A gesture drawing of Emily More would be composed of thin contour lines pressed closely together, like high elevations on a topographical map. She seemed to vibrate even while standing still over a rabid pot at boil on the stove. She had always, even as a child, been possessed of a tungsten-white energy that caused her hair to float away from her scalp, buoyed by invisible static. Her mother had called her names in bitter jest, all of them relating to her loquacity - she spurned all forms of religion, preferring in their stead her own wildness, trusting the wind, the fire & the storm.
Later, she would find comfort in alcohol, fiercely infatuated with the scourge of it down her tender insides. It was her adolescent way of externalizing her unnamed fury - violently drunk, marking her face & eyes with makeup & plunging into the crackling neon sea of the drink. She was the remainder of her mother & father's divorce, left to smoulder in the house while her mother attended fastidiously to everything in sight, preserving every room as though it were a museum. Emily left it at eighteen and never went back.
The summer was threshed by heat. The air seemed pulpy, like the meat of an orange. Experimentally, he bit into it. This was the third time since he'd burned his words that he had come back looking for it, and had still, found nothing. He persevered in seeking, however unlucky he was, possessed of a fear that he could not put a name to. The house had seemed flimsy that morning. The sunlight seemed to permeate through the walls, which had thinned overnight. Even the mice, with the comfort of their scrabbling paws against the floor, had vanished. It was as though he had gone to sleep on land and woke up underwater.
His father had gone already - and perhaps that was what it was, Adolfo thought to himself, descending the stairs. Perhaps the bulk of his father was the only thing keeping the foundations secure, perhaps his father was the personified force of gravity - perhaps, without him, they all would float into the atmosphere. The kitchen was empty as he entered it. The sunlight illuminated every mote of dust which meandered in front of the window. The humidity was cloistering, even inside. Adolfo felt like he could be pressed to microscopic implosion - pieces of him mingling with the dust. He walked from room to room, investigating, heart crashing inside of his chest - they had vanished, disappeared, and he felt a loneliness spread in his gut like a hot poison. Reason asserted itself. All he'd have to do is wait. They would return soon. In the meantime ...
He stepped over a seething pile of animal droppings. The leaves, fat & green on the trees, seemed to boil in the heat. A bird's sickly warble quavered, then fell lamely short. His footsteps were heavy with despair. He had long since taken his shirt off, tying it around his waist. Sweat dripped into his eyes, stung him, and slipped out the other side like a malevolent hornet, and yet still, through the haze, he refused to abandon his search. Perhaps it had been a sign from somewhere. It was the first time Adolfo had ever thought of omens, had picked up on the prickly feeling that something deeper lay beyond an ordinary circumstance. He felt it inside of him, a chill in the blood, an electric current diving through his brain to clench his jaw & fists.
It was also that he couldn't bear the emptiness of the house, the micro-whispers of dust accumulating. Reading was no help - he couldn't unstick his brain from the sound of the pages turning. A fly in the room, hurling itself at the ceiling over & over again, seemed monstrous, about to bring the whole house down around his head. This irrational fear gripped him every morning, and before long, slipped into the marrow of his dreams - he suffered from nightmares, thrashing in the sheets, possessed of fevered images.
(he is an old man, stumbling brokenly through the forest, bleeding from the temple & nose. he is being chased, and he is chasing. the sun is wheeling like a firework, cackling as it zips by the azimuth. the moon is in pursuit. the trees are purpled and have heartbeats, thudding faster than he can move. and his mother is sinking in a bog, her tongue cut out, her ears bleeding - he rushes to save her, but she is gone. he is sinking in the bog. the sun is a bomb that goes off. the trees shrink in the blast, shrink to skinny vertical lines and then wink out. he is in a desert. grit in his eyes, in his mouth. the horizon is a frenzy of sand, a cloud which blocks out the sun. thunder breaks the sky in half. in the darkness, a star goes nova and )
He wakes up swimming in his own sweat, dizzy, and vomits all over himself, all over the bed-sheets.
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