Laborers Return to the Forgotten Shores of Silence

Wood boards clatter to the soft shuffle of bare feet in sand.

Warm sand dispersing sun kissed nostalgia in golden waves.

My crumpled uniform smells like garbage. Spending eighty dollars total on work clothes will always be uncomfortable. My cheap pants carry faded crust; bourgeoisie slime and crunch. I know every stain, each trough filled with Hog slop served at battle ground festas; served with malice. High times by corpse piles and its their care free squealing that causing debris to fleck, fly, and dry. Nuggets of crud for the labor class.

Smooth sand to brittle shells scream under foot. Broiling heat mentions retreat but my callouses defend and beg for waters' cool ache. Left hand slides along collar bone to dishevel tie and release tensions, brought on by resentments and silk. Finding quick breaths I plunge forward to the oceans edge, dropping clothes to be swallowed by empty dunes.

To make it to the waters edge is to feel accomplished in one thing. Sand is simple but to move is dreaming.

Before my feet reach the damp sand something on my right calls. Demanding attention. A lighthouse leers high atop a black cliff. How much like a face erosions' patient chisel produced on this dreary canvas? How totally recognizable these sharp and angled features are? The deep black rock shapes nose, mouth and eyes; and how clear its expression. Oppressed as if worked to physical exhaustion. It's eyes closed to new dawns promised grief. I feel for similar lines on my face, they betray worry and stretched humanity to all who know me. Familiar but silent company is welcomed in an environment of constant disintegration and unexpected displacement.

The lighthouse seems a solitary structure. Imposing and abandoned, but somehow demanding so much space. Somehow mature. Somehow more everlasting.

My shoelaces slip loose and socks to join them. High tide in winters bite drags all belongings into the shelter of the deep. Just in briefs remaining I kneel against the break and close eyes. Tender and vulnerable knees on firm grains, bright revelations come in rays of loving flame.

I see my adult life spread out before me, images and time spliced like a prism. For 6 years I have given my time. Each shift ending in the soft witch hours of night. Red eyed ceremonies spent wrapping tomorrows time in leather. Neat gifts laid in forfeit resting comfortably on my duvet. Given with false humility in early mornings, always on time.

Groaning

body stiff

and unrested

propped up on center stage to produce profits for the postpartum owners; slick with hog slop and after birth. Transactional relationships birth overbearing cost. My silent suffering, as per tradition, is only pacified by open eyed dreams filled with fury and random violence. This drives me further from myself with each raw awakening. No time for personal pursuits; for redemption; the promise of salvation comes too delayed.

This unnatural reality has brought me to the beach on this day. Far off the grided map. To feel and savor the infinite quiet. To take time to dream with eyes closed and soothe my bloated body in the crush of high tide. I need to find a place to release a coiled and fiendish pressure threating to rupture my delicate cage.

All at once the holy light of introspection fades to black. The comfort that an honest check-in provides dissipates and the new vacancy is filled with an unknown sensation.

Drawing up from the center of the earth an infernal magnetism claws its way to the surface. Carrying after- images projected into my mind; of slag metals in savage gyroscopic labor. Pregnant with an unknowable evil.

Palms forced to the sand, head bowed in unconsented prostration. Gravity attempts to suck me lower and in sinking, an animal instinct to flee pushes blood to scramble into starved and unwilling muscle. My head has turned into a singing bowl, resonating frequencies of doom. Sending cascades of sweat to dampen the sand.

Pressure increases pulling me down to the elbows, knees and feet swallowed by the shifting and hungry sands. Grimacing brow ripples in panicked fever while gravity and pressure delivers heat.

Oh unknowable God! The burning!

The ivory sand glows red where the earth has taken me. Limbs buried and stifled in an underground crucible. Profusely sweating now, large beads tremble, fall, and evaporate on contact. Daring to split reality, a blaring shriek rolls down and out from the lighthouse on high. My ear drums are completely overwhelmed, cowering ever deeper into their caverns. This monstrous siren spreads through the air like water on glass. No paths ever the same. One tone hitting the mind and becoming several; dissonant and random. Sonic chaos becomes choral interpretations of the dark between the stars. I crane my neck to the right, drawn to the blare.

I bare witness to an unearthly change. The entirety of the lighthouse and its adjacent bodies are shrouded in a living fog. Thick and noxious mist brings to the minds eye images of an overturned witches brew. Within moments of laying eyes on this terrible sight; light streams from its massive eye and the unholy chariot begins to turn. I cannot see the conjuror.

Yellow light;

turn;

red light;

turn and repeating.

The velocity of its revolutions increasing, cruelly matched by the deafening volume of the siren. Grey clouds gather like sheep to hear the satanic preaching, fully obscuring the sun and moon. Just the new terrible light casting for miles. The beam widens from cone to wash, spreading in more degrees then should be possible by mechanical limits. Until the entirety of the sky switches from yellow to red and back again.

From within the gathering fog, shadows of unnamable creatures are revealed. At first only in the red wash and vanish in yellow. Dancing wildly indecent in a whirlwind of celebration for brief moments at a time. As the dizzying climb in speed of this roving light climaxes these beast linger in the milliseconds that strobe provides.

Fearing to stain my mind with horrors unkind I struggle to wrench my eyes away. Only able to bring my head back down to face the sand in all my strength. My heart is pounding at beats per minute synced with the insane carousel of light. I fear this is unsustainable and I recognize an unpleasant burning building in the center of my chest. Over the deep tones that have overtaken the roar of the surf, high piping of flutes glide in on wings of leather. This demonic frequency stokes the furious boiling inside me. I can feel the colling pressure and know it as a living presence inside me. My ribs ache and bend. If I could feel my hands they would be screaming; clenched with nails piercing flesh. Thunder claps over head like a starting pistol and I am over come. My spine snaps up straight and I hear the breaking of glass.

Through the wall of tears I take in a grievous injury. What is left of my arms are stumps at the elbows, a jagged break cauterized in glass. Transparent at the tips with blooms of crimson where flesh returns and is only partially melted. I let out a banshee scream, devoid of any semblance of humanity. Head thrown back in submission to madness. I am released.

With that fertile scream my chest blows open with ribs blasted outward like skeleton hands reaching out for deliverance. A stark clear light streaks out of my hollow frame, driving up into the heart of the storm. The light house slows down and pulls its wide cast light into a red beam to intersect with mine. Lighting splits the point where these two searchlights cross, red; clear; and blue. It strikes the ocean miles off the coast and separates the black water with unimaginable force. The earth quakes with the arrival of a being of massive scale, dripping with shadows that swallow all light around it. It raises to full height, lost to my failing vision. I can only see the stampede of rouge waves barreling towards the beach, when all falls to darkness.