The Third Day, Page Seven
Do not betray me with more catacombs, and grotesque statuaries of hairless gargoyles, hyena laughs from an iron maiden, a dismembering with bone-flecked cleaver, an embalming cocktail for the world-weary trudge of acolytes in search of a master. Sealed and cauterized underground, nothing but the agency of worms will wriggle out.
I must stay here, that’s why it was birthed.
Page Seven: My Kingdom for a Forest Rain
The air here is confused as to the purpose of mist: is it a recollection and redistribution of oceanic surf in a dazzling plumage of bittersweet droplets plunging onto tenacious plastic fronds or braceleting the rubber tubing of runners whose origins are unclear and undivinable as they boldly arc into small gaps of dense mahogany; fingers like runes to spell disaster for any low-flying drone attempting to catalog the landscape. The Imaginary Magpie alights on one such exposed and deformed vein that does not buckle — but curiously sways — under its ephemera. The enveloping dampness clogs his vision, swept away by his nictitating lid.
it had come to my attention that there would be vast arrays of colors unimaginable here, the Magpie was made to think, but all i can fathom is a mélange of monopolizing green that suffocates much of the daylight and suffuses even through the night. but i am a camera on the buckle of a belt, what more can you ask of me?
It is then he notices a gallantry of sunset pink ribbing — a network of piping, spindly roots squirming out from the ever-ferned forest floor to coalesce and form the fibrous beige trunk of a nut tree.
Comfortable under claw, he sidles up one of the more slender runners to gain altitude without moistening the underside of his wings he keeps tucked against his belly where he can now espy a way out. Like any well-prepared snare, getting in was effortless — glide onward, lured by the senescent call of gravity, until your extended tarsi touch ground. Without warning, the embarrassed sky, caught blissfully dancing about the atmosphere,
All I do is win, win, win no matter what
Got money on my mind, I can never get enough
And every time I step up in the building
Everybody hands go up — and they stay there
— DJ Khalid, All I Do Is Win
quickly covers her nakedness in a nightgown of flora. Under the canopy dreams of lapunae, the hapless quiz-show entrant is trapped, stuttering again and again: “Could you repeat the question, please?” You can wait for television snow, but it will never fall. You might want to pry your hands from the recliner, but they, too are locked, cuffed to pleather, your body going up, down, up, down, up, but you are not winning. You are the fool in the crowd who paid to be here. Even if there was no door charge and it didn’t cost you anything to get in, you gave of your most precious waning asset: time. And while you feel the coolness of an arriving stormfront, it is still daylight.
An elephantine wimba could be mistaken for a cliff, but as a light beam harshly punctures the sprawl of their shadow, the Magpie conceives of an exit. Swooping low to the brush until it breaches the pillar of twinkling waterlight and yaws sharply upward, the Magpie is expelled from the drowned forest with a puffy cloud of leaf matter back into the day.
From up here, he sees the cursive writing of magnetic rivers filigreed by islets and furry hackeys of overhang. Everywhere that isn’t piranha-infested aqua-blue displays the prosperous green felt of this recarpeted earth.
The freedom to depart inspires the interest in leaving. The Magpie renders one last image of this spectacular overgrowth, as it will be worth noting later.
The Magpie begins thinking it has seen enough and it is time to return to the nest.
“i think i’ve seen enough, it’s time i return.”