Together, we had four legs to trudge against this unknown surface. We’ve never felt the stars to close to our being before. We had always known it was there, but we never felt its presence like the days of now. Nobody knows of our existence on Mercury, for we are the ghosts of whom no one believes, and so are the others.
For hours upon hours, we walked. With no starting point or finish line, our destination was blurred. For all we know, we had gone around one thousand times. We always wished we knew where we were going, but neither of us bothered to ask. For us, a destination was superfluous as ghosts. We do not float, so we bury our legs deep into the liquid surface like any human would, should he (or she) partake in a journey across this planet’s face. I can imagine that journey for a normal human:
What would seem to be a simple drift across the cosmos would be the most violent of turbulence or most. Survival unknown as the most advanced technologies cannot protect, as they should. Being an apparition has it’s perks: to wear nothing but a soul as clothing for the shamed, to not worry about faces for we’ve done away with them, to be powered only by the heart that we chose to keep intact within our hollow being. It is our hearts that will help us escape this planet. It is our hearts that will save us, should we keep them. It is all that keeps us visible.
We take only one form, for we need not confuse the other. For whatever reason, it follows me wherever. Some call it flattery. Some days, I wish I could simply trudge on by myself, for my other half is mute and the silence is deafening. I ask God to send me into space so I can breathe again. SO I can breathe like the days before we were joined at the hip. Was it some sin that forced us to be connected? Was it meant to be a reward? As we try to find the bridge off this planet, I find the one that connects us to be far too dilapidated to carry us any further as one entity. I wanted out, and it was when I fell that I had finally found my escape.
Part II: Deliria
I tripped on the only piece of matter hardened enough to cause any harm to anyone. As I fell on my hands and knees, the link was broken. The tie that bounded us snapped off like a stressed out strand of string. It was the most severe pain I had ever felt in either of my lifetimes. I don’t know how my twin took the dismembering fall, but I saw a wince of pain in its eyes as my limbs hit the molten floor. It was a pain I had never fathomed would occur in my being again. You would figure that, once I took this form, al pain would end. Not true. It simply magnifies in the fact that there is no escape from pain through death. When a phantom is lost on an unknown planet, he could die one thousand times and never lose a single life.
Through all the pain, I had failed to realize that I had received my wish. I was my own. I got up and looked at my counterpart, who was holding its sides as if ii had taken a very violent blow to the ribs. We locked eyes for several moments in confusion. We were staring into a mirror that wasn’t supposed to come undone. For several seconds we considered joining once again, but we came to a consensus that the separation was a sign of a new start. We were free to roam the planet and double our efforts to find an escape.
Though it wept, I finally convinced the Gemini that we should part ways to find our much-deserved exit. I was on my way out, and so was it. As I wandered around, I came to the realization that the plan was failing me. I kept thinking about the well-being of my other half as well as my own mortality without it. I kept thinking about how we only had our own minds to keep us company. I thought about how we didn’t have each other to stand up or share thoughts. We were alone…after so long, we were both truly alone.
I don’t know how long I was walking or even where I was. I usually don’t know anyway, but landmarks usually turn up by now. All I saw was the muddy gravel forged form heat fixed in front of the sun, which appeared to be coming ever closer to this wretched planet. I didn’t care though. I just wanted out. I wanted to be free of this damned planet, even if it meant jumping planets and walking once around the sun. I didn’t care about the dangers anymore: I just wanted to escape.
My feet became the ground, as it was harder to walk. Time melted into itself and every second that passed felt as identical as the last. I collapsed.
Part III: Hyena
I don’t know how long I was knocked out. Did it matter? Whether it was seconds, weeks, or even years, I would always wake up exactly where I started and continue on where I was. When I woke up this time, I noticed three shadows without torsos. They floated in my presence, with only a grin on what was left of their facial features and eyes that bore no lids or pupils. The one directly in front of me offered me his hand attached to no arm. When I took it, I stood my ground. They laughed to themselves before ever saying a word. I couldn’t understand it, but I felt I would soon figure it out.
The leader asked me for my name, a question I had absolutely no answer for. I had no identity, especially not after relinquishing my second half. Without my twin, I wasn’t myself. I felt my equilibrium thrown into mush, trampled by searing gravel. The leader felt very aware of my situation.
The ghost that stood before me warned that I wasn’t in any condition to continue the way I have been traveling. It warned that I was a twin in atrophy, a Gemini in delirium, that without my other half I would fall to pieces over and over again. They only wanted to help.
