Special May 21 Edition of Brief Fictions. 

3.7

If one man is right, the world is now forever changed. The good and plentiful have been Raptured off to wherever it is they go, and the remainders are the scum, the uncertain. Certainty (faith) has greater value than ever these days. It could well be your get-out-of-this-painful-existence free card. 

If one man is right, the streets are half empty. Maybe less. Piles of shoes and clothing left behind. Piles of humans left behind to ponder the meaning of it all. To rue their doubt and rage against their parents for giving them the wrong upbringing. The anger it will unleash. 

If one man is right, my readership is now lessened. Possibly. I’m not really sure who’s reading this. 

If one man is right, today is a great day of change. Today is a day when the world must be fought for, where lines will be drawn and battles will commence. And where life, as we know it, is no longer life as we know it. 

If one man is right, today marks the new normal. 

The problem is that truth is consensus. Reality agreed upon. No one has yet—or recently, depending on what you believe—attained a pure knowledge pipeline to whatever mystic beings lie beyond our reach. So we all mill around, agreeing that words mean this and that up is that way, et cetera et cetera ad nauseam. 

If one man is right, about something so impossibly large and knowable, then I’d rather be left behind. To continue milling and debating, figuring out the world as it flies by us. The answers bore me. As do the people who claim to have them.

Is it wrong of me to hope that one man is right?

3.6

Marie shudders, her breath a cloud of haze in the dank space. The tour guide babbles on in a mixture of Français et Anglais, doing his best not to alienate the followers. 

The line extends some 10 people deep, camera flashes flashing gray bones and casting long, distorted shadows. Marie wonders if the people buried here could have ever foreseen becoming an attraction. A historical oddity for the consumption of the masses. 

“Zey were berreed in ze cemeteries, but zere were too many of zem,” the guide explains, “Mais il a fait le mauvaise eau. It made ze water bad. Too many. Un nombre trop grande. Poison. So, ils on été déplacés. Zey were moved. To here. Ici.” 

Marie cringes at the thought. These people were buried on sacred ground, only to be moved, after the flesh had left them. Piles of man-shaped stones arranged with care underground. A now, to be ogled at by chubby tourists with fanny packs. 

A little boy near the front was leaning forward, eye level with the empty socket of a skull. He jerked back suddenly and fell atop the damp cobblestone floor, shrieking. A spider crawled, nonplussed, from the hole. 

Marie smiled shyly, one corner of her mouth raised. A single coy dimple in her cheek as she attempted to conceal it. Maybe these people were okay after all. Maybe they’d found a way to amuse themselves.

3.5

The explorers stared into the rainforest, from the edge of a hazy clifftop. They looked below and saw lush jungle spread before them. The dark greens of vigorous trees and bright splashes of flowering plants. Animals moved about, shaking the tops of trees hundreds of years old. 

The explorers saw resources, but not in a way that they could’ve understood. They cut into the wood, mined the surrounding hills. Took wood and rocks while true wealth escaped them. The natives spoke out, showing them leaves which would help in high altitudes, roots that alleviated pain. They took these all as paltry substitutes for the sophisticated tinctures of home. 

Their grandchildren were the first to discover the essence of each plant. They learned that they could distill the mass, holistic effect of a given vegetable and condense it into a capsule. 

Everything was broken down. Simplified. The whole became a sum of parts, and the pertinent parts  transformed into more easily accessible forms. 

The whole was no longer important. Digestible resources that fit in your hand. That make you better. Supplements, vitamins, drugs.

The explorers wouldn’t have understood. Their grandchildren saw dollar signs in the tiny components of leaves and sticks, rather than gems and fuel. 

Two generations further removed, the great-great grandchildren of the explorers fight for the rainforest, fight for whole plants and ecosystems. The focus is back to macro. But still, the grocery store shelves are filled with bottles. Each promising positive effects. The condensed materials of a once mighty forest. A once impenetrable mystery, bottled and sold. 

3.4

Before he got into this line of work, Michael had fooled himself. 

