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Short Story

Living Light

A short story by Alistair Fruish.

You are living on light. The doctor did not understand. Food is not necessary. Water is not necessary. You comprehend this now. The doctor did not. Robert should not have involved him. You are not ill. Just a bit cold. A bit disconnected. A period of adjustment is to be expected. You are living on light in accordance with your true will. The only food you need now is pure cosmic energy. Pranic nourishment. Breath.

Breatharianism found you on an internet chat site. Someone by the name of Celestial Body was singing its praises. When you first read about it, you laughed. Surely it’s not possible to live without eating? These people must be pranksters, con-men or deluded. You and Robert both thought that. But it was just so fantastical, you had to find out more. The more you looked into it, the more it became obvious that this was the ultimate way to live without cruelty. You wanted it so badly to be true that nothing had to die, so that you could live. That nothing would end. Funny to think about wanting anything so badly now. You do not even want to sleep anymore. Now that you’re living on light, you want for nothing. Robert said that you were talking shit. That you were doing a great deal of violence to yourself because of your hatred. But you would not kill anything, would you? No, not again. You were living entirely on light and Robert didn’t understand, but then Robert never understood.

Even though you no longer eat, sometimes you like to look at food. It is only to be expected, your habits are difficult to break. You are alive on light, but there is further you can go. You are standing at a gas cooker, looking into a saucepan, watching frozen peas move in boiling water; defrosting, as they spit and surf around in the anxious liquid, they spin seriously fast. Little green worlds. Dead now of course.

Robert has gone. He told you that he could not take it. He feels guilty. He’s still eating the life out of things. You are too bright, too bright for his eyes. You are standing at a gas cooker watching the only food that you have in your house; beautiful peas, peas you will not eat. You are owing money. You are orbiting the sun. Your mother died in child birth. You never knew her. You are breathing in and out. You are subject to gravity. You are made up of beliefs. You are made up of cells, made up of molecules, made up of atoms of elements, made up sub-atomic particles. Your father is also dead. You have no other family. You are put into categories of location, age, race, culture, gender, sexuality, class, personality, finance, taste and size. You are subject to opinions. By coincidence a particle of iron in the haemoglobin currently in your eye, formed in the same dead distant star as a couple of particles in the peas. They were transported to just below the surface of this planet by a meteor two hundred and fifty million years ago. That sun has been dead three billion years. Seven people in your street lost their first tooth on Tuesday April the seventh. Yesterday you saw, but did not realise, twenty three people whose ancestors were from Finland. Some of the water in your pan was once in the belly of a tyrannosaurus. Other water molecules also about to boil within the pan have recently been unfrozen after twenty thousand years in a solid state. Do they enjoy their liquid freedom? As an ocean manifests currents and tides, as it is observed over time, so you manifest many patterns and behaviours that flow obliquely through your life and you are as aware of these patterns as the sea is aware within its wet infinity of each ebb, each wave impact. Over your life you will manifest many simple echoes, tendencies, themes, symbolism. You will not become aware of them and will be blind to most of them for ever. Sometimes you may get intimations. You may sense some freaky pattern. Seven people called Celia in a week. You suddenly start seeing pickled onions everywhere. Your mother was called Celia. But it slips away and you tell yourself you’re wrong and the pickled onion stuff is just you and there is nothing to it and it sort of feels like there is something hovering beyond conscious expression, you just do not manage to put your finger on it. That is all. It is there. If only you could sort of let the thought manifest… make the connection, but how the hell do you do that anyway and you start thinking about all the things you have devoured, all the life you have consumed and that now you are living, living on light and nothing need ever to die again…

Just a bit cold, a bit disconnected. Robert has gone. So will all the carcinogens and the toxins and the pollutants. You are being cleansed. The vibrations have changed. And you have changed. Lighter and lighter.

You began writing an alliterative composition with a lipstick. Do you remember? So far there are only five words in it, though they are repeated many, many times:

Meaning making monkey maybe mad.
Monkey making meaning maybe mad.
Mad monkey making meaning, maybe.
Meaning maybe making monkey mad.

Largely an autobiographical work. It remains unfinished. Robert thought it was about him. But you did write it on his car, didn’t you? You should have expected his reaction. He never liked you writing. You do not know where that piece is going anymore. You do not know where it has gone… Driven away. But every day as the peas boil at 11.23 I stand here and think about the ending.

Alistair Fruish personally endorses air and food and uses them both synergistically. But he tends to avoid eating stuff that once had both parents and a face, largely because of an irrational hatred of animals. He talks about himself in the third person and, despite appearances, is friendly. He can be contacted at: Fruish@ntlworld.com.

Elsewhere

In Elsewhere rolls a river you do not know
down to an ocean you will never see.

Elsewhere’s huge cities (nameless in your mind)
ring with a million arguments you’re not in.

In Elsewhere a stray dog barks, but you don’t hear it.
Its tautened nights, lit with ambiguous light
from the other side of your moon, are nothing to you.

But unconceive yourself,
and Elsewhere’s here.