Ylem by Mehreen Ahmed
Issue 24 of Ginosko. Nominated for the 2020 Pushcart Prize.
Her name was Andromeda. She swam on satin. Silken waters lapped her in the pool. Her mind restive. Her thoughts agile, kept her occupied. They were discrete, and non-linear. Thoughts about her dreams, she swam in them, out of her depths. Just as well, they kept coming back, braided in and out, oscillating like ripples in the waves. They impeded her swim; the half-formed thoughts, writ on water’s edge, chased her inconsequential.
In the aftermath of the war, random bodies floated, under the stringy bark. Down by the river, Andromeda, spotted pale faces most peculiar. Marked with agony, of the swollen bodies, some eyes shut, but some were open. Her musings turned in a moment. She sat next to her mother on a chair. They chatted in an oval room, mother and daughter. Her mother looked fresh and young, way back, a maiden, before Andromeda was born.
She asked.”Where have you been all this time?”
“I had been out to a conference,” her mother replied.
“How did it all go?”
Her mother answered, “Very good. All was good.”
“Ah, but I missed you. I really did,” Andromeda cried.
Mother smiled. An esoteric, young smile. Father came into the room. His young, handsome face brightened with joy, a radiant smile hovered, along the curvature of his lip-line. Mother rose to offer him her chair. But father sat on a stool, looking directly at her. Her father died a long time back, she thought in retrospect. The room became dark. Over the pool, a lorikeet flew straight at her. It seemed, it was going to gouge her eyes. But the sprightly bird frolicked, and rushed passed her.
The neighbour, who like a father, died recently. She went to his funeral. And he dropped by, into her dreams when she asked him. “Have you seen God?”
“No, not yet. This, a silent place.Where am I? This present moment. Vast, and void. Space, light as air, gliding here through no air. Did I die? Am I dead?”
“No God then?” she asked.
“I don’t know where He is? He hasn’t come to meet me yet,” he responded.
“Do you miss us?” she asked.
She, in tears. In her dreams, felt surreal.
“Yes, I miss your aunty,” he answered, then he vaporised like a collapsed star.
A fusion of elements, hydrogen and helium, led to the birth of a cosmic star. The helium ran out. Star collapsed. He collapsed. She saw the neighbour, driving his car, through the suburbs of his choice. With his wife, sitting beside him, whom he referred to, as aunty. The chemicals conferred. An accident occurred. He died. Of her dreams. Finite human lives made of infinite gasses. Of the cosmos, of the elements, life perished. A dead star, Andromeda thought. The stuff of life, helium, and hydrogen, oxygen, iron and zinc, did they not live out side the death orbit?
Mountain passes were rugged. She walked through the terrain. A storm picked up, she looked for a shelter. She found a cave. In the dark cave, she sat alone. A lightening fell outside. That creepy light, opened her mind to shadows on the wall. She was not alone; somebody there. In a flash, the shadow disappeared. She was out of her wits. She tried to sleep. Just when she saw some cave paintings. On the wall, they looked ancient. And they were, ancient. In a bit, she saw a little boy. A broken charcoal in his hand. This sentient boy, stood drawing a ploy, stories such as the fall of Troy. He lit a small fire. Lights emanating from the fire helped him to see better. He drew stick figures of many shapes and sizes: tall, short, men, women and children. It was almost dark. Shape of the boy silhouetted in the moonlight. Floodlights in the dark cave. Paintings of tales, some washed up in the rain. Parts of a tale, like this painting of an alley on a rainy day. People walked through with missing hands or hair, or even defaced, in the falling rain. Colours ran down the leaves of trees, and turned them into lighter shades of green to nearly white. Such were the paintings on the dark cave walls, and some on the plains, of the hard, cold dirt. Gallows hung in a market place. Kings, commanded horrendous sacrifices. Children to be sacrificed for fertility of the soil. Little boys had to be sacrificed for a cause at the bloody altar to appease the gods. Telltale signs of ominous days ahead. The King’s men marched, and took the boy away. Off to the gallows. Off with his head. The artist, little boy, broken into shreds. In a white loincloth wrapped, around his waist, the boy’s gaping horror, his face clouded. His small hands trembled. She looked through a portal. Tears, and cries of the innocent sacrifice. No one took pity. Nothing could move, stern cosmic parameters, to repair such wounds.
She, a mere bystander, in the present, saw wistful memories, played out on a beach. The beach, a silent witness, to silken dreams, lovers entwined. Sinking sands, in waxed moonlight. Of the mandala of ephemeral dramas, a beautiful beginning clashed with an imperfect finale, the ocean licked it up, obediently. These mandalas done and redone until time had given up, played on the beach, a part of resurrection. In the hours when all became sand, indestructible, and quintessentially minuscule. An atom of waves. The H2O.
Over those swelling waves, she boarded a pirate ship. And saw a thousand vessels, a war imminent. On the horizon, a ship appeared like a phantom. A skeleton of a ship, spectacularly luminous, shone in silver. There was a gunshot fire. She was hit. Oh! It hurt! She was hurt. She felt the pain of the gunshot. But she lived. She saw ships pass by, while her own cruised safely towards the nearest beach; sea-gulls, scoured the skies. Sands, the most wondrous, where monks built castles, and played Kings and Queens. Of a greater imagination, ruled by them, the three Moirae sisters. Monks made mandalas, painstakingly large, human history and destiny pleached. Giant pyramids erected with care, and the Taj-Mahal, The great Ozymandias. The King of Kings, his life sized statue pitched on the beach. Immortalised in the scroll, the statue awash, the mandala destroyed, flattened to the ground.
