Threshing Floor: August 2022
🙦 See all of the lovely names published below? We here at Threshing Floor would love to see your name on the list as well! Please give us your writing—we’re starving for words over here!
Poems: The Huntsman, Remembering Dad — Jessica Evans; Incantation — James Hill; Never Trust a Tow Truck — Ava Hixson; Our Kinds of Trees — Michael Thomas Jones; Why Is It Snowing in April? — Jacqueline Louviere
Reviews: Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness — Judah Wolff
Stories: Song of Honey — Sugar van der Meer; Final Fight: Eliot v Paul — Clive Miller; Happy Hour — Madelyn Youngren
🙧 Poems 🙦
The Huntsman
He throws the rifle strap
over his shoulder.
Out-striding his comrades,
he conquers the ridge.
A boulder goes crashing down
to its final resting place.
He does not wake the bear.
The bear will sleep forever.
Remembering Dad
There's a twinkle in his pale blue sailor's eyes.
Sporting a trucker's hat, he leans in.
He's got a joke for you.
Jessica Evans is picture book author/illustrator, an elementary school art teacher, and a school librarian. She lives in the Palouse region of Idaho with her husband and her four delightful children and has played volleyball most of her life.
Incantation
Spindrift, lightning, sea-foam, twire;
Words to set the heart on fire.
Chuckle, bustle, hearth and gloam;
Soft round words that smell like home.
Brabble, snicker, snark and scowl;
Inner beasts that stalk and howl.
Airy, lambent, halcyon;
Lingering sprites of summers gone.
Ghosts that live on after death,
Colored with another’s breath.
Common magic, daily cast,
Cutting loose or binding fast.
Cinnamon and Zanzibar;
Words to send the mind afar.
Crepuscular and pulchritude;
Misshapen words - an evil brood.
Words of ice and words of thunder;
Words that tear a heart asunder.
Words of wisdom, words of woe;
Sounds that bind another’s soul.
In these powers faint we see
The Word that spoke the world to be.
James Hill lives in Viola, ID, with his wife, two sons and three daughters. He enjoys writing software and poetry, but not at the same time.
Never Trust a Tow Truck
The pallbearer arrives clothed in construction neon
Beady eyeballs stuffed of disasters, more than he leads on
Crashes and glass shatters, his phone rings
Making nickels and pennies from broken things
Some lift with knees, others employ hooks
Whisking away machines we forsook
those colors are not appropriate
For the funeral this debacle creates
As you carelessly carry her to the sun
Oh, to uncover her resting among the junk
In a desolate graveyard boundless and bare
delivered by your strong, pink arm covered in hair
Onward, procession, process your reports and violations
Brought about by my hopeless hesitations
Ava Hixson is a young person hailing from Moscow, Idaho who is always on the hunt for the ironic and the beautiful. She has been writing poetry since last May and painting since she could hold a brush.
Our Kinds of Trees
aroused by self image
as the apex predator,
an invasive species
leaving imprints
on each ecosystem,
we kiss.
call me
johnny appleseed.
johnny appleseed
was a chick magnet.
missionary cultist,
big on fertility,
alcohol, the wild.
probably a slave owner.
we drag around big chain gangs,
well strapped sled teams,
whole chariot races
of organisms
to do the
work for us of
collecting nectar.
Cruelty is the engine
of a beautiful world.
Our kinds of trees
are withering away,
sexless, toothless, mild,
leaving fruitless forests full
of gnarled husks,
subdivisions in perfect rows of
house sized tombstones.
maybe some malice still lurks
in the old woods,
but so far I haven't seen it.
Michael Thomas Jones teaches literature in Moscow, Idaho.
Why Is It Snowing in April?
Easter is almost upon us, yet
Fat snowflakes fall from the sky,
Turn my hair white, shine
In weak sunlight.
This unseasonal snow looks
Soft and round, floating
In the air, like cotton bolls
that grow back home.
In shimmering southern
heat, those bolls
Also shine white in the sun.
A thousand miles away, fields
Spread for miles, full
Of plants bursting with
cotton that gleams.
So too do northern fields
Gleam, as snow gently
Smothers frozen earth.
