Nothing Does It Better

(Sum Fishing in Kaua'i, 2011)

The tide rolled in, white water foaming into white splatter rolling off of my feet. A tan-line marks the straps of my slippers that are now occasionally gone, removed, and perhaps I am too, removed, from it all, something about that white sea foam resembles me, or at least, what I have become, or becoming. The sand beneath my feet cave in, slowly but surely swallowing me whole one centimeter at a time. My ankles are now gone, and where the sand has taken my body I can no longer feel. I know it is there for I am still standing, but it just doesn't exist in my sensory, in a blank field of nothing. Nothing. Void. My knees were next, the sea rolling in, then that foam, it was me, my movement, it rolled back into the ocean, and it too was being swallowed alive. Waist deep, I no longer could shake this off if I had any will to move in the first place. Everything below started to grow cold as it lost feeling, and somewhere in all that lack of pain I felt relieved, like something was taking away all my burdens, my body was the biggest burden of them all. Chest deep, I struggled to breath at first but soon realized my lungs met no resistance, no solid wall of sand, I no longer had lungs they existed in status, an infinity, the blackness of a void. My neck, my chin, I let out a few last breathes and watched my vision fade grain by grain. My hands moved around on their own, floating as I felt my hands removed from their body for the first time, they were free. Fingertips, then nothing. Absolutely nothing. Overhead, looking down the beach where I once stood is now just an ordinary beach scene, without any trace of a human, just a mystic landscape, crashing and rolling, foaming all on its own.

Looking out from the cliff, headlights shooting off the edge and disappearing before a couple as they sip whiskey from the bottle, bums warm from the engine cooling below us. She doesn't give a face when she hits the bottle, he's impressed, taking another hit and letting the liquor warm him up. His eyes stare off, the city below glows, it makes them feel cold being so high and isolated and yet able to view it all. Down there it wasn't as beautiful, it was fast moving, buildings towering over them, the rush of traffic, the heat melting the concrete. In comparison, high above they were all chilled out, he pulled off his leather coat and wrap her body in it. She moved closer and let her body fall upon his, he put his arm around her and kept her there, ensuring her he knows how beautiful this lazy city is, the lights shimmering just for them, it's true the entire city decided to leave their lights on tonight because they knew they were coming, and they wanted to make sure they had something beautiful to see, to make it that much more remember able. He thanked them silently like a person praying to his or her self, careful not to be caught, one hail Mary like a scratch on shoulder, then the other shoulder then bottom of the chest and below the chin, another scratch it was itchy. Eyes glowing, they melted in place, he remembered a time in high school, this sort of place, these sorts of sight that spell romance like H.O.L.L.Y.W.O.O.D spell out Beverly Hills. There was something there, a feeling that landscapes like this create, the person you're with, what you both had on your minds, something boiled below that rough exterior, something raw, sweet, and maybe pure. It oozed down the mountain that night, the pureness, the lover's sap, it came slowly down, in a creep, in a silence, it took trees 20-30ft high in one gulp, then cars, and then houses, people screamed and ran with their hands in the air. One by one the floating stars of the valley disappeared. They saw it in our minds, their eyes closed, breath, breathing, hot jets, reservoirs forming, a rush, a flood, one by one they all fell down. The lights carried on, burning into the night, and no one could see, they were swallowed up in their mess, disappearing in the ooze, their fingertips as their last struggle to be, gone. The sound of the door slapping behind them, the breath that seemed to come from deep down inside, hot and sticky, wild, eyes in a daze, the walls of their reality had faded, replaced by something that is neither real or of dreams, but something lost in a surge of hormones and youth. It continued to ooze down, it fell into the sewers and popped manhole covers as it made its way to the center of the city. The stars were disappearing like the coming of daylight, they were still there but blanketed by a nothingness. Sounds in a car are loud, nothing to allow air to flow as it vibrated back to its source, it just bounced back into your ear and reminded you it is small in here, the only thing that exists was them.

