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Idiotically titled, and with no discernible reason,
Fin Molly Chakra, for Nobody but the Gangsta
By. Isaac Summers
After the young merchants arise from their seats, we will follow them.
Now we stride atop the sidewalk, waiting for a call from the gated community. A siren has sounded, and so this narrative will be on its merry way.
Mr. Ceasefire at his post as sentry of the Municipal Guarded Sloom would tip his hat up and look at the sun everyday at a quarter past noon. It was not an odd thing for him to do, for though the 15 minutes past the 12 is an odd number, the hour was not, and hours are often regarded with more importance than the minutes that follow within them. Mr. Ceasefire had a fondness for the equal companionship between the hour and the minutes, which is the thing that makes him odd, but not the actual time he chose. All in all, however, the sun was of even more importance at that particular time. The sun claims itself as neither sex, male or female, even to this day. I am sorry, but that is just the way it is. Owing to this disposition toward its own gender, it was possible for the sun to fall in love with whoever it chose, and in this human lifetime it had chosen Mr. Ceasefire. Mr. Ceasefire thought as well that the sun’s gender was of no importance, and since the sun loved him so, showering him constantly in warmth, especially during a quarter-past-noon glow, he felt obliged to fall in love with the fire on high in return. The sun would outlive all its suitors, and so it would be forever alone unless there was another suitor to take the former’s place. The two got along handsomely, and their union was a force that made the world all the brighter when they were together. Mr. Ceasefire would serenade and dance with the rays that came down from the sky as if they were the arms of a slender doll, and the sun would beam with pride in the joy that it brought to this in-the-infinity-of-the-universe young man.
It is said that no matter the season that came and passed, the sun would show back up again at that scheduled time of noon and fifteen, meaning no darkness at Mr. Ceasefire’s post could prevail in taking long-lasting hold. Just the same, the sentry still took his duty as seriously as he could muster when he was not otherwise indulging in his personal, gleeful aforementioned ceremony. The M.G.S. was a small gated community place that housed idiosyncratic homebodies of nearly every type of persuasion. There was the timid Gofblid who had ridden down from the neighboring mountains on a hair follicle-powered locomotive named the Grander Betsy GWR; then there was Ms. Pykes who enjoyed on Sundays to go door-to-door and admit to being of a moiety, her husband living in the same home as she but pretending they didn’t know each other; then there were the caged domplepillyites, placed on the ground beside a wishing well some many years ago, who didn’t mind their condition at all and would scratch and bite if someone tried to pick the lock, though they were pleasant when approached on other matters; then there were the young merchants with nothing left to sell, who still went out everyday in the morning and managed to come back with a small fortune, their black umbrellas, tops unfurled, perched attentively in their right hands; and then there was the Draftfool holed up in his meager mansion, his name being surmised out of superstition that in a former life he had built the M.G.S. and would remain there for eternity unless the land was scalded and impeached of all able possibility of providing anyone the means of being able to live there any longer. All these people Mr. Ceasefire stood for at his post, and more besides who drew not as much attention to themselves.
It was not uncommon for the sun to flare when people passed in and out of the Municipal Guarded Sloom’s walls; this was a sign of boasting, as if the sun itself was the most breathtaking and powerful thing in existence, and here was its one and only friend, now raised as well through this collaboration to a higher rank. It was a show that brought out the most positive excitement from passerby, especially Ms. Pykes, and the ones to who it was directed for, the somewhat calamitous clapping endearing and emboldening the celestial inferno to continue for more applause trice unfolding. The only ones who did not yield were the ones most busy of all, the young merchants with umbrellas half the height as they feet tall. It was not a simple debate to inquire why this trend held up on their end, for their plastered-on grins sent shivers down the spines of those who would at that current moment depend on this actual pondered discussion’s mend to emotions not yet considered to be whole in understanding; those emotions, to us, could be identified as fear and a lugubrious sadness playing high horse to either inspire disgust or pity. With all the merchants’ riches, it was a surprise that their lives were not a party. Their lives were devoted to their business and trade, for whom the sun’s dawning meant more debts to be repaid. A wizened and aged policeman would follow them to and from the marketplace when they and the debts were due and were done, as they (the merchants) had submitted a form for an escort, they believing their lives, due to their fortune, being at all times at an immediate peril. On the form they claimed they had not enough money to hire a personal bodyguard, and that an escort was due due to the hatred their practices had brought about, their black umbrellas only being able to shield them from the tempestuous customers and urchins’ disconcerting and acidic glares. The policeman, who had never been given a name at birth, would go by whichever one a person would like to bestow upon him in an interaction. The young merchants would never address him, so when he was with them as escort he bore no name; which meant little to them, as he meant very little more to them than nothing, them being of possible relation to his parents long since dead in coldness of heart and rigidity of mind. Don’t think this analogy never crossed the elder’s mind; being around them bothered him on some other internal level, but that level was deeply buried and long since forgiven, and to them he had a duty to uphold, just as he had been entrusted to do for the city at large for a great many year.
