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skonen_bladesThe banks of the river are dry in an irregular circle around her. The rain hisses into steam before it hits her. Her hair is frizzy and brittle like she’s had it in a hair dryer for years. Her eyes scrape in their sockets. She reaches up with the squirt-can and uses oil for eyedrops.
She's drying from the inside out, turning into something that needs lubricant instead of water. Like a cross between a statue and a robot. The dry scraping of her joints can’t be helped. She drinks a few gulps of the oil for good measure.
It’s the bodies in the river going by that hold her attention. They’ve thickened the river to sluggishness. There’s more meat than water in front of her. There has to be entire town’s worth of people rolling by. Occasionally, a stiff arm will roll over and up, pointing towards the sky in a lazy half-clutch like the spoke of a wagon wheel before arcing slowly back into the crush.
They ran into the water to escape and ended up being boiled.
The sky is black with contusions of red showing through. It’s a fresh burn scar of a sky.
The vegetation is black. The ground here is a salt-flat fractal crackwork of octagonal tiles.
The girl on the bank isn’t sure why her and the others were chosen to survive.
“There you are.” Says a voice behind her. The girl ignores it.
“Aw. Come on now. Don’t be morbid. Don’t be like that. Let’s go. There’s a lot of work to do.” Says the voice, sounding like wind chimes on fire.
The girl reluctantly stands. Her latest attempt at being dressed falls to smoking ash around her.
Naked, she looks up at the speaker.
The speaker stands tall, red-skinned and huge with horns glowing as hot as branding irons. He pats his thick, alien leg like he’s calling a dog.
“Come! Come on! Let’s go” he says and whistles with a laugh. He’s learned what that is now, this thing called laughing. The children have taught him so much. It’s a strange experience, though. In the beginning, he didn’t know how to laugh and the children, the girl’s new friends, they all laughed so much that eventually, He caught on.
Now, though. He laughs a lot and the children hardly laugh at all. For one things, it makes the skin on their faces crack. It’s like He sucked the laughter out of all of them for himself.
The girls walks forward, ready to get back to work, ready to join the other children conscripted to turn the Earth into a kiln.
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She's drying from the inside out, turning into something that needs lubricant instead of water. Like a cross between a statue and a robot. The dry scraping of her joints can’t be helped. She drinks a few gulps of the oil for good measure.
It’s the bodies in the river going by that hold her attention. They’ve thickened the river to sluggishness. There’s more meat than water in front of her. There has to be entire town’s worth of people rolling by. Occasionally, a stiff arm will roll over and up, pointing towards the sky in a lazy half-clutch like the spoke of a wagon wheel before arcing slowly back into the crush.
They ran into the water to escape and ended up being boiled.
The sky is black with contusions of red showing through. It’s a fresh burn scar of a sky.
The vegetation is black. The ground here is a salt-flat fractal crackwork of octagonal tiles.
The girl on the bank isn’t sure why her and the others were chosen to survive.
“There you are.” Says a voice behind her. The girl ignores it.
“Aw. Come on now. Don’t be morbid. Don’t be like that. Let’s go. There’s a lot of work to do.” Says the voice, sounding like wind chimes on fire.
The girl reluctantly stands. Her latest attempt at being dressed falls to smoking ash around her.
Naked, she looks up at the speaker.
The speaker stands tall, red-skinned and huge with horns glowing as hot as branding irons. He pats his thick, alien leg like he’s calling a dog.
“Come! Come on! Let’s go” he says and whistles with a laugh. He’s learned what that is now, this thing called laughing. The children have taught him so much. It’s a strange experience, though. In the beginning, he didn’t know how to laugh and the children, the girl’s new friends, they all laughed so much that eventually, He caught on.
Now, though. He laughs a lot and the children hardly laugh at all. For one things, it makes the skin on their faces crack. It’s like He sucked the laughter out of all of them for himself.
The girls walks forward, ready to get back to work, ready to join the other children conscripted to turn the Earth into a kiln.
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no subject
Date: 22 Dec 2007 22:47 (UTC)your writing is so visual...or, at least, my brain gets so much colour when i read you.
no subject
Date: 23 Dec 2007 04:18 (UTC)no subject
Date: 23 Dec 2007 04:21 (UTC)i was complaining about it to smartypants friend and she suggested a book i might like (Not Wanted On The Voyage by Timothy Findley)....brought me right back to books because of the visuals.
huge gift.
you do that, too.
no subject
Date: 23 Dec 2007 04:26 (UTC)no subject
Date: 23 Dec 2007 00:44 (UTC)no subject
Date: 23 Dec 2007 04:18 (UTC)no subject
Date: 23 Dec 2007 05:24 (UTC)Firekiln (http://skonen-blades.livejournal.com/152815.html)
...and (http://skonen-blades.livejournal.com/212322.html) other ones (http://skonen-blades.livejournal.com/202699.html) that remind me of this.
no subject
Date: 23 Dec 2007 05:48 (UTC)no subject
Date: 23 Dec 2007 21:50 (UTC)no subject
Date: 24 Dec 2007 01:32 (UTC)no subject
Date: 24 Dec 2007 00:38 (UTC)no subject
Date: 24 Dec 2007 01:32 (UTC)