Short Story: The Emerald City

The Wandering Poet took the little black girl into the emerald city, which was made up of parks, city buildings and neighborhoods. A microcosm of the place she’d been banished from. As they passed through the city the poet pointed out places of interest. To the east, far off in the distance there was what looked like a castle perched on top of a mountain. Was that castle made of ice? She wondered aloud. The poet told her that yes the castle was made of ice; it was the home of one of the oracles, The Ice Queen. The Ice Queen and The Alliterator were the founders of the Emerald City. They too were banished from there and set upon establishing a place where they could be themselves without scrutiny or persecution. They had the forethought to plan for others just like them, and here you have The Emerald City. The poet pointed to the west to where there was a crowd gathered around a podium. At the podium was a woman, fantastically dressed, giving a speech to the crowd. The little black girl strained to hear what she was saying, but all she could hear was the ooohs and aaahs from the crowd. The poet told her that the woman was the other oracle, The Alliterator. Just ahead of them was a man approaching them quickly. The poet called the man the Albino General. The man was clearly an albino, skin pale with curly blond hair, and eyes covered with a pair of stylish shades.

The poet introduced the little black girl to the albino and disappeared into the crowd. He had just passed her off. The albino general picked up where the poet left off. He took her to his condo, a courtesy he extends to all new arrivals. She found that hard to believe, but accepted his invitation nonetheless. He let her stay there for a few days, then told her that she was to meet the oracles.

The city, so far, had been a wonderful place. People were free to speak their minds and express themselves as they wished. They showed her around the city, took her out to eat, and exposed her to all kinds of events she had only dreamed of attending, back in the other place. So when the general told her she was to meet the oracles, she knew she had nothing to fear, but fear was exactly what she felt. The woman at the podium seemed nice enough, although she could never get close enough to the podium to clearly see the woman. The Ice Queen, however, made her shiver with just the mere thought of it. She had not seen the woman, nor had she been to the castle, and the people around the city would only say a few words about her, most were good things, but it was almost as if they were afraid to say anything else. She would find out soon enough about both the oracles.

To be continued in: The Oracles

Short Story: The Wandering Poet

The little black girl wandered slowly on the outskirts of the city. She hadn’t seen a person since the driver had dropped her off 45 minutes ago. She was just about to give up when she heard the faint sound of someone strumming a guitar. She picked up her pace and followed the sounds until she came upon a man sitting on a bench near what looked like an abandoned park. She didn’t want to sneak up on him, so she moved into his line of sight, walking right in front of him, slowly until she was in speaking distance.

He looked up at her blankly, hand in mid strum.
“I’m, I’m looking for someone called The Truth?” she muttered, looking intimidated. The man began to sit up straight as she started to talk, then he smiled and stood up. At his full height he looked like he belonged on someone’s football field, protecting the qb. But football was part of a life she no longer belonged to, another place, another time. The little black girl took a few steps back to make room for his presence.

“So it’s the truth you seek, that’s why you are here?
Well then it’s the truth you meet, have no fear.
I am who you want, you have caught me, my dear
your search you can stop, the answers are near.
But before you mention my name again,
over there they know me as another man
I have to keep my cover, let me tell you before I forget,
I’m known around these parts as The Wandering Poet.”

The man lifted his arm and gave a great bow. Seeing a man of his size bow so gracefully was funny to the little black girl, and for the first time in awhile she smiled. The gentle giant, she thought to herself, and allowed herself to relax a little. The Wandering Poet told her about how he was initially banished from the world they knew, just as she had been. Then he found a way to sneak back in and pass messages from the world they knew to the city they had been banished to. He disguised himself as a crazy artist, a babbling poet that wandered from city to city. No one ever bothered him, because they thought he was crazy. He would take the secrets he found in the world from the past and tell them to the people in the new city in the form of poetry. The others never gave the arts the importance that they deserved, so they didn’t take the time to decode The Wandering Poet’s words. The perfect disguise. However, this meant that The Wandering Poet ALWAYS spoke in prose….

“Freedom you will find
and a sense of self
a lot of people, if you don’t mind
but they will give you help
you are ready to join your people
you are ready to be among the free
so follow me up this path
to The Emerald City…”

The Wandering Poet picked up his guitar and all of his notebooks. A few pens spilled out of his pockets. She quickly bent over to pick them up, and as she stood back up she saw The Emerald City. She hadn’t seen it when she first walked up on him, but it had been there the whole time. Lined with evergreens, bushes, and vines, the gates began to open and the city unfolded right in front of her.

To be continued in: The Emerald City

Short Story: You think too much!

