Random Writings, pt 1

Random writings, since I keep getting these urges to scribble but can't really think of a great story to put them in.

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The heat is pressing in on me, a lead blanket I can't quite escape. I can feel the air stirring around me, a degree or so cooler than my own body, but it doesn't relieve me, merely brushes the small hairs on my arm, making me itchy as well as pressured. I shift, a slight motion to the right, my head lolling on the pillow, eyes closed. The air smells stale and lived in, the results of being crammed elbow to elbow with a hundred other strangers who I nevertheless share something intrinsic with. But over that stale scent, canned air hissing slightly in the room, is something vaguely organic

Sweet and musky all at once, a perfume applied too liberally to truly cover the vulgarities a body will commit when stuck in one position for too long. It causes a cough, a muttered remark, but nothing too loud - for we are sleeping here, a deep slumber that ought not to be disturbed. A bit of turbulence, a bump that lifts us all and drops us, annoying in that it promises movement but fails to deliver enough to redirect the air flow. And now another scent leaks out, cigarette smoke, a cloying odor that tickles the nose awkwardly, trying to induce memories of what once was.

I am annoyed, because I cannot have a cigarette. I ache for one, a bone deep ache that cannot be satisfied on this flight, and wonder how in the hell others were lucky enough to sneak one in. I consider calling out, but all around me are the still bodies in the darkness - I can feel their pressure, so close to me. Let it not be said I am unkind enough to wake others from the tremulous respite of sleep they might have entered. Still, I long for it enough that my lungs seem to burst with the urge to inhale the toxins, so lovingly and temptingly presented in cylindrical tubes and so far from me.

The voices have faded, moved away from me, and soon I am lost to dark and disturbing dreams. I am a crow in them - no bright butterfly flitting on the winds and exploring a vibrant world of color. No, my slumbering landscape is filled with shadows, drawn by a heavy hand and smudged by a mind that does not wish to think - I have shades of gray and black, moving against each other, the difference so slight and yet I keep yearning towards the horizon, where there is one strip of what might be lighter color.

A sunrise? A new beginning to break this endless dusk that has settled on my soul and vision, I hope for it with a vague realization that this is, in fact, the first hope I ever have had. All others are mere extensions and revisions of this base hope, and none of them can come to pass without this first. I yearn towards it, but in sleep, I am unable to make progress.

Eternity and nanosecond are equal, and equally without meaning, in this shadowland we exist in. It occurs to me that none even the heat I feel is real - mere sense memory of a place and time I might have once lived in, brought to mind by the name the crew calls this ship. And so they ferry us on, in what they call the Phoenix ship, bodies whose souls are still trapped within, yearning for reincarnation. We have flown these underworld skies for years, and mere seconds.