Night Baby
9 July 2010 15:50![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skonen_bladesWhen the boomerang returns to me, it is covered in blood and mucus like a newborn. This should be impossible. I don’t know what it found out there in the darkness or why it made it all the way back to me after it found it. This is a mystical night. The shroud of evening has removed all colour from the desert, making it into a black and white film that I can barely make out. I have a flashlight but when I shine it out into the gloom, only green pinpricks come back, my flashlight reflected in the eyes of distant kangaroos and nocturnal scavengers. I should put on my night vision goggles.
I am naked except for my holster, my bag and my belt. It’s too hot to wear anything else, even at night. The only fight I put up to the heat is my beard and my hair. I have let these grow long, regardless of the oven of the daytime. The sun is bleaching my hair blonde and ginger.
‘Glass’ scorpions wriggle across the nighttime prairie of sand. They feed on bioluminescent insects, making the scorpions glow in the dark after they’ve fed, scuttling around the desert floor and turning over pebbles. It looks like the stars are reflected by the ground, shifting over the surface like a lake. It brings water to mind and that’s not good to think about out here.
I take the night-vision goggles out of my bag and put them on. When I turn them on, the whole desert springs up in green detail in front of my eyes. The desert is a pale green and the sky is black. I can see the distant whorls of the wind-scoured mountains against the night sky in the distance. I can clearly see the animals searching for sustenance.
And I can see the giant newborn baby standing twenty feet away, staring back at me with its pupils gone green and bright. It’s not wearing any clothes and it’s slippery with afterbirth. It’s taller than me. All I can think is that the baby must have reached up and touched my boomerang, coating it as it passed without disturbing its trajectory. That’s impossible. The baby is looking at me, swaying with that difficulty that babies have with balance. Its eyes are looking at me with intelligence, though, and I’m scared by that more than anything else.
I step back.
It steps forward.
I turn around and run.
tags
I am naked except for my holster, my bag and my belt. It’s too hot to wear anything else, even at night. The only fight I put up to the heat is my beard and my hair. I have let these grow long, regardless of the oven of the daytime. The sun is bleaching my hair blonde and ginger.
‘Glass’ scorpions wriggle across the nighttime prairie of sand. They feed on bioluminescent insects, making the scorpions glow in the dark after they’ve fed, scuttling around the desert floor and turning over pebbles. It looks like the stars are reflected by the ground, shifting over the surface like a lake. It brings water to mind and that’s not good to think about out here.
I take the night-vision goggles out of my bag and put them on. When I turn them on, the whole desert springs up in green detail in front of my eyes. The desert is a pale green and the sky is black. I can see the distant whorls of the wind-scoured mountains against the night sky in the distance. I can clearly see the animals searching for sustenance.
And I can see the giant newborn baby standing twenty feet away, staring back at me with its pupils gone green and bright. It’s not wearing any clothes and it’s slippery with afterbirth. It’s taller than me. All I can think is that the baby must have reached up and touched my boomerang, coating it as it passed without disturbing its trajectory. That’s impossible. The baby is looking at me, swaying with that difficulty that babies have with balance. Its eyes are looking at me with intelligence, though, and I’m scared by that more than anything else.
I step back.
It steps forward.
I turn around and run.
tags
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Date: 10 Jul 2010 06:53 (UTC)no subject
Date: 10 Jul 2010 18:16 (UTC)