In the Belly of the Whale
William Blake
by Gerry Hayes
Without the daily rotation of day and night I am unaware of how long, exactly, I have been in the belly of the whale. With only the glaucous glow of phosphorescent seaweed to provide light, circadian cycles break down more quickly than you’d expect.
Early on, I found an old crate and, for the period I call day, I sit on it, staring at the walls of the whale’s belly. In the seaweed’s glow, they appear a wet and foetid purple. Occasionally, the walls pulse and writhe and my own stomach heaves in time with them and I think I’m going to be sick.
I never am.
Other than these undulations, my accommodations appear, relatively, inert. I feel no movement as the beast traverses the oceans, which I assume it must. I can, however, hear its moans–those who call it whale song have not listened from an internal vantage.
The whale’s belly has its own fauna. At night, strange and skeletal bat-like creatures fly from unseen recesses and buzz about my head. Their wings are diaphanous–beetle wings, really– and they have no eyes. In truth, I can’t really consider these creatures nocturnal as the seaweed permits only perpetual twilight but they tend to come most active when I am asleep. More than once, I have woken to find a number of them on my face and hands, clinging with tiny, keen teeth to me, feasting on my blood.
Once, when hunger drove me to it, I returned the favour. Insubstantial, sardine-bones crushed between my jaws and thin, dark liquid spurted. It tasted like pennies and seawater and I drank it down greedily.
I wonder if I am a prophet. I wear sackcloth and try to believe in God. I kneel by my crate sometimes but find nothing about which to pray. I consider my sins but deem them insufficient to worry a god and meriting little atonement.
I atone anyway.
I drink the blood of another bat creature and I think of the sun. The whale moans in torment.
***
Gerry Hayes mostly sits around all day and drinks tea. Occasionally, he writes stuff and sends it to strangers so they can humiliate him and debase his efforts. Apart from the self-harm to dull the shame of failure, it’s not a bad life. Like I say, there’s tea. Gerry’s blog is stareintospace.com and you can have easily-digestible, bite-sized pieces of him at twitter.com/gerryhayes
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