Literary Work
S
he still thought of Herself as a person, even as a She. She persisted in this though Her body had long ago turned to bones and dust, dust that lay unmoving in piles around the dark iron frame of Her bed. Whoever had placed Her within these confines had not furnished a mattress. Her skeleton reclined across the metal webbing between the cross rails.
Half An Hour Then Half An Hour Then… JOSHUA BLIGH
you can follow Joshua ryan bligh on twitter @bligh_ryan.
44 READER MAGAZINE 44 | |NEW NEW READER MAGAZINE
A few bones had fallen to the floor. She was very much alive. In a sense. Her body had always been of secondary importance, more an accessory than the collection vital tubes and organs bodies were for most people. Unlike others, She was not limited to a locus of flesh, but could extend Her consciousness and influence far beyond it. When Her body had still existed, it was little more than a soft envelope around what She was at Her core. The core was what remained. A mote of Her. A concentrated particle of Her force that, despite its prison, could and did continue to reach into the world, turned and tuned it in ways both malevolent and kind. Or perhaps this is a mistake of interpretation. For ill or better, Her effects on the world were no longer out of good or evil will, but rather something much more menial (though no less important): a balm on the ever-present threat of boredom. She did not sleep. The room was all She could remember. By decree of Her jailor (whoever they were), She had reign over no more than a handful of minutes. Something like half an hour, more or less. A snippet of reality that played over and again in a loop. Millennia passed within Her confines, and yet Her window into the world remained fixed on a period of time roughly the duration of Stravinsky’s Apollon Musagète. The room was dark. But She had spent so much time in it that She saw it all despite the absence of light. All in black though. All of it. If She were to draw the room, it would end up looking like a black page, but She (were Her fingers not on the floor) would be able to point out where each object was within that sheet. Her torments and gifts upon the world from Time X until Time Y turned quite creative toward