The hollow sand; into the sand, she buried her legs deep to the chest. A hybrid formed of part sand and part flesh. At its best, a mermaid tail; she lay half covered under the clay. High on her imagination, her dreams displayed, decrepit old places’, windows’ deep splays. Such was the beach, on the edge of which, the tireless seas creased. Where romantics rode unicorns, nomads wild horses, Homer, churned verses, now deplete.
Time’s most precious gift, offerings to God, watched His how his altar burnt. Stars burnt out. The sun burnt. This gleaming altar made out of gold; plush gold clouds, nestled His throne. A toy boat marooned, in the middle of this aluminium plain, uncertain of directions, on this smooth surface; hot liquid gold, poured into the mould, this sea basin, replete to the brim. God’s own altar, never to erode, shimmering and sure, until pilgrims come home.
Andromeda swam, a big hand bagged a snake. There was a man in the middle of her room. He said, he was leaving. He told her so that he wanted to be born again.
“Born again?” she asked.
“Yes, that is possible,” he said.
“Impossible. Because in order for you to remain what you’re, you need genes from both parents.”
“It is possible, though,” the man said.
“What about your wife?”
“What about her?”
“Does she have a say in any of this?” she asked.
“Probably not.”
The wife loomed at large. But she didn’t seem to mind. She heard his expressive desire to die, and to be reborn. She left it at that.
On a fevered night, in one short month, the man left for a forest, of illuminated fireflies. The blue forest bright, with sprinklings of light, a pathway strewn, with ubiquitous fireflies. Around tall trees and slim short bushes, he walked alone through such a forest. This dense forest, transformed into a conduit, led the man over the horizon. A hermit of a man, who wished to die, left through this conduit, he knew so well. Reincarnation on his mind, soul in another body, stars in the sky, twinkled a smile.
There she was, this lady in white, appeared in her dream, that’s how it transpired. She had some syringes; her face, young and glowing, lips of betel juices. She stood, at the bed, and held out those syringes.
“Your mother’s injections.”
“What?”
The lady vanished. Her mother had run out of insulin and was on the brink of a disaster. The lady had come to tell her this, to ask her, if she could get her some insulin. This lady was her grandmother who had passed away some years now. The silken waters blanketed her skin. Her swimming undeterred, held by some spells. This undying chemical, once produced within her failing organ, the pancreas, now injected externally for her survival.
He had come to say goodbye. “I’ve come to say goodbye,” he smiled peacefully. She looked at him not knowing his intent. Then she realised upon waking that this man, her brother-in-law, a saintly priest had passed away. This dreamland, not entirely unreal, of sense perceptions, a world parallel. Sights sounds and smell, shaped up to be real, pain compounded a curious bend.
Disjointed thoughts came to pass. Mesmerising chimera seeped. Through a third-eye, a tantalising glimpse, she saw an enormous replica, sprung as shaded entity. Who’s to know, what’s with the truth, this wakeful life of actuality? A dream within a dream; A doll within a doll, within a doll, the full picture, off limits. That cave painting in the rain, defaced people walked the streets, the greens washed off. Waters dribbled over, a piece of tiny reality, conceived by this artist in utter antipathy.
Such fragmented cognisance, manifold layered dream, alluded to Plato’s allegory of cave theme. Half a dream, a broken thought, the unfinished story, manifested visions of a narrow reality. This palpable existence, transcended truth, hinged on puppeteers beyond familiar scope. Answered with certitude, flung within the stars, lay a larger image, the fate of the universe. Dismantle the stars, dismantle Leda, sense foreboding descended Andromeda. Flash of light, “It is the stars, The stars alone, that govern our condition,” The long and short, Shakespeare foretold.
Mehreen Ahmed is an award-winning, internationally published and critically acclaimed author. She has written Novels, Novella, Short Stories, Creative Nonfiction, Flash Fiction, Academic, Prose Poetry, Memoirs, Essays and Journalistic Write-Ups. Her books have received Author Shout Reader Ready Awards, 2019. One of her books was a Drunken Druid Editor's Choice for June, 2018 and her short story was the best of Cafelit 8 Anthology, 2019. Her works have also been nominated for prestigious awards and translated in German, Greek and Bengali. She was born and raised in Bangladesh. Currently, she lives in Australia. She published with Routledge, Cambridge University Press, (Cambridge Core), University of Hawaii, Michigan State University, University of Kent, Canterbury, The Sheaf, University of Sackachewan.The Bombay Review, Down in the Dirt Magazine multi-pronged acceptance, Portand Metrozine, Ellipsis Zine, Ginosko Literary Journal, The Cabinet of Heed, Straylight Magazine, Creativity Webzine, Mojave Heart Review, The Piker Press, Kitaab International, Nthanda Review, CommuterLit.Com, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Scarlet Leaf Review. The World of Myth Magazine, Jumbelbooks, Literary Yard, Fear and Trembling Magazine, Terror House Magazine, Connotation Press, The Punch Magazine, Re:Action Review, Furtive Dalliance Literary Review, Flash Fiction North, Velvet Illusion Literary Magazine, Storyland Literary Review, Spillwords Press, CafeLit Magazine, Story Institute, Cosmic Teapot Publishing, Clarendon House Publication, Dastaan World Magazine, Books On Demand, Germany, Your Nightmares: Nyctophilia. gr Magazine, Best Poetry: Contemporary poetry online (2019).