'Winter Fluttering' flashfiction

... from that moment life would never be the same

'Winter Fluttering'

I saw the light as incandescent visions pierced the darkness of my night. I saw my destiny in embers of my blackened home, my sanity. My sanctuary gone, taking my family to a place beyond people. As I plunged into the icy wastes, frozen screams met silence in the pool of my resolve.

I faced my daemons. Dark bulk, as of icebergs, loomed beneath their whitened teeth. Crushing. Dreams of Christmas, wrapped up with loved ones, cocooned in our haven, were gone as if a wisp of time imagined. As if they had never existed.

I looked out through my view~screen towards the distant planet. I could only dream of times before e~plosion had driven my kind to the stars; and their heavens. The last salvation~flight had departed seven days early, ordered, urgent, on a covert one way mission. It would be earth~spring before the next was scheduled to arrive.

I was alone.

Or so I thought~believed. A disconcerting sensation caught me unawares, a strange sense of circling. Of entities beyond my knowing moving in spiral waves. The void created by the conflagration was closing, swirling mists unfolding, folding. Such was the way of this mysterious throng.

Stark graphics ceded to blurred uncertainty. Blurs of movement burned to graphic clarity, stark angles leaping lines of sight. I am at one with the release, caution howling at my impulse to survive, my whole being torn by onrush of tempest. The product of infinite disdain. My life is nothing. And yet it is all to me.

Self.

Self-assured, self-reliant, I am stripped bare. I am enveloped in smart~skin yet still am naked to the glare. I am consumed by wanton truth about my peril as I plunge towards perceived protection, lurching for shelter in a cleft remembered. A junction between alien desolation and desolate edge of this now hazy edifice. A cave in the base of the great ring~wall of this moon.

I knew if I could outwit the feral syco~dents there, then I could forage. I would find scraps and stowed belongings, air to breathe and maybe food. I could not grasp the true weakness of my state of being, did not conceive that teachers in their ignorance had lied. I knew nothing of the Changelings.

Between breath out and in I am suspended. I am as rack of lamb, hanging. Meat to fit the maker made more tender by the straps of shining glue. I am in slo~mo~hi~def visceral animation; I must watch as tinder burns and roasts relentless, schlepping each time closer to my cloistered niche in this domain.

I am fed to make me fatter, I am food for star~set rapture on one final soul~fest day. I am transforming into blubber slowly. I am in stasis, physically static yet fully self-aware. I see the process. I see with every passing year the larder cache~lode dwindle down by one. Lost souls engulfed by sanctity as end to torment suffered, taken in jagged passage through the beak, down the gullet, towards the gut and bath of acid for their bones..

I see my future host and loose joints turn to jelly, sweetened. No doubt part of esoteric plan to render me sublime for some indulgence. Two more fully ripened flesh~nodes, warp~weft palpitations well defined, then me. I know fork~time is closing. I am mortified and think of home. Of Christmas somewhen star~date and the syn~platter we were to
share with blessings, with friends.

My daughter, my son, my life~mate. The picture-perfect postcard of a neo~colo~clan. Our season in the firmament curtailed by sudden fetid intervention. I wish for scent of once encountered fresh cut hay. I dream of paradise. I wait my turn. I dream of paradise.

My mind is blistering. Myopic I am readied now, I am caressed and basted for my final validation. Wing tips flutter anxiously about, I voiceless sing of angels I have known and the beauty of the dawning. I glimpse the gulf beneath the nexus. I feel slight breath of eternity anoint me as I slump slip glistening from the corporeal... I am no more I am

gone.




Mark Shepherd
dashpoet 2011

Written in response to the December challenge on Jottify: 1000 words or less, on the theme of winter. A first dashpoet attempt at Flash Fiction.

Category:

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[marycigarettes]

this is pure transcendence ...a thing of being ripped from the material world..plunged right back towards it,and then away again...a rites of passage towards whatever enlightenment turns out to be...and that perfect merciless rain in the background....i love how you're going right out there mark.

[dashpoet]

@marycigarettes Fab comment, thank you mary. I'll push on and try to finish writing the series..

[cosmicskydaddy1]

Excellent. I am going to listen to this a couple more times.

[dashpoet]

@cosmicskydaddy1 I do hope this piece stood up to further listening! Cheers to you, and thanks for the feedback, Mark

[SybylFlight]

Your poems are so genuine and warm-hearted - it makes me think deep into my heart as well!!

<3

[dashpoet]

@SybylFlight That is a lovely comment to receive, thank you. I can't stop myself! A blessing and a curse...

[dashpoet]

@Idlinfarm Great! Thank you Ida. I could hardly hear myself speak at times, for the rain. Seemed like the right moment to record though, suitably distorted, somehow distant.

[dashpoet]

@PoetLina Thanks PoetLina, and best wishes back to you. I won't tell the turkeys!

[Idlinfarm]

Excellent. It held me to the end.

[PoetLina]

Beautifully written (struggled to stop myself saying "tastefully written") extended metaphor. Happy Christmas! :-)