Parable

A man sits on the floor, cross-legged and with eyes wound tightly shut, inside a steel cage with rusty metal bars, all black and brown. Weak and wane wrinkles first bend the skin on his forehead into easy crumples; into soft creases. Then they slowly and thinly unwind and dwindle into smooth nothingness; as if they were melting and becoming one with the air. It's like these wrinkles were ghosts haunting the dome of his head until all his thoughts were dead...until all was still, calm and quiet...until nothing was left stirring; not even the lingering shadows. Then they simply turned around without a sound and floated away with saggy heads and downcast eyes. A thick odour, of bleached blood and rotten garlic, envenoms and envelops the horizon, like a fog that proudly rides the saddles of clouds in a moody December. Absolute darkness heavily hovers. The wheezing sound of a creaking door being slowly opened cuts the awful silence like a hacksaw cutting through bone. A few weak bulbs faintly flicker a sickly yellow. A moment staggers like a minute, and a minute crawls like a year. Heels are heard ringing between the walls, softly clicking and clacking on a cold floor. A volcano of gleaming madness violently erupts from under the flat and fat nose of the floor-bound man. "Kill me! Kill me!" The words had been gurgling and seething inside his mouth like wretched vomit. Silence is flooded. Silence drowned. "Me..." the echo deafens the thunderous lack of reply.

By A. Guy