He’d been convinced that domestication was irreversible. Foolproof. Bad dogs were simply poorly trained. As a boy, he frowned and cringed at pitbulls in the park, throats straining at leashes. Their bodies were tightly wound coils of muscle, poised at a child’s height. 

When he got his job, Michael knew there would be work to do. Taking a well-trained animal and regressing it to its baser instincts. 

Each morning, he’d don the padded suit and think to himself: “We just have to open that door. Let out the beast living deep inside our buddies.”

Within a week, he knew the truth. Opening the door was the easy part. The real trick, as had never been done with the pitbulls he remembered from his youth, was keeping that door closed the vast majority of the time. 

“I made a mistake,” he’d think as his body was dragged to the ground. “We have to find our buddies somewhere inside these beasts.”

A flash of teeth, the smell of wet breath through the facemask. Then a release. And relief. “My friend is back,” he would think. 

And every time, he was surprised. 

3.3

The shaman rises early, as we all must in times of need. He passes the gently breathing bodies of the boys who will become men this day, padding softly on the earthen floor of the long house. 

Outside the air is damp, redolent with fertility. Insects hum and buzz about him as he nears the sacred grove. The plants he seeks. 

He pulls a handful of vines towards him, slicing them with a homemade blade. Then he kneels at the other side of the clearing, spreading the earth away from the bitter root he requires. 

He returns home and places a clay pot amidst the smoldering coals of last night’s fire. He adds the mashed root and pours water over it. A dark, herbal smell arises as the water hisses on heated clay. The vines are stripped and dropped into the cauldron, where they will boil until evening. He sits over the brew, eyes closed, and hums the quiet songs of other worlds. Songs he learned on his own journey into manhood, many years ago. The songs the plants taught him to sing. 

—

A world away, you wake, bleary. You ease out of bed, fearful of light and sound. You open the freezer and pop a plastic lid from a tin can as water boils on the stove. 

The grounds turn to hot mud in the filter, and concentrated alertness drips quietly into the cup, breaking the morning silence. You begin to feel better about the day to come. 

—

Intentional or not, ritual is ritual. 

3.2

A crack shatters the air as two heavily armored skulls collide. The crowd cheers, celebrating a direct hit. The murmurs begin as one competitor’s legs quiver, just for a moment. A subtle tremor belying the weakness of the body. 

A man with a cell phone is filming, documenting for some unknown audience. This may not be the sport of kings, but it is the sport of the here and now. Another thudding crack, a grunt of pain from the shaky-legged animal. His time is nearly through. He must cede, or pay with serious injury. 

The brain bounces within the protective bone. Stony horns begin to splinter. Once, this was competition within the community. Competition for the animals, by the animals. Amongst the animals. Now it has been co-opted by the thrill-seeking of humanity. Brightly colored bills flutter down on either side, bets screamed out in haste as the end approaches. 

The weaker animal charges. A final slam, a moment of glory. It’s legs stretch out stiff as it recoils, flying through the air to land in a cloud of dust, splayed and twitching. 

The men cheer. The survivor bleats once, then turns on the men. 

The crowd parts, and the victor is set free. He ascends to the mountain, to once again live in peace and quiet. Until the next man. The next rope around his neck. The next challenger. 

3.1

The messages fly overhead, zipping along fiber optics and copper. Translated into electrical impulses, the workings of the modern world are all around us. Radio waves pulse through your body; cell phones use your car as an antenna. 

A wealth of information, tuned to a different frequency than our eyes. If we saw it, it would be blinding. If we were to catch a glimpse, it would mean madness. 

A man, somewhere bland and flat, has tuned into this. He has learned to read the codes which permeate our atmosphere. He finds it hard to leave the house, each time inundated by innumerable colors and a cacophony of communications. 

He sits in his living room and patiently constructs. He is meticulous. He twists the ends of chicken wire through hole he drilled in metal frames. He welds the frames together, creating canvasses of interference. He insulates himself. He read about Faraday’s experiments on Wikipedia, and new it was the only solution to his unique problem. 

So he sits at home, building to regain the emptiness and silence we sometimes dread. The quiet night, the clear sky. 

He builds a cage around himself, so he can finally feel the freedom we take for granted.