Jacqueline Louviere, ersatz poet and aspiring student from southern Louisiana.
🙧 Reviews 🙦
Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness, dir. Sam Raimi (2022), 2h 6m
Listen, I don’t make a whole lot of money, so when I go to the movies I want the most out of the 12 dollars that a ticket usually costs. When I went to see the second Doctor Strange movie, I had set zero expectations for it, as I feel you should when downing one of Marvel’s bowls of cinematic gruel. Even with nonexistent expectations, I somehow came away disappointed anyways. During the movie, out of sheer boredom, my friend and I developed a new rating system with which to rank this multi-million dollar puddle of flaming vomit. It goes like this: since a ticket usually costs 12 bucks, we would start at zero and add or subtract dollars and cents based on things we did and didn’t like the movie in the hopes it would pay back the majority of the ticket cost. Spoilers ahead, though I feel like having a spoiler warning for this movie is like telling someone they might get sick from eating old roadkill.
Plot Synopsis:
America Chavez is a mutant with the power to travel the multiverse and needs Doctor Strange to save her from Scarlet Witch, who wants to steal her power so she can go to a universe where her kids are real.
Anyways, this is how the movie fared:
Doctor Strange possesses the corpse of an alternate version of himself and turns into a
zombie = 25¢
The character America Chavez = -$5
Doctor Strange has 3 eyes = 25¢
Scarlet Witch is in this movie = -$2
Scarlet Witch’s kids are in this movie = -$2
There is a green cow man wizard in this movie = $5
A guy has his mouth magicked shut and blows his own head up with his magic voice = 25¢
The illuminati is in this movie? = 50¢
The illuminati in this movie is totally pointless? -50¢
Doctor Strange, the hero of this movie, uses magic to make a powerless an innocent man beat himself mercilessly for weeks for no reason = $1.25
The alternate version of captain america is a british lady with a jetpack = 25¢
Doctor Strange, who is a snarky turd to everyone, cares about and wants to help a random obnoxious teenager the moment he sees her? = -$2.50
Zombie Doctor Strange makes a cape out of ghosts to fly into a magic tomb = $1
Sam Raimi made spider-man 3 = $5
Sam Raimi made this movie = -$4
The gummy worms I got were pretty good = 25¢
A lot happens but barely any of it goes anywhere = -$5
Cowman is apparently unkillable = $2
John Krasinski is in this movie = -25¢
Doctor Strange fights an alternate himself with magic music notes = 50¢
Not enough violence = -$2.50
A lot of boring and pointless CGI monsters = -50¢
This movie has a very underwhelming multiverse travel montage = -$1
I have discovered that Cow Man has an entire backstory and is a fully-fledged character in the comics = $3
People told me this movie would be scary. It is not = -75¢
America Chavez kills her parents because she is scared of a bee = $1.50
This is one of worst movies I have seen in the last year = -$10
The final net worth: -$15
Don’t watch this movie. Unless you want to. I have no control over your decisions, and that scares me.
Judah K. Wolff
🙧 Stories 🙦
Song of Honey (Part One)
Their house had been uprooted from the earth, uprooted on a promise made by a god in Adam’s dream. A god he had never met.
As he was waking, before he had made a decision about the veracity of the dream, before Adam even told Jamie, something else, a creature, appeared in the corner window of their bedroom. The creature terrified them.The mouth was a slit on the top of its head, gulping the sky. The eyes sat on its broad neck, circular and lidless staring through to the couple, and fanning out from its back were six feeble wings thin as fingers, scratching at the air behind its bulging body. The creature had the torso of a woman, with breasts in rows like udders, sagging one over the other, and below them the creature covered itself with paddle-like hands. There were no fingers to speak of, but in the center of the hands two antennae flicked along the window like a lobster inspecting glass. The creature clutched the home with three limbs splaying like branches from its ribbed sides. Legs dangled like a slug’s eye stalks, observing from below. Fur filled in the creases around the breasts. Some of the breasts were dripping a kind of dark milk. The creature never moved its gaze from the couple lying in horror in bed, but it did fix its eyes on one and then another, like a fish might shift its look as it lazily rotates around in a tank.