It was because of this respectability that there proved to be something possible of a most stupendous undoing. An evening sashayed light into night, the silent moon’s glow taking up a fraction of the sun’s domain. The policeman was escorting the grave laddies to the gates of their community when a different light chanced to peek out from behind the moon in the sky; it was the one special night that comes around rarely where the sun and the moon join together in it. Unhappy with the weak nature of the moon, and seeing travelers at the M.G.S. gates when aiming rays at the post to give Mr. Ceasefire an unexpected visit, the sun found the night to be the perfect opportunity to beam bigger and brighter than ever before. Oh, what courage the sun showed! Oh, what gravity and superiority did it impose! All this to another group might have been most exhilarating and fine and dandy, but the merchants were tired from the day, and upon the declaration of the sun, it only appeared that Mr. Ceasefire wanted to play. One of them hollered: “You desert your post for this gim hurray?! Let us through, Mr. Ceasefire, let us through I say!” But Mr. Ceasefire was gone to Never Never Land, his head’s heart and chest’s mind just below the clouds. Then they all talked amongst each other, the policeman a short distance away, “He must let us in! Let us in! We must call it a day!” The leader to the police officer: “Well what are you standing around there for? Get us in, post stat!” The police officer declined his head, it so humble, and muttered to them, “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.” Walking up to the gates, he threw back his head, and hollered up to Mr. Ceasefire, “Won’t you open up? It’s time for some of us to be getting off to bed!” But Mr. Ceasefire couldn’t hear them, was too far away. “See? See? I knew this connection of theirs could come to no good,” said the leader to his cronies, they nodding as if they had just scolded the entire neighborhood. Then to the officer, “Well, get us in! Call the army if you must.” The officer half laughing, “No, I think that’s a bit much. I can see he’s not quite with it, which is unfortunate, but love can do strange things to people, and then duty might not be enough.” “Then fulfill your duty, now more than ever you must! The sun blisters our senses, and it’s not a quarter past noon. It’s not time for lunch!” Still laughing a little, and cocking back his head, the police officer screamed up, “Hey, Mr. Ceasefire! If this keeps up, would you like breakfast in bed?” While the others rattled the gates quite irately, their leader approached the police officer and shouted, “You nostalgic dunderhead, help me or disclaim me!” This elicited a frown on the officer’s once jovial facade. “I’m sorry, Mr. Trife, what would you have me do?” “Get up there and bring him down! Bring him down! Maybe then he’ll listen better to you.” So the office turned back around and entered Mr. Ceasefire’s station; the high-up room was so bright, that his sight threw a conniption. “Mr. Ceasefire! Eh, Mr. Ceasefire?! Where are you? I’m to bring you down! Eh, Mr. Ceasefire. Ceasefire! Ceasefire? What did I just say? Dear me, I must hold my ground.” At long last he laid hold of Mr. Ceasefire’s form; but on turning him around, he found a disfigured marm. Reeling from this image, the officer called to the sky, “Where’s Mr. Ceasefire, sun?” “He’s dead.” “But why?” “He neglected his duty to me, one noon day. He was helping a young lady with directions, and she became interested in his station, she asking for a tour. His face was aflush and rosy red, my light sees everything, and he offered it to her as if it had been an idea of his own.” “But where is he? Where is he? Only he has the keys to the gates to those homes!” “Patience, man who will one day soon fade away. Though you have little time left, I having to be patient for eons, you have enough time to listen; harm has been done to me even more, I say. She then came back quite often, that teacher and her pecan-colored curls! They formed their own calls to each other, the same things like the time that was first. She asked for directions, and they guided each other to the others heart, and away from my glow. There went my beau! Earlier today I asked him if we were together still to be, and he looked back for a second before she came, said ‘huh?’, and let leave for my grief. When she entered in, she looked up at my sky, she smiled and said, ‘What a day.’, but I couldn’t let it lie. I smote her with my acid burn, the cancer rot and my court did to her try, find her guilty, her body there instead to lie. He and my love was all a lie, this lifespan a pain now to go over, why can’t the end commence?! You look at him, you turn back to the gates with your fake light that flashes in hand, and stare fast at that well. If you look properly, you will see the five digits of a hand.” Quickly the policeman ran down the steps and to the gates of the glen. He pointed the flashlight at the distant well, yet nothing met the tendrils of its faint grasp. The young merchants watched agape as the policeman took their place, he banging on the gates. “What have you done?!” he called to the sky. The sun returned, “He learned to love what he could touch. My touch is never enough for greedy man. He would have had me last the remainder of his lifetime alone-” “WHERE IS HE?!” “-I CURSE YOUR LAND! Only I can offer you enough light to find his body where its gone. Unless you agree to a deal with me, so too shall my world now abandon yours.” With that the sun disappeared from the sky, and the night was only kept glowing by the moon’s dim light.
