Category: writing

“Linger all you like, it won’t change much.” The laughter was cruel and without humanity. “I’ll just up the pressure.”

The grunt and groaned response carried meaning the Laugher understood well. He’d heard the kind before. This was nearing a fun time in the process.

“You wanted to undertake this journey.” The screamed response was almost endearing. A fond smile touched the man’s lips as he lingered, prolonging the immediate process enjoying watching the screamer break so prettily. The meaning behind the tears and sobs where a music to him. An instrument to play to his hearts content. The times he chose to look and use his eyes, it was like reading a novel and getting his favorite chapter, over and over again. Though with different protagonists/characters. He enjoyed being a reader of that story.

The screamer shook his body, quaking the bonds constraining him, repeating the motions again and again and again until all meaning was lost; though tears and pain were still there. The Man saw to that. And pleasure too. There was that too.

The pressure was immense to conform, to remain, to move, the no choices beyond of the man’s choosing. He saw to it the screamer had few options but obedience. The screamer need not think. The Laugher had to/no need of the screamer’s mind. That’s not what he liked to read.

A great wind blew across the land. Clouds roiled and bubbled, gray, black, flashes of purple and patches of brown moved seemingly without pattern or direction. The land had been in drought for many years. The Plains becoming scratchy tough brambles and stretches of desiccated piles of wood that once where without thorns had died and rotted long ago. Even the mountains that touched the clouds had become barren. Once the rivers that used to flow from them dried, everything else withered. When it began the cities at the foot of the mountains sent messengers and scouts into the mountains, contact in those people they knew there.

Though the clouds all moved as they had before, the fog, the water did not settle. No new ice formed, no dew fell on the ground. As far as the mountains extended on both sides, the winds were the same, but the rain would not come. No dew touched the earth. Though fog filled the air and clouded the eyes and stuffed the ears, the heavy pressure remained but no moisture was tasted on the tongue. No humidity, only dry, eventually with a dusty quality the people learned to ignore, then forgot was there to removed.

Flashes of lightening above the clouds carried no thunder down below. When that began it truly terrified the people remaining, especially when directly above. Many months the clouds grew, and the sky behind was a distant memory. Now, the clouds moved and shifted, where before was only stillness. There 3 remaining humans looked on, curious and stoic to their fate for they would not leave as the others had.

The wind washed over them. Their long, uncut, matted hair blowing around them. “Do you think it’s coming,” asked the only woman.

“Either it’s coming or we’ll die.” Responded the younger man, his black hair dancing loose over his shoulder in the wing as he looked at her.

“There’s no need to be dramatic about it,” the Elder man gently chided the young man. The Elder’s hair was bound in 3 rings along it’s length, a single tail, each ring a different material, leather, a silver metal, and something that perhaps once shone in the sun but was dull now and hard unyielding material. The Elder’s red hair was only visible at eh ends of his hair and some places on the back of his skull near the neck, every other hair was gray and silver.

“He isn’t being dramatic if he’s speaking truth” replied the woman, her hair once perhaps gold but now closer to mud brown filth as the others were. The long dreads of her hair kept it from getting worse.

“We aren’t going to die,” the Elder soothed.

The woman took a deep breath. Steeling herself. “If I didn’t believe you I’d’ve been gone long ago. But how—”

Thunder crashed above them. The lightening had become constant but without thunder. Now the thunder roared. Everyone covered their ears and huddled together. The roaring distracted them from the fist drops of rain. Pure, healing, blissful, blessed rain. None noticed the tears of joy the others wept as they drank their fill.