CHRYSALIS
She knew that if she left, she would never be able to
return. But that didn’t bother her. Did that make her a bad person? Selfish?
Throwing away her friends, her family, her lover, and for what, exactly?
It promised her so many things. It promised her vistas beyond her
understanding, feelings beyond pleasure, the chance to meet creatures no human
had ever seen before. But only if she
left everything she was behind.
Everything she was, including being human.
It explicitly promised that the transition would not be
easy, because important things, stages of emergence seldom are. She would be giving up herself for it. To it.
She opened the window and looked at the stars. She would never see them again. She’d still be able to perceive them, but not
with eyes. Eyes don’t see, it told her.
Not the things it wanted to show her.
Not the important things. Your eyes see what they want to see. They
don’t see the truth.
It had told her that the first day they had met. You
live in this world because that’s all you know.
There is so much more out there.
We can show you. We can show you
everything. It came into her then and it showed her what it meant. The trees of the forest, the ground, the sky,
all different shades of grey, like an old-fashioned movie. They shimmered before her eyes, and she
caught glympses of things inside the
trees. Glowing oblong spheres with
tendrils of light snaking out to the edges of the bark. The ground was one thing. It was a living
being. She could see the earth’s veins
and arteries and it’s brown, brown blood.
She could feel it move beneath
her feet. The log she sat on undulated
beneath her in an unsteady rhythm, at times moving against the earth. Above her
things that looked like winged snakes flew around in unknown patterns (why was
she always looking for patterns?). They flew in unison, a mass of angular wings
and tails, then they scattered, their wings tipped with light, their tails
emitting a purple (or was it cyan) trail.
And then it was gone.
It left her alone in the forest, on that log, surrounded by the
mundane. The sky that only had the
occasional bird. The dead ground. The empty trees.
Every night for the next two weeks she would go to that log
and wait for it. Some nights it came,
some nights it didn’t. The nights it did
it filled her and she saw all those brilliant shadows. She could feel the air tickle her skin the
same way a half-dead nine-volt battery tickled your tongue when you licked the
terminals, and she could taste the earth in the air.
It was all so much to take.
She would wake up the next afternoon still sluggish and sleepy, even
after a good eight hours sleep. Her
grades began to suffer, but she didn’t care.
What was the point of school anymore?
What was the point of anything when you’re only being taught the bare
minimum of what’s out there? Why not
just take it up on it’s offer and go?
Simply put, she was scared. As exciting as what she
experienced was, as thrilling as the possibility of seeing more was, part of
her reacted with horror at the things she remembered. Part of her did not want to accept that there
was more out there, things she didn’t know about, things that shouldn’t be but
are. That part of her mind just couldn’t
accept that there were more things in heaven and earth that were dreamt of in
it’s philosophy. It was frightening.
But regardless of her fears, of her rational mind actively
refusing to believe what it saw, she wanted to go. Again, how could she not? There were whole new worlds out there to see,
and she could see them only with it’s help.
She didn’t leave a note.
Why would she? What would she say
that would make any sense to anyone who read it? Anything she wrote down would sound like the
ramblings of a madwoman. She could lie,
make something up. Make up a story about
a new lover she had been seeing over the past few months and she finally tired
of this life and decided to leave with him.
That wouldn’t be that far from the truth, actually. But no, she decided
she wouldn’t lie. She would just leave,
and let them make up their own reasons why she left.
She didn’t pack.
Again, why would she? There would
be no need for t-shirts, toothbrushes or tampons with what was going to happen
to her. All that there would be was out there. She was going to be able to experience all
that. It would change her into something
else, something completely different, with no need for petty concerns like
hygene or attire.
She just left. She
walked out the door in nothing but her nightshirt and a pair of shoes for
comfort and walked to the forest.
She arrived at their place of communion, the mossy covered
log in the forest. She waited for it to
come, to caress her skin with it’s electric touch. To hear it’s voice within her
You have come. It said.
Yes, she
replied. She wasn’t surprised to see
that she was shaking. I’m here.
I want to go with you. Be like
you. I want to go to the places you go
to, see the things you see. Please.
When we do this, you
will not be able to return. Your body
will be dead. You will be like us
forever. We will only ask you this
once. Are you sure?
She didn’t hesitate in her response. Yes.
Then it was in her and she saw. The light within the trees, the creatures in
the air, the beating of the world.
Shadows of new senses mixing with the old. She smiled and waited for all worlds to open
up to her.
Then she was no longer alone. She knew it before she heard it. Countless voices, thousands of voices,
millions of thoughts racing through her mind, tearing it apart synapse by
synapse, neuron by neuron, axon by axon.
She tried to scream but nothing came out of her throat. Her voiceless scream joined the others in her
mind, harmonizing in the discord. She
felt her body shake, trembling at first, then violently, her arms and legs
thrumming almost audibly. She felt fluid
run down her nose, over her lips and she knew it wasn’t blood, wasn’t snot, but
something else. Judging by the loud CRACK she heard in her head it was quite
possibly cerebral fluid. She couldn’t be
sure. She never tasted cerebral fluid before.
Not that she could taste anything anymore.
She heard more than felt
her eyes burst as explosions both mental and physical went through her
head. No pain, though. How could there be?
Her screams faded into the cries, the random gibbering of
the other voices as she joined their horrible chorus in some unspeakable
song. Was it a song of praise? A dirge?
She didn’t know. She didn’t care.
She saw. She finally
saw. Everything.
Everything.
And she started screaming again, singing with the voices as
her body finally fell to the dead, cold
earth.
