Icarus

Icarus

I was lying down in the grass, gazing at the blue sky, cool wind blowing with the scent of geranium leaves floating lightly with it. I spread myself on the ground, taking full pleasure of the moment, drew a beep breath, filling my lungs with the cool, refreshing air. I glanced aside… she was there, sleeping on my arm.

I watched her, contemplated her, admiring each breath she took. Her lids were closed, hiding her deep bottomless black eyes.  Her eyebrows were perfect, fine, thin and almost touching each other in the middle, over her nose.  Her nose ran straight down, bulging a little at the end. Her lips, natural pink and humid, smiled even in her sleep. Her face was so fair, so smooth, so pretty, and so… perfect.

I looked at her and smiled. That moment, I imagined myself as the happiest person alive, simply because I had her… I owned her. I watched as the wind played with her long wavy brown hair, when a butterfly fluttered around and settled between us. I turned my head and sat up, among those flowers, those tall grasses, seemingly endless plain of green, with drops of colorful flowers sprinkled all over it.

My sudden change in position apparently disturbed the butterfly; it fluttered, flew up, did a circuit around her head and zoomed towards me, did a circuit around me and finally settled on the flower before me, kissing its white petals.

A sudden gust of wind blew, sending a cold chill through my body and apparently disturbing my friend the butterfly once again, sending it to fly around, and then up, up, up towards the so bright sun. The sun was already so bright, but the butterfly continued its course towards it… up, up.

I watched as the sun gradually became even brighter, much brighter than it should be. I panicked, stoop up stupefied.  Now it began to dim away, die and yet it still emitted some brightness. It was an eclipse. Only the bright, burning golden outline of the sun was remained.

It had suddenly gone dark everywhere. But the white butterfly still stood out in this darkness with its seemingly fluorescent wings.  Its wings radiantly shining, I watched it fly right above me, towards the center of the dark sun.

The incidents which followed had unreal… they were nightmares.

The butterfly began to burn, the wings, the white wings were being consumed by an invisible flame. And its ashes, black, silvery and shiny, floated in the air and looked like hundreds of burning fireflies falling in the palm of my hand.

I turned around to look at her, but there she stood, with her back to me. Her gown was no longer white; it was black. And the contrast between the dark atmosphere, the Black gown and her white skin was astonishing; she seemed to glow in the dark. Her long pitch black dress was flying in the wind which had suddenly gotten stronger. I took a step towards her but she walked away. I called her, but she continued her stride away from me.

Then she began running. I followed her, running past those flowers on fire. Yes, they were on fire. The whole plain was burning, burning in a deep scarlet flame glowing like fresh blood in the dark. The thousands of burning fireflies had scattered all over the plain and ignited this paradise into a burning inferno. She continued to run and I went on following her, drawn by her… drawn to her. She entered a forest; a forest I had never spotted before. It was full of large, tall and seemingly dry black trees. I followed her.

In there was black, total blackness. She was the only source of luminosity by far; glowing like silver in her black outfit. I ran towards her, pushing through the branches. I ran for her, shouted for her, but she was heedless. I shouted on and on with a strange pain in my voice… in my chest.

She continued her course in to a glade and once there, she halted. I finally reached clearing, panting, out of breath. We were in a circular opening in that dark dense forest, a circular opening surrounded by tall black trees with crooked branches going high up, reaching for the moon.

The moon was there, full round bright, illuminating the whole glade.

I suddenly felt tired, too tired to breathe… too tired to stand, I fell on my knees.

She turned to face me.

She had her eyes closed and her face was unrecognizable… what that the same face I had been admiring only minutes ago? It was expressionless, pale; the cuteness had vanished and left place for a frightening macabre feeling. A sudden gust of cold wind blew from behind her, sending the leaves on the ground swirling around and fly away.

I tried one desperate attempt to call her, raising my arm to reach her… but just then, the moon turned red… everything in the glade glowed with the red light. It seemed to get redder, hotter each moment that passed. I was stunned to the ground at this sight… but that was not all. Just then, when the full disc had turned as redder as possible… it exploded. The moon exploded.

It broke apart in pieces, fiery pieces scrambled all over the sky. And amongst those fiery pieces were those heading towards us… towards the ground. The large, enormous boulders of fire zoomed towards us. I had not the least idea of what to do… I was petrified, unable to move, unable to react. And besides me, she stood. Straight heads up, eyes still closed… as if nothing had happened. 

I forced myself into consciousness and grabbed her… she fell into my arms. She fell unconscious; she fell into her sleep once again. But this was no normal sleep, she was not breathing anymore… she had died.  A tear rolled down my cheek and I screamed… screamed with all my might, holding her harder against my chest.

The boulders fell, crushing burning, annihilating everything.  The tall trees began to burn… and I sat there, on my knees holding her against me, crying, screaming, in the circular clearing in midst of a forest on fire.  Her white skin glowed red, crimson, and made her face look innocent like that of a child.

The boulders fell one after the other; it looked like it was raining fire... on a sea of fire.  I thought I had seen it all… that anything worst couldn’t exist… but I was wrong. It was now the turn of the earth. The earth began to crumble, cracking open everywhere. Cracks that had no bottom, nothing but burning hell was there… down, down into the abyss. The ground cracked around us, the whole glade was left safe, as if the powers of that evil wouldn’t reach inside. But around us, it was another talk. The cracks surrounded the glade, like if it was an entity of its own, and opened a hole as deep as the deepest pit of hell, around the glade…. It was an island of safety in an ocean of evil, of fire, of pain.

But pain had found me inside too… the pain of losing the thing dearest to me. I cared not that the world was in flames. I cared neither that the moon was in pieces, not that the sun was no more… all I cared about was my love, her… nut now she was no more, and I had no purpose of living. I gave it all away… and crumbled on the ground.

It looked like the power refraining the evil from entering the glade was from me, for as soon as I fell on the ground, the fires entered, the cracks opened and the piece of ground which held the glade fell down into the abyss…

… into the nothingness…