By the tender age of nine, I had become something of a fixture of the Schoolhouse Sick Room; an awkward little space cut into the plaster by inexpert hands. It seemed constructed as if an afterthought, for the Schoolhouse was a confused and impoverished structure, the architectural brain-child of some disordered and troubled mind – detached from reality in the aftermath of some terrible winter storm.
“Plans for yonder Schoolhouse were conceived during the blizzard of ‘67, blueprints like bones revealed in the swirling snow… revealed to the builders as if through a dream …”
So I had been told by the blind and dishevelled Mr. Morrow who, when not in his cups, was tasked with operating the Strome Gas Station, a deteriorating establishment which only really opened its doors when the raucous symphony of Klaxon horns from stranded automobiles reached a certain pitch on cold winter nights. But I digress.
This Sick Room was a stifling little space, no more than a dirty cot with a thin, tattered sheet, a plundered artifact from the Great War. The room was no more than an afterthought, fighting for its right to even exist with the nearby “Copy Room”, crowded out by disordered reams of worm-eaten paper, cobwebs, and the leavings of vermin. The air there was hot, odorous, and oppressive, often subject to an unfavourable miasma which emanated from the dark cave in the corner known as the “Headmaster’s Rest Room”. Being as I was a nervous, hysterical child prone to fainting spells and strange visions (an affliction which was compounded by a cruel speech impediment), my visits to the Sick Room were numerous, and they were grim. Approaching this particular episode, I recall feeling a slight tingling in my writing hand, accompanied by a cold sweat and a wild dizziness, a feeling of utter detachment which quickly developed into a minor episode of psychosis. In vain, I tried to maintain control of my imaginary agencies, my symbolic world bending and buckling as if in the grips of some tremendous otherworldly wind. It came upon me during introduction to algebra, a terrible new concept of occultic origin which immediately hemmed me in from all sides.
Upon my weathered desk, vibrating odiously, sat the object of my indoctrination, my assigned copy of Algebra is All Right! Its cover was festooned with the sneering physiognomy of thin pale children. Their sinister eyes were twin beams of malice which betrayed a secret, hidden knowledge. One held an over-ripe red apple missing a large bite, an apple which was all too reminiscent of the one illustrated in my picture Bible at home. To distract myself from my own thoughts, I had peered around the room, bewildered by the silent reverie of my schoolfellows as they laboured happily on their tattered workbooks, everyone seemingly unperturbed by the gateway to forbidden knowledge before them, by the odd “problems” within, by the complex spells upon the blackboard before us which promised to unravel the Secrets of All Things.
Of course I should have known better than to look away from my workbook, for my bewildered countenance was quickly detected by the instructor, one Everett Fogg, a brutal and sneering Baptist woman who would abide no squawking or gawking. Like a coyote to carrion she was upon me, grabbing my hair in a spider-like grasp, wrenching my dizzy head over-zealously towards the immense blackboard populated by cobwebs of data, a precise and intricate mess of leering letters, sinister signs, and nonsensical numbers. With her grotesque spiny fingers pinching my cheeks together in a vise, shebellowed in my ear:
“TO SOLVE F, REARRANGE THE FORMULA TO MAKE C THE SUBJECT!!” TELL ME CHILD, HOW WILL YOU MAKE C INTO THE SUBJECT???”
Between laboured breaths and tear-filled eyes I tried with all my might to come up with something, anything to appease the old witch, something which would buy me the time to overcome my dizziness. The fear of some nameless judgment ran wild within my troubled mind. But I could manage nothing but a pained grunt, followed by but a few stuttered words from my twisted tongue:
“ … the l..letters …the nn…n…numbers are m…m..m…melting… e…ev..everything is melting….”
For indeed the pale yellow symbols were trickling down the chalkboard, rivulets of chalk coalescing into streams which flowed like piss, pooling upon the floor. Then everything went ocean black, and I knew no more.
I came into wakefulness upon that stiff little cot, the sole piece of sorry furniture in that stale alcove of maladies. Burning with immense fury, circuits of fever pulsed throughout my small frame, and as I stared above at the water-logged ceiling tiles, I began to ascertain secret shapes within its strange, stained textures, the leering faces of goats or cherubim appearing and disappearing upon its pock-marked surface, only to recede and be replaced by brownish cosmic bodies which sprawled and rippled with unrequited hunger.
