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Messengers
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Messengers |
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Dom Mart Member
since 1999-08-17
Posts 164Florida |
"His spirit is one with the wind...." Ben felt only pain and contempt as he heard these words from the mouth of this charlatan. "My God," he thought. This bunch of frauds had always disgusted him. "You must be joking," he had blurted out when Josh told him he had decided to join The Community of the Blessed Spirits. They were supposed to be some kind of religion, but their church was the apartment of one of the characters in Josh's Yuppie condo complex. They were supposed to meet for spiritual fellowship, which, Ben was sure, consisted of blowing a lot of hot air about art, ethics and world peace and then pairing off to have sex with each other. In their creed, the minister was anyone who felt inspired. Today it was Eric, a reed thin, blondish man of about thirty-five, with a shockingly deep voice, which, at the moment, was intoning some nonsense over Josh's grave. Out of the corner of his eye, Ben watched Meaghan Blackstone waiting her turn to play some ditty on the flute. "My god, Josh screwed her a couple times and that qualifies her to be an intimate friend." Ben hunched into himself. He could feel his feet boring into the soft earth, as though he wanted to plant himself as a permanent monument that would forever protest this desecration of his son's memory. But it was too late for that. Meaghan had begun to play. Her sad, frail notes rose into the crisp air like the fragile seeds of a puffball. Ben stood solid and straight as the music flowed around him, solid, as he heard another sound, deep and insistent pounding within his head, the sound of his own voice asking, "why, why, why." And then he heard still another sound--birds. Four red wing blackbirds were doing some kind of maniacal dance about three feet above the heads of Eric and Meaghan. They wre circling and screeching, swooping madly to within a few inches of Eric's and Meaghan's heads. Eric shuffled nervously. Meaghan's playing became hurried. The gathered mourners looked fearfully at each other. Everyone seemed to be expecting someone else to do something. Ben heard only the wild shrieks of the birds. Wherever he looked, he saw them swooping, diving, beating their wings furiously, hundreds of them, glossy black with a blood red crescent at the base of each wing. He felt them clamoring in his head until he thought it might burst. He began sobbing convusively from the pit of his stomach, as the birds crowded madly into the cells of his body. He closed his burning eyes and when he opened them again, he felt the cool, moist grass against his face. |
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Marilyn Member Elite
since 1999-09-26
Posts 2621Ontario, Canada |
Very vidid story line here. It was over much too quickly though. Nice piece of writing. |
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Christopher
Moderator
Member Rara Avis
since 1999-08-02
Posts 8296Purgatorial Incarceration |
Nice peice indeed, and agreed on the vivid portrayal. I too felt there could be more, perhaps a development... "O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?" Dante Alighieri |
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