Jamie pleaded with her husband to get the gun and shoot the creature, but as he sat up to get out of bed, the wings behind the creatures’ back burst open into overlapping wings, veined like leaves, and began fanning them. The wings undulated from left to right and came up together once the final wing had gone down. Their whole bedroom plunged in and out of darkness like a lower porthole on the ocean. There was a mighty cracking, Adam fell to the ground on his palms, and the floor in their bedroom angled vertically. The hanging rugs pulled back against the wall, Jamie’s cup of coffee fell to the ground from the nightstand, and a fracture emerged on the wall opposite their bed. Adam crawled to the window. Pushing himself up with his palms on the radiator, Adam tried to see past the creature’s wings as they undulated downwards. The creature eyed him with its circular fish eyes as if to look through him. They were being lifted far into the air. Past the wings, Adam saw the rooftops of their neighbor’s houses. He saw their street hundreds of feet below.
Adam turned to his wife as he sat on the floor and said, “I dreamed this would happen.” Jamie pushed back the bedsheets and with her hands pressed against her pregnant belly, wept.
Honey collected on their rooftop over the next day, dripping over the eaves.
Adam and Jamie had called it honey from the very beginning, but they did not know what it was. Whenever they were hungry, all they needed to do was open a window in the kitchen and scoop up the honey from the rooftop. The texture was mealier than honey, like a paste had been mixed in, and it was the color of grease. Though it was sweet, they could eat a whole bowl and not feel overwhelmed by sweetness. It sat in their stomachs as though they had just consumed a pound of liquid potatoes. The couple did not tire of the flavor, though on some days it took on a wretched rank smell if the stuff lingered under the sun for too long on the roof. They had to collect the honey as soon after it fell. Occasionally, eating the honey when it stank like rotten chicken was unavoidable if it had not rained in a while. There was no way to store the honey for longer than a couple days before it thickened like cloudy amber in the darkness of the inside.
They had no running water, no electricity. Their refrigerator sat empty, their cupboards full only of cups and glasses and bowls for collecting the honey.
She plied him with questions about his dream over the next few days. What did the god look like? What was it he said, exactly? Where did he come from? What is his motive? But after so many days of questions, Adam finally told his wife, “I don’t know. I don’t have any more answers than you do.” They were sitting at the window seat in the kitchen on the first floor. From here they could see at the corner window the shadow of a creature over the lace curtain. The sun was shining, as it always did, for they were above the clouds now, and the shadow of the creature and the pulsating of his wings stretched along the whole kitchen floor. They were just out of reach of the shadow in the window seat where they sat opposite each other, knees up, toes against toes, spines against the walls, like reflections of one another. Neither recognized what they saw in their spouse. Adam did not feel like he knew who she was anymore, or what she meant. Why did he have her, and what was he supposed to do now, how could he help her if he could not answer her questions, could not explain to her where they were going or why? His chest was filled with air, with a suppressed yelp. In a fit like this, Adam one morning even opened the window and shouted at one of the creatures, asking why. The creature made no reply, but turned its eyes up like a fish discovering its food.
The honey rains began after the house punctured the clouds. They came every morning from then on, soaking the rooftop afresh.
The honey had a calming effect, like holding a child in your arms or sitting in the sun after eating lunch. It was hard to keep on with the questions, hard to maintain vigilance against circumstance. After drinking the honey, Adam and Jamie sat silently together, not saying a word. Saying words hurt, they could see it in one another’s eyes. This is how it began that the couple began to drink too much of the honey. The feeling was so pleasant and stultifying, they tried to maintain it throughout the day, up to the point they became so sleepy they could hardly hold their eyes open anymore.
But after a week of forgetting themselves in the pleasant sunshine from the window, in putting off the questions, in saying nothing or thinking nothing, Jamie began to feel pains. They were more than false signs of labor, and yet they were not contractions. She was six months pregnant. Though she was full of honey, her fear forced words into her throat. “Adam, something’s wrong.” Jamie sat up from the window seat, pressing a hand against her belly.
He asked if it was labor, but she made no reply. His honeyed mind could think of nothing else to say except, “Maybe it’s the honey.”