Fire engines were called to the scene and their fighters broke the gates inward. Upon running to the well, the policeman found it had collapsed, and rubble covered the entrance. The only witnesses were the caged domplepillyites, but their language none knew how to unscramble. This left everything uncertain, and so the officer went back to his office at the police station to deliberate. The teacher’s body had been charred at her lover’s post. Where could his body have gone, and how?! There was something else going on here, and he had to find out.
The next day there was no sun in the sky. Everything remained in complete darkness, as the moon had gone with the night. The city lights cast their only lights upon the scene; their shapes were a blessing, but in the dark alleyways more crime was unseen. It was now more imperative than ever that the police officer escort the young merchants with their black umbrellas to the marketplace, as without the light of the sun people’s more deplorable fervors were emboldened. After the confrontations that had passed the night before, it is understandable that his mind was more on edge than he would normally feel okay to express. The merchants’ cold attitudes toward him this day did not sit right with him at all, and so when they went into work, he followed quietly behind. At their unlit stall, there was nothing on display, yet there were customers that still came up, their faces puffed and eyes bloodshot with pain. Some would grovel on their hands and knees after being turned away, and only after they had lay in torture on the ground for a while would there be an expressed change of heart on the part of the stall keepers. A quarter of an hour passed thus before the officer’s curiosity got the better of him; he wound his way through aisles to the back of the lot and poked his head in to see what was hidden on the employee ground. There were pink packets glowing red under the lights cast down from neighboring stalls, but they bore no labels. A second to spy was too long, as a couple of the clan had caught him in their sights. “What are you doing?! Go back outside! We don’t need you just yet. You’re early. Go!”
Later on the officer guided the young merchants back to the fallen gates of their home; upon doing this, he headed back to the closed market, where he got permission from a security guard, after showing his badge, to enter onto the grounds. Going through the back way again, and shining his dim flashlight on the ground, he found there was nothing there. The merchants always only brought back to the M.G.S. with them a few tiny bags of coins, so they couldn’t have brought their merchandise with them. The officer had been around long enough to know that young people watched too many movies, so on a hint of a suspicion he felt around on the musty ground until he felt something out of place. There was a disguised handle, which, pulling up, he found led to a storage area beneath. Descending the stairs with a rapid pace, he reached the bottom, swung his light, looked around and found…nothing. He was in a large room, no entrances or exits out beside from the one he had come from, and there were shelves along the walls with nothing on them. Then he heard the moan. Flipping around, he found the leader of the young merchants was standing behind him, the plastered-on grin present on his face. “Hello, officer. I am surprised to see you here. But it’s a pleasant surprise, nonetheless! How are you?” “It’s late at night, and I know you and your friends don’t like staying up past bedtime. Let’s cut to the chase so you can go on back home. What is it exactly that you sell?” “Why, officer, if that’s all that you were really wanting to know, why couldn’t you have just come to the counter when we were open and found out for yerself?” “Thanks. I might just do that.” When the policeman reached the top of the stairs, he looked back down to the man in black standing below in the light shining from his hand. “Don’t you have anything to light your way, sonny? If so, I have another one of these that I can spare.” The grin on the merchant’s face only grew wider. “No, that’s alright by me officer. You already do enough charity for me and my pals as it is. I would hate to ask for help that an aging man such as yourself might find harder and harder to offer.” At the exit to the marketplace, behind him he heard a magnificent boom. Yet he could see nothing in the darkness, not even the gleam of a pair of eyes that he was sure was looking directly into his soul.
Another day came with no sun. The officer was asked by the sheriff for a full report on what had occurred a couple days prior. Upon hearing what it was that the sun had said near the end, the sheriff leaned forward and asked, “It didn’t say anything more beside that? You didn’t ask what it was that the sun was wanting from you?” “Well...no. I guess not. Should I have?” “No, no. You did the right thing. It’s not an individual officer’s place to go making deals with the criminals that they are attempting to interrogate. You did alright, Jimbob. You did alright.” They shook hands, and the two parted from each other. But the officer couldn’t help but wonder what it was that the sun was offering.
