Sand

Sand

*

"And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Ozymandias P. B. Shelley

*

What remains?, the voice asks.

*

The shadow of the pyramids.

The dramatic break of stone angles against the smooth somnolence of the desert in the evenings, the afternoon perfection that stems from the sun's burning away, it's peeling of excess from the land to leave sand and sky and water, like a skeleton chafed clean white.

*

The noseless sphinx.

*

What remains?

*

Sand threatening to consume oyster-pink cities, whirling in dust storms that shift the shape of the desert. Tapping your shoes against the floor every morning before you slide them on, shaking a black scorpion from the trailing white lace of your tennis shoe. The pleasure of peeling back a jewel-edged scarf and kissing a painted mouth with its fabric burning against your fingers. Breathing air that has been trapped for three thousand years. The exhilarating hiss of a tendril of magic snapping.

*

What remains?

*

Desert flowers.

(flash: image: feeling)

Love.

(sunlight creeping around your bones, bright so bright so bright)

Sand.

&Water. Water. Water. Water.

*

The idea of water in a desert: unbearable longing.

The symbol & the object swirling together in the whirlpool of his mouth, the dryness that cakes behind his lips. Splayed under the sun, so still that vultures circle him lazily, he is turning from living flesh to sand; he is the desiccated air, he is the bones of a camel, he is Rameses II returning to the dust from whence he came. His face crumbles away and he knows only one comfort, and it flash-burned on his mind as he wakes from this dream (it is a dream, even as it clutches his heart he repeats it is a dream and perhaps it will fade away as the world turns turns turns but the desert is a series of eternities)

He knows:

Everything is unreal in the desert.

He wakes with Ginny in his arms.

*

A change, Molly whispered to Arthur, holding the lottery ticket in her hands. A very great change from wet green England for dear Ginny.

Instead: dry golden Egypt.

But underneath the silt and sand, beneath the flesh of both these lands lie tombs.

*

In Ancient Egypt, the Pharaoh had to wake each morning before the dawn broke to raise the sun from his murky rest and entice him across the skies. "You see," Ginny says, when Bill nervously blurts out the story while he pulls on his clothes and tries to find words for his confusion, "the sun itself needs to be begged to wake up."

Ginny slides off the bed and pours herself a glass of orange juice from the jug on his bedside table; she drinks it in a few swallows, and then drinks another in quick succession. She sets the cup down with a hollow clink, wiping her mouth off with the back of her hand before she turns towards him.

"Have you ever had that feeling that you haven't really woken up, and everything you live is a dream?"

Ginny stops there and considers for a moment before smiling quite suddenly, as if satisfied with her explanation. She leans over and kisses him, and the shock and familiarity of her lips on his mixes with the taste of orange in his mouth.

*

They leave Bill behind to visit the Pyramids, he's seen them so many times before, and Ginny escapes into the cool darkness of one of them while Arthur haggles with a souvenir vendor. "No, that's simply too much for a plaster model of the sphinx! Even with the nose restored!"

Inside:

There is nothing but the sound of her own breathing; the pyramid reverberates to it, its cornices seem to curve toward her, embracing her in symmetry, lines, angles, and when she stretches out on the sandy stone Ginny imagines she's part of the geometry.

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

And.

An emptiness beyond that, reaching into her body until she is impaled upon its edge.

Deeper:

Her heartbeat slows and her fingers shake and the realisation comes to her: I am a monster but even as her mouth forms these words her mind powders them into dust. And once this thought is but a speck underneath the black heel of her sandal the silence & emptiness push deeper, deeper, deeper until they encounter within her something akin to themselves.

The pyramid is satisfied, the black-rimmed eyes of the figures frozen in paint on its walls stare luminously at her; reality bends.

She is released.

*

She is alive.

She is empty.

She must survive.

This is what her dream tells her.

(She does not know whether it is really a dream, she does not know--)

*

Ginny slides her hand up the vertebrae of Bill's back as they're putting food on the table, snakes her leg up his trousers when he's spooning mashed potatoes into his mouth, flicks a tongue in his ear while they're washing dishes. He drops a plate and it shatters on the floor and Bill suddenly thinks that every single one of those shards stole a piece of him. He whispers "stop" when they're cleaning up, and "stop" when she pins him to the wall when they're all outside and "stop stop stop stop stop...oh God, stop..."

And she does, for a moment, just long enough to whisper. "This is what you want, this is what you've always wanted. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault. This is your fault..."

Chanting, chanting as she reaches down into his pants, rhythmically, in time with the movements of her hand and her cheek pressed tightly against his ear.

And Bill wants to push her away, and maybe he does, or maybe not, everything's getting so hazy and he's not sure of anything and oh God maybe it is his fault because oh God this is his baby sister his little baby sister and she doesn't know anything and

oh God yes, yes, yes

and for a moment his body is divorced from his mind and he comes; it's a moment of pure pleasure and no doubt and only the body (flesh flesh flesh) he struggles to remain within it but his eyes, closed tightly, open, and the warmth leaves behind nothing but an insidious coldness that prickles his skin.

*

She washes her hands in the same sink that she washed dishes in and throws him a cloth, smile curling over her face. "They'll be coming back in soon, you'd better clean up."

Bill catches it mechanically and his voice trembles when he asks, "Was that V-V...You-Know-Who? Is he still...in you?"

Ginny's lips quirk. "Tom's gone, Bill," she says, slowly, stepping towards him. She doesn't step any closer because he looks as if he's going to start moving backwards, and instead reaches out with one hand until she's touching a spot on his stomach, right between his ribs. "You feel that emptiness right there, Bill?" Her finger pushes harder. "It wasn't there before, was it? Yes. That feeling of cold dread, what you can't control, like a ball filled with your own death or everything that's unnamable rolled up very tightly and pushed down your throat until it slides into position right there."

And as she's speaking, Bill feels a chill which reverberates through to her fingers.

"Yes. That. Exactly that. That's the hole that I have to fill, or I'm going to spiral down into that hole. It'll eat me alive, Bill. I have to live. You understand that, you feel it inside of you."

Bill whispers, "Yes."

And then he says, "This is what Tom did to you, isn't it?"

*

In the desert there is only one law, and this law is: sand.

Eventually, it consumes everything.

Everything is turned to sand.

*

"What remains?" Ginny asks again, performing their ritual, her voice soft and powdery as it was in his dream.

This time, Bill knows the answer, and he repeats it hollowly, like he's re-enacting a scene, his existence sliding into a worn groove in the universe. A story repeated.

He says, "Nothing."

*