Break the Covenant
A universe inflated like a balloon, still swelling, and our earth within, this impossible speck that by all math should not exist nor the lives in it, we.
Gifted a paradise where true currency is bound to every precious second ticking. It is a countdown.
And I and the countless souls in the city before me, break our minds and trade our souls for money, for a job we began training for as toddlers then a decade and a half of school minimum, so banks can lend us hundreds of thousands for houses with doubling interest, and we pray that all goes well and we can be free 30 years later, when we're old and the countdown nears the end.
And there's no choice. How can we stop?
Each tick tick tick worth more than any prior. Burnout is not mere exhaustion from hard work; it's a symptom of the poisoned soul. An acknowledgement that we spill about our greatest wealth like clumsy children holding cups once runneth over.
Marks for the confidence men, bled dry and thirsty and led across the desert, capable of turning back.
But no. Never.
We keep the path, crawling on glass and sand on bleeding knees and raw palms, our backs steadily whipped.
What a thought that all the universe that came before led to this. I think I'd rather make a go of it on my own. Better to fail and die a hungry death than work another day for someone else to get wealthy off my crippling labor.
Blow the mighty thousand trumpets! Sing you million choirs of angels! God let your voice thundershake the universe, so all, everywhere trembles. And I will belt out the message long lain hidden inside - I am of this earth and no man or woman born has any more right to be here than I. And I will quake the lands and shake the seas with the ferocity at which I ascend my throne, built not on money or power or the labor of others in my employ, but a throne made from my will and my time, and no one else's.
The phone call ended
The phone call ended and I felt a hot wrath and the small stuff of my cells sped up and went off kilter and collided and all of me burst into flame from the inside out. White flame-limned, the matter I moved through upon or against ignited as spontaneously as I had. The ground branded with my footprints and dry grass lit and died and fell ashen. My back door knob puddled in my hand, the wall where all my family pictures hung and told the story of our lives from birth up to last Christmas incinerated with a grazed elbow. I screamed, a dragon, fireballed breaths eating up the walls and roof and floor as I spun, ragelit, contortioning, a conflagration cape cowl and bodysuit. The floor fell beneath the spot where I lingered, and crushed me into our basement floor and I crawled through the fiery wreckage, my head breaching just as the roof collapsed and I dove down but it pinned me in the pyre of where we'd all lived and memories of sheer joy spitfired through my cooked brain. I yelled and temperatures reached exploded star levels and all the rubble of a life built incinerated and I climbed a hill of ash to the earth's surface and the neighbors stood aside fire trucks and firefighters, shielding their eyes from the heavenly brightness but could see my form within, alive and crazed but seemingly unharmed, not on fire but of it, and I was tackled and beaten through inflammable blankets, but I soon burned through and my rescuers leapt back and the hose was turned upon me and steam clouds vapored off. The ire still needed somewhere to go, so I turned my head to the sky and a stream of hellfire went through the night and through the clouds and up through atmospheres and layers of gas and earthly barriers and pierced miles of space until my scream gave out and I crumbled to a heap and sputtered like a dying ember and cooled and sat, a new person, different than before, incapable of going back.
Page 137 of The Pyramid of Bones
The five of them caught fish and cooked them over the fire. They played poker and gin rummy till sunset. In the dark, they formed a smores assembly line. Michael toasted marshmallows on a stick, cooked to order, options ranging from lightly browned to charred. Sarah held a graham cracker in each hand, and Lincoln placed a piece of chocolate on the bottom cracker. Sarah sandwiched the gooey mallow between the crackers and slid it off the stick. They devoured smores until the chocolate supply ran out.
Late in the night, the northern lights appeared. Walt nudged Michael and Sarah from their slumber. They all stood and gazed at magic.
Green wafts smothered the horizon. It looked impossible. Ribbons pinned loosely on one end, allowed to flutter, then released to tremble and drift on solar breezes. Purple rivulets dribbled out from unseen sources. Dusky oranges and midnight blues embellished the impossibility before them, like flowers blooming in colors they cannot bloom in, in ground they cannot grow in. Instead of cracking open light to bleed across the day’s sky, the artisan dropped the pigments into his pipe and puffed out clouds of incandescence. A nice way to unwind after a long day and dream up the next morning’s masterpiece.
The lake’s mimicry placed the show in two theaters. Michael and Sarah sat near the edge of the plateau and looked down on the simmering green broth. It was a witch’s stew – its potency obvious but purpose obscure. Maybe it was an elixir that granted its imbibers bliss. Maybe it could start or end a plague. Maybe it could summon the devil himself.
Michael excused himself to pee. He hiked a little up the ridge they came down to reach the plateau. When done, he noticed a small ledge a little further up. He wanted a better vantage, where he could see more of the lake, along with the sky.
Michael stood a few feet from the edge. The heavens matched the earth. He could see his party below and estimated the drop at about 15 feet. Walt, Sarah, Sam, and Lincoln glowed like pixies in absinthe air.
Where do we go when the earth starts shaking,
and the storm pulses your brain
to the click-clack of your teeth?
Well, just for a moment,
your soul blasts from your body like light exploded from stars,
long enough for your sizzling mind
to wonder if it will ever return
or float off on a one-way to ticket to torture or bliss or some other plane,
before it returns like a deep, sudden inhale.
Shield
The bullets were gone. So was the medicine.
“I’m too small,” my daughter complained. “I can’t go. I’m just a girl.”
“Your mind is a rifle,” I said, my skin clammy. “Your skin, a shield. Your bones, armor.”
“What good are mind and skin and bones 'gainst a bear that wants meat? ’Gainst snow that snatches warmth with a touch? ’Gainst men who crave both flesh and warmth?
“Books made you think you’re civilized. You’re not. You’re a girl, a human, a beast. As much as the bear with its strength and claws and teeth. The eagle’s flight, vision, talons, and beak. The cat with its stealth. The frog, lover of water and earth, and its tongue, and its leaps. All beasts have their powers, but none as powerful as yours, my girl. Your wits conquer all. They make you more vicious than any other creature.”
“I’ve never gone to town alone,” she said. “A full day’s walk in knee-deep snow. A night alone in the forest....The light dies so early in winter. And the night lasts so long.”
I awkwardly unwound the dressing on my thigh to explain. The pus bubbled a gross green around the wound, a clear message. Help, or I would not live long.
“My love,” I said. “I would not ask this, but at present, I see no options. Though I won't make you, and I won't lie to you. There is danger in the journey. But I wouldn't ask this, if you were not who you are. The young woman you’ve become. You are fierce, sweet pea, like a winter storm. You are a force of nature. Had you a different disposition, with a weak piece to you, I would not let you go.”
She looked at me, fiery and resolute, tempered by my words. My God, I could see her mother so clearly.
She nodded.
“At the wharf there's a place called ‘The Galley,’ owned by a man named Stones. He will give you food and water, and help you procure the medicine I need. Have him come back with you, with more supplies than you can carry. Ask for him by name and tell him I’m your father. As a test of identity, ask him what got caught in our netting off the coast of Greenland?”
“What’s he s’posed to say?”
“A baby seal. White as clouds. We pulled it up and let it out. Fed it some fish and let it play around the deck awhile, then slipped it back in the water. It weren't old enough yet to be wary. Not like you.”
My daughter packed wares, dressed thick, and met dawn in stride.
Stones was a good man. He’d look after her.