Flash Fiction

As we walked toward the promised land kicking the pricks of the disused needles, he spoke the word and it was a weird word. A word that inspired a need. A word that became a music like hard driving rain that created a mist all around us. It was the mist of what may be, as we can only promise.

Somewhere in the distance a gong sounded, suppers ready, biting on broken bones and ragged feelings we walked on. The sparks from our high heels giving fire to light our way. As we passed we spoke to only a few and what they said was not what we knew. We consumed their knowledge but it did not fill us, we drank the milk of their milk but it did not quench our raging thirst. Divesting of a tradition not long held but such far inviolate we rested, and as we unbreaked our broken limbs the word was said again. So slaked but unrefreshed and under an edgy unforgiving sky battered grey by rain we wound on down the road picking at the meagre leavings of those gone before and those yet to come.

Slowly, but so slow as to remain unnoticed we gathered the rhyme of the reason that gave us rote and we sicked it up until it made our sense. Then the music stopped. We stood staring into the gaping mouth of the ominous silence, the beat still driving like stair rod rain through our heads.

He appeared before us. He raised his arms slowly skyward. He said. My name is Metronomicus, eat my beat. And we feasted like the worlds forgotten souls, the ones who are searching. We ate him rancid and when we were filled and he were an empty husk we became young. Young such that in our youth we knew, we knew that what you see is small but what feel is large.

No longer in need of a need.