More super shorts

More short, short fiction. Two this time, no lies. Novel is going well, direction has been found. One day I will return to this blog.

Dying of Thirst

Brazen bastions marked by concrete pillars just over the horizon and out of reach waiting taunting screaming yelling. No reaching point beyond horizon where pillars rise where the bastions lie and hope and festival and hope and glory reside. No additional aid is coming it can’t come now. The desert road is just too long too far too wearily traveled alone by the lost by the damned and into the unknown. The city upon a hill is nearing but it’s just a mirage or maybe it isn’t at this point it’s too hard to tell. Unquenched thirsts palpitate from the meanderings begging to be fed like lions to a slaughter only to find the vultures have stripped the carcass bare of flesh. Naked bones in the stark desert sky long plucked clean are all that remain and lions starve and souls thirst. Moving on soon. It won’t come slowly or easily but it will come. It’s coming now. Is that what that is over the horizon? I thought it was Cibola or Alexandria or a muse on the River Marne. It wasn’t those things or that stuff just the desert heat baking off the surface. For a moment it shimmers in the air and rises above and then it’s gone only to be replaced in an endless cycle. Collapse is near. Fatigue is setting in. thirst is overwhelming all other thoughts. Death will be nice.

–END–

With Hell and Ashes

Doors are shutting all around me now. They started slowly at first but grew in prominence quickly. It was cold there when they closed me out the worst day of my life was everyday. Really, it still is. Let me tell you who I am. I don’t have a name I am the ageless wanderer from the sea of blood and fire. I came on a cloud of pestilence from the darkest corners of the world from the unexplored caves of the souls of the lost. I came streaming in on black banners all coated with tar and filth. I came broken and determined to break. And they pushed me out of their house. They closed their doors all around me. They cast me out into the snow. Into the blizzard. To my own devices. I had them fooled. All of them. But they must have caught a glimpse of my red eyes in the night or the horns in my shadow. They must have caught on sometime. They saw my footprints in the snow or the mud the hoofed stutter step of the night before in a haze of death of booze. Somehow they all figured out the ruse that they followed for so long. Tipsters? Bastards. None of it matters now though. Through the winter. Wandering. I walk. Destination irrelevant, inconsequential. New places always show themselves when the time is right. It never failed before it won’t fail this time. When one door closes on me others beckon me through their thresholds. Call to me to come stay with them. And to fool the new dwelling to fool the new souls into believing in nothing and giving up everything. And watching them drown in their own arrogance and animosity. When I come streaming into town you’ll see me all clad in black on banners of tar and blood. With hell and ashes. With clouds of disease and infection. Birds fall from the sky and the cold wind blows sweeping me into your threshold. Try to figure out the ruse. See if you can. Invite me home. I don’t have name but I am the ageless wanderer from the sea of blood and fire.