Conditions

I haven't posted anything in weeks, though that's probably only bothered me. I'm working feverishly on a screenplay assignment, and I feel guilty when I write anything else (email, shopping list, facebook status update...)

But I felt bad about not blogging, so I wrote a short story in the last twenty minutes. I'm posting without editing as an act of contrition.

--Conditions--

There was a stony path that led from our house to the house behind what was once a pool. My parents were not poor, but we lived as though they were, hence the decrepit pool. It made a wonderfully impregnable fort. Except for during the rains.

The stones in the path were scattered randomly and seemed designed to have their sharpest edges jutting up through the earth. Indeed, I dug one up to test my hypothesis, and the entire buried hunk was smooth.

The edges dug through the rubber soles of my shoes as I would stroll, thirteen years old, to my private pool fort. I could have cut through the grass, but if the mason of centuries ago thought he could mock me with a walkway I could not walk, he had another think coming.

Halfway between our house and the house behind what had become my fort, there was a ring. The perfect circle was rounded by sharp stones rising nearly a foot from the dirt. Unlike the random rocks of the hurtful path, these were placed and molded so carefully together that it appeared to be one single great stone of a shape that stones do not come in.

I spent little time in the Ring, for I was a boy and liked lizards and beetles and hawks and worms and none of these could be found within the perimeter. The ground was different there; shifting, like sand but not sand. Not exactly ash, either. I’m sorry I have nothing to compare it to. Nothing lived within the Ring.

There were two constructs on one side. They seemed for all the world like desks for small children, which I was, having not yet hit the growth spurts my schoolmates had. Now being grown and having attended churches and temples and lectures seeking relief from my Condition, I would call them altars. The size still sticks in my mind, though. Clearly, the sermonizer or prophets or false prophets who used them were tiny by our time’s standard. Suffice it to say, the construct were rough, stone, and small.

I passed through one day as any other day and was halted by a man. This was odd since my father had few friends and those he did steered well clear of my house and (as I learned in my twenties) my flirtatious mother. This man was decidedly not my father’s friend, for he looked like me.

A grown me, obviously, and he sat in the ash-sand behind one of the altars and his knobby knees jutted up above either side.

‘Hullo,’ I said.

‘Hullo,’ he replied.

‘I’m not certain you should be here,’ I noted without a hint of threat in my voice.

‘Where else could I be?’

The question stumped me. Over the next hour, I conversed with the creature. We talked of forts and parents and the rising price of comic books. He was funny and much more charming than me and most of that probably comes with having girlfriends because if you’re not charming with girlfriends, you don’t get to have sex.

I said the above to him, proud of my knowledge. He frowned and offered me a deal. I accepted immediately.

Now I am older and my face gets hot when I consider the trade. I grew tall and strong from that day on. I read ferociously, gaining topics of conversation that would see me through any raucous bar or dinner party. My voice gained a lilt that was unidentifiable as an accent, but inarguably beautiful. I was, as the creature promised, never alone. I bedded women of every age and culture. They were powerless against my attention to every subtle flush of their cheeks and each word they spoke. I became a legendary lover.

But I sleep alone.

In the night, there is a constant pressure on my chest. Each breath is ragged and difficult. Something old and foul blows a soft wind into my mouth that stinks of brimstone. I am lonely and afraid and tired of carrying this weight.

Today, the stones of the path that lead to the broken pool are sharper on my feet than ever. I’m heavier now, I think, so that figures. I take my place behind one of the altars and wait. The afternoon sun dapples the ground through stirring leaves high above me. I wait and try to decide what to do.

The tramping of an awkward boy comes down the stony path. He swears under his breath at the imagined mason and comes into view. I hoped that he wouldn’t.

‘Hullo,’ he says.