purple prose

well it is midnight

Once luminous, now dim. It burns with cold: sucks heat anti-entropic from anything nearby; so you get warmer as it gets cooler. I keep it in the shed at the bottom of my garden. The shed shelters under a sticky sycamore, and late nights I'll sit inside staring at the thing's faltering glow, hearing, but not listening to, the wind whisper through the sycamore's black branches above.

I found it in my bed.

I woke one morning and there it was, resting on the pillow inches from my face. It was wet, and damp strings of spittle tracked from me to it, like I'd coughed it up in the night. I don't think I was surprised to see it, the explanation for its presence was in the fading dream I woke with. I can't remember the dream now.

I yawned, I stretched, I rubbed my eyes.

I reached to touch it - but I heard a hum (like an electric thing overloading, perhaps too full of volts, or amps) and pulled back my hand. The hum went. I reached again, the hum came back. I experimented, moving my hand towards and away, and the hum likewise rose and fell. This seemed acceptable at the time.

I got out of bed and picked up the shirt I'd left on the floor the night before. I threw it over the glowing thing, and then I became aware the hum was entirely gone, a loud silence in its place.

I wrapped it in my shirt, took it to the shed and put it on a shelf.