Partly a prompt from Writers Write. Partly a song I’ve been banging my head against this week, which was first inspired by the image below
Title: Orchid Lightning
WC: 750
It was an ordinary winter Thursday. The sky was just burning off the tail end of daylight. A block this way and that way, rush hour traffic was creeping its loud, profane way onward. Here, though, the ground beyond the chain link fence descended, an angular wedge someone had carved out for some reason.Within it, the deep drifts of snow drank the noise right down. Here, it was something close to quiet. Ren wondered if that’s why he’d chosen this spot. Or she. Or they.
The artist, she said to herself. The solution pleased her well enough that she said it again, this time spending a tiny parchment-colored cloud of breath on it—the artist. A gritty gust of wind roared down the train tracks just then, taking the moment’s pleasure with it and calling her out as a fool.
The quiet must be an occasional byproduct, at best. In the heat of summer, everything would carry. Horns and children shouting as they stretched out their games of Ghost in the Graveyard. The seclusion and the vast concrete face of the man-made canyon’s north wall. That must surely be the draw. Or must surely have been, maybe.
She curled her fingers tighter in the rusted-out diamonds of the fence and brought her face close enough to the dirty thing that could almost taste the ochre stains on the tip of her tongue. She scanned the white expanse of the drifts for interruptions—footprints, wheel tracks, any sign of the artist, but there was nothing. She allowed herself a sidelong, half-lidded glance at the thing itself.
The work, she called it the confines of her own mind on the days she forced herself, without turning, past the street at the west end of the fence. The creation. That’s what she called it here. Like this, when the vivid shades and haunting figures called the blood to the surface of her skin and forced her gaze downward.
Last week—another ordinary winter Thursday—she’d convinced herself with a half dozen stolen glimpses that it had grown, shifted, morphed somehow. A new flash of mad orchid lighting hidden in one of the eyes that danced through a streamer of clouds, or maybe a new hint of brilliance in the gem that rested on the forehead of the largest, most arresting of the faces.
But today, time had folded back on itself like a bird with its head under one wing. Today, she had come and she had to admit it to herself: Tte work was unaltered. The creation had been . . . created. And there was no reason in the world to think there would be more, or that one day there’d be an awkward, one-sided encounter: the artist working, Ren holding her breath and looking on from afar.
She took a step back from the fence, one set of fingers still tangled in it, reluctant to let go. There was no trace of the sun any more. It was beyond stupid to be standing here alone, staring into the blackness. With an effort, she pulled free and turned to go.
Just then, there was a hum, all the molecules of air for what felt like miles vibrating. The area inside the fence was flooded with punishing blue-white light. Ren’s first instinct snapped her chin upward. She scoured the night sky looking for . . . what? Little green men? A clanging down in the canyon shook her out of it. She stared in astonishment as figures appeared at the base of the work—the creation. Men. Two ordinary men, though in that first instant they seemed minuscule under the looming figures. But their dark, filthy coveralls snapped perspective into place. Men.
They’d come through a door she’d never noticed before. A dark oblong in what she’d always thought was an unbroken stretch of concrete grey. They were struggling with some kind of equipment. Long, heavy hoses that snaked back through the door they’d emerged from and wands that seemed to be as long as they were tall. Ren’s fingers found their way back through the rusted diamonds of the fence.
What? The wind carried the question away, a plume of breath this time.
The noise answered it, an awful, mechanical racket as water blasted against the concrete. The silver eyes wept. They dissolved, leaving nothing. It occurred to her suddenly that she’d never looked at it straight on before—the creation.
Ren’s fingers loosened their hold on the fence. Her shoulders slumped and she looked away.
MTZQ Telecommuniculturates 