(no subject)
Happiness in a bottle.
I didn't have much time to work on this this week -- therefore it makes little sense.
Water drips, paper rips, little girl with tight blonde curls in a white pinnafore. Gets her Sunday shoes dirty, jumps in puddles, rains booze to the thirty dirty old men in a dark smoky bar. Behind a car, rides her trike, grips the handle , lights a candle: flame burns, tale turns:
Pel never liked his name. To him it sounded like a raindrop in a bucket. Or a marble dropped to the cement by some child's clumsy hand. Pel wanted a name that was like a lion roaring. He wanted a name like thunder shaking dust off the mountains.
Every time Pel thought about his name he felt a little uncomfortable twinge, as though something between his ribs had ripped. But that's only where it started. The tiny tear grew. And grew. And soon Pel was hateful of everything. He hated the stones that cut his feet. He hated the wind that tangled his hair. And he hated the moon, because it was so calm and peaceful that it made his stomach choke with distaste.
The only thing that Pel did not detest was the sun. He loved the way it burned; he loved the heat on his head and the light that made others squint. When he was in the sun his muscles bulged, and he felt like he could do anything. And so he decided: he would bottle the sun.
Pel began collecting stones, working only on the sunniest of days. In the mid-day heat he would sit unshaded and hew them into bricks. Brick by brick he laid a foundation the size of a country, and began to build his celestial stairway.
Any other man would have died. It took far too long for the staircase to be built for one man to live through it. But as Pel built and grew higher and closer to the sun, he felt strengthened. His skin browned and tightened and he ceased to age. The closer to the sun he got, the quicker he could move the stones, until finally he was sitting right on the edge of the sun. So close that he could reach out and touch it if he wanted. So he did.
It felt as though his entire arm had turned instantly to liquid gold. He felt as though he were the sun, and all the people below at the foot of his mighty staircase were shielding their eyes because of him. "They will give me a name that rings from the hilltops for this!" he crowed. And without further delay he withdrew a spoon from his pocket, and began scooping up the sun in little bits and sliding it into the glass bottle he had brought with him.
He spooned and spooned until there was nothing left of the sun. The bottle he held was warm and bright, but only on him. If he held it in his hand, it was covered up, and all he felt was the darkness, and the terrible, terrible cold. A cold that was too much for every other man, and that was too much even for Pel.
He fell backwards down his magnificent staircase; it crumbled even as he fell, weakened without the sun that helped forge it. The bottle flew up out of Pel's hands
little girl catches in hand, cracks glass, spills on her dress. Toes in the sand, wipes at the mess. Eons ago, lighter ignites. Little girl takes a bath, then turns out the light.