Monday 13 August 2018

Light Birth by Owen Townend


It fell down the Moore West drain cover some time ago. A smooth grey plastic pebble with no features aside from the white speckles forming a ring around its centre.
            It barely made a sound as it landed, a mere splash in muddy water. And yet it wasn't dragged off by the current. Instead it gained a strange heaviness and sank like all pebbles ultimately do.
            And then, at the bottom of the cloudy brown, it malfunctioned back to life. It switched on without prompt and started to emanate bright white lights that cut clean through the water and reached out past the drain cover.
            This light bent and shaped itself into something flat at the bottom but curved at the top: a gentle curve, the curve of a human foot. The light created a twin and these both sprouted up into thin legs that broadened into thighs and hips and levelled out into a waist and chest.
            The light split into a three-pronged fork at the top, the middle prong significantly shorter and rounder than its left and right side. Eventually the arms lowered to the figures' sides. The head lowered too, looking deep down into the drain cover beneath as if to contemplate its own origins.
            As its limbs finished shaping themselves, the light darkened into skin, formed hair from irregular shadows and rough features from precise imperfections.
            The body raised its head again and teased open the slit of its mouth, steadily widening it into an oval from which the light within shone as bright as it originally had.
It didn't breathe. It didn't mutter. It didn't scream. It just mouthed and not even discernible words.
            The figure then blinked its eyes, a frame rate glitch, as it knelt down on the grate. It curled its long limbs inward and wrapped them around the solid trunk of its naked glowing body.
            It lowered itself even further and shifted into the foetal position, mouth still working. The rain fell through this and every other aspect of its body. 
            When it finally shut its eyes for good, the figure started to fall away, sliding back down the holes and cracks and even solid material of the drain cover.
            The figure steadily broke back down into shards of light which retracted directly back to the pebble in the dirty water. The white speckles received every last photon before shutting off completely.
            The pebble did not resurface nor did it move with the sewage flow: it stayed in its exact position and malfunctioned again for three months for precisely half an hour starting at exactly 01:43 in the morning.
            Late passersby learnt to avoid Moore West and the figure who appeared, screamed, collapsed and then disappeared without a single sound. By the time those seeking to divulge truth from folklore came to investigate, the light birth and death had finally completely stopped.
            These investigators shook their heads and moved on to the next tall tale as the strange pebble was swallowed by thick dirt. The speckles clogged and inner machinery dampened, the ghost forever faded away.

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