Listen to me read “The Technician Has Eyes Of Deepest Blue”
Podcast music via http://www.freesfx.co.uk/music/
The technician has eyes of deepest blue.
I notice them as she leans over me. Feel her brush against my cheek, the crimson flush rising on the surface of my skin
“Just a tiny prick, okay?” she says.
I nod “Uh-huh” but I am already lost, remembering a deeper blue I saw once.
“You’ll see stars soon” she smiles.
At least I think that’s what she says.
“What a peculiar thing for a dentist to say”, the last thought I have.
Because I fall then, into the blue. Spiraling down towards the center of something.
And there are stars.
In the deep blue, as it turns to black, I catch sight of them as I spin in the center of a pinwheel.
Mythical names I have long forgotten, names I can never recall at will, suddenly known, all their strangeness lost.
Cassiopeia. Circinus. Pegasus. Andromeda.
Galaxies and constellations in a universe that is infinite.
And I had not known it was possible to feel it. To feel the expansion into … well, into what exactly? Infinity?
It spins. Or so it feels. Generating a force that pushes everything outwards into the blue.
And I float on with it.
Then upwards into a dazzle of white, the colours splintering in a spectrum flash.
“Mr Andrews? Mr Andrews?”
“Uh-huh…. Uh-huh…”
She pulls me up into the light towards a garble of voices and chattering and sound.
Towards a radio blaring in some corner of the room. Fervent voices raised in argument.
“In a healthy democracy there would be space for all opinions to be considered.”
And I nod.
“Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”
Even though I understand now, that those voices are so tiny in the dark, are so easily lost amid the blue, where it is deepest.
She leans towards me, and there is something there, some hint of something. Concern?
“Mr Andrews? Hello there!”
“Cassiopeia” I say to her.
She laughs “It’ll take a while for the anaesthetic to wear off.”
And if I could reach out towards her, if I could touch her, I would.
But she steps aside and seems to disintegrate into the white, white light of the room.
Which spins a little still, and makes my head throb.
In the corner the radio plays on. A happy tune that dances towards the stars.
You can also listen to John Severity read this story over at the Mash Stories Soundcloud podcast
——————————————————————————————————————-
This story was written for the second Mash Stories competition. A competition for which I am one of the current readers and jury members.
The competition challenges writers to produce a story of 500 words or less using a set of three randomly generated words.
For this competition the words were: Andromeda – Dentist – Democracy.
My story was written as a just for kicks example.
