Catalogue
Sarcophagus of Love
BF231-299 Sensation
Several cars had already left, and he saw them drive north down the long hill and vanish into the countryside. It was an early September evening, mild and with light that mixed pink, orange and shades of purple. He already had made up his mind, but it still stung when the last car yelled for him to hurry up. Hurry up already. But he didn’t.
He stood there, on the top of the hill, on the yard of his childhood home, with his hands on his hips. A warm breeze swept against him, and he felt the cool pink air flow into his T-shirt and vortex in his armpits. He reached for the handlebars on his motorcycle and swung a jean clad leg across the saddle.
He didn’t hear his mother’s cry or his siblings’ frustrated curses. His father was at the front of the caravan, and was miles up the road. The motorcycle’s roar erased all that. The car door was still open. They still believed he would follow.
He turned right. South. They didn’t.
BF501-505 Motivation
In the evenings he sat in his sparsely furnished studio. It was February, and New Orleans was bleak and bleary. Much of the infrastructure was, of course, in a dilapidated state but if you pretended to ignore the broken down cityscape you could almost live a somewhat normal life. He didn’t have any money so he couldn’t live a normal life. He worked in a factory, and welded copper pipes.
One of his coworkers remarked that he ought to find himself a woman, and that comment stuck on his brain. Where would he even begin? The bar scene of yesteryears was no longer a thing. All the other traditional meeting spots had vanished after the unrest. So he did nothing.
In March his coworker brought up the topic again, and one afternoon when he took a different way home from the factory, because of road work, he met her. He was crossing Magazine Street and in the middle of a thought about how much he would like to smoke a cigarette, when he saw her. They saw each other.
They did the most unnatural thing two strangers can do; they walked up to each other and spoke.
BF309-499 Consciousness. Cognition.
How will you know if it is love? How can you be sure? When can you let go of the gnawing doubt? How long does this process usually take? When will you begin to sense what the other person is feeling? Can you ever be sure that someone loves you?
He touched her shoulder lightly when they stepped into the apartment. It was a wool cardigan, and it followed the outline of her shoulders and cascaded down toward her hips in a dark forest glen. He smelled a vague scent of lambswool and rain and a perfume that reminded him of lily of the valley. But it was too faint to know for sure. Maybe it was his own memory of picking the flowers by the river near his childhood home?
They sat at the small kitchen table and the light was pale yellow. They had not yet touched. The spoke. They talked. They listened but with less attention because they were thinking many things. Thinking and looking at each other’s hands. The four hands that were resting on the table top, perhaps less than a few inches from each other. They were almost sure now. Their fingers moved across the vast ocean and held each other’s hands.
She leaned forward and whispered into his right ear:
“What is it you’re looking for?”
They kissed and the universe opened up.
BD493-701 Cosmology
The heavy stone sarcophagus was covered in thin storage slots. In the slots were rows of glowing and non-glowing glass bars. The bars had symbols engraved on them. The bars were about the size of a cell phone. The bars indicated historical eras in the person’s life. Non-glowing bars indicated eras of sleep, and glowing bars eras of activity.
She was standing next to the sarcophagus with the being. It was him as he truly was. Broad hammerhead shark-like features up near the temples, and irregular shaped jigsaw skin cells. And the knowledge that he was him. He showed her that he had woken up a few times throughout the eras. That he was him. That he was the man. That the man had been experienced by him. That he was still the man and the being at the same time. And that he loved her.
And she understood.
Thanks for reading this short story of mine. Written for the Soaring Twenties with the topic of “A Good Life” in mind.
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Fascinating premise and piece, especially the final act. The ledger of slumber, proof of being, proof of love, all portrayed through a mysterious tale of futurist archeology. I really like this one.
Two strangers speaking to each other? Now, that's pretty far-fetched. A talking sarcophagus would be more plausible. Oh, wait. Haha. Cool post, Minna. I enjoyed each of them.