Beetle's Loop continued
Dad was lucky, he thinks in his sleep as the little spiders play with the fibers from his Dad's broom.
His Dad's straw hat is always veiled by the spider web that dangles from the edges so the bees take him for the beekeeper. He keeps his hat on, never doffs it, even when he goes to bed.
He is lonely, and his eyes are full of sand. Each time he hears "Dad" the sand rolls down his cheeks and covers him up to the waist. Therefore he always carries the broom to sweep the sand away.
* * * *
Mother must be beautiful, he often thinks, trying to visualize her. There are no ugly mothers. Mothers are goddesses. One who curses a goddess must die.
Every Sunday he returns from the ground to read the sign carved on the trunk. He must do it three times and think about it. It's a ritual. He does it thoroughly and after every reading he stops and thinks. He thinks no child would've written this about his parent - even cursed, children need their parents alive. He also thinks he's lucky to have them on Sundays. Then he knocks.
* * * *
He hears her steps behind the trunk… He gets smaller, slowly deflating on a thorn of a rose he brought for her. Every Sunday, someone puts a fresh one on the ground before he rises with the morning mist. It must be for her. He picks it up and knocks.
"Wash your hands!" she yells behind the door, suffering his presence just as the arthritis sufferer suffers the change in the weather.
Every time it's the same. No matter how hard he tries to convince her that his hands are clean she keeps yelling as if she doesn't hear him.
* * * *
Her face is a mystery to him. She is a mystery to him. During his nights, he attempts to imagine her, meditating over the clouts of flies' capronic wings and the glistening pollen on a moth's lonely feeler. She must be like them - ethereal and fragile. If you touched her she'd crumble to golden dust.
The little spiders weave his dreams that flash like spangles in mica. He would've been nothing without the spiders, just as the slush would've been nothing without its sucking and smacking larvae.
* * * *
Every Saturday, the underground waters wash out his dreams, but he doesn't mind. He wants to be empty and clean, and soon he's dissolved in the moisture circulating in the veins of the house. It's intoxicating, and he fancies the shiny bubble with the embryo inside. It's always in zenith, right above the chimney.
They gaze at each other for hours, or millenniums, and it feels good because there's no certainty about time.
When there is no certainty about space it's alarming; when there is no certainty about time it's soothing.
He wants to ask the embryo a question, but he always forgets which one. As soon as he sees it, he comes to a standstill, mesmerized by its slant eyes of an alien - the eyes of indefinite time.
* * * *
The embryo sways in the lunar glow stirring inside the bubble. Does it breathe? It's hard to tell. Its nostrils are two dots, and the glowing air seems to be thick, too thick to be inhaled. Nevertheless, the embryo does inhale it, and the moonshine flows over its molluskan body. One short inhale and the little body quivers with the unsteady opalescence. One short exhale and it turns into a charcoal fluid.
* * * *
When he returns to the roots it's almost Sunday. The waters that carry him back wash out his memories once again, and he forgets about the embryo, and the question, but the sense of a strange connection between them is restored so he finally falls asleep.
* * * *
At daybreak, centipedes patrolling the waters become slumberous, and he awakes and rises through the chimney, fogging the view of ants that take him for the morning mist.
His father is still asleep. His snore crushes glassy molecules of the morning air, and a caterpillar slowly expands its pleated body like an accordion, still dreaming.
His mother alarmingly strides inside the house.
It's time for him to read the sign. He knows it by memory, but his memory is scattered in the universe - each word is in a different corner. When ants find them they disassemble them into letters.
Ants are everywhere. Even inside him. They come and go, supervised by the little spiders.
* * * *
He squints and reads what's carved on the trunk. Three times. Then he knocks.
She yells that he should wash his hands. He rustles that he did. Then his father appears with the broom and the bees take him for the beekeeper.
The rose is thrown on the ground and the ants are instantly pulled in by its vortex. They struggle for hours with the rose's convoluted currents, and they finally win.
Earth gravity accelerates the fall of the sun. It slips down, clutching at the clouds, but the chimney vacuums it from the skies, making it serve the roots until morning.
It's time to leave.
Finally! She sighs with relief. She needs rest.
Her eyelids close against her will. She can't hold them anymore. She has no will. Everything is subjugated to someone else's will.
It's nonsense.
She's in control.
She's strong.
One moment, please…
She steeps in slumber.
Her exhausted body releases teary fluid that has corroded it from within for the past week, accumulating in her tissues and causing the formation of blisters in her organs. She looks bloated, her head's enlarged, her extremities are puffed up, and her wrists and elbows and ankles seem to be tightly belted which makes them look segmented like the bodies of caterpillars.
The nightmares surround her.
She lets out a sob and the blisters burst and the fluid breaks through her pores and nostrils and ears and she gets lighter and her body shrinks and becomes transparent and brittle like the wing of the fly that he scrutinizes downstairs while the streams raise the phreatic waters that snatch him and carry his particles to the obscure zone where he meets the embryo with the slant eyes of the sunflower seed and he asks it the question about the beetle he's been holding gripped between his two little fingers but as soon as he does he forgets about it and his question dies and she is awake again.
She feverishly grabs the swatter.
It's too late, though - centipedes begin to roll down her cheeks, seeking water.