He led her to a first floor guest room at the back of the house with a window seat of its own, pressed out over the clouds like a captain’s quarters on the ocean, once overlooking a garden. He helped her to the twin bed. She did not remove her hands from her belly. She did not appear to be in labor, or in much pain, but was subdued and fussy like a half asleep child. Her eyes were closed, eyebrows rising and pressing into each other as she felt strange things. Not painful things. Movement, warbling deep inside. Adam undid her pants and to his silent surprise he saw a head. She asked him if he saw anything.
“Are you in any pain? he asked. But she had fallen asleep. The rest of the infant emerged. The father’s hands caught the tiny blue creature, their son. The child was already breathing, as though it was also asleep. There was very little blood. The child had been born clutching his placenta to his chest. The jellied umbilical cord hung over his side. But those small fingers hung onto the placenta and would not let go. Adam laid the child on his mother’s chest.
She stirred. At once she pulled up her shirt to begin feeding him. But the child would not let go of the placenta, or let her take it from him. His grasp of the placenta was so firm, that she was afraid pulling his small elbow any harder might break a bone. And meanwhile, the placenta pulsed still, like a living thing, like a creature distinct from mother and son.
“Just hold him,” Adam said. The mother rested the infant’s head between her breasts. She could feel the placenta pulsing against her skin. Even the child’s knees were tucked up right against the placenta, immovable, like he had no joints and was born a statue.
Hours went by without change. The mother was in no pain, the child was alive and not in distress. The placenta continued to pulse with as much determination as a heart. Adam resolved to set his son somewhere and keep him there until he might wake up. They sat him carefully in bed, tucking him in up to his elbows. The child continued to breath, and the placenta stained the white sheet pink where it pulsed.
There was no sign Jamie had ever been pregnant. It was as if her uterus had completely shrunk within a matter of hours back to its original size. She did not bleed, she was not tired. The mother stayed in the room with the child, sitting in that window-seat over the clouds, staring at his small calm face.
Around this time, Adam started going out on the rooftop. He would take off his underwear—the only thing he wore these days—and slid out the window on the second floor. Cold wind hammered his face while the hot sun beat against his skin.
The rushing of the wind was so terrible, he learned he must wear earplugs to avoid the ringing that lingered hours after. The honey did not stick against his skin like earth honey. He could rub it in his fingers and it would turn into a paste. After he went back inside, the honey came off him like scales.
Jamie did not like that he went out on the roof like this. It made her nervous. She did not understand why he would be so reckless. Once she even discovered him dangling his feet over the edge as he lay down in the putty! “You’re going to slide off,” she said, “and leave me a single mother.”
But he was careful, he said, and the honey clung to the soles of his feet like wet sand. It was his practice to scoop honey into his mouth as he lay in the sun while the powerful wind blew through his chest hair. Adam did not stop his practice. Jamie retaliated with silence.
She often spent most of her time these days in the room with her child. Just looking at him. She would get a bowl from the kitchen cupboard, open the window, and scoop it up. This gave her an opportunity to see if her husband was still alive on the roof. Sometimes he would be so still, laying as naked as a fish in the sun...
With her bowl of honey, Jamie descended from the upstairs bedroom to the guest room where her child lay tucked snugly into the twin bed. If she put her ear close, she could hear his breathing. Most times, Jamie did not wish to disturb his sleep. She sat in the hot sun of the window seat, knees tucked against her heavy breasts, and sipped on the honey until she achieved a feeling of overwhelming bliss. So she fell asleep like this every day.
Jamie often awoke with a racing heart. Sweaty hair covered the nape of her neck, her back drenched and aching from her half reclined position. She would see her son asleep in bed, and assume he was dead. She would rush over to him, find he was alright, and feel a sudden resentment of her husband.
One day after a nap like this, Jamie went upstairs to confront Adam. She opened the window to look for him, but could not find him. He usually hung out on the corner of the house.
“Adam!” No reply.
“Adam!”
Her retaliation would be to tell herself she did not care if he were dead. But virtue got the better of her. Not giving into the pleasure of silence made her feel empty and irritated. She opened the window, the gust rushed in cold, and she took a step into the wet sand of the honey.
