Tag: dialogue

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Day 131: Marrow’s Next Step

Originally here. All posts with the marrow tag.

I’m pressing the crescant to his neck and he’s saying words like magic. Words that feel like they could unbreak a jar, maybe raise the dead.

“The best waters are swift and shallow.” He’s trembling as he chants, “The best waters are swift and shallow.” I realize he doesn’t believe the words, doesn’t trust their power. This makes me angry.

I gave up my daughters and ruined my wife. I burned my parent’s home and salted their orchard. I eat the same meal and swallow the same wine. Every day I guard this gate from nothing and no one comes. I even cut my hair. And he doesn’t believe. I did all of this and he still fears these words have no meaning. He rakes at might unyielding arm. He pleads again, “Please, please. The best waters are swift and shallow.”

In an instant I decide answering this coward is not worth the trades I made. I’m going to release this crux, let the prophesy fail, go back to my cold hearth. He must know his death is next because I feel him swallow through the contact of my weapon on his flesh. His tremors subside. He makes his final breath. He’ll beg for his life of course.

Then I feel like I am falling, like something I can’t explain has happened, like soon this something will hurt very much, but for now I just know something I can’t stop is coming. He’s kicked me in the groin and I am on the ground inhaling air, but unable to exhale.

“I said, ‘The best waters are swift and shallow!’ I’ll be inside when you are ready to complete the couplet.”

Eventually I’ll smile at my son’s return, but for now I’ll just puke.

***

“If you thirst, quench your spirit. Your body will wait.” My forearms lean on the lentil of the low door. I’m adjusting to the light and being upright.

“Is it true,” he asks.

“You cannot know the key and not know the truth.”

“I’m a skeptic, not a coward.”

“There’s a difference?”

I shuffle into my small home, surprised his presence doesn’t feel intrusive. After this many years alone I expected some annoyance. I motion to the barrel and the dipper; he waves a no. Zealot. “When I’m thirsty I don’t kneel.” I dip out two cups and force his into his hands. “Drink it and wait.”

Word count: 143

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Day 130: Like Dances With Wolves

From prompt #197.

I just started seeing more of Trey.

In the one class we shared, Chemistry II, he no longer bolted for the door when Prof. Chang concluded a lecture. Instead he’d arrange his notes, sigh, and place his books one at a time into his bag. In the regular cafeteria in Parker Hall West he’d face my direction rather than show me his back or worse just get his cheeseburger to go. I’d even seen him shooting hoops at Jasper during my scheduled karate classes. He never said anything.

Back home in Bixby, we’d had a barn cat–we had plenty–but we had this one in particular that habitually sat on the fifty gallon drum that held grain for the horses. His perch warmed in the morning sun and stayed cool in the shade of a long overhang in the afternoon. Entertaining mice congregated in the spillage. Other barnies’d scatter when I threw the latch on the back gate from the house. They went leisurely, not like a rabbit might, but they did go. This one I had in mind’d stay curled up pretending sleep. I brought bits of store bought cat food when I watered the llamas in the evening.

One day when it was dark early he sat upright on the drum in the porch light. I pulled a few bits of kibble from my Carharts to place on the drum in front of him. “Dammit!” He snapped my hand like it was a bird taking flight in front of him. He pulled the food from my fingers. He purred after that.

Trey pulled his old Corolla into one of the good spots near the dorm and right on the edge of Chamber’s Lawn where we played Frisbee. He arranged his sunshade carefully and took time cleaning out the Taco Bell cups and wrappers that built up in the floorboard of the passenger’s side. Tweep. He finally set the alarm and headed the long way past us to the entrance.

“Trey!” I called out. “If we had one more person we could play Frisbee football instead of just throwing it in a circle.”

“Sure. What the hell.”

He ran up to me.  I said, “Hey man. Sorry.”

“Pussy. I knew you’d cave first.”

Word count: 389

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Day 115: Something Magic-ish

The lights dimmed, flashed on, then went out completely.  Celia felt the magix rescind–like a downhill sled headed back up hill doomed to crawl to a halt.

"Storm’s knocked out all the conduits," she heard her father call to her mother.  "Do we have any good wells!  The ones in this lamp are empty."

Her mother couldn’t her him or didn’t care to reply.  They’d been fighting all week.  The magix being out wasn’t going to quell that.  Shuffle. Stumble. Thunk.  "Hex it!  Where are those wells?"

"Papa just light it up with a little bit of the raw."

"No, no.  I’m not getting caught doing that again.  And they should be right here in the drawer anyway."

"You sure you’re not in the middle one instead of the end?"

"Celia, it’s not that dark.  Well. maybe it is.  Thanks sweetie."

The little girl smiled because he’d called her sweetie and because he hadn’t felt her tap into the raw to see where the wells were.

Word count: 169