Fire and Ice
By Hiadel, aka "Hayes The Hayes"
Draft 2
Dear Steve,
It feels like it has been a long time; almost forever. I miss my brother and uncle elbow, the soft red velvet gloves that used to hug me, the taste of food on my fingers.
I am your hand and am lost somewhere across the universe. I don’t know how it happened. Do you? It seems that I was once a companion and am now totally a transformed character starting on my own adventure. I’m not sure how to feel about it. I’ve never been my own animal before. My disguise as an invisible part of your soul has vanished and left me as a small newborn mammal. Sometimes now I think of myself as a raccoon: lonely in the universe and left as a scavenger. Oh, what is a lone right hand supposed to eat? These answers will only be answered in time.
Before I stray too far into life and new found feelings let me explain my current position. Today my fingers woke to discover that they were not in your bed. There was no feeling of security, no literal sheets or boundaries that told me that I was safe. Large booming and blazing there was a literal form of danger all around me. Like a wall fire and rock surrounded me. Grandfather magma helped give birth to other molded creations. Down at the bottom of this large burning family oldborn magma lies, a shimmering pool of sloth and fiery death.
In this chasm my body walked. I was careful to walk on the solid footing of the archways that seemed to rise from hell itself. At some points it felt that the ground would give away and that I would fall, doomed for an eternity, down into the depths of the lava. With all this negativity bearing down on me I pushed forward against a sky of smoggy blackness that came from towering pillars of flame and ages.
Then, down the molten snake road over bubbles of death, there was an exit out of the heat. It was a cool candle amongst the other reds and orange. Like an Eskimo away from home I was drawn to it.
Inside the cut away cave path the light died and revived itself. It seemed that it only took a moment for the colors to change from red to a fluorescent blue.
Steve, things have gotten strange. This fact was stamped into my flesh by a sight before me coming out of the cave path. The small opening at the end seemed to by itself make me stumble into a new world. It was a crossroads; a divine rift between fire and ice. An ancient shrine was at the center of this meeting, cuts carefully forged into the base of the floor where the color spectrum met. Nature was the King, Jester, Judge, Jury, Executioner, and midnight companion. All that was missing was a live and beating heart.
I crossed over from color to color. Frozen tiles of ancient flooring then shook cold shivers up my nerves. With each tap of the step from my five friends I thought I would freeze.
There was another cave, from there I traveled into what was the equivalent of the fire world; only the opposite. What was red was blue and what was smog was a constant hailing of snow covering the sky with white.
With nowhere else to go I decided it was best for me to freeze to death rather than to burn. I crawled forward.
How far did I travel? I do not know. The only thing that I knew at the time about my existence was that I was alive and ticking. It was as if my life were a time-bomb, slowly counting down to the end of time. At that moment my universe would collapse. What a depressing thought.
I tried to cast that thought out of my mind. If only the pools of water were not frozen around me. I could have tried to go fish for happier thoughts.
The only thing I could do to keep my mind occupied was to climb. My limbs carried me up the ice summits and eventually I reached the top of the kingdom of blue. It was cold. I was afraid. The mountains around me in my field of view were equally large and distant feeling. What a lonely place.
It is hard for me to recount the transition in my story that took place at that peak. Out from the heavens a large prism of glass revealed itself. It descended like an archangel from the sky and came towards my mountain. As it got closer the snow moved out of the way and what seemed to be a single massive cube of glass revealed to be a large saucer of intensity. It was a giant magnifying glass.
Light reflected from the center of this flying monster and searched for me. It was as if I had escaped from prison. There was nowhere for me to run; it did not matter what I did to try to escape the lights gaze. Once it found me all the colors of the rainbow focused on me. I became lost in vision, depth, and all other forms of perception.
Steve stands with his his white flesh hanging down into the chasms that are filled by shadow. Rebel streaks of light zigzag over a couch and a slightly worn square table to die in a field of white carpet. There on the floor black silver strings lay strewn across the floor all connected to another being. Steve’s hand drips with temperature. A red glaze covers wounds inflicted both to him and... it.
“I’m sorry Charlie, I don’t know who you are anymore or what you were just talking about. Forgive me; even though I will never forgive you. Do you understand?”