I jolted upright as the photocopier began to beep and whir, the ceiling tiles returning once again to their nondescript veneer. The machine began to vomit forth its messages, a cascade of information which began to cover the floor in a frothing cesspool of white, black, and grey. The burning smell of mechanical grease and static electricity caused me to join in with an involuntary gagging, a half-digested baloney sandwich and other anonymous foodstuff joining with the swelling paper tide. Woozy and terrified, I jumped off the cot, the pool of printouts sloshing above my knees. In the whirling flotsam I caught a glimpse of strange symbology: diagrams of primordial sea creatures, strung-out theorems of gnostic metaphysics, and among other things, the sheet music for a ballad titled Centenary of Decay (in D Minor). Reeling, I fought my way to the door, and after some frantic pawing at the latch, I spilled like some writhing eel out into the hall, riding upon a frothing wave of mushy letterhead with my mind roiling like a gibbon in a cage.
Rising from the mush, I was immediately struck by the utter silence in the hallway. Yawning before me across the cool tile floor, I beheld a chipped and foot worn path extending down the slithering corridor. I found myself within the Great Intestine of Schoolhouse, tasked by the School Board with the timely funnelling of children through its disordered architecture, allowing brief lulls within its asbestos-laden folds. After a few years within this digestor, the children were ejected unceremoniously into the wreckage of the prairie, their half-formed heads filled in with fantasies. As for myself (a naive little tot), I looked forward to this ejection, expecting thereafter to have great adventures in that sprawling and mysterious sewer of the world.
Wandering feverishly through that serpentine corridor, I admired the walls festooned as they were with strange swirling shapes and colours – student artwork alive with the fury of autumn. There were the fields of wheat trembling with ripeness, fields of scarecrows trembling with anticipation, and the fields of the cosmos trembling with their terrible secrets. But my mouth was dry, and I needed to locate the water fountain. As we were strictly forbidden to wander the corridors alone, I had no idea how to find such a thing, for we pupils were only permitted such visits at lunch break, connected together in the high-spirited (and semi-humiliating) “Chain of Children” by which we were whisked down the hall, a chaperone at each end.
“We mustn’t be separated!” Ms. Muster would caterwaul, towing a line of children hand-in-hand, bumping along with great speed like some corduroy centipede, “For the schoolhouse is a stomach, full of hidden vestibules and secret warrens, and woe betide any small tyke who is cast-off by the class! Hold on tightly now children!”
Some of the children found this amusing, some grimaced, and others outright bawled,, hanging tightly on to the hands of their schoolfellows for dear life as they were bounced to and from the Rest Room each day. Dizzy with my new-found freedom, and with the roaring fever pulsing through my veins, I began to frolic, taking in the corridor with new eyes. I was keen to take in my surroundings far away from the frantic hustle and bustle, far away from the nervous eyes of the chaperones and the stern glare of the Headmaster. And oh… oh the things that I saw…
I could tell you, in that fever-dream trance, what I saw in the “Musical Room” as I pried with eager eyes. The odour of the room was pleasant, like cork grease intermixed with the humid aftermath of some tremendous orchestral performance. The band equipment – the tubas, bassoons, clarinets, and french horns sat gleaming on their racks, shining bright in spite of the hazy autumn sun sulking beyond the window. Arrayed in neat rows, they sat under rusty lock and key, under stern orders of the School Board. Lonesome and forlorn, they gathered dust, as if never to be used again. However, the only instruments available were found on the table in the room’s centre. old and worn: a collection of chipped and deformed hand bells, several of their number seemingly missing. Above the table of misshapen bells presided something like a metronome, shoddily built with plywood and rusty nails. Its great lolling weight resembled a sneaking, snaking tongue which swung back and forth lazily and out of time. Painted at its apex were a garish set of eyes the size of dinner plates, which swung in unison with the tongue, producing an unsettlingly comedic effect. I laughed then, at the funny metronome and its boisterous brood of broken bells. Nearby there stood crooked music stands, holding aloft sheets of music arrayed with wild, leaping scales and trawling undertones. It appeared to be the same music from the Copy Room, having some relation, I thought, to the poster on the door (advertising in comic sans font) THE STROME AUTUMNAL FAIR, an upcoming celebration of the the town’s centenary, which promised MUSIC, EXCAVATIONS, & MORE! Most disturbing though was the tall thin figure standing in the corner, gnawing anxiously at tattered fingernails, mumbling something about “the asbestos notes.” Unnerved by this scene, I returned to my frolic, my feet but faithful servants for my wandering eyes. I began to hum a little tune which was sometimes sung to me after I was tucked into my trundle bed each night
“Be careful little eyes what you see. Be careful little eyes what you see…”
Romping through that surreal corridor, I traversed that lime-green passageway where a strange motivational poster presided. It was crowded out by a round little fellow in a propeller hat, obviously beset by a tummy ache. His obtuse form was framed by the words THERE IS NO CANDY CENTRE IN THE CENTRE OF THE WORLD in bright blue balloon lettering.
