Repossession

A Story by Fox2436

This story was based on a conversation I had with an Afghan refugee from the Soviet invasion of the 1980s. The visuals are all based on real atrocities that occurred in the region.

Repossession

Black feathers everywhere. The down of carrion crows were strewn about the dirt in fluffy trampled patches. A herd of wobbled birds in bloated unison swarmed together in little leaps on the ground. They were a synchronized avian horde crowding strips of flesh breaded in dust and sand. Too fat now to fly amidst the dangling rowed smorgasbord hung above them, the birds huddled themselves together amidst meaty fallen jackpots. It was an unholy congregation of svelte black wings gorging like hogs. In this derelict outcropping, one could only hear the hum of cackling greed reverberating throughout the empty desert street.

The road where they dined was lined on either side with mud brick square homes, each possessing a rugged façade of crude hand-carved rectangle doors. These eroded brown boxes packed like freight cars, and ornamented with frayed mock Turkmen rugs that covered their openings, were no longer inhabited. The colorful hues of the thick ethnic carpets that awkwardly swathed each door were now caked in the residue of windblown earth. Vibrant canvases mired in dead tan, and along with the birds, they seemed to be the only living thing in the village as they twisted in the breeze.

The sun glowered over the flat topped buildings, on the sand street, and absorbed into the shining black coats of the crows. Some of the overzealous birds ate themselves into a gastric bursting death, and were fed upon by their brothers. Gluttony atoned in gluttony. The dead were numerous, and the living rotund crows hobbled to and fro about the fallen. Cutting through the thick desert air like a filet knife hung the smells of putrid produce and pungent meat, permeating through the cracks of the third world craftsmanship. The odor crept under floor boards, hugged rooftops, and clung to the beaks of the gorging birds.

These streets once held a local bazaar, where the trading of Lapis jewelry, carvings, carpets, and sweet dates had occurred. The remnants of rotten fruit baskets remained overturned, and broken clay pots returned to their earthen origins in oblong shards amidst the avian gaggle. In this little one street village, not worthy of distinction on the tip of any cartographers pencil, bustling goat herders would shoo and bag their stock for meat, milk, or Buzkashi. The migratory salesmen and caravan consumers would intermittently fall in submission to God with the rest of the village. Here, this clamoring plot of humanity would defy reason to reside in desolation. Now the hot breath of life was torn away in a vacuum of sand choked air, and not at the hands of the Earth, but at the harsh hands of man.

This small strip had two cobbled rock wells as bookends, each one visible to the other in a lonely showdown. Two buckets lay overturned at their bases. Between them, and in front of each mud hut, like western street lamps, lined two identical rows of freshly placed poles. Hollowed pipes manufactured in a land never known or heard by the natives. These crooked tubes, twice the size of a man, stood in tribute, as silent monuments to the frailty of life. They served as a macabre homage to the distinction of beasts, to the feature of man’s inherent brutality.

Then the winds came. Slowly at first, but culminating in a gale force crescendo, these gusts brought the gnarled hands of mother earth to choke the things that were already dead. In seconds, it washed away the fat little birds in somersaults. Like God’s Hand scrapping crumbs off a table, the dinner guests whirled in the wind. The rugs covering the rough doors clapped against their mud brick homes in a violent percussion. The earth itself reclaimed the land in a white wash of sand, whistling in high pitches and wiping clean the remnants of the dead. The advancing dust storm, etched its mark on all who fell before it, and blocked out the sun. The bird bazaar lay broken and cleared. It was a focused devastation only known to first generation Noahides.

Now the only residents at this grim desert party were the dangling pole visitors bearing dead blind witness to the phenomena. Human wind-chimes danced straight armed and stiff in the wind. The visages of those who once owned this land were painted in tan windblown dirt. It is unknown how they were strung up, but yet here they remained, swinging in uniform reverence to the earth with which their bodies returned. Gone in the Afghan duster were the Soviet tank treds that marked the sand entering and exiting the bookend wells. Gone were the holed and gunfire peppered rugs hanging at the doors. Gone were the echoed screams of rape and murder. Gone in the wind were the crows. Lastly, in final tribute, the last departing guests on the back of the black blizzard were their uncovered distorted faces. Their expressions of agony, regret, and submission were torn away in the ferocity of the khamsin. Their young and old, boy and girl, and man and wife faces, their exposed faces, were all of it taken in the wind. The skin, the flesh, absconded with by the indebted repossession of God. The dirt devil danced for hours in a war-torn wake, erasing the clues to their devastation, and returning the Earth to its natural order.

Later that night, two cloaked travelers donned in checkered cloth hobbled their way through the desert to the village, seeking refuge from their own unspoken ruin. Entering the town, the larger guest stood silent as his boy companion righted the overturned bucket by the well. Few remained at their dangled post. Those that did, hung faceless on creaking ropes. The migrants paused and bared witness like praying prophets. The boy broke the delicate silence,

“What happened here?”

“…”

“Father, what happened here?”

“God’s Will.”

They cut down the Sons of Adam, and used their hands to bury what remained. In the morning they moved on.

© 2014 Fox2436

Author's Note

Please review all aspects of this short story as it has also been shelved for years in the confines of my journal. I appreciate you taking the time to read this, and any feedback you can provide.