The Temple in the Sky, Fernando Herrera Jr [the rosie project .txt] 📗

it could, snapping its jaw and missing Apaec’s feet by an inch. They flew for another two miles until they made it safely to shore: a hot sunny beach of the finest of white sands. Apaec ripped off his winter garments because he didn’t like how they fell when wet, and fell ill to the sand. The bird waddled away into the thick vegetation of the land, but before it was out of sight, it turned its big, orange beak to the boy, snapped it in a sort of “vengeance,” and disappeared. The creature could have easily fed upon the boy, but for unknown reasons, a snap of his beak was its revenge for the feathers it had lost by Apaec’s plucking snaffles. The boy was vanquished.

9
The Magical Fruit for Reverie

Apaec took this opportunity to re-capacitate from his ill-assorted condition. He had endured the drastic changes of atmospheric pressure and temperature, along with the extreme thirst, the vicious hunger, and the deep despair of remote seclusion. Even though he was young and vigorous, and boon of a great physical form, it was still a miracle he had come out of it alive. He collapsed on the white, sandy beach underneath a branchy tree, which blocked him form the heavy sunlight, and then fell asleep. Two hours later, he awoke to find a mysterious world. His stomach rumbled as he realized it had been days since that delicious black-panther breakfast. Therefore, he blazed his path into a labyrinth of immense trees and colorful flora in search of something to eat. The timberland seemed to unbelievably radiate with luminosity of its own, almost simulating sublimation. It was an extravagant caricature of the forests of earth. Far towards the horizon, globular hills of golden wheat could bee seen, and they really were golden. The place seemed so barren, even the dirt didn’t seem dirty. The woodland ahead was green and mossy with undergrowth shrubbery that was roofed by a massive carpet of fog that blinded him of his immediate forefront; but he continued, nevertheless, encouraged by his provocative appetite. As misty as it was amidst, some spotted dome tops of abnormally sized mushrooms peaked out ahead, and their blue dapples radiated the implausible impression of glow. Around them were vast weaves of odd looking trees that tangled in quilts of cute little ringlets. They comfortably sheltered some pink colored creatures that bounced about the carpet of murk. The invisible birds chirped rather tamely as if harmonizing with the billows of green fireflies that whirled just about. It was soothingly damp and cool, and a soggy, pine-like aroma suffused the mood. What peculiar enchanting woodland of the odd. Could this be heaven? He pondered. Nah-it’s much too dark. After hiking many miles deep into the labyrinth of the murky woods, he ran into a mysterious cabin, completely dark, seemingly abandoned, ancient looking of dark rotting-wood and dingy cracking-windowpanes. The trees around the forest were so thick; they modified the daylight into dark-night: the woods were practically as dark as night. He stepped up to the first window and peeked inside, squinting for a better look. It appeared to have been ransacked by rampant apes. No righteous person could call such a wreck home. But he considered it, at least for the day, a place where he could rest at peace and recuperate. Therefore, he stepped onto the small broken porch, creaking the soggy wooden floor, taking the rusty handle and softly pushing it, whilst noticing moisture on the door. He touched it. It was cool. His fingers were stained red. It was fresh blood. Whoever or whatever it belonged to couldn’t be too far. Dead or alive, the blood was fresh and the wounded or moribund creature would surely be near. He dare not step inside. The bloody creature might be in there, might be hostile, might be hungry, might be big, regardless if it needs my help or not. He didn’t know what to expect but he didn’t want to find out. Thence, he stepped away cautiously, slowly, backwards, tripping on the steps and falling onto a puddle of cold mud [plop!]. He was terrified because he instantly (naturally) assumed it was blood; so he let out a moan, a moan which he silenced immediately with his hands. He squirmed in fright, muffling the sound as he could, gagging, as he always did when beholding the bodily red-fluid. If all that hadn’t been enough to shoo him off, to his left, he noticed rising smoke. A fire had been extinguished not too long ago. He looked over to the cabin, whence a bellowing, roaring, ape-like moan, amidst a long gnarly-growl was heard from inside; likewise, amidst rumbles of smacking and cracking of wood and breaking glass. Someone or something chilling was definitely aware of his snoops. He moaned once more in utter terror and ran away from the scene with all his fright. He clearly heard a door that swung violently behind him with a piercing thwack. He ran fast, never looking back, stumbling in blunders, tripping to the turf, immediately standing and continuing his race until his heart began to ache. He then slowed. His knees, face, elbows and limbs, all scratched and bruised (slightly bleeding) from his little mishaps. He began to scan the area around and found a small cave that had been carved into a monstrous tree: an accommodating cave where he sat and rested silently, trembling in dread. He listened for that unknown creature, but the woodland was loud with twitters and grumbles of its own: crickets, hooting birds, amongst miscellaneous chaotic sounds; all of which pulsated intensely at his eardrums. After a while, once regaining somewhat of composure, he decided to continue. He walked for miles, finding an auburn, flowering bush, which thrived of mauve and crimson, anomalous emerging fruits. It was an inviting glow. They were spherical, prickly, temptingly glowing (literally), and they radiated so marvelously