The Poet's Tale

Flash fiction written for a contest.

I stared down at the rivulets of water, threads of gold passing across my hands as the setting sun illuminated them. Already I could see them fading through pale amber toward the rosy red that presaged coming dusk. Curling my fingers, I shifted their paths and sullied their perfect clarity by stirring up the silt that lined the gutter.

To my left, I saw a field of pure alabaster. Tiny white flakes were falling upon the blanket of white, replenishing it even as it surrendered to the warmth of this dying day. Some little vision of heaven, it seemed, fading fast and soon to disappear as though it had never been.

The snow doth flow, but where does it go?

A middling poet on my best days, I laughed at the ugly little rhyme and turned my head to the right.

There, I saw the black iron grate which was the end of the journey. Streams of gold, flowing from pale Heaven to darkest Hell, and there I knelt between them with my guts burning within me.

I had come here, like so many before me, through drink. A glass of English gin here, some Russian vodka there, an Irish whiskey to chase them down and a dram of the Scottish to keep it company. Each one a toast to the absent friend whose pine box filled the table, whose ending had drawn us together.

The cold air dragged a cough out of my already-raw throat, the pain in my belly amplifying my spasms until I collapsed away from the gutter. The snow darkened in the spreading gloom as my stomach joined my lungs in their violent expulsions.

“You’re disgusting...’

I could barely argue with the voice. Even had I the breath, I lacked the words to hang upon it. I was disgusting. I was shameful. I deserved the pain.

Images swam in my head, clamouring to be revisited. My patron, displeased. His men, eager to make their master’s displeasure known.

My words... Once uttered, never to be taken back...

In vino veritas. The truth, shaken loose of my sealed lips by wine.

A passing light shone upon the snow and I heard voices turn from scorn to surprise, but their words were lost to me, obscured by the ringing in my ears. I think someone called for a doctor, but I waved them away weakly.

What brought me here? Simply this: I had spoken a secret. Drunken and boastful, I had uttered words best left unspoken. That night that had damned me, lost me my patronage and more.

She had been so beautiful, but also out of reach. She was above me, better, purer. Like any poet though, I aspired to greatness. More, I knew the right words. Words to flatter, words to woo, words to unlace the stiffest of gowns and soothe the most prudent of fears.

I had seduced my patron’s ward, dishonoured her and damned myself. It was a betrayal that we would repeat, time and again. Only through silence could we hope to escape his wrath, but like all poets, I was a man of words and boasts and pride.

In the gutter, my hands moved to my gut. The knife would not move, sunk too deeply into my soft flesh and my fingers too weak now to grip it.

I had dishonoured myself, taken the virtue of a true-born lady, and paid the price for my arrogance. Like Lucifer, it was through pride that I fell.

Once more, I felt myself falling. Nearby, a voice chanted in Latin, but I did not think he could chant fast enough.

And now I will learn the truth of it...

So tell me friend Peter. Is it to the alabaster gates or the cold iron that I go now?

I know I am not worthy, but I am a poet, you see. We always hope for more than we deserve...