Early one morning the mist rose,

In a world like this, literature tells us 

water flows vertical.

One day someone noticed a man singing.

I began to copy his song

Voices flowing with the water;

I am to imitate his practice.

He talks about song and water and how 

They both flow endlessly. 

Imagine a balloon, he said.

Picture all your grief,

The guilt, the sorrow.

Inside you, sitting in a 

     Bucket.

Pen twirling in his hand

Eyes careful and calculating,

He told me to fill up my balloon.

Transfer all those emotions-

The guilt. The grief. The sorrow-

Into the balloon, that's floating next to 

     You.

Watch them flow-

The guilt. The grief. The sorrow-

From being trapped inside you,

Into this balloon, and let it

Simply float 

     Away.

The worst therapist ever

sitting in front of me.

His hair stringy and greasy

Wire glasses hiding his dollar sign stare.

This couch reeks of sweat and regret

Why am I here, I don't deserve to be here

It should've been

     Me.

A cough. A sniff. 

He clears his throat and attempts to

Stare into my soul but

There's nothing there.

Nothing left anymore. 

It jumped out of me when you 

     Jumped.

I always said one day we'd fly away together...

Not like this. Not like that.

You spread your wings

Only they didn't catch the wind and you

     Fell.

A downward spiral

Accelerating faster faster

Until suddenly

     Still.

He told me to fill a bucket with

My guilt. My grief. My sorrow.

That I could put it all inside this fictitious balloon

And watch it dissipate into thin air.

I look up. I stare. I blink. I finally 

     Speak.

I am the bucket,

Red and shiny and capable of

Handling anything coming my way but

I am not filled with these emotions,

I have been 

     Consumed.

It's not that I am bogged down by

This muddy sorrow, guilt and grief.

It's that this overflowing pain has turned me,

Shiny and red and capable, into something

Faded black and grey and

     Tainted.

It's not that I'm too full to do anything.

It's that I'm too empty to feel

     Anything.

I have loved and I have lost

But at what irreparable cost

Several years of joy for a lifetime of pain

A fleeting moment of sun squinting through the rain

Chance day dreams destroyed by vivid nightmares

An actual life replaced with unanswered begging prayers

A memory of so many smiles drowned within a sea of tears

Was losing that love really worth the hurt felt all these years

------------------------------------------------------

© M.Withers/M.Strudwick . All rights reserved.

Both the name The EriduSerpent/EriduSerpent

and any written material is owned solely by the above named.

Permission granted for all written material to be shared but not for profit.

Printing or publishing is prohibited without seeking permission first from said owner.

I'll never forget.

How could I when

You were the best thing

That had ever happened to me

It's okay to have memories blurred,

To let them blend together.

It softens the pain, I've found.

But I don't forget.

Even if I could,

Why would I want to?

Sometimes they hurt

Really fucking bad.

Everything breeze or droplet a reminder

Causing a hurricane in my heart

Or tornado in my mind

Ripping me apart.

But then I remember how you

Brought me a new world.

A new light, and the love

We shared will never be

Forgotten.

I don't want to lose you.

I just want us to be okay.

Okay, A?

A-okay.

Love,

me

01:49:38 UTC 

March 21st, 2017 CE

“The Incident”

When she took the gun from the first criminal, she wasn’t thinking about the fake passport in her jean jacket pocket that said she was Dahlia Echo, or about the intelligent, wealthy, handsome, charming man with the “right” connections to get her said passport and an unanticipated flight to Jamaica.

No, she was thinking about how it was her birthday, and as an orphan she was forced to work hard to find the right combination of random kindness and selfishness to satisfy the day’s need to be fulfilling. She was thinking that the gruff, poorly spoken gunman with the onion breath permeating his black ski mask had no right to shine those bloodshot grey eyes so venomously at her; that he was going to die for even pointing the barrel in her direction.

Who robs a restaurant anyway?

The birthday woman was officially thirty-one as of ten minutes before the first robber announced their intentions with rapid gunfire and a smarmy warning. Still, it could have been that Wednesday in February when you think Winter is the universes way of reminding you how lucky you are to live in a global sauna all year -because you just can't take the cold anymore, and it wouldn't have made a difference. It could have been any day things went sour to her ideal and it wouldn't have mattered. She had no intention of dying. 

Her formerly charming companion hit the floor without even pausing to see if she needed help in her dress and heels so, she wrote him out of her mind and took the gun from the man who was practically shaking it at her in threat.

Why do they do that? Emphasis? A bullet makes emphasis; as noted when she blew the top of his head off with a bullet fired from under his jowls. The mist was still expanding it’s coverage with thicker chunks somersaulting end over end when she calmly re-sighted on robber number two without bothering to cock the hammer back.

