Silas Continued
As the day grew longer it grew more incomprehensible, gaining mass until it beat its bloated fists against the defenses of the everyday. No sleep for three days, and now as he walked glanced meetings with the eyes of strangers burned through his transparency like the consuming face of God.
McNally Street bustled with the throngs of dusk traffic. Leather scraping and spurs sparking along the thoroughfare that smelt of blood and spice and piss. A gauze wrapped sky smothered the evening, stained with the dried blood of thunderclouds that gathered in the distance.
The shine of a meat cleaver sliced through the air as a butcher waved it at a fruit vendor and called him a cheat. Silas filched an apple and hurried off. A blind beggar sat with his back against brick and played a harmonica with his eyes wide open. Silas pressed the apple into his coin-hat and wished that he played an instrument. His head tingled and he knew he needed sleep but didn’t know how to find it.
He passed a wizened gypsy woman who sat clutching her crippled son in the gutter, his legs stretching out limp and languid like driftwood. And her: gumming a pebble in her toothless maw, a grotesque pieta hacked from sandalwood and rust.
Through a black curtain of night he walked in arrested falling, an engine bereft of fuel. And all shall walk as he. The stars overhead were bright and alive, though he cared not to look. Wailings emanated from the distance like the cries of beast or men, or some awful amalgam of the two. His mind shook to the outland’s siren song. A shambling castaway, mind not fit for waking days, nor for focus of treasure and happy-end. What he searched for he knew not, nor did he plague himself with reasoning.
A swamp bereft with cypress knees and swarming reptilian shapes undulated in a sticky mass to his left. To his right a timeless warren where weeds grew their skeleton fingers around decaying skeletons of home and work. Dust and gnats floating motelike out of the ugly ground. Crickets singing their elegiac funeral dirge.
Sheet lightning stabbed the distance, the bright needles set to a weaving that no mind can encompass. He passed a cattle skull, bone forever, from which a single wildflower grew, lolling like a drunken tongue. Branch canopies formed tracery and skew lines in the wooden grid above.
Home waited on a bier of red clay. The boxcar in the clearing where it sat crowned with serried etchings of rain and the lightning that streaked across the shadowplay boarders of the world. The foothills to the west crowded and razor-sharp. The alpenglow nothing more than the forge-fires of destruction’s engine. Pine needles crackled under his feet. Fireflies slurred in epileptic glow.
He climbed inside and covered himself with a ragged piece of sackcloth, and though he closed his eyes and even breathed a quick and burning prayer for sleep, sleep did not come.
McNally Street bustled with the throngs of dusk traffic. Leather scraping and spurs sparking along the thoroughfare that smelt of blood and spice and piss. A gauze wrapped sky smothered the evening, stained with the dried blood of thunderclouds that gathered in the distance.
The shine of a meat cleaver sliced through the air as a butcher waved it at a fruit vendor and called him a cheat. Silas filched an apple and hurried off. A blind beggar sat with his back against brick and played a harmonica with his eyes wide open. Silas pressed the apple into his coin-hat and wished that he played an instrument. His head tingled and he knew he needed sleep but didn’t know how to find it.
He passed a wizened gypsy woman who sat clutching her crippled son in the gutter, his legs stretching out limp and languid like driftwood. And her: gumming a pebble in her toothless maw, a grotesque pieta hacked from sandalwood and rust.
Through a black curtain of night he walked in arrested falling, an engine bereft of fuel. And all shall walk as he. The stars overhead were bright and alive, though he cared not to look. Wailings emanated from the distance like the cries of beast or men, or some awful amalgam of the two. His mind shook to the outland’s siren song. A shambling castaway, mind not fit for waking days, nor for focus of treasure and happy-end. What he searched for he knew not, nor did he plague himself with reasoning.
A swamp bereft with cypress knees and swarming reptilian shapes undulated in a sticky mass to his left. To his right a timeless warren where weeds grew their skeleton fingers around decaying skeletons of home and work. Dust and gnats floating motelike out of the ugly ground. Crickets singing their elegiac funeral dirge.
Sheet lightning stabbed the distance, the bright needles set to a weaving that no mind can encompass. He passed a cattle skull, bone forever, from which a single wildflower grew, lolling like a drunken tongue. Branch canopies formed tracery and skew lines in the wooden grid above.
Home waited on a bier of red clay. The boxcar in the clearing where it sat crowned with serried etchings of rain and the lightning that streaked across the shadowplay boarders of the world. The foothills to the west crowded and razor-sharp. The alpenglow nothing more than the forge-fires of destruction’s engine. Pine needles crackled under his feet. Fireflies slurred in epileptic glow.
He climbed inside and covered himself with a ragged piece of sackcloth, and though he closed his eyes and even breathed a quick and burning prayer for sleep, sleep did not come.
posted by David at 4:58 PM
3 Comments:
Good opening. Reminds me of another of your stories.
The phrase, "walked glanced meetings," - a little confusing on the first read.
Eschatological tone, always love it ... "consuming face of God" - almost too much, but works.
"Called him a cheat" "filched an apple" - again, is this a Western or in the Old South?
"Grotesque pieta" - good imagery. Would it call too much attention to capitalize "Pieta?" For that matter, google up the Rottgen Pieta, a real-life "grotesque pieta."
"elegiac funeral dirge" - that's three-of-a-kind, there cowboy... necessary?
"Serried etchings of rain" - good description.
I don't feel like we are climbing into the boxcar with Silas. How big is it? Is it cold inside?
Overall I like it. Where is this going?
Thanks Jeremy--
Yeah I realized that that read awkwardly, but I haven't had time to toy with it.
The consuming face of God part I was a bit undecided on -- I like the image/meaning, but I'm going to fuck with the meaning some.
"Cheat" and "filched" -- old south but i think those descriptions could play out in either one. I realize the tone doesn't totally work, but it's pretty difficult to try to make the language itself evocative of a particular setting.
Yeah I like the pieta thing. I dunno about the capitalizing, I'll fuck around with it. That passage is longer I just haven't had time to add the newer parts. And yeah, the Rottgen Pieta is awesome.
the "elegiac funeral dirge": you're probably right, I just liked the way it sounded (and wrote it after one of those 36+ hour days I seem to have). It'll be changed eventually.
The boxcar also has some notes that I'll add in sometime in the next few days.
Thanks for the help brohemoth. I don't konw where it's going, I'm just writing. It's not structured. And it probably won't go anywhere, not unless it's drastically changed -- I was really just using this as an excercise in style.
What other story did it remind you of?
This story:
"The day had moved clumsily, like the hands of children fumbling with building blocks. Or even worse, it had moved like a corpse, wrapped in plastic and dragged towards the chopping block."
Sure thing, brohemo-globin.
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