From the icy coffin of our full-blast-air-conditioner car, it was hard to tell that it was blazing hot outside. The molasses parade of cars stretched so impossibly far ahead of us that we'd be forgiven if we couldn't see the herse, such a small dot at the head of the procession. But no, it glowed with such a deep, black, radiant light. "How can't you see it? It is everywhere."
The sky was so clear and burning blue that those first strange clouds rolling whispily in, though stealthy, were a shock to the system when finally spotted. Something like thunder roared. Rain began on the periphery and slowly but surely became all we could see. Sight was sheets and sheets of rain and smeared car headlights for what seemed forever. The sky was a close (too close, really) ceiling of gray (almost black) clouds, roiling uneasily.
I turned the radio on. Maybe to hear a weather report, maybe to hear something other than the rain. I like rain. I love rain. But this rain sounded so wrong. Unnatural hisses and sizzles marked its impacts, and in the cacophony of white noise it produced... could I hear whispers?
"Amelia," said the voice on the radio in such a distant echo, "do not fear."
We could smell just a slight sulfurous smell as the rain began to finally, after what seemed like days, slow its pace. I know it was we because we commiserated about it.
As the inky blanket above us parted, "Really, almost boiling away from the center, wouldn't you agree, Amelia?" said the radio, we were greeted with the Eclipsed Sun.
A pool, a hole of endless black stood in the sky surrounded by eratic, red, electric flames. And the sky purpled like a bruise.
Gripping the wheel tightly, I tried to focus on the road. But there is something in the backseat. There is something I feel so indentified with.
We drove on in silence forever, myself and the thing in the backseat. The Eclipsed Sun blazed with cold heat over everything. Thruming with indecent radiation, the violent inkblot stared at us, at me.
Along the side of the road, the rolling hills gave way suddenly to desert. Cracked earth spread everywhere and strange twisted cacti, like saguaro, but thinner, taller, meaner, blacker stretched into the sky. I could feel them pricking me even inside my car, so removed from their murderous looking needles. I could feel them pricking my mind, stigmatizing my hands and feet. "Get off that cross," sang the radio, "we can use the wood."
The Eclipsed Sun was like a closed eye. And then The Sun behind The Moon flickerd out and the eye opened.
The Moon looked into my soul.
The Moon asked me a question, but I can't repeat it here.
I would not answer.
The Moon asked again.
I could not answer.
The earth began to blacken and crack as those not-saguaros seemed to dig into it. From the cracks billowed a rancid smoke and as the smoke cleared, small, black, thin things began to grow rapidly from the cracks. They grew like vines, but it was soon clear they were more like tentacles.
The endless line of sap-flow that was the procession did not seem to respond, but I was suddenly gripped with an all consuming fear. I knew they were coming for me.
"Give in?" asked the radio while The Moon still stared deep into me and watched for my answer to its own question to bubble to the surface of my boiling insides.
There was nothing for it.
I jerked the wheel suddenly to the side and the car went barreling through the charred landscape. The black tentacle things matched my increased velocity, an ocean of spindly, slimy worms now following me as if magnetized. I swerved to avoid hitting a not-saguaro. The front driver's side tire thumped on a rock and I lost the wheel just for a moment, braked hard in panic, and then the ink trails came pouring on to the car. I floored it, and the car was doing doughnuts on the cracked, black earth. This did manage to break the tentacles hold. I began to speed away, not letting up on the gas even a little.
"And time goes by," sang the radio, "so slowly."
As my mind came back to me from the world of adrenal thumping in my temple, I could see that I had lost the tenatcles. I began to let off the gas. The desert was giving way to chaparral, yet it was still a bit more blackened looking than one might like. I came to rest at the gently sloping end of a large cuesta. At the top I could see a knobby, bare tree whose branches made a great thorny canopy over the peak. The Moon still asked its question, still squirmed through my guts looking for my reply. The radio said, "weeeooookrrrrrrkkssss."
I unbuckled and exited the car. The Moon The Moon The Moon still asking still asking still asking. I went to the back driver's side door and pulled the box from the seat. All this time it had felt so heavy in the backseat, but when I lifted it, it was so light, like nothing.
I climbed the soft slope the the tune of The questioning Moon. In the shadow of the knobby tree I found the hole already dug, a shovel in the mound of dirt by its side.
I looked out over the cliffside at the vast, rocky terrain below. In this crater, lay the endless body of a Dead God, it's many eyes glassy and blank, but clearly oriented in a stare toward The Moon. The question of The Moon had eaten away at parts, and preserved others. Oh to stay there and study the Dead God, to unravel its mysteries. The temptation, I'm sure, of anyone who stood where I am standing now. And which would be better? To live here in infinite archeology, scholarship of The Remains? To become a physician and attempt resuscitation? To leave this place and never return; never speak of the Unspeakable scene again?
I looked back toward the procession. It was such a thin line from this vantage, but endless. In each direction its extent was endless. No begining or end could be glimpsed, even from these heights. I looked back to the Dead God.
"I cannot burry the God," I thought, "but I can burry this." And looked to the box in my hands.
As I placed the box in the hole, I felt that weight I had felt in the backseat again for just a moment. Not a weight that would cause me to drop the box, but one that would cause it to fall into me endlessly.
I let it go.
It took a long time to burry the box. I was exhausted and the dirt was hard. And I was not as eager to be done as I might like. I was not so eager to live in the world without the box.
When I finally finished, I began to walk back to the car, and The Moon resumed its interrogation. I slid into the driver's seat and turned the key.
The radio said:
"We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a special report. Life is endless, but lives are not. To everything is a season and ours is the season of Sisyphus. But even Sisyphus is a story and stories move in finite circles."
I drove slowly through the charred landscape and saw that little tufts of dry grasses had begun to poke their way out through the seams of the earth. For a moment I thought I perceived their connections below, the rhizome spead throughout everything I could see or imagine. I wondered what this meant to the question of The Moon. For the first time in eternity, I smiled.
When I arrived again at the procession, I waited patiently. It did not take long to be let back in. This was a movement toward equilibrium, after all.
The procession moved imperceptibly, and my car along with it, A Glow still overhead, questioning.
I looked up and watched The Moon.