Crack in the sky

CRACK IN THE SKY

1. Dannie and the City forest

Dannie stood silently on the doorstep between two worlds – the well-known and that one lying there right after the turn, deep inside the forsaken forest. He closed his eyes and memories emerged – tremendously beautiful memories. Alex, when they slept in the wheat fields, when his head was lying in her lap watching the dark sky and dreaming with his eyes open, Alex, when they were sitting there, in the parking lot, early in the morning long before the sun rise, willing to start off with no direction, Alex, hardly carrying her traveling bag while leaving, Alex and the nurse with dark skin and light green uniform. Why did he recall on Alex at this precise moment Dannie did not know. Not just yet.

And his legs started moving as on their own will, like well greased robot. Dannie heeled in order to pass under a tree without touching it. He had this feeling that the surrounding was filled with germs, rising spores of illnesses, waiting to sink into his flesh, to start growing inside him until they become alive. Along the narrow and odd path (there is no fucking path! I cannot see it! This is not a path at all!) garbage was spread – colorful ripped bags with lost meaning, rusty kids’ toys with sinister eyes, shabby papers with erased content, transparent plastics, curved as the midriff of an old TV. The path was getting narrower and shrank as the forest became thicker and larger – the forgotten forest in the city was about to consume Dannie. But he was expecting this, he was warned, and as he thought - prepared. After all, the mystery was an irreplaceable ingredient of the magic he came to look for. On his left the cars were still roaring as Dannie was gradually climbing down beneath the safety fence of the road. He was in fact sinking. The thought of the contagion dancing round him, filling the air with their invisible menace, made him shiver. The roaring of the cars gradually disappeared hidden in a glass balloon – the real life, now Dannie was completely absorbed by the alternative reality. His footsteps were now echoing, striking like thunders in the dead silence of the City forest. The spirits that surrounded him were ill-boding.

That forest was small, atavism of the time when She reigned over the City. Now She turned out to be another infected and terminally ill child of the City. The bear calves of Dannie touched the grass and this made his stomach turn as if a crooked finger was scratching his throat from inside. Through his nostrils straight to his brain some fetid smell was coming that made the air hard to breathe. His eyes filled with tears and he stopped, slightly bent so he would not touch the strange dirty leaves of the tree over his head. He searched the sky with eyes – the good old sky he knew since forever - but could not see it. It appeared that at that moment the sky was gone – it has ripped, in the same time was shrinking, and eventually it ended covered in a tangle of deformed branches and dusty grey leaves.

Dannie’s heart was beating either too fast or too slow. He should not stop walking. For a second he felt thousand beings, fingers crawling all over his skin. He started rubbing his skin; he really wanted these things away. He cursed himself for not putting any long leg trousers. The truth is that he was completely unprepared for what was lying ahead of him – no water in his bag, no pocket knife, no flashlight, no rope, no matches, no tin opener, no warm cloth, no Bible or something. He only got some change, wrist watch, tablet, ID card, driving license, large string of keys, receipt for current account balance and two rooster legs, rolled in a white table napkin with blue butterflies, covered in dried blood stains.

At the very moment when early in the morning right before heading off to work, Dannie opened the refrigerator and took the two, not quite well packed rooster legs, at that moment he realized he was going to actually do it. In the beginning naturally he was extremely skeptical about the news that the woman living under the bridge was able to cure his cancer. For his entire lifetime he was taunted with those sick people beyond remedy who were targets of all kind of crackpots and paranormal geeks trying to offer them the ultimate cure. Dannie used to be completely capable of taking care of himself. And yet, yesterday, only three days after he was told about the woman under the bridge, he left work at four o’clock, went to the animal market (the only one he knew) and bought big colorful rooster that kept looking straight at Dannie during the whole time with its never blinking yellow-red eye. The fucking bird was looking daggers. Right after paying to the short man with wrinkled sad face, Dannie grabbed the rooster and headed quickly towards his car. He felt his fingers sweating and the bird was flapping strong and mindless, scratching his skin and his white long sleeve shirt with its sharp claws. . When Dannie reached the car he opened the back door and tied with one hand the peek of the rooster with white plastic roller (it was not his best decision but at least it was some preparation in advance) and his legs with thin rope. Just for a second he felt like a doctor. Or some kinky version of Norman Bates. People have snapped for less. Slight smile stretched his mouth. The rooster started jumping and waving with his wings all over the back seat of his recently washed car. Dannie swore at the cock and stuck his wings with the sticking plaster he kept in a compartment in the car, in case Terra hurt herself. He then threw the immobilized bird in the back and sat heavily on the driver’s seat. At this moment he subconsciously knew that he had believed; he was going to pay a visit at this woman living under the bridge deep in the City forest; and above all he was going to do what she told him to, anything, just to continue living. He pressed the wheel with his hands, rested his forehead against it and started crying with no tears, realizing that his fear of death and pain had finally turned him into a looney, a man who had lost his precious dignity, a coward. 
Photo by Google, Images 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Bates
above mendtioned