Unsure of what to make of this, I peeked into Mr. Raynard’s Room (grades one through three) where I observed the younger children, outfitted for some reason in colourful paper cone caps. Sitting uncomfortably in desks far too big, they sniffled and coughed, trying to solve long division problems. In stark contrast to this dismal scene, the teacher led the older children in a conga line, the group belting out a merry rendition of “Leeches in the Night”. In my delirium it all looked like great fun.
I could tell you what I saw in the “Experiment Room”, the wooden desk up front covered in beakers and calipers and something like a Ouija board. Across the wall opposite me, I marvelled at a long hand-painted mural with all of history arrayed neatly into seven dispensations, beginning with primordial chaos on the left and ending with some terrible holocaust on the right, interspersed with the outlines of sites, angels and dragons across its plywood surface. From a creaking dilapidated radio in the corner, there intoned something like the furious voice of a revival preacher:
“… for have I not warned you stiff-necked persons, you debauched and abominable ones, you proud and insolent blight upon the earth?? Purify your towns and your cities before it is too late! Yes, purify them with the axe and with the flame! For the stench of your debauched little town has at last reached the Great Nostrils of He Who Squats Above the Universe, squatting above even now with his Cosmic Magnifying Glass, His Prying Holy Eye perceiving every insolent and hidden deed within the sordid and subterranean anthill of man!
I say to you that the time has come to purify every rotten and sinful edifice in your towns, every proud and haughty haven of that wicked spirit of Gomorrah, that voracious and insolent spirit of Sodom! For a time is coming when His Cosmic Magnifying glass will eclipse the sun, when everything that walks upon two legs will be brought before its omniscient gaze, and all that is found lacking, oh my brothers and sisters, will be subjected to that eternal pillar of flame, to that all-consuming fire which cannot be relinquished.
Heed my words oh my brethren, let my words be like a chisel unto … thickened skulls … words be … sanctifying lobotomy to ….”
The vigorous diatribe had succumbed to a rolling wave of static. Unsettled in some way by that strange voice I tiptoed away, continuing my illicit exploration of the odd little Schoolhouse.
I may have wandered through those labyrinthine intestines for minutes, or it may have been hours. It may have only happened in a dream. But when I came upon the “Virus Room” I observed rows of my schoolfellows clicking and clacking at their computer stations, taking in the New Information with wonderment and horror as they learned to traverse a web of virtual dreams and hallucinations which was said to span the very sky above.
I could tell you what I saw in the seventh-grade classroom (or rather what I didn’t see), for the students were all missing. From rumours overheard of the quiet discussions between my parents, I had surmised that grade seven was a time for “The Assignment”, a project which involved neither reading or writing, but instead something called “work experience”, a program designed by the School Board which cast out the students from the classroom and into places of employment across the town. Girls waited tables at the decrepit hotel bar (when it was not abandoned by yet another failed “entrepreneur”), while the boys were sent to demolition companies where they learned to strip abandoned houses for copper wire. Of course, these labours were not exactly unpaid. There existed a tacit agreement with local companies, who would make donations in kind to the Schoolhouse; a half-baked fundraising program which allowed for the purchase of used textbooks and ancient sports equipment.
“It’s a very suitable arrangement” chortled the Schoolmaster into the telephone receiver on his desk, his voice causing me to pause for a moment at the threshold of administrative power, a room which smelt of formaldehyde and perfume. Kneeling below, the Schoolhouse Secretary appeared to be searching for a lost pen or earring with great vigour, showing little regard for personal space, at least in my childish estimation. A litany of merry flies buzzed sluggishly at the window, and I felt a strange knot in my stomach. Remembering my thirst, I then continued my search for the water fountain.