The clouds below glowed an iridescent pink, full hills of rolling blush, tender and alive. The sight pulled her gaze over the edge, but she paused, afraid she may lose her footing. The horizon was beautiful too, thin and tan, a layered strata, undecipherable events in time leaving shifting remnants, asking to be seen. She felt a strange responsibility to remember this moment, remember the moment before she could not find her husband.
“Do you see that?” she heard Adam shout. He stood up tall, his back against the faded yellow siding between the two upstairs gables, cupping the earplugs in his palm. He was turning his head this way and that, moving his eyes all over the place.
“What?” she shouted.
“I can see something, only out of the corner of my eye, a city,” he said.
Jamie rolled her eyes. Her heart dropped, she got startled. In the act of rolling her eyes, she saw the buildings too, dark and purple, penetrating the clouds.
“I don’t see anything,” she shouted. She made to go back inside. Suddenly her heart soared with affection imagining her son lying in bed holding his placenta to his chest. She wanted another child. A girl.
“You can see it, you can see it,” Adam shouted. He left his post and tried to grab her arm, “You just have to keep looking!”
She pulled away from him and once inside, she said, ducking under the open window to look at her husband, “That’s great, Adam. Why don’t you keep an eye on it for me, and I’ll keep an eye on our son.”
At first Adam thought Jamie was being sarcastic, but after staring at her for a moment, he nodded, and put his earplugs back in.
Sugar van der Meer owns and operates the second largest dirigible network in northern Idaho.
Final fight: Eliot v Paul
Recent developments in the field of artificial intelligence have resulted in new tools for storytelling. Naturally, Threshing Floor seeks to be on the vanguard of literary applications of technology. Also naturally, young men like to feed their friends into the Machine as story prompts, to see who would win in a battle to the death. After generating dozens of mortal duels between his classmates in a tournament bracket, the “author” of the following piece oversaw the generation of this last battle to determine the victor. The following battle was entirely artificially generated based on an original prompt by its “author” (the first two sentences), although the results were curated and edited to stay on course. AI story generation is an art that requires active participation, though it is perhaps better described as “shepherding” than “writing.”
Eliot is tall and fit, and Paul is short and agile. Today, they prepare to fight to the death.
There will be no time for healing magic if it comes to that. Eliot has been training with his spear since he first arrived on the island two weeks ago. The ritual battle today will determine who will lead the next expedition into the underworld.
Paul came up from below deck early this morning. He had spent most of last night thinking about how to kill Eliot without losing his own life in the process. His mind was still foggy after waking up at dawn, but he managed to pull himself together enough to get dressed and head to the main floor. He's been dreading this day ever since Eliot told him what he planned to do.
"Are you ready?" Eliot asks as he leads the way down the stairs to where their spears are stored inside an iron cage hanging above them on the wall. The space between the bars is barely wide enough for one man to stand in comfortably. They have practiced swinging their weapons through the bars until they can strike each other quickly and efficiently while still keeping themselves safe.
"I'm not sure I've ever been more ready," Paul says as he steps through the bars. He takes a moment to grab his spear off the rack along the wall and then follows Eliot out onto the deck.
The sun is just coming over the horizon, bathing the ship in a pale glow. There are very few people awake yet when they left the ship, so they're alone save for the captain and the crew. Captain Carter is standing on the dock, waiting patiently. He doesn't move or say anything as the warriors enter the clearing on the north end of the island. Once they are all there, he raises his arm to signal the start of the battle.
It isn't long before the blood starts to fly. Eliot goes straight for Paul's head, but Paul moves away quickly. It works to his advantage though, because it makes him turn to follow and gives him the chance to attack from the side. The tip of Eliot's spear strikes his stomach and pushes him back, knocking the air out of his lungs. The two men grapple for control of the weapon while their bodies slam against each other repeatedly.
Paul manages to score a hit on Eliot's side with his shield, but he can't take the spear away from him. He feels the sharp point dig into his ribs as he tries to push forward once again.
Eliot locks his arms around Paul's neck and holds him close to keep him from getting the spear away. Their eyes meet briefly, and Paul can see the fear and determination in them. This is it. If either of them loses, then he gets killed.
