The creature in front of you was monstrous: limbs that were too long for its body, skin the color of a puss-filled boil, smooth like a worn stone, and naked from head to toe. The thing glistened faintly in the light, as if it were wet with some one else's sweat. It stood in a grotesque position, crammed into the corner of your room.
But.
The thing you noticed most and first and last about it were the eyes: too large for a human but intelligent and angry. The twitches in the corners tell you just how real it is. The eyes are black but for a single reflective hole in the center that glows iridescent red with the pulse of the thing's heartbeat in its retinal depths. The heartbeat increases one beat twobeats three until a single moment has passed and the thing--for it is not any man you've ever seen--scrabbles and screams and crushes the heels of its too-long hands into its too-large eyes and shrieks so loudly you dropped the match
which,
tumbling,
winks
out.
And in the instantaneous silence of the match hitting the floor, you thought you saw the last shadows swirling like creatures under command to the corner to clothe the thing in a concealing grimace of victory.
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Wow. Hm.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how to respond to this.
Then don't?
ReplyDeleteI see you've met my window spider. Fernando will be so pleased.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I like the rhythm the lack of space between 'two' and 'beats' presents.
I really like this piece. I like Fernando. I like Hernando de Soto, too.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty fond of both this piece and Fernando myself. Also:
ReplyDelete"...Soto had encouraged the local natives to believe that he was an immortal sun god (as a ploy to gain their submission without conflict, though some of the natives had already become skeptical of de Soto's deity claims)..."
Clearly this is where the writers of Eldorado drew their (not its) inspiration. What a guy.
P.S. Blogger. What is the point of deleting a comment if you tell everyone the comment has been deleted. That's like saying 'what' at the top of your lungs while someone is obviously mouthing a secret at you. For shame.
I usually delete those for you but now we are engaging in a lively and interesting discussion based on the comment removal, so stay it shall.
ReplyDeleteI think Conquistadors had the biggest balls.
That's alright. It's like a battle scar.
ReplyDelete"Where'd you get that?"
"I noticed a grammatical error in my comment and knew something had to be done, risks be damned."
"Looks painful."
"Perfection has its price."
And I agree; it must've been hard for them to get those tights on every morning.
I can respect that.
ReplyDelete