Author: killian

"The child is ugly." Chillian stands on a light, shiny wooden floor, laughter echoing all around him. He looks to his right and sees a young man and a young woman sitting at two chairs at a low, wooden table, facing away from him. They are shaking, hysterical.

"The child is ugly," the man gasps, banging the table, lowering his head. The woman throws her head back and slaps her knee, long black hair flapping out and then back. These are my parents, Chillian realizes.

"The child is ugly," the woman screams, barely managing the words before snorting and putting her face into her hands, trembling with laughter. Chillian begins to run around the table to see their faces. A short golden arrow at the table's center follows his path, pointing always at him, while a longer one remains pointed towards his parents. However, by the time he has reached the other side of the table, their chairs have somehow been pointed the other way, and he is again staring at the backs of their heads, which seem to have grown larger.

"The child is ugly," the man shouts in a great booming voice, as though introducing a performer, and he and the woman again descend into hysterics. Laughter echoing all around him, Chillian looks up to see great circular lights pointing down at him, turns away from his parents' backsides and glimpses for the first time that he is on a stage. Every seat in the house is filled and every man, woman, and child in a seat is gasping with laughter, dabbing at eyes, save one. This is a man in a dark hat and dark shirt, pale as death, unmoving.

"The child is ugly," the woman whispers conspiratorially, and again man, woman, and audience burst into hysterics. The pale, dark man does not move, but a piece of his right arm peels off seemingly of its own accord, falling to the ground in the balcony where he sits. Chillian raises his left hand to wave. The man raises his right hand in unison. Chillian looks at the man's hand, then his own, and notices that he holds in his hand a wooden cross with strings hanging from it.

"The child is ugly," the man notes as though simply stating a fact, and all present hoot and holler again. Chillian opens his right hand and looks down as the man does the same with his left. Chillian's right hand holds another wooden cross with strings attached. There is a slight flutter under the man's dark shirt, and his face seems to grow paler.

"The child is ugly," the woman sings operatically, and the audience laughs and screams. A sheaf of the man's face falls off and slowly floats toward the the stage. Chillian picks it up left-handed, cross still clutched among three fingers. He reads the front:

MAN: The child is ugly.

WOMAN: The child is ugly.

MAN: The child is ugly.

WOMAN: The child is ugly.

And so on. Chillian can feel his head growing light. He turns over the paper and reads:

ATTIDOOD: We are not made of matter. We think and feel. We are ethereal presences who transiently, corporeally manifest in this physical realm, this stage, but we are so much more. We are the perfectly circular stars that beam down upon the earth. Do you know the word "constellation"?

The pressure in his head grows too strong and Chillian sees only black now, falls forward, faints.

--

Chillian jerks awake, seated in a black velvet chair, in a theater. He looks quickly down at the program in his hand. "Face Facts," it says. He looks forward. Instead of a stage, he sees an endless field of grain, a dozen men and women toiling slowly, heads bowed, minor chords softly buzzing from the strings in the pit. A child stands at the front of the stage, looking into the audience; he looks familiar but in a way Chillian cannot place. Chillian moves his left hand toward his face to rest upon his chin but is foiled by tiny plastic piping connecting it to the armrest. The piping leads directly into his vein, where it is taped down. On angry instinct he removes the tape and the piping from his vein. Immediately the brass join the strings in the minor chords, which grow even softer, accompanied now by a single, steady timpani softly announcing death at tonic. Two of the women in the field fall to their knees, then on their faces. The grain browns, wilts, falls. Urgently Chillian reconnects the piping to his vein, and the grain slowly grows back, though the women stay on the ground. The timpani and brass grow infrequent, then cease altogether.

Chillian looks to his right armrest and sees a golden knife and a golden goblet. Soft minor chords still buzz from the pit. "This is ugly," Chillian thinks. He fits the goblet between his left hip and the left armrest, places the knife in his left hand, and brings his arm to the air over the cup. He cuts into the forearm above the elbow but below the rest and a light but steady stream falls into the goblet. A flute takes up a melody and three young girls walk to the fields, planting flowers that instantly bloom into red and purple. The men, women, and girls in the field sing softly, in three-part harmony, "Surely it starts with a physical attraction." He waits, but the agrarian chorus does not sing again. The goblet is empty.

Chillian takes the knife now in his right hand and slices at his chest. He begins to feel faint. Blood pours into the goblet, then disappears. The lights above the field grow brighter. French horns and clarinets play lovers' games, now in counterpoint, now in sixths. The chorus sings, "After all, all we are is well-evolved animals, chemicals, biomatter like anything else."

Chillian cuts twice, deep into his cheek, and blood gushes down into the still-empty goblet. Trumpets and piccolo match martial insistence and birdcall. He can no longer see the field in front of him. The chorus sings, "We are not made of matter." Chillian topples forward in his seat.

--

Chillian comes to slowly, machinese buzzing and beeping around him, pain registering dimly at all extremities of his body. His right arm is wrapped and raised. There are two huge bandages crossing his chest. He looks down and sees that he is wearing a light blue hospital gown. He touches his left hand to the left side of his face and feels stubble. He touches his left hand to the right side of his face and feels nothing.

There is a soft buzzing to his left side. He concentrates and realizes that the sound comprises words. He looks to his left and sees Attidood sitting there, broad-shouldered, hair tousled, baggy-eyed. "Do you know the word 'constellation'? I think what it means is what the stars are when they're with each other. They're something more than when they're apart, when they're burning heat and helium. They're shapes when they're with each other."

Chillian smiles encouragingly. Attidood looks quickly at the door, then snakes his right hand underneath the gown, caressing thighs, testicles, penis...

--

Chillian wakes up sticky with sweat and semen on sheets of black velvet. He swears. He stands. He picks up the over-folded piece of paper on his bedside table and begins to read. "Who's to say where love starts? Maybe it comes from the center of a star." He spits. He sends the paper to the ground. He sidles over to his bathroom. He has to clean up and to piss. He spies himself in the mirror.

The right side of his face sports a gigantic scar in the shape of a cross. His right eye is crossed and the skin around it stretched sometimes over the eye, sometimes not as near as it should be. His right gumline is entirely visible and is a dark red and purple where it should be pink. He scowls. The man in the mirror scowls back. He lifts his left hand to the mirror. The man raises his right hand. He forms his right hand into a fist. The man forms his left hand into a fist. Chillian punches across the mirror, his left hand towards the left side of the man's face. The glass shatters.

--

Chillian's left hand breaks water, finding air. He can hardly hold his breath any longer. He does not know why he is holding his breath. He has a vague sense that he ran around the lake so that Attidood would not see him jumping in. He does not know why he is lifting his left hand to greet the air. A matching right hand, strong, firm, meets his three outstretched fingers and pulls him up. His head breaks water. He takes a deep, gasping breath. He lives. He feels a deep pain in his chest and a heaviness in his right arm.

Attidood lifts him to shore, laying him out flat on his back, saying nothing. There is a gigantic scar on Attidood's face in the shape of a cross. The child is ugly. Chillian does not know whether he jumped to be seen, to be unseen, to gain a better vantage point, to see nothing. The child is ugly. Attidood puts his hand to Chillian's face. "We're something more than when we're apart. We're shapes when we're with each other. Who's to say where love starts?" He smiles, holds Chillian's head to his knee. Chillian closes his eyes hard, then opens them and looks up at black sky. In the deep cosmic velvet there are no constellations; the stars are winging away from one another, winking back at him watching, each one's light first forming a circle, then forming a cross.

http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1393561&forum_id=4#15766467

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2015157&forum_id=2E#21262946)