——»He reached a thin, pallid hand into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. His other hand padded around in the other pockets, searching for an elusive lighter. There was distant laughter somewhere — young, feminine and piercing — the clanging of so many metallic bells. That darkened his mood further, and deepened his scowl.
As he lit his cigarette, he imagined setting the whole bridge aflame, which began to seem all too easy as he thought of the closest gas station. A weird tingle pulsed in his young brain. However, after a few drags of nicotine, the arson scenario began to actually frighten him, and he jumped down to the ground and began to meander through the tall grass and trees nearby to clear his mind.
What's the use? Yojov pondered, of being a boy, when girls exist solely to cause one pain? "Yes," he said out loud in a strangled tone, and the feminine voices he had heard laughing earlier vanished. A frog was oscillating its cheeks in and out rudely as it sat on an abandoned cinder block, and he began to convince himself that nature itself was also mocking him. "It is hopeless," he declared again, his voice cracking wildly.
He took an angry, large inhalation of tobacco smoke deep into his lungs and immediately began coughing profusely. Phosphenes played over the world and blinded his sight temporarily. His head spun, and he sat down hard upon the dry, sandy soil. As frogs croaked, insects whizzed, and birds screeched, he sat in the same position for a long time, slumped in a broken-looking posture, until he felt the burning end of his neglected cigarette singe his fingers.
Instinct took over and he dropped the expression of his vice into the dry grass. Lacking even the motivation to arise, he sprawled completely out upon the sunny spot and decided that it were better to be dead than to feel what he was feeling. As he was wondering if he could snuff his life out, acolyte-like, by smothering the candle of his life with a thought, he succumbed to a different, kinder oblivion — sleep.
Utter darkness. A peaceful void, expressionless. Over a languid stretch of timeless duration, elegant insinuations of shadow and light began to emerge from the nothingness. Yojov, a voice came like gently trickling water through the dark silence, Remember.
There was no Yojov. There was only this clearing, this grove of dreams, and this voice like a delicate waterfall. Yojov, said the water-voice again, calmly and softly, Remember Vydriss.
All the sound was vacuumed out of the clearing after that fateful last word, a sort of anti-echo, and the very foundation of the world seemed to shudder. The curves of light and shadow began to grow increasingly intricate, and enormous cedar trees began to be visible, reaching to the heavens on either side of the dark creek.
The tailfeathers of some celestial bird began to wind their rainbow way downward in a diaphonous helix. Above the spiral of crystalline feathers, a radiant green light began to pulse, slowly gaining in luminosity and beauty. Incredible prismatic rays were produced as the verdant light refracted chaotically through the translucent feathers. Yojov felt a stirring, and his ego was born into the revelation of this alien sight. The cedars began to sway rhythmically in the dreamwind that flowed downward. They seemed almost to be dancing to Yojov.
Hello? came a different voice, now, like the rustling of leaves. Are you OK? Yojov was unable to move, but the paralysis didn't bother him. He didn't want to leave this place with the river and the dancing trees and the colorful feathers and the green moon. He's breathing, the cedars whispered, and the world was plunged into oblivion again.
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Original writing and images
by Daniel Pendergraft
— created for HIVE —
published on April 26th, 2022
to Alien Art Hive Community.
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Writing is fully original
and can be considered a first draft/blueprint
towards eventual completion of a finished piece
shared and preserved immutably on blockchain.
.
Images are original smartphone photographs
taken with iPhone 8+ and processed
using Deep Dream Generator
with custom style images
and further edited
in Final Cut Pro.
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