Mapping the Terrain

by Stephen Oliver

A long car, a black night, tail lights push the bulk slowly round the slow curve of a hill, and blur. An indeterminate colour like a thought suspecting itself. A CEO has just been wiped off by a diminutive PA. His mobile pulses, snaps aquamarine. A trophy home, or is that an observatory ahead? The great dome of the sky swings open but no finger, points. No electrical charge of touch, that says, "To exist is okay." The plaited lights of the city like a weave in an Aztec fabric, or heavy chest adornment thrown down in haste. Brilliant beads, trailing like a brilliant wetness of multi-colour. Abrupt as a blow to the back of the head. Death: a memorable amnesia. Somehow, it must be like that, as Arthur Koestler foresaw it, the slow and invisible thump of a drum away in the distance, felt more as pulse, than heard. Passing across chrome, the city smeared glitz as the limo stretches toward the ridge. An instant before the Fall, the point at which death was invented. God's perfect pal hurled down from the heavenly ramparts. The shattering realization of loss, whose brushed aside light, that every night, is reaching out to us still.