short short

What follows is a short short i wrote for my creative writing class. i'm posting it here for current lack of material. My mind is burning out now that i'm home. I'm not yet at a comfort level to start avoiding my family in favor of introspection, so until that time comes, my posts will be scarce. At least I'm getting rest...

Make-Over

Somewhere in the process of evolution, a vital role was reversed. Perhaps it happened in one instant; perhaps it was as gradual as evolution itself. Regardless of how it occurred, somewhere in history the master became the slave, the hunter the hunted, Mother Earth was broken to the will of its own creation.

Victims of abuse respond in all manner of ways, from hate and defiance to love and misguided commitment. Mother Earth, a spirit unbound by all but gravity, reacted however she felt in any moment. She was capable of the most profound acts of love and the most abhorrent works of hate and shared each without discretion.

One day, Mother Earth split herself open in the middle, letting her endless oceans thunder down deep inside her, cooling the fires inside her heart. Those waters reacted to the molten core of Mother Earth and became gaseous, became steam. This steam rose to the surface through the massive fissure Mother Earth had cut into herself, seeping up through cracks in the sidewalks, thrusting through the soft, tender soil. Its heat stripped meat off bone, mortar off brick, paint off walls. When the clouds disappeared, the surface of Mother Earth was skeletal.

“Do you think I am beautiful now?” she said. She smiled at the silence she had created.