The third day with no sun was the worst of all. The officer had not taken the merchants up on their offer to stop by, and he could feel an energy from them as if they were pleased and silently mocking him as they made their way to the marketplace. Their black umbrellas blew around in their hands under the pressure of a wind. It was from this wind that a smell reached his nose, a smell that he hadn’t come across since his childhood. One of the merchants was looking behind himself at him, the edges of the lips curved a bit. The officer grabbed ahold of his front and pressed him against a building wall. “Where are you keeping it?!” With that plastered-on grin, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The rest of the group had stopped and turned around to face them. The leader: “What is going on, officer? Has my friend done something to bother you?” “Who are you people?” The leader’s eyebrows moved. “Why, didn’t you already know?” Teeth could now be seen in his smile. “We are from the ranks of the Legion of Sabnock, officer. We’ve been waiting for you to understand so that you may entertain us.” The umbrellas extended from their hands, contorting and spiraling into tendrils, the tops spinning into wings that spun out darkness. The officer ran away from this scene, heading for the police station. A chilly voice echoed over the city to him, which somehow he only was able to hear. “The sun is waiting, officer. It’s not polite to keep people waiting.” The ground fell away before him, cracks extending down into the fiery oblivion rising from below. The world around was fading away as a blur, buildings crashing down around and hydrants and cars exploding, floating in midair for a second before crashing down on the other side of the street from where they originated. “Oh, but can’t you see us, officer? We can see you.” Chains whipped around his body and pulled him toward the opening in the ground. The smell from the past was overpowering. “You know what that smell is now, don’t you?” Telling himself that none of this was real, the chains around him broke free and the elderly police officer went sprinting off again as fast as he could. Time. The smell was of time. The voice was always following just a couple steps behind. “Like us, you humans are confined to this planet and the scar of the smell, aren’t you, officer? You are always afraid of it, but why not embrace it? Why not embrace the power of time and use it to stand outside of the pain love brings, the pain that the material claims in you?” Something was burning into his back, branding a design on his shoulder blades, as if directed from a poker. The cement of the road burst into melting tar in front, and through this pool of agony he kept moving forward. “The sun will fade away, along with all the warmth and light you hold dear. This flame is eternal, is risen from the embers of all your hatred.” The cascades of ire fell over all who walked on the streets, they not seeing what was before them until their skin met with the devastation. “The hangman’s knot is cryyying! Rise as we stand for Cain. Come to ussss, officer. The due date is THROUGH!” The officer turned back around, and there was nothing left to fear. The city was dark again, and everything was in one piece. There was no peace for him, though. Whatever he had just experienced, would come back again. Despite what his superior officer had told him, he would have to talk with the sun.
The officer ascended the stairs of the sentry’s post. It had been sealed off with tape while the investigation was still ongoing. It was the morning of the fourth day, a little past nine. He had spent the rest of the day that had come before sleeping and wishing that this whole thing would turn out to be just a dream. No such luck. Though it was not the sun’s favorite time, it would have to do. There was no more wasting time. He called out to the sun, wondering how it could possibly be able to hear him. There was no response. Though he kept calling, the sun never came back. He wandered over to the crumbled well, but there was nothing changed. Looking down, there was the cage yet again, but… there were no more domplepillyites. Ms. Pykes had just gotten up, and exiting from her home and seeing him looking down at the cage, said in her candy voice, “Mr. Ceasefire had taken an especially nice liking to them things. It was decided by all of us a long time ago that they might as well be officially his. When he left, they left. No longer cared about their cage so much, I guess. Such a strange character he was. But it was always so much fun to see him playing with them through the little cage bars, I couldn’t help but want to join in and clap them on, it was so much fun. If anybody in passing didn’t know any better, they and those cute little things had been hitched together for a long while.” The officer turned to her. “What was that?” “What? Them being hitched? Yeah, he would take the cage up with him up into that miniature tower of his and they would spend all day long together. The birds would come out a quarter past noon, and their song would just delight his little things. Oh well. He took them with him when he moved. Wait, isn’t today Sunday? Guess what, everybody!!! I’m of a moiety! Woohoo!” With that, she went skipping off from door to door to find out if everybody had remembered her telling them this last Sunday, and the Sunday before that, and the Sunday before that…. The officer looked up at the sun, floating and softly shining in the sky. Everything was different now. He had put his demons behind him, time no longer an illusion, the sun, with which he realized he had made a bargain with in his sleep, being his one and true forever love until the day he died.
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Fin Molly Chakra, for Nobody but the Gangsta
By. Isaac Summers
After the young merchants arise from their seats, we will follow them.