I could tell you what I saw in the “Gymnasium”, though again, you may dismiss my account as the product of an overactive imagination. The hall, cavernous, dark and brooding, received its only source of light from the buzzing red score clock in the corner, which did little to displace the darkness therein. Its floor was dirt and sawdust, for the “work experience” of the middle-schoolers had not yet been enough to solicit the goodwill of the local business owners for something more suitable. Perhaps though, the Gymnasium had bigger issues, for hanging from floor to ceiling were long stalks of mycelium, serving as conduits for rats the size of small dogs. It was rumoured that the vermin had been known to steal away a number of dawdling kindergartners, those poor tots who had the misfortune of straying from the “Chain of Children” as it made its daily passage through the Great Intestine of the Schoolhouse. It was when I heard something gibbering in the rafters, that I decided it was time to go. However, before I closed the door I thought I could make out a burly figure moving vigorously in the red din of the score clock. Perhaps it was Mr. Foulweather who I saw there, outfitted comically in a skin-tight leotard as he lifted a monstrous set of dumbbells by means of immense effort and concentration, muttering incomprehensibly to himself about bodies and temples.
I could tell you of the swarm of moths which met me in the corridor, of creatures who swam through the air like a swirling plume of ash. It seemd as if they came from the library, flitting and dancing down the hall, playing at the light, guiding me playfully toward their source. Compelled onward by the whirling lepidopterans, compounded by my burning curiosity, I crept down the hall, taking a left at the junction and crossing the threshold into the antechamber of sanctioned knowledge: “The Book Room”. The disordered scene therein was that of a banquet – of some great feast, for it appeared that the moths had been hard at work, nibbling at the old books with total abandon. The Teen Fiction section was in tattered ruins. The children’s books were a mottled mess, and much to my delight, the stockpile of Algebra books were nearly gone. Furious, the aged and decrepit librarian, Ms. Burrow, had taken up a defensive position, her sharp brunette bob swinging like a mop as she screamed and cursed and swatted at the moths with a switch, its sharp whooshing through the stale air drowned out by the incessant fluttering of a million grey fiends, humming and munching as they did through the collection off dull and insipid literature. My feverish eyes began to search for their blessed fount, for a thirst now burned within me which I knew could not be sated by any water fountain. I desired the forbidden taste of wine. My eyes followed their frenzied whirling and swirling, emerging in great numbers from behind a few dusty and cast-off Bibles.
Scurrying across the room with my arms over my head (so as to deflect a couple of meaty whacks aimed at my person), I made my way over to the font of moths. Quickly emptying the shelf, I located a small wooden door, slightly ajar, barely as high as my knees. From therein was the source of these strange creatures. In the grasp of my fever-driven curiosity, I pushed the door open enthusiastically, rusty hinges giving way. I saw that the space behind was pitch black, as if black paint upon a wall, but the air was cool and moist and good. As I explored its contours with my hand it disappeared from view as if submerged in bitumen. Against my better judgment, and the hysterical screeching of Ms. Burrow (something about ‘the spaces between the stars’), I wiggled into the open air of the crawlspace, its embrace enfolding me into something like a second womb. I fell then, headlong into the darkness, the roar of things long-forgotten buffeting my tumbling form.
Landing hard upon a large pile of debris, I stirred up a wild cloud of dust, which in turn brought on a fit of asthmatic wheezing. In a coughing fit, I slid down the mound of detritus, much of which followed me down in a small avalanche. But this was an avalanche of knowledge, for I could ascertain by touch that the mound was composed of sodden and decomposing books, books in their thousands. With curiosity burning, my eyes adjusted to the darkness, and my situation was somewhat elucidated. Haphazardly I began to survey the mountains of books, scanning their weird titles and authors with interest. Salivating before such a great feast of forbidden knowledge (no doubt expelled from the library above), I poured over them in that meagre light, understanding none of it, but full of delight all the same as the strange words washed over me, even tearing pages from the books and chewing them greedily like communion wafers.
