Bury Me in the Mouth of Forgotten Gods
From the Fictionistas prompt. I took a bit of a wild turn on the prompt, but that’s life, yeah?
And he had had a dream of the earth’s blackheart pulsing at the same cadence as his own broken widowed heart, and when he stared up into the blackmaw of space the stars all rhymed his name in time with her last gasping breaths.
And when he woke the flowers were rotted and the yard overgrown; the crib remained empty and his phone still drowning in the toilet. And he walked outside to the end of the block and then kept walking dressed as he had been since his life emptied, since the earth swallowed all his dreams; and through the rain his clothes clung to him as he walked still farther and farther. And then the shovel in his hand became a fang gouging at the earth over and over again, making heaps of red earth and a hole through the middle of the outfield where he once waited to catch flying balls.
And the rain fell again, falling heavier, and he saw her dark skin drinking in sunlight on beaches months ago, her belly rounded and her smile heaving through the discomfort of growth; and when the stretching skin scarred her like raking bestial claws he kissed them and ran his fingers gently through her hair, breathing love and hope into her, inhaling the stink of her affection. And then he blinked and the hole was full of water and neighbors had gathered to ask him what he was doing and why.
And through their questions, through the ethereal gauze of memory crowding his vision, he dug deeper and deeper. And in the days that followed there were other diggers digging, as if they too had lost so much, as if the stars only shined to mock them too, as if the earth’s howling blackheart beckoned them always home. And through the static hum of their human chatter, of their toil, the blackheart’s vibrations resonated through his bones and his teeth loosened as vision slurred and he fell gasping into the muddy pit.
And when he woke still more diggers dug deeper and deeper all around him; and their voices told him nothing but that they only had questions, and he had nothing to speak and so he stood once more and took his shovel up again and stabbed it into the earth, seeking what his disciples believed was revelation. And as he dug they dug, and as they dug still more dug and the hole stabbed through the muscles and bones of the earth, shattering the lives of those who found so much more than earth in the ever expanding pit.
And when the rain turned to snow and the snow to rain and then sun, the shovels warped and cracked and corroded and rotted in their hands until their fingernails cracked and bled against the gristle and marrow of the earth; and when children returned to play baseball in their field and found only a gaping emptiness full of mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters, they shuddered; and their shuddering conflicted with the blackheart’s consuming cadence until the blackheart’s beat swallowed the shuddering into its own rhythm, creating a new perpetual percussive passion.
And through the broken fingers and yowling abscesses, the rotting clothes, the silent work of dozens of bodies searching in the mud through the blood for something the man had no name for, for he sought only the blackheart beating in the monstrous heaving chest of the earth named oblivion.
And when he uncovered the eye big as his chest and the mouth big enough to swallow him whole, he gasped, and his digging disciples shuddered to hear him for the first time. And rapturous was the revelation and intensity of digging and clearing that followed. And when he was able, he climbed into the jaws that closed gently around him, encasing him in the blasting beat of the earth’s blackheart.
And if you’re one of those kind souls looking to get into my fiction, here are the novels I’ve released recently:
Glossolalia - A Le Guinian fantasy novel about an anarchic community dealing with a disaster
Sing, Behemoth, Sing - Deadwood meets Neon Genesis Evangelion
Howl - Vampire Hunter D meets The Book of the New Sun in this lofi cyberpunk/solarpunk monster hunting adventure
Colony Collapse - Star Trek meets Firefly in the opening episode of this space opera
The Blood Dancers - The standalone sequel to Colony Collapse.
Iron Wolf - Sequel to Howl. Coming 7/25/2023
Some free books for your trouble: