Out of mud

He came, rising from the mud.

First his mouth, filled with razor sharp teeth, then his neck, bloated and long, snaked across the cracked, fissured earth. He rose, fashioned from the bones of the earth, a skeleton of stone. He reared his head once, and the water drained from the nearby rivers and ponds, a swirling mass of water filled the spaces between his bones. He reared his head again, and this time, the leaves fell off the strong, straight orchard trees. The trees withered and bent, spines, once straight, now supine, hunched like old men over their roots. Fruit fell, from their branches - heavy, ripe fruit fell....but withered, dry skins touched the ground....all the succulence and flesh sucked out.

Threads of flesh coiled around his bones, weaving and layering into a multi-coloured, dazzling skin. Now complete, he smiled, white teeth flashing, putting the sun to shame. He took his first step, and the earth bent, shook under his enormous weight. He reached the edge of the cliff and then bent low to observe the realm beneath. Fields of green flecked the landscape, filled with tiny black figures, scurrying industriously through crops of rice and wheat. In the distance, black clouds of smoke hovered over a city, a soaring, dark city.

He laughed. And as he laughed, his body shifted and changed - grew smaller, tiny, transformed into the shape of a man. A handsome man, with flickering red eyes, and tiny, pointed teeth.

He spoke now, for the first time, a language of war, words sounding like the thrust of bayonets, the sound of bullets racing through darkness, the squelch of blood, the crying of women.

He spoke quietly, but the tiny, black figures, hard at work in the fields, stopped to listen. The city stopped too, cars braked, lights flickered off and on. In a dark alley, between piles of garbage, a criminal, a young, hunted boy, stopped and listened. A few yards a away, a plump, perspiring policeman, hot on the trail of the criminal, paused and dropped his gun. In a room that overlooked the dark alley, a pair of lovers, burrowing and clawing into each other under white, sweat-stained sheets, stopped their fierce lovemaking.

They all stopped, and listened.

The words of the newly born man on the cliff, borne by the wind, filled their ears and wormed into their brains.

He spoke, and then stopped.

The policeman looked around for his gun, but it was there, in the tiny hands of a young child. The policeman smiled at the little girl, pretty in her blue frock, and gestured towards his gun. But she frowned, and shot the policeman. The bullet tore through his chest, and embedded in his soft, fleshy heart.

He died, a look of surprise frozen on his face.

In the room over the alley, the man stared at the woman, dark and sweaty, hovering over him . He gazed at her neck, at a mole on the side of the neck, a loop of black hair curling over it. He frowned, something about the mole disturbed him, repulsed him. Without thinking, he reached out his hands, and caught her neck in his strong grip. She gaggled, she whimpered, she tried to scream, but he strangled her.

The man on the cliff, with red eyes and sharp teeth, smiled. He strode off the cliff, into the air, towards the city.

He is coming.