Sands Denial
by Michael S.
Collins
Sycophants
Sycophants the lot of them. I have no time for
them.
Time flows
softly in the wind. It brushes over my face and
my arms. I held my arms up to touch time, and it
burned. It burned a hole into my very soul and I
saw nothing. Nothing but the bleak vast emptiness
of aeons, carried on without any diversions in
their eternity. All the realms of insanity
invoked me, all the systems of regret, and soon I
was within one extreme of denial.
Denial. Denial.
A river in Egypt, you might say. Swift silken
soft sands stuck sneakily around my shoes,
grabbing at my toes, sucking away my laces,
threatening to engulf me. Sphinx stood standing
in the distance, beckoning closer. The might of
the Pharaohs fell apart at the seams; all around
me was the dying of the light. From a point in
time, I was only one person, alone in the middle
of the Desert. The wind howled past my ears. My
ears crumbled into dust, the rest of my features
followed. Only my eyes were left and they stared
into the dark sky, as two larger set eyes
appeared in that night sky and looked back at me.
And they smiled, and I waited for the mouth to
appear alongside those eyes, but it never did.
It never did,
I remained where I was. Listening to the
Sycophants. All of them.
“I am
very sorry to see what has happened here.”
Said the first one.
“It was a
tragedy to be sure.” Said the other.
“We
expected so much of you,” said the third.
Blaspheming.
Exalting. I heard the words but they were only
words, only elements of sound carried on the
breeze. What care I for those words? Those
precious indecisions of air that make a man. Not
by his actions do men deal with legacies, but
through their words that follow those legacies.
Why else should Great Men with big sticks become
legends in their own mind? The staff would agree.
Agreement is a
good thing. I see that. Only if they agree with
me. Otherwise, what is the point? So, as the
Sycophants listen out for my next words, my mind
floats back to the Desert.
In addition, I
let that sand drag me to eternity's end, instead
of listening to another word. It is better that
way.
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