Simply Symbolic

"Simply symbolic."

"I beg your pardon, sir?" The man had not been the same since the Knights of the Thorn were pushed back into the keep.

"Do you feel as if the gods are watching now, smiling as our enemies take what is left of our spirit? Look there. The barbaric devils have torched the royal library and stand basking in the warm byproducts of sacrificed knowledge. Where do we venture from this pit of heavenly wrath? A world that was once a bright beacon of hope has become a funeral pyre for empire. Do the night stars shield mockery in their twinkling eyes? Are we the victim of a great celestial joke?"

"Sir, you speak nothing but blasphemy."

"Perhaps, but I feel assured that my sins will all be purged in the same fire." The soldier glanced at his companion, her loose hair, eyes of some tormented beast caged in a face of innocence.

"Can you imagine such sins?"

"What trangressions do you speak of?" In her mind played visions of erotic mistresses in exotic locales. Velvet window drapes, brown liquors, opium clouds ricocheting off crystal chandeliers. Laughter and dancing and self-medicated merriment. All the joys she imagined men were allowed to achieve while ladies were learning to embroider. "Nothing temple-worthy, I imagine," she sniffed.

"Not these temples, never." His hands made a sweeping gesture to mask their trembling. "These gods are dead, or at the least, they have abandoned us. Death is our sole god now. He speaks his teachings of Darkness through his messenger, Silence. I will visit him soon on broadsword sings. His sins, they spread more evenly through my soul. The murder of boys who have yet to lie with women. I have cut down countless children because these Neanderthals try to pass them off as men. They are but sacrifices to my great god, but they have not quenched his thirst. Still he yearns for more blood and will soon overtake me."

"Sir, you talk in tongues too unseemly for civilized conversation."

"My lady, you are lucky that my god allows us to do anything other than foam at the mouth and spew spit the times are so mad. However, what I fear is the worst black strike against me is this, Death peers into my damaged soul and knows that if he chose to visit me, I would offer to send you in my stead." The man fell to Silence after this confession and left her to Darkness. She pondered the man's passing away to his god and the simply symbolism of the feathered arrow that he rode. The man had appeared villainous at first, but she wondered if this was because she was so unaccustomed to survival in its purest form. Her enemies were now dancing around their paper fire, happy, for the moment, that they had so well-appeased their primitive gods.

Smoking Is a Southern Thing

"Smoking is a Southern thing. The soft hazy feeling of gentility can only be described by an association with this region." The basement was dark. The light of a cigarrette smouldered between them.

"You are so full of shit."

"Hardly. You have an obligation to believe so because your upbringing has taught you that all ideas which rely on a person's reputation to be true are frivilous and outdated. You, for instance, believe that my emphasis on the sanctity of breaking bread is pointless." Candlelight danced on the board in their laps and illuminated the letters that ran downward slant in an overly ominous fashion. They were waiting once again for that most powerful of hours to begin their sacred ritual. A long silence filled the air and forced them to sip at their Kool-aid and awkwardly watch the cheap candles flicker. As the time crept nearer, the atmosphere took on a persona, such an oppressive nature that it began to overpower them.

"This is a bad idea."

"Scared already?" The dog sitting beside her lifted its head to stare with half-interest at a shadow on the floor. There were so many haunting the room that one was barely noteworthy to superior human minds.

"Some forces in this world are too much to be controlled by my will. There are things like death and suffering that I don't have a damn bit of say in whether they happen or not. It is presumptuous and sinful to try to communicate thoughts beyond the veil of the grave. What if we channel the agony of someone fated for Hell? What if we turn God against us with this sorcery? It is blasphemous to think we are capable of handling such pain outside of God's blessing."

Animal Cracker Migration

He knew the nature of the place that they were in by the texture of the walls. These, these today, they were smooth, slick, and smelled of disinfectant. He imagined the essence of a villain, some terrible evil with a clinical detachment.

“Do you know that some animals migrate?” He heard the rustling of nondescript objects in her purse, the sound of a plastic storage bag opening to a release of air and time.

“Really?” Here was another of her stories that he would struggle to see with no avail. The setting would have to be connected to a place in the senses, a place of memory and vague understanding.

“Yes.” She pressed into his hand a familiar shapeless thing, an animal cracker with the sleek symbolic opportunity to be any species it wanted. “Large groups of birds fly south for the winter, looking for warmer weather. That’s a bird there.” He immediately felt along the edges of the hard cookie, taking in the tip and curve of the wing. “They move in flocks in a v-shaped pattern, and all of their wings beat in unison. Up and down, up and down, one community of flight. Can’t you just imagine that? Not having to think about where you are moving…” She slid into silence. No, he could not. He, who had juxtaposed the very ground since the day he took his first step, could not imagine travelling in time with anything else.

Formless flying blurs all curve and tip? Yes.

Unity? Impossible.

“Sometimes I think I belong in Indostan.” He knew this statement would pull her out of her reverie and cut her deeply. There was nothing like truth and reality to soften the walls she built.

“I never should have read you that poem.”

“I deserved to hear it. The elephant is very like a wall, right?”

“Not exactly. An elephant is beautiful and majestic. They represent wisdom and-”

“Those are just ideas. I’m sick of concepts and senses. Is the elephant like a wall?” Here was another cracker being thrust juvenilely into his hand. This time he felt what could only be the trunk pressing into his palm. He ran his thumb over the spot where the face should have been, searching, in vain, for an expression of great wisdom there, but, finding none, he tossed it and the bird to the side. They were shadows of the truth, and falling in love with phantoms was such a dangerous game. He had learned that in his own life all too soon. There was the smell of disinfectant again, towering in the air like a wall between them, perhaps, an elephant. “How long have we been here?”

“Half an hour or so. Not a long time to spend waiting.”

“I have been waiting forever.” Those forms, those damn forms tormented him. Cheap and lumpy interpretations of what really lie within the memories of others were all that he contemplated. The nature of the world could not be found in synecdoche, and he hated her for trying. She spent all of her time discussing the beauty of the whole, the elegance of a universe he could not picture.

“Please don’t dismiss me. You have been this way ever since-” He heard the muffled sound of footsteps on carpet that had cut her off. At last, the quiet hoof beats of destiny were upon him. His name was hidden underneath the screaming of her heart beside him.

“I’m afraid I have some bad news…” The forms were migrating again, moving up the planes of existence.