Story-a-day cancellation
Wrapped up my story-a-day project with #42. A random place to stop and a delayed finishing considering it was for 7/26/10. Things got away from me and so it's time to stop.
You can read the stories or the shorter collection within the story-a-day called The Clara Wars.
It was a fun project and one that began to get into my general unconsciousness. The juxtaposition and POV and verb tenses were challenging and produced some really unexpected pieces.
Something to look forward to doing next year over the summer.
#42 Holy Milk
The holy glass of milk has been missing now for two weeks. His holiness has become quite cranky without his glass of milk before bed. He claims it is the milk that gives him the connection to God (milk being the sustenance of life and all). And it was the glass that made the milk holy (something about the transubstantiation -- though we’re not Roman Catholics). So you can see that we’re in it now. His holiness can’t sleep, so I can’t sleep. I think this forced insomnia is making me closer with God, though. He told me (yes, God is male -- let me put it to bed) that a couple had stolen the glass. They must have been employed here because no one would have thought this glass (distinguishable only by the tiny tear shaped air bubble near the lip) would have been holy. Which makes me wonder: should I just replace it? Hasn’t he been dropping hints already? (“Where’s that glass, Victor? I’m sure I must have just misplaced it somewhere. It’s bound to show up any day now.”) But that would mean the whole thing is a scam. If I replace it and he’s connected again to God, then God is dead, or worse, nonexistent. And then I lose my connection. His disconnect is all I’ve got and I see it so clearly now. The children playing in the sticker bushes as opposed to his holiness dressing the Christmas tree. There is no innocence. The children are bloodied and scarred and filed with death. And we have been there -- the children, the thieving couple, the mad man -- but I am filled with the holy milk that needs no glass. It is high time for a new regime and our cups will run over with blood.
Prompt
42. (7/26/10)
A girl and her boyfriend are kissing on a bench
with a sacred glass of milk.
In the tender innocence of morning,
the children play in the sticker bushes;
while a madman sews popcorn on a Christmas tree.
#41 Scabs
I remember the knock at the tavern door. Everything happened so quickly. Or rather everything was happening simultaneously. Or rather, I don’t remember objectively. I mostly remember the news and that everything else was happening around that. The two knocks I remember very clearly. Despite the things going on. KNOCK. KNOCK. Granted there wasn’t much noise. Silent ballerinas padding around in their slippers. Smoke -- quiet as death -- creeping into the tavern from the chimney. Must be breezy, I remember thinking. In retrospect, it all seemed rather ominous. I remember thinking about people who actually get mad about, fight against death. All of the things that have happened, that will happen, too much to bear on their mortal souls. I was thinking I might be persuaded to start thinking that way when I saw the girl eating scabs. Her eyes fleshed over and I couldn’t tell if she knew they were scabs or not. Even after the news, I can only wonder, the knock echoing in my memory, if she had been tricked or was willing.
Prompt
41. (7/25/10)
A schoolgirl is eating scabs in a fine restaurant
with eyelids like coins of flesh.
Smoke rises up from a cedar wood fire;
ballerinas are practicing for the show,
while the postman delivers the fateful news.
#39 Story
Really, when did Adam and Eve not argue? It all began with an argument. Doesn’t everything? I suppose it’s fortunate. Arguing, I mean. That’s why we don’t hear about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Boring. Not the “without a stitch of clothing” part, mind you, but that’s a no-no, isn’t it? You know, the unbridled sex. Still, you have to wonder about bestiality, right? I mean if there were no boundaries, no limits, no names for God’s sake. Let’s stay off that track. It might ruffle a few feathers (they weren’t known as feathers back before the argument -- they just were, like silence is now). So really, it’s pretty fortunate that they had that argument. We wouldn’t have metaphors without that argument. How could we live without metaphors? Or similes? Such good fortune spills like milk from a ladle. That wouldn’t exist. Oh, and plot twists, right? I mean, it wouldn’t matter if a girl fell in love with her father in the Garden of Eden. I’m just touching on the bestiality tangent -- I’ll move along. (God, these people are touchy, but not you, eh?) You and me, we’re like pea’s in a pod. We are the defenders of life. Of language! Let us go, then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherised upon a table -- do you recognize that? That is an argument with life. That is life. Come along then. Let’s leave these jugheads.
Prompt
39. (7/23/10)
Describe Adam and Eve in an argument
without a stitch of clothing.
Such good fortune spills like milk from a ladle;
a girl falls in love with her father,
while two cherubim block the way to the tree of life.
