three stories
by Joseph Linscott
Lives to Spare
The world grew heavy in my throat; a snaking, flaming, vomiting acid crept from tongue to stomach and back, traversing the landscape of language I already held so delicately. I looked ahead and saw flaming red brake lights of cars ahead. I saw that the bus would not stop. That the bus would hit the curb and spill us onto the neatly manicured lawn. Some man would see us fall on his lawn. Some man who makes more money than I could imagine—more money than I would need in order to consider myself rich—he would see us, the bus riders, dumped and spilled and spilling ourselves over his hard worked lawn, a Saturday’s labor.
What would this man have been like as a child? I thought, and who were his parents? and what did they do for livings? and how did they live? What would he think now, looking out over this carnage of life that he paid not to see, and how enraged would he be that my brains might soil and sodden his grass?
Gravity and force had won out over the hope I loosely placed in public transport. When the bus hit the curb, I knew I should’ve followed the man with the toolbox and the overripe mango—the one who reminded me of my uncle—and gotten off at the previous stop. When I heard the driver’s laugh, as my seat jolted me towards the roof, which was then below me, I knew I should’ve changed something in my life long ago. If I shouldn’t have listened to my uncle and his teachings from the only book he read.
I wonder now if it wasn’t just a devil at the driver’s seat, head now leaking, who had come to taunt this rich man on his lawn. All of us on the bus pawns in their game. Lives to spare in their game of back-and-forth.
Hurtling through the air, I wonder if this wasn’t meant to be. If my uncle’s book of toilet humor wasn’t an oracle; some sooth-saying tell all of all I’d be: nothing but a piss-stain on a rich man’s lawn, but never his conscience. As I think about my uncle, I wonder why it was my aunt left him so quickly after marriage. What thing about himself did he reveal, or reveal too quickly? What about him could I not see? didn’t want to see? because he had the book of toilet jokes that I loved so much? why could I never learn?
Glass breaks next to me, above me, below me, away from me, and I wonder how long it will take for the next bus to arrive on this lawn so that I can scoop myself back up, carry the pieces, and be back home in time for dinner.
Settle
You settle into a hollow. In your brain, a vibration hums that matches the wiggling of worms under your body. A pale glow from the moon extinguishes your fire. Shivers shudder out and from your mouth a grey winged moth emerges.
The dogs in the distance know their master is coming, and you take this as your sign to leave. A malted mouth layers dry, the upheaval of words from your throat become turgid bile. In your palm, the cardinal speaks only to you. He whispers soft starchy compliments.
You ask the cardinal if the moth was a subtle warning from the land. The cardinal responds that it could be, but he has not lived long enough to know what is a warning and what is simply the way of things here.
A wind blows from the east. In your youth, the men of the families whom you lived with told you that these winds bring good tidings. It gave you hope that things would get better. You ask the cardinal about this, but the cardinal has flown into the sunrise.
With a bright morning sun, you gather your things and collect your thoughts, begin moving in the direction the wind has blown you. You hear the choruses in the distance, worshiping water. Drinking deeply of song and sin, the hours pass as another day comes to you finding some hollow to settle into.
Worms avoid you now as the moth returns. It does not whisper to you as the cardinal did. It does not tell you what it wants but makes it known. You open your mouth to the moth. Tremulous hands clasp shut a dream door waiting to offer escape. Moth thoughts enter, fluttering images of the world to be burned.
Scorched earth offers cover by way of ash, blanketing your sleep. Coughing makes it worse, and so you swallow whole this disease. Enumerating the ways a death from above could happen, the chorus of those worshiping the earth disband when the moon’s glow is uncovered by the clouds.
When you wake, the moth is gone. The moon still exists in the sky, but whether a sun appears becomes the basis of today.
Only the Earth Beneath
In the field a forceful rain had come. Falling harder than any on either side of the family could have guessed. Falling harder than any of the oldest on either side of the family had ever remembered the rain falling. The tent had not yet been set up, and the rain and the wind threw it to a nearby ditch. The only cover provided for anyone came from the sturdy branches and thick foliage of the trees on the edge of the field. The families waited for the rain to pass.
Under each tree came chitter chatter about how some rain on a day such as this was considered good luck. Under each tree came tales and anecdotes and gossips about the couple and their love. Under the tree with the aunts, considerations for the possibility of the couple moving their eventual family into a nice neighborhood, but that each aunt’s respective future in-law would hinder the possibility of that future family in a future nice neighborhood. Under the tree with the uncles, arguments were built and defended on behalf of the respective aunts. Under the tree with the parents contained nothing but platitudes and joyful crying. Under the tree sheltering the siblings, the liquor. And the siblings kept drinking as fast as the rain was coming down hard, each sibling wondering when their chance at a day such as this would come.
Eventually, under each tree, worries and concerns that the rain would never stop. Worry that the day would not proceed as planned. Had anyone seen either member of the couple? many had started asking as the ditch that the tent blew into was bubbling over with the rain water and the feet of the guests began to wrinkle from the wet. Do they have somewhere dry to stay? many started asking as the water rose to their ankles. Do we? the inevitable question came from the uncles.
When the water rose to the knees, soiling all of the men’s suits and nearly all of the women’s dresses, the rain stopped and the clouds parted and the sun shone down on the guests and the couple appeared, wading from the far tree line.
The affair commenced and everything was consumed by the guests and the rain water, and after the field had dried from the sun’s rays nothing remained but the tattered and frayed tent in the ditch. Nothing would be said of the day and only the earth beneath each tree would show the damage of what had occurred that day in the rain in the field.
Photo of Joseph Linscott
BIO: Joseph Linscott is a writer living in Providence. His work can be found online and in print. He can be reached on social media @prosephlinscott.