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A girl with long, brown hair stared into the pit, her skirt swishing as she bent at the waist. Her hair fluttered around her face and covered her eyes, sticking to her cheeks like spider’s web. The pit’s deep swelling darkness reached out to the surface, pulling down pebbles and gravel and dust. The ground around the pit was devoid of life, and brown dirt caked the girl’s boots. Her skirt was gray with dust, and she blinked rapidly to shake the dirt from her eyes. A crow gusted over head, and a shiny black feather fluttered down to the girl’s feet. The gravel twitched, the air around it ripped away, and the feather was sucked into the pit. The broken warning tape fluttered in the wind, its yellow jarring against the cold empty sky. That warning circled the girl and the pit, hemming her in next to the gaping maw. Its frightened black letters warned others away from them both.
Shara picked nervously at the grass in her hand, weaving the strands through her fingers. The strips of green stained her fingernails. The crows around her took no heed, feathers rustling in the sharp wind. Shara’s black hair twisted itself into knots in the breeze. The sun dropped stutteringly in the sky, making the crows shine red and pink and gold in fading light. A single crow soared towards them, over Shara, to join its murder. A black feather dropped on Shara’s white dress and she stared at it as it twitched in the wind. A crow tilted its head to the sky and the sun sank down its throat.
That night, Mori scampered up the ruin, the moon at her heels. At the top, she spun frantically, scanning the dust and moss. At last, she stooped, and brushing boulders away like feathers, she saw the glimmer at the end of her search. Mori lifted it from the rubble and stared at the book in her hands, dust-covered and worn down by time and rats. The ruin was still, but for her breath that caused the dust around her to flutter into the air. The moon hung as if on a string, its light casting hard shadows on the cover of the book. Mori held her hand above it, the shade of her fingers casting the title into doubt. Her toothy smile glittered in the dark. The old pages stank of rot, though the building around her was dry as a desert grave. Her fingers brushed the moldy cover, stirring up the soft black and blues. She could taste the wet dust on her tongue, and she savored the realness of this broken-down part of the world.
Sharp clouds skittered across the sky like rats. An old flag battered against its pole, torn and gray from sun. When it flapped, a huge faded eye flickered into view, opening and closing with the wind. The girl in the red leather jacket stared up at it, watching it back. The empty parking lot cracked around her. Insistent dandelions shoved their yellow heads towards the bleak sky. The sound of pebbles jumping in the wind clattered along the ground like fingernails. A single bat shuddered through the sky, wings beating to the movement of the flag.
One day, those four will be weaved together. The threads of their lives tangled into those of the flag. One day, they will stand around the great pit and hold hands as the crows rise from the below, coming to the chanting of the book. One day, they will drag each other from the chasm, hands slick with sweat and mouths coated in dust, laughing. And one day, they will watch as each falls into the power they so recklessly desired. The pit will open farther and devour dust and stones. The book will be read cover to cover, and its powers twisted so deeply its ink will bleed from the page. The crows will dance from star to star and chase the sun to exhaustion. The old fluttering canvas eye will blink slowly, as if to smile.
One day only the last will be left, leaning against a cold flagpole. The flag will lie in tatters at her feet, the eye torn from its fabric socket. Battered canvas will droop over her shoe and flutter as a breeze passes casually by. The dandelions will have retreated into the broken asphalt. The last one will close her eyes and watch an old book drowning a lightless pit in ink, guarded by crows that burn from within. She will smile at the old torn caution tape, lying in the dust. And the canvas eye will watch with her, hovering above her head, and flapping in the breeze.
Artwork by Xan.