#38 Compelled
The hot air balloon drifted up in the dry desert heat. Up. And then steady not going up any more. Soulless patch of sand. If we didn’t stay up here, we’d die. The girl in the basket -- our basket -- had soiled her underwear. She was asleep. We knew she did not die because she soiled her pants and her chest moved up and down very slightly. Getting her underwear off and over became an ordeal. We tried to keep feces off the wicker. We thought about throwing her over but we were too weak. And we were hungry. So many days we had been going over the soulless desert without food or water. We drank our own urine and the sleeping girls urine. Finally, too, we at her feces. I am not proud to say that. But I am compelled to tell you. We wouldn’t last an hour if we set down. No feces. Nothing. Our urine was getting very strong. The two of us could not lift the sleeping girl. Only her legs to take off her underwear. I have a map, but it looked wrong in the balloon. The lines looked like a man aiming to shoot his dog. We did laugh at that. The trade winds blew us off course as we skirted the desert. Blew us into the desert so that we could not set down without dying. I have written this in feces. I am not proud of that. I think the sleeping girl has finally died. At least we have eaten her. You will find bones in this wicker basket. And maybe one of us alive. Which one of us will sleep first?
Prompt
38. (7/22/10)
Imagine a girl is falling asleep
with no clean underwear.
The moon travels over a soulless stretch of sand;
a master aims to shoot his dog,
while the insomniac holds a candle in the dark.
#37 Escape
At the beginning of the Clara Wars1 you tried to flee the city, irrationally, but rightly, as it turned out later. There had been some looting and the soot of fires clung to the bus, your wet rag cutting back only slightly on the acrid odor. Smoke clouded the buildings reminding you, for the briefest of moments, of the snow capped Alps that you’ve only ever seen in photos. Then the bus careens into the old Kress building. In the hospital -- your gurney in the hall -- two policemen came through the hall looking for someone2. They show you a picture of a woman who you recognized, though you shook your head, “no” (your jaw was wired shut). That’s Clara, you thought. You had heard her name. You imagined that she was waiting somewhere. You should have told them where. She died many years later, part of the sickness creeping across the war torn continent.
________________
1Only known then as “the assassination.”
2The police became agents of the new government very quickly, often before people even realized that there was a new government.
Prompt
37. (7/21/10)
As bombs fall in the hills you are riding a bus
with a wet rag.
Snowy mountains steep like wrinkled sheets;
two policemen enter,
in a nearby house, a girl is waiting for something.
#36 Treatment
That night she came for treatment1. The line wobbled and weaved up through the mound of rubble, the alter below it2, basking, rarely, in the full moonlight (usually the bomb smoke eclipsed it at least slightly). She didn’t get treatment3. Nor the next three times. And by then it was too late.
______________________
1Due to the abundance of fish, several Christian sects -- part of a loose knit coalition attempting to form a majority tribal leadership (called The Majority Tribal Leadership or MTL) -- began using the rare canned fish: mysticism, a language of holiness contained irrefutably and sealed in -- leap of faith between word and what is actually inside -- the can.
2This was a specifically created shrine, the material culled from several destroyed churches and modelled to look like the sabotaged tower of Babel.
3The absolution process -- the ritual of healing -- proceeded as such: the “broken” lies prone on an alter -- stone -- among the rubble of a church during a full moon. They divest themselves of raiment (if the broken is male, as all the clergy are, they must cover their loins). The priest, one ordained by the MTL, which is comprised of a council of the three heads of the three main Christian tribal groups -- Burnt Offering, Gold Chalice and White Covenant* -- chants from the ancient scripts, charred, leafy texts, and holds the gleaming can of sardines aloft into the moonlight at which point the sardines are transformed into a holy viscous substance. The punctured, but unopened, can is then rubbed vigorously on the broken’s ailed area. Through the contact they are healed.** Success rates, according to believers, the only one’s allowed to be treated, is 100%.
______________________
*The rise of these three tribes has raised some linguistic eyebrows.
**Prolonged contact, however, is said to actually produce maladies, hence the long (no less than two years and up to five) vetting process by the MLT and the generally rare, though no less popular, healing ritual.
Prompt
36. (7/20/10)
The priest is healing all the believers
with a can of sardines gleaming with oil.
The sea waves lap on the nearby shore;
a street urchin is selling stamps
while the bombs fall in the hills.
#35 Conversation, Holy Symbol, Command, Holy Bible
They joined a group of other children, orphans, run-aways, refugees. But they became lost on their first scavenging trip. San Antonio was not their own city and they did not know it, though they had once visited just before the war. The convention of exorcists1, to which their father had belonged, met at the Convention Center. Conversation, Holy Symbol, Command, Holy Bible. A mantra. The sky began to bruise and they had been warned not to be out after dark. Seeking shelter in the old Kress building, an open corner not yet taken, they remained silent. In the gloaming, a man, dandelion drooping in his button hole, guided people, ashen gray, to they did not know where2. The children watched the spectacle as the smell of saffron filled the air. And human flesh. Someone deep in the building played a long, slow note on an oboe. The air pressed in on them as the bombs began to fall in the hills. Conversation, Holy Symbol, Command, Holy Bible, they chanted under their breath, the percussion blotting out syllables: Con ... Symbol ... and Holy. They felt like this exorcism required the latter. But they had not had a bible for years.
