Beyond Measure; A Toronto Short Story

The truth caught me further off than when the doctors asked

“Have you had thoughts of suicide?”

Suicide. There were no symptoms, nothing you could measure, but the look of dissatisfied boredom on my face made the doctors think I had a case of suicide. My eyes gave it away. The absence of a spark, the lack of glistening, just glazed over white spheres, lazy, drooping, kneeling over onto their sides to rest, finally. Suicide? I was sick, they thought, sick beyond any tools they had to measure with.

I imagine my decisions like hurling a curled up version of myself with strong hands as big as suns into the Earth. The impact sends grains of sand into space, my sliding and sinking never stopping. Flesh and red decorate the quick moving sands, and I shrink until bones are the only things left. The air is thin and darkness abundant. I can never collect all of myself back into myself, it’s too scattered now. Too out in the open and the wind has parts of me. The sky was a part of me, the moon was my vanity mirror but there was no vanity left and I cannot recognize myself, big or small, here and there. “But you never failed.” What happened then?

"the moon was my vanity mirror" by Ilichna Morasky

I remember “doctors” in a lab tossing a man’s parts like they were playing hot potato in a sand box. His pelvis was on display, from his naval to the shafts of his femurs. A wet formalin filled towel covered the space where his groin was supposed to be, preserving his… modesty. If the rest of him were there, would he laugh like the girls laughed, throwing his remains around? The boys fought over it, shoving each other aside. “Catch.” Snaps of latex accompanied the horsing around; nobody wanted to get their hands dirty after all. Their futures will be filled with wide eyed patients looking to them for help and answers and I laugh with the rest of him at the thought.

As naked bones I took that towel as my bandage. Following like a black cloud eons above me, Truth’s shadow nipped at my ankles as I awkwardly met people. Why were they so uncomfortable? Truth laughed. I wrapped the towel tight so they wouldn’t see me and tried not to notice their eyes avert.

“Stop fidgeting and take those f#$%ing ear phones out of your skulls.”

I wander under the hot sun, blind. My feet find sand again and the bandaging over all of me seems hard as rock. I can feel myself bubbling over inside this thing. I’m boiling water covered in rough cotton. People stop and look so sharply that I feel their stares needle me. The shell cracks open with a sound that shakes thrones. He smiles as fragments of blessings reach me as gently as snow flakes. The scorching heat and broken shells melt the sands below into rubber. The last of my bandaging falls, and I’m happy to see unblemished flesh again. Making a fist feels good again. I throw myself into the ground for kicks, bouncing high out of sight this time. “Beyond measure.” The truth was there the whole time. “Sick they thought.” As my momentum ceases, my face is grabbed midair by a black figure with blue piercing eyes and he comes in close - as if for a kiss. Death? Our visions rumble as we spiral higher sparking flames on heaven like a match. Children must be pointing at us making a wish as we streak across the sky, I imagine. “Braille” he corrects.                                                                           

"making a fist feels good again." by Jonathan Gray @JoN0

“Beyond measure” he names me,                                                                                                                                                                

                                                     before letting go, 

                                                                                                                         soar

                                                                    his       wings       as      wide      as       my      vision,                                                         

                                                                                                                                                              to see if I’ll                                        or

             sink.