This is a story I wrote while waiting to play the drums during pit orchestra. Inspired in part by Eventide Media Center.
The sprawling Escher Park changes as you walk further through it. Its shape is indeterminable and its length doubly so. Hills warp beneath your feet, the grass stretching soundlessly as trees alter in their distance from your eyes, the sun a blip in the sky and then a massive, burning ball right above your head. In the park you walk arm in arm with your love, and you turn to say something, but he is further down the gravel path.
You walk to catch up, working up a sweat, for the path inclines perpetually upwards, and the sun cannot make up its mind. Behind you is a person who looks like you but going the opposite way, holding a book. You wish you could be them, because then you wouldn’t have to climb uphill. A sensation on your arm and he is back at your side.
“I’ve been thinking about what I found,” you say. These words release from you but you don’t know what they mean. He looks at you but your love says something you can’t hear, it’s too far away, he’s too far away, again. The rocky shoreline appears in view, the wind from the ocean blowing cool on your face. You catch up with him again near the end of the path.
At the end of the path is your house. Through a mirror in the living room the TV is on, black and white static covering the screen. Out the open window you hear nothing and you look to the source but the TV is not on, and your mind overflows with blue and the sound of the ocean fills your ears. You are in your house.
You had found a book on your shelf that you didn’t put there. You have so many you didn’t even notice; you have no idea how long it could have been there. The inside has a dedication on the front page in an illegible script, a handwriting scrawled into the cover. The radio is on but when you open the book the station switches to static. The pages are walls of numbers and letters written in tongues.
The path continues outside the window. Your love is outside waving to you and a voice coming through the static tells you to go. You bring the book. The path bends downwards and you look behind and there is you, walking up the incline you had just come from. You feel sorry for them, for the road is a steep one. His arm becomes linked in yours.
“Why? What’s wrong with it?” He asks.
“I have to keep searching. I’ll know one day.” You hold the book out for him to read, but he is far from you, further down the gravel path. The sun fills the sky. You walk to catch up.
