{"sf1_id":1719796,"sf2_id":"J1Og0d1j","title":"Ragnarok - XIX","author":"Rob MacWolf","words":1879,"posted_at":"2021-05-19T16:51:00.000Z","tags":["Epic","Iambic pentameter","Poetry","blank verse"],"url":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1719796-ragnarok-xix","original_url":"https://sofurry.com/s/J1Og0d1j","image_url":"https://cdn.sofurryfiles.com/submissions/thumbnails/fe/3f/fe3f6aeb-e959-4d7d-b7be-81f32e32f909","description":"#20 of Ragnarok\n\nShane looks about at the world he has reached, to find he recognizes it.\nJourney to the Underworld is a common characteristic of the epic as a poetic form. Odysseus and Aneas both make one, Gilgamesh makes one, the first book of Divine Comedy is one, and Paradise Lost starts with one. Beren and Luthien, arguably, make more than one. Norse mythology, too, has one, when messengers are sent to the hall of Hel to petition for the release of Baldr from death. But since this entire story has been about the dead, and arguably has taken place in 'the Underworld,' I inverted the pattern. So here is the Journey FROM the Underworld.\nThe biggest change, if I were writing this today, would be Barbara. Shane's bereaved partner, were I to be writing today, would be a man. But I began this before I was even out to myself, so instead I'll just point out that St. Barbara is the patron saint of Cannoneers and Those in Danger of a Sudden Death, due to th circumstances of her matyrdom: her father beheaded her and then was killed by being struck by lightning.\nIf you need something to put on my gravestone, \"And there a wandering insomniac/ Crossing the street against the traffic light/ That shouted orders to an empty world/ And flashed ruby and emerald down upon/ The silent crossroads.\" isn't bad.","content":"Somewhere, it was winter. Stars were lost\n\nAbove the mottled, slate-hard clouds. The streets\n\nWere glazed with colorless lamplight. The air\n\nWas weary cold, and smelled of apathy.\n\nSomewhere it was January, or\n\nSome time that felt like it. Beside the curbs\n\nWere swept thin strands of snow, grey with the grime\n\nAnd grit of city streets, like smoke condensed\n\nTo almost solid slush and crusty salt.\n\nSomewhere it was almost dawn. For most,\n\nNight with her phantasms would yet hold sway\n\nAn hour or more. Until the coffee smell.\n\nUntil amnesiac stirring of the sheets.\n\nUntil impatient morning, seeping through\n\nThe sky like water through a paper towel,\n\nTo prod them to the scramble and the rush.\n\nTill then, the streets were nearly empty. Here\n\nThe rumble of a lonely early bus.\n\nThere the swelling scent of bakery warmth.\n\nAnd there a wandering insomniac\n\nCrossing the street against the traffic light\n\nThat shouted orders to an empty world\n\nAnd flashed ruby and emerald down upon\n\nThe silent crossroads. Shane, wondering, went\n\nDown sidewalks once familiar, now made strange\n\nBy their familiarity. The heights\n\nOf black brick and grey iron seemed to shy\n\nAway from looming over him. The bare\n\nTrees hibernating looked too small, as does\n\nYour school, when you revisit decades hence.\n\nThe city he had known for riot of noise\n\nSeemed smaller in its innocence of sleep,\n\nSeemed younger, as if Shane had grown, and it\n\nHad stayed a child. All was the same, only\n\nHis self had changed. There was the diner where\n\nHe would have pancakes and fried steak against\n\nHis trainer's orders. Now he hungered not.\n\nThere the dim tavern where he once caroused\n\nHis every victory. He thirsted not.\n\nHere was the corner where he once had crouched,\n\nClutching around his shoulders the thin coat\n\nThat already the rain had soaked, waiting\n\nFor proof that though he was only a boy,\n\nAnd a poor one at that, who could not pay,\n\nHe had more than enough resolve to learn\n\nA fighter's trade. Yet now he felt no cold\n\nFor all that he wore only boxing shorts.\n\nAt that last thought, Shane suddenly noticed\n\nThe officer bearing down on him. Shane\n\nFound reflexes within his mind leaping\n\nFor some excuse, no matter how slender,\n\nBut the policeman did not even blink.\n\nHe passed barely a foot before Shane's face\n\nAnd gave no least sign that he had seen him.\n\nShane stood, jaw slack, in shock. The officer\n\nContinued his patrol, oblivious.\n\nShane frowned in thought, then with new purpose he\n\nStrode swiftly down a sidestreet, searching. At\n\nThe corner was a tiny donut shop.