The Sand Hill Review               http://www.sandhillreview.org 2011

Discovery

A. Molotkov

When I cross the street, I find myself in another universe. Reality has been adjusted to fit my purposes. In the empty staircase of the building right ahead, I sense ghosts of many generations waiting to make their return. Why have they chosen me as their entry point? I try to resist, but there are too many of them. Very soon I realize I have to give up. If I don't, I will be utterly destroyed, erased, to the point where my very existence is obliterated from the moment of my birth until present. Whatever it is we call present.

The staircase is dark. I have to make do with what I have. I’m not the first to encounter this predicament, and certainly not the last. Everything is destined to repeat. Anything unique just pretends to be so. No need to try to change things. Whoever tries must resign in advance to failure.

The small bridge I am about to walk over is suspended in the air. It is separated from the ground by only a few inches. One wouldn't notice unless they pay attention. For some reason, I am paying attention tonight.

I cross the bridge. A lonely figure awaits on the other side. I approach. It is a woman, she is looking directly at me, making it clear that I am the one she is expecting. Does she have a special message for me?

When I get close, she opens her arms without saying anything at all. We embrace. I lean forward to kiss her, but at the last moment another unexpected intention supersedes my original plan. I open my mouth as wide as I can in a bite that consumes her nose and a part of her cheek. Her flesh feels like wax, it gives way under the pressure of my teeth. I pull away and examine her. Her face is horribly disfigured. She displays no reaction: no cry of pain, no call for help. I chew and swallow the flesh that I have bitten off. It is completely tasteless, like wax.

An erotic charge pierces me. I begin to fondle the woman’s body, rubbing her pubic area and her buttocks with both hands. Yet these parts are soft, as if made of clay. The pressure of my hands molds them into new shapes. Again, she displays no reaction of pain. Her arms are wrapped around me in a tight, steady hug, which in the absence of any other means of expression can be interpreted as either a sensual or a friendly gesture.

“It’s too late,” I hear myself saying, “I have to go.” I’m not quite sure why I said that. I interrupt our embrace. I head in my original direction, if such a direction exists. After ten or fifteen steps I look back, but the woman is gone. She is nowhere to be seen. The spacious square I find myself in lends no explanation to this sudden disappearance, but I am not in the least surprised.

Once I cross the square, the topography of this place abruptly changes. Wide spaces are replaced by an intricate labyrinth of narrow corridors. What surrounds me are no longer buildings. Instead, they are bizarre clay structures shaped like buildings – a careless parody.

I know I must find someone, receive a message. I feel desperate, even though only a moment ago I was completely content. Hysterically, I knock on one of the negligently molded clay doors. Naturally, there is no response. I keep knocking for what seems a very long time –much longer than reasonable – until my despair is cured, once again placing me in a state of calm observation.

I see the woman’s lonely figure at the end of the street. Somehow she must have gotten ahead of me. I head in her direction. Her reappearance cannot be accidental. Apparently she still has some information for me. I must keep myself open to any and all information. I know that for a fact, without a reason or a need for a reason.

Despite the distance, it takes me only four or five steps to reach the woman, whose dark silhouette now seems to be tipping as if bent by the wind. But there is no wind. Why is she standing slightly inclined like that? When I approach, she repeats her old gesture, extending her arms in my direction. Should I repeat mine too? If I embrace her, are we destined to reproduce the same series of actions as last time, as if the two of us were nothing more than wind-up toys serving for the entertainment of some temporary god’s immature mind?

As I observe her closely, I realize with some surprise that the defects in her appearance caused by our previous encounter have not been rectified. The part of her face I bit off is still missing. I look down. Her pelvis also remains deformed. While I make these observations, the woman takes the matter into her own hands, wrapping her arms around my neck. Her embrace is so strong I feel difficulty breathing. I gently grab her by the wrists to release the pressure. Her wrists deform under my fingers. My fingerprints remain imprinted on her skin.

“What did you want to tell me?” I ask.

She gives no response. Instead, she leans her face towards me. Looking into her eyes I realize: their expression is simultaneously pathetic and intimidating. She looks like a robot expecting me to give it life, prepared to go to any lengths if I fail to do so. But I may be reading these intentions into her motionless stare, a mere reflection of the eyes of the beholder.

“I must go now,” I say. The woman offers no objection. I realize: she is wearing a nun uniform with a large rosary. Yet I could swear she did not have these items on during our first meeting. Upon closer observation, I notice: the rosary is not a separate entity, it is a part of her habit, suggesting that her obscure creator might have been in a rush, unconcerned about these minute details.

I head towards the canal – for once again I find myself next to a canal, with a large wooden bridge hovering just above ground at either end. And again, when I turn around, she’s gone.

I walk over the bridge. My recent experiences have proved that when a bridge is offered, I must use it. The reality is being tailored just for me. The very thought that there may be a bridge irrelevant to my needs is inconceivable. However, with each step I take, the distance between me and the crest of the bridge seems to be increasing. The bridge is growing before my very eyes. Is this also a part of the message I am supposed to receive?

