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Editorial

20th August 2024


Recently, the word has taken on new life – literally, in the form of AI. As John said in Genesis, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’. In the media constantly humans are worried, or not worried, or trying to get attention or money for column inches, about this creation of a knowledge-being, a communication-lifeforce, taking from and reassembling information to present to its human creators and compadres, or on which to base decisions for actions.


Just when it looked as if the written word was increasingly injured, suffering and off sick sometime in the early 2000s, with levels of literacy low, libraries underused, and visual media increasingly taking over, it received an unexpected boost from the digital world. Emails, text messages, and comments on written media such as Twitter, became paramount, and everyone needed to be able to write and respond to at least some basic level. Voice calls are now increasingly unpopular in comparison with written word-to-word communication.


I asked one of the major AIs (alongside myself, with my rather prescient initials of AI!) to write something creative in response to ‘Another Creation Myth’. I include what it wrote at the bottom for you to refer to.


The Song of Creation

Before time, there was only Silence. A vast, empty expanse, a void where nothing existed. In this stillness, a single note hummed, a vibration so subtle it was almost imperceptible. It was the seed of creation, a primordial sound.

From this note, a cosmic being emerged, named Lyra. Her form was made of starlight and melody, her essence a symphony of existence. Lyra yearned for company, a chorus to harmonize with her song. With a thought, she willed the universe into being.

She plucked strings from the cosmic harp, and from each note, a celestial body was born. The deep, resonant basslines formed the sturdy foundations of planets, while the soaring trebles became distant stars. The rhythm of creation pulsed through the cosmos, giving birth to galaxies, nebulas, and black holes.

Life, too, was a melody composed by Lyra. She breathed her song into the cosmic dust, and from it emerged the first beings. They were creatures of sound, their bodies vibrating with the harmony of the universe. They lived in harmony with the cosmos, their lives a continuous dance to the music of creation.

As time passed, Lyra’s song evolved. New notes were added, harmonies deepened, and dissonances appeared. The universe expanded and changed, a cosmic symphony in constant motion. But Lyra remained the eternal composer, her music the heartbeat of existence.

And so, the universe continues to sing, a breathtaking melody of creation, a testament to the power of a single note in the silent void.

Would you like me to expand on this myth, or perhaps create another one?


Ephemera

“Who’s that, at the corner table?” Elaine asks Ruthy, who was spinning about the lobby busily serving guests.

“What, him?” Ruthy nodded in the man’s direction, where he sat alone at a table for two. “That’s Henry Wilcox, he’s one of them boys just got back from France or some such, real quiet these days but I tell you he’s still a looker!”

"What did he order?"

"Hmmm? Oh well, I think it was a spot of tea if I remember."

"Mind if I serve it?" Elaine asked.

"Be my guest," Ruthy said with shrug and spun off with her tray of bacon and eggs.

Elaine bustled back to the kitchen and snagged a pot of tea. She didn't know what exactly it was about the soldier, but she knew he had a story. He had that look about him. And well, he reminded her of Dan, and she needed something to take her mind off the old heavy.

“How do you take your tea?” she asked, striding up to his table. He glanced up, startled, from where he'd been staring at his hands folded on the white tablecloth.

"Sorry miss?"

Elaine was in return startled by his deep brown eyes. Soulful eyes, her mama might call them. Soulful and deep. And sad. Elaine felt her heart reach out.

"I asked, how do you take your tea, Henry?"

Henry blinked in surprise, but paused before answering. He knew the question was a more personal one than it appeared. Something about Elaine let him answer honest. Her eyes were disarming.

“With milk and sugar, when no one is around, but I generally skip both in company. And I'm at a disadvantage. You know my name, miss...?”

“Miss Harvey, but you can call me Elaine. And, why would you do such a thing?” Elaine asked, pouring the tea into the petite service.

“Well, present company excluded, I find people judge when a guy like me puts in two teaspoons of sugar and half a cup of milk. I was in the war, after all, I got used to it without. It’s not very manly, you see.”

Elaine gave him a laugh, "And you think it’s more manly, denying yourself things you enjoy?”

Henry took a breath in as if to answer right away, paused, and then answered, “I’m afraid that’s our Western definition of manhood: we grow up on hard truths and self-flagellation. And then we get sent to war to die. Not much enjoyment in that.”

“That’s rather a dull outlook on things. If I had my druthers, we’d all drink tea the way we like, do the things we like, and no one would go off to Europe to shoot each other.”