Now we stride atop the sidewalk, waiting for a call from the gated community. A siren has sounded, and so this narrative will be on its merry way.
Mr. Ceasefire at his post as sentry of the Municipal Guarded Sloom would tip his hat up and look at the sun everyday at a quarter past noon. It was not an odd thing for him to do, for though the 15 minutes past the 12 is an odd number, the hour was not, and hours are often regarded with more importance than the minutes that follow within them. Mr. Ceasefire had a fondness for the equal companionship between the hour and the minutes, which is the thing that makes him odd, but not the actual time he chose. All in all, however, the sun was of even more importance at that particular time. The sun claims itself as neither sex, male or female, even to this day. I am sorry, but that is just the way it is. Owing to this disposition toward its own gender, it was possible for the sun to fall in love with whoever it chose, and in this human lifetime it had chosen Mr. Ceasefire. Mr. Ceasefire thought as well that the sun’s gender was of no importance, and since the sun loved him so, showering him constantly in warmth, especially during a quarter-past-noon glow, he felt obliged to fall in love with the fire on high in return. The sun would outlive all its suitors, and so it would be forever alone unless there was another suitor to take the former’s place. The two got along handsomely, and their union was a force that made the world all the brighter when they were together. Mr. Ceasefire would serenade and dance with the rays that came down from the sky as if they were the arms of a slender doll, and the sun would beam with pride in the joy that it brought to this in-the-infinity-of-the-universe young man.
It is said that no matter the season that came and passed, the sun would show back up again at that scheduled time of noon and fifteen, meaning no darkness at Mr. Ceasefire’s post could prevail in taking long-lasting hold. Just the same, the sentry still took his duty as seriously as he could muster when he was not otherwise indulging in his personal, gleeful aforementioned ceremony. The M.G.S. was a small gated community place that housed idiosyncratic homebodies of nearly every type of persuasion. There was the timid Gofblid who had ridden down from the neighboring mountains on a hair follicle-powered locomotive named the Grander Betsy GWR; then there was Ms. Pykes who enjoyed on Sundays to go door-to-door and admit to being of a moiety, her husband living in the same home as she but pretending they didn’t know each other; then there were the caged domplepillyites, placed on the ground beside a wishing well some many years ago, who didn’t mind their condition at all and would scratch and bite if someone tried to pick the lock, though they were pleasant when approached on other matters; then there were the young merchants with nothing left to sell, who still went out everyday in the morning and managed to come back with a small fortune, their black umbrellas, tops unfurled, perched attentively in their right hands; and then there was the Draftfool holed up in his meager mansion, his name being surmised out of superstition that in a former life he had built the M.G.S. and would remain there for eternity unless the land was scalded and impeached of all able possibility of providing anyone the means of being able to live there any longer. All these people Mr. Ceasefire stood for at his post, and more besides who drew not as much attention to themselves.
It was not uncommon for the sun to flare when people passed in and out of the Municipal Guarded Sloom’s walls; this was a sign of boasting, as if the sun itself was the most breathtaking and powerful thing in existence, and here was its one and only friend, now raised as well through this collaboration to a higher rank. It was a show that brought out the most positive excitement from passerby, especially Ms. Pykes, and the ones to who it was directed for, the somewhat calamitous clapping endearing and emboldening the celestial inferno to continue for more applause trice unfolding. The only ones who did not yield were the ones most busy of all, the young merchants with umbrellas half the height as they feet tall. It was not a simple debate to inquire why this trend held up on their end, for their plastered-on grins sent shivers down the spines of those who would at that current moment depend on this actual pondered discussion’s mend to emotions not yet considered to be whole in understanding; those emotions, to us, could be identified as fear and a lugubrious sadness playing high horse to either inspire disgust or pity. With all the merchants’ riches, it was a surprise that their lives were not a party. Their lives were devoted to their business and trade, for whom the sun’s dawning meant more debts to be repaid. A wizened and aged policeman would follow them to and from the marketplace when they and the debts were due and were done, as they (the merchants) had submitted a form for an escort, they believing their lives, due to their fortune, being at all times at an immediate peril. On the form they claimed they had not enough money to hire a personal bodyguard, and that an escort was due due to the hatred their practices had brought about, their black umbrellas only being able to shield them from the tempestuous customers and urchins’ disconcerting and acidic glares. The policeman, who had never been given a name at birth, would go by whichever one a person would like to bestow upon him in an interaction. The young merchants would never address him, so when he was with them as escort he bore no name; which meant little to them, as he meant very little more to them than nothing, them being of possible relation to his parents long since dead in coldness of heart and rigidity of mind. Don’t think this analogy never crossed the elder’s mind; being around them bothered him on some other internal level, but that level was deeply buried and long since forgiven, and to them he had a duty to uphold, just as he had been entrusted to do for the city at large for a great many year.
