A thousand burning meteors rained down upon the city of the ungrateful mayor. As they fell, the reason for the destruction passed in whispers between the squalid cellars, dusty rubble, and hastily-built shelters where the citizens hid from the fiery hail. Mothers spoke to their children in hushed voices in the minute-long intervals in the storm, in the silence as deadly as the cataclysm itself, and this is what they said: "The mayor was ungrateful."
The city was utterly laid to waste in the course of one night. Boulder after celestial boulder thundered upon the buildings and streets and any other man-made thing within the city limits, setting aflame that which was not crushed by the impacts. But one building remained untouched, its dome shining in the light of the fires: the temple of the god of night. The god for whose pleasure the city was founded and named and made great. The god to whom the new mayor had not made even the smallest of offerings, though the god had raised him up from the lowly legislature into the fine white brick house mayors were customarily kept in.
Those who dared look outside saw a miracle. Not a single stone of the ancient temple was upset while all the others were brought low. And they knew instantly what this miracle meant: the destruction came not upon the god's house because it was the god who had sent it.
When the sun rose the next day, after the night of relentless bombardment, the citizens gingerly stepped out of their hiding places and into the tender rays of the morning sun. They were drawn through the shabby rubble towards the only building still whole: the temple of the god of night. There, they found a sight that froze the blood in their veins. Something more terrifying than the entire night of destruction from heaven. It was the mayor, that ungrateful agnostic, standing on the steps of the temple, a detonator in his hands.
He looked out over the heads of the crowd, towards the horizon, as if he were addressing the night that now fast retreated from the dawn, and just before he activated the detonator, he said in a thunderous voice, “It’s only fair.”
Where he had gotten enough C4 to reduce the entire temple to rubble, the citizens never discovered. They were never able to ask the ungrateful mayor because none of them ever saw him again. The blast and the debris and the smoke drove most of them away, and when it had all settled, he was nowhere to be seen.
Some say that the last shadows of the night gobbled him up. Others believe him entombed under the carcass of the temple of the god of night. But a few old men, reckless with their great age, had not run from the choking debris of the blast, but remained to see what happened after. They swear that they saw the mayor standing calmly in the haze, lighting a cigar. Then, all these old men say, the mayor turned and strolled into the unending desert, without food, a canteen, or a care in the world.
They say that, but no one believes them.
The city was utterly laid to waste in the course of one night. Boulder after celestial boulder thundered upon the buildings and streets and any other man-made thing within the city limits, setting aflame that which was not crushed by the impacts. But one building remained untouched, its dome shining in the light of the fires: the temple of the god of night. The god for whose pleasure the city was founded and named and made great. The god to whom the new mayor had not made even the smallest of offerings, though the god had raised him up from the lowly legislature into the fine white brick house mayors were customarily kept in.
Those who dared look outside saw a miracle. Not a single stone of the ancient temple was upset while all the others were brought low. And they knew instantly what this miracle meant: the destruction came not upon the god's house because it was the god who had sent it.
When the sun rose the next day, after the night of relentless bombardment, the citizens gingerly stepped out of their hiding places and into the tender rays of the morning sun. They were drawn through the shabby rubble towards the only building still whole: the temple of the god of night. There, they found a sight that froze the blood in their veins. Something more terrifying than the entire night of destruction from heaven. It was the mayor, that ungrateful agnostic, standing on the steps of the temple, a detonator in his hands.
He looked out over the heads of the crowd, towards the horizon, as if he were addressing the night that now fast retreated from the dawn, and just before he activated the detonator, he said in a thunderous voice, “It’s only fair.”
Where he had gotten enough C4 to reduce the entire temple to rubble, the citizens never discovered. They were never able to ask the ungrateful mayor because none of them ever saw him again. The blast and the debris and the smoke drove most of them away, and when it had all settled, he was nowhere to be seen.
Some say that the last shadows of the night gobbled him up. Others believe him entombed under the carcass of the temple of the god of night. But a few old men, reckless with their great age, had not run from the choking debris of the blast, but remained to see what happened after. They swear that they saw the mayor standing calmly in the haze, lighting a cigar. Then, all these old men say, the mayor turned and strolled into the unending desert, without food, a canteen, or a care in the world.
They say that, but no one believes them.
No comments:
Post a Comment