THE UNDERSIDE OF DISLOCATION
On the Underside of the World, located over & South of the horizon line, things operated differently, from what Jonas had observed. Humans never slept. Some strange malady consumed the sleep forest centuries ago, leaving generations lost on the road of the waking.
Their sun rose in the west & set in the west; everyday, without fail. Their scientists claimed the yo-yo strings from a defunct super satellite were holding it captive on that end of the world.
Their moon didnt have a “new” phase. The carnival operators who ran the old skull were contractually obligated to constantly appear in the night sky, making a different shape every time its light graced the octagonal mountain ranges that stretched the length of the Underside.
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Cubicles roamed free across the plains of the Undersides single continent, grazing on discarded email accounts & raw blades of calculus. Jonas was especially fascinated by their hibernation ritual, which involved scaling the innards of abandoned skyscrapers & sleeping in groups on their many emptied floors. This would inevitably lead to the season of the Telemarketer, which blossomed from the fertile carpets fostered by the hibernating cubicle hurds.
But the whole reason he made the trip over the horizon line was to find the thing responsible for dislocating his shadow. No law enforcement agency had jurisdiction on the Underside, leaving Jonas with the burden playing vigilante to his own injustice. Dislocated shadows were unruly, constantly cannibalizing other shadows & invading the dreams of thier owner. Giving off a blue haze, they were more parasite than silhouette.
He found the culprits on a tip from a fog farmer, who stated "theres a whole gang of dislocators hold up in the old bus depot." Jonas thanked the woman in the traditional custom of the Underside & tapped his own forehead thrice while coughing.
By the stories he’d heard from the locals, shadow dislocators were a gruesome bunch, but not violent or aggressive, so Jonas entered the ancient bus depot with a broken shadow & a head full of questions.
His eyes fell on children of the most ravenous sort. They all scurried about, desperately drinking from the light streams that drifted through the gouges & holes in the roof. Their own shadows had been dislocated; from the look of them, more than once. Even as Jonas watched, one of the misbegotten children was shifting her own cobalt silhouette, frantically manipulating its dark veins, her eyes full of yellow confusion.
There were no answers to be found here. No justice to be given. Only the stale whispering air of the fallen depot & the disfigured shadows of orphaned, light starved children.