Eventually I am forced to give up. I have been ascending this bridge for so long that its base is now hidden by fog. Or is it a cloud? But exactly at the moment when I stop, the rest of the bridge levels off, placing me on the very top. Clearly, I have to continue crossing this canal. I must be wanted on the other side. Maybe it is there that I will finally receive my message? I feel I am running out of time, even though I don't have a clear notion of how much time I have at my disposal, or even how much has passed since the beginning of my journey. Now that I think of it, I don't believe my journey had a beginning. It seems I have been walking for years, never getting any closer to my destination. Is this true? Is this an illusion? Is there a difference? Who sent me on my journey? Did I undertake it on my own accord?

Despite the fact that going up the bridge took such a long time, I am able to come down the other side in only a few seconds. The topography of this universe is so malleable, but I am yet to figure out who bends the shapes and which rules they follow. Do the changes originate within my own mind, controlled by me, as I thought earlier? Or is it the exact opposite?

It comes at no surprise: the nun is waiting for me on the other side. This time, her arms are already stretched in my direction, as though she has been preparing for an embrace well in advance. Her long curly hair is also stretched towards me, held up by an invisible gust of wind, frozen in time. When I look more closely, I notice that her clothes too fit the same description. She appears rapidly propelled away from me. Yet, she remains motionless.

There must be a reason why she keeps following me – or rather preceding me. Due to our communication problems, I have been unable, so far, to receive her message. Is it my fault or her own? Whatever the case may be, I no longer feel any desire to continue our encounters. I turn around. Contrary to all logic, the ascending part of the bridge once again takes a much longer time than the descent. Obviously the bridge has been reconfigured once more. I don't look back to avoid provoking the nun. But when I reach the crest of the bridge I see her on the other side, patiently awaiting me. It becomes obvious that I have no choice other than to confront her once more.

I walk down, each step swallowing ten yards. The nun does not fail to stretch her arms in my direction. When I approach, I do my best to accept whatever is about to happen, for the fear that an outward gesture of rejection might only exacerbate my ominous circumstances. Her embrace is cold, her arms holding me tight – too tight. I’m forced to release their relentless pressure by flexing my shoulders. She brings her face close to mine, the absurd gap in it fitting perfectly against my mouth. She presses her face to me – so hard that I feel a hint of pain as my nose attempts to adjust its position to make room for the invading flesh. Just like before, her face is adaptable. As soon as I am able to pull myself away and look at her, I notice a small crevice in her cheek that my nose has caused. I am beginning to fear this enigmatic creature, so easily molded and yet so unavoidable. If she has a message for me, why won't she deliver it and leave me alone? Is she trying to avenge my earlier bite? But that bite was certainly not an act of my own choice. I suspect I simply did what the situation had programmed me to do. In any case, it is too late to worry about that.

“Do you have something to tell me?” I ask, still hostage to the nun’s firm embrace, yet at a sufficient distance to see her face, to observe her reaction – a complete lack of reaction as the case may be. With a slight delay, she shakes her head – the first meaningful gesture she has made today, albeit harboring nothing but a negative meaning. At the same time I feel her arms pull me in with a supernatural force, with such persistence that I panic. In a fierce attempt to set myself free, I push her away, but something is completely wrong – it is her arms, which stay wrapped around my shoulders while her body falls back, propelled by the hysterical energy of my push. I tear the arms off me and heave them into the water. I run across the bridge, then one more bridge, then yet one more. The bridges succeed one another in a strange geometrical puzzle. This city, in its most current revision, is comprised of nothing but canals and bridges.

The more I run, the clearer the futility of my situation. In this artificial universe, what chance do I have to outwit its mysterious creators? How did I get here? And why? To think that initially I had the illusion that I was in control, that the rules of this bizarre world were adjustable, ready to fulfill my every wish. Then I remember the ghosts, the moment when they came in – something I had forgotten until just now, as if their entry was accompanied by an injection of a powerful memory suppressant. The ghosts have used me up. What should I do? Where can I possibly run?

Mad with fear and out of breath, I finally collapse on a step of one of the bridges. The nun is right there, on the other side, waiting for me. She makes no attempt to approach, as if she knows that there will come a time when I stop running away. She is right, of course. I regain my breath and get up, my cotton legs carry me over to her crippled figure. Now that her arms are gone, she begins to levitate, her legs spread in my direction, as if she were insisting on some horrible version of mutant cunnilingus. I stop once again, uncertain if I can walk any further, my limbs no longer at my command. And yet, I keep being propelled towards her by the sidewalk that has assumed motion. In what seems less than a second, her legs are wrapped around my face, pressing to me so hard that I find it difficult to breathe. The strange deformity of her pelvis caused by my careless caresses ends up against my right eye, which shoots a sharp impulse of pain into my adrenaline-ridden brain. In a last mad attempt to save myself, I bite away at her belly, her wax body offering no resistance. I try to spit out the pieces I bite off, but the pressure is so great that I can't get them out of my mouth! My mouth is filled with her tasteless flesh, more and more of it entering me, filling up my throat … my lungs. How strange: I’m dying. As the last instant of reality leaves my mind, my remaining left eye catches a final glimpse of her face. Instead of a horribly disfigured façade I am used to seeing, it is a face of perfect harmony, utmost beauty, as if by destroying me she was able to lift her horrible spell.

This must have been the solitary purpose of my life.◊