Archive for the ‘Series’ Category
Dinner out in the Yucatan
Friday, September 5th, 2008
Rowena blew dust from the stone tablet.
“Look here.” She pointed at some blurred characters.
“I can’t read them,” I replied, “these are pre-Mayan. No one can read this script.”
“I know,” she replied, brushing a lock of hair away from her face. “But last night I dreamed about a stone city. I read this inscription on a temple gate. Listen.”
As she recited the alien syllables I felt that I almost understood them, that I knew the dread city of which she spoke.
I clapped my hands over my ears. “Stop!”
“People stood around an altar. A priest cut out your heart with a gold knife. The heart was given to me.” I looked at her, but she turned away. “I ate it. You were dead.”
“We should leave,” I said. “Now.”
I seized her arm, but she slipped out of my grasp, darting through a door that gaped nearby. I ran after her. She eluded me among the shafts of light and darkness. When I came to a courtyard I was surprised to see her standing there beside a stone table the height of her chest.
“This is the place,” she whispered, “this is where I saw you slaughtered.”
“That was a dream.”
Even as I said this I thought I remembered the scene she had described, and I felt something stir within me. Her sorrowful expression changed to one I could not interpret.
I was on my back. I tried to tell her that I needed food, that I felt hungrier than I ever had, but no words came. I sat up. I caught her hands and tried to explain, but she would not listen, trying to pull free, and shouting. I gave up on talk. There was no time for that now. Hunger was all I had, my vision shrank to a blurry point, and I could do nothing but fill my belly.
I came to my senses on the open hillside. My shirt was wet. The sun set in a welter of crimson and ragged shreds of cloud. A couple of Mayan youths in shorts and dirty shirts stood near. I called to them, but when they approached me their faces changed and they fled. I struggled to my feet, felt the awful hunger returning. Maybe the young men would give me food. I stumbled after them in the gathering dusk.
The end
Meet the Extraordinary Ordinaire
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008
In terms of continuity, this is the first of the Pandora series. It is followed by 2) “The Bug-a-Boo Bear,” 3) “Chop Chop,” 4) “Byzantine,” and 5) “Long Live the Dead“.
She was just like us, but she was less than us, and she was more.
Pandora left the pantry door unlatched, the mead-stained beer steins in the sink, her clocks unwound.
She read the stars, some side-stitched journals stained by meadow grass, the minds of mortals (unreliably, it’s true).
Pandora had boxes–lots of them. She opened some and closed the rest. A magpie queen of hollow cubes, she mountained box on box, secreted box in box. She even slept in one. The boys perked up to hear how well she worked with boxes though she labored blithely blind to such potential perks.
She lived for untold years, for who knows what? She died, for who knows why (none cared to ask)? She altered lives, for good and ill.
So why are you, dear reader, unaware of her but for her famed faux pas?