I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife
The storm swallows him. The pressure is immense, no room for air in his lungs, and for a moment Sleaze thinks it will never stop, that he will be flattened into nothingness. But it does stop, and Sleaze breathes again, inhales the thick air. The clouds are all around him, smothering, and in the corner of his eye lightning flashes and he feels as much as hears the thunder.
He looks back the way he came, but the clouds have consumed the space he flew through. He flies downward and the clouds part briefly until they don’t, until his legs collide with something solid and he crumples, bruising his worn knees, the wings flying out as if to catch him.
Can’t turn around, can’t go down. He thinks about flying up, that maybe that’s the way out of this cloud, but fear keeps his hooves on this faux-ground.
As we said – he’s been here before. Not here, specifically, of course, but in these kinds of things.
The only way out is through.
Through what, though, is yet to be determined.
So he moves, his steps cautious. With each step, he expects his hooves to lose contact with the ground. But he doesn’t fall. The clouds shift around him. He doesn’t know if he’s walking a straight line or in circles. It all looks the same.
Until he sees the first image.
It’s a child – one he doesn’t recognize – and he sees the abject fear on the small face, sees the mouth open, crying something out soundlessly.
The noise comes then, after a delay, the way thunder follows lighting - mom!
The voice is pleading and Sleaze’s heart twists, he sees the wet shine of the child’s face, the tears in its eyes, and then he sees the child fall.
After a beat, the roar of something monstrous.
After a beat, the sound of a scream.
The image is gone, then, and Sleaze shudders.
He keeps moving. More images come. Some he does not understand – he sees strange horses turn and walk away. Their voices come too, almost matching the images now, and this, he thinks, is a sign he’s going in the right direction. Into the eye of the storm, the way nearby lightning is followed instantaneously by thunder.
He sees them die. He sees them say I don’t love you, I can’t, go away, you’re nothing.
He sees a silver mare begging a gold one, saying don’t leave me here alone.
He feels an ache in his chest even if they are strangers.
The images flicker and he slowly feels almost numb to them. They are pictures on the cloud, words on the wind. He’s seen worse. He’s been through worse.
And then he sees his father. His father, who is solid, walking on the same clouds Sleaze is.
“Dad?” Sleaze says, and his voice is thin and reedy, like he’s a child again.
He was a child, when Garbage left. Or, little more than one. He hasn’t seen him since but it was Garbage who bore him, who raised him, who led him in strange, half-fabricated prayers. Garbage who laid his head across Sleaze’s sun-warmed back and said I love you.
Garbage does not look at him. He is staring at something – someone – else.
Sleaze hears it then, the chittering sound of monsters, and the pale mare comes into view.
Run! she says and Sleaze watches as the figures run, a strange movement – he can see their legs pump, their sides heave, but they don’t move. The pale mare transforms into a snow leopard and he watches her fight the monsters, sees his father fall. The light flickers, the image changes, and then it’s the pale mare’s face – incorporeal again, no longer solid – and he hears weeping and his own chest feels tight and he keeps watching, keeps looking for his father to come back. Keeps waiting for the dream-father to turn and see him and say oh, my son, I thought I would never see you again.
But there is nothing – that image is gone, his father is gone, the pale mare is gone. Sleaze is alone amongst the nightmares, moving through.
He walks to where his father had been, but there is nothing, only the same stretch of clouds.
And so he walks past it, keeps moving on, hoping that eventually, he will become immune to the sound of their screams.
After all, the only way out is through.
Sleaze
