The strange last journey of an old man from this life.
Somewhere between waking and sleeping on our journey towards the unfathomable deep, there comes a thin moment where we have one foot in the waking world and the other is in that other world where we relinquish conscious control.
Pausing here and straddled between two planets that drive one another like gears, the attentive traveler will notice a narrow door only wide enough to sidle through.
This is the border of sleep, where imagination and reality are braided together, a chasm in the crust of consciousness, venting the hot pumice of imagery into the irresistible magma of narrative.
Welcome to episode 38 of Stories from the Borders of Sleep, a semi regular podcast of curious tales from bordersofsleep.com featuring original stories by your host, Seymour Jacklin.
You can visit bordersofsleep.com for more information or to leave some feedback, or you can find us on Facebook if you search for Stories from the Borders of Sleep.
Artwork is by Robin Trainor, production by Tim Wiles, and the soundtrack for this week's episode is from Journey into Subconscious by Satori, and that's available from magnitude.com you can also get this podcast on itunes.
So if you're ready to journey with me, then I shall begin.
Mortal Uncoil By Seymour Jacklin near the equator, the midday sun is not fit for breathing beings.
In temperate places the darkness of midnight covers the witching hour, but here, in the heat of the sun at its zenith, the veil flickers like the lines of a mirage.
CD is sitting like a scorched piece of old driftwood outside his hut in the yellow hot sun, washed dust, and the long road goes straight by, dissolving at the quicksilver horizon where the air has melted.
Even the flies with their mineral bodies are still.
But something moves out there at the edge of vision, seeming to come and go but steadily coming along the road, a perpendicular black scratch.
He's narrowing his eyes at the figure, like an old lion on the savannah.
His white hair halos his dark face like a mane and startles out like leaping flames.
He watches the figure.
The shape is unresolved, but it comes on.
Minutes pass.
The only change that marks the time is the irresistible movement of that shadow on the road, its rhythm, for it seems to walk with a stalking step.
Soon as we might understand soon to mean next week, or in a few moments it will be close.
Sidhe looks down at the scatter of scratched shells and bones between his feet.