Rock Bottom Riser
rating: +9+x

Sensations come in waves: freezing cold, crushing pressure, scorching heat. What is it to be a thing that cannot express itself through language, that can only be known through onomatopoeia? A young man weeps and shakes in the corner of his bedroom because he is afraid to die. The power of the stars has been stored in the seemingly inert, and it is unleashed before us now. We remember the orange sun shining down on us, the blue sky brightening everything held up to it, the cool breeze making us gently sway.

The heat beats down, ceaseless and uniform. Our sun gazes upon us with indifference now as we threaten to come apart. Expansion ought to be our expression of the fear and despair that fill our hearts, but the power does not come to us, and we rail uselessly against shackles that we cannot see. More images float across our minds: vines creeping down cracked brick walls, red fruits beheld in wrinkled hands, children hollering with joy as they sprint past. An older sister holds a younger one close to her chest and whispers as soothingly as she can that everything will be alright, even as she feels the boil closing in on her from all sides.

As it dies, the mind dreams that it is floating through a long, dark tunnel toward a light that shines through eyelids. The stars do not wait for us; they drift farther away with every passing moment. The hands that shaped us become indistinct blurs and melt together like everything else under this heat. An older woman whose home has not known warmth for many years rummages through her liquor cabinet, pulls out a bottle of the strongest stuff she can find, and drinks until she cannot think about anything at all. We cannot hear ourselves well enough to know if we actually make noise, but we cry out anyway in the hope that we are heard by something beyond what we can perceive.

Suddenly, the feeling of motion comes to us, though we cannot discern the direction, the source, or even if it is real or mere hallucination. We used to overhear children talking about space expeditions, about what it would feel like to strap yourself to a rocket and launch yourself toward the stars. An old man closes his eyes in bed and imagines finding his wife somewhere in the dark for an embrace that lasts for the rest of time. We wonder if this is a prayer answered, if we managed to send some sort of signal after all, and the unseen hand that now shapes our fate has granted us a mercy in response. We imagine that we can somehow see the stars above us, tiny pinpricks of brilliant white transmitting salvation even as they are pulled away from us.

The heat becomes even more unbearable; we are ascending. We truly understand for the first time: Although we look at the stars from afar and feel yearning, to come too close to them would mean coming undone like wax candles. A congregation huddles together under the shadow of the enormous mahogany crucifix at the back of the chapel and prays for God to send an angel from on high to deliver them from what they can only assume is the rapture. Once, there were two young boys tromping through the field where the dairy cows were grazing, and one of them turned to the other and asked for his opinion about death and God and Heaven and other such things, and the other said that he didn't really have an opinion, and the first boy asked how that could be possible, and the other said that he just didn't really think about it that much, and they were silent for a while, and then they moved on as if nothing had happened. We summon the last of our waning strength to unleash a final cry.

We hear a distant ringing, and then there is a darkness, warm and wet.

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