FIGS AND WASPS

Holly Brissette

The world moves like the hands of a clock, rotating slightly in a darkened room, abandoned. Of course it wasn’t always like this, and that is to say the world was not an empty vessel of lava stretching under its crust. No the world was busy and bustling, but the world in its room was still forgotten and avoided. Long ago, when the world was the center of the universe and the center of gods’ attention, there was a man. A man I call him, when he was more than such. A beast, perhaps, the essence of life. Yes once something painfully human and achingly not. Doomed by his own kin to live, to love, to suffer, to live, then die, over and over again. The man who was not, who is not a man in the moment I speak of. His body shook and ached, his fingers danced shakily reaching needily for a bottle or two that lay abandoned after a sort of abuse. His fingers brushed the bottle before the comprehension that the cold smooth surface was just the medicine he had been looking for. His hand came alight and wrapped around the bottle bringing it to his lips, only to revel in the bitterness not of tongue but the taste most foul of the disappointment of finding his bottle emptier than him. Aeris, for that was his name, carelessly let the bottle drop onto the wood floors beneath him and his bed where it slipped just underneath, glittering in the light of the fire like the eyes of a cat waiting for feet to appear in view. Aeris found himself completely purposeless, he was alone, helpless, and most importantly alone. An uncomfortable awareness to be surrounded by nothing but yourself, its own underneath in the world above. And above him he couldn’t help but see something, two somethings, in the rafters glittering like rubies. Aeris almost cared enough to investigate it further, but he needed a drink, he needed it like oil needs water. He strapped on his boots and shuffled outside, pausing at the door. His hair stood on end, and before he could stop himself he turned and glanced into his empty abode. The warm fire flickered welcomingly, and the inside of the hutch seemed much less foreboding than the moist, foggy and cold air outside. Before Aeris blinked he found something amiss. A sense of foreboding wrapped over his shoulders like a thin cape fighting to stay against the wind. Then his door slammed shut and he let the thought close with it, he didn’t want to remind himself of the

ghosts that haunted his life and his home; for that’s all it had to be, just one of the ghosts that he could not purge through the bottom of his bottles. He instead focused on how he found himself consistently not inebriated enough for these shameful journeys. The pitying gazes lining up one by one behind windows on top of faces, followed by those old friends asking him if he would like to stay behind their closed walls for the Banishment of Pestilence, or those less familiar looking away at pieces of made up muck stuck nowhere on their shoes. Thankfully lost in his musings, he failed to notice those glances and the thoughts that hounded at his heels, insistent on what little scraps he had. He was in fact almost happy, a lost moment of nostalgia, a moment of time hung up and forgotten, the moment unattainable for even the gods. The memory filtered about in his nearby atmosphere, the sky’s gray gloominess of the day became a summers eve, the environment heavy with anticipation, with gazes up rapt toward the night sky unable to tear away. But Aeris was an exception and so was she, in a moment of magic held bound within the golden strings of destiny, in that lovely night their gazes met, the spaces previously laying in occupancy near them soon shifted as they sat beneath the stars and awaited the annual miracle. As he made his way over, her enchanting lips curled ever so slightly into a smile. His heart shot up to his chest and he sat down. They didn’t say anything, each waiting for the other to make their move like two beasts on a plane of battle, they circled one another until the silence became much too unbearable to wait another moment. She spoke first, and Aeris felt like he should beat his ears for being so cowardly. He flustered as she spoke. Then Aeris opened the door to the tavern, slamming it open unthinkingly. The barkeeper looked at him with a slight glare. “Brother, don’t be so cold.” Aeris tried to sound cheerful, the facade barely convincing behind his disheveled appearance. “Brother close the door, lest you let in the cold,” the barkeeper shot back. “My bad, my bad.” Aeris closed the door and walked to the bar. “Usual please, Myrmre.” “Aha, your tab is a bit high. I’d recommend paying it off before you rack it up again.” Aeris patted himself down before, by some miracle, stumbling upon a pouch. He set it on the table. “For now and later.” Mymre looked at it and turned away. “So much drink can only do so much, and much of that is bad.” His brow furrowed as he counted out the money. “As your brother in this hard time, we mourn my sister together; we are brothers in mourning.” Aeris stiffened, “ I don’t think I need a reminder…”

