Archive for the ‘Edd Vick’ Category
I Live on Despair
Thursday, April 12th, 2007
I live on despair. It is my meat and depression my air.
You look past me, a simple trunk sitting in the corner of the dayroom, dust-shrouded and ancient. A faded chintz throw covers my top, a battered secondhand lamp with a too-weak bulb weighing it down. Reading glasses might be left here one night, dentures the next.
You don’t open me, you don’t think to. You’re just here to visit relatives, to jolly them along. Wearing happiness like a shroud over misery, over impatience, over gloom, you breathe leaden air and play checkers or talk in low tones with those left to die.
And if some of them die before they should? And if some of them take ill more often? And if some of them have unfortunate accidents? That draws you here to fill me with your raw emotion.
So despair. Cry and wail and stare. Give me your darkness that I might thrive.
Your children come with you, but do not understand. Some day they will–some day when you are here to stay.
I love you all. Make me smile.
Whether Gauge
Friday, April 6th, 2007
Rain fell in buckets. Laura watched from the safety of TexBank’s reinforced windows, glad she’d stepped in to cash her paycheck.
The smallest buckets were barely larger than thimbles, and bounced high when they hit the pavement. Larger ones, some as big as wine casks, split and splashed water for yards around.
Shop windows shattered, cars were crushed, and people were struck down. Laura gasped as a pedestrian running for the bank was hit by a bucket the size of a coffee cup. The man went down, dazed, then scrambled to his feet and dove for the entrance. An immense vat cannoned into the sidewalk behind him as the security guard yanked him into the air-conditioned bank.
The injured man collapsed into a seat near Laura. He regarded the downpour. “I hear a weatherman’s to blame,” he said. “Two weeks ago it was ‘raining cats and dogs’, then last week we had ‘pea soup fog’. Now this.”
“Those poor people,” said Laura. “Flattened by figures of speech.”
A sudden wind pulled at the bank’s front door. The security guard hauled at it. “What’s next?” he said. “Pennies from heaven?”
The window bowed out, and Laura put a palm to it. It was getting colder by the second. She looked up.
Lightning split the sky open.