It Was A Thing Without A Name

By: Jordan Seifert

It was a massive, sprawling field, curving up and into the wind. The grass was neatly kept, somehow preserved by nature. The flowers, whose petals sprung outwards like open arms, were as brightly tinted as the splotchy, hopeful paintings of a three year old, experimenting with colour for the first time. They were ghostly but still bright, and the flowers were gifted with streaks and splashes of colour that trickled down and into the ground. Deep in the meadows, far below where the Earth was, it was beautiful. The meadows were so indistinct and nebulous that they seemed more like inky blotches of spilled ink than any kind of art. From where the ground sank away, it seemed almost like a bottomless pit, but at its furthest reaches, where it turned to a soft curve that sank into the blind field, and where the flowers curled up against the hard gemstone walls, there was a thing.

It was a sightless thing, and a thing without a name. It moved silently, not even bothering to breathe. It didn’t smell, or taste, and it existed on its own axis and equilibrium, separate from the rest. But even though it existed free for the most part from the senses, it still had a form. A grey, smoky, orb-like form. It hovered above the ground, twenty feet or more, although in the dark place it was more like the creature had lost depth than gained height. It hovered like a balloon. Something a person might never think to see. Something somebody might just glance over, too strange for the makeup of the human perception. As if the floating orb would pass through the pupil and pop against the cones of the eye. Then it would probably just blow away. From its underside hung dozens of long tendrils, clumped together and knotted, stretching out towards the ground. They were thin like string--Like loose stitches in the arm of somebody‘s sleeve. Those thin strings moved quickly underneath the thing, gripping and grasping at the clipped grass. It didn’t think much, but it thought about the grass and the flowers, and it thought that it didn’t know what might happen if it ever let go. The thing, whatever it was, didn’t want to let go.

The thing passed over endless expanses within the black pit, clinging to the grasses and the flowers and even the weeds. It didn’t differentiate the weeds. It couldn‘t. It might, on a good day, think that it didn’t want to let go of what it had--which wasn’t much--and it might also wonder if it was alone. And it was alone, lurching through the whispers of a wandering breeze and above the hearts of the flowers rooted deep in the Earth. The flowers had thoughts; simple thoughts about colour and shape and things that concerned them, but the grass was dead. Every blade of emerald green grass stood hopeless, thoughtless, and dreamless. They didn’t care if they were plucked or not. The flowers had no real idea what it meant to be plucked, but they still didn’t want it. They didn‘t really know what being tugged at alluded to, but deep inside of them, and at the hearts of their roots, they felt a longing to stay grounded, and an unpleasant sensation associated with leaving their place. Sometimes the thing thought the flowers were trying to shake it off, and maybe they were, but the thing held firmly to the stems of the roses and tulips with its silver strings.

The thing felt something new. It was slippery and motionless, and it didn’t move in the wind. It grazed its long sterling braids over whatever it was, and it felt a new kind of coldness. Like something had been there, and had since been removed, and whatever it was, it had nothing left. Not even the cool dampness that it had been washed in. The thing carefully passed over whatever it was, a pile of small limbs, and a series of bumps and bruises--A broken face. The thing felt an immense sense of loss. It felt like whatever it was that was down there with it, it had lost something. It had lost what it had. The child’s corpse had been neatly stacked, its blood and bones all arranged in a pile with a slit face wrapped over the naked chest cavity that sat atop the mess of limbs and organs. It was neat, almost clean even, but it was still a mess. A body could only be a mess, especially like that. The thing felt a thought stir inside of itself, an image whirling about the ash-grey balloon. The thing felt sad.

As the creature passed its coiled twine limbs over the dead girl, it became matted with blood. Slick red stripes and layers of dripping sanguine fluid which greased the fibrous strands. In this cool, dry place, the creature had never felt that sickening wetness, or come to understand how a bone snaps, or a vein bursts. The corpses red colour seeped into the ground and mixed amongst the efflorescent blooms, and the plants, the posies and perennials, felt sick and sad. The thing, so slippery, blew away. It desperately tried to cling to the girl, or the grass, or the flowers, but there was no way it could. The twisting, braided spirals of grey cord pushed down towards the ground, but it was already too late. The thing floated into the sky, past the dark walls of mud and broken crystal and up to the place which living things knew as Earth. For a brief moment, and just for a moment, the creature passed over someone as that someone turned to glance, and the image met with the man in such a way that he didn’t instantly forget, but he never knew what he saw, nor did he have any way to describe it. The thing floated upwards and into the matching greyness of the clouds, and then even further than that. It had lost what it had.

Down in the deep pit where green and blue and even red didn’t matter, a new thing sat amongst the flowers and popped off their heads. A dark thing.