Mymre looked at him. “And neither do I brother. You, my friend, are a walking reminder, for me, for yourself, the people of this town. Your nature is a precarious one; while you mourn you think of her, and you think of her because you mourn. It has to stop eventually brother. As dear as my sister was to me, I have to live.” Aeris stared unblinkingly into Mymre’s eyes. “And at some point you have to as well. I beg you, do it for her, do it for me, and do it for yourself. We don’t need a second tragedy, brother.” Mymre broke his gaze first. “None more than I would be happier to see you become an old man, with bride, perhaps even little ones.” Aeris didn’t respond. Mymre’s shoulders slunk and the look of hope in his eyes smouldered out. “Brother, please think on my words today.” Aeris’ face screwed up, but he swallowed bitterly and made Mymre content with his answer. It was a promise he would one day have kept, if not for what would happen moments after his feet stopped being ground upon the wooden boards of his brother-in-law’s tavern. His eyes glazed over as he was swallowed up by his memories like a drowning man, yet content to his fate. Her lips, her mouth, opened, made to speak something courageous, those words something that Aeris had yet to find. At the first utterance of her words, Aeris found himself rapt with attention. He startled when the sky blew up. Aeris came back to himself and realized he had fallen off trail and into the mud. He scoffed himself, falling like a tot. At first he felt annoyed enough to get up out of the earth, but let himself relax into it. It felt unpleasant and it was cold, but dear gods if that wasn’t what Aeris wanted. The dim awareness sunk in that someone was laughing at him, at first it began as a low chuckle but evolving into hysterics, thick and supple such as chunky butter that had sat for a long time and the mist was certainly just as thick. “Mymre is it you? You are who?” Aeris snarled confused upon the tune. “I am me,” said a voice as sweet as boysenberry jam. “Mother of bee, of wasp, creation it’s cusp.” Aeris set fit to burst, an overflowing dam.“Speak not rhyme, only reason.” “I will one season, but now is no such time.” The voice circled Aeris like a hawk upon the breeze on a summer day. Yes, he decided, such a voice circling in may should certainly sound as a bray. But neat and tidy unsuiting of her he would pray. Sweet she seemed to no one, while voices hit like the saccharin sweet notes of bells, she had her tells. The stranger spoke wrong in her little song. But the game was long. Yes the unease prickled and the maw trickled as the star of the game decided to reveal frontstage. The tidings of rage began to fade yet Aeris swelled.

From her curtains of fog she poked her head out into the bog. Aeris upon the sight paled, but was stuck merely gawking, and the strangeness stepped frontward stalking. But finally with reniued rebellious vigor his body railed. “Do you not recognize me father?” The voice that belonged to the face that did Aeris bother. But could something so out of place be considered a face? “I bare no line,” Aeris snarled. “You bare a father resemblance to some foul swine.” “I was the first, one of only.” She gestured wide, and she ignored the insult, let it simmer as her beady eyes glimmer through mist. “You are none, you are lonely.” Aeris made to move retrograde. “I am none! And I am lonely!” Her cheery tone didn’t delay and Aeris felt the ground he could spray. “A monster you are lowly.” “A man, a meal, a lamb, those are things you are, not am I.” The cannibal’s damnable mandibles clicked in tangible hunger. He couldn’t take away, even as his legs began to break and shake. The stranger’s black eyes shone upon a shiny golden head. “Father, come closer – please, a hug?” The bug, her head twisted to side and she spied his revulsion. “No, no.” Aeris, poor thing, his heart finally shriveled and died, tugged by two different compulsions. His skull began to ring. “Nonsense! It’s been so long!” She jumped forward and embraced him. He shook, it was so wrong. Her hands bony, yet strong, circled him as she hummed her song. Her hands began to sink in. Aeris squirmed recognizing the sin. In the strangeness with barely contained haste they drew closer to lay to waste. The strangeness, her body acting simply as bolster. Aeris began to scream as he felt a slight nibble upon his neck. “Hush.” Then there was a crunch, his body bunched. Something hit the ground as for a moment his temple was beheld until she dropped harshly without soothing (with the love and care of any farmer with a pained back and bags of grain to move). Blood pooling by the pound hitting the ground with sound. It all faded away like a dream as she began to preen. Blood dripped off obsidian mandibles, just as black and just as sharp. She had done her part. All she needed now was Derlix to pull through on his end. Just for a moment time was spent, to stare upon the bloody visceral meat there upon the clay. It would be such a shame to leave as such without moment to stay lest it decay. Her eyes glimmered and she began to start as her jaws began to part.