How I Thirst (A Short Blurb from the Eyes of Selidor)

Eyes, closed,

I stand ‘midst the night and there is a sound.

The sound of scuttling. Scurrying. Buzzing.

Legs, thousands, scraping over the skin and under the armor and in my hair and I feel them. A hundred beetles digging their way into my flesh, all whispering at once until their voices rise up in a pulsing hiss. Death watch.

You know what to watch for.

I don’t want to watch I don’t want-

-I open my eyes. I am opening my eyes. A thousand wings of a thousand insects ink up my vision make all black and clouding filmy as I fall. With a scream that is blurred out by living static, I fall, I am falling. I fall into consciousness where there is only the thick air of a crowded room on some foreign planet.

There was a celebration. A week ago? Two? ...Five? Insects- or ormigites. One or the other, dancing, laughing, chattering. Chattering and chittering and buzzing over the skin. The skin of the planet.

I don’t want to be here where nothing belongs, where the insects speak instead of buzz; but I remember. In the catacombs and in the crowns, a tingle down my spine. They call it the Arts. I call it power. It trickles through this world like a broad river.

A river, and how I thirst.

I stare at the ceiling made out of heaven knows what, and I remember. There was a celebration. There were ormigites. There was a lizard, like Lagarto. And someone who could make hallucinations visible for all.

But

there was also a doctor. A cylonquin. What did he say? His voice is being blurred out by living static. But he lead me to that river, did he not? Did he not lay the gift of violence at my feet? What matters then these trite words.

A name trickles in, blood in the water, and I must separate it. Goddamn osmosis. I must separate, and I do separate it, and I find name that is Thegix.

Ah, yes. Doctor Thegix.

Perhaps I will pay him a visit later today. And perhaps he will lead me back to that river, to that balm in Gilead.

It is still the night, and so I let my mind rise back into sleep.

I close my eyes

and let the waves of black beetles engulf me once more.