the altar

The Oracle stamped his feet on the parched earth, one after the other, raising hellishly purple dust from within the crevices. Then he carefully lay down a granite slab that passed for the Altar.

"This is it. We must begin here."

The paesanos dug and dug for hours but time after time, they came up high and dry.

"I am certain of it. We must not give up".

Thus they went on laboring under the high sun clinging to prophetic words. The day was slipping away -- yet little sign of the aqua vita showed.

The ditch grew wide and deep by twilight. Torches were lit against the brooding hills on the pitch-dark night.

One Ignatio unearthing the core uttered a panicked scream. Two of his compagnos (Antonio and Marco, cousins from the Monserratis) hurtled into the abyss, following the receding voice and little premeditation.

Within moments, it was evident that all three men were gone. The fellows standing around took turns hollering out the plungers' names in anguish and probing each other's eyes for signs of dash. Not one volunteer would emerge.

Ordained certitudes steadily devolving into blind hysteria, a hushed retreat to the village followed, heedless of the Oracle who thundered at the cruel cravenness of it all and hurled grievous imprecations at the decamping rustics.

At dawn, the entire village (save the infirm and old) gathered back at the scene. A glistening pond now covered the excavation. In the center, three white lotuses stood floating in full bloom.

The Oracle was soon summoned to sanctify the site. His lamentations at the sacrilegious hegira only hours earlier gave way.

"What glorious metamorphosis! Here lie the three brothers-in-arms -- the Fraternità di loto", proclaimed he with eyes to the heavens, lips trembling with a rapturous smile, hands gesticulating the consecration.

That night, all but a dozen-and-one denizens dreamed of silently opening lotuses.

The accursed thirteen, hereafter conferred upon who were the variously inglorious titles of "Band-Of-No-Bothers", "Cowards-In-Harms" and "No-Moon-Poltroons", could not sleep at all (nay, not for the rest of their ignominious lives!).

Even as they were serially reclaimed by mortality decades into this singularly shameful incident, it is rumored that on black moonless nights still, the tortured souls emerge to tiptoe around their own graves. For those dreadful epithets followed them to their epitaphs (and that wearisome insomnia to supposedly supine non-existence).

Moreover, it was surmised by a perspicacious few that it didn't help much that the headstones happened to be crushing reminders (nay exacting replicas!) of the Altar (nay spitting images!).

misanthropology

“That's way too loud, kid”.

“No, you're too damn old, gramps”.

Bezvan had been a regular at the Metrovomix for months now.

Within moments of entering the hall, he would still break into a secret, odorless sweat. Jaws clenching into a vise, his head would reflexively swivel staccato every few seconds towards the door, in the manner of a wind-up toy.

As the night wore on, however, and the lights dimmed gradually, the dull mechatronic beat had a way of nursing him into a state of shallow, joyless sublimation.

In his younger days, Bez, as he was known back then, had fancied himself a people-watcher -- voluntarily immersing himself into situations that would offer the slightest vantage of anonymous observation -- as a benign alien collector of human experience might.

Spiraling down the faces in detail, he would extract subtler imperfections with each sweep, with the intent of refining his physiognomic deductions. The initial appearance of an alluring visage would gradually devolve into little more than an aggregate of little deviations from the classic ideal – the faintest bent of the nose as it wound down the center of the face, the slightest disproportion between the frontal and profile diameters, an unseemly horizontal slope along the frontal plateau; not even a healthy asymmetry (to the casual observer) between the eyebrows was lost. There were the ears, of course – there was no other organ of such prominence glaringly grotesque variations of which in his judgement escaped notice so easily regardless of other more conspicuous defects.

Now, he found himself the subject of a collective, unwavering gaze wherever he went by the teeming, faceless, lustful vermin of youth. That look – stolid, yet not entirely innocent – it engendered in him a certain instinctive revulsion that to his eyes arose from the unreflective panoply of maya.

"If I were really that old, little punk, I wouldn't be complaining about my hearing. I bet you couldn't hear your floppy eardrums if they slapped your ugly cheeks!".

The kid stood there silently for a few seconds, with a vaguely amused look. Then he lifted both of his pudgy, hairless hands from behind his own head and raised a dripping, glistening, chalky mass into the air.

