garbage

fear to come

the prompt here was from a creative writing/book arts workshop, basically i ended up with the task of describing a cannibal artist on a shopping day in the middle of a rome type marketplace.

In front of me I see a lemonade stand and a sea of people dressed for the weather.

I am outside under the sun walking on beige cobblepaths.

What is closest to me is a woman dressed in jewels in the stand beside me, shouting about her wares in efforts to coax me (or anyone around me) to buy. Farthest away I see mountains looming over the square.

It is day, which I know because of the sun beating down on our shoulders. There's too much chatter for it to be nighttime. Everyone is bustling, clouds thin and stringy.

The light is coming from the sky, the sun, and people's faces.

I am wearing muslin cloth draped over my torso and waist as are most around me. Breathable. Not very washable.

Tucked behind a fold is a needle. I have long since understood how to maneuver so it does not prick me.

It would be odd to come to the marketplace with no coin. I hold a red pouch filled.

The air smells like flesh ready to be picked off the tree. Of sweat and fear to come. 

what is one to do when hungry?

The sandals beneath my feet are meltable. We are sardines in a can pressed up against each other. It is hot. I am moving.

People chatter incessantly. Chickens cluck and dogs bark, girls giggle and boys do the same. It is hard to run, but I hear that they can manage.

Move with the current, I tell myself, following the crowd's basic undulations to one stand then the next.

The townspeople gather here every other day it seems, faces that would not recognize me if given the chance. I do not give them that chance. I weigh the outcome of doing so and the alternative. It's curious.

What forever sits at my back: the needle. Dripping with desire to taste flesh as I.

A Thursday as any other Thursday. The cityfolk gather in the town square for the weekly market after their labor for the day is done. Some is cut short for the occasion, some rush their work, others are their own other.

I stand among them and stare at what faces me: a lemonade stand manned by a woman with an eager face and wrinkles creasing her eyes. She is too pale for the weather, too shrouded by the thatch roof and probably oh-so-tough in thigh. She asks me if I would like a drink. I decline.

I move along to browse the people. Flipping through sheets in the comfort of my own home is too little of a challenge. This is a prowl. I am hunting. I am asked if I would like to spend some of my hard-earned coin on the necklaces adorning a woman's neck beside me. Yes, I respond, the coin is hard-earned. But not for me. She is what I am looking for, but it's too public. It is a puzzle I must solve, curves I must shadow. I ask her name. She asks for mine. She doesn't know how it works. I move on.

The needle at my back tucked into the folds of the cloth draping over my waist is a dull comfort. I think about it and the sensation brings me back from the bustling sardine sweat that is the crowd and back to my purpose: fear to come. I am surrounded by apples on trees and it is my duty to sort through them.

There are too many people meandering about, doing nothing. Lazy, slimy slabs of fat wiping the ground with their ankles and chortling about nothing important, nothing at all.

Just to pollute the space, taking it up. I need them gone. I cannot breathe. I rip at the clothes in front of me, and surely there are protests but I will hear none.

They beg for my forgiveness as if I am not the one clawing through their flesh getting out out out.

They are wastes of breath, nothing to spend time or coin on and I cannot breathe.

They have stolen the last from me I will allow.

They see nothing.

I SEE IT ALL.

I SEE YOU.

WHAT IS TO COME.

PRESENT YOURSELF TO ME NOW, GIRL. I AM HUNGRY.