From: corleyj@helium.gas.uug.arizona.edu (Jason D Corley )
Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
Subject: [Pitzar] Alone on the road Part I
Message-ID: <22pclp$9sm@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu>
Date: 23 Jul 93 19:03:21 GMT

The fields were wide and green, uniform and dark.  The plants reached
to my waist, and I waded through them slowly, as if it were liquid.
The land was flat, the sky was grey with clouds.
	When I sat to eat lunch, unrolling the bright white linen
from around the cheese I carried, the plants rose above me.  The
day was warm and huimid, so I rested my head on my knapsack and
relaxed for a while.
	When I stood up, there was a small dot of color near the
horizon, a tiny spot of white in a long green rippling lake of
grass.  It took me hours to get near it.  For the longest time I seemed
not to be moving at all.  As I drew closer I saw that it was a scarecrow,
pale arms hanging straight out and down.  When I got very near,
I stepped in a hole hidden in the weeds and stumbled forward.  I rubbed
my ankle and stood up.
	The scarecrow was a man, crucified with iron spikes through
his arms, neck and legs.  His pale, pallid flesh was rotted and stained
with mold.  His eye sockets were black, crawling with insects.  His
head lolled to one side, mouth hangin open at an obscene angle.  I moved
back, my feet rustling through the plants.
	His head rolled around and I heard the snap and pop of little
bones in his neck.  Large beetles appeared in his eyes, their black
shiny carapaces reflecting the dim light of the sun.  His mouth slid
open and shut.  I heard a voice rise from the earth, strangely out
of sync with the mouth, dripping with unsentimental hatred, cold
and monotone: "Welcome back, Jake."

	I woke up.  The breeze had come back.  I picked up the knapsack
and kept walking.  Overhead a crow circled and wheeled away on the
breeze.  The sun was going down.


 
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"Why shouldn't things be largely absurd, futile and transitory: they are so,
 and we are so, and they and we go very well together."	------Santayana
Jason D. "corleyj@gas.uug.arizona.edu" Corley is no longer in service.