MystyrMystyry
08-26-2011, 08:01 AM
No-one knew where it came from, just that it had. A block of ice in the middle of Manhattan, the size of a skyscraper stretching from Fifth Avenue to Thirteenth.
You may ask how it was that there were no witnesses to its appearance, but perhaps there had been, so terrified that they had fled and refused to admit it - not even to themselves.
This had happened to one such individual who was presently quaking in his socks on the floor of his apartment; not solely from the cold did he shake, but mainly from the shock of what he saw inside.
It was a balmy afternoon in late summer, yet here he was shivering his goosepimples off with his airconditioner on full heating. He was on his third Beam and cola, and tenth cigarette since his return, a self-medication that had seen him through many of life's more traumatic times - and here he was in his most traumatic.
On the floor next to his shivering feet lay three scraps of silver trim paper peeled from a Riversol notebook, and a leaky blue biro. There were blobbed markings on the nearest sheet which even he had trouble deciphering this early, though he felt he had to do his best to describe the event lest he was struck down by sudden cardiac arrest.
His breathing was fast and shallow, and his pulse pumped at a frantic rate. He bypassed the pouring of a fourth glass by taking a deep burning swig straight from the bottle, and another, grimacing, though it's desired effect was nearly immediate.
'How to describe the sight?' he wondered with the ballpoint poised, however not yet ready to unleash it. He couldn't say what he saw simply, other than to relate it as 'everything' and 'all at once'.
There were clothes on washing lines, helicopters, sweeping deserts, an accordian player in the rain, jam tarts, mountain ranges, freshly picked carrots, asteroids, colourful toys in a department store, a new red rose, a murder of crows, an electronic waste dump, a redwood forest, a watch factory. As he would soon write 'Far easier to describe what I didn't see.'
The next half an hour rolled by rapidly as the scraps of paper piled up, and more whisky ingested, as the sights were recorded. When he finally took a break he found himself exhausted and hungry. He ordered a pizza.
But something felt odd, apart from the event and the effects of the liquor, he knew something about him had changed forever.
He sat patiently waiting, musing over what had happened a few hours earlier - which he could afford to now that his blood pressure had resumed to a stable level.
There were very few reflective surfaces in his home, so it may have come as a surprise for him to find he'd changed on the surface as well.
When the doorbell rang, he leapt into action while the pizza delivery boy stood in stunned silence, too petrified to run, as a long sticky tongue emerged from behind the fangs and instinctively coiled around the prey's neck.
It whipped back and with one gulp the human became dinner.
You may ask how it was that there were no witnesses to its appearance, but perhaps there had been, so terrified that they had fled and refused to admit it - not even to themselves.
This had happened to one such individual who was presently quaking in his socks on the floor of his apartment; not solely from the cold did he shake, but mainly from the shock of what he saw inside.
It was a balmy afternoon in late summer, yet here he was shivering his goosepimples off with his airconditioner on full heating. He was on his third Beam and cola, and tenth cigarette since his return, a self-medication that had seen him through many of life's more traumatic times - and here he was in his most traumatic.
On the floor next to his shivering feet lay three scraps of silver trim paper peeled from a Riversol notebook, and a leaky blue biro. There were blobbed markings on the nearest sheet which even he had trouble deciphering this early, though he felt he had to do his best to describe the event lest he was struck down by sudden cardiac arrest.
His breathing was fast and shallow, and his pulse pumped at a frantic rate. He bypassed the pouring of a fourth glass by taking a deep burning swig straight from the bottle, and another, grimacing, though it's desired effect was nearly immediate.
'How to describe the sight?' he wondered with the ballpoint poised, however not yet ready to unleash it. He couldn't say what he saw simply, other than to relate it as 'everything' and 'all at once'.
There were clothes on washing lines, helicopters, sweeping deserts, an accordian player in the rain, jam tarts, mountain ranges, freshly picked carrots, asteroids, colourful toys in a department store, a new red rose, a murder of crows, an electronic waste dump, a redwood forest, a watch factory. As he would soon write 'Far easier to describe what I didn't see.'
The next half an hour rolled by rapidly as the scraps of paper piled up, and more whisky ingested, as the sights were recorded. When he finally took a break he found himself exhausted and hungry. He ordered a pizza.
But something felt odd, apart from the event and the effects of the liquor, he knew something about him had changed forever.
He sat patiently waiting, musing over what had happened a few hours earlier - which he could afford to now that his blood pressure had resumed to a stable level.
There were very few reflective surfaces in his home, so it may have come as a surprise for him to find he'd changed on the surface as well.
When the doorbell rang, he leapt into action while the pizza delivery boy stood in stunned silence, too petrified to run, as a long sticky tongue emerged from behind the fangs and instinctively coiled around the prey's neck.
It whipped back and with one gulp the human became dinner.