The waterfall spoke for the only god the people knew, the god that was the Earth. And the water had been falling ever quieter during the drought that began six years ago.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
Now they wait for the last drop from the waterfall’s mouth, when there will be no resolution left, but for someone’s blood to be spilled.
Drip.
Drip.
To trade one soul for the survival of the many.
Drip.
Image by Max Gindelle on Pixabay
It’s a Monday near the end of Q4 and the offices of Blackfish Intl. are empty. They shouldn’t be empty. Men and women should be scrambling over numbers too high and numbers too low, reports that don’t prove enough, stats that don’t hide enough. But Cohen has declared a holiday, evading the ritualistic frenzy that has the rest of the corporate world enslaved. That’s exactly how he puts it, enslaved, and he’ll have no part of it.
Impossible! Cry the bankers to the north.
Stupidity! Scoff techies to the south.
And that’s how Blackfish Intl. carries on at its mediocre revenues and its subpar profits. No one will be writing Cohen onto any of their top ten lists, or calling him for interviews on how to blind the world with his insatiable success. Everyone sends him their resume.
I come from the cave people who dwell in the dark, and once a year my day would come to fetch the water from the drinking cavern. I liked to feel the gnarled roots that snaked along the limestone walls. The mud never bothered me since I was barefoot. I sometimes forgot how the sucking mud fought with me for each step, pulling into depths too heavy to salvage both my feet and my shoes. The torch I carried cast long shadows around and ahead of me. What a strange phrase, casting shadows, as if light is the sinister creator of those dark, shifting lines.
The groundwater pooled under an exposed sinkhole to the sky. It was like a tunnel running upward, leading to a dangerous revelation of the outside. The rule was to bow our faces to the water, get in, collect, and get out before temptation drew our eyes toward the brightness above. But when a shadow soared across the surface, a form my torch had not cast, I did look up and witnessed for the first time a bird in flight, and I followed that vast, spell casting light into a totally new world.
Scour the pit to find the glowing ember.
Do not leave behind the trolling ember.
The hidden debris is a flowing heat.
A burn born from a small, knowing ember.
Spreading unrestrained as a mowing fire.
Cutting, destructive, destroying ember.
Flames are a distraction showing deceit.
Massacre our view by throwing ember.
Civilizations torched, bestowing ash.
You turned your back on lit, smoking ember.
Photo by Mafujur Rahman on Unsplash
The orbit of Clara’s family centered on the weddings, weddings that were filmed and edited with Oscar worthy devotion. Some weddings (with the five mariachi bands and professional dancers stomping across the plaza) centered on national pride. Other weddings (with the Cinderella carriage and the six white horses) prioritized outdoing the Jones’ over the Garcias. And of course, attending every one of those weddings was law.
Silently, Clara arranged the princess style gowns around the bridal dressing room. She didn’t know how to tell Sofia, the matron of the ceremony tomorrow, that no one would be coming to wear these dresses. She practiced in her head the safest way to say it. She considered asking Julio to inform Sofia. Julio was certainly the most resilient, being only six years old. Or she could ask him to ask his even younger cousin Manuel, who had just learned to walk and could easily deliver a letter with the news.
Photo by Cinematic Imagery on Unsplash
Friederike lay in bed and the blanket, cotton, weighed across her legs and resisted her hands as they tugged, though with less determination today. Propped up she resembled a queen settled to receive her morning breakfast. Outside the snow was falling. Quickly at first but slower now. Each flake hit the glass as silently as what life had come to for Friederike, who watched with her head craned toward the window as if the monotony of snowfall was something never to be taken for granted.
I wonder how the weather is at Jennifer’s today.
Friederike checked the clock. Maybe schools will announce a snow day. The children would be thrilled at the news once they woke up.
She smiled as their excitement warmed her imagination, conjured by the senses of her own memories.
“There, there,” she sang and stroked the base of his snout with her good hand to make his nostrils flare in response. “You love the shade of the grove, don’t you?”
The unicorn pushed passed her until he reached the swaying drapes of the nearest wisteria. It made him quiet and softened the dry look of bewilderment in his eyes. Sometimes when Sarah brought him here his breathing shifted from his usual pulsing grunt to something so whispery and light he may have been singing a song, if animals could sing songs. But why the grove cast this spell of serenity over him was a secret for the unicorn alone, along with why he never left her side and why he had chosen Sarah of all the other villagers to enslave.
She did not flinch when the tears began to fall. Among the wisteria was his only distraction. With her right hand she got to work spreading the healing mucous of his snout she had collected, instantly clotting the blood that glistened over the gashes on her knees and ankles. Nothing could be done for the broken bones of her left.
Image by Natalialix on Pixabay
I am the plant.
The flower only grows in season.
You celebrate the bloom while it lives; sigh at its demise when it falls.
But I am not the flower.
I am the plant.
You want me to be the flower.
I am not the flower.
I am the seed buried and bursted through layers of soil - dark -
reaching for light and grasping for water.
I am the plant.
Hari could not understand why she took that next step onto the ice. The instant she heard the sound of something breaking, she should have turned back to the solidarity of the snow bank. But Kallik beckoned to her from the center of the pond, hand held out as though he already had her there. His gentle, hypnotic voice tethered her to him while Hari’s throat ached. Her cotton scarf held no warmth against the cold. Why didn’t she plant her feet this instant and refuse to suppress her instincts? She screamed when the ground gave way. If she had only gasped instead, she might have gathered some strength. Strangled between the agony freezing her blood and the searing in her lungs, she suffocated. That same hand luring her onto the lake strained to reach her now, but Hari’s limbs were paralyzed, and she could not reach back.
Image by wal_172619 from Pixbay
When thunder clapped over the concert, he belted the high note of his greatest hit and collapsed. Maybe he had been reaching for the floor the entire show, knees shaking. Surely there had been more than one sign, an out-of-rhythm sway, a slurred lyric, because everyone watching, from the pit to the nosebleeds would later remember predicting it. As clouds sank heavy over their heads, promising rain, they knew, just knew. Not only was his collapse a certainty, they had it pictured in their minds: forceful, as if he were shoved aside and trampled. They were all looking right at him when the thunder echoed. The music continued to blast the outro through the speakers, heavy bass vibrating under their feet with the storm rumbling in their ears. No one moved. The fans who were sober and the ones who were drunk, the locals, the foreigners, everyone waited for permission to breathe again while suspicion grew that this was all their fault. They had loved him too hard, begged for him too long, driven him to exhaustion in exchange for their euphoria.
Photo by Sebastian Ervi on Unsplash
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I was driving angry to the library. After the humiliation Chef Nonnier had just put me through, I hardly cared about the tailgating and stop sign rolling. Yeah, my experiment with cayenne pepper, peanut butter and filleted tuna screeched to a scrambled, flavor-smash wreckage. However! In no way did my curiosity deserve Nonnier's repeated spitting, complete with blubber tongue scraping, while he lectured for half an hour. Stick with tried and true basics in Culinary Arts 101.
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