flash fiction friday #44
flash fiction friday #44 trigger: ...when the sky broke...
rules of engagement:
you will send in your suggestions for flash fiction friday triggers (starter sentences/phrases, closers, titles, inclusions, structural challenges, etc.) anytime during the week up to 11.55a.m. friday, trinbago timezone; i will post the new fff trigger by noon friday trinbago timezone.*
if your trigger is not chosen and you think it is too brilliant not to be chosen, you will send it in again the next week.
you will write an anecdote, short story, or novel length prose poem using the trigger provided.
you will add comments and appropriate linkage to my trigger-post indicating your desire to participate and the completion of your piece (don't need a blogger/gmail account to comment on my blog).
you may join in at any time prior to the deadline.*
you will display your piece as a post on your own blog (or as a comment on my trigger-post or fasbook note or whatever, once we can all read it- please make sure we can all access the link to read it, not just those who are your friends on fasbook; there's a way to create public links for that, right?).
you will be done by monday noon trinbago timezone.*[in light of collective busyness and my general mentality, i not pressed about these deadlines 'cause i'd rather have fun reading late than never, so if you want to fff past deadline, go through hard, just make sure you comment on the appropriate trigger-post so we know which it belongs to, and if is a real old trigger, comment on the most recent post as well so we know something new to back-back+read...if nobody fffs i'll leave the same trigger up until at least 1person other than myself writes a piece]*
write fresh!
walk good.
posted by sweet trini @ 12:01 pm
8 comments
8 Comments:
almost forget to declare intention: i'm in! walk good.
i know i officially late, but in case anybody waiting for ting to read, i saying i almost done and still intend to post it...walk good.
Done and posted
Done, if late, and posted: arsculinaria.net/?p=450
1.
When the sky broke, when it finally cracked open and we could see the infinity beyond the blue, the infinity in the blue, we were in tears. We were in the final launch and she and I had shaken and rattled till we broke the hemisphere. She looked at me. I wondered at her. I mirrored her look of newness and horror. I'd never been touched like that before. My soul had moved around and grasped hers with tangible spirit caresses. I'd heard of soul mating before, but I'd never guessed it was real. Here in outer space away from all others, we’d admitted to each other that it was something we always wanted to try. Our friendship had exploded. The ground beneath us had been incinerated by our ascent. I moved to touch her but she flinched away. "You've ruined me forever." she said. She was right. This was the high we’d been searching for all our lives. There was nothing beyond this. Anything past this, I was sure, had to be the ecstasy of death. I’d waded through a thousand thighs, and could wade through a thousand more, but I would never regain this moment. We were afraid to touch each other. The electric currents flew across the ship and jolted us. I understood her perfectly. My fear rose to meet my desire, my wonder, and strangle them both before they could turn us to deities. Here was the mystical. Here was the answer. Here was everything. This must have been what the first man and woman found, the first time. We could populate new worlds.
"People will come from all over the planets to see us." She was not speculating. She was stating the reality. Her hair was a nest that she touched and rearranged as she spoke. I believed her. I knew the truth of her words as completely as if she'd told me the earth would keep turning. I would never get over her. Her love, her lust, her smell and her laughter were now mine. Her moans would echo through me for eternity. Whatever was mine was hers. She was me. She had ruined me forever. I turned to the controls and nudged the spaceship nearer to the Mars substation. I knew her thoughts and sensed her movements before she made them. Even now, I could feel her steeling herself to make as quick and as clean a severance from me as possible. She would not leave me, she never could, but she would live her life without me. If she had to she would take a creature from the red dust of Mars. She would fashion him in her own image and likeness and breathe into his nostrils. She would make love to the clay figurine. She would make him walk and talk. She would animate him and have him follow her around and hold her baby stroller and her groceries. He would be a zombie and a slave. His be all and end all would be to lay impotent between her legs every night after she’d murdered him. She would resurrect him in the morning and he would shave and salute the day and go out to his job and bring her home money. She would do this without a second thought as to what I was thinking. She would do it easily enough, because he would good man. He would never be me, but she would live on because she was just like me. She was a deity. She was a goddess and goddesses do as they please.
After we clamped on to the substation we were transported down to the red dirt of Mars by a circular machine we'd nicknamed the escalator. We descended in silence. We heard the crunch below us and the hatch opened. Already I could see the Nevarrians coming near, their long silent strides were intimidating to the uninitiated but we knew them well. I turned to her and said, "I will stay. I can stay. I have to stay. Just let me know what you did. How did you do that?" She sighed, "You already know I don't know. I had that once before with someone, but never so powerful." I had to know what she'd done. Was she a spell caster? An alien? Had the trip deprived me of one of my senses, or heightened them all and made me open to suggestion? What was the explanation? I was lying to myself, chasing down what I already knew to be falsehoods. The answer was as simple as stated. We were soulmates. I turned to her. "I need to know for sure, give me time. Let me have you a few more times so I can figure this out." "No,” she answered. “No more love making. I know what I want. We are here. We are now. There's nowhere else to go except for on together, or on apart."
