HUT

The bought police found him later with a hurriedly slit throat. The bride wore petals in the adjoining room. The Young Boy, sheltered in a small copper bathtub, shook quietly. A breeze ran in circles. As he crouched, unsure that his legs weren’t broken, a vivid calm broke as clouds parting. One foot slung over the edge of the tub, he tested his weight on scarred palms. Confident to crawl, The Small Boy thrust his bones over the brim of his cell. The heat of the packed dirt floor softened his toes to breaking. Palm-fronds acting as portals parted with whispered assent. The Boy inched forwards. Or sideways. To his left, the bride, to his right, a creek of cochineal lay curling, meandering and unfurling, congealing around a jagged corner wall. Here and there the dust siphoned off a tributary and drank. Moloch’s vermillion oases. Golgotha spits blue tears. Bruised arms quake. The Tall Man runs out of Him, down pocked and thumb-indented thighs. Breathing could be heard from an ante-room. Her muffled, last sobs. A single lily petal adorned his path. All then was silent, except for the burst of his violated heartbeat and a periodic clicking coming from without. The Old Man’s body lay at odd angles. An arm seemed raised in pseudo-salute; a leg upturned as if to run. Arcing scuff-marks illustrated the floor. The Young Man looked from arm to elbow, recalling the fuzz of His wrist as it swept his eyes while time grew thick. The Youth had lain, frozen, counting out the rhythmic signature of pain. Warm gusts murmured through The Cut Man’s hair, reanimating him for a set second. Time thinned and Our Boy was outside the hut of huts, nude, on hands and shattered knees, staring into His Father’s ballistic Bombay eyes, eyes that watched their hands gently caress a caked blade. CLICK: open. CLICK: shut. CLICK: open. CLICK: shut. C L I C K . C  L  I  C  K . . C   L   I   C   K . . . CLICK: on. CLICK: off.