Nick Johns Week 137: Losers’ Weepers

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Nick John’s Picture Choice: 2

Title: Losers’ Weepers

NB This story is a follow-on from (though not a sequel to) my last story, written for Daily Picspiration 137 - ‘Finders’ Keepers’.

Squinting past the spotlight, I peer at the upturned faces of the people who have come to see me die.

Well, people, have I got a show for you.

I draw a steadying breath and leap from the platform.

Tumbling, twisting, the whirling kaleidoscope of my view shows me the roof above, then the sawdust strewn floor below.

I am flying.

But not for long.

I stretch out and feel the wrench of my shoulder muscles as my resin swiped palms grasp the bar of the trapeze.

The crowd’s roar is tinged with disappointment.

We don’t work with a net. Just like real life.

Anyway, the marks don’t like it.

I flip to anchor my feet into the ropes and dangle upside down.

On the third swing I clap once, to establish the rhythm of the routine, and extend my arms for the next upswing.

Rebekah jumps into space.

Empty space.

I am not there.

But I will be - as her fall and my swing coincide.

My wrists feel the familiar strength of her grasp and my hands hold her.

Safe from harm. Just like real life.

Her eyes bore into me, from two arms length, still angry.

A tear rolls down my face and falls glistening into the darkness far beneath her.

I release her to catch the second bar and she somersaults to the far platform.

Screw her. If anyone has a right to be angry, it’s me.

I swing back and catch Tony.

He grins up at me.

The same dazzling, boyish grin that has always protected him from the consequences of his actions. Well not this time, brother.

I know what I saw, despite her denials.

I flip him to the second bar and the main part of the act begins.

Tony and I flip Rebekah back and forth between us.

In one moment she clings to me, in the next he holds her close.

Just like real life.

Taking a break on the platform before our finale, I look down at the marks.

Our world is more honest than theirs.

Only a few of them come to admire the skills on show. Most, even though they will not admit it, even to themselves, come to see Death. It is the same urge that makes cars slow down to gawk at a car crash.

As showmen, we know this and the show is built around our seemingly impossible dice game with the Grim Reaper. We let the marks glimpse a world more visceral than their own, more vivid; a world where one small mistake could carry the ultimate consequence.

They pay us to tweak Death’s nose on their behalf.

Well, here goes.

Our finale is simple really, despite all the drum rolls and flourishes. Despite Rebekah’s scanty, provocative poses and painted pouting at every man in the place. Despite Tony’s preening and winking at all the girls.

It works like this.

First swing. Tony jumps to my catch. I launch him to the second bar.

Second swing I catch his ankles after his double somersault back to me. In the mean time Rebekah jumps to the second bar and then leaps on towards us.

Third swing, we both swoop back for Tony to ankle catch Rebekah’s second jump.

The twist is that, on that third swing, I ‘lose’ my grip on one of his legs, apparently forcing him to flail wildly and make a late, despairing, one handed grab for her.

The marks lap it up.

We bask in their applause for having taunted and cheated the Old Man once more.

The old clown once told me.

“Deep in their darkest moments, people still cling to their primitive beliefs that their rituals and rabbits’ feet can protect them. Give them power over Death. We know the truth. Death is always with us, walking half a step behind, idling along, capriciously choosing one over another for no other reason than he can; like you choose to step over one ant while crushing another. No-one controls his power.”

Well, Father, you were wrong about that.

I launch the wind up swing to begin the finale.

Tonight I have that power.

I decide who pays the ferryman.

My second swing, or my third?

My brother alone, or my wife as well?

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Nick John Week 125: The Call of the Wildwood

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Nick John’s Picture Choice:

Title: The Call of the Wildwood

The trees hate me.

I have been their implacable enemy, but the depth of their malevolence, honed over centuries of slow growth, cuts more keenly now I am alone. I drove him to keep us safe from them. For years we controlled them, he and I. In the springtime of our love, we would venture out. He, armed with the tools of their subjugation, the well honed axe, sharp toothed saw and, the thing they feared most – fire; and together, we beat the trees back.

They were kept at a respectful distance. No shoot or sapling was tolerated. For years we maintained our ascendency. Tireless seasonal toil kept them at bay.

In the summer of our love we erected fences, evidence of the range of our proud enclave. The children were even allowed to venture to the margins of the trees. I cautioned them about the dangers that could lie concealed deep within their fey shadows, and sternly enjoined them not to wander too deep, but my concerns proved unfounded. The trees held no power over Jack and John. As soon as they were old enough our offspring sought out the city and soon settled, never returning to help their father maintain our refuge. He never recovered from their desertion, and the first sad small signs of autumn showed in his now wrinkled face.

I suppose I always feared that the trees held an allure for him. He walked among them for days. And nights; and, as our bond slowly withered, the trees began their slow, imperceptible, re-conquest of our refuge.

I feared that he would abandon me for them, that he would linger, trapped, wrapped in some timeless, nameless arboreal glamour. I watched, anxiously fearing that they would ensnare him. But he always returned to me, emerging from their tangling, snagging grasp, stamping his boots to rid them of the trees’ cloying, mulchy earth; flapping his coat to dislodge wicked, clinging leaves and seeds.

But trees possess the power of ages and, in the hard crack winter of our love they bested me.

On a stark moonlit night when winter held a frosty knife to the throat of all creation, he finally heard their summons. He scrambled, heedless of scratching, snagging branches, climbing higher and higher, gave himself up to the siren call. Through my rimed, darkened windows I saw him crawl out onto a limb and watched, helpless as he surrendered to them. His last mad tarantella was danced, not in my sheltering arms, but in the gnarled embrace of the blasted Oak, stage lit by the sere, watery moon.

So I faced the hatred of the trees alone.

Next spring I watched as sly seeds sprouted and, with each verdant awakening, blossomed into saplings replete with green loathing, the approaching vanguard of the trees’ inevitable triumph.

In summer’s arrogant fullness they blocked out the sun, creating dark pools of serotinal spite where their seedling plots could mature.

In equinoctial gales they cast down boughs to beat down our once proud perimeter fences. Autumnal malice dripped from every branch. Brown, treacherous leaves swirled toward the house carpeting the ground; swathes of slimy, rotting matter, their perfume of putrefaction reminding me of the approaching season of my loss.

Bending ever closer in their stark, spare nakedness, the barren trees commune openly now, safe in the knowledge that I no longer have the power or the will to control them. At night, I hear them plotting my destruction, their branches whispering, clashing together, beating a wild woody tattoo, preparing to engulf me. Their whistling voices, borne on the heedless wind, the harbinger of winter’s desolation, call to me. And, now, by the first pallid light of the solstice sun that no longer provides life giving warmth, the old Oak mocks me with the noose, calling me to abandon my now dilapidated fortress; to let all that we built return to wilderness, and to unite with my love once more, under the dominion of the trees.

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Despite his Mother telling him not to, Nick continues to make things up.

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