The Eastern Shore - A Fable

   There were fires along the eastern shore; fires that burned bright and yellow.  Because of these fires the eastern shore is riddled with plumes of smoke, thick and black, with heavy aromas of dried leaves, broken twigs, and hints of sulfur.  The smoke is so deep it turns the days into night with very few dramatics.  There is no warmth to these fire, only light that never died, never faded, and never escaped.  The fires burn in shallow pits along the shoreline.  These pits are separated by wet sand, each exactly 27 yards apart from the last, each burning with the same intensity.  There is nothing but consistency clouded by black.  The eastern shore is a collection of memories, memories that are lies, lies I am more than happy to believe.  

   The smoke deepens, the clouds hang, the wind never blows.

   I watch these fires with blazing intent.  I watch with fascination and sadness.  There is no fondness in me, there is only emptiness.  The fires burn and I watch them burn.  I get up, walk the 27 paces to the next fire, and sit back down.  I watch the fire of yellow with pockets of blue and white just near its base.  The sand is wet and confused on my backside.  The sea ripples passively.  There are no waves, there is no high tide, no low tide, there is only listless water.  The water holds many secrets; secrets I crave to understand.  But the fire is my life.

   I move along again, 27 more paces to the next fire.  I listen to the silence of my ocean.  I breathe in the acrid smoke.  My skin wrinkles, my hair grays, my bones wither.  But I move on.  The journey is endless.

   In one of the day’s deep nights I stare off into the distance and pick out the fires waiting for me along the coast—waiting for me to watch them.  The fires go on as far as my vision will allow, each one growing fainter and fainter up the winding coastline.

   I touch the fire with the tips of my fingers and feel no burn.  The flames lick me like the devil...and the devil don’t kiss so good.

   The sea wanes.

   I walk 27 more steps.

   I sit down in the wet stand and fire crackles.  A piece of wood shifts and a cluster of sparks kick into the sky.  

   I am old.

   I watch the fire for days, waiting for another cluster of sparks, another shift of wood, but it never comes.  It is only the same monotony and I start to doubt the wood shifted at all.  My mind plays tricks in a world that was a mirror.  My reality becomes a hallucination that somebody else had created and I am their eternal captive. 

   Clouds blanket the horizon, but they do not blanket me.

   I am much older.  

   I move the next 27 steps much slower.  And when I sit, I sit with creaky back.  The sand is still wet, and the fire is still yellow, and the sea is still placid, but I am aged; aged and baffled.

   There is no sleep, there is no relief, there is no catharsis.

   I see foothills to my left, foothills that look like paintings scrawled on a mediocre portrait.  But I never go to the foothills, I never stray from the shoreline.  I do not part from the wet sand and the docile sea.  I am obedient to its wishes, subservient, submissive, pathetic.

   My back hurts, my feet hurt, my knees hurt, my eyeballs hurt.  The fires grow hazier, the nights grow darker, the steps seem longer.  Paces go on for days, and the 27 steps do not come easily.  

   Age waits to take me.

   I reach a fire and watch as long as my eyes will allow.  And then the fire goes out.  I stare off into the distance and see the coastline begin to darken, each fire extinguishing one by one.  I look back and see the others have gone out as well and I am cloaked in a sheet of darkness.  The outline of the foothills silhouette in the distance and I consider going to them.  Perhaps I will find asylum there.  And then, for the first time, I hear the sea.  I hear the great waves rush up on shore.  The water slips beneath my feet and pulls the shallow fire pits into the sea.  Suddenly, there becomes no evidence of their truths.  There is only wet sand and an angry sea.

   The tide turns high.

   I drag my old bones from the prospects of the foothills and walk into the sea.  I leave the eastern shore behind.  The waves carry me away and I am consumed by its darkness.

   And then the sea becomes placid again and it waits for its next traveler.

Doorways - A Fable

    As I traveled down the Path of Vitae, I got lost along the way.  The path was shrouded with deep bushes and wavering trees, layers and layers of them, each one intent on hiding the intricately woven trail.  Along the way, and through all the travels, I found only darkness.  When I would come to a fork in the path I took the one that seemed less threatening.  But, more often than not, this path would result in the most foreboding, haunting things.  When I came to another fork I took the path that seemed most terrifying, but then that path would lead me to horrors and macabre I never expected to find.  There is no rhyme, no reason, there is only a series of moments that lead to startling conclusions.  I am an aimless wanderer, never learning, only drifting.  

