Angel
12-01-2009, 12:35 PM
The Wait
by: Patrick Johanneson
She planted the seed and waited. After a while rain came down from the sky, pelting her skin, chilling her. She shivered but didn't leave, not yet.
The sun came out, warming the soil, driving the cold from her bones. She waited. Clouds scudded by overhead, in a hurry for some reason. The moon rose, stars wheeled, and then the sun rose again.
She didn't just wait, of course. She prayed, she sang, she read the old stories, the myths and the legends. On the seventh day she snoozed under a cloudless sky, waking only briefly when a dragonfly happened to touch down on her nose. She observed its cathedral-window wings, irridescent with refracted sunlight, and drowsed once more after it left her.
Rain, sun, moon, stars: she endured them all. The seedling broke the soil with a questing green curlicue, looking for all the world like a question mark in the Old Tongue. She sat on it and waited more: days, months, decades.
A boy came along and asked her why she'd climbed to the top of the tree.
"I didn't," she said.
Eating Everything There Ever Was
by: Patrick Johanneson
It started with a local hot-dog eating contest. Lou Verbain took first place, and moved on to the provincials, where he placed second. But the first-place contestant bowed out when his stomach ruptured, and Lou was on to the nationals. At internationals he placed a distant third to a whip-thin Japanese girl.
Lou wasn't about to take that lying down, so he went into hard-core training. He ate all the hot dogs in town, then in the province, and eventually he caused a continent-wide shortage in meat-ish products.
He moved on. Hamburgers, pies, cookies, anything he could stuff down his gullet. He grew and grew, too, expanding like a weed, like a balloon. It was surreal.
The day he started eating cars was probably the point of no return. He started small, with a rusted-out Datsun, but by week's end he was devouring Hummers and limos.
At some point hydrogen fusion started up in his stomach, but he didn't notice.
Long story short, now he's a black hole, Verbain X-1, and the Universe is slowly falling into him.
Dancing
by: Patrick Johanneson
On a hilltop at sunset, they danced one last time. High clouds burned crimson and chromium, and she sang to him:
o this is the guillotine, and this is the knife
this is for murder, this is for life
He whirled her like a dervish, spinning her about and about, watching her dark hair mask her face like a funeral veil.
so come, hangman, tie up your noose
my lover is here, waiting for you
He dipped her low, kissed her, then lifted her into the sky. She laughed with delight, and he couldn't remember the last time she'd sounded so happy.
we dance on the hill, we prance through the heath
we eat, drink and are merry, till we're all out of breath
And the music ended, and the first stars appeared in the eastern firmament. He bowed to her, both of them dripping sweat from their hair. Her smile was inscrutable.
"It's time, isn't it," he said.
"It is," she said. "Time to wake up."
He woke, and the bed was empty, and once more he was a widower.
He put on his ring and faced the day.
source: ecclectica.ca
by: Patrick Johanneson
She planted the seed and waited. After a while rain came down from the sky, pelting her skin, chilling her. She shivered but didn't leave, not yet.
The sun came out, warming the soil, driving the cold from her bones. She waited. Clouds scudded by overhead, in a hurry for some reason. The moon rose, stars wheeled, and then the sun rose again.
She didn't just wait, of course. She prayed, she sang, she read the old stories, the myths and the legends. On the seventh day she snoozed under a cloudless sky, waking only briefly when a dragonfly happened to touch down on her nose. She observed its cathedral-window wings, irridescent with refracted sunlight, and drowsed once more after it left her.
Rain, sun, moon, stars: she endured them all. The seedling broke the soil with a questing green curlicue, looking for all the world like a question mark in the Old Tongue. She sat on it and waited more: days, months, decades.
A boy came along and asked her why she'd climbed to the top of the tree.
"I didn't," she said.
Eating Everything There Ever Was
by: Patrick Johanneson
It started with a local hot-dog eating contest. Lou Verbain took first place, and moved on to the provincials, where he placed second. But the first-place contestant bowed out when his stomach ruptured, and Lou was on to the nationals. At internationals he placed a distant third to a whip-thin Japanese girl.
Lou wasn't about to take that lying down, so he went into hard-core training. He ate all the hot dogs in town, then in the province, and eventually he caused a continent-wide shortage in meat-ish products.
He moved on. Hamburgers, pies, cookies, anything he could stuff down his gullet. He grew and grew, too, expanding like a weed, like a balloon. It was surreal.
The day he started eating cars was probably the point of no return. He started small, with a rusted-out Datsun, but by week's end he was devouring Hummers and limos.
At some point hydrogen fusion started up in his stomach, but he didn't notice.
Long story short, now he's a black hole, Verbain X-1, and the Universe is slowly falling into him.
Dancing
by: Patrick Johanneson
On a hilltop at sunset, they danced one last time. High clouds burned crimson and chromium, and she sang to him:
o this is the guillotine, and this is the knife
this is for murder, this is for life
He whirled her like a dervish, spinning her about and about, watching her dark hair mask her face like a funeral veil.
so come, hangman, tie up your noose
my lover is here, waiting for you
He dipped her low, kissed her, then lifted her into the sky. She laughed with delight, and he couldn't remember the last time she'd sounded so happy.
we dance on the hill, we prance through the heath
we eat, drink and are merry, till we're all out of breath
And the music ended, and the first stars appeared in the eastern firmament. He bowed to her, both of them dripping sweat from their hair. Her smile was inscrutable.
"It's time, isn't it," he said.
"It is," she said. "Time to wake up."
He woke, and the bed was empty, and once more he was a widower.
He put on his ring and faced the day.
source: ecclectica.ca