Attempt to touch the sky no.3 by Yuichi Ikehata © 2014. Yuichi is an award winning artist whose work focuses on the arresting collision of the real and the non-real. His work explores the idea of identity, of memory as fragmentation, 'on the way to oblivion.' His work has won several awards, including silver in the 2012 PX3 Prix de la photographie Paris. You can see more of his work on his website and follow him on Facebook.

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An ill defined horizon by Tony Black

I don’t know yet exactly how it ends. I know what I need to do, how to do it, and how long it will take. I just don’t know exactly how it ends. Yet.

I won’t be missed: I know that. I have shuffled apologetically through this world lately. It’s quite some time, I suspect, since anyone last noticed I was here. I have drifted from the centre of the page on which my life is written out into the margin. Where once I was boldly pronounced in ink, I am now sketched scratchily in pencil. And today I will be erased entirely.

It’s a bright winter morning on the beach. A light, cold drizzle drifts idly down through the thin air, taking flight occasionally when caught by a squally gust. My clothes, stacked neatly some feet away, show a silver fuzz where the rain has landed. It sparkles feebly when caught by the watery November sun.

I look down to my feet and the soft sensuous ripples of sand around them. Gently rocking to and fro on my heels, I feel the sand yield to me and pull me to it at the same time. I look out to sea but the vista is a wash of white. I can’t discern the horizon, the point at which churning grey-white clouds become roiling white-grey surf.

I’m ready. I close my eyes and think, and then think deeper. I inhale slowly and stretch my arms straight out in front of me. I concentrate, and then concentrate deeper. I feel my consciousness start to pare from my body and pull farther and farther away until finally, successfully, it is entirely disconnected.

My eyes open involuntarily and I can see the tips of my outstretched fingers start to tremble. Soon they are shuddering so quickly the actual movement becomes imperceptible. My fingers and my hands become a violent blur. The motion sweeps up my arms, across my chest, to my legs and up to my head. Faster and faster my entire body thrums. I am a plucked string. Little more now than a shadow: less even than my reflection on the wet sand. I become a vibration. Within seconds I am a mere frequency.

I am cloud, I am sky. I am wave, I am sea. I am rain, I am air.

I am gone.

A. Joseph Black is from Carnlough and writes Flash Fiction and short stories. His work can be found online on various websites, in print in Belfast literary journal The Incubator and in translation in HESA Inprint magazine, Finland. He will eventually get round to sorting out www.ajosephblack.com at some indeterminate point in the future.  

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