Archive for the ‘Luc Reid’ Category
One Bright Morning
Monday, July 14th, 2008
“Say, mister, you sure are going fast in that thing.”
“My God–get out of here, kid!”
“Whatcha got there, a rocket pack? You invent it?”
“No, don’t touch that! Keep away!”
“Aw, you don’t have to be afraid of me. I’m not a ghost or anything like that. I’m a angel!”
“I can see that.”
“I wasn’t always a angel, though. I was a kid once. You got kids?”
“Angels are a separate kind of beings. They’re not people.”
“Some of ’em. Not me, though! I died in 1938. Fell in the creek and banged my face on a rock and whaddaya know, next thing I’m a angel! Lost my two front teeth, too. See?”
“Stop getting so close! You touch the wrong knob and I’ll drop a mile straight down. Can you just go home? I have to talk to God. Things aren’t going right down there. I don’t think this is how it’s supposed to be.”
The kid-angel swooped in little spirals around the man as the rocket pack blasted the man up through the blue glare and toward the golden glimmer he could already glimpse far above him.
“I don’t know,” the kid said. “Maybe that’s not such a good idea. Cantcha talk to him from down there?”
“I tried that.”
“What are ya, a preacher? Ya look like a preacher.”
“I am.”
“But yer an inventor, too?”
“Get away from that! Shoo! Didn’t you hear me? You could kill me fiddling with that!”
“Sorry. I just never seen anything like this. I’m mighty interested! What’s this do?”
When the kid-angel touched a switch, the rocket pack sputtered and died. The man screamed as he tumbled backward, down toward the clouds, his arms outstretched and a pleading expression on his face. The kid-angel fluttered in place.
When the rocket pack man was gone, the kid-angel wiped his nose on his sleeve, which had gotten runny from all the crying. Finally he looked upward and flipped his wings once, sending him shooting toward Heaven. He wouldn’t be needed again for another 63 years, Saint Peter had said. He’d be able to spend the rest of the time playing and talking and swimming and singing hosannas and whatever he liked. In Heaven, even. And he could go say sorry to that man when the fella arrived in a few minutes.
But it was still a crummy job.
From An Ancient Tablet, With Successive Historical Notations (Translated)
Wednesday, July 9th, 2008
With the last gleam of the wolf’s eye[14] will fall the night[1].
[1] Robert of Tours speaks of this fragment being borne from the tomb of king Vraghur II of the Cirroghs, born in the 714th year before Our Lord, whose armor was carved into the likeness of a wolf[7], a prophecy of the fall of the Cirroghs at the proud king’s passing.[2] (Jacques Etablant, 1310)
[2] Though the fragment be Cirroghic[3], no death of kings did it fortell but the death of us all, in the Plague[4] God hath wrought upon us, the weak and the strong alike. So show the French their putrid ignorance. (John of Hampdenmontfordshire, 1351)
[3] Be it Cirroghic? And who the Cirroghs, pray?[5] Though long extolled as paragons of ferocity, the learned man in modern days misdoubts that ever such men walked the earth.[6] (Albert Burlowe, 1605)
[4] Good John, were thou but mistaken of the nature of the thing, yet thou art mistaken only of the year! Thus God doth visit on us finally the last and worst plague, and we perish like (illegible) (author unknown, London, 1666)
[5] The Cirroghs were a race of bean farmers residing in the valley of Dziban, though they were not known to write with the Old Dazibanic script in which the table is inscribed. Yet they did exist! (Caleb Blackford, 1884)
[6] Oh? Then why is it that Vraghur II’s breastplate recently surfaced during excavations in Dziban?[8] (Blackford, 1884)
[7] But there was no wolf on it, so we doubt this tablet to have referred to Vraghur II[9]. (Blackford, 1884)
[8] Never mind. The breastplate, it appears, was a hoax. (Blackford, 1886)
[9] An excellent conclusion, as the Cirroghs were slaughtered to the last man[10] in the reign of Vraghur I. (Wolfgang Krunt, 1928)
[10] A 1952 excavation reveals evidence of surviving Cirroghs in Albania, however.[11] (Dr. Janice Pitui, 1973)
[11] Which doesn’t prove[12] it’s Cirroghic. (Dr. Walter Mordartur, 1974)
[12] Nothing in science is proven[13], as the occasional buffoon may forget (Pitui, 1974)
[13] But we talked about it a lot and decided it probably wasn’t Cirroghic anyway (Dr. Janice Pitui-Mordartur, 1976)
[14] A mistranslation; recently reviewed and retranslated as “With the last gleam of the sunset, will fall the night.” Appears to be an ancient snippet of amateur poetry. (Andre Hampden Etablant, 2017)