The final light to disappear was a glowing clock of a clock tower, it read 11:11 the moment it disappeared. No one saw this, so no wishes were made, therefore no more wishes could be left undone. Time stopped for everything but the interior of that car, it was protected by something that neither existed in dreams or reality, it simply just did, exist that is. Two became one, a singularity floated in space, surrounding by nothing, absolute nothing, not even light could enter this dimension. The windows of car frosted up from the coldness of space, somehow there was a heat source within the backseat of the car that kept the car from turning to stone.

The ooze would eventually stop flowing, many years would pass and what was once flowing liquid would be rendered into a solid, this solid would eventually crack and part amongst itself over and over until fine grains of sand would form. What moisture that ooze once had been dissolved into atmosphere, waiting to return back into it's former form. The Earth rained for a week solid, where valleys had formed from dry seas now filled with water again, ponds turning into lakes, lakes turning into oceans with rivers and such in-between. The car that once stood in free-floating space met water and floated just above the surface. A thick layer of ice had formed around the surface of the car, and from within one can see a light flicker in a pulse.

Pump-pump went the heart. Pump-pump. Slower. Pummmmp. Pummmmp. . . Pummmmmm-ump. Pummmmmm-ump.

I opened my eyes, I'm sitting in a chair in a room filled with overwhelming white, like a flash of light, but I could see the form of the room, the corners form the end of one wall and start of another. I felt like I'm was in trouble, waiting in the hallway of the Principal's office, he was never going to come and tell me what I did wrong, I was all alone, my punishment was to wait, in this white-white-white room. A clock ticked on the wall like the pulse of the room, time was all I had. For all I knew beyond the room was nothing, absolute and pure. I waited and waited, for something to happen, for something to change, but no change was had happened. It felt like days, I hadn't slept or felt the need to sleep, my state never changed I just waited. For a long time, a month maybe, a few hours, something did happen, but the room itself remained the same, it all happened within me. Flashbacks of memories came to me in a vortex of colors and sensations, something out of 2001: A Space Odyssey, I was sucked up into this brilliant spectrum of color transforming into mathematically patterns until I saw myself in the shapes, and instead of seeing an image I was flashed by emotions. Everything inside of me was shook violently, I felt loss, an overwhelming emptiness that made my eyes tear up as if my soul was being pressed against my body, my eyes being the softness thing they bled tears as result. After that I felt my soul be torn apart, a violent shift in my everything was happening, and then the final flash was the oldest of the feelings it had no physical pain my mind felt disoriented as if I was being flipped upside down, everything I once knew and saw was shifted upside down with it. I looked down to my feet, I was still sitting, still in that overly white bright room, and yet I was on the ceiling, hanging upside down. The room soon disappeared, and my eyes opened.

The car battery was dead, it was early morning when they woke up. The world was back to normal, people working their jobs, delivery men delivering packages, nothing seemed effected from last night's blob invasion. The two walked down the mountain road, the girl still wearing his leather jacket, it was big on her. Somewhere in this universe some rock is floating, it is about to be hit by another rock much larger in size and it will push the other rock off it's course and send it slowly but surely towards earth. The rock is 40miles long and will take about a hundred and forty-four years to finally meet its end on the surface of Earth. By then the couple will be long gone, they will have many many more memories together and all that they will do in their life and everything they influenced will be erased from all memory. And perhaps it is something that has happened, that there is a history outside of the human memory, and traces and markings of evidence left behind that carries on, that something has happened, it scratches deeper than anything we are able to comprehend and that it marks into time itself. With a broken Earth and lava flowing over land, seas turning to vapor, the sky no longer blue but a fiery red, something hovers, something stays, forever, that it is impossible to destroy, that something has happened, and will always remain, not forgotten, and never to change, crystallized in the hardest and softest of all things, time, time itself.

The boy and the girl hitch a ride in the back of a truck, the sun sprinkles their faces as light passes through the trees. Wind is blowing the girl's hair, it dances and the boy looks off, inside of him he feels like this is going to be wonderful, everything, not knowing what the future is like, but sure of one thing for the first time in his life that everything is going to be not only just OK, they are going to be gggggggreat!