The Intellect is Aflame (?) by William Lloyd

(2 ratings) Rate this Story (5 best) 1 2 3 4 5

Josef knocked the heady marble floor with a mahogany gold cane, whistled a clear soprano scale of D flat major that knocked itself off the starry ceiling and down the black staircase, slumpily released another moment's angry carbon and double tapped his feet at every step, walking through the cubic open gallery the size of a monster, uniform students scribbling and choking on their words amongst rivers of paper and trash piles of old novels, drumming hands flippantly off the jittering tables, confused and busier than the world, whilst Josef's skull faced the heady marble floor, beating into his mind like an anvil, as Professor Garnet tripped out of his office and into the hall like a haggard Jesus, brushing fallen motes from his cufflinks, thinking about snow globes, sinking in a dirge filled mental universe of Claudio Monteverdi and superstring insanity, searching the burning windows for the rays of a heralding dusk, whilst children played outside, whilst Mohammad Qasim P.H.D lay in a musty stinging dump and punctured his wild eyes with sticks, as the druggish foreign music slunk out of a crack in his bedroom door and into the ancient corridors and the black staircase, absorbed by an endless choking rattle hour after hour, dead and gone, as two strangers met across the chalky rift, and Mohammad wondered again what was the point in anything.
"Yesterday I dreamt again that the stars were falling...and that I could trace a pathway between galaxies with my hands."
"And did you tell your students this?"
"No, no, no. What would my students want with dreams?"
"But did you tell anyone about it?" The conversation moved in low tones, running through the aisles of books, and now collided with the walls of the wide Garnet office. Inside, they were lined with book cases, not a shape or piece out of place. Josef sat down.
"What would they want with it?
When I woke up there were bars on my windows and inside my brain, and there were angels of different colours, and each angel spoke in short sharp screams and said twelve and a half things at once. I remembered studying experimental chemistry when I was 9 years old, when we made flames and watched liquid evaporate. It came down the glass walls in streams of blue and green- it was beautiful. I remember looking for minnows in streams in Kentucky,-field biology; I was 5- and the Europa landing...not the landing itself but my parents' conversation during the broadcast. I was barely six months old- I don't know how I could have remembered that."
Professor Garnet spoke a little slowly.
"My whole past is being recounted to me in the clear morning by angels. They say "Io, io, sono', sono', it means so much to know, know..." and then they start to siphon my earlier life to me through holes in the air. They say other things too, like "you lived, you lived." It doesn't mean anything now, but when they're here I know exactly what they mean." The Professor said.
"You should tell someone."
"...I could not tell people."
"Do not be ashamed."
"I am finding myself in vivid, delusional states for what must be several hours each day now.