Its dirt-faced mask revealing hints of pale grey surface, stretched high towards the blue yonder, and merely scraping the sky, assumed itself a spear bursting from the earth. Crawling with vines of veridian-bled veins and rock softened to the pulp of disgrace, it is no wonder this tower isolates itself from the concrete jungle by which it was misplaced. It rather undermines than embraces the beauty that surrounds it. Silences the colours that scream so loudly to be heard. Attracts merely the dust along the wind and the waste vegetation of the earth. A canvas for elements that aren’t so lucky as to be granted exposure in status, and the only thing that would ever bow down at its feet is the dirt, the same dirt walked over by the feet of a vagabond.
One who dwelled within its diadem would find themselves next door to the celestial heavens. And that lucky one presented much, much worthy than a vagabond.
Geneva propped herself on two blackened elbows, as she did every morning, on the balcony fencing, palms cupping her face for the 3 hours she spends watching the sunrise. Then. at exactly lunchtime, or what lunchtime was perceived to be when one didn’t have a clock, she would venture out. Timing her journey, she’d follow a strict schedule that objectified she be back before noon, not a minute after. She’d run-not walk-down to the stream, where everything grew around the water; her supermarket. Once she had met her standard supply for the night; this included a basket of non-poisonous berries, a tin can of fresh stream water, two fists of yellowing wheat grass, and whatever game came lurking in broad daylight. Some times she was so lucky as to find a pit of worms out there in the open, still freshly viscous, not yet crisped by the scorch. She would head back the same way she came, and in the same manner-maybe even more so.
By the time she’d get back, the sun would have fallen behind the tower. For her to see it once more was the tower’s purgatory.
Safe in her haven of 50 feet above the ground, anxious Geneva prepped her nighttime meal. She placed it on the floor and squatted before it against the wall, beneath the window. It called her to ravage, yet she refrained in uncertainty. When her hunger outgrew her delay, she’d ravish in her meagre feast while the sun grew weary. By the time she’d picked at the last few berries, slurped their juices from her fingers, the night would have fallen, and so would have her heart.
Her arms would obediently embrace her knees, and the walls, though flat, seemed to embrace her. The silence would hang in the air, and the air would press against her ears. Geneva despised the silence, its mockery prolonging the moment of its break.
That moment provoked the worst of her fears. In that moment, survival became rather a luxury than an instinct. A moment in which her human form was of no superiority to the animals. When she was indecisive about life, as now it was suddenly a curse much rather than a blessing. This was decided by the hours that separated day from night. During day, she exercised power, the badlands at her service. But by night, her reign eroded to beggar. The night degraded her to the perfect fit of the victim. Her predator, the carnivorous terrain.
The land mutated into a savage beast, its tongue a bed of grass. A walk among those taste buds was a walk among the tombstones. A mass of forsaken flesh and bone would dissolve to petty ruin if her feet were to ever fall upon this Earth’s defying proportion.
The only mass withstanding the beastly hunger amidst its very floor was the tower to which Geneva called “Friend”. But even rock may be defeated. Though it not be devoured by beast, rock erodes by time. And with rock consumes the sweet, strayed soul of Geneva.
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