/lit/ - Literature

The anger came across the air in a stench of burning, torn steel, screaming as he split the sky and held his breath. The latch wouldn’t release, the latch of the cockpit of this burning awful failure, it grinded rust so loud, and the fire stuck on the grill grew arms up high. Out the fire reached, clawing up the nose, furiously swinging with drunken fists, but it didn’t matter. The man, a gatherer, Nicholas, closed his eyes. With his hands he interlocked his fingers, and the fire came, knocking on the glass, wisping around the peripheral visors—the small ship trailed down, down above the treeline, not too far down yet. He adjusted himself with his back firmly against the seat, eyes closed, palms an inch apart, lips still, and as Mom brushed her nose against his cheek and the bosom of God rested so perfectly, Nicholas found himself floating. In the sky, there he was, a streak of smoke fell down a few hundred feet away, 200 maybe; the chute, yet pulled, out it went above him in a snapping billow.

A canopy so large, he had seen no clearing at any point in the descent. With a grand landscape of resources, no single gatherer could have transported all of this alone, not with so few resources of their own. A cart like Nicholas’s could hold a few thousand tons, but the manpower to collect so many resources, it would take months. He was tasked to be here for a few days, to collect laterite. This was a barren planet, no life, nothing, and he sank beneath the trees. A battle broke with cracking and catapults flinging the man, a man of rather large size, into gunfire that stabbed into his stomach, his back, slapping his lips with a fat scrape, and thick arms pinioned him at an angle that had branches wrap his right hand back around to the other elbow in anger. Some small, dumb man had done this, had him strung up limp; a well read, fresh young, no more than 22 stupid, idiot, dumb boy slithering out of bed for amphetamines and mother’s teat, he was responsible. He was, but what happened on the ship, moments before the descent, was looked over like a small nose of ice washed in breathy salt water. Nicholas, floating, wouldn’t see right, or better, for a while because the audience laughed at him, and the ship was behind him or to the right, one of the two, so it was both. His shoulder hurt attached to the arm branch, and it attached well where gripping the bark and lifting his weight using his left hand would pressure dislocation and yells. The naive dumb boy, his hands, thin and boney, slid across desktops and documents with eyes closed and a stupid girl smiling, and Nicholas was stuck there, his eyes blank and inward. Behind to the right, a knife in his pocket -maybe- his neck tightened and twisted to a pocket buttoned shut then snapped and unsheathed to stab his, no cut the arm away with a bit of time and tears that ran then and there. But time had nothing to say; God, already quiet, did not either, and the blade quietly tried.

The anger came across the air in a stench of burning, torn steel, screaming as he split the sky and held his breath. The latch wouldn’t release, the latch of the cockpit of this burning awful failure, it grinded rust so loud, and the fire stuck on the grill grew arms up high. Out the fire reached, clawing up the nose, furiously swinging with drunken fists, but it didn’t matter. The man, a gatherer, Nicholas, closed his eyes. With his hands he interlocked his fingers, and the fire came, knocking on the glass, wisping around the peripheral visors—the small ship trailed down, down above the treeline, not too far down yet. He adjusted himself with his back firmly against the seat, eyes closed, palms an inch apart, lips still, and as Mom brushed her nose against his cheek and the bosom of God rested so perfectly, Nicholas found himself floating. In the sky, there he was, a streak of smoke fell down a few hundred feet away, 200 maybe; the chute, yet pulled, out it went above him in a snapping billow.

A canopy so large, he had seen no clearing at any point in the descent. With a grand landscape of resources, no single gatherer could have transported all of this alone, not with so few resources of their own. A cart like Nicholas’s could hold a few thousand tons, but the manpower to collect so many resources, it would take months. He was tasked to be here for a few days, to collect laterite. This was a barren planet, no life, nothing, and he sank beneath the trees. A battle broke with cracking and catapults flinging the man, a man of rather large size, into gunfire that stabbed into his stomach, his back, slapping his lips with a fat scrape, and thick arms pinioned him at an angle that branches wrapped his right hand back around to the other elbow in anger. Some small, dumb man had done this, had him strung up limp; a well read, fresh young, no more than 22 stupid, idiot, dumb boy slithering out of bed for amphetamines and mother’s teat, he was responsible. He was, but what happened on the ship, moments before the descent, was looked over like a small nose of ice washed in breathy salt water. Nicholas, floating, wouldn’t see right, or better, for a while because the audience laughed at him, and the ship was behind him or to the right, one of the two, so it was both. His shoulder hurt attached to the arm branch, and it attached well where gripping the bark and lifting his weight using his left hand would pressure dislocation and yells. The naive dumb boy, his hands, thin and boney, slid across desktops and documents with eyes closed and a stupid girl smiling, and Nicholas was stuck there, his eyes blank and inward. Behind to the right, a knife in his pocket -maybe- his neck tightened and twisted to a pocket buttoned shut then snapped and unsheathed to stab his, no cut the arm away with a bit of time and tears that ran then and there. But time had nothing to say; God, already quiet, did not either, and the blade quietly tried.