by Matthew Spataro
Rough, bleeding hands work away at the ground. They dig, removing the earth from its home and displacing it in a controlled diaspora. Their owner kneels in a twisted mirror of a prayer as he does the task as if the dirt was sacred ground. The sun is high in the sky, bearing down on him like the weight sitting in the back of his mind. Sweat drips down his face, tracing over the tracks the tears already cut through the grime blanketing his skin.
A man sits in a hole, digging. Each clump of dirt cupped into his hands bringing him further and further down where he belongs. He’s searching for something. Another inch deeper another step closer to what he has been looking for.
“You’ve been up most the night.”
He doesn’t stop. Not when the voice breaks the silence he’s forced upon himself. Not when soft, ethereal steps move into his space. Not when cool hands grip the back of his shoulders, trying to convince through touch alone to stall his motions.
“You won’t find the answer at the bottom of this hole,” the voice continues, “you couldn’t find it at the bottom of a bottle.”
He tries to drown out the voice by digging louder, faster: dirt bundles flying from his hands like they were fired from a catapult. But no matter how hard he tried to cover the voice, it cut through each noise as if their words were sharp blades.
“You fool no one,” it whispers. It’s in his ear and it’s in the sky. It pummels him from all sides.
“You play the martyr, drape yourself in grief, and con others of their sympathy,” it bites, “But we know what this is truly about. We know what you truly hope to gain from this-“
The man stops. His hands suffocate in the earth. He closes his eyes for the briefest of seconds, not even letting himself enjoy the sweet sensation of rest before they are open again. He pulls back to sit on his haunches, hands curled around each other on his lap. Fingers twisting at the ring that sits on his right hand.
He looks up, green eyes staring into the golden flecks of fury that have been drawn onto the figure above him. Long, auburn hair hangs from its scalp and tickles his exposed shoulders, embers flickering out of them from time to time. Its face has no soft lines, each sharp bone almost jutting from its skin, razor sharp. Its plump lips are curled up in a smile.
“There are things you can hide,” it says, exposing the razor teeth the soft skin covered, “People you cannot hide from. Truths that cannot be buried.”
The man continues to stare, his green eyes bound in vines of red that form cracks on the eggshell of his eye. The skin beneath is purple and puffy. His blonde hair sticks to his forehead, dark with the sweat and the ground. He opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. His mouth and throat are as dry as the sand he trekked days across to get to where he is now.
“Such a conversationalist,” the voice continues, moving around the man as if he were a maypole in spring.
The silk is like torture, the material sliding over his hardened skin like a promise of comfort he does not deserve. The material is stitched into a dress, the gold moving like liquid, complementing the dark bronze of the figure’s skin. It wears heels that have no place where they are, yet hold steady even in the manmade cracks of his labor.
“There is no retribution here, if that is what you seek,” it continues, voice full of mirth: all at his expense.
He continues to stare, matching its hardened gaze with his own. He’s stared down at worst, faced tougher challenges. He’s journeyed to far places, enjoyed the sweetest of pleasures and known the true darkness that hides in the shadows of nights. In the desert, bathed in the glow of the celestial body towering above, with no one and no thing else in miles, he knows one thing for certain: there is only one monster here… and it is not the other.
It bends down, and he follows. It’s in his face, and he can see finer details now. How a splatter of freckles lay across the bridge of its nose, like constellations in the night sky. The golden irises like whirlpools trying to suck him deep into its thrall: to suffocate him in its perversion of the truth.
“Is there anything I can say that can make you speak?” it tilts its head, “Any trap I can set that you can fall into?”
Still he says nothing, but the firm set of his cracking mouth lets the other know the challenge has been accepted.
“I can do this as long as you want,” the person smiles, “my body can last longer than any mortals-especially yours in the conditions you’ve been putting yourself through.”
Still no response.
“Although you’ve had your experience with expiration, haven’t you? I can smell the ghosts that haunt you, see the faces that flash in your nightmares.”
