Writing: Moment in Time -Traveller

I walked with a lackadaisical sense of urgency, my stride almost flowing beneath me across a river of black molasses. My steps felt as if they had no direction, yet each foot wanted to move in a hundred directions as once, the contradiction pulling me apart and suffocating me with each footfall. My mind darkened by the passing clouds, each one staring angrily down from the sky, threatening the jacketless with a sudden clap of thunder. I wander aimlessly, yet have a destination, though I don't exactly know where I'm going. A man with a beard that starts somewhere below his eyebrows demands something of me, suspicion in his piggish eyes. I can't quite make out what he wants, but I manage to satisfy him as I fumble with something in my hands. He imperiously points for me to keep moving and woman with a black eye and dressed in ice glares at me through a doorway. I'm scared to move, but something tells me I should or the frozen witch before me or the bearded pig behind will attack me for indecision. I step forward through the door, an eerie feeling coursing through every fiber of my being, and the feeling suddenly snapping the slow flow of my step into the rapids, as I am hurried and pushed down a never-ending hallway where people in suits wait like gargoyles every few feet.

My mind still refuses to illuminate the world around me, the darkness washing over and over the world. One of the gargoyles, a small man with an unimpressive chin that he covered in coarse, scraggly hairs, rises from his perch and calls to me, almost pleading me to come to him. My body freezes at his call, the blood chilling as it churns through my veins. My skin grows hot, sweat forming instantly on desert-dry skin. My mind struggles to understand what he is screeching, fumbling clumsily with each word, like a young child trying to build a tower of blocks only to watch them fall after only a few of them rise. Unlike the semi-joy a child would get from that fall, I close my eyes, fighting back sea-salt tears. A hot breath on my neck startles me and I feel myself scream, yet no sound is uttered. The wiry gargoyle is only inches from me, pawing at me; demanding something of me, but I can just stare at him in abject horror. He begins pushing me towards another door, a door which could hold heaven or hell, judging by the people walking through it. Pedophile and preacher, Scholar and terrorist, demon and angel. The lines blurred as each hides behind cellphones and newspapers, keeping the illusion even as they pass through the gates to what may be Hades.

My eyes were closed the entire time he moved me. His hands, I noticed, lacked the blood-drenched claws one normally see's on gargoyles, and that comforted me somewhat. I feel my body slide through the doorway, moving like sap flowing down a tree. My steps once again become languorous, stepping carefully, testing each step, yet taking each step with blinding confidence. Another doorway stands before me, smaller yet seeming to have a message that says that behind it I will finally go where I am going to. Stepping gratefully through that portcullis, A wave of cool air overtakes me. I feel my body go weightless, almost like I was in space. The cool air raising me like a balloon that lost its way from some now-crying child. So refreshing is the sensation, I don't feel the tug and gentle guidance from a steady hand down a small corridor, until I am forcefully thrown to the ground, my euphoria popped not unlike that adventurous balloon when it climbed too high to say hello to the moon.

Tiny pebbles peak up out of an ocean of blues and grays. I notice some covered in seaweeds of different shades and hues, but I'm strangely not afraid to be lost in this ocean. Looking around, I see the sky below me and the ocean ahead of me, though I do struggle to correct myself that the ocean is below and the sky is above. Satisfied that I have it correct, though I no longer remember nor care what I had corrected myself on, I lean back and let the calm waters envelope me, blissfully uncaring of the demon floating to my right, whispering, babbling disgusting, evil temptations into my ear. His breath, so fowl the very water and air part to let it by so they don't get touched, wraps around my neck. His tongue, forked and flicking against my now frozen skin, hisses and cajoles me, demanding I do something terrible. I shut my eyes tighter, the blood and light floating in front of me in that awful darkness, but better my own darkness than his. I hear myself say something, but to this day I could not tell anyone what I said, and my words, forming a sword from St. Gabriel himself, stabs the demon in the very core. Staggering back, his hand swinging skyward, almost pleading to God to forgive him, he goes limp and slides below the iron-blue tide.

I cant remember much else from that ocean, sadly, but once the demon was vanquished, I sank below the waves myself, feeling my eyes close and when I opened them again, I was back on land surrounded by golden statues that made me remember the ages of gold when Gods were cast in molten gold and cooled as to harden them eternally against time. The fog was thick, though, so I could not tell where I was going, but I walked with a determination, slowly and with steps that took twelve lifetimes each to land. I survived much today, I heard myself say as I cut through the fog and watched it fall to the ground writhing like a beached eel. I snap my fingers and give a startled exclamation which had to have scared the most closest statues because they suddenly became a cast of tragedy and comedy masks. Reaching into a pocket, I pull out a red shell and raise it to my lips. Feeling them fall down my throat and swim within my blood, I imagine I am smiling, though I am no longer sure why I would be smiling. Taking on a mask of supreme indifference to the beautiful statues around me, I continue to struggle through the swamp, my feet like lead in the murky ichor below me.