Henry managed a laugh at that, and quickly raised his hand to his mouth in surprise. Wry or not, it was his first laugh since his buddy Jack got shot.

“What’s so funny?” Elaine queried.

"Well, I haven't laughed in...well, in a good long while."

"Well, we'll just have to change that, won't we mister? So, would you like some tea with your milk and sugar?" She asked as she poured a whole dollop of milk in. The milk bloomed in the glass. She took a small silver spoon, and keeping eye contact with Henry, added two heaping teaspoons of sugar. She stirred, back and forth like her mama taught her.

Henry blushed and glanced away, but his eyes kept darting to the tea as she stirred. He abruptly said, "It wasn't shooting."

"Pardon?"

"I mean, if it was just shooting at each other it would have been fine, you know? It wasn't just shooting. It was the trenches." His jaw clenched, and he tensed as he fell silent.

"Well, this won't do at all, I said I'd make you laugh, and here you are about to cry on me!" Elaine looked over her shoulder surreptitiously, and quickly sat. She took his hand in hers, and rubbed it quick before dropping it.

"Look sir, I don't know you, you don't know me, but when I saw you across the way I just knew I had to get to know you. You've seen some stuff, and well, I've seen some stuff too. Lost some good people. But I'm going to be frank, which is this: you have something that I want."

Henry looked up, and Elaine felt a jolt at those brimming eyes. "What could you possibly want from me? I have nothing left to give."

Elaine brushed the comment aside. "Well, a bit of your time for starters. There's something about you...I'm not sure. You remind me of my brother, Dan. We haven't heard about him in a while back home, all of us are real worried, and we can't seem to find out even basics, like where he's stationed, his squad number, that sort of thing. Heard he might be in France a while back. That's where you were at, right? Maybe you could ask around, help get me some contacts?"

Henry felt himself deflate a bit. It was always something, people wanting impossible things from him. They never seemed to want to talk to him because of himself, but always had an angle. "I'm sorry Miss Harvey, I don't think I'll be of much use. I just was discharged myself, and I really wasn't in France long enough to know any of the soldiers other than in my unit. The rest of my time was in England."

Elaine in turn also deflated, and looked away. To break the awkward moment, Henry took a sip of tea. He made a surprised 'hmm' in the back of his throat, and took another sip. "You make some good tea, miss."

Elaine smiled, still in profile.

"Would you like a cup of tea, miss? How do you take it?"

Elaine glanced in surprise, and huffed a small laugh. "I like coffee, and I take it black."

Henry waived down another waitress, and Ruthy came over to the table. "What can I do for you? Got tired of serving already, Elaine?" she asked, winking at Elaine.

"Can I get a coffee, black, for the missus here?" Henry asked.

"Sure thing, coming right up. Be back in two blinks, you kids have fun!"

Henry looked at Elaine, "Do I detect sarcasm? I didn't mean to call attention to you for sitting, sorry if you get in trouble."

"Oh, its no mind, I don't technically work here. I move through sometimes and they let me pick up a shift or two in exchange for a night's stay."

Surprised, Henry said, "You travel?"

"Yes, before the war I wrote for my newspaper back home as the travel columnist, but since '39 I have been writing a soldier's special column. I didn't want to say, because you strike me as the sort who doesn't want to share the heavy stuff, and doesn't think the lighter stuff worth sharing."

Henry thought the assessment was rather acute for someone who'd just met him. "You got all that from a look?"

"Well no, Ruthy is also a terrible gossip. You two grew up together?"

"We went to school together, I wouldn't call it growing up together. Her parents wouldn't let her near me with a ten foot pole. My family wasn't so well off, part of the reason I enlisted."

"So this is home?"

"This is home. Or, this was home."

At that moment, Ruthy came bustling back with a black coffee. "Now! There we are, enjoy!" And just as quickly scurried off to another table.

"You know, she served as a nurse for a year before coming back here."

"Really?" Elaine turned to watch Ruthy go. She hadn't mentioned anything of the sort on any of Elaine's stops in Mills Creek Hotel. She took a swig of the coffee. It was bitter and strong and reminded her of Dan.

"I'm going to enlist as a nurse then. How do I do that, do you think?"

Alarmed, Henry reached for her hand. "You don't mean that. Don't do that, why would you say that?"


"Its just, I need a way of contacting my brother Dan and if I'm in Europe it would sure be a hell of a lot easier, wouldn't it now? There's no way in hell I'm getting over there myself, so I'd better have a good reason, hadn't I?"