\n\nJust open, empty, no customers yet.\n\nHe shoved open the door, and loudly said\n\n\"Give me a chocolate donut!\" The clerk raised\n\nHer chin not from her fist, nor her elbow\n\nFrom the counter. \"I want every donut\n\nIn this shop!\" Shane cried. She did not react.\n\n\"Put up your hands, and empty out the cash!\n\nThis is a robbery!\" Shane raised his fists.\n\nThe donut seller scratched her neck and yawned,\n\nGlanced at the clock, then frowned. Shane left the shop.\n\nHe wandered like a drunken man toward\n\nThe river. On the apex of the bridge\n\nHe leaned against a suspension cable\n\nAnd laughed bitterly. \"What did I expect?\n\nWhy look, among the living, for the dead?\n\nIf ever I believed you, Varr, I do\n\nBelieve you now. I am a ghost indeed.\n\nAnd who can see, or hear, or touch me now?\n\nHow shall I now return, to keep my word?\n\nHow can I stand with my brother warriors?\n\nHow, even, could I find the woman I\n\nHave glimpsed in missing instincts, memories\n\nUnclear, and through the door's teasing echo?\n\nHer name is Barbara. I remember,\n\nI think, that much. But what was she to me?\n\nWhere is she? Does she even mean herself,\n\nOr is she some metaphorical naught?\n\nEven could I be heard, I cannot go\n\nIn search with nothing more than 'Barbara.'\"\n\nShane stared into the ice-sealed river. \"Well,\n\nThis is not the first time that I have found\n\nMyself purposeless in a stranger's world.\n\nLet me seek out whatever ghosts seek out,\n\nAnd when I find it, then choose what to do.\"\n\nGuided only by whim and gentle breeze,\n\nHe turned back to the city, and wandered\n\nThrough streets he did not try to recognize.\n\nBeneath the paling streetlamps, a milk van\n\nGrowled past. Early commuters staggered to\n\nTheir trains. In windows blinds creaked open, and\n\nAmong them walked the ghost of a boxer,\n\nLooking for nothing, and at everything.\n\nHe walked aimlessly, at his leisure. He\n\nExamined any thing he noticed with\n\nThe fascination of an infant who\n\nSees everything for the first time. The whole\n\nCity was his to discover, and he\n\nWas in no hurry to discover it.\n\nUntil, out of the corner of his eye,\n\nShane saw something that pricked his mind with more\n\nThan memory of memory that he\n\nCould not take with him. This ran down his neck\n\nLike ice water. An oldwife might have said\n\nThat somebody had walked over his grave.\n\nShane turned in mid-stride, staring. When his eye\n\nAgain caught the squat building, he felt more\n\nThen coldness down his back. Just looking felt\n\nLike straining breathless past the Lady's seal,\n\nBut nothing seemed to bar his way. He went\n\nShouldering through the shivering deja vu\n\nThat he heard teasing him from up ahead.\n\nThe sign above the door said 'Arena.'\n\nIt opened for him. He pushed inward through\n\nA fog of heavy breath and vertigo\n\nThat hung round him like drunkenness and sleep.\n\nThe stadium was empty, silent, dark,\n\nWith that characteristic emptiness\n\nOf places built to fill with light and sound,\n\nWith throngs and noise of throngs. The darkness here\n\nWas less than false dawn, save for one\n\nSole shaft of light that lit the boxing ring.\n\nAnd there, beneath the darker semi-dark\n\nOf the unpopulous arena, Shane\n\nStood like a statue, sweating, for he saw,\n\nLike a jigsaw puzzle flung on the air\n\nTo tumble cataractlike, then to splash,\n\nA brightly colored cardboard waterfall,\n\nSoft-rattling the sighs of autumn leaves,\n\nYet, coincidence too coincident\n\nTo be coincidence, every last piece\n\nLands perfectly beside its mate and match,\n\nThe picture interlocks entirely,\n\nAnd the puzzle is solved, just so he saw\n\nHis last seconds alive play out again,\n\nHis last breaths flash before his eyes, his ears,\n\nHis nose, his nerve endings, his balance-sense,\n\nHis last memory on the earth, forgot\n\nTill he walked earth again. He saw flashbulbs\n\nIn time to blows that rocked his bones. He heard\n\nA strong bell sound the moment the firm shock\n\nOf his fist making solid contact ran\n\nUp his bicep. He felt the sudden blow\n\nOf treachery at the base of his skull\n\nThat snapped his neck back, drove him to his knees,\n\nMade vision swim and time run syrup-slow,\n\nMade faces one by one float up at him:\n\nThe referee, awash in rage surprised,\n\nHis foe, gloating and spiteful, upside down,\n\nAnd at the ropes, his name upon her lips,\n\nBarbara, shaken to her very heart,\n\nBarbara, tears unnoticed in her eyes,\n\nBarbara, his wife, now his widow. Shane\n\nFelt something rise behind his throat that felt\n\nLike it might have grown up to be 'Goodbye,'\n\nBut ere it could, he found he had no breath\n\nAnd then the blackness took him. Memory\n\nLost hold, and the next thing the boxer knew\n\nHe was running, he knew not where, nor whence,\n\nWith sweat and tears and blood upon his face.