a resurrection from hiatus!
IT IS A BURNT OFFERING, A FOOD OFFERING, AN AROMA PLEASING TO THE LORD
“What's wrong, Luke? Are you feeling well?”
His mother's cheery voice wafted past him like a breeze, only snapping his attention away from his plate for a moment. Luke’s head dipped in a slight, almost invisible nod. His mother's smile shrunk, growing tightened as she examined the boy, her eyes becoming glossy as she glanced back at her husband.
The silence in the air grew thick and uncomfortable, broken only by the clattering of silverware and the fleshy smack of chewing from the familial actors.
Luke's plate sat untouched. The steam that had caressed the darkened stump of rabbit before him had gone elsewhere, leaving the object of its affection to grow cold under the eye of boyish scrutiny.
He did not know why he despised the meat now, considering how he had aided his father in its capture. Perhaps it was because it looked less beautiful on the porcelain plate, yes, less beautiful and more grotesque.
He poked at the flayed skin with his fork, using its pines to lift up the thing and peer at its underside.
His father set down his water glass with a firm, noticeable thunk.
“Luke.”
The boy's eyes reluctantly traveled up to meet the eyes of his father. He lifted his chin, staring into a face that very nearly mirrored his own- if the eyes were only darker and the face more hardened and shrewd; the hair greying at several intervals.
“What did I tell you about playing with your food, son?”
His father's voice had a smile in it, one that manifested in a strained, snarling kind of smirk.
Luke tapped his knife against the tablecloth.
“It's wasteful.”
His father waited.
“And ungrateful.”
Luke felt a coil of hurt and anger growing tighter in his gut. He was not trying to be wasteful, and he certainly wasn't ungrateful. His father couldn't understand.
He would see only what he wished to see.
“I just don't want it.”
He bleated, looking back down to his plate.
His father’s sardonic smirk birthed a bitter chuckle, and he cut into his meat with more fervor.
His mother swallowed down the last of her water, her dark eyes flicking towards her husband nervously.
“Luther-”
“Oh, never mind him, Rosemary. I'm going to have a talk with him afterwards.”
Discipline was not at the forefront of the woman's worries. Her husband never laid a harsh hand on their children. Still, he was effective, and this disconcerted her more than anything.
SKIN THE BURNT OFFERING AND CUT IT INTO PIECES
“We can't always have what we want, son.”
Luke stood stiffly, glaring up at his father with hatred.
Luther smiled.
His large inky shadow enveloped the dwarfed figure of his son, consuming the boy’s meager shadow and bleeding into the wooden planks of the shed walls.
The shadow flickered out like a dying flame as the man crouched down, getting on eye level with his son. His voice grew soft and probing as he continued on.
“You didn't want to eat your dinner tonight. I'm surprised. We caught it together- and it seemed to me like we were having a good time."
Luke looked down at his toes. His father chucked his chin, pushing it up with a strong hand.
“Come on, son. Why didn't you want to eat your dinner? I just want to know.”
This feigned kindness felt odd. It stank of deception, and Luke felt his nose wrinkle further.
His answer was soon blurted out, leaving all sense of tact behind.
“It was ugly. That's why. It was ugly.”
His father did not let go of his chin. Silence reigned.
“It was ugly.”
He repeated at last, his voice flat and sterile.
The bulky shadow was resurrected as his father drew himself up to his full height. His pale eyes glimmered with malice and a predatory anticipation as he stalked to a far corner of the shed.
Luke remained paralyzed, eyes widening in slow recognition as he espied the alien object that his father dragged from the corner.
“Put your hands in.”
Luther commanded, his voice low and terrible.
The only response was a violent shaking of the head.
Low candlelight gleamed and caught on the flying blonde strands of Luke's hair.
An exasperated hand flew out at last and clutched the face of the boy, stilling it.
“Put your hands in.”
“No. I don't want to. I hate you.”
Luther's hand quivered, tempted to deliver a firm swat to the despicable, defiant face before him.
Instead, the man bit his own lip, and dug his nails further into Luke's skin. A wave of red began to tint his neck and creep into his face.
“Put your hands in, dammit!”
Luke plunged his hands into the grimy white bucket. The foreign curse that escaped his father's lips had frightened him into an early surrender.
Luther's hand faltered, before slithering away from the boy's face, moving to rest on the edge of the bucket.
A squelching noise came from the bucket, thick and viscous, and along with it rose an acrid, ferric scent that stung Luke's nostrils. This bucket was a filthy chalice; little better than being a sepulcher.
