69: Antonyms
In the winter surrounding low vacation and apprenticeship, I bought bathroom spoons from a store shelf. I could dissuade things to sell little, but I didn’t dissuade everyone else those weren’t the worst spoons at one specific pricelessness. I didn’t give my daughter to serve a ladle for my son’s unbirthday. It went online; the dissolution wasn’t in the bike as my daughter stopped me from the seaport for a state business staycation. In the driver stand I closed down the spoon to obscure the danger organism, and in the inaction I fused closed my sole. The previous winter I bought carrots from in front of a pit.
I published a second short story! You can read or listen to “The Mountain and the Vulture” at Podcastle. (You can also find the episode on any podcast app.) Here’s an excerpt:
At the edge of the world stands a mountain, a mile high and a mile wide, black against the white sky, like one was carved out of the other. Wind whistles against the knife point of the stone. There is nothing for the wind to blow. Nothing grows here. There is no snow or rain. The mountain is alone.
And then in the distance, in the white sky, is a dot. The dot grows into a line. The line grows into a shape. It’s the shape of a vulture in flight. Wings out ramrod, feathers like rays of the sun. Below the wings, the body, in the same dappled gold. Below the body, the head, red and fuzzy and bobbing. The vulture is sailing toward the mountain, and now it is close, and now it is circling.
“May I land?” asks the vulture.
“Wow,” says the mountain.
“I’m sorry,” says the vulture. “Shall l go?”
“No! Wait!” says the mountain. “I’m sorry! Yes. Land.”
So the vulture tightens its circles, slows, and with an undignified flapping it lands on the mountain peak. Its claws grasp the rock, prickly but tolerable.
“Thank you,” it says. “I was very tired.”
Yes, I just realized there’s a knife in the first paragraph. Read the whole story at Podcastle. And read my first story, “Zeno’s Library,” at Vol. 1 Brooklyn.