The Damnation of Daniel Mayor
10/28/14
Fiction Story: Imitation of Ernest Hemingway's Writing Style
On Tuesday morning four soldiers clad in green cloths hanging from their dry skin sat around an unlit fire, playing a game of sticks as silent as the bombs that were coming. The first man was Daniel Mayor and he looked across at the three of them, sitting on the ground together as if it was the end of the world. Angel was furthest to Daniel’s left, his greasy black hair growing under his nose as if to compensate for the lack of hair on his head. Angel was so brown he looked the color of dirt but if Daniel said something then he would be subject to the same dirt in his dry mouth. Daniel though that would be a bother, but not so much a bother as this damn silence. Daniel slicked back his own black mustache with his swollen hands. They too, were cracked with dirt just as all the mens’ hands were.
Monday morning the boys climbed the mountain, giddy and excited, with each other’s familys long behind in tow. The boys were all brown boys, kicking up dirt at each other, and kicking down twigs and leaves and ashes down unto the faces of their families because it was like snow. Daniel is the smallest of the young unknowing boys, until he became the oldest when the bombs came crashing behind them. The boys were left alone and in the lights of their eyes the candles flickered out into the darkness and the only sound the boys could comprehend was the deafening searing of ringing in their ears. Later these boys would be drafting themselves to lay on cold ground while more bombs deafened them.
The next morning Daniel observed the three men play sticks with higher stakes. They signed in their cracked fingers in the dirt, the loser will be the first to check above the fortress. The loser was Angel and Angel sacrificed himself to look over the old, splintered wooden wheelbarrow the four men were hiding behind all night. Daniel watched Angel’s back as his stood and was shot from in front of him and Angel took a bullet into his head, not as silently as the bombs but as quickly as the men realized that Angel’s heart had stopped and there was no way to save him. Daniel asked the men what Angel’s name was and signed it into the dirt. He thought, he didn’t know Angel well, but he wouldn’t mind seeing him again sometime. He signed Angel’s name in the dirt next to Angel’s warm body.
Daniel frowned, his mustache sprinkling dirt into his mouth as he spoke. “Do you two have a spare cigarette?”
“No.” The one on the right said.
“No, check Angel.” The one furthest to the right said.
“Good Idea. Look I found one. Who’s going next?” Daniel asked cautiously and put the unlit cigarette in his mouth.
The men across from Daniel frowned and looked at him.
“I don’t understand what’s so damn big when we’re all going to die eventually! You two, be damned! I’m signing my name in the dirt. You two are these two stick men. Daniel Mayor. There. What’s that they’re dropping?” The bomb was deafening to those who didn’t notice it before, but those who saw it up close know that it didn’t make a sound.
 BeatsyaBass · Fri Nov 07, 2014 @ 04:51am · 0 Comments |
