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Block Party
December 21, 2006 in 299 Words, Books, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Literature, novels, Poetry, reading, Short stories, Stories, Very Short Novels, Writing | Tags: Neighbor, Threat | by davidbdale | 1 comment
On Saturdays, the punishing sun lashes the asphalt of our tormented neighborhood. The fresh tar bubbles underfoot. We’ve assembled where the sidewalks meet the street, each tethered to a different house by an orange extension cord. We appear to have gathered by chance, but every weekend we reconnoiter, first two to conspire about unfinished business, then three or more to form a mob we hope will terrify the vermin at house 299. The sympathizers have escaped to other towns: the childless couples, the singles, the sodomites. Just one remains. We poke tar bubbles with our shoetips and raise our voices, and yank the power cords when they tangle. When the thick skins of the tar bubbles split, we can taste their cruel tar breath. We’re keeping an eye on 299 because the undeniable threat of it looms whenever we turn our backs. If it were to fall vacant, for instance, if the lifelong bachelor who keeps to himself were to suffer a coronary episode there and die, or if he were to abandon it on short notice, no decent family would move into that nest of cells. As long as we’re here to tell the story, it may as well burn itself down through the basement and tunnel a scorched bowel straight to hell. At the end of the block, we can just make out the blue shorts, the blond ponytail, the leather bag, and the suntanned girlish legs of the unfamiliar substitute letter carrier. Unless one of us warns her, she’ll reach 299 and climb the steps. She might slide a package through the door! Will a hand slip out and pull her through? It’s time we burned a sign into the lawn to warn the unwary. We finger the switches of our power tools and watch.
Copyright © December 21, 2006
Kingdom Come
December 19, 2006 in 299 Words, Books, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Literature, novels, Poetry, reading, Short stories, Stories, Very Short Novels, Writing | Tags: Conquest, God, Religion, War | by davidbdale | 5 comments
When the great wars began, hundreds of clans held dominion over portions of the enormous land, each with their own gods and culture, totems, legends, marriage laws and excuses for combat. For hundreds of years the battles raged, until the forty most ruthless clans had stained the land with the blood of the less ruthless, whose gods simultaneously perished, along with legions of warriors slain and civilians starved and broken. Belief systems were trod into the dust, ground to powder like the small bones of the martyrs underfoot. Gods who had commanded awe for centuries ceased to exist. As part of the living spirit of a people, they expired with the last breaths of the last believers. As fragments of history, they perished with the burning of the holy parchments, the toppling of the holy stones. We only think they might once have existed. With the expansion of the conquering clans, the influence of the victorious gods grew, always in fulfillment of a prophesy that the vengeful gods of the most rapacious warriors would prosper throughout the land. Forty clans, even belligerent clans, might have shared the vast terrain in suspended hostility, but forty gods—fickle, indifferent, arrogant, vindictive—could not. Most had to be killed, but it was not necessary to eliminate the more pragmatic believers, who adopted the conquering gods as a cost of living. Every battlefield victory confirmed the faith of the true worshipers in the power of their gods to deliver them from danger. Each skirmish they survived convinced them, as they took up arms against another god, that they could not die. Now the pretenders lie in waste and the conquerors, rich in spoils, survive to spread the good news of the one true god to lands about which madmen and mystics have dreamt.
Copyright © December 19, 2006
Very Short Novels 