Glory’s Opposite

by Heinrich Brueckmann

The moment of the most glaring juxtaposition was imminent. 

Her vigor, her passion, her beauty – all conspired to bring out in sharper relief the opposing image of the dying man in her arms.  His helplessness, wretched filthiness, the light leaving his eyes.

She stared at him with an intensity known only to those in love.  But he saw nothing in particular; just a blurry sky.

***

In another life, they could have been sister and brother, or have sat near and never known of each other’s presence.  But it was not another life; it was this one.  And for him, it was about to end.

***

Radiance and dimness, fairly arbitrary manifestations of the infinite degrees between two poles that are called light and dark.

The difference was widening.  She glowed ever brighter, more enflamed with passion.  He drained of vitality, dimmer like a smoldering meteorite, falling.

The moment of utter negation is fleeting – something for the philosopher-sadist to savor – but after it passes, not one, but two lives, have ended; two deaths have occurred, two universes diminished until implosion.  Infinite spectrums of possibility fading out of existence and gone.

***

As the blind man’s hearing grows more acute, so did a further sense, indefinable for its uniqueness, in him develop as his conventional senses slowly vanished. 

He sawfeltheardtastedsmelled-thought-he-became something further.

***

His eyes clouded as the slime behind them floated upwards.

Her eyes were sparkling clear with tears, salty water: an excellent conductor.  Their rims were red with sobs.  Impact craters with raised edges, crusty, steaming.  Vaporized hope left a debris-field of remorse.  She would henceforth live in the shadows of its charged dust clouds, away from the light.

His blood, bright crimson, leaked onto her, saturating her in the puddle it had created around them.  Waterfalls fell to streams to trickling creeks to dry riverbeds and dirt.  An emptied reservoir.  Darkening, it dried on her.

***

 

Perhaps some form of negative energy transfer had taken place through the thick medium of blood.

She bore the corpse forever.

 


Return to the Story Archive