He's starting to lose feeling in his hands and feet as he fights to hold Eliot. His vision blurs, and he sees stars as he struggles to breathe. The spear slips through his fingers and falls to the ground. He releases his grip on Eliot's neck and collapses onto the sand.
The fight is over before Paul can even fully grasp what happened. He stares up at the sky in disbelief.
"You made me bleed today," Eliot says as he stands over Paul. There are dark circles under his eyes, and his clothes are wet with sweat. "You think we're done here? We'll never be finished."
"Is that it?" Paul asks. He pulls off his helmet and shakes his head to clear it. "Did you really need to kill me?"
"Yes," Eliot replies. There's no emotion in his voice at all. "And you probably should have died instead of trying to steal my victory."
"Why?" Paul asks. He looks around the clearing. Captain Carter is watching the two men carefully. He hasn't moved for most of the fight, but now he steps forward to look closely at the wound on Paul's stomach.
"Because you're mine!" Eliot shouts. He lunges forward and grabs Paul by the throat. He slams him against the ground and pins him there. He holds his hand over Paul's mouth to stop him from screaming. He leans in close and whispers, "Don't you ever forget that."
Paul struggles to free himself, but it's hopeless. Eliot is too strong, and he keeps pushing him down hard. He kicks his legs helplessly in frustration.
"What did you mean?" Paul gasps. He can feel blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. "Who are you?"
"You'll find out soon enough," Eliot says. He lets go of Paul's face and stands up. He walks over to the cage and picks up his spear. He puts his helmet back on and turns to leave.
"No," Paul calls out. "How do I know you won't kill me later?"
Eliot stops and turns to look at him. He seems annoyed by the question. "You'll die eventually if we keep fighting. Either of us could be killed in any given encounter."
"But why would you want to kill me?" Paul asks.
"Because I hate you!" Eliot yells. "We've been rivals all our lives. You've always been better than me, and I never understood why. Now you don't need to. You can finally get what you deserve."
"Then why not kill me now?" Paul asks.
"I promised your father I wouldn't kill you unless there was no other option," Eliot says. He looks down at Paul again. "You have until sunset. Make sure you're far away from the boat when it happens."
Eliot walks away, leaving Paul lying on the sand. His entire body is shaking violently, and he can't catch his breath. He lays there for a long time, trying to force himself to calm down, but it isn't working. He needs to get away from the ship, but he can't move. Everything is spinning around him.
His world is ending, and there's nothing he can do to stop it. He's going to die here, like his mother and brother. He can't believe how easily he gave up everything for this man. It wasn't just the duel, either. He'd given him his trust and his friendship. How could he have been so stupid?
It doesn't matter, he thinks. It's too late. He's already gone insane.
He hears footsteps approaching from behind and recognizes them as Captain Carter's. He's surprised to see him arrive so quickly. He thought he had at least another hour before anyone else woke up.
"How bad is it?" Captain Carter asks when he reaches Paul.
"I'm dying," Paul replies. He wants to tell him what happened, but he knows he can't make it out of the clearing.
"Can I help?" Captain Carter asks. He kneels beside Paul and pushes his helmet off his head. "How badly is he hurt?"
"Not...very," Paul says. He's unable to speak clearly anymore. The world is growing dark around the edges, and he can barely hold onto consciousness.
"We should probably let him rest," Captain Carter says. "I'll stay here with him until someone comes looking for us."
"Thank you," Paul says weakly.
Captain Carter helps him to lie down on the sandy ground. He places a blanket over his shoulders and holds his hand to comfort him.
The sun begins to set. The sky turns orange and red, and the ocean glows with the same color. Paul can feel his heart pounding in his chest, and it's all he can do to try and slow it down. He's scared of what's happening to him, but he can't stop it.
"It's almost time," Captain Carter says. "Do you need anything?"
"Yes," Paul replies softly. Eliot is returning to kill. He doesn't want to die, but he fears he may not have a choice.
"Give me your hand," Captain Carter says. He takes Paul's hand and closes his fist around it.
