Sea

The body was still floating at sea. That’s all they were now; the body. A body. The world had eroded so long ago, so violently, there didn’t seem any point to keep up with the charade of names, and sexes, and distinctions. They were just a body now, with bits on the outside and bits on the inside, lying in a boat, in the middle of the world long since gone.

Like names, there were no numbers anymore. No reason for them. The days never came to any rewarding conclusion, no meaningful horizon, no noteworthy event, like the end. The days lost their name and dates. Time bled, a drab gradient of sunrises and sunsets. There were hot days and cold days. The same for the nights. The body would sleep when they needed to; there was nothing sacred about the day anymore, no holy pointless ritual to adhere to anymore like before the sea. Nothing a full moon and star speckled sky couldn’t offer in its place. It’s hard to think they could have reached that deep violet mess hanging so high above them. The other bodies, that is.

No names, no numbers, no one. The body slipped in and out of delirium, pulled between the expanse of sea and the expanse of madness, one filled with bodies and a strange solid sea of dirt and bricks and borders. Imagine such a bizarre world, where the sea isn’t all consuming, all encompassing, all. These mad moments were often brought on by the gifts of the sea; the drifting offerings carried to the body, gently knocking on the hull of the boat, on occasion disturbing their sleep to bring them an even stranger dream.

Often it was good; an egg, a pineapple, a noodle strand. Occasionally, it was something not so edible; a pen, a picture frame, a triple-A battery. No matter what, the body’s first course of action in discovering these gifts was to try eating them, to various degrees of success. An egg, crunchy and brittle on the outside, slimy and slippery on the inside, brought on hallucinations of a boat, but flat, with four masts, but upside down, called a table, with more food, like eggs, on boats made of ceramic, flat again, called plates. There were other bodies at this table. They had thin fabrics, like sails, all over their outside parts of their bodies. A pen, which rarely tasted nice, though red was the best, summoned grotesque phantasms of limited expanses, as though boats had been erected all around you; above, below, enclosing. And there were bodies, angry, mad, shouting, abusive, all crazed and nightmarish. They called this sea “job.”

These visions were real. They couldn’t be, right? What a frightening way to live! The body would flail and fall into the sea, so entranced and delusional from these apparitions that they lost all sense. No. They couldn’t have been ever real. The body, lying in the boat, blinding themself with the searing ball of light that made the day the day, began to laugh, amused at the possibility that these visions were the world before the sea. That’s just silly! Absurd! Stupid! Scary… Unnerving… Disturbing…

The body’s cackle quelled, simmering to a silent shallow rasp. Imagine it. A sea with the sea. Bodies that weren’t bodies. Bodies that made sounds that other bodies mimic and echo for no other reason than the sounds give little jolts in the outside parts. Bodies that climb on top of other bodies and ride them around their entire lives until they’re too old to be of use anymore, abandoning them in old age, conjuring some archaic name, “retirement”, to make it more palpable. A bizarre world that deserved to drown. How ghastly! So ghastly, it shook the body in the boat in the sea with a horrifying realisation; those bodies, those “people”, may have survived.

The body quaked so badly the boat rocked, slapping the otherwise mirror smooth sea, rippling out waves of anxiety. They’re out there, aren’t they? Those things. With their numbers and names and opinions. Imagine that? Names so immaterial, so nonsensical, they get their own category; beliefs! They’re out there. If the body had survived, in this flooded, landless, perfect world, then they most likely have as well. The bodies. The numbers. The names. The ideas of the old world.

This wasn’t the first time the body had realised this terrifying epiphany, nor was it the first time their immediate solution was to become one with the sea, entering its tranquil oblivion. But the problem wasn’t death. Death is literally nothing. No. The problem was that every time the body tried to steel up to commit the act, to save themself from the ever-growing threat of finding survivors, they retreated back into the boat, huddled in an emotional heap, having locked eyes with another body, lurking in the shimmering reflection beneath the water. Instead of doing anything, it was just safer to accept the sea, like all the other bodies that had survived, floating out there, in the sea.

Forever.

#HI