Writer: Brian Michael Barbeito

Fabrics

Black formations in the sky were far away but felt close, and Jacob looked also briefly at the telephone wires, the bridge that was passing, and the tall grey abodes. All and more were only sinister portents of an acute descent, and though the vehicle went slowly, the world felt as if it moved at breakneck speed. Save for the hiding sun, there was nothing to create kindness. He looked at the leg of his pants, and the fabric seemed to move. Part of it dislodged from the other part and jingled around. He knew on one level that it was a hallucination. Yet the artificial nightmare was not any more terrifying than the real one. They could be together, could cohabitate, and in fact were. There were, in the city, shells, and the shells had eyes and hands, legs and arms, brains and feet. Big steel trucks raced past. This was a foreign land, and always had been a foreign land. Any illusion of home had dissolved. Sparkling went the sun, surely on the other side of the city. On this side it was only the waking dream in full fledged malevolent laughter. Jacob remembered the time when he was in the cold area, and felt the breaking of the world- and though did not laugh outwardly- grinned inwardly, because he thought he was in hell. This too was now hell, but just another level. The different areas of such a place were spread all over. That fabric from the pants. Moving round like that. The other time- on a walkway- frozen- in a blue sweater. Others. The fabric on the pants. The fabric of the telephone wires, the brown buildings in the sea. The fabric of the complacent world. The prior world- the false Eden, had descended down some hidden drain. The drain was impossible to see- but it was so patient, so proficient. After it took all the water- it sucked at the air- it brought many things- many solid and subtle things down and away. What was where the shells with eyes and ears were- the grey glowing buildings- hallucinations at dawn- and silent inner laughter that hell had come alive? Surely not floundering at any of its developmental stages...surely having no birth pangs. Arriving on its own time, like a perfectly formed leopard gecko in the desert, waking up and beginning a hunt, the sand under foot, a knowing and ancient material, as old as creation itself.

© Brian Michael Barbeito 2011

Brian Michael Barbeito writes short fiction. His work has appeared at Glossolalia, Exclusive Conclave of Delights Magazine, Lunatics Folly, and Mudjob. He resides in Ontario, Canada.