Ariera

I find myself lying still in this lattice of thorns, the prickly tethers of what feels like worn rope press into my thick skin. I cannot feel my limbs, only the mass of my torso – I feel taller than before, as if some magical sculptor has stretched me thin, elongating my spine and flesh. The sky flickers – golden yellow fireworks! Oh, but they fail to melt back into the prior gloom, silent and comforting with its masking grimace of unknowingness. This 'Sun' shifts about tentatively, like a glowing ball on a rope swing, suspended above a jungle of apes, threateningly swiping with their great arms. The tapping of faraway footsteps pulses through me and my spiny bed. Perhaps it is some god, coming to rescue me from this dark doom? I shall call out to them – never have I felt more relieved to be in so light a presence when in this crushing black cave of disorientated souls.

My words seem to be muffled by a doughy matter smothering my mouth and airways.

Oh god, what is happening? My sad life will end prematurely after all. Yet, I can still follow my scattered thoughts, disturbed by this awful happening. Perhaps, if I endure my suffering and retain my mind, I can find a way of esca--

My thoughts, ubiquitous and brimming with fear are cut short by the instant dimming of the bright Sun above – a shadow of ill-fate steals my worst notions of terror from my screaming psyche and clasps its dark, deathly fingers (surprisingly fat and fleshy) around my soft frame. My curved chest tightens, my innards twist in the compression, but still am I unable to emit a scream of ashen agony from this inexplicable torture!

‘Ariera*! I have been looking forward to devouring your feathery flesh all day!’ booms a voice, piercing and peeling the air of silence.

Even before panic can diffuse into my veiny body, I immediately feel a sharp stinging on the crown of my head; the shadow’s claws have sunken into my case, like a farmer digging his spade into the hard ground during winter’s defiant months of chill. My head, rife with pain, throbs with heat. The stinging persists and stretches further down my body, my skin, peeling away, leaving my newly exposed flesh raw, white and burning.

I have no teeth to clench together, no eyes to squeeze shut, no hope to desperately cling to. Yet my external senses remain intact, and pulse the excruciating soreness through my nerves which glow threateningly from the sickening pain of this affliction.

Just after a thousand pinpricks stab at my mutilated exterior, inverted and bare, a foul feeling of moist ensnarement rasps through me; doughy bile in my spongy stomach arises; it pulps inside me, for it is unable to surface. Sharp knives rip into my flesh, scraping at my neck, my chest, my pelvis, until I feel a sudden lightness in the midst of this chilling disfigurement of my shredded body. My top half, now mashed into puréed carnage, has been ripped from me by the jaws of a monster!

I cannot resist, I cannot refute. All I can do is lie here, rolling away from the blood-thirsty chambers of an atrocious demon.







…and so is the fate of a banana.

* Ariera is the Latin name for the English word banana (a long, crescent shaped fruit that grows in bunches and has a soft, pulpy texture and yellow external skin when ripe)

Copyright © JRFB 2012

Rouge

I gaze at the fruit as she pulls at its soft skin, tearing it with her teeth which appear to glow a luminous white in contrast to the unforgettable bright reds and oranges as they ooze out.

What was once a pristine, spherical lump of softness is now a misshapen, ugly, mangled mess. She sucks at it - the innards being absorbed from one organism into another. But no matter how natural the process, this image before my eyes disturbs me. For nothing so lovely should be treated in such a dishonourable way. The fruit, (barely recognisable) seems to bleed small fragments of life in its desperate attempt not to prolong its own, but to begin the life of others. Only one escapes, as it glides down the chin of the oppressor, in one long slippery movement.

The others were not so lucky.

The fruit breathes its last breath and collapses in on itself, exhaling a sigh as juices protrude - from ripe, tender skin to a wrinkled, shrivelled husk; thus mirroring the lives of our own species. It is a very strange spectre; like watching a plump, new born baby with skin as soft and smooth as a pearl of the sea suddenly merge into the archaic, crippled old man it is destined to become after a lifetime of memories, wither away into the darkness from whence it came.

*

It no longer resists. The oppressor has won and celebratorily wipes her mouth with a handkerchief of the same white as her teeth. Horrified, she is taken aback when she catches sight of a dark red, clotting like blood as it seeps into the open pores of the handkerchief; the blood of her victim.

As she frantically rushes to the nearest pale of water, to inspect the damage done to her mouth - where the danger had begun - the one and only spawn of life from the fruit lies still on the damp earth. Silent; waiting. Waiting for Light to come, to appear from hiding and nurture its growth. The girl screams with hysteria as her blood-shot eyes spark after fearfully gazing at her mouth in the pale.

Dripping with cold, dark, sparkling blood, its smell is repulsive - like decrepit jagged metal rusting on the side of a deserted road. Although no one is around, the smell lingers, adding a weight to the air, hoping to intoxicate the next living man, woman, child, or fruit that has the misfortune to come across it.

The seed of life listens, but does no hear; it breathes but does not inhale; it grows, it flourishes, it lives. For it comes - even the darkness and dreariness of the commotion and horror cannot obstruct the pureness of nature's gift to our troubled world: Light.