But in my guts, a sour feeling developed. I remember holding my swollen little belly and gritting my teeth in pain, remorseful for my adventuring, wishing for nothing but to go home to my trundle bed. But suddenly, I heard a voice in the gloom, calling out to me or to no one in a sweet and burbling intonation,
come and see
And I was afraid. Afraid of the voice from the darkness, of the words that it spoke and most of all, afraid of its sweet, sticky, sing-song inflection, a phonation that somehow suggested the trembling oscillations of a bubbling brook and the buzzing of wings, perhaps even the rustling of the garden at night. But this was impossible, for I was not at the bank of some river or in some patch of potatoes. I was alone in those underschool depths where sewage dripped like fetid honey from decaying pipes, where forbidden literature was left to putrefy in moldering mounds. But something had now been set in motion. This voice had already struck a chord within me, bringing to life the whirring gears of the repetition machine located somewhere deep within my organs.
come and see
come and see
come and see
In the dim light from the Reading Room above, I crept along a brick wall, sloshing through rancid water which ran above my ankles, my tender fingers brushing against the rough stone and lichen as I traversed the subterranean room. The voice, no longer audible, resonated nonetheless from within my mind, my curiosity propelling me forward and downwards toward its source. So it was that I came upon a whitewashed wooden door, paint peeling like parched earth. I pushed against it testily, but it gave no quarter. I pushed again, causing it to shimmy forward slightly in its frame. Grunting, I threw my whole weight into it, and it gave way, its rusty hinges shrieking like a mandrake exposed to the full moon. Caught off balance, I fell from the dirt corridor to another room, collapsing onto the rough concrete pad below.
Cast in flickering red firelight, the room was stuffy and claustrophobic. Lying on the floor, gasping for breath, my fingers began to probe a growing lump on the back of my head causing me to wince. Dizzy with fever, pain, and fear, I pulled myself up, leaning against the wall as I tried to find my bearings. As the room came into focus I discerned the source of the firelight. A large gas furnace roared opposite me, flanked by two asbestos-laden boilers which hissed and groaned, propelling steam through the schoolhouse’s sprawling circulatory system with much difficulty. I realized then that I was in the basement.
The schoolhouse basement was a place of immense mystery among my schoolfellows; a source of a number of conspiracies and murmurings among the student body. Some believed that Mr. Pickly, the alcoholic janitor, lived down there. Others whispered of a pit of fire, where teachers threw confiscated toys and trading cards. Rumours swirled of tall stacks of lewd magazines (like the ones Johhny Homestome once found beneath a pile of sodden leaves in the woods), while others claimed that the schoolhouse basement was the resting place for the school’s life-sized nativity scene, the one which was set with great reverence upon the school lawn each Christmas season. After some searching, I found the light-switch, and under the luminescence of a single flickering sodium bulb, the rumours dissipated like the scurrying cockroaches; well, at least most of them did.
The room was L-shaped, with its longest section stretching off into the darkness, stacked from floor to ceiling with dilapidated desks, dusty chalkboards, outdated globes and other cast-off debris from the classrooms above. In the shorter length of the room, nestled among piles of crumbling bricks, there stood the roaring furnace and its creaking boiler. Beside this a set of creaking wooden stairs rose to the main floor, terminating at a rusty steel door with a fogged out window. Beneath a curtain of spider webs, there languished some janitorial equipment, but as far as the rumours go, there was no Mr. Pickly, no confiscated toys, no lake of fire, and, to my wolfish dismay, no stacks of prohibited magazines. However, as I scanned the room, I came to believe that there was yet some truth to the schoolyard murmurings. Leering over me with the malevolence of betrayed and jealous gods, I was confronted by a collection of cobweb-laden figures sulking in the shadows. Gasping, I took a step back, slipped, and fell hard. I may have screamed then, peering into the din at the figures before me.
It was the Nativity Scene.
Their forms had a waxy sheen to them, as if composed of layers of Kraft singles dyed with food colouring. Their toothy smiles were of absurd proportions and the half-lidded eyes of the barnyard sheep betrayed a wolfish intelligence, a knowing which far outshone those of the Three Wise Men, who stared absently at the concrete ceiling. The mischievous countenances of the swineherds disclosed some ill-intent, and the figure of Joseph watched them warily, seemingly prepared to use his walking cane violently. Beside the waxy donkey braying with laughter, only the sombre form of the Virgin Mother appeared appropriate, her head bowed in bewildered sorrow, for the infant in swaddling clothes was strangely absent from his manger. Mystified, I marvelled at the strange traditions of this School, of this town, how this blasphemous assemblage had been given its cherished place on the front lawn of the Schoolhouse each Christmas, how the God-fearing inhabitants of the town had found comfort in such a profane ornamentation. My wonderment, however, was interrupted by the burbling voice I had heard from below the subfloor. It had begun to sing.
