(with Martin Edmond)
All the lights went out. The sun disgorged a dust of insects. Microbes crawled from the disintegrated carapaces.
He sensed them marching in serried ranks towards the lesions in his skin. His hands could not find the switch. For a nanosecond a shell of fear encased him. His trembling broke it. Then he acted.
Reaction first. Interrogated the night but it had nothing to say, was full of aliases, none of them his. He felt like Schrödinger’s cat – but where was Schrödinger?
The air was full of dis-ease. Space was the uncertainty principle. Time was not his friend.
This was not an experiment, it was slaughter. The rustling battalions had already breached his integument, were immune to his response. His massing white cells were being massacred. Defense is knowing when to run.
Afterwards, he never knew exactly how he got away. Surmised that just as there were lines of force there must be lines of weakness, and the pale pupa that was his soul had somehow broken one and used the other to lift off.
His new wings were like nothing else in the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment