Idiacanthus fasciola.

I held the aged, yellowed glass cubicle in my hand. It was roughly a foot long, by about four inches high. My hands were grasping the cubicle, but my heart grasped what was embedded within. I held the tapered black ribbon in my gaze. Everything about it was beguiling: the almost two-dimensional strip of its body, sequined by regular patterns of white speckles, but itself as black as a gash in space and time, the lines of dots giving the impression someone had tried to repair the rip with a lace of diamond dust. Most beguiling of all though, was the head. It rose, like a horse about to upend its rider, as if defying the pegs that held its otherwise limp physique in suspension within the gently sloshing preservative. Its teeth were needles, projections extending beyond the gape of its jaws held perpetually sagging by more of the devil’s spikes contained deeper within its treacherous maw. In a humorous divertissement of evolution, from the chin streamed a thin white tassel, a singularly incongruous filament which extended into an elegant ‘come hither’ swirl beneath the arresting head. The eye was a sapphire, a jewel, a Koh-i-Noor, set in regal glory upon the bevel of this devilish crown. It spoke of having seen great wonders, fortitudes, repasts and tragedies no human mind could fathom, yet it was Nature’s irony that this blind tailor could not see. Nothing but an endless realm of black dimensions, progressing through black time, which this creature knew no beginning of, and finally was gifted blessed vision, only to behold the portents of its tragic end, the spirit of its existence snuffed out by the monstrosity which swept it into the shallows, initiating the paradigm towards its final resting place. Now its assaulted, cursed form lay bare in the rasping glare of the irradiating fluoro, the magnitude of its beauty caught in a shaft of idle early morning sunlight.

I stayed with the block for what seemed an abnormal eternity, my mind, addled from two nights of sleepless tribulation, struggling to come to terms with the culmination of a lifelong dream, one which had transported me through ten years of struggle, in which I danced the tarantella of fate which were to drag me through to my final reckoning, along this self-determined path of paved dreams and esoteric fantasies. Such was the flame of my ambition, and now I was here, having attained this stage, having dragged all horse and cannon slipping, sliding, kicking, crying through the raging gunfire of teenagehood, immaturity and self-doubt. Yet my mind could not linger. Hands trembling, I set the black dragonfish down on the lab table. The emotional fissures from within finally manifested, renting the context of my soul and shattering its already tremorous stability into unidentifiable fragments of grief. I began to weep. Not for the joy of attained glory, not for the incandescence of ambition achieved. No, this was unbridled, unadulterated sadness in condensed form. My knees bent in physiologically violating angles as I gathered my composure and left the stuffy malodorous chamber, perhaps thankful that not a soul had noticed my momentary meltdown. Poignantly I beheld the object of my accursed indecision as I passed, having not previously beheld it for better attentions up to then, paid elsewhere.

Where, where had I gone wrong? It had practically been a year to the day when I first sowed the seeds of my gut-wrenching dissolution. Oh to lament the weakness of the heart, the disregard for the unwieldy handrail of cynicism and caution wiser men use to steady themselves in such periods of weakness, the cataract of romance blinding myself from the forgiving shelter of sensibility, as I crossed over from the realm of pragmatism into one of misguided folly. The conclusion had long been forthcoming; I was too deluded to see it. As the entrancing scent of bait lures even the wiliest fox from its hole, even I was ensnared, too consumed by my own selfish delusions to contemplate any antagonistic ramifications. How I belted logic and rationale with the whip of fantasy and misplaced confidence. Now as I look back I trace the bloody steps of my progress from sane and sensible man to the unearthly pit of self-pity and lost hope. Desire had consumed me, now I was entering its digestive system, my prone hapless form and soul macerated into disintegration.

Those were blissful times. I cannot begrudge anyone the time, effort and soul I vested in this ultimately futile endeavour. The assessment is frank: I had set it up as a goal to attain, and I have through circumstance and loss of nerve, failed. It has proven me a man amongst men, one who sought the extravagant chalice yet ultimately could not hurdle the obstacles in his path. My own self-wrought quest to facilitate romance has now brought about my own self-wrought downfall. This failure has brought me to my knees, rended me to the core. I can no longer say I am wholesome in mind or spirit; I have lost faith in my sense of direction. No longer can I invest full measure of faith in the decisions that I make, no longer can I wrap bloody swords in cotton cloth of purity. I am bleak inside. Chastening is always a stark happenstance, but I have learned. It seems an irony that even as I beheld the very symbol of my greatest hopes and dreams all hope slipped away from me. No longer can I pursue such trifling matters with faith or any degree of meaningful ambition. Like a dog who fears his abusive owner, I cower from any prospect of future engagement and contact with that which has destroyed my confidence. As Edgar Allan Poe’s raven did quote, ‘Nevermore, nevermore.’