supple sway of her body, how could he forget, how?”
He didn’t say a word as he lowered his child to the ground and took his wife into his arms, he simply kissed her, kissed her like their first kiss and all the kisses that they shared, and when they parted he just looked into her eyes.
How could he forget?
“I have a picnic all prepared” she said, “all your favorites, are you hungry?”
“Famished” he replied.
Beside them was a checkered tablecloth lying on the grass and on that cloth was a straw basket filled with a never ending banquet of August treats, and so they sat down and began filling their stomachs with deep fried chicken, mounds of potato salad, mustard hamburgers and catsup fries, juicy spare ribs and honey smothered ham, sinful deviled eggs and crisped cold slaw, fresh baked breads and skinned carrot sticks, sour pickles and sweet corn on the cob, yellow cheese and green salads, chocolate caked a foot tall and warm brownies fresh from the oven, a thousand flavors of ice-cream and seed spitting watermelon, they only thing the man didn’t eat were the mushrooms that were offered to him, seeing them he turned his head away until his wife placed them back in the basket never to be seen again. But all the other things he did consume, enough for a dozen men and when his wife said. “Go easy there mister or I’ll put you on a diet” he simply relied, “I can’t help it, your cooking is the best in the whole world”.
But when the little girl asked for more she was given all she wanted for neither her father nor mother would say no to those trusting eyes.
And when at last they were done eating they washed it all down with a river of lemonade, sat back and laughed for they didn’t have a care in the world.
Not far away the old man sat on a polished stone that resembled the head of a long forgotten god, he didn’t look at the man and his family, he was too busy reading from a small book, and all about him were other writings, ancient scrolls of calfskin, leather bound books of all sizes and languages, hundreds, thousands, a mountain of knowledge in all forms and shapes, and along with the books were memory dicks, information crystals and bio-storage units, all the history of man at his feet.
“I wonder if I've been changed in the night” the old man read “Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is 'Who in the world am I?' Ah, that's the great puzzle!”
Looking over at the man and his wife and child the old man smiled, “so long ago, so long ago”.
Beside the now breaking sea the fallen giant still lay unmoving under an afternoon sky, the wind blew hard and the growing clouds tumbled passed the falling sun, dangerous Arrow-tails sat on their woven nests in the withering vines that now clung precariously to the body of the metal man. They had feasted on the Day-clawers and Jaw-snappers and laid their precious eggs and now they would guard them from other predators that needed them to feed their growing young. The Light-flowers that had sprung up with the glow of the morning now hung their heads as shadows began to move across the land.
Father, mother and child lay on their backs and looked up at the afternoon sky.
“Daddy?” the little girl asked.
“Yes?” the father said.
“What is that in the sky?” and she pointed with a tiny finger at a small dark spot in the otherwise blue sky.
The Father could see a dark blemish in perfect sky as if a slip of a heavenly artists hand had dipped into the wrong palette and placed a black scar on his elegant work.
“Don’t look at it” the Father said and turning away he put his hand on his wife’s arm, “you never looked more beautiful”.
“Beauty is always in the eye of the beholder” she replied, “and you will always see me as you do now”.
“Always is a long time”.
“As long as you are both with me it will seem like only a day”.
“Then why did you leave us?” the woman asked coldly.
He continued to look into her eyes but something began to pull him, not at his body but at his mind, something beyond his control, and he again looked up at the sky and there he saw that the dark circle had grown larger, and again he turned away to see his daughter sitting near him with a basket full of mushrooms, “where did you get those?” he asked harshly as he grabbed the basket from her hands, “I said where did you get those, answer me!”
The little girl looked at him with frightened eyes but she didn’t speak, she only pointed to the space around them for there were now hundreds of the tiny growths sprouting from the earth, they stood shoulder to shoulder like dome headed Lilliputian soldiers ready for battle.
Angry the Father tossed the basket away and stood looking at the landscape around him, except for the fields of mushrooms it seemed the same, the mountains, the jungles, the structures and the animals, all there as before, but something had changed, the snowcapped mountains were dark now and great chunks of ice toppled from their lofty peaks, tumbled down steep walls and crashed into deep canyons, and the green jungles were wilted by heat and the emerald leaves were turning dry brown and dropping in the millions to the matted rainforest floor, the coloring book of earths creatures lay on the parched ground like so many half-eaten animal crackers , even those ancient creations to man’s ingenuity were beginning to show their age, the pyramids began to topple as if the beast headed gods of Egypt had grown weary of their building block toys and left them for other amusements, the Eiffel tower began to rust, the Great Wall no longer held out intruders, Quasimodo’s bells fell silent.
The summer feast turned rancid as hordes of insects nibbled at the stale bread, mildewed fruit and rotten meat, the ice-cream melted, the chocolate cake hardened, the brownies were covered in ants and flies floated in the lemonade.
But the Father again turned away because he wished to look on the faces he knew.
“What’s the matter?” the wife asked.
“Nothing, I was just thinking….”
“Were you trying to remember?” she asked.
“No” the Father said, “I was trying to forget”.
The summer dress woman put her arms around the tired man and held him close, “what were you trying to forget?”
“I don’t want to talk about it”.
“but you use to talk to me about everything” the wife said looking into his eyes, “you use to tell me about your dreams and your dreams within dreams, you use to share your life with me and I with you, and when you were hurt I felt the pain, and when you were happy I laughed, yours was the first face in morning and the last at night, you are me and I am you”.
“Yes, that’s right” the Father said with a smile, “I was just feeling a little sad that’s all”.
“Were you sad because you killed us?”
There was a long pause as the words of the woman cut deep into the heart of the man.
“What did you say?”
“I said, is it because you killed us!?”
The man drew back in horror at hearing such words from the women he had given his life too, “that’s a lie, I wouldn’t do anything to harm you or my child”.
Overhead in the paradise sky angry clouds began to form, the sound of lightening broke the air and a strong wind began to blow from all directions, the tablecloth rose up along with all the rotten food and crumbled basket and vanished into nothing.
Nearby the old man put down his book and looked at the quarreling couple, “Years of love have been forgot, In the hatred of a minute”, then he felt the wind on his face and saw the land changing around him, “all things change” he said with a sigh.
The soldier just sat and laughed, “Brain bugs”.
The father stood in the vortex of the growing storm with his family standing before him, but they had changed, the blue summer dress that his wife wore to cover her supple limbs was torn and dirty, her long brown hair was matted with blood and her face was
scarred with horrible burns.
“You said you would never leave us” she screamed, “but you did, you left us to die!”
The man put his hands over hear ears refusing to hear, “I didn’t leave you, I didn’t!”
“You promised to take care of us but you didn’t!”
“It wasn’t me!”
“You promised to love us always, but you didn’t!”
“NO! That wasn’t me!”
The blue dress tore away revealing a blackened body of horror, “of course it was you, look what you did to me, look what you did to her!”
The man shut his eyes refusing to see what he didn’t want to see.
“Look!” the woman cried out.
Unable to stay in the darkness the man turned to gaze on his child, what he saw made him shutter, the pink ruffles were gone and only tattered rags remained, the golden hair was scorched and the eyes were no longer there, just walnut shell hollows, the once milk white body was covered in oozing scabs of red and black.
“Where were you daddy?” the broken doll said, “Why did you go?”
With his new found heart breaking the Father took his dying family into his arms and looked up at the dark oval that was devouring the sky, “I’m sorry” he wept, “I’m so sorry!”
There was a blast of light as great towers of fire rose up around him, first one then another and another, blazing monoliths of colliding atoms, the atomic Kraken set free, the ultimate weapon, the BOMB.
And they all looked like giant
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