Jan Urban | Author

TRAGEDY OF THE CLOUD WITHIN THE EYE

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In the dusk, poised to succumb to darkness, the street emerged with its strange, filthy façades, coarse, damp, and dark. Perhaps he was the first soul to pass through it that day, planting in it his dull, faltering steps. He had not foreseen that he would have to traverse such a hostile place. Yet the street seemed to have placed itself in his path as if of its own will; it reminded him of a tunnel leading somewhere into the unknown.

The moon glared and vanished; it pressed its distant light into the sullen walls and smeared windows, which seemed perhaps even more opaque than the filthy façades. At the foot of the tall, battered buildings rose a clutter of refuse, grime, scraps, abandoned cobwebs, beads of moisture on the frames, and a rusted ladder disappearing somewhere into the earth.

He stepped forward slowly, and it seemed to him that the walls had shifted. Light appeared and then vanished again. His eyes darted over dark corners and rat nests, and he tried not to listen to those eerie, faint footsteps that, he realised, likely belonged to him. The air was thick with a dark colour, if such a thing could even exist.

In the distance, he heard a rustle. An ordinary sound, unremarkable in itself, except that it was drawing closer. From the moment he caught it, it clung to him like a tick, and that realization made him stop. Images flickered through his mind; for a moment, he wondered why he was standing there like that, alone in the middle of the street. He had the sensation of filthy rats brushing against his legs—then they came in an endless torrent.

At last, a shrivelled old cat began sniffing him, and he sensed that, driven by some deep animal instinct, it might at any moment claw out his eyes. Between these walls, something hovered, an impulse long imprisoned, bloody, tender.

Suddenly, fear swept over him. He realised he would have to turn the corner and submit to the trial of darkness. He thought he heard something—some indistinct noise—but for now, he gave it no real attention.

He turned and stepped into pitch blackness, groping towards a cold, rough wall (who could say what it truly was), bounced off it, stumbled, and nearly fell into a century-old puddle. He opened his eyes in vain. He saw nothing. Again he stepped on something (a corpse’s foot) and then his face gently sank into a great, sticky web. As he pulled the mask from his face, he was slowly emerging from the black, but it was no progress at all, for he had only entered a deeper darkness: the darkness of DARKNESS.

He heard a moan. Moans. A quiet, sorrowful cry.

He pushed through the mist and saw a figure huddled by the wall, silent, wrapped in a black veil. For a moment, his soul gave way to grief, and he couldn’t help but check whether the poor soul was even alive. But how could she not be—she was weeping.

Hesitantly, he uncovered her face, and there appeared eyes, shy, unfamiliar, the eyes of a woman in tears. A tremor of pity passed through him for this woman, yet what could he say? He stood over her in silence, watching her wounded eyes, bowing inwardly, trying to help.

A deceptive veil of moonlight appeared, and it seemed to him that in the entire world of blunt decay, there were only the two of them, he and the weeping stranger to whom he had nothing to say. And truly, are words always necessary?

He bent towards her and silently wiped the tears from her smooth cheeks. The grown girl slowly calmed, looked at him shyly, and gently took the finger with which he had gathered her tears. He noticed that she had a beautiful face, that she was a warm soul, that her eyes were so exquisite they took from him every word he had meant to say.

Why had she seized his hand with such fierceness and tenderness at once?

With her fine black hair, she was flawless. She embodied a perfect body, a perfect soul. Why was she silent? He too was unable to utter even a single word.

Their thoughts had bound them to one another. And then it came: without warning, her lips pressed against his. He was defenceless and surrendered to her. She threw herself upon him with a passion he felt rising from that mysterious unknown and entering him through the passage of their mouths. His eyes were closed, and yet he saw her before him. Questions surged: Who is she? What is her name? What does she truly want? And yet he neither wished to know, nor needed to.

She gripped him tightly, and he felt as though she embodied a serpent, a beast of sin coiling around his defenceless body. God had shaped her lips in the likeness of perfection; they were pressed to his so fiercely, it was as if she meant to draw the very life from him. And that bristling instinct, that animal urge, it was nearly tangible! Was it truly her? He had no time to think.

She released him and shoved him away. Blood on her lips, like a lustful vampire. He stood mute, like someone beaten. He touched his mouth and understood—she had bitten him, and the blood was already running down his chin. A beast in human form… Out of here, now! She is a hyena in a den of darkness!

She filled him with fear. He even thought he saw a faint smile pass across her face as he stood there, frightened, staring at his own blood. Who was she? What did she really want? He said nothing, only turned and fled, confused, from the woman, the girl, the goddess from the unknown. He glanced back once more and saw her standing there, looking after him: he hated her. He never wanted to see her again, this sinner.

At home, he sat in the dark, his thoughts caught in the folds of her veil. Somewhere, water dripped. Then came a soft knock. He opened the door.

She stood there, more beautiful than before, filled with desire and excitement. She smelled of untamed instinct, of a thousand cravings, and appeared in silence—a goddess. Her body, her beautiful body, now suddenly naked, was the most perfect creation in all of Being, in the universe, in every abstract imagining of existence. He didn’t want her; he feared her, yet he desired her. The two of them were like dried-up springs, waiting for a single drop of moisture.

He gazed at her rippling lips with reverent longing. Why had she come? In his mind, he bowed before the goddess, honoured her, revered her, loved her. They found themselves on the ground, and he, led by the deepest part of his soul, touched her fragile body with reverence. She embraced him from behind and bit into his flesh, gently, innocently, bloodily. She wrapped him in her long, sinful legs, and he breathed in the scent of her fingers, passed along her calves, over divine thighs, and felt perfect ecstasy. Her legs were smooth as a breeze, and he surrendered to that drifting sensation, the feeling that for a moment, each was God to the other.

They merged into one body and writhed in silence, without a sound, on the floor of a dark room woven with ghostly apparitions of moonlight. Suddenly, he loved her above all else, though he did not know who this creature was, where she had come from, or why she was sinking her teeth into his flesh like some wild animal thirsting for red blood…

He saw a cloud in her eyes, a shadow that, even before they fused into a single thought, had already begun to darken and deepen. Even when she bit his lip, it flickered there, and he felt a strange fear. But now his mind fell still. He was overcome by intoxication, sweet and ungovernable. Her eyes grew darker still, until at last they vanished into the black. Slowly, everything began to change. Dimensions blurred, his body became the surrounding dusk, and in truth, all of Being had gathered itself into that one room.

His thoughts abandoned him; only one feeling remained. The feeling that he was dissolving, vanishing with the goddess through the scent of red blood, drawn into a black void, a whisper, a cloud in her eye. Yes, it was a cloud filled with the universe, with thoughts, desires, visions. All that was perfect, and all that was ruined, sank into a vast, unknowable Existence and slowly, without a word, dissolved like mist upon the street.

And their universe transformed into something else once more.