It was because of this respectability that there proved to be something possible of a most stupendous undoing. An evening sashayed light into night, the silent moon’s glow taking up a fraction of the sun’s domain. The policeman was escorting the grave laddies to the gates of their community when a different light chanced to peek out from behind the moon in the sky; it was the one special night that comes around rarely where the sun and the moon join together in it. Unhappy with the weak nature of the moon, and seeing travelers at the M.G.S. gates when aiming rays at the post to give Mr. Ceasefire an unexpected visit, the sun found the night to be the perfect opportunity to beam bigger and brighter than ever before. Oh, what courage the sun showed! Oh, what gravity and superiority did it impose! All this to another group might have been most exhilarating and fine and dandy, but the merchants were tired from the day, and upon the declaration of the sun, it only appeared that Mr. Ceasefire wanted to play. One of them hollered: “You desert your post for this gim hurray?! Let us through, Mr. Ceasefire, let us through I say!” But Mr. Ceasefire was gone to Never Never Land, his head’s heart and chest’s mind just below the clouds. Then they all talked amongst each other, the policeman a short distance away, “He must let us in! Let us in! We must call it a day!” The leader to the police officer: “Well what are you standing around there for? Get us in, post stat!” The police officer declined his head, it so humble, and muttered to them, “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.” Walking up to the gates, he threw back his head, and hollered up to Mr. Ceasefire, “Won’t you open up? It’s time for some of us to be getting off to bed!” But Mr. Ceasefire couldn’t hear them, was too far away. “See? See? I knew this connection of theirs could come to no good,” said the leader to his cronies, they nodding as if they had just scolded the entire neighborhood. Then to the officer, “Well, get us in! Call the army if you must.” The officer half laughing, “No, I think that’s a bit much. I can see he’s not quite with it, which is unfortunate, but love can do strange things to people, and then duty might not be enough.” “Then fulfill your duty, now more than ever you must! The sun blisters our senses, and it’s not a quarter past noon. It’s not time for lunch!” Still laughing a little, and cocking back his head, the police officer screamed up, “Hey, Mr. Ceasefire! If this keeps up, would you like breakfast in bed?” While the others rattled the gates quite irately, their leader approached the police officer and shouted, “You nostalgic dunderhead, help me or disclaim me!” This elicited a frown on the officer’s once jovial facade. “I’m sorry, Mr. Trife, what would you have me do?” “Get up there and bring him down! Bring him down! Maybe then he’ll listen better to you.” So the office turned back around and entered Mr. Ceasefire’s station; the high-up room was so bright, that his sight threw a conniption. “Mr. Ceasefire! Eh, Mr. Ceasefire?! Where are you? I’m to bring you down! Eh, Mr. Ceasefire. Ceasefire! Ceasefire? What did I just say? Dear me, I must hold my ground.” At long last he laid hold of Mr. Ceasefire’s form; but on turning him around, he found a disfigured marm. Reeling from this image, the officer called to the sky, “Where’s Mr. Ceasefire, sun?” “He’s dead.” “But why?” “He neglected his duty to me, one noon day. He was helping a young lady with directions, and she became interested in his station, she asking for a tour. His face was aflush and rosy red, my light sees everything, and he offered it to her as if it had been an idea of his own.” “But where is he? Where is he? Only he has the keys to the gates to those homes!” “Patience, man who will one day soon fade away. Though you have little time left, I having to be patient for eons, you have enough time to listen; harm has been done to me even more, I say. She then came back quite often, that teacher and her pecan-colored curls! They formed their own calls to each other, the same things like the time that was first. She asked for directions, and they guided each other to the others heart, and away from my glow. There went my beau! Earlier today I asked him if we were together still to be, and he looked back for a second before she came, said ‘huh?’, and let leave for my grief. When she entered in, she looked up at my sky, she smiled and said, ‘What a day.’, but I couldn’t let it lie. I smote her with my acid burn, the cancer rot and my court did to her try, find her guilty, her body there instead to lie. He and my love was all a lie, this lifespan a pain now to go over, why can’t the end commence?! You look at him, you turn back to the gates with your fake light that flashes in hand, and stare fast at that well. If you look properly, you will see the five digits of a hand.” Quickly the policeman ran down the steps and to the gates of the glen. He pointed the flashlight at the distant well, yet nothing met the tendrils of its faint grasp. The young merchants watched agape as the policeman took their place, he banging on the gates. “What have you done?!” he called to the sky. The sun returned, “He learned to love what he could touch. My touch is never enough for greedy man. He would have had me last the remainder of his lifetime alone-” “WHERE IS HE?!” “-I CURSE YOUR LAND! Only I can offer you enough light to find his body where its gone. Unless you agree to a deal with me, so too shall my world now abandon yours.” With that the sun disappeared from the sky, and the night was only kept glowing by the moon’s dim light.
