WURD!

 

 

The ancient woman (Queen of Henderson Manor to most) in the high-backed chintz chair cackled and threw a wild stare in the pudgy man’s direction. The man, who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, scowled at the woman. This would be easy. He had long since stopped seeing this woman as a human being; from afar, through the lenses of high-powered, monstrously expensive binoculars, she had become more or less an eternal crone of electrifying spite and pitiless hate.

 

The man scowled, but said nothing.

 

She would answer his question, but as was her custom, she would make him wriggle and gasp for it, like a dying, desperate fish on a hook.  She knew all, but that didn’t mean that even her simplest clarifications came without a price.

 

“How, you ask,” she whispered, her lips sulky and shining, “did a market supported by a never-ending supply of fresh greenbacks emblazoned with the wooden faces of dead presidents fall to the rotting and rich words of the past?” She cackled again and pulled from the end of a frayed cigar that smelled like a burning tire.

 

The man before her said nothing. His neck creaked and pointed his aggravated face at the tall window to his left. Through this dusty (nevertheless handsome) window fell spears of golden afternoon sunlight. Dust motes boogied in these ever-mutating spotlights from space. In the vast garden beyond the stained walls of Henderson Manor, large crows picked amid the remains of a once flourishing vegetable bed. Past the garden was a black gate of wrought iron that kept the world of the common poor at bay.

 

“In 2009, the American people elected a President who delivered on his inauguration promises,” said the old woman. A haze of blue smoke oozed from within her sunken mouth, coloring the atmosphere of the room with the smells of secret knowledge finally coming into the open.

 

“We got what we wanted. Free health-care, a justice system that isn’t a revolving door for every a*****e with enough cash to throw at a capable lawyer, a public school system that rewards perseverance and hard work.” Pausing, she tossed the tattered cigar away and heaved a sigh in the shadow thrown by the profundity of her chair.

 

“We also got a man so committed to the written word and its power that all bills and coins were eventually abolished and replaced by the great literary works of old as currency.”

 

The old woman frowned and cast her thin arms about the room. Her mouth was working and her eyes were oddly unsympathetic. She seemed to live in a vast and meticulously ordered library. Here were towering shelves filled with the works of Russia’s brightest. A shelf for every country, city, state, town, principality, and commonwealth on earth. Throughout the room were trolleys bursting with weirdly schizophrenic poetry that traversed the barriers of time and space. The floor was a littered ruin of pages torn from the minds of countless races, tribes and families: pages ripped from tomes of all varieties and temperaments and backgrounds as payment. Bills and allowances and kickbacks, all paid for with the blood, sweat, and tears of a few tortured souls tortured enough to chronicle their pain.

 

The place stank of guilt and information.

 

“Look at what we’ve got, now,” the old woman said loudly, “A commonwealth forced to respect the words of Toni Morrison back and forth, a strange literary police-state where every man, woman, and child must know exactly why the caged bird sings, a place with boundaries beyond the scope of the imaginations of the dim, my friend.” She sniggered and lowered her arms.

 

The man’s right eyebrow jerked upward, but he remained silent.

 

“Rich, my friend,” said the old woman, raising her hands again. “I’m filthy rich with sentences and exclamation points and periods and harsh language and bland words and brilliant statements and perverse language, richer and filthier by far than anyone else in America.”

 

The man had apparently heard what he’d come to hear, for when the old woman grew silent, he pulled a snub-nosed firearm from within his jacket and pointed it at her.

 

The old woman laughed. Her right hand moved to her smooth forehead and lay there like beached whale on a forlorn seashore. “You aim to rob me, do you?” she said, rubbing her forehead. “You aim to rob and murder me.”

 

A statement, not a question.

 

The man still said nothing. His finger squeezed the trigger of the gun.

 

“You’ll kill me, I’m sure of it,” the old woman said. There was a sad little glower on her face, but there was a speck of bright reservation there, too. “Very well, but you won’t be able to kill the feeling inside. You know the one I’m talking about.” She placed a withered hand over her heart and smiled. She was old, perhaps even ancient, but she did possess a full and dazzling smile. Over the smile, however, a pair of eyes gained a bitter sheen that was chilling to behold.

 

“Existence in a world of sprained shoulders and pulled backs, that feeling,” she whispered. “Life on a world where masterpieces done by the minds of Fitzgerald and Goines and Lee and Bradbury and Hurston and Ellison and Ellison and Mosley and King and Rowling and Dickens and Angelou and Youlan and Hosseini are towed across the plains of a blasphemous and ignorant country and ripped to ribbons to buy over-priced wares. To live in a world in an America that forces all born within its borders to know the work of these people and more, the endless rows of them, to know their works inside and out, but forced away from a true understanding of it for what it is, in its plain and frank honesty, is to live in Hell. In our new world we have become terrifyingly complacent.”

 

Silently, the man, the thief, the murderer, began to sob.

 

“It’s alright, sweetie,” whispered the old woman, who now stretched her arms out to him. Her eyes had lost the bitter sheen they had held only moments before. Now they were kindly grandmother’s eyes. “It never goes away, that feeling, but we can pretend, right? We can pretend that it goes away together.”

 

The man jerked the gun up and pulled the trigger and erased America’s last hope.

 

Before she faded, the old woman, Queen of Henderson Manor, forced herself to speak one last time, a final word, with all the meaning and heart and zeal that she could muster.

 

“Read.”

 

The man who would eventually be the King of Henderson Manor took this advice and tried to spread it, but beyond the gates of the Manor, people continued to drag works of brilliance through the country’s streets in large satchels and totes and rucksacks to pay for the ludicrously expensive and flashy wares of tomorrow.

 

Sometimes it goes that way
 

Author's Note

I went through this after my brother told me a few things about it that didn't work so well. This is the improved version. Give me hell if you feel the need.

Reviews

[Rob Luciano]

Read it once again. Third time reading it altogether. Damn, man. I mean, obviously you polished it up and what not but still. Even in it's raw stages it made me think. (As I told you before, not many people can do that...not to sound like a prick or anything) There's a lot going on within such few paragraphs. The gun man is aware of the fact that works of the greatest are being whored out for made-in-china pieces of crap. He is aware what is about to happen is not right, but he does it anyway.

Why?

Because in the end, as is human nature, greed will prevail. Very conflicted individual.

The old lady on the other hand, she accepts her fate. Perhaps she is relieved that she does not have to live through such atrocities any more? Who knows?

Despite not knowing how to take this in the beginning, I think this is one of your best. And when speaking of such a prolific b*****d (inside joke) such as yourself, that's saying a lot.

[Rob Luciano]

Just wanted to let you know that I read it. This is one of the seldom seen oppertunities when I can access the internet at work; don't have enough time to post my thoughts.

Very Enjoyable piece....I'll be back with more.

[Inda Lauryn]

There is so much to this one short piece it's almost impossible to comment on it all. Still, as an avid reader of many of the writers mentioned and someone who wishes intellect was the equivalent of currency, this struck a deep chord. I'll leave it at that since I don't want to offend anyone with my reading of the characters. Another excellent write.

[.:Naiira Harlow:.]

A somewhat dark and strange piece with its own weird twists. Very well written!