Life Itself is an Ancient Ruin

The first snow fell with an unusual bitterness. The icy wind blew and icicles formed on the fall leaves and the leaves were mad because they had not had a chance to yet fall which should have been their destiny. Nature was rebelling and the winds cried out for vengeance.

Stan Marriott trudged through the snow wearing nothing heavier than a light windbreaker jacket. When he had left Chicago the day before (or was that two months ago? His memory rebelled at the effort for clarity.) the early September sun was shining and the temperature was in the seventies. Now he was in Michigan, only three hundred miles or so from Chicago, yet the weather was so stunningly different Stan was beginning to wonder if he had somehow slipped into an altered state of consciousness. It (slipping into an altered state of consciousness) had happened many times before but all the previous times had been under climate-controlled circumstances. Except for that one time in Haiti, but Stan, due to an agreement with the Haitian government, could not and would not divulge exactly what had happened under the hot Haitian tropical sun. All he ever told people was that voodoo was not a religion.

***

"Demetrius, bring me some more olives."

Demetrius obeyed his master with languor that bordered on decrepitude.

"What's the matter, Demetrius? You seemed to have lost that usual vibrant spring in your step."

"Nothing is wrong, Master. At least I don't think anything is wrong."

"Didn't you pass your recent physical with flying colors?"

"Yes, but Galea of the Delphi Sub-Oracle Station  looked at some entrails of a raven and said there was something missing in my life."

"Ahhh" was the Master's only reply.

***

The screen front door was flapping wildly in the wind as Stan approached the old farmhouse. He knocked on the solid wood door with what amounted to an almost fierce persistence. Finally, the door opened and Stan was peering (as best he could, it might be added, as his glasses were fraught with ice and snow) at the visage of Sony Allsurethinger, Chairman of the Board of the Aztec Publishing Concern.

"Hey there, Stan, what brings you here?"

"You invited me."

"I did?"

"Yes, you emailed me a couple of months back and ask if I'd be interested in being assistant editor for your quarterly magazine, 'Ancient Ruin'."

"Well, darn, I think I do have a slight memory of such a thing. What took you so long to get here?"

"My car broke down about fifty miles out of Chicago and I've been hitchhiking and walking ever since. I would have made it sooner but I feel asleep while catching a ride on a tractor-trailer and when I woke up I found myself in Denver."

"Well, be that as it may, it's good you here. Let me show you your office."

***

"Demetrius, bring me some more olives."

"Yes, Master. I'll be there almost instantly." Demetrius glided over to his Master. His buoyancy and joy of spirit were evident and palpable in his every movement.

"So Persephone is working out?"

"Yes, Master. And how!"

THE END