one, to change our perspective. How else do you grow, right? But we don't really think about that when we're enjoying music or a movie. We just enjoy it. People don't think about that. It's interesting."

Sara tossed this around her head.

"Makes sense," she replied, "and that perspective shift is like an evolution. Like an unnatural-well, what’s natural I guess. I don't know, whatever. Does that make sense?"

"Who’s the philosopher now?"

Sara laughed and buried her head into his chest.

***********

The lights burned. They were something more than just visual stimuli. Were they there, physically, or a manifestation of the sensory experience her brain developed? A signal telling her synapses to fire? Sara tried to picture the atoms, the transference of energy in every part of the room, and the massive and vast ocean of energy she was a part of. All it was, the only thing any of it was. A trading of energy.

"Do you want to fly? He had said.

The realization snapped her back, punched her in the gut. The realization that it was all inside her, that she took it, but it enhanced what she made. The world she made inside her. It tasted like nothing, and it was nothing. It was just a catalyst. A boost. She was the alteration. Reality felt flimsy, her experience felt flimsy, but it reeked of her own making. A new realization. Then black. Then she was at home.

***********

"Did I tell you what happened last weekend?" Sara asked suddenly. Matt met her eye line, studying her hazy blues as though he hadn't stared into them a thousand times.

"Your friend called me. Whatshername-I got the gist."

"And?"

"Sounds like quite a time you had. She said you were fine, didn't really wanna get on your ass about it unless you wanted to tell me. So, whatever. Not my place."

"Thanks." She gazed off into the distance.

"What are you thinking about?" Matt asked after a moment. Sara looked back at him.

"I'm thinking that I'm afraid I liked it too much."