Look at The Star Above Your Head
Letter about you, The Last Day of November 2000
“Look at the star you have above your head,” said the Mosquito, “and you will see the Scornful One upon it. She scorns everything to such a degree that she herself is made of whatever rubbish comes to hand: her body is made of plum pudding, her wings of holly leaves, and her head is a burning grape drenched in spirits.”
— Lewis Carroll
You matter.
You matter so much that this entire letter may be only about you.
After all, supposedly:
“the blue ice
the blue part in the icy castle
I lie at the feet of a statue whose beautiful expression has frozen me
in the burning warmth of its cold”
Exactly that.
You know this. Just as you know everything that comes below. None of this will be a surprise to you.
“Ah yes?” — Alienne smiled bitterly and narrowed her eyes.
“Well… yes…” he said uncertainly. He dissolved into a puddle of mercury.
She summoned the wind— a hurricane.
Wind so strong it opened the window of the house, tore down the curtains, demolished the room they were in, knocked over the aquarium; water and mercury mixed into blood, and meanwhile he was already hanging as black mist above her head.
She smiled — one spark — the black mist exploded like flammable gas — and the house turned into ashes carried far away by the hurricane.
They both fell as rain — into two underground streams, two rivers flowing long and lazily through the Garden — she became a white river, her part of the Garden pulsing with Life; he, poisoned water — black flowers, dying trees. At their end: the Sea.
They sat somewhere deep there — like two dead human bodies that drowned — the water rocking their bodies steadily — from his eyes, mouth, nose slid black snakes — soon he turned entirely into a tangled mass of serpents, she dissolved into blue poison.
But he was no longer there.
Adjusting his glasses, he sat comfortably in his armchair, pushed his slippers deeper in, took a sip of tea and handed her the newspaper. She looked carefully, but not at the newspaper. Behind him stood a shadow. Vague, wavering, between the antique armour and the fireplace.
“Look — they’re writing about a new museum, a museum of experiments on humans.”
Yet inside him, in Monty—there before the Little Creature—Alien sat. For him this room was only a dark, wet corridor — crouched under the ceiling he listened to her lonely, quick footsteps; she came not hurrying; he tensed completely — his whole being was the jump that would come any moment now.
Thirty steps away.
Twenty.
Ten.
He pressed against the wall and stopped breathing.
Six… five… four… three steps…
Sud—
The air split open with Miss Mantis’s horrifying giggle.
The ceiling crashed down on him in a mass of metal rods. Pierced in thousands of places at once, he howled senselessly…
“Indeed?” she said. “A museum of experiments on humans?”
Yes, she was now certain — the shadow behind him was herself.
They knew selfishly, within themselves, about themselves, for one another, the most unusual things — things no one else knew because no one else needed them.
Read previous five letters:
So Scentless. Everydayness
I was on the other side of myself, as if my body had remained in one room, while I, the real I, had seeped through the gap under the door and ended up where time turns its back on everything alive. On the other side of time, on the other side of the border, in a region that appears on no map, because no one in their right mind charts their own abandonme…
“That Comes From Elsewhere and From Without"
Those words will be what I would call the beginning of terrible things. But it somehow reached an unintended, yet good goal. You know how it is with goals — they’re never really goals, although once achieved, they somehow seem to have been.
This felt like stepping into someone’s dream and accidentally sitting in the wrong armchair — the one with the shadow behind it.
The way the scenes kept slipping into each other… rivers, serpents, blue poison, tea and slippers — it’s chaotic in that delicious, “I’m not sure where we’re going but I’m already buckled in” way.
My favourite part? The quiet confidence at the start: You matter. You matter so much this whole letter might be about you.
It’s unhinged and tender at the same time — my favourite combination.
Also, the Scornful One made of plum pudding and a burning grape?? I think she’s my new patron saint.
This whole piece feels like a myth someone whispered to me in a fever dream — and honestly, I kinda love it.