Tears beaded in the corners of the boy's eyes. He lifted up a hand to wipe them, out of habit. A reddened, slimy appendage stared back at him, and he instead let his fingers grovel back down into the amalgamation of viscera it had departed from. The mish mash of organs and intestines greeted him with a loud sticky smack.
His father's hands, calloused and sure, joined his in the bloody depths of the container.
“This is what I have to do, son, after you skin them for me.”
He whispered, the hush of his voice cozy and unsettlingly warm.
“But I think you're man enough to really get hands on.”
Luke tried to issue a response, but the only thing that left his lips was a choked whimper.
“None of that.” his father said firmly.
After a while, his own hands withdrew. He wiped them carelessly on the front of his shirt. Red streaks joined the orange and yellow plaid stripes that crisscrossed the pale off-white fabric.
“You can see how silly it is now, can't you?”
He said cheerfully, looking down at his son with triumph.
“It was always ugly. It was ugly before we shot it, it was ugly while I was gutting it, and it was ugly when it reached the plate. Some things in life are like that, son.
Even us.”
Luke remained on the rough wooden floor. Splintery shards pricked at his his knees, but he paid them no mind, his gaze being utterly enraptured by the sight of his bloody hands.
“Son, you know, it didn't have to stay ugly.”
Luke stared up at his father, a silent question in his eyes.
His father's voice took on the paternal twinge that it was supposed to have had.
“If you had just…eaten it, it would've become beautiful again. You know why?”
Luke shook his head. His father strode up to him, one pale red hand burying itself in his soft blonde strands.
“It would have helped you, son,” he said hushedly, as if unveiling some great secret, “helped you to grow big and strong. You don't want to be a little, scrawny boy forever, do you?”
His voice grew biting as he said these last words.
Luke shook his head again.
Luther gave his hair one last ruffle, before heading to the door of the shed. He opened it, staring out into the dark expanse of the woods surrounding them.
A single upstairs window was lit in their house, which stood waiting for them across a sea of feathery grass.
Luther stepped outside.
“You're on gutting duty next time.”
bloated.
I used to devour words. Pages and pages of them, weaved into capitivating tales.
But now, something has happened.
I can no longer devour stories as I once did.
It is as if I am bloated with dopamine- so bloated that there is room for nothing else.
It is a feeling of being full but not one of being content.
Even my pen writes with rotten ink.
My words are a glimmer of what I once knew, mindless mutterings from a mad man grasping at what he has lost.
Half of my heart has been wedded to a devil.
A devil that dances in my hands and dazzles my eyes, leaving me full, yet empty at the end of the day.
And in the end I am frightened.
What if, despite all my ideas and intentions, I am no different from a machine regurgitating junk?
What if, what if, what if.
Eventually, I will move on from my what ifs.
The Seventh Day of the Fifth Month
The bunker door slid open, and a shaking hand reached out into the stagnant, cold air.
It was over now.
All of man's quarrels had been silenced at last. Ironically enough, by his own innovations.
Adam Newman coughed the raspy cough of one who has taken a very long rest.
That was what the bunkers were designed to do; to throw one into a long rest, to shut one's ears to the terror around them. They were designed for the elite only, of course, but they blocked most of the noise from the exploding bombs above, along with the cries of some unfortunate soul that sometimes limped past their doors.
The bunkers did not, however, block the vibrations of the war that raged above them, the terrible war that they all had started.
Newman, a young scientist with the weaselly look that many had developed in this new age, greedily pushed his way out of the bunker doors.
“You will need the respirator. Radiation levels are still quite high.”
Newman looked back at his companion with hasty annoyance. But he took the respirator offered and slipped it on. He was no fool.
Together, the two men, perhaps the last of their kind, stepped out onto the grey earth.
A gust of dry air, carrying the particles of a world now fragmented, whipped their faces.
The monitors in the bunker not only recorded when the war had ended, it also kept watch for when the dust on earth had settled. Only then would it open its steel doors and release the forefathers of a new generation.
They hadn’t considered how the survivors would find each other.
Ichabod Mathis glanced back at the bunker.
Meanwhile, his associate stared silently at the pale sun that looked angrily down on them.
A sharp, high-pitched bray broke through the whistling patterns of wind that ran to and fro around the two.
“Look at this! Look at this! Fit for life it said, fit for life indeed!”
Newman’s gaze swiveled back to Mathis; his cracked lips pursed in a sardonic smile.
“You’re thinking it, but you’re not saying it, aren’t you Mathis? Wish we’d gone out on the frontlines instead?”
