One black seed pinched between his two fingers, a fleck which might have been picked from between his greenish teeth left over from lunch. 'Be careful,' he grinned sardonically as he dropped it into my palm. I had expected, I don't know why, a seed from hell to be hot, at least warm, but this imparted to my hand a cold, moist sensation.
'Is this the only one,' I asked looking directly into his manic hazel eyes set in an orange-freckled face in order not to see the too toothy mouth. 'Isn't one enough? No, more than enough,' he chuckled. 'And it's yours now.'
'I haven't paid you for it,' I said.
'You have it now and that's payment enough, plenty good, ah, so good.' he cackled, and turned away to go.
I'd found it on Craigslist under the heading of Suicide Seed--I mean who would be interested by that--but I didn't know what to do with it, how to care for it, anything. 'Where did you get it,' I called after him.
'From where no one's hand has ever been before,' he said, 'while alive: Minos' pocket.'
He was almost gone. 'Where do I plant it?' I called out. 'In the belly of a black squirrel.'
That was that. The seed, not much larger than a broken pepper corn, was clammy in my palm.
I suddenly didn't it sliming my hand and flicked it away, but it wouldn't go. I brushed it. No change. I tried to pick it up with my index finger and thumb but, like a tomato seed, it clung.
As I walked back through the woods, an animal plunged though the foliage above me, and then, right in front of me, hurtled down to thump on the ground. A squirrel lay feebly squirming, and not the normal grey tree rodent of the area, nor even a red one, black.
As I picked it up, its pink mouth yawned open, its eyes went glassy and its tiny body became stiff.
I dropped the carcass in disgust in a crevice between the roots of an oak tree, and didn't notice until I was on the bus that the seed was gone.
Perhaps I'd expected something like a pill which would, here's the idea, suddenly stop me dead, the way it happens in stories. Being dead was something I was feeling more and more comfortable with but dying... I remembering wiping down the bathroom after my cousin, and my brother in law took so very long. Not for me.
Fall afternoons, with time to kill, I wandered along in melancholy languor, mocking the chrome and crimson of the leaves, soon to be brown, sodden mush. The oak's green had turned purple and russet but I foresaw the crisp crackle of winter's hanger-on leaves.
As I ducked beneath the canopy, a branch whipped my head. In sudden wrath, I snapped it off. A black sap seem to bead up on the stump; I thought I heard coming from it a susurration like speech, almost a sizzle. On a whim, I put the broken end in my mouth like a pistol, and drank.
The whine of the tree's words matched the dirge of my own mood. I understood a history of betrayals and disappointments, a gradual collapse of promises and aspirations, a growing grey numbness, a world-weariness, and the ironic glamour of the achievement of...quietus. I sensed lank hair, sparse blotchy beard, bleary eyes, my face sometimes, my voice always.
That town, those people, the life I was condemned to act out: I nursed on that tree often that fall, as the days grew darker and colder. Finally--to hell with quick and clean--I got a rope, put it on, climbed up to a branch open below and jumped.
My head must have hit the trunk because I don't remember strangling, or my neck snapping. In any case, when they found me, my body was limp and draggled, smelling of shit: my take on existence.
It was my brother who found me and cut me down. After he washed his hands clean, there was a certain black clingy seed on his finger he couldn't wipe away. Overhead, squirrels jumped from branch to branch.
'Is this the only one,' I asked looking directly into his manic hazel eyes set in an orange-freckled face in order not to see the too toothy mouth. 'Isn't one enough? No, more than enough,' he chuckled. 'And it's yours now.'
'I haven't paid you for it,' I said.
'You have it now and that's payment enough, plenty good, ah, so good.' he cackled, and turned away to go.
I'd found it on Craigslist under the heading of Suicide Seed--I mean who would be interested by that--but I didn't know what to do with it, how to care for it, anything. 'Where did you get it,' I called after him.
'From where no one's hand has ever been before,' he said, 'while alive: Minos' pocket.'
He was almost gone. 'Where do I plant it?' I called out. 'In the belly of a black squirrel.'
That was that. The seed, not much larger than a broken pepper corn, was clammy in my palm.
I suddenly didn't it sliming my hand and flicked it away, but it wouldn't go. I brushed it. No change. I tried to pick it up with my index finger and thumb but, like a tomato seed, it clung.
As I walked back through the woods, an animal plunged though the foliage above me, and then, right in front of me, hurtled down to thump on the ground. A squirrel lay feebly squirming, and not the normal grey tree rodent of the area, nor even a red one, black.
As I picked it up, its pink mouth yawned open, its eyes went glassy and its tiny body became stiff.
I dropped the carcass in disgust in a crevice between the roots of an oak tree, and didn't notice until I was on the bus that the seed was gone.
Perhaps I'd expected something like a pill which would, here's the idea, suddenly stop me dead, the way it happens in stories. Being dead was something I was feeling more and more comfortable with but dying... I remembering wiping down the bathroom after my cousin, and my brother in law took so very long. Not for me.
Fall afternoons, with time to kill, I wandered along in melancholy languor, mocking the chrome and crimson of the leaves, soon to be brown, sodden mush. The oak's green had turned purple and russet but I foresaw the crisp crackle of winter's hanger-on leaves.
As I ducked beneath the canopy, a branch whipped my head. In sudden wrath, I snapped it off. A black sap seem to bead up on the stump; I thought I heard coming from it a susurration like speech, almost a sizzle. On a whim, I put the broken end in my mouth like a pistol, and drank.
The whine of the tree's words matched the dirge of my own mood. I understood a history of betrayals and disappointments, a gradual collapse of promises and aspirations, a growing grey numbness, a world-weariness, and the ironic glamour of the achievement of...quietus. I sensed lank hair, sparse blotchy beard, bleary eyes, my face sometimes, my voice always.
That town, those people, the life I was condemned to act out: I nursed on that tree often that fall, as the days grew darker and colder. Finally--to hell with quick and clean--I got a rope, put it on, climbed up to a branch open below and jumped.
My head must have hit the trunk because I don't remember strangling, or my neck snapping. In any case, when they found me, my body was limp and draggled, smelling of shit: my take on existence.
It was my brother who found me and cut me down. After he washed his hands clean, there was a certain black clingy seed on his finger he couldn't wipe away. Overhead, squirrels jumped from branch to branch.
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