Those of you who follow me closely may know that my work situation has changed; no more do I commute to the Isle of Manhattan, but a much shorter distance down the stairs and into my basement. This is obviously to be a great personal shift and has the side-effect of taking away what has been my writing time; it's easy to write on the train, hard to on the way down the stairs. I will try to keep these pages alive and awake as I find a new schedule for myself.
Today's Flash Fiction Friday is another Deal with the Devil story and another involving the moon, loosely inspired by another image prompt. Enjoy.
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"Another Man who Sold the Moon"
You can't blame me.
It was after the last strorm, after I lost damn near everything. Even being smart, even evacuating early, even making plans, it still didn't help. Yeah, I know I'm lucky, I know I'm alive. Most people are alive, even if the news lingers too long on those who aren't. I am and I was lucky and I still lost so damn much. You have to know that to know the state of mind I was in.
You can't blame me.
Anyway, the stories are mostly right on this one; it's surprisingly easy to find the Devil if you want him, and he's always ready to make a deal. That's what he does, but that's what I do. And I read all the books. From that old German one The Art of War to The Art of the Deal. Well, not those, but books like that. I need to give you a frame of reference. If I was gonna make a deal, I was gonna make a killer deal. You can take that to the bank.
No, it doesn't matter where I met him. At a crossroads. In a clearing in the woods. At a graveyard. A great dealmaker never gives away all his secrets. And that, my friend, is a secret.
It's the deal you want to know about, and I suppose you want an apology. First, remember that it isn't my fault. I read up, I planned.
I was clever.
Yeah, I asked for a lot. For us to be spared for the next storm and the storm after that and the storm after that, for all of eternity.
When you ask for a lot, the price is high, so very high.
He wanted the moon.
Yes, I know it sounds crazy, but I was clever. It was clear we couldn't sell the moon. There's no way to get it down, for one thing. But what I could sell, what he could take and put in a jar next to all the pretty skies he's keeping for the proverbial rainy day, what the deal could REALLY be for is the idea of the moon. I knew it had worked the next month, when the moon would have been full and no men shed their man-skin to walk the wilds in wolf-shape. When madness came to become a matter of outbalanced humours in the brain and not the influence of the heavens.
When a little bit of magic faded from the world.
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| Bottled Sky by Lukasz Wiktorzak |
It didn't matter. We were safe.
Until the next storm came.
The seas rose.
Our city was gone.
I fled by boat as I watched the waves overtake the last and highest of the towers, cursing his name. The current took me to land where, after a days' wandering, I found him at a crossroad, I accused him of breaking our deal. The moon was his, my city was gone.
"You gave me the idea of the moon. I preserved the idea of your city. A thought for a thought. A fair deal, no?"
So, since that time I wandered. I tell my tale.
But enough about me. Let me tell you about the lost wonders of my home.
Atlantis.
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