Mathis, an older gentleman nearing sixty, felt his brows dip downwards.
He had a weary air about him, a weariness that penetrated far beyond his bones, and pierced into his soul.
“Stop that, Newman. Talking so won’t get us anywhere.”
He gestured back towards the bunker.
“I’m sure there’s some way we can connect to others-”
“There are no others.”
Adam spat venomously.
“Can’t you see? We’re in London- or whatever’s left of it. There’s no telling what the rest of the world looks like. Those bunkers were hooked up to the old communications systems anyway, and all that’s ruined- ruined!”
The words were shaky, penned by the young man’s nervous tongue.
Silence fell upon them once more.
Dust and tiny bits of what once was clung to the black fibers of Newman’s coat.
Mathis stood silently beside him.
“We’ll stay near the bunker then.”
Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months and soon the chill gave way to a sudden wave of heat. The heat was unforgiving, scorching the two men, fogging up their brains and reminding them of all their sins. The bunker would not have power forever; this was proved by the spasms of blackouts it would experience suddenly.
Soon it was the fifth month, or so they supposed.
The bunker lights flickered before shutting off completely.
This did not faze the men but then a low droning noise rose from the bowels of their shelter, growing louder and louder by the minute, a low droning that went on like a dying animal’s cry.
And when it ended in a twisted cacophonous howl, they were grimly certain of one thing.
The power had perished.
On the third day of the fifth month, Mathis exited the dark bunker, sick of quarrelling with Newman.
His breath echoed in his ears as he shakily took in air through the respirator.
Huge, hungry gulps of air, hoping that with each breath, it would grow fresher, or at the very least, how he remembered it to be.
“What are you doing?”
Newman’s nasal voice rang out accusingly.
“That’s one of the few respirators we’ve got left.”
Mathis spun round; his eyes cold as he surveyed the only other face of their race. A face that he was growing to despise.
“We’ve plenty left. Now, I came here to- to clear my head. Do you mind, Newman?”
“Newman, Newman, Newman…”
The younger man took a step to Mathis’s right.
“There’s really no need for formality, now, Ichabod.”
Mathis stiffened in shock.
“What does it matter? Can’t you get it into your head that in order to live, we have to leave stupid nonsense like that behind?”
“Just what type of world would we have then- without that "stupid nonsense"?”
Mathis retorted, tracking Newman with his eyes.
Newman had taken to pacing him now, his hands skewed a little to either side of his body, his mouth parted slightly.
Mathis stepped back towards the bunker.
“Newman- or, Adam, I believe the heat has gotten to you. Grab a bottle of liquid from the bunker.”
“Liquid’s gone.”
Newman straightened up and slid his hands into his pockets.
“You know, when people were still in the deserts, they had a curious way of getting water when they ran out of it.”
Mathis nodded, inching back towards the bunker.
Newman took a step forward.
“They had camels back then. Interesting thing, camels. The horse’s hunchbacked brother.”
Newman let out a chuckle that rose into his bray of a laugh.
“They’d cut the water out of a camel’s stomach when they ran out of water.”
“Out of its stomach?”
Mathis reiterated, one foot inside the bunker.
“Well, it wasn’t really water. But it was liquid, and they didn’t care much, I suppose.”
The sun began to sink. The air became cooler, and in the fading light, shimmering dust danced round and round.
“Ichabod?”
“Yes, Adam?”
“We haven’t any more liquid. Or food.”
“None at all?”
“None at all.”
On the seventh day of the fifth month, man had perished.
The bunker had a collection of dust piling up around its entrance.
Wedged between the heavy steel door was the head of Ichabod Mathis.
The sun shed its last rays on the pale, lifeless form of Adam Newman, and the battered respirator that lay beside him.
One could argue that the two men had reverted into nothing more than savage animals.
But perhaps they had been beastly things all along.
©coyotetrickstergod|daniellejacobs
Graeme and the Devil
It is said that the babe born under a vulture’s watch belongs to the Devil.
This superstition did well to strike fear into the hearts of many; particularly peasants who lived in the vast countryside, where vultures were only too glad to pick a cottage as a roost.
When a woman is with child, she will have her entire family by her side to ward off these carrion eaters from coming near the home, ensuring that a healthy, Christian child be born.
However, there were some that had to do this task by themselves.
Thus was the fate of a peasant couple, who were expecting a child in the heart of autumn.
They had been shunned by both family and friend; they had nothing to their name.
Still, the two fixed up their little, worn cottage as best they could, and whistled as they worked, for joy is sometimes greater than riches.
