Subject: Ghost in the Machine by Kipler@aol.com (vignette)
From: kipler@aol.com (Kipler)
Date: 16 Nov 1997 18:59:37 GMT

Ghost in the Machine

By Kipler @aol.com
..............................
Summary:  A during-"Redux II" vignette.  (Gasp!  My first one!)
Rated:  V, G
Please archive to Gossamer but do not archive elsewhere without my
       permission.
..............................

The light enters his eyes and gives him the image, but it is faint at first, as
 he struggles to adjust to the darkness.  Still, still, the room is, and pale,
 and no movement except - yes, maybe - a slight rise and fall.  He walks across
 the floor, not looking down but straight ahead, and watches for a moment the
 slight shrugging motion, the skin and bone moved by sleeping command.  A mind
 somewhere slumbering, but sending the message to these physical threads to
 move, to rise and fall, to inhale, to exhale.  The image so familiar to him.

And yet the lines of the image are not right, anymore.  They are tight and
 stretched, and they do not quite perfectly stand for what they once did.  Once
 they told what they contained but now they tell what they cannot much longer
 contain.   What has rested here must leave soon.  

For a moment he is a genius.  For a moment he knows the truth.  The truth is
 that these curves and lines are nothing but a trick of light, a tiny,
 collapsing mask, a shelter for what huddles inside, invisible but felt.   The
 truth is that the shelter is weak and has always been so.  The truth is that
 what is hidden is invincible and eternal.  For a moment he can feel the truth
 weighing on him, surrounding him, heavy like warm air.  For a moment he has
 all the knowledge in the world, and he feels his body a cage too small for his
 heart, and he is rich and grateful.  

But the truth is fitful.  It lights so briefly before skidding away. He blinks
 quickly, and has forgotten already what he knew a moment ago.  And all he sees
 are the lines before him, the skin and the pallid lips and the tightness of
 the face even in sleep, the weariness.  And he is made again a threaded pile
 of muscle and bone - needing flesh, needing lines, unable to feel eternity. 
 He wants fingers to feel and eyes to see this thing before him.  He wants skin
 and hair and lips, her voice and her smell and the fall of light on her cheek.
   

The truth is distant and lost in the small rise and fall of her broken body. He
 wants, and he wants, and there will be no end to his wanting.  



End

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