harvest...... flash fiction

I always knew I was different, even as a child. People would look at me and see what they wanted, then take it. I’ve been plucked so many times that you’d think there would only be a hollow shell. Hair and freckles holding the bones together.  

Somehow I always refill.  But it’s gotten harder lately.

Probably because I’ve been doing it for so long.  I’m old, so very old. Pyramid old, horse and buggy old, before the internet old. And I’m tired. It takes a lot more energy, a lot more food to replace what’s taken.  Not sure how the universe balances that on the ledgers. There must be a give and take set of books. Bound in calfskin, the spines embossed with precious metal.

When I was young the give volume was fat and juicy, audibly humming with energy, but now in my mind’s eye it sits cracked and peeling, dry and fragile cowering on a shelf next to the take volume, its pages oozing out of the cover like overfed slugs, excess charge arcing out and grounding willy nilly like lightning on any handy metal surface.

My spark is almost gone. And it’s no wonder.  It’s been ages since I’ve felt the wind on my face, or had the bone melting pleasure of lying on the ground in the sun; the earth thrumming underneath my spine, refilling my well.

When he caught me, he hid me away.

He was a hungry man. Hungrier than most.  Full of ambition. Full of need. I was blind to his plan until it was too late. Millennia of studying human nature and still I was trapped.  Walled up. Sealed in.

I sit in my prison and watch the people below. Cars busily buzzing by, taking their drivers and passengers to who knows where. Purpose driven lives. 

I know he’s coming today. I can already feel the pull. This visit will be the end of me. One last harvest before my fields lay fallow, and dust returns to dust.