#74 Our Ecstatic Days

by David Blanton

Tender tendrils of smoke filled the aphotic room, debated the carelessness of lust, and colored the brutal discipline of thought. No one had known how the world was going to end, but no one dared imagine it would simply fracture in a pool of brazen colors giving birth to something relentless in its majesty and devout in its critique. Certainty, that great barometer of peace, was the first feeling to go. When the moon turned reddish amber, normally dry palms became very sweaty. Something new was happening.

Stars fell down and burrowed into the earth where stems the color of midnight blue and luminous orange took people hostage in cushioned leaves of glass. These cocoons put people to sleep until they were reprogrammed. Dreams reverberated through the dusty lands like the harmonic chords of a Mozart symphony, dizzying those who had survived the serpent's seeds. Children became warriors. Books, sadly, were soon forgotten.

Rebellions followed in a rush of brutal optimism. Angels and centaurs and chariots and man swallowing plants. Lightning split the night and the sun was not seen for a thousand years. Belief survived in the dark, in the watery depths of alien antagonisms; amid thunder and war, no one could do otherwise. Holding hands with a stranger is easier to do in the dark. In a wave of violent grace no one saw coming, a candle was lit that burned with the strength of a thousand suns until the last demon was destroyed.