... for Hell
Everything is brown, not the brown of a muddy landscape or a sepia-toned photograph,
but the even, pale brown of a piece of MDF. The ground is totally flat, giving the
impression that the four castles that comprise the landscape rest on a cutting board.
Moving close to one of the structures, it’s not totally clear that it is a building more less a
castle, perhaps it is a more like a rollercoaster at an old fashioned amusement park. It is
made of two large parts, a giant upright gear sandwiched between two upside down T’s,
and an equally large spiral which shoots out perpendicular to the gear at its top and
circles down till the smallest spiral connects back to the bottom of the gear. A drop of
milk moves along the spiral but it leaves no trace of moisture behind. When it reaches
the bottom it slides onto one of the groves of the gear and rolls back up to the top.
“Why do you always get to have clean hands?”
“I don’t feel like it, but that shouldn’t stop you.”
The next structure is a tall thin rectangle suspended between two triangular frames.
Along the midline of the rectangle snakes a line of open space, like a squiggle drawn
across a page. In the grove of this line runs a blue tear, when it falls to the bottom with a
clang the rectangle quivers and suddenly flips, and the tear starts on its downward path
again from the top.
In another construction a wheel spins alongside of a shoot that juts out several times the
width of the wheel and then returns again and back in a zigzag. The wheel is solid
except for one circular hole by its edge; when the circle aligns with the shoot a drop of
blood, or maybe it’s a ruby, springs out and rolls down the shoot, moving away from the
wheel and returning, away and back again. It reaches the bottom as the wheel
completes one turn; the hole accepts the red jewel and rolls it back up to the top.
“How am I supposed to be vulnerable when you are always attacking me?”
“I’ve been here the whole time waiting for you.”
The fourth structure is a box with one large, circular window. The window opens onto a
cylinder that stretched back almost the length of the box. It rotates just fast enough to
keep a transparent yellow bead moving along its edge: rolling and never falling, rolling
and never falling.
Each edifice produces a dull hum, like a room full of refrigerators each cooling a single
fruit. There is no clinamen in this world and no encounter, just dragons polishing their
treasure. Underground is a blinding light invisible from above, but the ground is too solid
to dig and so the sky is without color.