Transience on a Monday Morning

photo by arantxa villa

Transience on a Monday Morning

fourth-year marilyn cottom

The morning is quiet and gray. You stand alone under the awning of the bus stop, idly flipping through your reading. When the bus arrives, you barely glance up before your feet are carrying you through the doors.

“This is East Campus,” the automated voice drones. 

The bus shudders to a start, and you close your eyes—just to rest them, you tell yourself—when everything goes black. 

Your eyes shoot open, not that it makes a difference. The world around you is dark as pitch. Your mind is still whirring through explanations as the darkness resolves itself into dozens of tiny pinpricks of light, and you gaze outside into the impossible. 

The galaxy stretches out before you, the sky a thick black velvet encrusted with a thousand diamonds. Beneath you is a vast, still ocean, its star-scattered surface blending seamlessly with the horizon. You lean closer to the window and gasp. Sea creatures in jewel-bright colors glow from inside the water, the distance rendering them as small as furniture in a dollhouse. Beneath the calm, serene mirror of the ocean, they seem to swim among the stars. 

Your eyes track a school of bright, tropical fish as they flit among the star-speckled coral. Their scales flash luminous gold, orange, and red as they move as a single being, a ribbon of flame weaving through the dark water. A tiger shark with luminous white stripes, as if painted in moonlight, lazes in the shallows. As it draws nearer, it charges towards the oncoming school, cutting through it like a knife. Orange and pink starfish the size of the nail on your pinky finger coat the surface of the rocks and sand at the bottom, oblivious to the shark and the danger it harnesses. They lace among the nebulae and neutron stars. 

As the bus trudges onward, leaving behind not a ripple—what are you driving on, you wonder, and decide that is the least bizarre thing going on right now—you make out a strange shape beneath the water. An enormous city rises from the seabed, its towering spires cut from translucent blue stone. A ruin, you think it must be, forgotten and perfectly preserved. You keep thinking you see movement in the streets below out of the corner of your eye—long, narrow bodies with peculiarly arm-like fins—but you never manage to see more than a glimpse. 

“This is Memorial Hall,” says the automated voice, and you bite back a hysterical laugh. The bus stops, and the doors open, letting in a sudden, blinding panel of light. 

You squeeze your eyes shut, but move towards the door, curious as to what you might find outside. Squinting against the glare, you are able to make out solid ground beneath the last step. You take a deep breath and step off the bus. 

There, barely visible between the trees, is the ordinary shape of Memorial Hall. You stand and stare, more relieved than you would have imagined at the mundanity, the familiarity. You hear the bus pull away behind you and you slip your backpack strap over your shoulder, heading towards your next class. You don’t look back.