This week's prompt is a
picture and it reminded me a bit of
The Swamp so I'm writing a Outtake.
Roy was walking in the woods, studying the
tall redwood trees, looking for the perfect one. The one that would hold his
weight without cracking and turning his suicide attempt into an embarrassing
accident that would probably leave him with a broken leg or worse. Of course
the leg would take forever to heal and it would probably get infected and kill
him slowly and painfully. That was the
nature of HIV after all, wasn’t it? It turned the body’s attempts at healing
into a joke. The thought was almost enough to turn Roy Lestrange away from his
quest. But no, fuck that; he wasn’t waiting around for the grim reaper to take
him slowly and painfully. He didn’t want to hang around until his the skin
diseases had the whole town knowing exactly what was wrong with him; maybe
shouting ‘fag!’ as he passed. He wasn’t no fag. He didn’t even understand how
he’d gotten the disease. All doctors were liars. And that bloody scary witch his
mother had taken him to, who’d confirmed the diagnosis was a liar too.
Suddenly the sun came out, bathing the
glade where he was in magnificent light. It was heartbreakingly beautiful and
Roy wanted no part of it. How could such beauty exist amidst the ugliness
suffusing his soul right now? Why hadn’t this darkness killed him already? Or at
least overshadowed the light so that he didn’t have to remember that there was
more than disease and sickness in the world? He slumped to the forest floor,
leaning his head back against a vast redwood and looking up into the sky with
despair. He howled his grief and rage at the heavens; there was nobody to hear
him here after all…
Suddenly his vision began to blur,
dizziness overtook him and he clutched his head in confusion.
“What?” he asked nobody in particular, realizing
he’d shut his eyes when he opened them again to find a huge, naked, black man
peering down at him.
“O
hola si?” the man seemed to be inquiring…in a language Roy had never heard
before. The man seemed to shimmer in front of him and then turn his head to
look deeper into the wood.
“báareende liikeenda” the naked black man said peering into the
distance.
“I.don’t.know.what.you.are.saying”,
Roy said with angry emphasis.
“Get out of here. The
Ageless One approaches”, the man said in perfectly good English. Roy frowned
wondering why he had to spout all that foreign shit if he could speak the language
well enough.
“Who’s the Ageless One?”
he asked. He wasn’t moving just because some naked black man told him to. Suddenly
there was an inexplicable mist in the sunny glade and the man he’d been
speaking to was just…gone.
“What?” Roy asked no
one again looking frantically from side to side. Was the disease giving him
dementia already? He’d heard that was possible. Then he heard voices
approaching and scrunched himself low against the tree. For some reason, he
didn’t want these new guys to see him.
“…Even the slaves are
getting restless”, a deep baritone was saying as the shushing sound of feet on
leaves indicated that they were coming ever nearer. Roy scrunched lower down
against his tree.
“There is nothing to
be done but wait Armand. The slaves are restless because they know their
freedom might be nigh. Might. They’ve
been waiting a long time.” The second voice said. This voice had a lower
register than the first, like car wheels over gravel. It also shook with a
timbre that Roy had not heard before. If he was a guessing man, he’d say that
this one was the ‘Ageless One’ that the big black man had mentioned. Come to
think of it, the naked man had been covered with scarring over his scary tribal
tattoos. The kind of scarring produced by whipping if Roy remembered his history
books correctly. Were these the ‘slaves’ these two beings were discussing? Had he
somehow travelled back in time? It was all very disconcerting. Suddenly Roy found
that he just wanted to go home to his mama.
He made a small sound
which to his dying day he would deny was a whimper and then started when the
shuffling on the leaves stopped abruptly. They had stopped walking.
“Did you hear that?”
the baritone inquired.
“The whimpering? Yes I
did. Nothing to be concerned about. In fact Armand, there is nothing going on
right now that need concern you yet. Why don’t you go back to the hospital? Play
craps with Bernard and just wait? You will know immediately when they begin to
play your song.”
“Its easy for you to
say. You haven’t been waiting millennia
for this.” Baritone…or ‘Armand’ sounded a little sulky.
“Oh Armand, ever the
impatient one. I have this to tell you. Already the signs begin to manifest;
and whatever will happen, it will be soon. Your wait is almost over. There. Satisfied?”
‘Armand’ laughed
bitterly, “Your idea of ‘soon’ probably doesn’t match other people’s Mama Ruth”,
he said.
“Indeed”, she agreed, “But
it certainly matches yours…”
Armand sighed, “I will
go now…because I realise I cannot get anymore from you. One more question
though, the Andrewes witches…?”
“Again, my eye is on
them and when something happens, you’ll be the first to know.”
“The animals gather
outside their shack every night and simply stare. Did you know that?” he asked.
“Armand, the swamp is
full of mysterious things. If we wondered at all of them there would be no time
to do anything else”, the ‘Ageless One’ sounded tired.
“In other words, you
already know why they do that”, he said.
“Go home Armand”, she
replied and this time, the tone of command was unmistakeable.
The one called Armand
was silent for a bit and then he said, “As you wish, your highness”.
There was a terrible
disturbance in the air and then after a time, the birds in the wood began to
chirp again. It was then that Roy realised they’d gone silent when the black
man appeared. Roy looked around him, searching for signs of danger but all he
saw were motes of light dancing on the leaves.
“I need to get out of
here”, he murmured to himself as he hastily got up and got moving.