I could tell you what I saw then, tip-toeing carefully past those malefic wax figures, my mind reeling like a windmill in a storm beneath my concussed forehead as I gave them a wide berth. My fears were overpowered by my burning need to know. I needed to know the source of that voice. The singing echoed from behind the Nativity, its source seemingly a wide sump built into the concrete floor, the place where every trickling thing beneath the Schoolhouse was destined to go.
I could try to tell you of what it sang, that thing in the sump, although you may not believe my feverish recollections. I could try to tell you who it was that sang that beautiful and terrible chorus, although even I do not trust my disordered memory. But it is impossible to describe the melody it sang, for they were notes which I had never heard before, and have never heard again. Piercing, mournful and dejected, they scaled such heights as to barely be audible, and plunged to such depths as to reverberate within my very bones. Creeping up to the sump’s edge, yet careful to keep the wax figurines in my periphery, I peered downward into the moss-covered concrete pit. And then I saw.
Submerged up to his lips, eyes shining bright against the gloom, and long hair floating wildly atop the murky pool, there floated the Wildman. Atop his forehead, gleaming in the ailing luminescence of the flickering bulb above, there sat a tangled nest of greenery, a crown of ivy arrayed with bursts of wildflowers. His eyes met mine with barely-concealed mirth, as if perceiving the innermost secrets of my deceitful heart, rendering the very marrow from my bones. A feeling of overpowering dread began to flow through my being, and I realized with dismay that my frolicking had now come to an end. My childhood, my age of innocence, curdled in an instant, and I began to tremble with terror. From his gaping mouth, there came a torrent of monarch butterflies. I tottered before the unrelenting wall of sound, the wave of burbling notes boiling and frothing up from beneath the surface, causing my teeth to chatter violently. The notes rose higher and higher, growling with the vengeance of the ocean, crashing over me like waves of radio static, tickling my inner ears like a carbonated beverage. I fell to the floor, the song like something out of time, its bombastic cadence thrumming across my vision like a cosmic guillotine accompanied with something like an orchestra of wailing violins. The sound stewed into a crescendo, angry notes which buzzed like hornets against the pinewood floor-joints, an undulating swarm of butterflies and dissonance. I found myself overwhelmed by the lunatic intensity of the music, of the wild ululations of the Wildman which bombarded my fragile psyche, a delicate carapace had begun to crack, like the fissures of an ancient dike, a dam built of little more than social injunctions and bitumen, a construct as fragile as that stunted little town. Of the great black river of desire which swirled and whorled behind this dam – this was but a murky enigma to me, but this terrible and beautiful wave of music which emanated from that dark and fertile sump threatened to awaken something dreadful within me, rising as it did like a great scythe above my quaking little world.
As the singing crescendoed, the wave of sound crashed upon me like some two-handed sword swung by the Almighty God himself, vivisecting my naive little self-conception, causing every synapse and nerve ending to pulsate within me with both pleasure and pain. My mouth was now wide open – far too wide, and I felt myself go outside of me, as if in third person, as my spinal column broke free from its moorings. There came a mess of cartilage and nerves bursting forth from my gaping maw with a terrible squelching, propelled outward with a long-repressed violence. Cut free from every home or haven, I floated like a long and gleaming helium balloon, a nervous and spectral inner self covered in blood, viscera and tiny wings of pink and blue, wings of writhing feathery nerve endings, gleaming hungrily in the flickering light. I could tell you that from this new spinal cord perception, floating as I was among the strange notes and the whirring pillars of monarch butterflies, I saw my other self below, a blood soaked child standing upright, entire body waving back and forth like sea-grass, a look of stupid contentment on his face, now just another nondescript member of the Nativity scene.
The voice spoke once more into the cloud of song, rising like a creaking tea kettle on full boil. The voice caused the light to dim, shook the walls, causing the flames in the furnace to waver meekly:
COME AND SEE
Like a poltergeist, my nervous system rose through the floorboards, through the intestines of the Schoolhouse, bursting through the asbestos-packed ceiling like a vapour. I rose into the prairie noontide, above the little town, receding rapidly from a broadening autumnal vista of golden wheat fields and insistent patches of foliage burning ripe in a kaleidoscope of colour while the echoing words followed me skyward.
Come And See. Come and see. come and see…
To be continued in A Scab Across the World
transfigurations 