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February 13 Joke...Dark One had been called Loki in days of yore. Of course, the Scandinavians had not quite gotten him right, but “mischief-making shape-shifter” was close enough. In a blasé way, he supposed he was evil. If that was what his winged servants wanted to believe, he let them. If they believed they were rebelling against some greater force, he let them. If they believed they were on the fast-track to success, that was fine too. Dark One enjoyed pulling the wool over his subjects and ministers alike.
He enjoyed helping human beings get away with ill-gotten gains, tyranny, multi-million-dollar scams, and other vices, then brought them crashing down. The crash was his favorite part. Sometimes he wrecked his subjects while they still walked the earth-- made them bitter or crazy-- then lost interest. Other times his waited until they died to surprise them by handing them over to his ministers. Dark One was king of the world, though most of his human subjects did not know it. The Egyptians had come closest to his likeness in their Anubises and Thoths. When he bothered to look at himself (which was seldom. Dark One was not vain anymore) he was usually a stylized anamorphic. He had not made the world. No. Dark One could and did create situations and climaxes and ruin but could never make something from nothing. Although he had millions of plots running at once and enough material to supply Reality TV forever, he was no longer amused. Childishly, he wanted to destroy his plaything. He wanted to bring the entire world to a crashing, grinding, screaming halt on the edge of the abyss and then --ha!-- push it over. Dark One’s thoughts had only recently begun to turn in this direction. The novelty of being worshipped had worn off long ago. After endless wars and intrigues, all the depravity he could think of, he was growing bored. It occurred to Dark One that he should not be bored. If he had ultimate power, as Prince of the Earth, he should not have limits set on his activities. He should be able to keep the world spiraling down, inventing new horrors and wrongs for his human subjects to commit and endure. That would hint at someone else setting limits, however, and he never followed that sort of train of thought very far. He never asked who or what had caused the earth to come to be. Dark One was content to take the whole thing for granted. He determined to destroy the world in a great lovely blaze. It would be his grand finale, before moving on to greater things. To hell with limits! It took Dark One two ages to build up to his finale. He discovered a device so novel he almost had second thoughts about destroying his plaything. He let people believed that he didn’t exist at all. He finally allowed them to discover mysteries about the world hitherto unknown, instead of keeping them in ignorant squalor. This bolstered their confidence and helped them to forget. No one would realize their doom until it was too late to even think of raising a hero to save them. Dark One listened in on many jokes at his own expense with vast amusement. At last the day came. Instead of allowing some intrepid soul to stop him at the last minute as he had often done before, Dark One launched Armageddon. He heard the wails of a million-million subjects. He even annihilated his fiery servants and ministers, a spectacular joke on them. He laughed aloud into the silence. The silence ate his laughter whole, without an echo. Dark One called for someone and no one answered. He screamed into the void, into the dark, dead earth, his composure shattered. There had always been things to attend to, servants to build up, plots to strike down. No one answered. Submitted by Manda February 10 DetritusThe vase stood out, resplendent, in the flea-market stall. All the rest was just the detritus of life: army jackets, figurines, tattered comic books, a few long dresses. The sort of things which could be found at Laurel’s Attic or any other flea market.
Mae stroked the porcelain surface, marveling at the alternating shades of blue which looked like reflections on the ocean floor. She lifted the lid and replaced it to hear the sound of clay on clay. The vase was surprisingly hefty when she took it off the shelf. ‘It’s quality,’ she told herself. ‘It has weight.’ The old woman at the counter snickered a little when Mae brought the vase to the front. Mae supposed it was at her appearance: she still wore her hair long and straight and loose. Her jeans had been broken in ages ago and were felt-soft. She wore a shirt too big for her. It hung nearly to her knees. Mae did not let the cashier’s expression faze her. She walked happily back to her house, which was a tiny one-bedroom affair with a tiny awning over the front step. All available yard-space had been converted into a rock garden. Mae cultivated herbs and mountain flowers. Rosebushes flourished near the walls where the frost could not bite them. She was better at growing flowers than she was at holding a job. The long-stemmed roses she trimmed should have blazed wildly red against the cool blue vase, but they would not go more than halfway in. She peered into the vase, then jerked back, astonished. Heart thudding in her ears, Mae called her cousin. After the sweet-voiced secretary (“Thankyou for calling Memorial Cemetery, this is Sherry…”) told her to hold, Frances picked up. Mae explained her purchase breathlessly, “But there’s been an awful mistake. when I took it home, I found it was an-- an urn, with someone still in it. Do they really sell those?” “It’s been known to happen.” Frances disapproved of flea-markets on general principle. “Won’t they want him back? There aren‘t any dates or name anywhere on it, but--” “Probably not. They probably don’t even remember who it is, or else they wouldn’t’ve sold it.” Mae was silent long enough for Frances to grow impatient. “If there’s nothing else..?” “Couldn’t we give him a decent burial? You‘re in charge of selling graves.” “Urn niches aren’t free. Just dump it in the back yard.” “I couldn’t do that,” Mae faltered. “It’s someone.” “I’m not buying a space for some anonymous person when I could make a thousand dollars selling it,” said Frances. There was no arguing with Frances. She wasn’t a bad person, but she was a saleswoman through and through. She put a price-tag on everything. Mae took the vase from the table and sat on the front step with it cradled between her knees. Its surface was slippery-smooth and warm from the sunlight. Who could this person be? She thought back to the detritus in the stall at Laurel‘s Attic. Perhaps it was a veteran… the army jackets were from Vietnam. Mae rebelled all the more at dumping the ashes of one of the soldiers whom she had lobbied to bring home. Though that appealed to her romantic side, if the family had the guy’s jackets, they would know who it was and would probably not have sold his urn for $5.50. It might be anybody she held on her cracked concrete step. After a while she got up and walked to the bus stop, then rode to the shore. Reverently Mae scattered the ashes into the gray water and murmured good-luck prayer of sorts. Then she climbed onto the jetty. A few winter shore-dwellers paused to stare at the frail-looking woman standing barefoot on the rocks with a blue urn in her upraised arms. upraised. Waves slapped at the cuffs of her jeans. Her long hair, only touched with gray, whipped around her body. She threw the urn against the mossy black rocks. Sure, she could have kept it, even kept the ashes inside it to ground her flowers. But then the mystery-guest inside would have been given up for sale when Mae moved on. Perhaps the person might not want to be sifted into the ocean, but no one would want to be perpetually the detritus of someone else’s life. Submitted by Manda |
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