Part 1
Forewarning
I've watched the stars fall silent from your eyes - R.E.M. - The Great Beyond
One
Manila
An incinerating moth caught in the exhaust plume glimpsed the ink black jet dancing demonically against the cigarette sky. Even as the burnt flakes of the moth eviscerated into the jet stream, the perpetrator continued to press a cold hard body against the smoky air. Far, far below its belly, a wide wave of foam crushed over a sugary shore.
The dark dragon roared over more waters, the sky around it transforming from stained tobacco yellow to the color purple. Running along the inside of the dragon’s purple painted spine was an echelon of people, something like cyclists seen from above in a cycling race, except they had nothing of the organic nature of the peloton. The holidaymakers had placed themselves with machine like precision in columns and rows, like numbers on a spreadsheet. Most of these numbers were asleep. Some were reading, but in Hugh’s case, writing.
Hugh closed the lid of light, and as he did the peppermint blue was extinguished. The passenger beside him opened an eye as the notebook clicked, then closed it to the airplane’s hollow sounding darkness.
A child could have drawn the deep gashes in Hugh’s forehead. His clenched hands pushed down on the computer’s ceiling. His eyes were closed, but not in an attitude of sleep, such as the Asian man beside him. They were pinched shut. Hugh’s thoughts had focused his face into its present consternation. And his thoughts were the clanging symbols of futility. He had, you see, on a whim decided to open a document he’d been polishing for several years, and after a few final flourishes and finishing touches, he had fiddled and fussed, and somehow lost it all. Now, with the edge of the Philippine’s dark archipelago crawling under the ailerons of the Asiana Airlines Boeing, and his two weeks holiday about to start, his entire being ached with pain and futility. The consequence of confirming to overwrite the file had meant he had lost the original. And with that loss, all the sacrifices, backaches, arguments – the entire retrospective – now amounted to nothing.
For more, click here.
Manila
An incinerating moth caught in the exhaust plume glimpsed the ink black jet dancing demonically against the cigarette sky. Even as the burnt flakes of the moth eviscerated into the jet stream, the perpetrator continued to press a cold hard body against the smoky air. Far, far below its belly, a wide wave of foam crushed over a sugary shore.
The dark dragon roared over more waters, the sky around it transforming from stained tobacco yellow to the color purple. Running along the inside of the dragon’s purple painted spine was an echelon of people, something like cyclists seen from above in a cycling race, except they had nothing of the organic nature of the peloton. The holidaymakers had placed themselves with machine like precision in columns and rows, like numbers on a spreadsheet. Most of these numbers were asleep. Some were reading, but in Hugh’s case, writing.
Hugh closed the lid of light, and as he did the peppermint blue was extinguished. The passenger beside him opened an eye as the notebook clicked, then closed it to the airplane’s hollow sounding darkness.
A child could have drawn the deep gashes in Hugh’s forehead. His clenched hands pushed down on the computer’s ceiling. His eyes were closed, but not in an attitude of sleep, such as the Asian man beside him. They were pinched shut. Hugh’s thoughts had focused his face into its present consternation. And his thoughts were the clanging symbols of futility. He had, you see, on a whim decided to open a document he’d been polishing for several years, and after a few final flourishes and finishing touches, he had fiddled and fussed, and somehow lost it all. Now, with the edge of the Philippine’s dark archipelago crawling under the ailerons of the Asiana Airlines Boeing, and his two weeks holiday about to start, his entire being ached with pain and futility. The consequence of confirming to overwrite the file had meant he had lost the original. And with that loss, all the sacrifices, backaches, arguments – the entire retrospective – now amounted to nothing.
For more, click here.
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