A Moment’s Piece
by Kerry Joyce
The trees glowing red now swayed, and sweltered, and the Gray Plain convulsed against the deathly smoke orange sky. It throbbed and pitched indignantly as roots ripped through at last from their living crypt, tearing and breaking stomping and churning, gladly felled and collapsing, rolling down, down atop and then over and beyond the living and the dead. Upon that which was made and on that which merely was. Rending all things surely and securely fitted and all that was hastily thrown together. Upon the hearkened and ignored, the cherished and the long forgotten, the venerated and the scorned, the fearful and the feared. Upon the spooled, the digitized, the downloaded, the backed up, and even the corrupted. Bucking, it swarmed the present and future too. There was only one law, and all and everything yielded at once in the face of its overwhelming force.
Are you okay? You seem kind of quiet.
Hmmm… No… Yes! Really, I’m fine.
The Earth coughed great stones, it spit granite ledges and hissed incessantly from broken steam pipes and long stagnant pools. Birds of every imaginable size and shape together formed a sweeping, circling arc low on the horizon. Even the bats and flying insects of all sorts joined in. Their cries and whoops and buzzing mocked and menaced, yet never mourned. The wind cried too from out of bursts of dust and smoke. Again and again it formed a crooked hand, it pointed, it beckoned, then rose to strike and vanished.
More coffee? There’s half a pot left.
Huh? No thanks.
The lake churned and rammed the shore like a great and angry sea. Lightning strikes, and thunder sounded through the cloudless sky. It pounded like a great army on the march. While between each step, the cries of pain, the cries of loss and sorrow, of remorse and indignation resounded from the multitude.
How ’bout a blueberry muffin?
No, I don’t have much appetite this morning.
Yeah, you seem kind of preoccupied. YOU-SEEM-KIND-OF-PRE-OCC-U-PIED!
Yeah, I’m kind of… I don’t know… Preoccupied?
Most crouched fearful and dying in crumbling basements, under mattresses and couch cushions, wailing and bewildered, but a handful of the once proud and strongest as if summoned staggered beaten and bewildered to the lake shore. They clamored as best they could up a pile of rubble where minutes before the height of the hill had split and fallen.
It’s getting late. Are you going to take a shower?
No, I took one last night.
In the distance, fires could be seen ripping through the town, and across the lake, a great squall seemed to have devoured every flying thing gathered over on the other side. The ground surrounding them seemed to shake now while that which they stood upon was sinking. And they were sinking too. They were all sinking. And yet each was sure that there must be some reason, some special purpose for bringing them all there together like that.
You’re going to be late for work if you don’t hurry up.
I know.