_____________________
1There is a convention of Catholic priests on record as having “swarmed the convention center” in 2002, about a year before the war began in the North.
2In actuality, these are public exiles or, as they are known to most, “Hermes guiding souls to the underworld.” Depressing and sometimes bloody affairs started by the Cross Ridden Gang when it was in full force (a mere several months), but never done away with.
Prompt
35. (7/19/10)
Hermes was guiding souls to the underworld
with a wilted dandelion.
The smell of saffron fills the air;
a satyr comes skipping with his jolly pipes a-blowing,
while two children, lost in the streets hear bombs fall in the hills.
#34 Insomniacs
We are all insomniacs. Some of us have grown accustomed to the concussions of bombs falling. Some even soothed by it1. Those silent nights are the hardest for them. So we are all insomniacs in the dichotomy of this war: explosions and silence -- what we call “Adam and Eve in an argument.”2 Any dreams of glory or honor have been swiftly denied and we go about our business as best we can, sometimes sleeping, sometimes not. Now our dreams have turned to hunters wandering in the forest3. Outside in the streets, the torrents of floodwater leave bodies stranded in trees. It is a lurid sight when the swollen water recedes. Especially in the silence.
__________________________
1There is an entire generation, albeit young, who have known nothing but war and concussive thuds.
2This is a saying used by members of the Cross Ridden Gang.
3Most of the trees having been leveled outside of loop 410 (see note #1 in #33 Consistency) foliage and the idea of “forest” have become a common communal archetype appearing often in dreams.
Prompt
34. (7/18/10)
Describe Adam and Eve in an argument
with dreams of glory and honor.
The streets are flooded with torrents of water;
out in the forest, hunters are wandering
while the insomniac holds a candle in the dark as bombs fall in the hills.
#33 Consistency
It is the first day of spring, though it doesn’t feel like it. It’s been hot since March1. The grey-eyed sherpa2 is coming out of the house across the street again. Must be getting pretty close to five3. She’ll be driving up in her cobbled together car4 soon enough. Then the lights will go off for the blackout5 and the bombing raid will commence6. I wonder what it means, this consistency. I close my curtain until I hear the car choke up the driveway, then I turn off the lamp.
____________________
1The consistent carpet bombing from years two through eight created much higher temperatures for the area. Hills were bombed into rubble, trees destroyed so that there was only the flatness of the outer perimeter.*
2The Clara War brought some unforeseen immigrants. The world itself had been thrown off kilter with the war in the United States and struggled to recover economically and politically. As the war ground on year after year, a small group of people, mostly of Asian descent, saw an opportunity. One of them being the recent “legalization” of prostitution (see note #3 in #28 Before the Bombing)
3Business must close before five so that the few people who manage to find employment are able to get home before curfew and blackout. Even bars close at five, which has created a two headed beast.**
4Cars have not been in production in the South since the bombing began. However, car shops have opened all over the city. They splice cars together to basic specification. It is of the utmost importance that these cars are armored and have large tires to get over debris and bodies.
5The loose tribal coalitions had begun to solidify into a governing body -- one opposed to the regime in the North. This body sent edicts, usually transmitted through bullhorns by party members in cars. Mandatory blackouts are the first law of the city, though it is unclear if this is part of a treaty or general wariness. Action against those that break the ban is swift and deadly.***
6These nightly raids are as certain as the blackouts themselves to a point where the blackouts have been followed superstitiously. The general thought being that the blackouts keep the Federal Army from dropping bombs into loop 410. There may, however, be absolutely no cause and effect relation.
_____________________
*It has, so far, remained an unspoken rule (some say there was some kind of treaty signed, though that has not been validated) that, after the first wave of bombings that destroyed the near West, South and East sides, the area inside loop 410 is off limits to the relentless carpet bombing. While the actual roadway has been reduced to rubble, and aside from the occasional bombing raid, the pact has held.
**People either drink early or buy alcohol and have blackout parties. Or both. Nearly every -- or at least the new majority (called the “morale majority”) -- fit into one of these two molds.
***Exile and even summary execution.
Prompt
33. (7/17/10)
A man is cheating on his wife
with a girl with eyes as slender as pearls.
It is the first day of spring;
a man tiptoes past the closed door,
while bombs fall in the hills.
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