| The Wound |  |
| by Christopher Woods | |
| This story first appeared in Chris's collection, Under a Riverbed Sky, published by Panther Creek Press. | |
Illustration by Jeff Crouch. Jeff Crouch is an internet artist in Grand Prairie , Texas. His graphic work has appeared on various and sundry sites on the internet. Google "Jeff Crouch" to find more of his work. |
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You’ve kept it bandaged properly
all day and into the night. Not to protect it, or to be socially responsible,
but to hide it. From them. The wound has knowledge others want.
Now, beneath the late night lamp, the wind singing out the window, you
unwrap it. The bandage unfolds slowly, like memory flayed. That done,
you see it clearly. With two fingers you pry it open afresh. You ignore
the new blood and peer inside. You can see the passage, even glimmers
of light visible from the other side.
Slowly, with utmost care, you begin crawling, pushing,
never stopping to consider the impossibility of it, to climb inside oneself.
If you stop to think about it, you know the magic will evaporate. You
pass through the red forest, beneath the white mountain range, obsessed
with the concept of beyond.
By the time you stop to rest you are already in another
country. In a town, in fact. You wander the streets which are filled people
carrying balloons. Music in the air. A fair of sorts, though you have
no idea what is being celebrated.
In any case, you do not feel a need to be part of
the festivities. At random, you select a building and go inside. Climb
what seems like endless spiral staircases until you feel you have finally
escaped the noises below. You open a door and find yourself standing in
an office. Desks, files, many machines. You find what you are looking
for, a desk where a man sits, playing with a scab on his arm. You watch
as he pulls it off, then holds his own wound for you to see. You do see
it, the unbearable sadness, in his eyes. You have seen it in your own
eyes.
You feel an unspoken kinship with him. So it does
not surprise you when he pries his old wound open with a shiny brass letter
opener. You step forward to see it more clearly. He is making the passage
clear. All you need to do is to decide if you want to continue the journey
alone, or if you want to take the man along with you.
You search his eyes for trust. It’s there or
not, in one person or another, one town to the next. It can make all the
difference in the world. Trusting, yes or no.
You finally decide he cannot be trusted. It’s nothing more that
intuition, but it is strong. You back away as he begins to crawl inside
his own wound. In seconds, he’s gone.
You sit down in the chair at his desk. You begin shuffling unfamiliar
papers in an unknown language. You attempt to appear proper and professional.
But you cannot ignore the letter opener left there with blood on the tip.
You pick it up and run it along your arm. It grazes
the skin so gracefully. Then, as though it had a mind all its own, the
letter opener dives into the flesh. You pry open the new wound, see a
dim light in the distance. Through another red forest, over the next white
mountain range. Always a promise of a civilized world. Beyond. Always
seeming closer than it is in reality. Than it can be.
But a slim hope is better than none. You bend over.
You go head first.
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