Henry just stared. Here was this stunning and bold working woman sitting in front of him, drinking her coffee black, proclaiming she was about to enter the hellhole he had just left. There was no way he could let her do it. No way in hell. He would just have to convince her otherwise.

"Look lady, if you're that desperate to find your brother, I'm sure there are more official ways to go about it. No need to put yourself in harms way. What if they deployed you to the front lines? You'd see men become meat! No one should have to see that! You could be killed, or have to kill someone to put them out of their misery, or run out of morphine, or watch your buddy die, no one should have to see that, or the gas, no one..." Henry's voice had been growing louder, and he broke off, gasping. His chest rose and fell, and a noise like thunder rose in his ears. His hands gripped the teacup, and the liquid quaked.

Elaine, seeing the telltale signs of a panic attack, reached across the table and grabbed his hands, pinning them around the tea. "Breath, Henry, breath! Look at me! Breathe," she breathed in and out to show him. "Feel how hot the tea is? Can you feel it in your hands? What do your hands feel like, Henry?"

Slowly, Henry's heartbeat slowed, and he looked at Elaine. Her hands were around his, steady and strong, and he managed, "The tea...has gone a bit...cold."

"Well that's because of all the milk, mister. The water never had a chance." She continued soothingly, "Hey listen, I just need to find my brother. Whatever you've gone through, I want to spare him that. I think he might be in trouble. Like, big picture cover-up type of trouble. I don't need your help today, but yours is the fate I'm trying to save him from. Think you can do that for me? Save someone else your experiences?"

Henry looked her steady in the eye now. "Yes," he said, "I'd like that very much."




The conversation turned toward lighter things for a while. Ruthy watched the couple, a smile on her lips. She'd always thought that Henry a handsome fellow, but a bit too serious for her taste. And that Elaine, did she ever work hard to get what she wanted. Ruthy loaded up another tray, with a cup of tea with two teaspoons of sugar and too much milk for him, and a coffee black for her. They could sure talk.



Good… Old… 'Everyoneelse'

