My grandmother was born in 1896. In 1969 we watched men landing on the moon together. She said she thought her generation would probably have seen more change than any other - from horses to men on the moon.
^ ^ ^ ^ ^
Certainly looks that way. Even time traveling from 2021 back to 1960 surely isn't as radically a different shift in worlds as a person in 1960 traveling back to 1899. The year 1906 is still viable for a movie Western like
Old Henry, and many have been set in years well after that.
The old plathitudes are the best.
I struggled long and hard against posting that.
Recruiting Middle Eastern folklore as metaphor for this common category of woe. Wanted to simply title it "Camasb's Fate", but he goes by a thousand different other names, depending upon the particular account of the tale. So Shahmaran had to be directly included as a signpost. (edit) Final revision.
- - - - - -
Shahmaran (Camasb's fate)
The brute shock,
And the extremity,
Of that queen slain for King's Remedy.
Now I am the next block
Cemented by his mute Bricklayer.
Wed to this sage, this wraith,
Her lover, who was her betrayer.
I weighed by misgiving,
But he haunted by his breach of faith.
Each day, this man's guilt is reliving
ache.
The calling
Of a cavernous space
Escalating, roiling in his face...
Soon he is withdrawing
To her realm, an ophidian place.
Scaly in the distance,
He dwindles from my biped existence.
Her bereaved subjects there
May damn him; yet a wry curse that leans
To anoint a Judas snake, as Queen's
heir.
Murder
Is like unlocking the combination lock on a bike.
All the numbers have to match,
But the last number unlocks it.
Click.
Bang.
The last number unlocked it.
But all the numbers matched.
Didn't intend for a descriptive snapshot to gradually warp into a hackneyed, story-like account. But there you go -- "provocation by prose" -- one of the many perils one may encounter in the streets of Weekend.
- - - - - -
The Requisite Discontinuity in Irrational Iteration
Verna led Claire down to the metal door -- her flashlight illuminated that far less obscure, second barrier to the hidden basement. "I don't know how she kept this a secret all those years," she said ruefully.
Claire awkwardly pressed her back against the stone wall on one side of the descending steps, then immediately withdrew in reaction to the dampness. "You never explored around this place as a kid?"
"No," Verna replied. "They moved here after I graduated and left. Dad died a couple of years later. Then... mom told me that my nomadic Aunt finally got over her problems and reclaimed Amy. But she lied..."
"Why would your mother do something as monstrous as this? Are you going to open that door and finally verify that Amy's remains are even in there?"
"The police might not want the evidence disturbed." Vera said. "Besides, I don't have the means yet to unlock it."
Claire faintly snorted. "So you are going to tell them? No longer dreading the spotlight this will shine on your family..."
Suddenly, there was a loud thump as something seemed to hit the door from the inside.
Claire jumped back. "What the..."
"You see, that's the actual elephant in the room," Verna commented. "According to my mother's notes, she got fearful of falling, in the routine of coming down here. Stopped giving Amy food and water after the first few years. She decided to let her die."
Claire ventured: "It's just rats or something. Animals."
"I doubt ordinary vermin could do that. And if the walls are still as solid as out here... What else could enter there? Watch this. Listen." Verna rapped against the door three times. A repeat reaction occurred on the opposite side.
"That's impossible," Clarie remarked. "She can't be alive. If that was opened, do you seriously believe that we'd find a filthy, stringy-haired woman breathing in that stench-drenched darkness? Gone mad a thousand times over, to the point of assigning names to her accumulating turds and having conversations with them? Why doesn't she yell something right now -- at least scream or howl or mumble, if she can't remember speech."
"I don't feel it is Amy." Verna said. "At least, not anymore. No mortal could survive for months without nourishment, much less years."
Claire laughed. "Alright, you got me. Tell whoever your buddy is in there to come out. You do realize the only reason I accepted this up till now was because your mother was buried only a few days ago. Who would be inventing a prank like this so soon, that disparaged their own mother as wickedly deranged? Seems more like you're the one who..."
* * * * * * *
Was she still unconscious, or was the lingering nothingness merely due to an absence of light? Why couldn't she taste the thick, crusted syrup in her mouth? That had to be blood. That strange agony, as if some oral limb had been severed, surely had hemorrhaging associated with it. Where was the salty flavor?
"How could you not have bled to death by now from a missing tongue?" Claire mentally wondered. "Or choked on the gush of it, or something?"
A circus of other pains was converging on her -- from a bump on her head to scattered cuts and bruises. She heard unclear voices.
She crawled around on the concrete floor and against the stone-walled emptiness until finally encountering the metal of the door. Despite a ludicrous amount of weakness, Claire struck it with surprising vehemence.
Later, three wraps from the other side of the door ensued. Failing to yield to her mutilated condition, she returned the pattern, as if shouting for help with it.
Then a revelation -- an absurd revelation of abyssal magnitude -- unleashed its clarity upon her like a hurricane blast. "Oh, my God," she thought, behind the drizzling tears.