JUNE 2009

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The Moment
By Fariel Shafee, Apr 20, 2009

A slice of the moon seeps in through a crack that connects Jack to the rest of the world. A distorted pale map forms on his arm. Layers of darkness in shades shroud the bareness of the cabin as space shrinks to that shapeless patch of light.

He sits straight: his back to the wall, and the world pushes on to his existence, acknowledging him.

Outside, a man waits.

He has a gun.

He wants a piece of paper: a very specific one now in Jack’s pocket.

In return, Jack can keep the world: the bright orange sun setting on the pebbled shore, sprinkling glitter on the saline waves, the song bird, the ivy crawling up those red-brick walls on his way home, that small brown squirrel and the full moon.

He can also have his home, cups of coffee every three hours, that warm red pullover Mary gave him years ago, his three-year-old blue car, and that striped rug next to his leather couch.

He will be able to feel the breeze again, slashing his glass door next to the cobbled path. He shall hear the roar of the thunder covering the humid soil smelling of moss.

Jack listens hard. He tries to feel the air around him. He touches the wooden floor. A scratching noise superposes onto the background of the familiar rhythm of his heart and his heavy breath.

He can keep them ALL: the moments seeping into his body as bits of the world, ticking in the existence of his friends and the dog, the street lamps and the doorknobs.

His laughs, his sighs, his kisses and his touches can brush into the cycles of life and distort the ones around him, mirroring his habits and his oddities. He can linger in the weaving iota so that the shapes around him can be reshaped to adjust to his presence longer. His hands, his eyes, his hair and his lips can all be there, in a bundle, defining him.

He can hold on, and disperse slowly, elegantly, with dignity. It doesn’t have to be now. It need not be gory, painful.

But he cannot have yesterday.

He cannot have the moment when a part of him made a connection, a unique one that no one else could have had. He cannot have his name signed on the yellow sunshine bouncing off of that roof that would be erected because of what that moment had unveiled, or how it would rearrange lives.

He will be lost from the moment, while the rest of it will move, devour and reign.

But he can live on longer, touching the rays of the sun reflected from that rooftop.

That moment may spread into an eon, and the inches of sensation propagating through a million of very unique connected nerves may amplify into a change in the world. He cannot have his shadow crawl into that vine and the placid waters entangled with that moment, although the moment is HIS.

After the molecules of his skin dissipate years later, his blue car will be scrapped, his mug will shatter into pieces, and his notebook will gather dust to be ignored. His photo with his beaming lips, his eyes pointed at Mary will be carefully placed in an album which will be handed over to a relative and then some day the album will find its place at a corner in an attic next to an intricately created spider web.

But the moment may live on.

The revelation of the moment may inundate the floors of the skyscraper reflected in the river and touch the hair of the smiling girl in the street. His shadow may live in that moment if the piece of paper does not change hands.

That moment belongs to him.

Jack takes out the piece of paper and a match box. A blaze devours the piece of paper.

He throws that burning paper on that floor.

The dazzling flame sends out packets of photons to be reflected from the floor and the ceiling, and a world expands to reconnect with Jack.

He sees an insect at a corner, a pair of shoes next to the door and a black coat hanging from a hook.

He wants to see them longer; he wants the wall to push on to him, and he craves that the sound of the breeze outside would ooze into the cabin with the smell of wild lily.

He touches the floor again, and then he closes his eyes.

The infernal heat of the flame opens a narrow time passage, often diverging into multiple worlds. He sees himself dressing up for school, his mother preparing lunch, and his father starting the car. He sees Mary in that bright red dress. He watches Mary leave. He touches his first paycheck and the smell of ink thrills him.

Then he sees no more.

The wall detaches itself, and the floor turns first into a placid pool and then a foaming cloud before they all shrink once again into a point and then to vacuum.

But the moment lives on, melting with the fume and evaporating slowly, flying high to the mountains, taking a shadow of Jack to a world he cannot feel but only forge to his shape at that moment, and what might come next, uncontrollably.