“Then you crave to abandon this vile world. “ Her words were starting to make sense. Death comes when you start to savor your extraordinary existence in this unscrupulous universe,” I remembered the rare times when my mother interrupted the fatal ritual that would lead her to the indefinable dimension.
“What was she thinking?” There were sudden strokes of violet in the darkness.
“Purple, huh?” My feet could not feel the sticky grass.
“I… ca...aaan… see...eee...the… purrr...ple… flamesss…” I could hear the sound of my neck being pierced by the violent monster.
“Mmm...o...o...mmm,” I entered to the realm of eternal agonies. This was only the beginning of my torture.
“Are you punishing me, mom?” How morbid was I by witnessing with sheer interest the end of my mother’s culmination of life. My eyes fixated on the purple flames covering my mother’s naked body. Her long brown hair was the first thing to disappear from the face of this earth as the flames consumed it. I had never noticed the moles on my mother’s scalp. “Mother is beautiful,” I couldn’t contain my youthful curiosity. I leaned over.
“Mother, the universe is your face and the stars are your freckles.”
When I was about to caress my mother’s velvety speckled face, the purple flames grew gigantic. Despite the heat, I was freezing. My mother’s body was deteriorating. Crystal ashes emanated from the purple gelid flames.
“Mother is chaotically beautiful.” The boreal ashes were surrounding my elfin body. This was the first time that I had felt loved by someone.
This metamorphosis is still the pinnacle of my life. Mother ceased to exist in this irrational universe, and I accepted the vicissitudes of inhabiting this illogical cosmos. The Ancient transfers their wisdom to Innocence, but its gifts always come with a gruesome price.
As soon as my mother’s remains disappeared, a wild strawberry appeared where her body once was. When I ate the strawberry, I felt a sudden sharp pain within my eyes. I heard the blood gushing out of my eyes.
No one heard me. I lived in the secluded part of the damned forest. Treacherous and lost souls inhabited that fiendish forest. It was forbidden to adventure into its dark core. If one dares to enter, it was the duty of humankind to kill them. It was a sacred taboo that maintained the expected order between the Uncanny and the Ordinary. Creatures and humans are not meant to be together, because it would be chaos. “Chaos is beauty.”
I have always remembered my mother’s death as a work of art, because it was the last thing I saw. It was 2:37 am when I went blind.
Ana Valle
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