Smoke and Mirror

     Starving and near death, I lied on my back and open my eyes to stare at the heavens. The dry, cracked earth beneath me was just as thirsty for rain as I was. I lied there and watched the evening sky fade into night, the faint stars beginning to shine bright. And in this purple twilight, my bright spirit was being slowly snuffed out.
     I shut my eyes to welcome Death’s cold embrace. The light of the world quit shining through my eyelids and I readied myself to sleep and to never again wake. It was then that the thick aroma of burning sage came drifting up my nose and into my brain where it sought my curiosity. And my weary eyes, so ready to close forever, opened once more.

(story inspired by:
The Art of John Jude Palencar © 2007 image)

     Above me, hanging there between me and the heavens, billowed clouds of grey smoke. It’s harsh haze pressed against my dry corneas, stinging them slightly. I rolled onto my stomach and, pressing my hands down onto the brittle flakes of dried earth, I pushed myself up to search for its source.
     The smoke came issuing out of a small mound in the distance, barely distinguishable against the flat, brown horizon. The world had been silent and still as I journeyed through this desolate and seemingly endless desert. I wondered what fool would dare test their wits against a land as harsh and unyielding as this. So, I forced my half-dead body up from the earth and made my thin, bony legs carry me toward this growing curiosity.
     Out on this barren plain, I walked, my pale skin clinging to tendons clinging to bone. Skin stretched over my sunken cheeks, wrapping around my jaw in attempt to keep it attached to my skull. Blackened shadows encircled my pale eyes from lack of sleep. I must have looked like a skeleton crossing this foreboding wasteland.
     I was barely more than a corpse being sought by Death and the Devil, and yet this curiosity had more strongly beckoned. The level ground had deceived my mind into believing the little mound was not so far. Though anticipating Death and Hell as I was, I moved ever closer. Despite my weary state.
Such details of my curiosity were exposed as I drew near. It was more than just a mound set apart from the flat terrain. It was a mud-brick dome set directly upon the ground with smoke escaping through a wide oculus in the center of its top. An open doorway revealed darkness in the space within. A tiny cross had been sculpted above the threshold. I took it as a sign of sanctuary or of healing; some kind of merciful symbol. If only I had noticed the human skull, picked clean by vultures, resting outside amongst the debris gathered there.
     But I hadn’t noticed. I had gone right inside. There was a man standing amid the darkness. Shrouded by shadow, he remained unknown to me. Still, the clouds of sage rose up from a burner hidden somewhere in tiny dome. The scent so saturated the air that it nearly overwhelmed me.
     “Your name?” a familiar voice asked.
     “Thomas,” I answered. My dry throat made the words crack with a sound both coarse and weak.
     And then there was a tiny spark. And then flame. The stranger had started a small fire in the center of the dome where a stone pit was arranged. No stock of wood sat near it or anywhere else. No ashes of a previous fire remained. Glancing up from the warmth of the dancing flames I saw that the stranger was not a stranger but a man who looked much like myself. Not the weak, rotting corpse that I had become, but the strong, bold youth I had once been.
     I gasped, barely able to contain my astonishment and fright. His skin was porcelain, ivory and smooth. His lips parted slightly, displaying the faintest hint of a smile with perfectly straight teeth. His sparkling eyes penetrated the depths of my soul.
     “Who can you be?” I cried. “A mere memory triggered by my ailing mind?”
     His smile widened as he spoke, “So much more, Thomas. Gaze into my eyes and see reflected all the phantoms of your past.”
     Without a choice, I did as he commanded. Within his eyes, those that were the same vivid blue as mine had been before the iris had faded to grey, I saw all the most incriminating moments of my life rush past. I cringed at the sight of my most devious deeds.
     Even amid this arid space where no man ventured, I could not escape the heinous crimes I had committed. I had come to die in peace, far from those who spit on my grave. Yet I had never considered there was one person in the world I would never outrun. Myself.
     “Who are you?” I cried as the visions in his eyes finally vanished, leaving only my distorted body reflected in their stead.
     The sage was now completely devoured and only ashy remnants lingered inside the dish of the burner still swinging to and fro from the chain in his hand. Without the heavy smoke from it, the oculus was opened to the heavens, hazed by thin wisps of smoke from the fire in the dome’s center. But it was not the same fire as the other me had started. Inside the stone ring, a great chasm had opened to reveal Hell, the tongues of fire and crimson cinders bursting out of a great Devil’s mouth.
     “I am but a mirror of all that you are and all that you have ever been,” he answered.
     “Smoke and mirrors!” I cried. “You are an illusion!”
     His smile was replaced by a grim expression as he said, “I am consequence.”
     With that he gripped my shoulders and pulled me into the stone-ringed pit. I felt myself fall towards the belly of the beast. My doppelganger stared back only a moment before dissipating into the shadows. Helplessly, I watched Heaven beyond the mud-brick dome’s oculus grow smaller and smaller.