His mouth turns, only for a second. Soon enough he slips the mask back on.
“But you’ve lived long enough that you’ve numbed yourself to all that haven’t you?” it laughs, moving closer, “Yet… I can’t help wonder if there might be one face… a name that can still cause a shiver to crawl its way up your spine.”
The coldness of her breath makes his skin tingle where it was sizzling before.
“Someone who’s been the only one to ever destroy you, from your heart to your soul.”
His pulse skips a beat. He sets his jaw, and draws in his brows.
“You know the rest of us sing praise to this hero, celebrate the day they destroyed you,” it continues, building towards a crescendo, “we gather together and in an unholy choir we sing out the name M-“
A hand shoots out, gripping the other’s neck and crushing it in the man’s grasp, stopping it mid-speech. His eyes, breaking free from their exhausted prison, burn with anger and hatred he hasn’t been able to conjure up in months.
Blue drips from the other’s nose, its lips, yet it still smiles.
“There’s the fire you’ve been missing!”
The other’s hair burns bright orange now, the gold in its eyes filling the rest of the space in a bright glow. It is as if he holds a human torch in his hands.
But he can only feel cold.
He tightens his grasp further and brings the other closer.
All the trapped fire-soul can do is chuckle as it is brought before the man’s ire. Its laughing in the face of death gives him a pause, and he cannot help what comes next.
“What?”
He forgot how he used to sound. It’s been forever since he spoke, forever since he promised his last words would be only for another’s ears. How he’s broken his final promise to them.
It wasn’t the first he’s broken.
The other stops laughing, and brings the fire on its head to a low burn. Its eyes return to a semi-normal state, which are used to sneer at him.
“I win.”
It disappears not long after that in a dark smoke. His fist falters around nothing, and he falls forward onto his hands.
He’s shaking.
He doesn’t know how long he stays there, trembling. It’s only when the moon has replaced the sun and the clay beneath his face has turned to mud does he start to move.
The man slides his hands across the dirt, combing it in with his fingers. It gets easier when it gets to the soft area he christened with his sorrow.
He looks back into the night sky. Stares at the moon as she hangs in the sky. Stares at her compatriots the stars, who cluster together: never alone.
Never him.
He can’t stand the sight of such heavenly creatures and their rapturous enjoyment, and turns away like any common sinner.
But the glow of starlight will not let him escape. In the ground, in the mixture his sadness produced, sits an object that shines brighter than any jewel or gold coin he has ever come across in all his years of travel.
Shaking hands reach out to grasp the luminescent object. It rests, as if made for his palm. It highlights the cracks time has worn into his skin, but in a way that the calloused hands can’t help but look soft to the touch.
The object is star-shaped and small. Its glow as bright as the sun, yet only leaves a gentle warmth that he has only known once in his life.
A gentle warmth that was taken from him too soon, too sudden, that only left a void to grow inside and consume him. But now it has returned… in a way.
The glowing bursts bright for a second before cutting out completely.
In the dark, he lets out a strange warble. The loss of warmth too fast, too sudden yet again. And like before he was still not prepared. And like before he yearns for it again.
But like a wish, the star lights up yet again.
It’s not as bright. It’s not as warm. The glow doesn’t even encompass the full trinket like before.
Instead it emits from the left branch of the star in a continuous pulse, communicating something to him.
He looks up in the direction it points to and sees nothing in the distance but dark and sand. Then, he looks back at the magic he found, as that is the only way he can comprehend what he found. He softly brings his fingers to cradle the star, and brings it to his heart. He looks up once more to the skies, saying a silent prayer to the ones who sent their brother down to aid him down the path he’s been forced to walk.
He stands.
The man climbs out of the hole, to pick up where he left his bag and sword, placing each back to their original position.
He turns, and walks towards whatever fate has in store for him.
The star his only guide, his only friend, his only comfort.
