The pig is slow and bloated but struggles little. The manioc root slows the bleed, the bleating lasts the day, or is that its echoes, it is hard to follow with the fence, the poles move as it is walked, the rails rough.
The fence was simply constructed. The workers tired, left to their own in the mud without oversight. And yet the pig was contained. Double duty as the slop processor and dinner provider, the magical transformation of waste.
The reference pyramid spins, focuses on the pot. The lid has been removed and the pyramid is aware.
Words are slopped in. The pyramid spins up today's metric, broadcasting the red digits to the content floor as diffuse as they are misshapen, flowing over and around the pot.
The carnivores stare down at the city lights from the hills. They curl their lips and flex their jaws, inviting the moonlight in, but it does not satiate them.
A short slink down trails mistaken by joggers and it's the small alley residents and backyard sleepers that are the first to go. Small bites, some swallowed without chewing.
This is a photograph of a beautiful story nearing completion. A final braiding of the delicate threads that have propelled the narrative, a clean tie at the end.
And the story. The characters will gut you with the choices they make. The dialogue is like water on a hot cast-iron. And the prose, if I was capable of writing like the author, could be described as ...
What's that? What did I use to take a picture of the story? Uhhh... my phone.
I moved over a few old posts from the last year. Things are set up and settled for a few years at least, which is a long time, considering the speed at which words move. There is enough dry paper that things should engulf in the next little bit, and I'm looking forward to seeing the blaze.
It’s a new season. Time to harvest some stories. They’ve been well tended by idle thoughts and ruminations, but the required typing weather was unusually short this year. Keyboards sat idle while fingers flicked phones. While screens glared.
My trowel is ready. November is in two days. There will be enough residual Halloween candy to pump my fingers through 50,000 words.
If the wood slides together in the right way, the shadows on the lawn look like a face. And if I hold my head at the correct angle, the path towards a half-hundred-k words is barely visible through the thicket of thoughts.
Afternoon. The trough. Restless snakes seeking shelter in veins.
Parched and peeling, a reticulated brain.
It’s the end of a century, and I can’t think of anything, except … the end of a decade. It’s hard to get out of the way of a decade when it keeps swinging around for you on a virus tether.