“Citizen Iskandor” the Initiates stood on either side of her, periodically notching up the level of pain, “you have been heard subverting the mind of your son.
“Concerned neighbours have reported numerous occasions of conversations with the boy that questioned the authority of the Core; and yet you find no voice to guilt; you see no reason for shame."
There was a short silence while the speaker drew and indignant breath
“It is time therefore for you to make your peace with The Oracle”
Her head has forced off her chest by a hand in her hair causing her, involuntarily, to unclench her eyes.
She sucked a ragged breath, before her the blood-blurred figure so integral to her life; hers and every one she had ever known.
She blinked to focus on a room filled with arcane objects: shiny tubes and glass devices; their purposes obscure but presumably integral in the workings of the Oracle.
Ensconced in a large and well padded chair sat the hallowed figure itself, dressed in one piece suit of pale blue fabric; faded and, in parts, worn beyond repair.
Iskandor’s gaze settled on what, at first, she assumed were shoes but slowly came to realise were the Oracle’s feet, rose up the blue clad legs on whose knees rested a pair of blackened and deeply creased hands, mutilated five fingered hands with fingernails brown-yellow, long and thick with age; past letters stitched on the left breast of the suit, letters that read, absurdly:
“Concerned neighbours have reported numerous occasions of conversations with the boy that questioned the authority of the Core; and yet you find no voice to guilt; you see no reason for shame."
There was a short silence while the speaker drew and indignant breath
“It is time therefore for you to make your peace with The Oracle”
Her head has forced off her chest by a hand in her hair causing her, involuntarily, to unclench her eyes.
She sucked a ragged breath, before her the blood-blurred figure so integral to her life; hers and every one she had ever known.
She blinked to focus on a room filled with arcane objects: shiny tubes and glass devices; their purposes obscure but presumably integral in the workings of the Oracle.
Ensconced in a large and well padded chair sat the hallowed figure itself, dressed in one piece suit of pale blue fabric; faded and, in parts, worn beyond repair.
Iskandor’s gaze settled on what, at first, she assumed were shoes but slowly came to realise were the Oracle’s feet, rose up the blue clad legs on whose knees rested a pair of blackened and deeply creased hands, mutilated five fingered hands with fingernails brown-yellow, long and thick with age; past letters stitched on the left breast of the suit, letters that read, absurdly:
R.AKAL
Above the letters a shiny metal emblem pinned, a disk with a silhouette depiction of a man cut from its centre, higher the buttoned collar from which a wizened neck protruded.
The face...
She sucked another rib aching breath at the sight of those empty eye sockets, deep and black below a skeletal forehead across which a feather wisp of hair seemed to apologise for its existence.
Iskandor’s horror at the proximity of this monstrous creature was further compounded by a sudden shudder that passed through the blue clad chest beneath the shiny metal emblem.
In the instant of seeing the Oracle for the first time a myriad of interconnecting thought-shapes were formed and instantly shattered:
Her childhood perception of the Oracle as a calm figure of benign and honourable power was lightning-struck by the reality of this so obviously dead creature – and this reality in turn obliterated by the Oracle’s belaboured intake of breath – she could almost taste its despair in the back of her throat; despair thick with antiquity; unwilling, or unable, for reasons known only to the Source, to die.
A realisation as bleak as those empty sockets chiselled its way to the centre of her world:
the realisation that had hung in the back of her mind since as far back as she could remember, silent but nagging; the realisation that everything she knew was a lie; a grand and pre-meditated deceit; a deceit now shattered; a deceit that she found herself unable to reassemble into anything that would allow her life to resume its once preordained path.
To question The Core’s authority was one thing, but The Oracle? Her mind shied as she realised that beyond the next rise lay questions about The Source itself.
The enormity of this brutal awakening caused an involuntary reaction from Iskandor’s own chest; a breath held longer than she could remember blew across her voice like some discordant and mutilated instrument fit only to be played at the funeral of innocence.
Except from Decaying Orbits - a work in [slow] progress.
The face...
She sucked another rib aching breath at the sight of those empty eye sockets, deep and black below a skeletal forehead across which a feather wisp of hair seemed to apologise for its existence.
Iskandor’s horror at the proximity of this monstrous creature was further compounded by a sudden shudder that passed through the blue clad chest beneath the shiny metal emblem.
In the instant of seeing the Oracle for the first time a myriad of interconnecting thought-shapes were formed and instantly shattered:
Her childhood perception of the Oracle as a calm figure of benign and honourable power was lightning-struck by the reality of this so obviously dead creature – and this reality in turn obliterated by the Oracle’s belaboured intake of breath – she could almost taste its despair in the back of her throat; despair thick with antiquity; unwilling, or unable, for reasons known only to the Source, to die.
A realisation as bleak as those empty sockets chiselled its way to the centre of her world:
the realisation that had hung in the back of her mind since as far back as she could remember, silent but nagging; the realisation that everything she knew was a lie; a grand and pre-meditated deceit; a deceit now shattered; a deceit that she found herself unable to reassemble into anything that would allow her life to resume its once preordained path.
To question The Core’s authority was one thing, but The Oracle? Her mind shied as she realised that beyond the next rise lay questions about The Source itself.
The enormity of this brutal awakening caused an involuntary reaction from Iskandor’s own chest; a breath held longer than she could remember blew across her voice like some discordant and mutilated instrument fit only to be played at the funeral of innocence.
Except from Decaying Orbits - a work in [slow] progress.
6 comments:
Shades of Illuminati suspicions and learning all you know is wrong. The rite of passage for all whose minds are not closed by education. — by the short hairs
Keep at this work and then publish it. Have you someone to proof read?
You volunteering?
Powerful and disturbing, Pisces.
And yes, I know that slow work in progress thing... Sigh.
Yodood: The main thrust of this story is the role of the gods in our lives (on a greatly simplified level for these particular citizens of the Source).
The othere side of the coin involves a planet terraformer working for the proverbial giant corporation in a space-age athiest society dictated by Reason. I'm struggling hard to bring the two societies into orbit around one another.
Complex and yes also disturbing.-Surrealism an oracle meets the corporation
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