Cleaning goes against nature. Look at your pets next time you tidy up around the house. The animals scurry away- not that they are scared they will get swept up and discarded- but because cleaning is simply unnatural and wrong.
I don’t think a job like states attorney comes with a loaner-suit on the premises in case you come to work out of uniform.
Everybody waved goodbye as the gym teacher ran off, struck and tumbling, in a twenty one dodge ball salute. Cheerleaders circled, their purple and green tongues slithered up and tangled in the high branches of the trees. The fire cackles, dancing like an Egyptian, kicking a leg out and arms to grab those closest. Not far off a bird mimics a song in a language not spoken in ten thousand years.
The next day, not a trace.
I was twenty four at the time, and I was repeating my senior year for the sixth time. But I would not give up, that’s the important thing. It was hard to take it seriously anymore. The teachers were definitely unequipped to have a student around the school for ten years, especially the teachers whom he had tenure over.
It was a precarious ledge for a young wizard. I remember the only time I had tarot card reading and the lady looked me straight in the eye and said “You are a joke- the fact that you believe what you feed yourself is more scary than it is unfathomable. I doubt you will be able to decipher what I say to you right now”.
I have never had the desire to seek a reading since, and still cannot make out the cryptic message that strange old card-reading lady relayed to me.
I went back to the woods a couple times a week for the next year or so. Looking for clues, something left behind. Maybe a call from that damn bird.
It got hard to remember exactly where it had taken place. I would sit on a branch and wait for the sun to set, trying to superimpose my memory on top of my surroundings to see if I was in the right spot. A couple of times, I could see the fire again.
For a moment I could watch it dancing on the rocks, and feel its hand as it reached out to grab me. A flash of heat against my face, and it vanished. I would sit for a minute more, and then wonder back to the path. Noticing always a strange silence in the woods, as if the animals had all run away.
irobert.me 