Excerpt II from "Scaring the Stars Into Submission" - Only So Far

This particular piece has blown up from a one page flash fiction story to something closer to 25 pages. There are still 6 or 7 sections to finish, but here are a few that I've got done. The title of this particular short story is "Only So Far." It's definitely a new direction for all the pieces involved and I'm really loving what these first two stories have evolved into considering where they started. I'm definitely bolstered by the progress and the fact that I am firmly embedded in each story until its completion is helping to keep my writing momentum on the up and up when it was so recently waning.

This was when

the world was burning…

First came color. Mighty multi-hued oaks grew overnight. The scattered shard of blown out stained-glass window had turned to drip in the bake of over-violet sun, melting and melding into the thirsting, bony-fingered roots of struggling saplings.  The liquefied remains of Christs and Marys, saints and sinners all pooled up on dying fields, becoming one and the same, swirled into each other above loamy topsoil into a baptismal font of pooled vertigo.

Amaranthine red, carmine pink, the deep blue of midnight’s silence, emerald, mint, ochre, and onyx filled the brittle bark veins snaking up to weak limbs, twisting and intertwining into the pale copper, ash and umber arms held out as if asking for rain that hadn’t come in months.

Soon after, the brittle limbs fell to earth and spilled their colorsapblood like secrets across cracked pavement and brown grass. Rotting fruit remained hanging, calcified and petrified, split open upon striking ground. Each broken piece contained the abalone swirl of stain-glass fertilizer, each section a stone whirlwind of shine and gleam. The pericarp, the septum, the loculus pulp all glimmer and shine in the overbearing daylight. Incredible, inedible. A feast for eyes, but not belly.

The oceans receded slowly at first, relieving themselves of dying fish on sandy beaches at low tide. Lakes dried up, withered like aged skin, left carcasses of once moaning frogs and the silent shells of tortoise. Yellow heat had touched the world with sickness, had parched its skin and kept on, burning out the retinas of the few who’d tired of dying slow and simply wanted to pass into natural wither. The freedom in death was stronger than the prison of living.

  

This was when

 the red fire of the east coast

danced a cross-continental Lambada

with the yellowed smoke of the west coast…

Televisions sang lullabies of black static and white noise. No reports, no warnings, no sirens, just the hum of soft harp through speakers set up hastily on street corners and meeting places, on street lamps and roving garbage trucks. The pluck of harp strings was quiet in the beginning – soft, soothing – but had come to scratch like nails along the metal of our ears.

The harp sounded, another block destroyed.

The harp sounded, another hundred people missing.

The harp sounded, but only after the explosions.

The harp sounded, and sounded, and sounded…

Until it became a thing to drown out, to ignore. No longer a symbol of calm, the harp came to be its own angel of death, waging war on senses and gonging long into the night like a death knell on repeat.

We could hear it reverberate through our teeth and in our dreams as we wept over oceans we could see, but could not reach. The ringing caused waves to swell and strike beaches cluttered with cans and plastic, sloughed skin and dying birds, eyeless fish heads and kelp the color of melt. Each ring of strings sent us into convulsions, made our insides shake, liquefied our cellular structures and controlled us from the inside.

Sunsets ceased to be, never came, never left. Perpetual bright on every horizon; dull red to the west, gaseous yellow to the east. We wondered if we were the orange middle of everything. We wondered if everyone else heard harps before dying too. We wondered if, once planted in the earth, would we still hear them long after death. Would our ears cake up with dirt and earthworm and maggot and rot and harp too?

Strangers came from both sides, holed up in empty houses, made homes of hollow, nests of leftovers, wanting to live in our orange. The orange was getting smaller, crushed in from outside. Strangers slept atop us, piled up in rooms one on top of one on top of another like human bunk-beds. Soon no one could sleep through the always harpsong.

 

This was when

 the screams of Boston

sounded like the screams of Atlanta

sounded like the screams of Houston

sounded like the screams of Seattle

and everyone burned the same…

Twelve hours, fourteen hours, seventeen hours a day; the sun kept constant vigil over the earth’s surface browning surface. Ground split, cracked, dried up like skin set to be leathered.

