things that lead to more things

SC: Tom Sawyer

The room felt mournful, possibly because I was at the most modern funeral in the world. White marbel glittered and the walls shone with electric yellow and orange. But the ecletic style took nothing away from the sunlight streaming through the windows. However, these were not the things I noticed. On the ceiling were oval-shaped plexi-glassed covered light fixtures. There were bunches of them all above me. Someone was leading me around the room and when they talked about a certain person that had passed the light glowed and dimmed, blinked on and off. When the light penetrated the see-through cover, inside were tassles of hair and what looked like momentos of a past life, photos, scattered ashes. Instead of burying and forgeting the dead in the ground or covered in a vase their remnants were out in the open, for all to see and admire. The narrator told me various stories and showed off numerous coffins.

Then she led me to mine.

sandman chronicles: east winds

She was happily married and wanted everyone to know it. until she cheated on her husband by kissing another man. this killed her because her husband was wonderful and she didn’t want to shame him or give him dissapointment. alive, she was the west winds but if the east winds came over her she would die. she danced and cried and tried to repent but the east winds were coming—coming because she had committed infidelity.

Sandman Chronicles: Bulgaria

It was the trip of a lifetime. I was in Bulgaria with my classmates. We were outside a little European cafe eating lunch in the afternoon sun. A train track sliced through the street with clumsy purpose. A gaggle of horses were walking on the track, heading who knows where. There was a horse that held the rear, his legs were skinny as a starving model’s but his body was round. He was so tired and his little legs could not support that round body, his fight to keep moving died. He laid on the tracks to rest. A train whistled his chugging approach. The horse couldn’t move, his fight was gone remember. The viewpoint zooms into him, but me, the watcher, close my eyes so all I hear is the horse whisper these words,

“say goodbye to my body for me.”

then all noise ceased.