It quivered a little, as he gingerly lay the thing on the bar.

"Care to study it, gramps?" .

Bezvan's mouth curled involuntarily as his senses dimmed.

"Works like a charm with them old fogies", the boy's voice crowed.

A titter broke in the crowd that had assembled.

"Imbeciles", Bez mumbled under his gasping breath as his eyeballs rolled up.

The Inn At The End Of The Earth

Jamil glanced over his shoulder.

As far as he could see in the twilight, tufts of sunburnt, mostly dead grass cropped up like bad hair, windswept at an infinitude of angles.

“Amu was so sure it took him three hours... and he's sixty-five.”

He became aware of his pocket-watch ticking in the stillness that followed the odd breeze. He took it out and checked.

It read 7:37. He held on to it.

The sun had already sunk into the sands when he reached the sarai. Along the bleached mud wall outside, a shriveled figure wrapped in a white, crimpled turban and loose, flowing gown sat astride a sagging charpoi.

Clasping his smoke with sunburnt hands, he puffed into his sunken cheeks.While the low arch of the crumbling entrance swam closer, the old man appeared to spectrally levitate from within his ample garment, till he broke into a wide, toothless smile as soon as his feet descended into sight.

In silence, each held out his arms and embraced twice, burying chin into each shoulder, in effortless synchronism. The rustle of the nestle and flutter of the cloth that billowed across the elder's leathery legs carried into the passing breeze a peculiar hush.

Soon, both disappeared into the dark interior.

Jamil dreamt of sand that night.

High, chiseled dunes loomed on all sides. He shouted out his name several times, as if searching for himself. Then, as he shouted "Rimaal" and his own name returned as an eerily melodious will-o'-the-wisp, swirled around the crater he stood in several times before dissipating, mute horror passed over him.

As he wrung the cold sweat off the sleeves of his own caftan, his feet started to sink into the dry morass beneath him. He kept peering up at the bright ball inside the sun as he felt his limbs cocooned by the warm sands at first, then his neck swallowed whole by the bleached barren. A corona bobbed and slowly eclipsed along the edges of his feverish vision. And then the sieve filled up and couldn't sift anymore.

"In the name of Allah, rise, son.".

Sunrise peeped through Amu's eyepiece.

Captains Virtuous

"Most vice is nothing but distraction, Helmut. Momentary relief from the burden of all those duties and expectations of the world we carry around all day, some our own, mostly others. Gambling, whoring, drinking, smoking... lazy indulgences, nothing else".

"Sure, Cap. But surely you see the harm that can come of these. It is the habit-forming nature of these enjoyable idlings that's the real problem. Once you give in, even once, your brain starts turning into jelly. Soon enough, you can't even think straight any more!".

"True, Helmut but that's where strength of character comes in. The strength that comes from a profound self-awareness, that keeps you on the right side even though you cross the line so many times. It stays with you in the middle of the most violent of your excesses, even when your mind is veering and careening into the temporary madness of the vicious act. You know its there even though it is usually of little help in the moment itself. It is usually after the fact that an equally violent self-correcting reaction ensues that steers you away from this rabid course, and exerts at least a tenuous hold till the next time you succumb to another indiscretion, which will, to no one's surprise, happen again. For the damned thing has an equally devious hold on the victimized mind and will surely find a way to rear its fangs when you're not looking. Of course, the frequency, intensity and duration of such transgressions will reflect the past and mold the future of the besieged soul's character, or perhaps I should say lack of."

"Battle for the poor sod's soul, huh?".

"More like a protracted war. Rare are the decisive battles, more often nightly sneak attacks and swift, vengeful reprisals the daylight after. Usually a war of attrition, for your attention. What dominates your consciousness the most? What consumes more of your energy and thought? How much do you allow the dull comforting shadow that the vice of choice looms upon your soul to blot out the destiny that otherwise awaits you? The answers to these questions decides the degree of moral victory or defeat. On occasion, one slip torpedoes the whole enterprise but most other times, you always get another chance to fight back and hold the line. It is the proportion of time you hold off the adversary either in native innocence or an acute intensity of purpose and devote time to your true being, relative to the time you spend fighting and retreating and cutting your losses, that is the key".

