by Josh Shiben
Chapter 11
A Mind Unbound
From the journals of Dr. Alan Kaspars
14/81
I am now in the office. Or the memory of myself is standing where the office stood in the past. The millennia of the eons stretch open before and behind my memory. My mind’s eye pierces the veil into oblivion and through it. It’s all there. There is so much. If only they could see.
Is it before or after I learned the words? They were always there. There is no “before” or after. Time is a series of moments, each simultaneous yet distinct. Our fractured ordering is arbitrary and irrelevant. I will learn them all. Or have I already? The words. The moments. Have I always known them?
I remember the blood as the knife drove through the f’thagh I called John’s head. Have I done this already? Am I doing it now? It doesn’t matter. He screamed and I will scream with him. The flesh will peel off of his scalp. I will hang his flesh. I have already hanged his flesh above his bed. My memory is now cutting through the scalp to remove his flesh. I will cut. He will bleed.
He will understand the gratsh’klnsh. He thanked me in our native tongue as I cut. The tongue of screams. Words from beyond. The four flayed limbs were left. The four empty limbs of skin make the eight. Four gratsh’klnsh, four rflyuns. Eight limbs. Beautiful symmetry. A tribute for rog’nshgnak in her strythgk’lt. She has seen, and does not care. Uncaring birther. Forsaking creator. Woven into her strythgk’lt. It happens. Has happened. Will happen. Shrgunth’ka.
I will slice my belly. Have I already? It’s so hard to tell where you are in strythgk’lt. The web of nows. My memory foresees me pulling. The tubes - they are thick like ropes. Were thick like ropes. I am so empty. A vessel. A sarcophagus. A mausoleum. A dream. My hands - there’s so much blood. Is it mine? Was it ever mine? Can the unborn bleed? Can a memory? I will slash the ropes. Filth pools on the floor – I am become rog’nshgnak, the uncaring birther of a trillion. Blood. Life. Disease. Shit. I am all. I am nothing. I am the memory of a dreaming corpse. A ghost. Fhtagn.
