Two headed horse tails
The Sampson Child
Planets, Pillars and Apocalypse
“Drive me to Big Pabbie. He’s waiting.”
Roads are empty. Very few are authorized to drive since the Event, and even fewer have the means to buy gas.
Tough times.
Charlene doesn’t care. She’s Big Pabbie’s psychoastrologer; rules don’t apply to her. Some even say she’s the one making them.
Pablo Sasore — AKA Pabbie — was who you confessed your sins to, without cracking church.
People told Pabbie strange things they’d done to pets growing up. They confided stolen items and shared passwords to DarkInternet.
But Charlene had something on Pabbie, because of his strange fixation with moons and their orbits.
“Jupiter’s transit across your psychotic ascendant will start next month, Pablo. You should send your family away.”
“For how long?”
“Twelve years, Pablo. Jupiter’s a slow planet.”
“And the war?”
“Next year will be propitious. Declare yourself the first day of February. The retroconjunction with your natal Mars will help.”
Charlene’s chauffeur winced. It wasn’t comfortable to be near the big man and see his she-boss so instruct him. Didn’t she know the people he owned so entirely?
Pabbie smiled, perceiving the driver’s internal wrestling.
“I will not go for 12 years”, he beheld his wisewoman. “Give another interpretation”
“I can’t change the orbits, Big Pabbie,” Charlene said, respectfully reverting to his official title. “But I can read the entrails of a sacrifice,” she added, slicing her driver’s throat with her haruspex’ knife.
“What do you see?”
“A long war. Your family, dead. And I need a new chauffeur.”
But what neither saw, not chauffeur before demise, not Pabbie before final-reading, not Charlene before ultimate-descent, was the starving child shivering where combines rusted. With little knees and tiny voice, teeth achatter, petitioning the orbits’ Maker…
Mountains rained down, flattening their darknesses, with Light too bright to behold.
This story was co-written by Fox (the artist) and Smillew (top writer in satire).
It was our fourteenth tale! Here are the previous ones:
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7| Part 8| Part 9| Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13
We call the concept the Two Headed Horse Tails.
As Fox (poet and digital art expert) describes it, Two Headed Horse Tails can be a tug of war. Two people (one of them could be YOU) are trying to get a tale into the corral, sometimes even against each other’s will.
Here are the rules (follow them or break them):
- 300 words total.
- Someone starts and writes 50 words. Then the other takes the lead and writes 50 more. Till the 300 count is reached.
- You can switch back and forth as to who starts the piece. (or not! We do.)
What about finding yourself another horse writer and giving it a try?
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