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NOTE: These stories are
intended for a mature audience.

Oroborous
A "Vorare" story
By
Ivan Ewert
Start at the beginning of the Vorare series

Dawn flew from the face of the sun to the edge of the knife, light without warmth, a winter's day that meant nothing in particular to man as a whole. Here and there meaning existed, certainly: someone would be married, someone would be born, and somebody would surely die. Across the continent and around the world, this day would be marked in one way or another as being a day to remember by a small number of minds, match lights in the darkness of the world.

Gordon reached to the stump of the tree, and clutched his stolen knife. He no longer had words for sun or moon, for silent tree or sunlit sky. He no longer had words for himself, for the Farm, for those who had come so close to being victims of his hunger. Words had faded into nothingness, and all was sharp-edged vision as he brought the blade to his arm.

Was the forest silent, or had he simply ceased to hear? No rustling breeze or wintersong came to his ears. The cold did not touch him, nor did he feel the chill ground below his feet, only the handle of the carving-knife, worn smooth from use, fitted to another's hand. The smell of blood was in his nostrils even before it promised to be spilled, warm and full and iron-rich, the foundry of his body which would temper the cold steel blade.

With nothing in his mouth, he could already taste what was to come.

The first slice hardly seemed real. He watched the crimson seam open along his wasted bicep, as easily as unzipping a winter's jacket to fully experience the rich cool air of a crisp winter's morning. The pain did not come for several seconds, not until the first run of blood had begun to pump lazily from his arm.

He remembered the tiny discs of flesh bitten from his raw fingers, brought the knife around in a gentle, easy circle. The blood was pooling on the grey earth below him, barely of interest to the bright fever of his mind. The pain was clearing his vision, making the clean edges that he cut around his arm a perfect circle, the face of the full moon and the color of sunset, bringing his whole body into focus. There was pain, then, but not the pain of loss; the pain of something entirely new ? the pain of true sight, unburdened by emotion.

Flesh and muscle came away from his arm, sliding neatly down the knife's edge for an inch before he tilted it to the side, stopped the movement and lifted the blade to the eastern sky. A perfect circle, a perfect sacrifice, the perfect scent of something new born into the breathless woods around him. Blade and flesh alike glistened in the sharpness of sunlight.

He put the knife into his mouth and closed is slowly, drew the blade from his lips and began to chew, eyes open and staring ever at the slowly climbing sun. There was no flavor, only joy, only the raw red strength he had felt in his flight. It was not food but life, and as the flesh broke down beneath his molars the world began to sing again.

Had he seen before? Bright and clear as his vision had been, had he ever truly seen? He was both above and within himself, saw the rising sun and his own body observing, saw the red discs above and below, felt himself lifted, pulling, chewing, swallowing, descending, rising. He felt the end of all troubles in the ebb and flow of the world, felt the pain and fear and madness rise and fall like tides upon the great sea that was all mankind.

There was nothing wicked here, nothing dangerous. What could threaten a force as vast as life? Little sparks were banked and ended but the wildfire would rage ever on, shifting and moving and burning bright through all eternity. Tiny stones were ground to dust but the mountain would never wear away, patient though time might be. One cloud would slip into unformed vapor but the sky itself went on and on into the eternal ether, unseen but everlasting, changing but indestructible. There was no entropy, there was no death, there was no fear. There was nothing in the world but life, life, life, endless life, immortal and eternal and all in one.

He could see himself bring the knife again, no longer felt the insignificant pain of his insignificant body. He watched without fear, smiling as he sliced through his flesh, singing through tears of delighted joy, knowing now what so many had tried to teach him though they had not the knowledge themselves: that there was no body but the endless soul. That there was no unknown hunger, only the desire to be fully and completely at one, to be lifted beyond and above and ever away.

Gordon saw the farmhouse he had robbed, watched the couple as they boarded up their window and held each other tight in a meaningless fear that the burglar would return. He saw their neighbors, whispering and shaking their heads over coffee and tea in the basement of a church, wondering what had become of the wide and wicked world.

He saw the Farm, still standing, full of death and life in equal measure. He saw the plates and the ovens, the knives and the hooks, the axes and drains and wheat and bread. He saw the children of the Farm, unfed and unfeeling, saw the men of the Farm, filling themselves on paranoia and pride.

He saw further, saw his mother, watching out the window with a cup of tea in her hand, never quite accepting that her little boy was gone, was lost to her forever and all the waking world, gone as his father had gone before him into the endless tide of life that the world could never understand. He saw the child he had eaten all unwitting, saw his tiny candle flickering through birth and childhood and the lessons of the Farm, saw the flat and fearless acceptance he had seen in Sylvie, and this too he now understood.

There was no apocalypse, none had ever truly threatened. There was no end to the world. There was no end to life, nor would there ever be. He could never have perceived the truth in his former life, a life of work and routine and self-satisfaction. Selfishness and chaos ruled that day, no matter how gentle and giving he might try to become. No. The sacrifice alone could sense the answers, could watch them run red and steaming into the earth below, absorbed into the vast russet tides of the endless world.

The hunger ended only with the answers, devoured. He would both reveal and receive as the darkness turned to eternal day, as the crooning blade cut along first one eyelid and then the next, sliding gently into his lights as the salt of blood and tears ran into his eyes, blinding in this world and witnessing all, himself sliding gently into himself as time turned upon time's own axis, head over tail to the nonexistent ends of the world.

He was rising, rising, unable to see the world pulling away but ever rising toward the red face of the sun's wound in the sky, that perfect bite taken out of the universe to shine the red and rising truth into the days of man.

He rose, finally free of the flesh that had imprisoned him, and was gone.

Story and photo by Ivan Ewert, Copyright 2006