He, Escarius
By Ahmad Jasim
Escarius awoke and raised his back from the cold stones. His long hair was pulled from the green grass that his being had laid upon. The previous ten days he had been watching, with his magnificent eye of splendor, those two far planets moving upon their course. He had, prior to that, escaped the jaws of the God of nature after a fierce strife. Upon Escarius’ awakening, the fish in the pond that his finger swam in approached. With a graze of a finger, Zadala the bloodfin tetra grew a human face. Undulant hair streaming in the water caught Escarius’ splendor eyes. The fish began to speak, when it had never spoken before. “Oh dearest Escarius, I had seen this morning from under this blue water a troubled mind of great thought! What is it, if you may?”
“I couldn’t shake my beliefs, and that God, whom I’d call the God of all things static and unmoving, had not swayed me. Are not all things: these rocks and dirt and clouds, foul when likened to that which gathers the sheaves and threshes the grain? That which moves and breathes and thinks and talks? What is the beauty in that which couldn’t be hailed as dead or alive? It remains with no mind upon the happenings of this world. Zadala, could you imagine that the mountain of my mother, Queen of death, had not commented upon all that she had done for it? It was she who brought the rocks one by one and placed them upon the flat land. I had watched that mountain grow, and yet it had not known, nor did it know, of my existence. How disgusting! Without those with blood, the world is blind with no eyes. The beauty is in that which records, and with a conscious thought becomes the world itself. They are the self-shaped head of God.” He lifted his foot and touched the bark of the tree. The leaves became arms that swayed and danced in Escarius’ visage. “Even this tree, alive and well, disgusts me, and looms upon the two realms. I cannot allow myself to sit here and not spread that beauty upon those desolate flying bodies.”
“What bodies do you speak of, Escarius?”
“Jupiter and Neptune. Wouldn’t it be a scene of worth? In my name, the God of life and all things that scatter and beget.”
“You must not! Your punishment would be a great deal.”
“I cannot stay and remain silent. My blood boils and assumes the flow, which is none, of the rocks beneath my feet. I call it that it must be something to be done.”
Escarius strode away from the pond. The muscles on his back twisted and contracted, and from them leapt a great set of wings, yellow and bright like an eyelash viper of utmost beauty. Queen of death, Haederia, had of them a hundred pets.
Zadala cried in her loudest voice: “I wish to watch such a thing if you mean it. My eyes are not unerring as yours. They grew in the unclear waters, reading all things devoid of their most color.”
He, Escarius, returned to the pond and pointed at the bark of the transformed tree. “Do not fret, I could do many things. You shall accompany me.”
“I cannot fly with you, dearest, and I have never left this pond.”
“I shall join you then, Zadala.” His foot sank into the water. His bare legs, and back, and head, and flowing hair, which reached his calves, descended. The pond darkened in color, as black as India ink. Glimmers of light dotted what depth there was. The pond was no pond. Zadala and Escarius in that water were soaring above the world. The fixed glimmers of light that emerged were burning stars. It was no mere illusion. Both of them were, in truth, staring at Jupiter and Neptune.
Escarius was like water, for his flesh moved and grew, mending itself with both spheres until all horizons were consumed. His hair had become the rings of Jupiter and Neptune, and the globes possessed a living soul. There was nothing but Escarius. Without a warning, like a roar of thunder, a God had struck him with a great sickness. The dark void regained its blue, and the glimmers, cast into pebbles, fell to the bottom. The pond was a pond once more, and Escarius was thrown into his body, expelled from citrine and sapphire.
The ground beyond the pond was now wondrous. In the center of the Connellia and Cattleya orchids, Escarius saw his father. Lenentar was a hippopotamus of wine-dark hide. His face was human and vacant, and his eyes, between the strands of long hair, glared at his son. “Have I not told you? What is there for the observer if it is not that to observe? What is there to study? Is it not the static beneath us? Is it not the heavy clouds and the piercing mountains?”
Escarius spoke no more. He knew that his father’s mind wouldn’t waver, and that his end was of an eternal kind. “You will punish me, father?”
“It is most unfortunate, my lovely jewel and oldest son.” The hippopotamus opened its mouth. Escarius peered his head, and the hippopotamus swallowed his son whole. When he came to his senses, he found himself on the face of a great ocean. To his side was the Goddess of rot. Her neck was a closed stump bearing no head, and her legs, half covered in the rolling waves, were that of a baboon. With the blade of her adze, she chipped away at his head, which would regrow without fail, only for her to chip at it again. After every time she had done so, she would place Escarius’ head on her stump. The head would become that of a baboon, cry, and wither into dust. The cycle repeated as the waves crashed onto them, carrying away his fallen blood.
Bio: Ahmad Jasim (He / Him) enjoys revolving his writing around contemplative questions of identity, deception, and morality. These questions could be approached from multiple perspectives, ultimately finding their way into stories that sit across literary fiction, thriller, and magical realism.
Author’s Notes: I wanted to formulate a story that sits within the realm of myth. Greek and Mesopotamian mythology usually had stories which could be told in a short sitting, and contained heavy elements of magical realism and some philosophical perspective etched into it. I wished to do something similar, and thus I created “He, Escarius” to be a story which mixes Sentiocentrism with the surreal.
