“What did you say?” she screams. “What did you fucking say?!”
He stands back in disbelief. “I said nothing. I didn’t say a single thing.” But words are words and she thought she had heard something. Something meaningful. Something like just wait until I cast you aside or maybe can I turn you into a stranger once more? or maybe I don’t believe anything you’ve ever said.
“These words will stay with me,” she mutters, still seething. “I’ll lock them up inside of a little box. Then I’ll super glue the box shut, place the largest lock I can find around it, and I’ll eat it. I’ll swallow it so it can become part of my blood, part of the very air I breathe.”
He shrugs, still slightly taken aback. They continue walking together in silence. But they’re melting; leaving behind a gooey trail of incandescent soft lighting, painting the sidewalk behind them. Their immediate vicinity doesn’t quite know to make of it. A stout man passes by, mouth arched into an O, but he is too busy to stop and instead hurries on, darting from place to place like a purgatory ping pong ball.
The incandescent trail lays heavier and the man puts his arm around the woman and whispers, “Have you always been like this?” When he removes his head from her ear, a similar, placenta-like, incandescent cord stretches between them. It tickles slightly and she laughs, lips spreading her face. The corners of her mouth reach her eyes and suddenly that ruby red tint she held so dearly around her mouth is spreading. The form of her face is changing; her skin is stained.
And the tip of her head melts into itself like the wax of a tall candle. The substance is sticky, light, and airy like the glowing trail the two leave behind. The man is hungry, hungry from somewhere deep within, a place he cannot quite trace. He turns to her melted forehead as her mouth has stretched further, threatening to disappear past her ears, and he licks. A thick layer of her essence coats his tongue and he smacks his lips with a renewed vigor. The tenderness disappears to be replaced with something carnal. He opens his mouth, turns towards the heavens, and lets the winter snow grace his tongue. It’s not enough. He wants more. He wants her.
Her head is almost completely gone now, hanging atop the rest of her body like low hanging smoke. The man likes what he tasted. Likes it more than he knew he ever could.
“Thank you,” he says, smacking his lips. “Thank you for this.”
As he realizes his own thoughts, the final wisps of the woman float and snake their way into his mouth. He devours her as they walked steadily, marching on. She enters him completely now, her veins, arteries, and whatever becomes of her entity, the lockbox, the words, every syllable she ever said, swirling incandescent inside of him.
I’m watching this all unfold from my very own snow globe, perched on a cold, city bench as people pitter and patter around me. Smoke from exhaust pipes stands frozen in the air and the cold from the bench stains my flesh through my denim jeans. Snow is falling and the sticky couple disappears. I don’t quite know what to think of that. How much of that was even real? What now?
My hand feels like it’s sticking to the globe, but I don’t quite know for sure. What else should I be doing right now? I can stare at my face in a mirror forever but it stays the same. I still stare. And maybe when I’m done with that I’ll fall right to sleep like some kind of infant. My head will hit the pillow and I will wake up once more. Somehow, six hours have passed without any sort of self-recollection of the passing of time, I have aged without even realizing it. But I turn around on the busy, bustling street to see everybody passing through me, and I feel as though the same incandescent light drags its way into me. Everybody seems to be somebody I know or have known. Nothing but different versions of each other. And as the weather gets colder as promised, my mind moves in circles. I want to be something more, something outside of myself but perhaps I am merely that incandescent substance typing two people together and it is merely the oncoming of cold weather that propels me to end the distinguishing factors between form and the formless. These thoughts only last about a minute and I am once again brought back to the bustling life of the city. Horns and motors and excited chatter can only float into the background of my brain for so long.
As these thoughts percolate and swirl around my head like a beautifully, unreachable concoction, a man glances at me as he passes by. He wears a long, black winter coat, has a black briefcase in hand, and a shiny bald spot on the top of his head. How cold must that exposed piece of cranium be with the biting winter air paralyzing his thin flesh. He talks mildly on the cell phone glued to his ear and although he turns once around for a second glance, I will persist as nothing more than a brief imprint, a quick flash and a rapid synaptic firing. In fact, in less than twenty-four hours, his optic impression of me will blur and fade and my ghost-like afterglow will be replaced with nothing more than the feeling of me, that rosy retrospective gaze over which he has no conscious control. We will fade together in the memory of one another like the snow fluttering chaotically inside of my snow globe. But perhaps we will persist out of sheer chance and universal randomness. Forever intertwined for no reason at all.
I stand up, for good this time, lifting my snow globe over my head to smash it into oblivion on the frosty concrete. It splatters and splashes brilliantly, oozing a creamy, glowing substance onto the pavement and into the fabric of my winter boots.