Lines. Many lines; all parallel like train tracks. I see five lines in front of me. The one in the center is the brightest thing I've ever seen, glimmering like God in Heaven. Blue lines peak from the darkness separating them from their brilliant center. This reminds me of how cold I am.
Blue is associated with water. Blue is unity with cool and refreshing air. Blue washes tears of sadness into the waves of the ocean. I feel air pass over my skin, raising my flesh in ripples across my sensitive body. My fingers feel numb. I watch the light slowly filter into the brown plane that separates the lines. The center line is now consumed with blue. It must be sad.
An enormous sound in the distance crescendoes. I blink. A black dot passes from the right line, to the next, and skips across the center-click-and-HEEEAA! HEEEEAAAH! A train horn. I know it well because I've been hearing it in my dreams since before I could remember. The squeaky sound of wheels on tracks echoes through my ears.
Bird. The dot was a bird, the light is the sun, and the blue is the sky because birds fly in the air. Not all birds can fly. Judging by the chickens and the slowly depleting number of our world's penguins, the number of birds that fly will only decrease as humanity grows.
Am I a bird?
No. Of course I'm not a bird.
Then what am I?
I flex my fingers until the pads touch with another finger-my thumb. Monkeys have thumbs. But I'm not a monkey according to the vast collection of knowledge this mind possesses. If I'm not a monkey and I'm not a bird, and I don't live in the sky, but I do live in the water... Does that make me a fish?
"I'm... not a fish." My lips move and a beautiful, calming voice escapes. It is my voice. This ruins all likelihood of my being a fish. Logically, anyway. I have fingers. I am in the water. And I can speak. That, by process of elimination, makes me a human being, lying face up in the water, looking into the blue sky through a screen or filter of some sort. The planes separating the lines of blue are brown. Brown-chocolate. I like chocolate.
"I like chocolate very much!" My high voice echoes, and I am smiling. Because I like chocolate.
Brown-skin. Brown-stick. Brown-wood, grain. There is grain in the planes, and they are the same, each without name, for they are tame; not without cause, of course. It occurs to me that my mind may in fact be damaged in some way.
It is dark where I am.
Where am I?
"Where am I?" I repeat, and flex my fingers again. They are freezing. I am freezing. I am in the water, and the water is cold and brown.
Brown-shit. It smells like shit. I am in the water, and it smells like shit. I must muse on this. I sleep.
-
HEEAHH-HEEEEEAH-HEEEEee-chuck-a-dum-chuck-a-dum-chuck-a-dum-SQUEEEEE. I wake. Lines. Orange lines. The day is passing into eve. I sit up. My back pops and droplets of light brown water slither around my bare breasts and drip from my hardened nipples. I stare down the long rectangular corridor that disappears into darkness beneath the passing train. I lift my hands. They are covered with brown. Brown-shit. Yes, it smells like shit. I stand with ease.
Water runs down my body, circling my bare legs as though racing the drips back to its watery home at my ankles. I am naked. This is... unacceptable in these current conditions, being outside in the middle of what appears to be a storm drain. I look up to see a wooden bridge crossing over my uncomfortable resting place amidst the soiled trash and garbage.
I have no idea how I got here, other than the singular concept that I was born here, which is... highly improbable as I appear to be a young woman by the age of twenty-eight with ten perfectly wiggle-able toes, ten fingering fingers, two long, slender legs, a thin stomach, and two very healthy, firm breasts. My hair is golden blond, but filled with brown from the water. Brown-shit.
I smell like shit.
Shit: the composure of fecal matter left by the remains of an organism. I am an organism. There is a lot of shit here, enough to kill weak animals. Animals are organisms. I must be in a city of them. Beautiful. I am beautiful-covered in shit, but beautiful. I take a step easily enough, and then another, and another after that. I walk forward, my bare feet kicking slimy, sloshy feces through the ankle-deep water.
After leaving the shade of the bridge, I see the sky. It is still blue. Orange surrounds the body of ocean that spans the area between the tall boxes lining the storm-drain. They are buildings. Judging by the faces and figures moving back and forth across the open visions on the sides (windows, I think) they are buildings for people. Buildings with windows for people so they can see out. Are they pets, I wonder; wild beings crammed into their furnished boxes of luxury by some Lord Almighty that walks about in search of entertainment?
I see a stairway leading up to the wooden bridge. I place my hand on the pebbly concrete structure of the stairs and take the steps one at a time, following their motion. Stairs in motion along a pathway usually lead somewhere at the end of their ascension.
I'm catching on!
The sound of motor vehicles from somewhere nearby fills the air. I must be near a street. Up here it still smells like shit, but the wind carries most of it away. I look from one side of the bridge to the other. Both ways lead to alleys. Across the bridge, the path continues up another set of stairs. The right leads to where the vehicles are.
My legs take me right as I stride between the buildings. Buildings made of bricks. Two buildings next to one another create an alleyway between. All along the walls of the lower buildings I see vulgar slogans written all over the walls. Why? I shouldn't speak those words because society tells us not to.
"Because I mustn't." I speak, finding this feat rather intriguing all of a sudden. "Fuck you, asshole." My chipper girl's voice echoes between the buildings as I remember one of the statements written on the wall. I see cars getting closer as I progress through the alleyway. The gravel and broken glass hurts my feet and toes. I don't think I've ever walked on gravel or glass before.
I hear the sound of something else. It's the sound of... music! Music makes me smile. Smiling must mean that I like music. There are six notes being played all at once and it fills me with such joy and happiness as the rhythms dance in my ears.
Turning the corner to see what mystical, not to mention powerful, force this is, I see a man in a checkered red and black shirt strumming on an acoustic guitar, filling the street corner with music while the city inhabitants move on, oblivious to his talent. I walk down the sidewalk toward the man, who looks more focused on the drivers. He's smiling, and wearing a black beret on his head.
I sense a change in the atmosphere. Someone slams on their brakes in the middle of the road. I look over to see a man with very wide eyes gawking at me from the window of his truck. He's astonished that I'm not following society's laws by not wearing clothes. This is... out of the ordinary for him. His eyes follow me. I feel them peeling into my skin, searching for secrets and treasures buried there.
I keep my attention on the man in the beret. He finally sees me and does a double-take. His eyes go wide like the man's in the truck. People from every vehicle on the road are watching me move, as though the world and time has stopped. Is this... love? I don't feel any different, but the world has stopped, and that is defined as love at first sight.