Fire engines were called to the scene and their fighters broke the gates inward. Upon running to the well, the policeman found it had collapsed, and rubble covered the entrance. The only witnesses were the caged domplepillyites, but their language none knew how to unscramble. This left everything uncertain, and so the officer went back to his office at the police station to deliberate. The teacher’s body had been charred at her lover’s post. Where could his body have gone, and how?! There was something else going on here, and he had to find out.
The next day there was no sun in the sky. Everything remained in complete darkness, as the moon had gone with the night. The city lights cast their only lights upon the scene; their shapes were a blessing, but in the dark alleyways more crime was unseen. It was now more imperative than ever that the police officer escort the young merchants with their black umbrellas to the marketplace, as without the light of the sun people’s more deplorable fervors were emboldened. After the confrontations that had passed the night before, it is understandable that his mind was more on edge than he would normally feel okay to express. The merchants’ cold attitudes toward him this day did not sit right with him at all, and so when they went into work, he followed quietly behind. At their unlit stall, there was nothing on display, yet there were customers that still came up, their faces puffed and eyes bloodshot with pain. Some would grovel on their hands and knees after being turned away, and only after they had lay in torture on the ground for a while would there be an expressed change of heart on the part of the stall keepers. A quarter of an hour passed thus before the officer’s curiosity got the better of him; he wound his way through aisles to the back of the lot and poked his head in to see what was hidden on the employee ground. There were pink packets glowing red under the lights cast down from neighboring stalls, but they bore no labels. A second to spy was too long, as a couple of the clan had caught him in their sights. “What are you doing?! Go back outside! We don’t need you just yet. You’re early. Go!”
Later on the officer guided the young merchants back to the fallen gates of their home; upon doing this, he headed back to the closed market, where he got permission from a security guard, after showing his badge, to enter onto the grounds. Going through the back way again, and shining his dim flashlight on the ground, he found there was nothing there. The merchants always only brought back to the M.G.S. with them a few tiny bags of coins, so they couldn’t have brought their merchandise with them. The officer had been around long enough to know that young people watched too many movies, so on a hint of a suspicion he felt around on the musty ground until he felt something out of place. There was a disguised handle, which, pulling up, he found led to a storage area beneath. Descending the stairs with a rapid pace, he reached the bottom, swung his light, looked around and found…nothing. He was in a large room, no entrances or exits out beside from the one he had come from, and there were shelves along the walls with nothing on them. Then he heard the moan. Flipping around, he found the leader of the young merchants was standing behind him, the plastered-on grin present on his face. “Hello, officer. I am surprised to see you here. But it’s a pleasant surprise, nonetheless! How are you?” “It’s late at night, and I know you and your friends don’t like staying up past bedtime. Let’s cut to the chase so you can go on back home. What is it exactly that you sell?” “Why, officer, if that’s all that you were really wanting to know, why couldn’t you have just come to the counter when we were open and found out for yerself?” “Thanks. I might just do that.” When the policeman reached the top of the stairs, he looked back down to the man in black standing below in the light shining from his hand. “Don’t you have anything to light your way, sonny? If so, I have another one of these that I can spare.” The grin on the merchant’s face only grew wider. “No, that’s alright by me officer. You already do enough charity for me and my pals as it is. I would hate to ask for help that an aging man such as yourself might find harder and harder to offer.” At the exit to the marketplace, behind him he heard a magnificent boom. Yet he could see nothing in the darkness, not even the gleam of a pair of eyes that he was sure was looking directly into his soul.
Another day came with no sun. The officer was asked by the sheriff for a full report on what had occurred a couple days prior. Upon hearing what it was that the sun had said near the end, the sheriff leaned forward and asked, “It didn’t say anything more beside that? You didn’t ask what it was that the sun was wanting from you?” “Well...no. I guess not. Should I have?” “No, no. You did the right thing. It’s not an individual officer’s place to go making deals with the criminals that they are attempting to interrogate. You did alright, Jimbob. You did alright.” They shook hands, and the two parted from each other. But the officer couldn’t help but wonder what it was that the sun was offering.