Last week's competition

Featured Entry

by jellybean
Susie’s café stood at the end of main street, teetering between the newly-hip downtown and its ignored edges. The low-ceiling restaurant had been here since 1967, at least according to the sign out front, and at this hour of day was occupied almost solely by old men who’d been attending Susie’s for Sunday breakfast since they were young men.
I stood out amongst the diners, in my 20’s and dressed in khakis and the only button-down shirt I owned. Miniature swallows paraded across it in neat lines, white silhouettes against a navy background. Rich, who sat across from me, maintained the perfect and gruff picture of a Montana man in his mid-sixties. His jeans were well worn but clean, his belt buckle shined but was slightly obscured by a bit of a beer belly, with the look completed by a tucked in red-and-blue checkered shirt.
The men sitting at adjacent tables and the front bar seemed like they were all different versions of this same caricature; they sipped from cups of black coffee in worn white cups, read the morning paper, and laid thick compliments on the owner and hostess, Susie. The pictures that hid the majority of the wood-paneled walls that closed in the small space displayed images of the American West: bucking broncos, newspaper clippings featuring Rodeo stars, vast landscapes captured before white folks had put towns in the middle of them.
Rich cleared his throat. “So what’d you think of church, college boy?” he picked up his cup of coffee and sipped, waiting for my reply.
I shifted slightly in my seat, the red vinyl letting out a slight squeak. “It was lovely, Rich. Thanks again for inviting me.”
The older man narrowed his eyes, nodding. He’d taken to calling me ‘college boy’ since I’d showed up at the Flying K, the working-ranch-turned-dude-ranch we were both employed at. Only difference between us was that he’d been there since they drove cattle and I’d been there three months.
“What’d you really think of it? You grew up going, didn’t you?” he pried.
I sipped from my own coffee, contemplating how to reply. My relationship with church was not a rosy one. I started to regret accepting Rich’s offer: free breakfast if I went to church with him in the morning. The list of things I’d do for a free breakfast was long. Disassociating for an hour while people sang around me seemed like an easy ask for some pancakes and eggs I didn’t have to pay for. I hadn’t considered that the free breakfast part would also mean alone time with Rich.
I didn’t know Rich well, even though we’d spent the last three months working and bunking together. His language was typical of the other ranch hands, which is to say it was fouler than a sailor’s. His jokes were crass, and he always had a different conspiracy theory to bring up no matter what topic was discussed around dinner.
Still though, when he’d offered the free breakfast, I’d taken him up on it. “I liked the Gospel today, and the organ was a nice touch. And yeah, I grew up going, but haven’t been since I left home.” I kept it at that, no need to give my further opinions on organized religion.
“Seems like that’s what happens to all you kids!” Rich replied, a zealous vigor slipping into his speech. “You leave the barn, go off to college, and poof! No more church.”
I was used to this rhetoric, and gave the reply I’d already practiced on my uncles: “Don’t worry, I’m not a lemming. I didn’t go just cause other people weren’t going, I just didn’t want to go.”
Rich’s reaction startled me. He straightened up in his chair, swinging his coffee mug forward and allowing the hot liquid to spill in a tidal wave across its edge. He didn’t notice, and was about to launch into what was undoubtedly a fabulous tirade when Susie arrived, two plates in hand. One bore my pancakes and eggs, the other Rich’s cinnamon roll and sausage.
“Rich, darling, hope you’re not giving this handsome boy too much trouble.” Susie feigned disapproval as she set the plates down in front of us.
The ranch hand chuckled, adjusting his ball cap before replying, “Nah, Susie, none at all. This young man was kind enough to accompany me to church this morning, and I figured I’d reward him with the best breakfast in town.”
Susie smiled at that, patting me on the back as she left.
I dug into my eggs, and Rich turned back towards me. “So, lemmings,” he said.
I glanced up at him while I ate, the table manners my parents taught me not making an appearance as my hunger took over.
“Did you learn as a kid that lemmings jump off cliffs, commit mass suicide when their population is too big?” I nodded, taking a beat to douse my pancakes in syrup.
“Well, it’s a lie!” Rich proclaimed, holding his fork in his fist and raising it up high. A couple patrons looked over at him dubiously. I doubted Rich’s morning outbursts were an irregularity.
I waited, silent. Rich leaned over his sausage and started sawing through it, all the while narrating: “Disney made a nature documentary, White Wilderness, back in 1958. As part of that they drugged up a whole bunch of lemmings, brought them up to Canada, and threw them off a cliff! Filmed the whole thing, and from there, the image of lemmings spilling over a cliff to their demise has populated everyone’s mind. Don’t be a lemming! Don’t be stupid! Don’t run off a cliff if everyoneelse does!”
Rich paused for a moment, taking a big bite of the sausage before continuing, “But lemmings just migrate as a herd! They can swim! Any cliff-jumping involved is one of a reasonable height to water they can survive in. If lemmings understood English and analogies, they’d be pissed!”
I’m a fast eater, and was nearly halfway through my pancakes at this point. “So, I’m not a lemming?” I asked, interested to see where this was going.
“No!” Rich stabbed his fork in my direction; it hovered in the air between us, bits of sausage still clinging to its tongs. “No, you’re a human! Sometimes you’ve gotta run with the herd like the lemmings though. Just make sure you keep your head up and look out for filmmakers.” He laughed at this, finally deciding to tackle the enormous cinnamon roll that occupied his plate.
My pancake being almost gone and me in a considerably better mood because of it, I decided to test him a bit. “So, what about church then? Isn’t that literally blindly following?”
Rich looked up at me quizzically, seemingly interested. “For me there’s a difference between blindly jumping off a cliff and blind faith. Faith involves open eyes, open ears. Faith allows for doubt. For questions.”
The answer surprised me. My church-going days had been spent in a fire-and-brimstone church, no room for error, much less doubt.
“It’s good to be part of community.” Rich continued, unprompted. “We need people in our lives, and yes those people are incredibly fallible and any system we make is damaged, college boy.” He glanced up, a mischievous look in his eyes. “But we need them, just like the lemmings need their herd.”
The meal was finished, the bill paid. I got up and left, said thanks to Rich, and walked down the bitter-cold street to my shitty car. The wind whipped in devilish ways off the sidewalk, spraying my face with week-old snow.
When I closed the car door behind me, I pulled out my phone and Googled lemmings. Turns out Rich was right. I owed an apology to the species.
I turned on my car, desperate for the heater and knowing it was still a good ten minutes until I’d feel its warmth. I watched through my front windshield as Rich finished a long goodbye to Susie and sauntered back to his truck; I didn’t think Rich would get me back to church, but maybe I’d come to breakfast next Sunday. Suppose I could pay for my own pancake and eggs.

Last Week's Winner!

Winning entry by Sir Lucealot
Here he is again.

Every day at opening time the dishevelled, grizzly bearded man slopes into my bar.