Recoil tested in the point-blank shot, she let experience and instinct do the calculations when she pulled the trigger on the second gunman as she exhaled, likewise ensuring she wasn’t immediately going to breathe in the blood and brain matter. Whatever sound the bullet made hitting the second gunmans left eyeball, was drowned out by the sound of the firearm going off minus a head to muffle it. Unavoidably, the folks on the floor behind gunman No. 2 not only became wet and sticky with his scrambled eggs, but also the weight of his collapsing corpse.

The third and forth gunmen fired at her simultaneously, one of them missing altogether while the other skimmed her right arm through her jacket as she turned. Despite the pain and the weird sensation of thick blood dripping almost immediately, smearing and making slippery sensations beneath the jean fabric, she didn’t miss a beat to align her sights and kill number three.

A slight turn to square the gun on the forth robber, and she was surprised to realize he was holding his gun by the trigger guard, letting it dangle, his other hand up in a non-threatening gesture. His eyes were seeking her’s out. “I’m an Undercover,” he panted, cautiously aiming his free hand toward his mask even while crouching to drop his gun without as much clatter.

“What’s your badge number?” She countered, hesitating on the final pressure that would send a bullet through his skull like the others. The woman said nothing about him showing his face, it was a handsome face but somehow not as non-threatening as maybe he’d hoped.

He paused. It wasn’t the ‘oh, let me think of a number’ pause, but that ‘what? Like you would even know if I’m lying…’ pause. Then, he rattled off, “sierra alpha zero three six three dash seven nine zero forty-two thirteen.”

Only then did her heart spike, take off at a belated run to burn off the excess adrenaline. He was right; she didn’t have a way to verify his badge number right then, or even what agency, but he seemed to know that too, and said it anyway. He was either a very good liar, or hoping honesty would save him.

The woman with a fake passport naming her Dahlia Echo hadn’t the time to decide what she was thinking about his surrender and undercover confession. She took a breath, eased off the trigger because her finger was feeling slippery (she didn’t want to shoot him on accident), and the Calvary arrived in time to mistake her for the bad guy in a side-line to thought altogether.

While the officers were shouting variations of “drop your weapon” and she turned to face them mid-comply, she had enough time to think ’yeah, I’m single-handedly robbing this restaurant… ” sarcastically before she felt the first impact. 

Didn’t see that coming.

In the time it took the gun to leave the palm of her hand and hit the floor, she was impacted with seventeen bullets, and took another six as her body tipped back from the force of each round.

Ironically, she also finally understood why the films always showed folks dancing like puppets on loose marionette strings… almost wiggling… as each tiny projectile perforates body tissue and explodes outward on the inside (or out the backside) in the absorption of all that velocity and momentum. Yeah, she looked like a well dressed gummy worm for a moment there.

It was understandable, she assured herself before impact with the ground, that her body lost all obedience to her mental command. Shock. She knew she was in shock when she didn’t feel herself hit the ground, but simply woke up on the ground with the undercover man trying to cover all of the holes they put in her while looking at the ones who’d shot her. 

He was shouting by the appearance of how red his face was, how wide he opened his mouth and every vein bulged from his neck and forehead, but she couldn’t hear a word of it.

Her heart was stumbling like a semi teetering off the side of a cliff; her lungs drowning like a wet paper bag in high winds, her limbs were both surged by an electric fire and an alien numbness that pulsed from every wound. Somehow, she managed to cough a bloody, “don’t worry, I’ll be back” before her eyes tore off the Undercover’s surprised and worried face, rolled back, and took her into darkness.

Despite what she said, and she didn’t know why she said that, the woman (with only a fake passport to identify her) wasn’t so sure she was ever going to come back. Twenty three bullets. It was reasonable that no human body could be expected to survive it. Before the black became total lack of consciousness, her last thought just happened to be:

“Happy Birthday to me!” 

With a distant, subconscious nagging, “why didn’t anyone take the headshot?”

--

[201702251058]

Tell you my age?

You'll only hear lies.

When come the wrinkles,

I'll Botox away the lines.

Perhaps I'll stay healthy,

If I eat just right.

I'll try every fix till I believe in my own lies.

But age being sneaky will finally catch up,

It will creep up slowly, softer than a turning door knob.

Best friends that fell out just because it was time,

Parents no longer invincible, who you tuck in at night.

Numbers on your phone you can't call and can't delete,

Scars innumerable that the heart's never whole and complete.

Tell you my age?

Oh! What's the point?

One day I'll loose my teeth and what's left will be, but aching joints.

Ritika Jolly