𓃩𓃩𓃩𓃩
00 - bullseye
𓃩𓃩𓃩𓃩
FOR the one and only Hendrick Barbova, love was a hierarchy.
First-borns were gluttons, middles were starved, and the youngest were, above all, pampered for their incessant innocence and whimsical charm. Here was the science: There was the loved, the liked, the tolerated, and the unloved as desire wrapped around itself much like a snake; an eternal ouroboros wreathed in the cyclicality of its own hunger, a food chain—ache eating ache.
But he supposed this was natural. Everyone had a favorite of theirs. A quintessential thing that ruled above all. Then he considered further—no this was biological. This was years of thoughtful evolutionary design stamped into fruition. Nature over nurture as nature, much like desire had superseded everything that had come after. Who you are is always what you have been and what you have wanted was already there from the start—one just had to wait.
Thus, everyone had always known of their favorite thing. Their favorite color, their favorite animal, their favorite sport, their favorite movie, their favorite being from the moment they were born. So within the anatomy of natural phenomena there were bound to be statistical errors; himself being one of them.
Though this was not a flaw but a feature. He just happened to be no one's particular thing but himself. Which he supposed made him into an invisible defect; a master at nothingness. A living absence or perhaps a walking purgatory; not too sinless not too sinful and yet infallibly fallible, all the same.
That's because Hendrick was simply never there unless he was. Unclean in the way that glasses were stained; seemingly see-through until tested against the willful bridge of a nose where the impurities began and festered, frozen in time. Opaque smudges; blanched, gritty spots; orgasmically brittle splotches that plagued the clear surface in discolored wounding circles. Disgusted you'd put them away or if you were responsible, you'd clean them up; the filth no more and the world full of answers: Hendrick Barbova was full of nothing, and the lack thereof is that shall remain.
So, here was the structure: Mr. and Mrs. Barbova had their eldest. The eldest had his progenitors and the broad smile of the neighborhood. The youngest had each other and no room for one more. And Hendrick had what it took to be consciously registered as a person and merely moved on.
But for the sorely unanointed, Hendrick Barbova, was clearly a middle child. His favorite color was black and his favorite kind of animal were decidedly honey badgers while his favorite sport was soccer and his favorite movie was The Crow for a particular reason he couldn't name, whereas his favorite persons had both yet to stay with him and yet to find him. But many things were soon to change.
Once, he had grown up in the house that his father had built with own two hands and within the four walls of bedroom—initially intended for a daughter—he had technically lived.
And the house was arguably the one thing his father had prized the most, even more than his precious first-born and perhaps even more than his own self which Hendrick took great delight in. The desire for marvelous architecture, to build something physically immortal and entirely from scratch—was far more understandable than the love for another—he had once thought, before this too, was soon to change.
So, because his father was a carpenter and his mother interior designer it had meant two important things:
One, his father loved making things look beautiful on the outside and two, his mother loved to make things look beautiful on the inside. Both of which Hendrick had inherently lacked within himself and single-handedly destroyed all with the temple of his mind.
This is because back in Stetson, Georgia, the land was cursed with breathtakingly long summers and an unearthly heat. During the high rise of many a late afternoon the air was sweltering; breezes scarce, drained and dry with crooning of gash-shaped meadowhawks teetering low on the hunt near flooded potholes and cat-tailed lakes. As drafty winds rippled down the shoulders of valleys, porched-slumped bodies were seduced to a halt, necks raised, and chins tilted at the sultry chase of a biting nip as mosquitoes cruised the streets, enticed by each welcoming inch of bare skin. Time was slow and the earth smelt like an undercurrent of fire, perspiration, and spilled wine clung tacky to the pavement; making it hard to breathe and even harder to choke. It was often a joke amongst the locals that the devil downstairs had resided right underneath the sweeping beltline of the region; getting inebriated off the sins of lesser drunkards until burning himself sober with the ripe juices of fallen peaches from bowing peach trees that straddled the lush landscape where the foliage grew thick and the leaves prickled tough in a flash of hot green death and taunting blush.
That was what a younger Hendrick had been thinking about when he had surrendered his body to the sticky cushions of his mother's artisanal couch. The small living room had beamed from within as flaxen light bled through the windows and onto the face of the walls in golden saffron and faded apricot. There was a fan barely breathing in the corner, barely easing the sweat that dribbled off his chin as he laid flat against the wax-hot leather that wretched at his throat. He was parched. He was empty. He was bored. He was fatigued. The eldest had ditched him for his friends and his progenitors were too busy playing adult and acting alone.
So, he slept to the rumor of the devil, when his eyes sank headfirst into sleep:
A man-goat, ram-horned and apple red, had emerged from the dirt like a wounded flower, twice the size of the swollen horizon that swam above him; warmth kindling bright and bright before the devil had pounced and swallowed the sun whole—the celestial sphere vanquished neatly behind the wooly veil of his throat.
Then the air twisted—sinister with ill—as a shape more absent than darkness had encompassed the world with a fiending for life; a feast for black-winged carrion. Night was approaching, approaching, approaching—shrouding excerpts of bell-towered trees and their cloying branches to myth as they all caught aflame, stirring char in his lungs. The devil picked from each and every peach tree. Devouring every Georgia belle, every nectarine, every freestone, every elberta, every heirloom of loring—till he was the only yielding drupe, still struck against the earth, that was left to peel.
And it peeled him.
It—no longer man nor goat—peeled and pulled and yanked him apart, organs asunder, as the anguished pit of his body told him to let go and let go and stretch apart from the tendered seams. And so he did. He was ice on a stove. He was snow on beach. He was a tear in a star. He was shame in a bottle. He was—
Alive and woken up by a screaming and screen of smoke from a wall of fire bursting from the carpet floor. He was in Mrs. Barbova's floundering arms, her eyes watery and mouth agape, as Mr. Barbova, shouting and tinted crimson, brandished a fire extinguisher towards the adolescent inferno. I am nothing. A pulsating thrum had pumped through his ears. And no one had known what had happened until he had opened up the left heart his palm, suddenly stark and aware to the thing clasped within them—a feeling he hadn't known he'd been holding: a shard of stone. No-a brimstone diamond sanded down by embers. The edges slick and burnt and as shiny as a crackling evening star. Pure vesper.
He had dreamt a piece of the sun.
★ • • • ★
Authors Note: FYI, I have absolutely no idea where I'm going with any of this so enjoy!