Soon, the day came. As the sun cast its last glimpses to the earth, the peasant woman let out a cry of agony, the cry of childbirth.
“Stay by the window, my love,” she hissed through clenched teeth to her husband, watching anxiously on.
“Night is falling, keep watch, keep watch!” However, her face was so red, so twisted with pain, that the man could not restrain himself from rushing to her side as she was in the last throes of birthing.
And as he wiped the blood off of his son's brow, his wife looked past him, to the open window.
Her breath caught.
There, its head black, wrinkled and bare, hunched over on the sill, was a vulture, who stared at the three with shrewd, glittering eyes.
The woman let out a cry more terrible than those she had uttered before, and the vulture took off into the night sky, leaving the couple frightened and shaken. Then, the woman spoke, the love in her eyes dulling as she glanced at her newborn son.
“He is the devil’s child, now.”
They named him Graeme.
Graeme grew up to be a healthy boy, with bright, snapping black eyes that neither of his parents possessed.
He was only too glad to flash these eyes at his mother, who would stop her scolding and shrink back in fear, or at his father, who would settle into a stony silence at the sight of them.
Even the sheep in the pasture were cowed, and the birds would stop their singing, when the boy’s gaze fell upon them.
Man and beast feared him, and for this he was proud.
When Graeme was of age, his mother and father gave him what scanty savings they had, and begged him to find an honest trade.
Gladdened, he took the money, but a wicked intention stirred in his heart.
“To work a trade is terribly taxing,” he said to himself, “Nay, I shall be wise, and earn my money easily.”
So, he departed, having decided to gamble what little money he had been given.
On his way down the mountain path, however, he saw a lovely maiden. She bore no hat or gloves, but wore a loose, white frock, which rippled in the wind.
He ventured near her, as if in a trance, and she laughed, fleeing from him, leading him deeper and deeper into the wood, away from the mountain path.
Oddly, she would not falter under his gaze, and she only stopped her teasing once he had caught her.
As Graeme held her close, a triumphant glimmer came to his eye, but it faded away, replaced with terror as he truly beheld what he had caught.
For it was not a maiden in his arms now- but a large black ram, which grinned so terribly at him that he tried in vain to throw it from his arms.
“Do not trouble me,” Graeme cried out, “let me go about my honest way, trouble me no more!”
The ram laughed a hideous laugh, filled with nothing but dark mirth.
“There is no honesty in you,” it declared, “your eyes would not gleam so, if you were an honest man. I put the fire in your eyes when you were born, and now I must retrieve my coals.”
And with a thrust of his mighty head, the Devil skewered the young man’s eyes out, plunging him into a darkness that he would never escape from.
The Disheartened Painter and the Dark-Eyed Ferret
“Let’s make a deal, yes, let us make a deal,” said the ferret with the dark eyes.
It was talking to the disheartened painter, who stood despondently before his canvas, on the meadow green.
The painter could not paint anything worthwhile in his own eyes.
The painter, was a very desperate man.
“What is your offer, little ferret?” asked he.
“Give me one of your paintbrush hairs,” answered the ferret with the dark eyes,
“Just one, and I will give you an amazing vision.”
So, the painter plucked out one of his paintbrush bristles, and gave it to the ferret.
The small thing slithered away, and did not appear again, leaving the man to ponder.
As he fell asleep that night, the painter dreamed of a wonderful painting.
It was filled with the most vibrant reds he had ever seen on a canvas.
When he awoke, the painter said to himself,
“I must paint this thing, this wonderful thing, that I have dreamt of.”
He pulled out his biggest, whitest canvas, and set it upon his easel.
But when he pulled out his paints, he frowned.
His red paints, every tube, and every jar, were awfully, awfully dull.
Whatever could he do?
Then, the painter got an idea.
He went out to his garden, and plucked off all the dark red rose petals from their stems.
He threw them into his stone mortar and began to grind them with a pestle.
“Rumble, rumble, rumble,” went the pestle.
“Squish, squish, squish,” went the dark red rose petals.
But alas, the paint from the roses was still, awfully, awfully dull.
The painter sighed.
Then, he got an idea.
He went into his pantry, and drew out a quart of bright red raspberries.
He threw them into his stone mortar and began to grind them with a pestle.
“Rumble, rumble, rumble,” went the pestle.
“Squish, squish, squish,” went the bright red raspberries.
But alas, the paint from the raspberries was too light, and dreadfully, dreadfully thin.
The painter sighed.
Then, he got an idea.
He went onto his porch, and picked up a few mottled red ladybirds, who were hiding from the rain.
