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'Death Is Just A Point In Space' by David Luntz
I had this dream about an ape playing with a hand grenade. He was tossing it in the air, throwing it against the wall. Biting it. And, as he began to pull the pin out, I thought I’d woken up, but maybe I hadn’t, because I was sitting on top of an alpine peak sipping fortified spirits overlooking snowcapped mountains seeking the line where my sadness began and the tree line ended; the low point where the lush scrub died and my depression began; because I thought if I could locate those dissolving lines, I would understand myself and the world better; so, that night, I walked down to the mountain lake and began to peel the moonlight off its surface to persuade the comet streaking overhead to grant me that deeply-held wish; that is, if it wanted to get its reflection back and keep me from knowing how the dead really see us; and if it had declined, I would have swum to the bottom of that opaque pool to return that shooting star to the moment of its conception to stop it from knowing all my life’s bad choices, all the while knowing, too, that that wouldn’t have made much difference; because each passing moment has its own requiem no matter what we do, and, besides, by then, the ape had caught up to me, and, as he swallowed the grenade, I knew there was no coming out of that world, or of waking up, unless I hugged him.
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Work in Post Road, X-R-A-Y Lit, Hobart Pulp. Twitter: @luntz_david
'Death Is Just A Point In Space' was first published in Variant Lit in December 2023.