    During my travels I would collect coins, scraps of bread, or little bits of crystal, each item more meaningless than the last.  I was a peasant, a beggar; I had been on this road for over thirty years and my bag was littered with pounds and pounds of emptiness.

    When I slept, I dreamt of paths filled with flowers--flowers that bloomed three times their normal size.  I dreamt of bushes consumed by plump raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries.  I dreamt of sunlight shining down on me, bathing my face in warmth and reassurance; sunlight that would shine on the path I was meant to travel.  But when I woke the dreams seemed further and further from my grasp.

    Along the way I met many travelers, and these travelers seemed just as lost as I.  They wandered around, their bags filled with the same nothingness I carried.  But they did this in secret.

    And they told many lies...

    The Path of Vitae is filled with liars, waiting to steal your goods or lead you astray.  There is no room for followers on the trail; followers will be lost, forever forgotten.  “You remember that funny lookin’ fella with the cleft palette?”  “Nah, can’t say I do.”  “Maybe I’m thinkin’a someone else.”  “Yeah, maybe.”  These people blended into the shadows and became the darkness that followed me like soldiers.

    Nothing makes sense.  The days are filled with walking, the nights are filled with consumption.  I wake plagued by coughing fits, cotton tongue, bloody noses, raspy throat; it is all grating and horrific.  Days are never days; there are only nights and nights you don’t sleep.  And nights without sleep are nights filled with desperation, for the dreams are the only true luxuries on the path, devoid of any famine, disease, retribution, abandonment, and--worst of all--death.  There is no death in dreams, for when there is death you wake, and when you wake, you are riddled by reality.  And there is nothing quite as brutal as reality on the path.

    Upon my thirtieth year I met another traveler who showed me his bag of tricks.  In this bag he had a collection of stone, a few dead snails, a rock hammer the size of my palm, thirty-eight pennies, and a goat bladder where he claimed he was fermenting cheese.  I showed him my bag and he scoffed at its contents as if I was some naïve wanderer.

    I cursed him silently as he zipped up his pack.

    I offered him some of my water and he refused.  I took a drink, stowed the water away, and then he asked for some.  I found this peculiar, but I placed the canteen in his hand and he drank like a savage beast.  Water rushed down his chin and I saw his stomach expand.  He immediately began to cramp and double over, overwhelmed by his gluttonous hydration.  This man had not seen water in days, maybe even weeks.  When he handed the water back he grabbed at his stomach and fell to the ground.  He looked up at me with pleading, helpless eyes.  I watched as the whites flipped his irises away.  He began to shake uncontrollably.  The traveler opened his mouth and a cloud of smoke raced out from the depths of his throat.  The cloud circled my head and ran off into the darkness like a frightened animal.  The man’s body convulsed and his skin turned cold and grey.  It began to crack and peel.  And then, all at once, the traveler himself turned into a giant cloud of ash and vanished like dust.  

    His pack lay on the ground where he once had been.  A few of the coins had spilled out as had one of the stones.  I picked up the stone and inspected it.  It was bright green with a smooth, sheen coating.  There were no imperfections, only brilliance.  In all my travels, and down all those paths, I had never encountered such a stone.  It was immaculate.  I looked at the other stones and found they all shared the same purity.

    I folded up the traveler’s pack, stuffed it into my own, and took the fork to the right because this particular path had a glimmer of light.  It was distant and faint, like a diamond star miles off in space’s black; but it was there.  The fork to the right offered no deception or cruelty.  Of course this path would inevitably lead to many other tributaries and many other choices, but at least there was a glimmer of light.  And that was all I needed.

    I opened my bag and cast one final glance at the traveler’s pack.  There was a small bit of soot near one of the buckles.  I wiped it away with the edge of my finger and smudged the bit of ash on a nearby bush.  The bush sparked, burst into flame, and turned to ash just as the traveler had.  The diamond light down the fork grew and became brighter, calling to me.

    I fastened my pack and began walking again.