Resonating deep between the broken glass trinkets, there sat a bold beauty who flashed no grin at the people walking by in a slow procession beyond the rip in her universe. Her infinitesimal, upturned sensory mechanisms quivered at the pungent bite of designer perfumes rising through the air like humid pockets of putridity. Zap! The scents tingled her spine down to her appendages, tittering fingers that ran to the ends of her nervous system. No way to hide from the bombs of Chanel, Passion, and Beautiful. The temptation had been looming for what seemed like a millennia, nesting itself in her mind the way she nestled into a nourishing meal. It would have been inconceivable if not for her new, stronger legs that had danced readily across the surface toward the brilliant yawn in the darkness – had skittered dreadfully toward a future where she would finally know, positively, what was out there.
Before falling out of her world and into this new enterprise, others had shuffled past her in great lines that ended only at points east and west. Some carried food; others rushed off to the breeding grounds. She felt as if she stood at a juncture that stretched beyond their existence. She faced their swelling rows and the brilliant depth of the opening with her new assortment of body parts and wanted nothing more than to jump into the passing pull of bodies. She fought the inbred need to belong and clambered over them until she was on the other side of the eternal commotion that had, thus far, separated her from another reality.
Pausing to catch her breath, she moved herself in a semi-circle and faced the great juxtaposition of collective stability and cosmic uncertainty. She strode the millimeters to the great chasm in mere seconds, and stood on a precipice of blinding chaos. The movement, the sheer magnitude of the objects that moved beyond that portal, boggled her senses. Like heavenly bodies, they swung past in varying arrays of speed, color, sound, and scent. A strange symphony erupted from their cacophonous mutterings; the timber of their voices rollicked through her body. The variegated spray of pigments at once burned her eyes and opened her mind. What did it all mean? How could this have been just beyond their collective reality and not one of them had ever ventured out to acknowledge it, experience it, or attempt to understand it? Seeking the answers, she meandered her way beyond the edges of darkness and light, out onto the surface of a glass countertop.
After exploring only a few steps, an elegant leg, longer than any she had ever seen, wound itself around her midsection as if to pull her into an intimate dance. She turned and attempted to maneuver herself into a position that would allow her to communicate with the owner of such an impressive appendage. After all, where she had come from, the length of ones’ appendages were a mark of beauty and privilege. Upon turning to face it, she found that the leg was a gossamer thread, detached from body or host, that stretched ten times the length of her own stunted ambulatory means. Fascination gripped her as she moved the entire length of the disembodied leg. To what creature could this exquisite apparatus have once belonged?
As she considered pulling the leg back toward the crevice, for it was quite light,
an opaque and solid darkness flew crushingly across the surface of the countertop, grazing her body, shoving her to the ground, and sweeping the unbelievable appendage over the edge of the horizon. Terror melted her as the object slung back across the counter, this time landing to her left only centimeters from where she crouched. Like a vast obelisk, this astoundingly large mass sat stationary, oblivious to the detriment it had placed upon her.
The crevice, mere inches from where she was immobilized, beckoned to her. She darted left, then zipped and zagged around the broken horizon of the countertop. Back, back from whence she came, the giant chasm in the reflective plane before her. To reach it, she would have to stealthily run along the gargantuan monstrosity and fling herself into the cavity, back to the safety of a world she knew. She darted to the side of the monument, rushing with tapping feet along its wall. The chasm was here; she stood on its edge, but could not jump. In her rush, the behemoth at her side had moved ever so slightly and trapped her hind appendage under its massive girth. No matter how she strained at her leg, she could not disengage it from under the weighty monster. A last moment of pressure, of pleasurable understanding, and pain ripped her as she pummeled into her world leaving her own appendage as a token.