against the auburn leaves. Clearly, they stood out form the jumble of the enveloping umber-green foliage. “Magic fruit,” he mumbled as he picked one of them, peeled the skin, and devoured it savagely without prudence. It was the single most delicious thing he had ever put in his mouth. It dissolved easily and melted into the stoma of his tongue. It was so tart, so sour, so sweet, and so juicy. Furthermore distinctly: electrically stimulating: bliss, considering his lavish appetite. A vibrating tingle enveloped his mouth and his taste buds were electrically stimulated. It excited his nerves, casing them to palpitate and burst with a tiny voltage which prickled along his spinal column and up into his cerebrum. He was entranced in a sheer moment of euphoria. Moments later, he found himself glaring at the forest roof of intertwining branches which spun rapidly before his own eyes. He felt lightheaded and woozy as his body began to itch profusely, and big red hives arose on every inch of his bristle, teenage frame. He fell to the ground, shivering in an entranced state of delusion that had been triggered by the hallucinogenic, electrical toxin of the orphic fruit. He began to imagine, beguilingly, hexed by the luscious poison, dream after wicked dream as he doze unconscious from his milieu for three evocative hours, and perhaps more; and out of the chaotic confusion of the thick, muddled bizarreness of dreams, there was one single delusion that was enthrallingly sufficient to perpetually inhabit the turmoil of his memories. Within it, he lay against a familiar dripping wall, yet again, contained by an engaging dark-chamber of false virtue: cool with an unperturbed ambiance and fragrance. His left hand held by his left-behind friend Micay, who in a bewildered manner, pointed outwards and spoke so reverberating: “So long my beloved friend… I have appeared in your thoughts merely to orate to you of your eloquent quest for the clandestine.”
“Micay! It is you! Oh, how I have missed you! Touch me lover. Hold me in your arms…”
“Do not come any closer, fiend! Look at the walls: they are sodden of barren, hydrating waters.”
“Micay?”
“Look again: the single egress, and beyond it… the white panther awaits in the secret pentagon-portico of elevated beams. Look once more: cerulean-blazing-pinnacles transversally placed along an abysmal spiral-stairway of shimmering white-pebbles. Alluring, is it not? Go on inquisitive child, take a look; abscond your placate status, cease your due omnipotence, and follow the effervescent white-cat; thrill your erroneous pious zeal for the unknown and oblige your covets, my love, for this is your only chance. Grasp it; it is your own keep.” Obedient, he did as the girl said: exited to the engaging juxtaposed-trail of the indefinite stairway. He did turn back to adieu, but the girl’s dark eyes grew irate in tears which spilled whence sating her sockets. She held her arm out to him and spoke in lament, “Curiosity killed the cat nine times. Did you know? I will witness opprobrium on behalf of your absence. I will experience vicissitudes to my entity and ultimately grapple with imprisonment, on behalf of your absence. I assure you, the garden of forking trails is not the rapture which you seek. Please, I beseech to you: do return. Do not disappear from my incorrigible world! For you, my love, you are the one, the only, and all that tames my contentment. Can you not perceive it? I am irrevocably in love with you, beautiful boy; so I beg you furthermore, do not ever more despair my forlorn soul.” She fulfilled her terms as a monstrous body of water violently shattered down upon her frame and washed her away in disintegration and fusion with the exploding waters. He ran to the twirling stairway and followed the white cat down. He was led all the way to the foundations where amidst a puddle of blood, a headless body of a boy lay supine; beside it, the head of his friend Khuno glaring up at him with lifeless blood-shot eyes. Subsequently, he fiercely awoke in horrendous disarray. For years to come, that dire reverie would prove to incite the haunting of his most precious memories.
That was odd—senseless! What is the meaning f all this? Lord? How and when did Micay get so weird? What in the world just happened? He thought terribly distraught from the strange episodic nightmares. He was in awful shape because the intoxicating inebriation was still polluting his mind. For that reason, the forest appeared magically vivid and enchanting with lurid, rich and intense but false colors. Despite the fact that he was still hallucinating, he was well aware of his surroundings, so he walked miles after miles in the dark murky-forest, until he eventually came upon a fierce river of rapid currents he dare not cross. Instead, he followed it up-stream by the riverbed, trudging for a few more miles as the forest seemingly became friendlier. The dark thick-foliage became thinner and lighter, and the previous heavy blanket of fog which had blinded him from his forefront became more of a radiant mist that allowed him to perceive the more distant of settings. The light from the sun was then able to flicker through the apertures of the branches and leaves. It’s beautiful, he thought.


10
The Last Socialist Town of Pippolas

Moments later, sometime around noon, a teenage girl sat upon her flannel suited bed with pooling tears that satiated her sensitive sockets. She wished for a better room, for a better house, a better family, and perhaps a better time. She wished that her adored grandfather wouldn’t have had to take the place of her unknown father. She wished she had known her parents and that her baby brother would have grown up to inhabit the empty little-room upstairs. She wished to somehow recuperate the doomed naïveté that had been copped by a languished vitiate goat of inamorato. Besides the crushing solitude that besieged her,