Episode 4: Awash in a red sky benevolent eye

Glory B & East Hastings’ awareness of each other across time and space is growing, as Glory B ponders the circumstances that led to them being trapped in the box.   

Episode Transcript

Glory B (00:21):
Once upon a time I could fly.
Before the stank devoured ourworld in a giant death fog.
Before the After, I couldspread my wings and fly away...
anytime I felt like it.

East Hastings (00:39):
Some of us stay in the winter clay.
Burrowing under the leaves and thetop soil like squat, shiny polyps.
Like wormites, growing and stretchingdown into the deep, wet belly.

Glory B (01:01):
Over the city walls and up into the bare-skin wind.
Swelling, dipping.
Wings pierced glorious with joy.
Shivering in the frosted crust.

East Hastings (01:14):
Longer and wider, our feet expand, our legs multiply,
growing down and out, twistingand writhing all around. Our many
arms stretch out, each to each.
We clasp hands, we reach out andstretch out and join together.

(01:38):
Our hair springs from everytangled crack, running wild
across the forest floor.

Glory B (01:46):
Hot wind blasting under my breasts and my belly.
Whipping me awake at midnight.
Spittle whistling, plowing throughnever-ending dust clouds, awash
in a red-sky benevolent-eye.

East Hastings (02:02):
All the forest things roam our home.
Winding and slinking through the quick.
Or skipping and flitting acrossthe canopy, where fat boughs bulge
and break with a cracking-crash.
Land sewn tight, fortified andsinging the same old story.

Glory B (02:24):
Wings spread wide, returning, once more, down,
down, below to the city walls.
Gliding gently in the phosphureticlight, radiating fine splendours.
Scattering in the streets below.
I was truly glorious...
...and the Keepers didnot like it one bit.

(02:47):
They put me in a box.
It's for your own good Glory,the Keepers said to me.
It isn't safe anymore.
They smiled.
They cared.
They loved me with bland shameand sickly-sweet desire.
The Keepers told me,You're our future Glory B.

(03:07):
But you're flying too closeto the edge, they said.
It's not safe.
You'll get burned.
It's too toxic out there.
It's just not safe.
They folded my wings withtheir pale blue fingers and
numbed me with smooth lies.
You must stay in thebox for your own good.

(03:29):
If you can't control yourself,then we must control you.
For your own sake.
Your own safety.
Stay in the box, where it's safe.

East Hastings (03:41):
sssshhhhhhhhh, shhhhhhhhhhhhh,

Glory B (04:00):
These dreams of freedom lost overwhelm me.
All the hours and minutes and seconds.
Dusty, terrible hope goes dark.
Trapped in this impossible madness.
Grinding.
That whining, nagging feeling in theback of your mind that never heals.

(04:21):
Perfect, not perfect.
Stuffed in the corner with allthese tiny, winking regrets.
Hunched and listening for...
anything?
Any sign at all that there'ssomeone here besides me?
There's no escape.
My limbs wedged, fleshpinched and squished.

(04:42):
My shaking mouth curved ina hot-breath night-scream.
Eyelids shut.
Lungs feel like they've beengreased flat with the bland stank
of life backed into a corner.
Clutching my belly tight, I pressmy ear to the ground and listen...
for the perfect question.

East Hastings (05:03):
huuuuh? [big sleepy yawn]
....whooooooo? .....Wherrrrrrre?

Glory B (05:29):
Day after day.
Week after week.
Year after year.
Nothing.
Until all sense of time is lost.
Nothing.
And then suddenly, out of the darkness.
Out of all the long, long nothing.
The sound of a voice whispering

East Hastings (05:53):
Where are you?

Glory B (05:56):
Breathes the Ghost in my sleeping ear.
And all my salty tears rain down anddown into that great sea of blackness.
And this is all a dream.
And the question is asked.
And the answer is learned.
And somehow, the ghost is here...
but not here.
They are somewhere else.

(06:16):
Far from here.
Buried, under the ground...
but they're not dead.
They're not dead, and I'mscreaming because my salty tears
are raining poison down on them.
But the Ghost is strong, andthe stank can't hurt them.
They burst open all that whiteleafy brightness and breath a milk

(06:40):
wind, and it washes out the stankfrom my salty tears raining down on
all the sweet green and brown andgolden blossom that surrounds Them.
And is them...
Them, and so much more than them.
So many more of Them.
And my tears ask thequestion, Who are you?

(07:02):
And their answer whispers...
Hasssstings.
Easssssst..