The third day with no sun was the worst of all. The officer had not taken the merchants up on their offer to stop by, and he could feel an energy from them as if they were pleased and silently mocking him as they made their way to the marketplace. Their black umbrellas blew around in their hands under the pressure of a wind. It was from this wind that a smell reached his nose, a smell that he hadn’t come across since his childhood. One of the merchants was looking behind himself at him, the edges of the lips curved a bit. The officer grabbed ahold of his front and pressed him against a building wall. “Where are you keeping it?!” With that plastered-on grin, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The rest of the group had stopped and turned around to face them. The leader: “What is going on, officer? Has my friend done something to bother you?” “Who are you people?” The leader’s eyebrows moved. “Why, didn’t you already know?” Teeth could now be seen in his smile. “We are from the ranks of the Legion of Sabnock, officer. We’ve been waiting for you to understand so that you may entertain us.” The umbrellas extended from their hands, contorting and spiraling into tendrils, the tops spinning into wings that spun out darkness. The officer ran away from this scene, heading for the police station. A chilly voice echoed over the city to him, which somehow he only was able to hear. “The sun is waiting, officer. It’s not polite to keep people waiting.” The ground fell away before him, cracks extending down into the fiery oblivion rising from below. The world around was fading away as a blur, buildings crashing down around and hydrants and cars exploding, floating in midair for a second before crashing down on the other side of the street from where they originated. “Oh, but can’t you see us, officer? We can see you.” Chains whipped around his body and pulled him toward the opening in the ground. The smell from the past was overpowering. “You know what that smell is now, don’t you?” Telling himself that none of this was real, the chains around him broke free and the elderly police officer went sprinting off again as fast as he could. Time. The smell was of time. The voice was always following just a couple steps behind. “Like us, you humans are confined to this planet and the scar of the smell, aren’t you, officer? You are always afraid of it, but why not embrace it? Why not embrace the power of time and use it to stand outside of the pain love brings, the pain that the material claims in you?” Something was burning into his back, branding a design on his shoulder blades, as if directed from a poker. The cement of the road burst into melting tar in front, and through this pool of agony he kept moving forward. “The sun will fade away, along with all the warmth and light you hold dear. This flame is eternal, is risen from the embers of all your hatred.” The cascades of ire fell over all who walked on the streets, they not seeing what was before them until their skin met with the devastation. “The hangman’s knot is cryyying! Rise as we stand for Cain. Come to ussss, officer. The due date is THROUGH!” The officer turned back around, and there was nothing left to fear. The city was dark again, and everything was in one piece. There was no peace for him, though. Whatever he had just experienced, would come back again. Despite what his superior officer had told him, he would have to talk with the sun.
The officer ascended the stairs of the sentry’s post. It had been sealed off with tape while the investigation was still ongoing. It was the morning of the fourth day, a little past nine. He had spent the rest of the day that had come before sleeping and wishing that this whole thing would turn out to be just a dream. No such luck. Though it was not the sun’s favorite time, it would have to do. There was no more wasting time. He called out to the sun, wondering how it could possibly be able to hear him. There was no response. Though he kept calling, the sun never came back. He wandered over to the crumbled well, but there was nothing changed. Looking down, there was the cage yet again, but… there were no more domplepillyites. Ms. Pykes had just gotten up, and exiting from her home and seeing him looking down at the cage, said in her candy voice, “Mr. Ceasefire had taken an especially nice liking to them things. It was decided by all of us a long time ago that they might as well be officially his. When he left, they left. No longer cared about their cage so much, I guess. Such a strange character he was. But it was always so much fun to see him playing with them through the little cage bars, I couldn’t help but want to join in and clap them on, it was so much fun. If anybody in passing didn’t know any better, they and those cute little things had been hitched together for a long while.” The officer turned to her. “What was that?” “What? Them being hitched? Yeah, he would take the cage up with him up into that miniature tower of his and they would spend all day long together. The birds would come out a quarter past noon, and their song would just delight his little things. Oh well. He took them with him when he moved. Wait, isn’t today Sunday? Guess what, everybody!!! I’m of a moiety! Woohoo!” With that, she went skipping off from door to door to find out if everybody had remembered her telling them this last Sunday, and the Sunday before that, and the Sunday before that…. The officer looked up at the sun, floating and softly shining in the sky. Everything was different now. He had put his demons behind him, time no longer an illusion, the sun, with which he realized he had made a bargain with in his sleep, being his one and true forever love until the day he died.
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<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" /></a><br /><span xmlns:dct="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" property="dct:title">Fin Molly Chakra, for Nobody but the Gangsta</span> by <a xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" href="http://tundrabon.weebly.com/short-stories-128064/fin-molly-chakra-for-nobody-but-the-gangsta" property="cc:attributionName" rel="cc:attributionURL">Isaac Summers</a> is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>.
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