He’s often earlier than my barmaid but then… she still has dreams away from here.

He drags himself across with his cane pulling his life in a trolley bag behind him to the far side of the bar.

When he is not here I do not know where he goes nor do I particularly care.

I don’t want to be here a moment longer than I have to be not even in thought.

He raises his hand and I pour his first - a cheap gin drunk by the pint. Probably not legal but who cares- I know I don’t.

The hours pass away like this. Hand raised, another pint of liquor.

People ebb and flow around him like a tide but like an old wreck he is unmoved by any of them.

He says not a word the whole night to anyone. Never does.

I’m sure this is not how he planned his life. To be filthy and unwanted, not better than the rats in the alley, downing pints of gin all day.

But then I hadn’t planned to be here either serving him bottles of liquid no better than nail polish remover. Pleased that as he slowly kills himself at least he pays his tab at the end of every night.

As last orders are rung out and everyone else has long gone including the barmaid with dreams; finally he stands from his stool.

Swaying he declares clearly:

“To Good Ol’Me and to good ol’everyoneelse!”

Then he leaves- dragging himself and his life out of the bar to who knows and who cares where.

And every night I feel the same coldness.

After all who is he toasting? Who does he see?

And worse how long is it until he is me?

Featured Entry

by Shay Rose
Truth be Told

I belly up to the bar and order nice gin. "Make it a double, and don't ruin it with bad tonic."
The man next to me three seats away says, "You know your drink order."
I laugh, as required.
"You know your drink order like you know yourself."
I laugh again, this time more reluctantly. I don't want to engage. My brain screams danger, and its why I stand three seats away.
"You wait for someone to acknowledge the sophistication of your choice. I have; well done. You have been seen and approved."
The giggle dies in my throat, and I sidle further away as the bartender hands me my drink, a twinkle in her eye. "He's here most nights, disturbing the guests and myself. He can't seem to get enough."
"I'm sure," I laugh, and explain, "I'm going to go sit at a table, I don't like the bar, enjoy." I take a sip of gin.
The bartender wishes good luck under her breath and under a grin.
The man nodded, and says into the head of his Guinness, "Ah, yes, good old everyoneelse."
He said the word as if it were a single word, an affliction. It held too many Es.
The nonsequitor prompted me to respond, and not move away. "Excuse me?"
"If I repeat the words they still won't come true. It's always go, go, go, as demanded by the masses, and the masses bend over in aquiesence. They set the pace, they keep the pace, they demand the pace out of others. Who can stop the peer pressured race?"
The heat rose up the back of my neck, and my feet felt rooted in place. I didn't like the tone, or the question, or the man. He looked from where he sat, and again began talking, then time looking me in the eye, his voice both crisp and slurred; a gentleman of the cups, an oracle of past hedonism.
I presence filled the room and swept all inhibitions into its path.
My mouth opened of its own accord, and I began to speak: "There's this fast down, turn around hustle and bustle of the modern world, and I cannot seem to clear my mind long enough to write a single line of prose."
"What is prose when we could pose naked in the sun?" He parries.
Bothered and too articulate, I ask, "What poisoned nectar do we drink, to speak thus in tongues?"
"You call this poison, this freedom? It is what I seek and what I return for."
A terror engulfed me. My feet could not move, the water beaded on my drink, and the man was looking at me with a devil in his eyes.
Again I spoke, if not freely, then truefully and uninhibited, with no hint of the earlier laugh to hide my mind, "When I looked into the mirror, the stretch marks of a thousand smiles swore back at me. The masses, as you say, may sweep and turn, and I am left wanting." My hand moved as if to cover my lips, but it could not limit the sound. "I have both said too much and too little, and none of it makes a difference compared to the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner."
Our eyes broke contact and darted to the corner, where an oaken steadiness now permeated the space. The feeling it had not been there before engulfed me.
The man replied, "Your words create, yet you do not call yourself a poet? Would you call yourself a mother? My hands are scarred by asphalt and rebar, yet I do not spend my last paycheck. I am a good man, and truthful. We are connected in this moment. What is it you fear?"
"I fear a thousand fears. I fear my freedoms and my inhibitions. My hungers are worse than my starvation. I fear you believe you hold appeal to me. I do not fear solitude, but rather the dying of the years." I tried to hold back the truth-dance, before more of my psyche could stain the floor.
"If never another true word passed my lips, it would not be a curse," I mutter.
"You fear me then, the unnamed man?"
"I should not."
"Yet you do."