The thirsty sucked final drops from spigots and wells, lay beneath open taps with dried and wishing mouths open, sucked dry every bottle at every gas station and grocery store before they ever had time to store them up in bunkers. The hot came too fast and within a week had allowed only a single hour of moonlight every day. For twenty-three hours, the world baked without reprieve and no way to turn off the oven, no way to keep cool.

Basements became as hot as lawns, but there was warm shade. Whole families curled up in dark corners, like thirsty vampires hiding from the yellowed-world. They slept fitfully, sweating together against the walls that seemed to bow inward from the heat, the home in slickery melt around them. Brother smelled like sister smelled like father smelled like mother, their tears becoming sweat, their sweat becoming sticky.

The metal of the family car crinkled, smooshed, pancaked into a goopy driveway mess of paint, rust, and rubber. Oil snaked out from the puddle and into the street, a black slither that stunk up the neighborhood and fouled the air with putrefaction. This was the new pollution, the earth was all heat-melt.

The house sank. Soil crawled through brittle foundation, buried some alive, still curled up in their corners hiding from the daylight. Earthworms slinked across cobwebbed basements in search of moisture, found none, dried up like twigs along windowsills and doorways.

  

This was when

skin boiled, flaked, and flew into the skies

mixed with the ash and sparse rain

that never seemed to be enough…

If left out in the sun too long, a person’s skin sloughed off, fell to the ground, lay puddled up and stinking in the lawn like old deli meat. There was no burn, only melt and puddle. Like a pile of human there in the grass, folded in upon itself and melting together as if under heat lamps.

Rain showed its wet face again. Brief and taunting, a quick minute of downpour surprised us over and over again. We sat in darkened doorways, staring up at skies that promised only ash snowfall. We emaciated, dry,  stick figures stood in silence, mouths upturned, eating past the ash that collected on lips and tongues, stuck to lips like lover’s kisses we no longer wanted. The ash was briny, bitter to the taste, a sour death upon the palate. It was the taste of neighbors, their children, the taste of strangers sun-baked and withered and picked up by uncaring gusts of wind and dust and carried up into what atmosphere remained.

We could taste their religion and their fear.

We could taste their passion and their dreams.

We could taste their silence and their screams.

We tasted air and death, waited for the sky to open up and fill our bellies with drink, soak our faces and bodies in wet. Green clouds turned brown, swirled menacing but still the sun penetrated. And still we stood in doorways and watched our arms and legs drift off in pieces of tallow skin, never to be seen again until landing on another’s tongue across the city.

Would that they could taste my religion and my fear.

Would that they could taste my passion, my dreams.

Would that they could taste my silence, but I refuse to scream.

           

 

This was when

the Sun’s settings and risings

were at their most vibrant,

but no one had the time to stop and watch;

they feared being gobbled up

by its clumsy, earthly protégés…

 

Some learned to speak the language of fire, spoke in tongues of flame, tasted heat and ate in hellish burn. Their voices were ash and soot, their eyes betraying hyperviolence, their fingers twitching and in need of heat. Nimble with wires and timers, hands flew across containers and tape and bits of nail and screw, ball bearings and hurt compacted into hand-sized packages. Some learned to harness anger and madness in the time of anger and madness.

The silence before the booms made tension, crackled up spines, up into craniums, tickled nervous systems in awkward ways. Little spurts of voltage climbing up backs and muscle. The sound of nothing echoed off long-empty basketball courts and cul-de-sacs, vacant apartment buildings and businesses already half-blown to char. The air was fat with possibility; death hung like fog across neighborhoods.

Uncle got caught in the beginning. No one could tell amongst all the rubble, but he stepped wrong on a trashcan lid, became supernova there in the middle of the street. He became starlight, orange and white, smoke and flame, alpha and omega all in an instant. We never knew who left that one for him to find, but it didn’t matter. Soon, everyone was a firebug. Everyone had a missing limb, a missing friend or relative, a missing pet; all blown skyward and scattered across a dying city, little clouds of flesh and red.

Mother became martyr. Weary of hiding, we strapped flame to her body, hid it beneath fabric finery, robes, a t-shirt from my childhood. She called out to them, they came, surrounded her, smelled her as victim as she feigned fear. They circled, grinned. Saliva dripped from snarling lips, blackened fingers reached out to grab her.

