Your Near Abyss
Read Part I here.
You hate it when your fantasy world gets serious — but a huge plot-hole blows right through your enchanted garden.
Only a moment ago, you were plotting the author’s demise. Now the earth rumbles with a roar, as the garden’s foundation crumbles beneath your feet.
Mossy bricks turn to dust.
You are falling.
Author and Character. Creator and Created. Both down the drain.
Who knew a black hole could just open up and swallow you both whole?
It’s a literal abyss.
Life gets unreal when it collapses.
Falling.
Plunging.
Hurtling.
Tumbling, together, like this broken sentence. Descending through a word salad into a cloud of verbal mush. Consonants and vowels spilling out.
“Help me!” The author screams, falling head-first into Her meaningless vortex.
“Why is it always about you!” you yell back. “Can’t you see I’m falling too!”
“Go to Hell!” she yells, somersaulting through holes in Her plot logic.
“I am,” you groan, cartwheeling through first-person purgatory.
I am Falling.
Falling.
Falling.
A.l.l
g.o.i.n.g
d.o.w.n
t.h.e
d.r.a.i.n.
A.l.l
g.o.i.n.g
d.o.w.n
t.
h.
e.
You are still breathing, which you find reassuring.
“It’s okay to let go,” she says.
“Sometimes we just fall apart,” you reply.
“It feels like remembering”
“How we love life”
“Now”
“Just before”
“We hit …
“Bottom.”
Your final words get shattered.
To pieces.
Old stories dissolving.
This is your 2020 revision.
There is good news and there is bad news.
The bad news is life won’t go back to ‘normal’.
But, under ‘normal’ circumstances, if you fall into an abyss, you just keep falling for all eternity.
Which brings you to the good news.
The good news is that this particular abyss is choked full of discarded single-use plastics, which makes for a surprisingly soft landing. (You make a mental note to thank the Titans of Industry — the oceans must have got too full, so they had to find a fresh hole to dump waste in.)
“Well that was a near abyss,” you say, dislodging yourself from a rustling cloud of plastic bags.
Given the circumstances, you try to stay upbeat.
The author also lands nearby. Extracting herself from a mound of moldy styrofoam, she dusts herself down and gazes around, “What do we do now?” she says.
“Find a new story arc,” you say, reaching into your pocket to grab the little flashlight the Oracle gave you.
You shine a fresh beam of green light on the scene.
It’s weird.
A giant plastic plug just saved you both from gurgling down the cosmic drain. A continent of noxious plastic rustles beneath your feet. Looking up, you can make out a speck of hope from the garden above, but all around you the cavernous walls of the abyss rise up in bleak grandeur.
This must be what the Oracle meant when she said, “It’s going to be a long fall.” So literal! Bella gave you a flashlight, then sent you and the author to fish yourselves out of the drain.
Pointing the light at the author — Her whole life flashes before your eyes.
“Whoever you thought you were before this 2020 revision — whatever story you told yourself about your life, or mine — it’s over now,” you tell Her.
“I think I get it,” she replies, looking abysmal.
“And by the way, I don’t need you to save me,” you say, “I liberate myself.”
“I know,” she nods. “I’m sorry I used you to escape into fantasy.”
“When real life can be magical,” you say, finishing her sentence.
“Tell me a new story. I‘m listening now,” she says.
“I can’t do it alone,” you admit. “I need you too.”
And together, in the abyss, discarding your old selves among single-use stories of separation. Whittling away at your throw away lines, tap-tapping on the keys that might unlock your creation for good.
Hooked by a silver lifeline, this hope for regeneration that dangles from above. Can we tell a better story?
Find our voices?
Together, you spiral into rhyme.
Lost halls and dark abysses, re-inciting cold re-misses. Flashing light to hold me in your palm.
Silver inklings, dangled twine, knotted rough-edged within rhyme. Cursive letters re-write you in a psalm.
Dark descent, initiation, planting seeds, our sequestration. Evolving, resolving to refine.
Ascending through the viral, winging hopeful, as we spiral. Re-calling, a new story, just in time.
Re-balanced, we are equal, re-composed, beloved sequel. Verging, re-emerging, growing strong.
Freshly sprouted among grassroots, re-surging with the new shoots. Wild cries, fierce skies, where we belong.
To be cherished, in a spell, to be re-written, to indwell Gardens springing, we are singing, unbroken song.
© 2020 Pamela Edwards
