DEEPSTARIA // EXCERPT

DEEPSTARIA

1:

Blue, Orange, Ribbon, Linen, Lamb, Formula, Soap, Interest, Revoke, Toast

The second time he is born, he can feel water inside of his nose. It’s the first sensation that becomes real to him, that it’s cold and bitter. Then he becomes slowly, and groggily, aware of the flesh - sensations down arms, down legs, the tingling of nerve endings in the tips of fingers. The water is sliding off of skin, foaming around his edges and curves and the corner of a mouth which must be his because it is full of salt. He becomes dimly aware of noises, muffled as if from afar - voices, firm and faraway, and the unnatural, mechanical beeping of machines.

He thinks that he must be in the ocean, something he can see through eyelids he cannot open, a sensation that feels like home. There is a dark, infinite blueness, the whispering brush of sea anemones, the gentle flail of ropey seaweed coursing back and forth in a serene current. This is very far beneath the ocean, where black trenches bore the home of tethered lights and whiskered bottom-crawlers. Electric eels with swerving yellow eyes thread the needle through the porous architectures of the reefs, and octopi pull themselves through grainy shell-choked sands, flowering their sticky feelers. From above, a shoal of hammerheads leave slithering shadows over the colorful coral. Soon, the wildlife will taper into barren underwater deserts and rocky ravines, where the silence is a thick, waterful one you will never hear. But he hears it. He sleeps in it, like a fetus wrapped in its’ mothers womb. He feels the presence of the jellyfish undulating through the darkness, like pale clouds of thin skin, like veined lamps. He feels brothers and sisters and sleep.

And then, his eyes are pried open, and the sensation is broken as abruptly as the sterile white light that floods violently through his vision. The water is suddenly warm and thick, the hot salt flooding out of his nose and streaming over his lips - he feels the swell of his chest as he breathes in the taste, tepid air flushing over wet skin as if he has never been touched by it before. It burns, raw and vital, inside of his lungs. There is an abrupt awareness of tubes, of artificial veins and plastic siphons, binding him to this glass womb, this metal sarcophagus. Feeding things into him, taking things out.

Though his eyes are open, they sting beneath a film of tears, the fluorescent lights above him like the blotchy eyes of some giant, bright beast. The voices come in pieces and patches between the dialing of medical equipment.

He catches: “Nuclear, mountain…” (...) “Pulse is at forty-five…fifty…leading steady.” (...) “...formula, soap, interest…” “Brain wave frequency stabilizing, three hertz and updating.” (...) “- stimulated by triggers, might need -” “- lymphatic system complete shutdown per protocol, we’ve got full consciousness.” (...)

He blinks, and he can feel the very sliding of his skin over the wet surface of his eyes. His vision then sharpens, and he feels hands, the uncomfortable crease of their latex gloves as the heads bob above him, defaced in white paper masks, rubber hairnets, and clear safety goggles. He is being detached, defeathered, stripped - the umbilical cord has been clamped and ripped from him. The underwater sensation, the belly of the ocean, is fading like a dream. He pries open a mouth with stiff jaws, and the sound that comes out of him is dry and wordless.

(...) “- yeah, thirty milligrams. Induce blackout for transport.” “Restart trigger inventory.” (...) (There’s a stab in his thigh, sudden and jarring as if he’s been bruised in a delicate place, but the light starts to ebb, and a different kind of sleep comes onto him as the room darkens.) “Function…papaya…pray….tune…nuclear…mountain….” (...)

(...)

(...)

(...)