"What shall we do tonight?" asked the scarecrow of the fowl, to which she replied with a cackling shriek, a witch in her throat, a frog in her belly, spewing her discontent at the unmoving mouth and the voice that leaked like tar from within it, bits of faded yellow flittering like saliva in the wind, broken and limp.
"Won't you sing to me, beloved?" A gust caught his torn lids and arched them high, the holes of his eyes reverberating some empty sadness, for his companion would not sing a tune, nor flutter a feather at his request, and merely perched, unmoving, cocking her head in small, nervous jerks, those shining orbs holding flickers of light still yet as the sun bid adieu to the day.
"Won't you sing to me?" His voice was as hollow as his eyes, as empty as the dried up well that sat yards away near an abandoned farm. It was haunted, or so it was said, by the ghosts of a family brutally murdered, all the livestock stolen, nothing left but bloodstains on creaky wooden floors. The scarecrow knew; he'd seen it all, no matter how bereft of his eyes. A black and white monochrome play danced before him, the luxury of color unafforded to him by the rough, calloused hands that had given him life and purpose, and crucified him to his post. Hands that sacrificed ragged clothing had strewn him together, his body a mishapen mess of burlap and stitch, mangled by years of neglect. He'd seen it all.
"Just a note, my beautiful wife..A single trill would suffice." Still, she gave him no answer, only staring at the deflated lump of his head, blinking quickly and opening her mouth to offer a silent scream. It pierced him further than any sound could, drove down into the hay stuffing of his heart, snapping the twigs that made up his form. His burlap flesh quivered in a gust, the wheat sending up a chorus of yells as it swayed like the sea, rippling and breaking, a demanding crowd that served the scarecrow's prison, a bubbling mass of lithe, skeletal bodies. They reached for him, battered his legs with their tall, pointed heads, flailing their arms in the wind. His beloved, the crow, snapped shut her beak, and all was peaceful again.
Twilight shrouded the dusky sky, pinprick wounds of light shimmering like a million ashen eyes, countless courtesans that seduced their tattered friend and bade him look above and drink his content of their marvelous beauty. "Look at us, look at us" they said, and he strained to obey and please his many mistresses. But the stick of his neck, alas, lay broken and slumped to the side and eternally down, to look upon the angry heads of wheat.
"Please, won't you sing to me, oh cruel but lovely wife? Can you not set me at ease for but a moment? I do so ache to look at you. Flutter by my face, let me feel the softness of your wings." She croaked out a caw that disatisfied, and discarded the urge of his plea, tilting her head and leaning to pluck at the lid of his eye that flitted and twitched near her face. He sent up a cry of betrayal, another stitch breaking to lay open his lips and vomit the moist straw from his head, leaving it formless and ugly even to the crow's eye. She released him and flared out her stiff, onyx wings, the tips of them brushing his weather-scarred face, the post that supported him groaning and pleased. And had he owned tears to shed for that touch, to feel the sweet tickle of her wings rather than claws that pinched and gripped him roughly, that bore no kindness in the cold, he'd have wept under the cloak of the night.
"My darling, my goddess...now will you sing for me, that you've wounded, now that you've pricked? Will you stray from your silent apathy?" To which she gave nothing but the hiss of the wheat as the wind carried echoes of ghosts through their midst.
A dirge of drums came on quick, quiet feet, tucked beneath bodies of ash. A thousand pairs of unpolished coal, glowing with embers of cruel, burning heat, an army of blotches of ink. The scarecrow could see them through his torn cornered eye, an omen of death in those glittering orbs, and he cried out to the beauties who beckoned in the sky.
"Fend them from me, oh beautiful dears, oh shimmering darlings I have never seen! Save me, your companion, this ugly pitiful thing, that has not heard his sweet wife's song!" And those tiny wounds who loved him so, and tried to break free of their black velvet sheet, could not but writhe as they witnessed the brigade, the slaughter that unfolded before them.
A chorus of caws like a funeral choir swelled in waves of tone, a cacaphony of noise, of bitter sensation to the formless ears of the scarecrow. A scream, a flutter, and the trill of a song came spilling out of his companion's mouth as beaks came crashing into her breast, talons strumming the chords of her life, to send up a crimson shower of song. Ecstacy to his ears were those sweet screaming cries, an orgasm of life in his hollow, straw-laiden soul.
"My love, you relent with gorgeous submission! Pray, give me more of your song!" Warmth spattered red on his shoulder and face, a shivering delight in his heart, imagining her wings enfolding his head, until he saw it all, and reckognized the broken thing that laid at his feet. Her wings lay in ruin, folded and bent, her feathers of beauty and youth cast away to reveal one tattered finger of bone. The coal of her eyes shimmered none for his sight, as dull and lifeless as his own, the body contorted and still except for a ruffle, a stir from the breath of the wind, and the scarecrow's eyes assigned beauty to her form.
"Truly, you are Venus...oh sweet muse, sing again." But her mouth gaped wide and spilled out only her tongue, never to trill again.
His lopsided head and downcast eyes beheld her forever thereafter, night after night near the old haunted farm, while he pleaded and begged her to sing. And into eternity her cries rang in his ears, until he contented himself with their memory, and yearly the army of spirits returned while he sputtered his praise with spittle of straw, and wept as his paramour bleached white from the sun, and the soil crept over to make her a grave. His torn mouth screamed forever, alone, and the children of generations came to say "The ghosts of the farmhouse can be heard in the weeping scarecrow's song."
The Scarecrow by Ashton J. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
No comments:
Post a Comment