|
The blue light of the girl's cell phone is all that reveals her face as it beeps for the last time. She flips it shut. Hermes is already in the room, as if he has just received the long awaited signal, slippers clattering across the stone floor as he crosses and opens the curtains. The darkness cracks to reveal a setting sun over a ruined city. "What errands have they been sending you on, Hermes?" she asks. He puts his finger to his lips. Then takes that finger and draws a long line in the dust on the floor. Sitting at the end of the line he removes his feet, sandals and all, and throws them to one side of it. He removes his ears, eyes, nose and mouth and throws them on the same side. To remove his skin he stands to take off his clothes and piles them all neatly next to the rest. He pauses for breath before his bony fingers plunge for his heart. It rests in his hand, glistening in the last light like an hourglass. It's as if the situation itself were studying it. Its slowing pumps, its symbolic appeal. He drops it. In silence he crosses over the line, draws a small circle, and walks back. He empties his head of his brain and collapses.
The girl walks around Hermes' diagram and stops at the empty circle,
wondering what about it is so still. And so full.
|