He threw them into his stone mortar, and began to grind them with a pestle.
“Rumble, rumble, rumble,” went the pestle.
“Squish, squish, squish,” went the mottled red ladybirds.
But alas, the paint from the ladybirds was too thick, and awfully, awfully dull.
The painter sighed.
Then, he got an idea.
His neighbor had a little, charming, red songbird that she kept in a cage on her back windowsill.
He went up to the windowsill, and grabbed the bird, who let out a nervous twitter.
He threw it into a boiling iron pot, which hung over the fireplace.
“Bubble, bubble, bubble,” went the pot.
“Squawk, squawk, squawk,” went the charming, red, songbird.
But alas, the paint from the songbird was an ugly, frothy gray.
The painter let out his gustiest sigh yet, and threw his paintbrush into the fire.
“Oh, I am such a fool!” cried he, “A fool, for listening to that black-eyed vermin!”
Silence fell upon the room.
Then, the painter got up in a rage, throwing things about.
And as he did, one of his fingers caught on a little nail, sticking out of his easel.
“Drip, drip, drip,” went the shining, scarlet blood, which dribbled out from his torn finger.
The painter smiled.
Then, he got an idea.
His hand reached up, and delved into his chest, drawing out a shining, scarlet heart.
He threw it into the boiling iron pot, which hung over the fireplace.
“Bubble, bubble, bubble,” went the pot.
“Thump, thump, thump,” went his shining, scarlet heart.
He threw it into his stone mortar, and began to grind it with a pestle.
“Rumble, rumble, rumble,” went the pestle.
“Squish, squish, squish,” went his shining, scarlet heart.
And when the paint was finished, it was even more vibrant than the paint in his vision.
“At last!” exclaimed the painter.
He set his largest, whitest canvas upright again.
He grabbed his favorite paintbrush.
He sat, and began to paint.
Furiously, he worked into the evening.
He painted with light strokes.
With hard strokes.
With bold strokes, and gentle strokes.
And when he was finished, he was glad, but also very, very tired.
So, the painter went to sleep.
When he awoke, he drew the sheet off of his magnificent masterpiece.
And he looked on, in absolute horror.
For the paint, was an awful, awful brown.
The painter cried.
He crawled into his bed, drawing up the coarse, brown sheets over his head.
He slept.
He slept and did not wake from his slumber.
©coyotetrickstergod|daniellejacobs
avian lovers
my lover is a vulture
i a silver crane
side by side
we live our lives
through pleasure
and through pain
my lover is barbaric
he only feeds on bones
though i prefer
a glimmering fish
i hate to eat alone
the people think it strange
that i dance for him
by the way they talk
you'd think it was a sin
but it's not odd to me
our twisted harmony
for the red on my head
is the red on his chest
i see it
and so does he
©coyotetrickstergod|daniellejacobs
the enemy of oneself
Vampires bite and werewolves howl
Ghouls stagger and zombies yowl
Creatures of imagination
What harm can they do?
But there is one
As real
As me
Or you
This creature bites
Does not let go
It looks for fights
Things to cause woe
It is the trap
That traps its paw
It growls and snaps
At its own maw
Reflected in the mirror
A visage of pure terror
Rabid froth
Spilling out
Composed of anger, bitterness
and moral drought
It whines and barks
And screams and yells
It lies and tricks
Deceives itself
But when the sun sets
Leaving leafless trees bare
The paw still bleeds
That trap still gleams
And the monster
Is still there
And in its mind
Is naught but one
Solution
It bares its crooked teeth
To perform
Self-mutilation
Ⓒ daniellejacobs/trickstergod 2023
Ten Years Left
I'm sitting at the kitchen table. It's an average, mid-summer evening in my house, and the smell of curry mingles with mint-scented breeze from outside. My mother and I are engaged in a drowsy, slow conversation as I browse my laptop.
My eyes aren't focused on the slowly setting sun, and my nose is numb to the scent of home. It's an everyday thing after all. But an opportunity like the one I've been given is a one in a lifetime chance. I scroll through displays of graphics tablets and art programs, colleges and cities. There's so much, and my mind aches from the garish display of options.
My mother's voice distracts me for a fleeting moment.
"I would like to move to North Carolina. Your aunt says it's nice up there."
She has a faint smile on her face as she elaborates on this prospect.
"I might only have ten years left, but it would be nice to spend it up there, you know?"
Then silence.
The sun is fading behind the trees that encircle our neighborhood.
My laptop displays a few homes in Caldwell County.
Money is truly nothing.
Why not spend it on a dream?