A Man's Mind's Journey

A moment in the conscious life of an unknown man

His middle toe curled over as the snow white knuckles of his right foot jutted out against the dry leather of his two year-old penny loafer. The polished, gripless rubber of the shoes marked a single streak against the linoleum as his body swayed around and back to the tune of the harps and bells that played in the inner levels of his consciousness. The music climbed his heart like a ladder, extending from the uncut nails of his fat, misshapen toes to the knotted hair that fell against the sides of his shoulders. Back and forth. Twisting his knee to propell himself out against the limitless darkness around. The creases of his eyelids shut against one another with a light pressing force. The bells danced around octaves, changing in meter with every passing second while the harp shook itself into a double as if the source of the sound was squinting its eyes at the instrument. The bells were an uncomfortable embrace between the demons that ran rampant around the smooth caverns of his mind and the joy that laced the shape of his skull like layers and layers of picnic blankets fluttering in the hot wind, making their slow decent like sunkissed parachutes. Focused and elated, he listened. In listening, the focus spead to his eyes still lightly shut. He saw a pool of glistening green confetti creatures spinning around the bottom left of his mind. They sang out in low droning harmonies that pushed them around and around, spinning in more directions than exist in the third dimensional realm. Time was a direction, a separate course for the creatures to move and expand. They danced and danced until they grew larger and stranger, first becoming kidney shapes, skinny on top and fat on the bottom. Then suddenly, but not suprisingly, bumpy spheres. Each bump remained green, like that of a manacured sports field against a soft blue sky while the spheres changed in nature. Strobing and flashing the deep oranges and reds of sunsets that graze like cattle for hours above the world of men. They grew and grew, shaking and strobing all the while until they filled the whole space behind his eyelids. Once the black of his closed eyes was eradicated, he saw only orange, with waves that slapped the orange base with changing force like a tide that was neither low nor high at any and every moment. And as the orange ocean consumed his mind, the harp return. First softly, creeping delicately like a toddler in socks tapping her feet over wooden floors. The music rose in pitch until it matched the orange waves that swirled without end and he realized that this ocean was the producer of the harp, and the green confetti creatures he had almost forgotten were the producers of the bells that now returned with expanding variety in pitch and tone. In that moment, when the bells and harp came together in peaceful congregation, he understood his vision. All at once he pulled back his cheeks to create a smile that radiated in orange waves and green confetti from the smallest atom in his heart to the white walls that surrounded him. And in the final gesture of the life he now left behind, he opened his eyes, and the smile remained. His brown shoes reached a halt as the man looked down to find a pattern of black and grey streaks, painting the white floors in beatiful twists and turns that came together in a random symbol that represented the ending of his journey.

Reviews

[Meat of Dog]

I liked your descriptions right off the bat. It took a little bit to realize what was happening but I wasn’t worried about it. I usually like to get right into it but I was enjoying forming a mental image. “As if the source of the sound was squinting its eyes at the instrument.” I really liked this a lot, very original. This is a cool little snippet. It feels like an excerpt, a story that could easily be extended into a longer one and the mysteriousness of it left me wanting to know more about him!

Suggestions:
“linolium as his” Linoleum.
“his conciousness" Consciousness.
“ran rampent around” Rampant.
“seperate course for” Separate.
“todler in socks” Toddler.