She did not scream. She did not flinch. In the moment before loudest silence, they saw the fire in her eye, turned to run, felt the ground shake beneath them as she unleashed her own Prometheus valentine upon them. The streets are quieter now. The city naps longer and so do we.

     

      

           

 This was when

everyone’s lips cracked,

when sleeping in a full bathtub

seemed logical…

When the constellations reappeared, they were askew. None were recognizable anymore and no one could remember their original positions. Ursa major was a cluster of gleam, Cassandra shined black - obsidian. Libra leaned heavy to one side, Taurus became a mewling calf.

We drank soured milk, thirsted for the clump, became ravenous for greenmoldbread. Pus dripped from sores at the corners of our mouths and rot replaced enamel. The skin hung from our bones, oozed and peeled and left in heavy footprints behind us. We were walking dead, too weak to run from the fire that was surely on its way to consume us. We could see its phosphorescent glow beyond the mountains on either side.

Our ribs were song-less xylophones, our fingers frail tools corroding, breaking down into slender maim. We never felt the blood dribble out and off the fingertips. Never felt our hands go numb from loss. Our lungs sang in whistles and breathlessness. When the fire came, we could only stand and watch.

The porcelain protected. Too slow to get out of the way, we turned our makeshift houses into battlements; metal sheeting around the sides, slathered in creams and frozen. We hid in bathtubs, their porcelain an armor against the laughing, dancing flames that rose up over mountain ranges and sprinted across deadgrassfields, hungry just to burn.

Thin and frail, we all fit in the tub together, me and son and daughter. Like sardines, staring up through holes in the roof at cloudless sky. The fire ate around us, over us, singed bits of hair and parts of diseased skin. I wondered why the moon smiled down at us. I wondered when we last smiled. The fire passed, turned brown fields to black, left in smoking ruin. Still the moon smiled.

  This was when

everyone ran

 towards the middle of the country,

clamored over mountains and

fought over soon-to-be dry rivers…

I awoke from a dead dream, all nothing white and soft ringing. Hands reached out to me from the ether, tugged, pulled, pushed, waved off. They laid their hands on, cupped my face and twirled my hair, ran fingers over my eyes and touched gray matter through the crevices. The voice of rotting angels made love to my ears, filled me with cold and want, pimpled the skin on my arms, whispered that it wasn’t my time, that I was time, that time was all I had left. It was the most touch I had felt since ever. I wanted to stay. I wanted to remain in someone else’s cold grasp.

           

I awoke in a field, a bed of burned grass beneath my head. Ashen scars covered exposed skin like I was sacrifice.

I awoke sheathed in metal, hot from the sun and smoke clamoring towards the mountainside.

I awoke in melt, snow dripping down my scarred skin. I had packed myself away in ice, hoped to avoid the mob racing to the top of the screaming mountain.

I awoke in bombed-out building. A concrete structure bathed in graffiti and old lives I could smell as if they were standing right beneath my nose. Rubble coated the floor, dust and mud covered the shattered windows that remained. In the moment, I felt new and clean.  

             

 This was when

an untouched field of wheat

was a danger instead of a way to feed…

We awoke in drown, lungs full of flood. Restless, placental. We floated in the home, watched our life swim by and sink below us. Fractured picture frames, unpaid bills, the family pet, good china, building blocks, a dimly lit lamp still plugged into the rotting wall, glowing beneath the surface. The brick house eroded from the inside, the insulation tearing like dead tissue.

Our bodies filled, bloated, dead whitened. Fingers plumped like sausage, broke wedding rings. Shirts stretched, tore, ripped with the sound of soft breath and broken lover’s hearts. On the wall: the children’s heights, marked in pencil and pen, slowly being erased. I screamed at the vanish, inhaled more water, forgot the names of my children.

The wall clock cracked under pressure. The big hand between twelve and one, the little hand hung limp in the current, swinging between five and seven. We could hear the chimes faintly through the water, fighting tide and flow. I heard the waves crash against the vein walls inside me, collapsing against bloodlines and pumping organ.

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