\n\nTo stumble backward up the stairs two at\n\nA time came easier than breathing. Shane\n\nReached blindly for the door handle. The ring\n\nOf accidental, gladiatorial\n\nSacrifice seemed to float toward him. To flinch\n\nAnd flee was reflex. In the time it took\n\nTo draw and spend three bellows-bursting breaths\n\nHis memory, passive glutton, had been lit\n\nIn places long disused and atrophied,\n\nLike upper rooms for generations filled\n\nWith nothing but dust cloths and darkness, now\n\nThe cloths flung back, the shutters opened wide,\n\nThe dust billowed aside. So pictures lit\n\nAll inescapably upon his brain,\n\nAnd with each came a blossom of fresh pain\n\nIts roots around his heart, its stem crowding\n\nAgainst his laboring lungs, its leaves choking\n\nHis arid mouth, its petals unfolding\n\nAway from one more lost lamented scene\n\nHe had not known was missing until now;\n\nThe waking in her arms, the only light\n\nPale azure through the breeze-rattle of blinds\n\nIn a high brownstone window, the warm grass,\n\nThe slowly-melting taste of strawberry\n\nAnd chocolate off the spoon she held out,\n\nThe blossom-scented vernal equinox\n\nOf long festival afternoon in park\n\nLawns shaded by the sleeping linden boughs,\n\nThe slow itch of the tiny salt crystals\n\nForming upon his chest, where the tears dried\n\nNow that she slept and wept no more, her hair\n\nEntwined around his fingers and the scent\n\nOf it entwined around his face, the dark\n\nTheir only blanket, save eachother, and\n\nThe hope that fed them when they had no food,\n\nSheltered them when cold family spurned her,\n\nFueled them when every road was a dead end,\n\nAnd made a bare attic the kind of home\n\nA Champion could call his palace. Shane\n\nWas heaving like a broken racehorse when\n\nHe stumbled back against a cold brick wall.\n\nSomewhere it was near enough to dawn\n\nThat the streetlights were powerless. Shane drew\n\nA long and shuddering breath. \"I am alone,\n\nAnd more alone to know how once I was\n\nNot alone. I know why they called the dead\n\nLost souls. What soul has been more lost than I?\n\nWould that I could have stayed, and fought, and died\n\nWith honor, and forget all else. But no.\n\nMy Barbara deserved remembering,\n\nEven if to remember is to ache.\n\nThe little girl deserved her rescuing,\n\nAnd if my half-damnation was the price,\n\nWell, it is paid and she is rescued. But\n\nHow much I wish that all I had to face\n\nWere infinite ash-zombies, treacherous\n\nWitchfolk, and a beast higher than the hills\n\nAll made of fire and black malevolence!\n\nThat would have been enough.\" He shook his head\n\nAnd blinked sluggishly. In his fit he'd run\n\nTo regions of the city that in life\n\nHe had not known. He stood in the shadow\n\nOf stone buildings, of long arcades, of signs\n\nProclaiming wealthy donors long deceased.\n\nAnd from the rolling mall, chilled with silver\n\nAnd sapphire dew, he heard a voice, like one\n\nWho tastes a speech before he serves it up,\n\nWho practices his cadences, and tests\n\nThe often tested roll of word on word.\n\nThe boxer rose, and looked about. The grass\n\nWas unpopulated by any man,\n\nNor did the voice come from open window.\n\nConfused and curious, Shane followed, out\n\nOf the cold college grounds, through a thicket,\n\nOf morning glory and of bittersweet.\n\nThrough a gap in a chain link fence, he found\n\nSmoother lawn still, and rows of silent trees,\n\nWho would, at sun's arrival, shade the long\n\nStill ranks of gravestones sleeping on the hills.\n\nThere in amongst the graves stood the speaker.\n\nKnowing he would be neither seen nor heard\n\nShane stayed a moment, idly listening.\n\n  \n  \n\n","series":{"name":"Ragnarok","previous":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1719495-ragnarok-xviii.json","next":"https://fse.anthro.fr/stories/1720152-ragnarok-xx.json"}}