"Got it, Cap. You sound like a preacher, not quite the hell-and-fury kind but close enough. You ever considered the pulpit?".

"Not that far off, Helmut. I commandeer men's ships from the deck instead, even though I shepherd their souls at times too, especially when the waves gets a little choppy on the high seas."

"Or the vices!! Har, har... Aye, aye. Quite the master of turbulences, moral and nautical!".

Cap winked.

"Now let's see you save this soul, Cap".

With that, Helmut leapt.

Charon's fare

He looked up and saw a totem peering at him askew through the glass door of the cafe in the remaining light of dusk.

It was a sad elongated face, with large rounded black shadows for eyes, the nose of a stony gray parrot and a small conical mouth that receded into a long rectangular chin. The steely hood of a parked truck formed its broad, square shoulders, gleaming in the yellow streetlight overhead. The trunk rolled into the front wheel of a resting bicycle.

It stood still on the street curb, watching the passing traffic wearing the cold cryptic wariness of a sphinx, flicking its red tongue in a slow rhythm, as day slipped into night.

He walked up closer and pulled two coins from his pocket. He could hear the satisfying clink of metal swallowing metal as he fed.

As he walked away, he turned back to look. The meter had stopped blinking.

The Digital Life

Thum started tapping, merrily.

"Stop that obscenity, will ya??!!".

"Obscenity....that would be your middle name, amigo! Don't go around projecting yourself...".

"I'm the tallest around here... I can't help myself.", Mitto replied a bit woefully.

"You don't do much else, do you?"

"True, the only one who pulls his weight around here is Litto".

"He leads the sway, senor! Why are midgets called so anyway? They ought to be called littgets or shortgets or something, don't you agree?", Dexto interjected.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah... Dexto, you sound so annoyingly bookwormish!", Ringo's voice rang out.

"Well, you sound like a silly ringworm to me! Or perhaps a bee-hee-hee-tle!", Dexto buckled once in a paroxysm of derisive glee and then chuckled in bouts of whittling amusement.

"You people need to stop being such bad neighbors. I'm so thankful I only have one, even one like Dexto", Litto lamented.

"Yeah, me too! I need to start throwing my weight around so you little folks can carry on together!", Thum nodded.

"Bah! Pretensions of magnitude. Truth is we're all little tendrils bearing the weight of those hairy trunks... Why, even my name is a travesty. The real dextrous one sits way up there like a tender petal... caressing hair, playing music, writing poems, savoring food... We're the poor dregs that nobody pays any attention to."

"We get all that dirt heaped upon us."

"Not to speak of collecting more from below."

"Except for dress-up days, when we get cleaned, filed, painted... ahhh, what royal treatment! Can't wait for the next one..."

"Only fools find pleasure in being mutilated... I grow my glorious crown so lovingly for days and then in one fell swoop, they hack it away only to be consigned to an inglorious heap!!"

"Well, ours don't matter much to us anyway! Can't hardly call them crowns... more like little party hats."

"Ditto".

"Stop wallowing in our collective misery! You people ought to count your blessings!"

"How do you expect us to do that? "

"In digits."

the firefly

“There's no sign of any fire or smoke, Sarge.”

“Did you check the basement switchboard?”

“Completely dark down there, sir.”

“Are you sure we're in the right house, Bingers? I haven't seen a goddamn alarm yet.”

“I'm afraid I couldn't find any detectors or extinguishers either, sir. ”

“How did this one dodge the city codes anyway? It looks fucking ancient but you'd think some buffoon at the municipal office would actually sit up and take notice one of these days.”

“Couldn't agree more, sir. Perhaps they lost the records in the Vilmahl fire.”

“Yeah well we need to saddle up and get to the real fucking inferno. I'll be a minute down with my flashlight and then we're off – remember to always use yours in basements next time, Binger”.

“Sir”.

Marburr felt a cool, swirling draft puff into his ears as he descended - the stairs felt wooden, dusty and cracked, but barely creaked.

The landing felt even softer. He pointed his flashlight at his feet.

A spark leapt from within the darkness ahead - his eyes pounced.

“Fireflies!”

Then his mouth fell.