DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.
The Story
If you would have told me the sounds of bones clacking somber in the breath of a gray winter morn would be the one thing to bring me peace, I would have said you were crazy, and that I was a man who didn’t deserve peace.
But there is no you. Only me. And I speak that truth every morning as I wait for my mug of hot water to cool enough so that I may drink it. A selfish ritual, but by ritual standards, it could be worse. And I know worse.
There are homes around me, but I have no neighbors. Sometimes I think one day a man or woman or child will step out of one of those husks on these mornings when I sip my warm water, to greet me with knowing eyes, and we can enjoy the morning together and each other’s company, though from afar.
If you told me distances could be more intimate that closeness, well, I would have told you that you were crazy. Thankfully, there is no you. Only me.
I haven’t touched a woman since the day I stepped foot upon this land with the dirt road whose ruts are often filled with rainwater, though it rarely rains, this dirt road that curves away from the homes who sit there, brooding beneath their eaves, only to be drawn back to course directly through this scattering of homes as if by some strange gravity.
I didn’t misspeak when I said “who,” nor when I said “homes.” You’ll recall I said no one lives in those houses, but they are homes nonetheless. Structures are unique that way, when built by human hands and thereby dwelt within by humans. I say “humans” as if I’m not one. Most say “people,” but that doesn’t sound right to me. Not that I’m an alien or anything. Now you got me laughing. Well, I suppose it’s me who got me laughing. Lord, it feels good to laugh.
Anyhow, let’s get back to the moment, the present, because it’s not about the deeds a man has done, but about the deeds he hasn’t. At least I think so.
My water is cool enough to sip, so I go about my daily ritual, as you might call it, sitting on the rickety chair that was here before me, dead center on the porch to have the best view of the road that led me here, which I’ve already described so I won’t do it again.
One thing I forgot, though, which brings us back to the beginning of our chat or whatever it is you call this exchange, and that is the totem that rises off the side of the road that led me here. I can see it from my porch, the one upon which I sit dead center, about half finished with my water, which has gone lukewarm. If I had a son I would have named him Luke. A good man according to the good book, and that’s good enough for me.
Anyhow, about this totem. I’ll describe it to you how I see it with the clarity of my vision from this distance, as the blackbirds sweep across the sky, jostled from the sagging power lines that hold no power. It’s not quite the height of a man like myself, and I am not a tall man. It is a single beam of wood rising from the ground to join three other shorter beams in the configuration of an arrow pointing skyward. That realization took me a long time to come to. The first thing I thought of was that it looked like one side of the support of a very small house, a shed perhaps, and that the other walls had fallen away.
Stranger still, and perhaps horrific to some, is the ram’s skull that sits atop it, its two horns hooking over the crossbeam to rest inside a rotting tire on the backside. And at the ends of this crossbeam, beside the skull hang three bones, two on one side, one on the other. They clack in the wind, and there is always wind. I’ve thought about adding another bone to the lonely side, so that it may have a companion, but I haven’t found any bones lying around and I’m not a killing man.
So, you ask, why does such a horrid thing bring me peace? The sight and sound of this thing? It’s what sits at the bottom, perched above a gathering of flat stones about a hand off the ground. It’s a bottle with the label peeled off but some of the scars still remain no matter how much rain hits it. It’s a bottle I left there when I first arrived. Put it there as a joke at first to free my hands to have a piss because I had drank it empty. Facing the ram’s dead eyes then, I saw the blackness inside me, and all the things I’d done to get here, out in the middle of nowhere with nobody.
Some might say it appears to be a symbol of worship, erected by a cult in the backwoods of wherever it is I am. A warning, not a welcome, to others who dare tread further down that rutted road. Some might say a cult requires more than one member, but as I said, there is only me.
I hope you understand now why it brings me peace, though there is no you, which means I am perhaps crazy, and perhaps I do not deserve peace, but peace I have found.
Clouds draw in. Not much sun ever in these parts, and I’m fine with that, as are the birds, the trees, and the grass that grows strong and green except around that totem, which has a worshipper of one. Mostly weeds and brambles, a human might see there at the bottom. And the bottle, of course, which stands tall.
Even the storms can’t refill that bottle.
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