"Stay with me," Captain Carter whispers. "Try to relax. You'll be okay."
Paul squeezes his eyes shut tight. He can hear Captain Carter's voice, but he can't understand what he's saying. He wonders if he's talking to him or telling someone else about his condition. He can't tell which one is true anymore.
A loud crack splits the air, and Paul opens his eyes to see Captain Carter fall backward. He stares at him in horror, but he's too tired to react. The captain hits the sand next to him, and his body crumples into a heap.
Paul sits up quickly and scrambles away from him. Someone is standing over him, and he realizes it's Eliot. He's holding Captain Carter's sword in front of his chest.
"You can't escape me," Eliot says. "I'll kill you whether you want me to or not."
"Please," Paul begs. "Don't kill me. Just let me go. I promise I'll never bother you again."
"I don't care," Eliot says coldly. "You are mine. I'm going to kill you, and no amount of begging will change that."
"Just wait a minute," Paul pleads. "Let me explain."
"There's nothing you can say that will change my mind," Eliot says. "You're going to die, and I'm going to enjoy every second of it."
He pulls the hilt of the sword down and swings it high over his head. It slices through Paul's chest, cutting him open from shoulder to navel.
"NO!" Paul screams as he tumbles to the ground. He tries to crawl away on his hands and knees, but he can't seem to put any strength into his legs. He can't feel them anymore. He's dying, and there's nothing he can do to stop it.
The last thing he remembers before he passes out is Eliot standing over him. His face is twisted in rage, and his eyes are burning with hatred.
"I told you I would kill you," Eliot snarls.
Clive Miller is a Palouse native. He spends his free time training Giant Palouse Earthworms to jump through circus hoops.
Happy Hour
Allan Patch had the odor of a working man. This odor was, however, misleading. He rarely toiled in the good and honest way his grandfather had, but he did own a field. At least he called it a field. It was around five acres of scattered barley (remnants of some ambitious attempts in his early thirties), tall grass, and thousands of cattails. The earthen sweatiness of Patch’s particular fragrance was largely caused by his hobby of standing (or more often sitting) in his field, and watching the wind on these cattails.
Sometimes he would chew tobacco or sunflower seeds. A rare few of those discarded sunflower seeds managed to sprout around September, until the typical rain drowned their already fragile chances. Oftentimes Patch would pick the heads off the cattails if his daily visit exceeded twenty minutes.
Why he spent so much time in The Field was a mystery to his wife and the postman, but they never questioned it. To them, it was just an inconsequential trait of his existence. Like freckles or a nail-biting habit might be for someone else. If you were to ask his wife, Poppy, about this behavior in her husband, she would likely respond that it was sunny today, with no further explanation. If one were to return with some comment on how it rarely wasn't sunny in Putnam county, Florida, she’d nod her head and say, “yup, e’s been out a lot, past week.”
The only person who might be able to explain Patch’s regimen, if he cared to think twice about it, was the bartender at the Strange Beaver.
Other than The Field, Patch frequented no place more than the bar in the town closest to his house. It was about a mile’s walk downhill if he took the shortcut and he preferred to walk when he could.
Ed, the bartender, was one of the few people Patch would really talk to. Ed was a muter man himself, and Patch liked that.
He told Ed about how The Field used to be glorious and full of grain. He told him how one day he'd start planting again but there were just, “too many damn cattails.” Then he’d raise his hands, as if in surrender, to reveal that they were heavily splintered, “stuffed with their whiskers,” he'd mutter wetly, shaking his shiny red head.
Ed would just nod, continuing to dry the pint glass he was holding with an overripe rag. No matter how many times Patch came in, murmuring the same story, Ed managed to maintain an expression that looked both sober and indifferent.
Patch didn't seem to mind. The trickle of words running from his lips continued with impassive persistence.
Patch was not a heavy drinker, but two beers made his slivered hands feel smooth and pockets full. His gray jaw would loosen into a kind of grin. He'd picture all the barley heads in his field; swaying gently in the wind.
The whole Field, his.
Madelyn Youngren is a young student who loves to write and always has. She is eighteen years old, currently living in the beautiful Palouse after living most of her life in Chicago, IL.
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