"Miss Summoner"

Rob Carlson


Stilted houses remain
Constant on the windy shores
As waves tumble close
And grass bends
Pulled away from
The earth

Caught and spun
Around in broken circles
Passed from one
Breeze to another

Those strands of grass,
Those chilling faces

Rising from the depths
Of the sea
Grinning in each crest
Ghastly smears of

Pasty white flesh

Their limbs flail
Limply crashing against the rocks
The bluish hue of
Science
Marks their action as
Improbable

Hands flex fingers
Joints crack and break
Gripping rocks despite
The sharp edges - they ignore
And rise up
Oh, they rise
And pull themselves upon
The mist shrouded shore
Like maggots birthed in a festering wound
So they march again towards civilization
With razor claws and yellow fangs
Their eyes static orbs,
Unmoving in each socket
Their march,
A wretched thing
A clumsy crawl
Like life towards the grave
Now reversed

For they have been summoned

"Oh shit oh shit oh shit," said a girl braving the howling winds
At her side digging through the dirt, another girl dressed in black
The second looked up at her sister's lament

"What is it?" she ventured.

"They come," the response, as the stander turned
Her face stricken with fear
Her lips quivered.
"What do you mean 'they'?"
"I mean they," shrilled the stander,
As she gestured frantically over her shoulder

The sitter sprung from her piles of dirt
And looked down through the mist
Down upon the rocky shore
Down upon the deathly procession
Of a hundred rotten corpses

"Oh, what the fuck," she mourned.

"Did you say the right words?" asked the first standing girl.

"Of course I said the right fucking words," snapped standing girl number two.

"Well, what are we going to do?"

"You can do what you want. I'm getting the hell out of here," she spun and ran with reason.

So the first girl, whose name, by the way,
was Sue,
Turned and watched again
The march from the sea.
The tallest corpse then turned,
Looked up at Sue,
With death's grin fastened
And inhabited by worms,
Beckoned down,
With one fractured hand
Imploring Sue to join them.

And she did with just the briefest of pauses
Standing on the edge of the cliff,
Then turning, walking slowly
One foot after another - along a path and down

The tall corpse with salted rags,
Shuffled, loping towards her form
And smiling, shook her hand:

"Miss Summoner, we greet you,
We the drowned, the lost, the wretched-
We greet you who has awoken us; with thanks
And some gifts."

Sue waited patiently
As the small corpse of a child
Approached with a barnacle crusted box

The taller corpse, the speaker,
Gestured toward the box

The child opened it, the hinges creaked,
Like a soul being ripped
Away from a longtime dwelling.

A sea-glass mask,
Smooth and azure
And a claw; lacquered
Black

"Wear these gifts, Miss Summoner,
And lead us from this place, our longtime grave
And show us what we have missed-
What events have transpired upon the
Earth."

The briefest smile at the corners of her mouth
As she looked down upon her gifts.
And then emotion faded, drained
As her face grew old in the span of
A heartbeat.
Reaching down she fastened the mask to her face
and secured the claw upon her left hand
then looked up upon her awaiting corpses,
beckoned once and then turned
and began walking towards
the nearest city.


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