Into each life a little darkness creeps...

The dreary days are getting to me.  What better way then to write to scatter the darkness from my thinking.  Will this chase you away or will you stop in again and see what I've come up with?



What Joshua Doesn't Know Won't Hurt Him

Joshua poked the eye of the dead carp with the twisted wire he had found. He was near the edge of the pond, resting on his haunches, his five year old knees tight against his chest, one arm wrapped around them for support while the other worked to remove the milky, sightless eye. The fish stank. And it was huge. Joshua had never seen such a big fish in all his life.

Considering how rotted it was he was having quite a bit of trouble getting the eye out. He knew crows liked the eyes. This eye had been against the ground before he had flipped the fish over. The other side of the carp was mostly bones and scales. There had been maggots crawling around inside and flies buzzing and hovering just above the decayed flesh. But this eye was in good shape. He was sure that was because of the flat stone the carp had been lying on.

He watched as a fly landed on a small wet spot on the grey stone, walked the centimeter length of the patch and then walked onto a dry place. It walked in a weird little circle and then its legs gave. In less than five seconds it went from alive and searching to dead and shriveled. A hornet swooped down, landed on the fly and then picked it up and carried it away.

Joshua didn’t like the stone. He was sure it had something to do with how the fish had died. He watched another insect, a sow bug this time, wander across a dry patch of stone and then stop cold, curl in on itself and die. He flicked the little bug off the stone and then gently waved the wire in the air to keep the other flies from landing there accidentally. Eventually he started picking at the eye again.

It was like the eye was tied into the fish’s skull with a string. He’d just about get it out and then it would slip back into place. He nearly reached out with his other hand to hold the fish still while he tried again, but he thought better of it. Too close to the stone. Too close. He raised the wire in the air and held it there for a second. With force he brought it down on the rock with a sharp crack.

The bugs scattered. They had tolerated his presence before; his slow, methodical poking hadn’t disrupted their own marauding so they had stayed. But this unexpected movement, the violence of it, the sudden wind his swing had created, sent them flying.

He hit the stone again. Crack! Then, why he didn’t know, he hit the fish. Once, twice, three times he hit it in rapid succession. Scales and rotted skin and muscle flew off. The sound of the impact was dull and wet and not nearly as satisfying as he expected. He hit it one last time across the head and the skull gave. The eye exploded and the carp’s cheek split from chin to eye socket. Maggots spilled out and writhed on the ground. Those that touched the stone died. The ones that fell on the grass simply wriggled further into the darkness at the roots.

The strings that held the eye in place, the nerves and tendons, hung out of the socket like tiny hands reaching for a lost toy. The eye was gone. Frustrated and losing interest, Joshua shoved the dead carp with the end of the twisted wire until it no longer lay on the grey stone but in the grass beyond it. There were words carved in the rock, but Joshua couldn’t read them so the warning went unnoticed.

“Caution: Radioactive containment pond. Absolutely no swimming. Absolutely no fishing.”

Joshua stood up and threw the twisted wire into the still water. It floated on top for several moments before slowly sinking through the green ooze that covered the pond’s surface. Without a second glance he climbed back through the hole in the chain link fencing that surrounded the pond and ran off to the only open swing in the playground.



~ Peace and knowledge