I left her behind on the Nevarrrian region near the underground lake a few miles from the Martian equator. She had just looked at me. We dared not touch each other and we did not speak. I waved and she waved back. I stepped on the ship and navigated it back to the substation. She was already moving about her business and chatting up other crew members as I began my ascent up the escalator. She was brutal. She would move on as easily and with as much difficulty as I. I re-launched two days later and I did not tell her goodbye. She made no effort to contact me. She never did. I returned to earth and enjoyed a beautiful relationship with my girlfriend, who became the mother of my three children. I satisfied myself with living on Earth. I thought of her sometimes, when the sky blushed purple and the sun bled red. I thought of us in the heavens, about who we had become then and who we could have become. I taught my children to never fear greatness. I taught them to never fear the unknown. I hoped they would be braver than I. I never flew again.
late-but-done+posted@ http://urbanfolktales.blogspot.com/2014/12/fff44.html
majorly experimental, but now i get to read plenty ting! yay!
walk good.
Ten minutes.
No one on the cliff had made a sound for ten full minutes save for the zuldan who struggled to maintain his composure after having been starved and exposed to the elements. He could not tell which he was shivering from more; cold, fear, hunger or exhaustion. The slaves had been beating and hacking at the wrists of the god Kun’s statue feverishly working to free its pike from its grasp. Overhead the clouds blackened. “Fitting…” thought Oskha, “… even the sky heralds the fall of Goyan.”
He had begun the evening enjoying his tour of the pleasure quarters in the citadel of Hel Tugush. The Bahuyani and Mahicani women were his favourites. Now those same women stood facing him with the machetes of the imperial guards held tightly in their hands. A few could not help but smile at the sight of the great zuldan Oskha Pathunyh ‘El Haulh Al Orubh’ reduced to a mere whimpering animal as he held on for his life. Oskha winced at the sound of each blow at the statue as he could hear the slaves getting through with their task. Eventually when the spear hit the ground with a loud clang, Oskha nearly jumped out of his skin as he could hear the slave Kaminho taunting from behind the throng,
“Zuldan Oskha Pathunyh. El haulh al orubh. Runt of the Rakmuni litter.”
The zuldan lowered his eyes to the ground. The silence was unbearable as he shuddered at the thought of his fate. The crack and boom of thunder was all he had to break the silence as a storm approached. He glanced over at the pile of dead bodies; his family. His principal wife, Adhalusya’s naked body stuck out from underneath the pile. Her skin had a ghastly hue and was punctuated by deep slashes caused by severe flogging.
“…..OSKHA!”
At the sound of his name, Oskha jolted around to face Kaminho who stood brandishing the spear of Kun. He stared at the blade at the top of the spear and remembered taking part in many Kun worshipping ceremonies as a child while his father conducted prayers. He thought of the many goats he had slaughtered in the name of receiving Kun’s blessings for victory in wars that his father waged against Goyan’s enemies. A burst of thunder and a blinding flash of lightning brought him back to the present moment and tears came to his eyes.
“Are you crying?”
Kaminho stared at the wretched sight of the zuldan and calmly motioned for him to stand. Oskha struggled to rise to his feet and in the moment of standing, sobriety returned. He felt the first drop of rain on his scalp and looked up to the sky. The huge blackened clouds above seemed laden and pregnant. He returned his gaze to the slave Kaminho in front of him. Oskha stared into the man’s eyes and cracked a smile as he said, “Remember me when the ships of Goyan reach your shores and you are overrun with the host of my soldiers. Remember me when they stick you and gut you like the filthy pig slave that you are.”
Kaminho stepped back, the image of the whimpering dog was gone, replaced now by a defiant wolf.
“So…” Kaminho thought, “….the dog has regained his fangs. Here then dog, see of what use your bite is against this.” As the sky broke and the torrential downpour began, Kaminho raised the lance high into the air and brought it down with such force that it cleaved Oskha’s body down through his left shoulder and all the way to his chest. The zuldan’s lifeless body was immediately set upon by the surrounding host who now spat and stabbed at his carcass.
Thus fell the old filayat of Goyan.
It would be another two hundred years before the restoration of the Rakmuni dynasty during which time the filayat buckled under the strain of completely inept leadership.
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