The Spot

Polsky had a spot. It was somewhere between his ajna and sahasrara chakras, but sometimes it would manifest on his body in the form of a suppurating tumour. Never in the same place twice, the spot would on occasion masquerade as a glorious energy, and for a time Polsky would feel alive and capable of the most remarkable feats. He loved to sculpt the immobile from unstable materials: a concrete pillar from gelatin; a moss covered stone from rotting fruit; a towering bone from ice. He could never raise his head or hands to his art when the spot was in its metastasis. His periods of vibrancy, much cherished by him and those who loved him, were marked by the shadow of the spot. It would crowd over him like a dreadful promise, blocking out all the sunshine, and in its highest joyful illusion mock him with the ephemeral taste of happiness. Polsky learned of the interconnected nature of his intermittent glory and the sickness of the spot when he tried to remove it. Using a pair of pliers he set to tearing out the excrescence, but the harder he pulled the more the spot grew, until it covered his entire body in a perfect layer, resembling the shape and texture of his skin perfectly. The spot even grew a pair of pliers to help him with his work. This continued for some time, until Polsky found he could not remove the pliers themselves.

Then Polsky ran into a light. It was the cosmic sort, the kind that gathers under trees or atop mountains. He found his in a weight loss manual. For forty years he laughed ebullience and wept universality. He would say such things as, "There is no spot," and with this the spot entered into its greatest masquerade. Walking happily through a forest of buildings, Polsky encountered a man who looked him in the eye and would not let him pass. "What bothers you, friend?" asked Polsky. The man pointed in between his ajna and sahasrara chakras and told him, "You have my spot." Thereupon Polsky collapsed and wept, for then he realized that all the world had thus become the spot, which had fed upon the light and grown beyond all proportions, consuming even the sources of light. By the end of his life, as Polsky lay on his bed, covered in spots, attended to by spots, breathing spots, he remarked that, "In the beginning, all I had to do was understand that purity and joy were the spot, and all my problems would never have begun." Then those around him told him, without compassion, "If you had said that, the spot would have been there already for many years. Even so, it will be there now where you go." And with that he died, and sure enough the spot was waiting for him.