Comforted by the warmth of Light, as if by instinct, the seed of Life stretches its roots down passed the screams of death and into the cool earth, embracing a chance for new life to begin.

The sounds of the girl are lost. Only nature can be heard now. The inculpable, pure shoots sprout from the spawn of the fruit, slowly curling and uncurling in euphoric replenishment. Energy is re-released back into the soil, the earth quivers with excitement as it soaks up the new Life. 

Much time may pass, yet still in the garden of men, although nature seems to be lost, the strong, tall steams; the broad thick leaves; the glorious, ripe red fruits all remain on the tomato plant - spawned from death. And not a single fruit from this plant of righteousness is to be harmed.

Copyright © JRFB 2012

Home.

She came home last week. Her soul, delayed for six years, dragged back here by her weary, wandering, impoverished feet having already deserted their own helpless body; floating aimlessly in the abyss of day dreams and night time terrors, she landed here, on sandy shores, sprinkled with prickled bushes and beach shrubs..


Her body, though encrusted with seaweed and bitter brine from the waters, glimmers like the crystals of water running free down her body, as if they were enjoying their freedom for the dark sea. She is not shipwrecked, nor lost, nor washed ashore on some heavenly bay of the gods, she is home; but she is unaware of how much significance the lapping waves, tainted by milky white tips have.


The sun is up high, it must be nearing midday, but nothing of time or reality can really be felt, only the ecstatic giggling of waves as they gently glide down on the hard, cool sand, before softly retreating home, back into Neptune's cave. Those sparkling waters, the serenity, yet brutality of the waves, the high sun's rays brightening everything in sight; it was all so sublime, so exquisite. Despite her awe of the enticing landscape, Cherry failed to notice the way the Wind, mindful and gentle, charmingly motored a light breeze mirroring how a mighty hand might nudge someone on their way from the sloping hard sand onto the paler, more inviting grains with gentle caresses of his invisible forces. Cherry, on reaching the top of the slope, faintly collapsed in the way that weary bodies keel over after utter exhaustion. The chalky sand began gently soothing her grubby feet, prickled and pinched bythe dune plants which peeped among the fragments of the warm silk beneath her. Cushioning her raw soles, Cherry could not help but allow the delightful massages from the rippling grains and softkisses from the sun to overcome her, and soon those soporific lids yielded to the warm breezes.


A deep mist invaded her psyche, objecting light's admittance into the corridors of her brain. Her eyes flicker from empty room to empty room. Her legs mechanically run, never conquered by fatigue, but fueled by horror. Her chest pulses rapidly. However, like a grandfather clock being launched out a five story window, no time at all seems to pass whilst she darts around the empty chambers, frantic, searching, lost in her own mind; on her own soil.

A tumultuous clap of thunderclouds shakes her from the internal darkness of her mind, but now the hellish gloom pervades reality. The rain beats down. The sand is ripped apart. The grains which were once as soft as velvet are flung up and hammer into the concrete ground. All forces focus on their victim: vicious and merciless, the razor-shards of sand tear at Cherry's salty arms and back as she leaves them exposes having recoiled into a less vulnerable position. She cries out a devastating scream when the relentless stony jabbing now draws blood on her shoulders, but her shouts for mercy do not seem to inspire any sympathy on those who control the weather. Weak, dehydrated and now with her body covered in blood and sand, Cherry seeks refuge by slowly, but productively heaving herself back into the monstrosity that brought her to this doom in the beginning: the Ocean.


Never in her life had anything been as refreshing than the instant Cherry dived into the stirring waves. The violence above the surface softened abruptly and an air of tranquility arose. Cherry descended deeper and deeper into her liquid garrison of still numbness, frantically trying to shake the raucous sound of the splattering pebbles of rain. With her eyes shut and her breath held, she waited. The mist was seeping back into her thoughts; that awful darkness. But the storm, the precipitation, it would rip her limb from limb, shredding her bones, heart and body; she must remain under the refuge of the compassionate sea. The oxygen gathered when inland was depleting, Cherry thought that if she did not surface now her body may collapse and just one sharp intake of salt water may drown her lungs and destroy her. Yet the rain was like icicles plummeting from the dark sky, shivering, waiting to kill. Either way, Cherry was against some force of nature (the Water offered only temperamental relief, she was not expected to stay under forever).

With the light fading, and her head soaring away from consciousness, away from survival, Cherry dragged her now weighty arms through the thick water towards what she believed to be ultimate death directly above her.

The water parted for her struggling head and neck when she came up, vehemently spluttering and coughing out the significant volume of water which had begun to pervade her organs during her dive. Her eyes, kept shut due to the brine burned when she pried them open; the light trickled down from the heavenly sky.

She opened them wide. The rain had stopped. There was the high Sun, smiling, coaxing, as if it had never experienced a storm in its entire existence. The sand hugged onto her body, as if each grain had absorbed the golden elation emitted from the inviting rays of the Sun and wanted to share their joy.

Cherry Reason, perched knee deep in the shallow, lukewarm water scanned the shore: the glowing sand, the deep greens and purples of the vegetation on the banks, the smooth, crystalline sky, free from any clouds.

Here she sat; she is Home.

Copyright © JRFB 2012