The Scream of Nature

It happened gradually. He had sensed it was happening. The images were shifting. In the beginning it was a slight shift like some aberration, probably he wasn’t looking carefully or his eyes have weakened, later it gave impression as though he was watching the world through some dense partition. There was a distinct refraction he felt as if the images were at an angle, the reality was being wrenched out of place. The more he became aware of it the more it started to trouble him. Then came the images of disasters, the fire, the flood, the cyclones, the increasing regularity and intensity. He knew the shift was real. He could feel his heartbeat rise before he calmed himself down. He distracted himself in his daily chores. The world went on in its deceptive phase. There was sunrise, the morning, noon and sunset, the night. On bright sunny days he could see vultures circling in thermals at great height. They looked like darts controlled by some unseen forces pendulating in a set pace. His eyes throbbed and eyelids fluttered rapidly, images of vast fields of dead rotting vultures filled his sight. They hang their neck deliriously and roll down dead. The darts became large as it drop onto earth with dull thuds. It was raining dead vultures. Exhausted he leaned on to the railings of the bridge. The warm sturdy metal assured him. It dispelled his fear. He clutched it. The bridge was real and held in place by simple mechanisms that could be trusted. It held its truth. On gravity. He felt it. He knew nothing was real. There was no wrong or right. He didn’t know what to trust and what not to. There was no anchor to nurture his thoughts. He must therefore focus on the immediate. The distant was absurd or else it would kill him. There was no reason, no purpose. He need to conceive a reason, device a purpose, to keep the absurd away. Though there wasn’t anything to understand he need to understand. Understand the absurdness of his reality. He must assume himself to be happy. That is the only way he could survive.

There is a giraffe ambling in the savanna, careless to her fate she seeks the acacia leaves. Her striking eyelashes in wonder of beautiful life. They shoot her for fun. She falls in pain and in muted screams beats her long legs in air. They smile and desecrate her body while they take pictures to share with friends and family, and stuff her as trophy to be shipped in faraway drawing room to be lit in luxury and comfort. He hears the giraffe’s scream. He feels the pain. He cannot assume to be happy. He can no longer pretend. He hears the bleeding sky. He hears the horrors of exploding bombs. He hears the utter anguish of human existence. He hears the restless river. He hears the falling trees. He hears the machine dredge the deep forest. He trembles. He hears the visceral scream passing through the nature. They swirl in tremendous energy towards him. He hears the scream of kuala trapped in the eucalyptus tree as the forest fire engulf. The tongue of the flame leaping ferociously to singe his skin. The screams of fishes as the acid ocean wrangle the life out of corals. The bleached corals sway in terrifying desolation. The screams of shocked deer swept away in surging flood. The screams of hapless cormorant covered in oil slick. The screams of polar bear marooned on melting ice. Her life dangling in the precipice of no return. He is reduced to bones. He knew he wouldn’t survive. He reconcile to death. But there is something terrible that awaits him before death. Something he must face. More and more screams arise from all corners and suffuse into primal horror. These bloodcurdling shrieks consolidates to disintegrate his humanity and obliterates his soul. His brain burst, he bleeds through the eyes, ears and mouth, and is reduced to skeletal androgyny floating in timeless agony. He feels that he is falling into the abyss of untold misery.  He seeps and is distorted, appropriated by the great force of destruction. He must atone the sins of humanity. He has a longing to disappear and become one with the world. There are no gods, no words, no ideas, no facts, no nothing, just this deep emptiness that needs to be filled. Like in the color book. The green. The red. The blue. The humpback whale take in all to spout immaculate rainbow.    

(This is a short fiction alright but has deeper insights of Munch’s painting, Nietzsche, Camus…but finally it has to be Spinoza!)