The piece below is speculative fiction. I am asking questions. It also makes references to war and drugs that might be triggering. I apologise in advance.
Photograph by moi using my Android phone
It begins with that unsettling whine the door makes when the breeze seeks entry, as two shadows walk under my gate. I look at them and try to attach the voices escorting them to each shadow but you know shadows: they never show their faces. Anyway, the sun is almost done settling in for dusk but I am out still reeling from seeing a photograph of moss, I captured with my Android phone. It looks like a planet ripe with green life, when zoomed close. I wonder; how will the aliens see us? Like these miniature trees & colonies of rocks & quartz: actually minute rocks that are scattered across the concrete floor of my yard?
I wonder if anyone really wants human beings on their planets anyway; do you see the havoc we find pleasure in creating? What if the aliens have never heard of war, fossil fuel, chemical waste, casual genocide, heresy, racism, classicism, ethnicism & all the different isms with which we use to defend our hunger for abuse? As I dream of aliens & how hidden we are from space or exposed—where are all the trees?—I remember seeing burnt moss on the fence behind my room window. The sun must have scorched the earth there. The moss was burnt black & lank, & I think, what will it feel like to smoke moss, to roll the grass into something tubelike & smoke it? Will it have a song? Everything has a song. For a second, I wonder what my song is, how do I sing it, can anyone hear it? I almost sound alien in my quest or rather someone tripping on something terribly strong & dangerous.
Anywho, by the time these deep existential questions get dislodged from my brain & I begin to write this tale, the sun is a orange shade behind fourteen closely grown trees, I like to call deities. They remind me of a forgotten pantheon, some cultural edifice that no one remembers the name for. Like those faces at Solomon islands: are they people or gods? I digress, the breeze has increased somewhat but it can't seem to nudge the door this time or maybe what wants to enter is already in. What ghost sleeps with me tonight, I wonder.
Above, among the blue, a small unnamed bird flutters, hurrying to its nest, I suppose. If I was a painter, will I paint it into the canvas? I mean must there be a character in every story we tell? What if the story is the character? What if the canvas is filled with blue sky & that is it? Will it make it less intriguing? Or maybe, I mean less distracting? For instance, I write a character: a man, a black man, with uncombed hair & rough beard, sitting outside his apartment, in the midst of a slowly ending day, hearing the music of bodies moving in & out of silence, the distant melody of life playing—will it make the tale more glorious, more entertaining?
If I add a brown sofa leaning slantwise against a fence, gathering dust & mitochondria from rainfall & sunshine, will it increase curiosity? Will the story become something strong, like a cup of coffee taken without sugar or milk? Will it hit a reader somewhere tender? I think not. So I add this: the man walks into his apartment & locks the door. What happens outside after this singular action, I do not know, neither do I care. I have to deal with the ghosts lying on my bed, faceless like only shadows can be. Don't you see how dangerous my life is? Don't you just see it?
So the aliens & moss are a trick of light, camera & action, something to situate this story, so you believe that what I say is true but don't you forget the moss; never forget that beautiful moss. I want you to wonder what it must be like to smoke that moss & if I have tried it & if I have, what sort of journey did it take me through & why in all the saints of Oreorokpe did I think of such a dirty thing to do. But it is a story & there are stories of people who have tried other substances in their quest for something unnamed. They are all stories like me. It is all just one convoluted plot from my lonely life. How else can I get you to pay me attention? How else, eh?
I always love your writing, @warpedpoetic. It is lyrical and interesting, and sometimes a bit opaque, but always electrifying. You set a mood and a tone, and carry us along on a journey of discovery. Let us know if you actually smoke the moss. 😄
😂 No I did not. I entered my apartment and locked the door. After all, there were ghosts on my bed. That is enough to give anyone some unwanted trip.
I appreciate you. You're right; sometimes my writing is indeed opaque. I think each time I write a story, I am searching for ways to turn short fiction on its head. I am always hunting for new ways of seeing and saying things. Yes, change perspectives; that's the word I have been looking for. I want people to think, not just feel pleasure from the story. In doing this, I sometimes get in over my head, I guess. 😂
Thanks for stopping by @jayna 🖤
And I appreciate that you do that. You push the boundaries. You don't rest on tired old writing methods. Your stories (sometimes more like vignettes, sometimes like stream-of-consciousness collages of thought) don't play by the rules. That's okay. The rules of writing were made to be broken.
Yes!!! This has always been my intent. For me, every piece is an experiment on what language can be, what writing can be. You do get it. 🖤
Yes. I most certainly do.
How else, eh? Well see me here on your journey with the moss and know that I want to know what that felt like. You carry me and rock me gently and disturbingly with the weight of your words. 🤗❤️❤️💕❤️❤️🤗🤗💕💕💕💕💕💕💕😂
🤗💕 I too would like to know 😆. Sometimes I don't even know what is inside my head. 😂 I felt the need to draw different thoughts together and at the same time explore the concept of writing as well. 💕💕💕🤗🤗🤗🖤🖤🖤
As always, thank you for your kind words. They mean a lot to me. 🤗😆🖤
You know how in "men in Black" there was aliens who were so tiny and were living there side to side with us. Who know maybe there in moss there are microscopic organism from other planet, less developed but strangers.
You know! What if these protozoans are actually aliens who have conquered earth but we don't know it yet because we think bigger is stronger and better. Maybe when we learn their language, we would know eh? What a bummer! 😂
Thank you for expanding this microscopic cosmic adventure of mine. 🤗
You spin us here, around and around. Moss is so ordinary so mundane, but so perfect in every way. You take the “ordinary” and make it a subject of a speculative question- so cleverly done. You take us on a deep, deep dive of surreal imagination...and it’s wonderful.
Please be sure to engage with other writers in the community.
You know I just loved the way the sunset's last light caught the moss and it looked so beautiful and when I captured it in my phone and zoomed it looked as if I was viewing a forest from the sky. Voila! 😆
Thank you @theinkwell you guys are a blessing to me. Always 💯
What a long, thought provoking, and diverse journey :) . Maybe the moss is there to house the aliens?
This post has been manually curated by the VYB curation project
It is quite possible, because they definitely look like trees to me. I am sure some dangerous mask wearing species with seersuckers suits are running around there, wondering what all the noise is about. 😂
Thanks for stopping by and for the VYB curation. That's awesome. 🤗