The leader spoke with a hyenas bark with every breath it spilt into my ears. It said that, although I rejected my shadow from my past, the entrails within held me back. “In order to ascend into true nirvana,” it started “You must discard the body”. So I did.
The one to the left of me spoke only in tongues; A sort of Spanish with an indecipherable hum. The one to the right of me didn’t speak any language but laughter. Any other attempts to speak to it were futile. It bled air and silence was its name. Within minutes my torso was like theirs; barren and free of innards. The leader himself helped tear out my eyelids so I could see like them. They dilated my pupils to the point of evaporation. Within one hour, I was one of them.
Part IV: Chimera
We stalked the planet with reckless abandon. We cared not for the other beings that may have inhabited the planet sharing our oxygen. All these ghosts know were laughter and bloodshed. Every being we came across was met with a grizzly hello at the end of their armless claws. They stole the hearts of many and left the bodies to suffer. The very last luxury in any ghosts’ being is raped by these floating spirits. They were the ghost killers, and they chose me to become one of them. Why? I never asked. They found corpses of other worlds and devoured them for their own amusement. The jackals never went hungry.
We came across a wounded phantom sunken inside the lava of the surface of the planet. My new friends pulled it out of its liquid hell and presented it to me. I didn’t know what they wanted me to do, but I knew I would have blood on my hands by the end of this. The leader told me that, to understand what it is to be free of my ghostly restraints, I must feast on the wounded ghost’ heart. “Those who can’t withstand death without a pulse did not deserve the afterlife.” He cried. When he punctuated a period in his breath, everything made sense.
When they found me, my pulse was in the twilight of its existence. It was fading and that’s what attracted them to my being. They found me with no pulse, with lungs stitched shut, and eyes closed with cement. I was like them even before my amputation. That thought marinated in my mind.
I ate the ghost’ heart.
Part V: Navajas
I felt we were invincible. Time no longer mattered as we controlled its very essence with our movement. We continued to feast on ghosts that fell into purgatory and the smiles stayed chiseled on our mouths. In the distance, we saw a figure without a heartbeat trudging slowly across. We deciphered it’s fate. I withdrew my vote so as to see the master at work. The quiet one blinked in approval. The leader nodded its head. The one in tongues screamed “Su latido del corazón manchará nuestros navajas!” and charged the shadow. The others followed, but I stayed behind. There was something about this spirit I refused to harm. I saw them thrash the body with zero empathy. Time hadn’t bothered us for a while, but in this moment, every second slowed down to the pace of the ghost’ diminished heartbeat. I saw every scar open on it’s body. I saw every drop of blood pour out of an orifice. I prayed the spirit be like us and not suffer the consequences of having a heart to feel pain: to die forever without release.
I heard every scream.
Part VI: Stigmata
The bloodletting didn’t stop. It felt like days, at points, even years that this thrashing lasted. But why? Why did I feel sympathy for this ghost?
When they finally finished, almost millennia later, they left the body and wandered away without me. I tried to catch up, but the leader insisted that I inspect the beaten spirit. “Should you choose to devour its heart, you can continue on our pilgrimage of feast” exclaimed the leader. They disappeared into the horizon. I wouldn’t see them ever again.
I stared at the decrepit corpse of the beaten phantom. I saw my body and my lifeless heart within the ghost. It was my other half beaten to a bloody pulp. I stared at its stab wounds as the glued themselves to what was left of my skin. Blood poured from my mouth as I tried to speak to it. We were both destroyed. I had no body to lend and it had a heart too shattered to spare. We couldn’t do this any longer. Any safe bridge off the planet has long since been burned. I had no other choice: I I picked up its body and feasted upon its dead heart. It was in no way nourishing, just as I expected. I didn’t put myself down. Instead, I took it from the planet the only way I could.
We floated upward toward the sun. Everything around us grew lighter and everything was visible. Everything was visible.
Its heart was gone and so was mine. We were once one, but now we are in the red. There was no longer any point to living on forever as ghosts. What very few pleasures fate had offered to us in this form has been squandered as my selfish needs destroyed nirvana. We were one so we could have found a way out. Instead, I ruined it. Everything. It didn’t deserve my fate. Which is why I was so happy it disintegrated in my arms before we reached the giant star. It was free, but I was still here; as it should be.
I felt the heat as the sun embraced my being. The closer I got, the more it became obvious that I wouldn’t find solace in evaporation as my twin did. Instead my penance will be strolling once around the sun. Then, and only then, my heart will be welded together once more.
The End.
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