The little black girl lifted her head from the table, her mouth dry, lips cracked. She had been trying not to take a sip of the water in the paper cup that was put in front of her, but she couldn’t take it anymore. She reached a weary hand across the table, grabbed the paper cup, and sipped long and hard. The water tasted faintly of cardboard and it was lukewarm. The taste was horrible, but the refreshment was to die for. She finally looked up at the two men seated across from her. She looked at the recorder perched on the edge of the table, where it had landed after she had smacked it aside.

They had been grilling her for hours about what she thought about everything. Her views on politics, politicians, the government, and her people. She couldn’t understand what they wanted her to say or to admit to. After awhile of being asked the same questions a hundred different ways, she started to make stuff up. The more she fed them, the more they wanted to hear. She was tired of the interrogation, and they wouldn’t tell her where she was or what they wanted from her. She eventually just put her head down; she was convinced that they weren’t going to let her out.

“Have I committed a crime? Why am I here?” she asked in a last effort to get some clarity.
“We are not the police.” There was a tap on the door and one of the men went to answer it. After a brief discussion, another man entered the room.
“I’m sorry ma’am, there has been a case of mistaken identity. You are not who we are looking for, you can go now.”
“What?!” she shouted as she stood up. She knocked over her chair in the process and sent the men reaching for their guns. She quickly put her hands up in surrender, knowing how quick these kinds of people were to shoot someone like herself.
“We’ll escort you out, ma’am.” The third gentleman took her by the elbow and led her out of the room. They put her in the back of an SUV, similar to the one they had snatched her in. The third man talked to the driver, the driver nodded, locked the doors, rolled up his window and sped off with her so confused in the back seat.
“Where am I?” She asked the driver, who happened to be a black man.
“Girlie, I can’t tell you that.”
“Well where are you taking me?”
“They want me to take you to the place where they drop off all of the people they want to keep away from the general population.”
“Excuse me?”
“Honey, you think too much! I don’t know what you said, or who you said it to, but they have you listed as one of those thinkers. They are afraid of what you know, and they are trying to keep you away from everyone else. They don’t want someone like you giving everyday people ideas about what’s really going on.” The little black girl sat back in a daze. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, she couldn’t believe what was happening to her.
“Look, I’ll drop you off right outside of the city. It’s up to you whether or not you go in. If I were you, I wouldn’t go in there just yet. Walk up the road a little, around the city. Don’t go up the obvious path. Seek The Truth, he’ll help you out. And please, KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT. These people aren’t ready for what you have going on up there.” He tapped his temple with his index finger. She looked out of the tinted window at the passing scenery. What in the hell had her big mouth gotten her into this time?

To be continued in: The Truth aka The Wandering Poet

Short Story: The Land of Hot and Heavy

In the land of Hot and Heavy the little black girl found everything she had been hoping for, and much much more. She spent a lot of her time catching up on all of the parties and socializing she thought she had been missing back in the banker’s box. She eventually found out that in the land of hot and heavy all there was was more of the same. More of the same parties, more of the same kinds of people, more of the same bs that she thought she’d left behind. That was all hot and heavy had to offer. She began to chafe under the weight of the superficial life she had bought into. She realized that her focus, back in the banker’s box, was to escape from what she couldn’t handle, what she felt she had no control over. She escaped by emerging herself into the frivolous things that people do to make themselves feel better. The parties, the drinking, the drugs, the after hours activities, were all tools of the escape. They weren’t what she needed. What she needed was a purpose, something to fulfill her, something to motivate her to become what she was supposed to be. Hot and Heavy had none of that. It was the escapist’s dream, superficial distractions for the lost and aimless. It was time for the little black girl to move on…

To be continued in: Kidnapped!

Short Story: The Bankers Box

Once upon a time in a land as hot as the fiery pits of hell, with cockroaches (waterbugs) the size of kittens, lived a little black girl. Her height, just short of the model cut off, build slight, with an ever lingering pouch around her midsection, a place to hold her stress, and hair locked as a symbol of her freedom from the chemical lie. This little black girl had escaped to the pits of hell, running from a trap that placed her so tightly in a box that she’d just about forgotten how tall she really stood. The little black girl was looking for a way out, to a place far away from the box, a place that at that time would be, just had to be, better than the cramped bankers box she had been residing in. She craved excitement, invigorating adventures, reckless abandonment and maybe a little something to appeal to her darker yearnings. What better place than hell? She had heard rent was cheaper down there, and everyone was the complexion of the sugary sweetness found in a Russell Stover’s chocolate candy box. Yes this was the place for her, hot and heavy and oh so different from where she had been. She broke out of her box, leaving no forwarding address, informing no one, and burned up the road to her next destination…
To be continued in: The Land of Hot and Heavy