Repetition Island

Some time ago, on an occasion lost to memory, Mardi read an old caravanner’s chronicle that recorded the details of a daily regimen recommended by a long-dead sect of ascetics, and later favored by warrior shahs who sought special clarity when deliberating on great matters of state. The regimen consisted of a cold bath each morning (by preference in a mountain stream, far removed from the distractions of social intercourse), following which the devotees would meticulously review the entire surface of their bodies. With a sharp blade they would shave themselves from head to toe, trim their nails, and excise anything that blemished the smoothness of their skin. According to the caravanner’s report, the ascetics of antiquity would then ingest these excrescences and imbibe a mixture of their own sweat and urine. Afterward they would fast until the following morning, when they would repeat the process, convinced that with this ritual their bodies would enter a period of total homeostasis, thereby freeing their minds from the bondage of the material world.

After several days of a precipitous decline in health, punctuated only by nightly terrors, Mardi began to feel the world slipping palpably away. At first Mardi believed that the agonies gripping from within could only harbinger mortality. But even Mardi’s grim visions – brittle nail clippings scraping the raw tenderness of Mardi’s gullet, hair amassing into little nets that Mardi would cough up in the heat of the afternoon – were not without their comforts. Eventually, though, the sour taste of bile receded from Mardi’s mouth. The world became brighter than Mardi remembered, and sharper. The air seemed to penetrate Mardi more profoundly. And it was in this state that Mardi discovered, in the mad mixture of scents carried on the wind from across the sea, what waited beyond the shores of the island.