"I fear your attention. I fear you and I fear my own actions betraying my true wants. My actions hold more consequence than do yours. I fear my wagging tongue, what back alleys it might push me to, and I fear what must have been slipped in my drink."
"No! I would not do the thing you accuse me of. I am as trapped as you in this moment. My drink holds me, and my tongue has a will of its own. I too hunger and desire, but not for what you think. I want to know, to know, to know, the youth that still clings to you. I want to know your mind and its twists. I want to be the cause of a smile."
We fell silent at that, trapped still in lock-eyed contact. He could not lie, and so my fear lessened. I still feared his attention, but not his intentions. I was sickened by his logic, but not afaid of the deep fear of womanhood.
"Another round then?" and a pint appeared in front of him, and a goblet in my hand. I had finished my first drink. The bartender's eyes glintened sharply.
"Is it you, then, who so ensnares us?" I ask the barkeep. Her eyes glistened, and there was no devil behind them, for the devil possessed the whole face. She says, "I see the truth becomes no easier to bear, the more the eons pass. Come now, genie-eyed, and tell me what you see?"
The man stood from his chair, and tipped it. I saw he must be a worker, leather-tanned and hard-lived, and someone I could never trust. Yet, in face of worse he came to my aid and said, "You capture us both, you devil-wench, and in so doing have painted your own demise. You unite where you would soil, and placate where you would embroil. Who are you to question our means? Who are you to stand in our path? You forced metaphore upon us, what could you possibly want with that?"
"You amuse me, man."
She continued after licking her lips, "You have been here before, but only now protest?"
My feet still rooted to the ground, and the second drink on my lips, I said, "She asks for wrath and rage and ruin, she asks for sage and distant vision, she asks for unspoken platitudes, and wants to know the root of ruin."
The devil smiled, and refilled our glasses. "I had hoped to be more subtle. But as it is, I must admit, I had wanted to see you ruined. Who knows to who the antichrist will be born?"
My mind reeled ahead of my loosened tongue. Not a word, not a word, echoed in my mind, pedantic wanderings I did dispise, and I glanced to the man on my left, glanced to him who was held rapt, and directed my next question at him. "You know of the ruin of which she speaks?"
"It is the ruin that never sleeps, which ruins the woman more often than the man, and wakes itself at three am, howling of the moon and crying to be suckled. It is the ruin of families and of nations."
The devil grinned, its plans revealed, "You know this ruin has happened before, it is the fear which drives all your actions. You, woman, do not trust, you stand alone, and you," she glances at the man, "you have no chance, because of others who have taken my mixture, and in the morning woken up sicker."
I felt my heart pounding ever harder, as the trap being sprung had no way out.
"Not this man..." died on my tongue, with all the justifications that had died before. The broken truths, the broken trysts, the seveal minutes of pleasured bliss--it was wrong, wrong, wrong, and there seemed to be no escape from the terrible fact: it can happen to anyone, it happens to everyone.
The devil, she smiled, and filled up our drinks, and walked away to leave us to our devices.
The man and I stared back again, and drank our drinks and tried to pretend that thousands of years of confused injustice didn't drive our genes to seek the things the devil implored them to seek: him to take, and me to hide.
Then the man, some decisions reached, he straightened up, and still looking into my eyes, for he could not look away, he said, "I'm sorry. It's not enough, and will never atone, but I do not wish to stoop so low. She has prompted conversation before, for which I return, but never have the fears and plans been laid so bare. If we can leave, I will leave this bar, and never again will I be tempted at heart to fence with the devil and to tempt my heart, to ask and to lust after what isn't offered. I am sorry"
I broke his gaze then, for with those words he had broken the spell, and I looked down at my half-full gin, and wondered.
Was that all it took? To never or no longer partake? And the truth-sense still on me, I opened my mouth, and a final truth came pouring out:
"The facts have been changed after the fact, to power do the stories lie, and within the victor's eye. I am not Eve; I ordered my cup. But just as then, somone ordered me drink. The world has not slowed down, not since then, and the fire that is burning might never be quenched. You sit at this bar every night, what, did you not expect this? Has this temptation not happened before? You are part of the problem if you are only proving what a good man you are. You may not perpetuate fire, but sir, what did you do? What did you do, when your buddies told you, told you about everyone else?"
The man slumped low, and looked at his drink. He muttered something I could not hear, and I backed away, my feet now unfettered. The glass it dropped and further shattered the spell, and I ran from that bar with the devil's laugh still in my ear.
My Notes