Love

A Story by John King

    Red lines on the face of a field of fescue. Red grid of Radon Red. In evening dusk the dust rises and then falls soundless and insignificant as no living soul is in the field to choke and cough. There is no life moving in the fescue. Not a mouse or other vermin.
But there is death.
    The demon Furfur ascends to the field from a pit no person will ever find. He is the demon responsible for love between a man and a woman. All demons come to bring death, and love is death. Furfur looks upon the field which now grows dim in the night and lies a curse upon it, that all who enter it will fall in love.
    The next day, a boy of seventeen and a girl of sixteen enter the field running after each other in innocence. They fall on top of each other in the fescue. They lay there and the demon's curse brings them love. They have children, raise them, watch them leave, watch each other grow old, until the girl of sixteen is an old woman of seventy, standing of her husband, who died in the night.