Lover's Flood by Daryl Banner

Author:Daryl Banner [Banner, Daryl]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Frozenfyre Publishing
Published: 2020-05-06T04:00:00+00:00

30.

Each street lamp passes over us like a warm, yellowish goo as we walk down the winding, twisted roads of our neighborhood at night. It could not feel any less like the holiday it is. No fat man in a jolly red suit flies overhead with his reindeer. There isn’t an ounce of cold in the air as my mother, wearing just a robe and slippers, walks by my side. Some of the houses have their decorative, colorful lights on, flashing and blinking, but every year seems to bring less and less holiday spirit.

She hooks her arm in mine. “I miss you.”

Her words don’t touch me. I wonder if I’m already resenting her for whenever this moment of clarity ends and she sinks back to the bottom of her pill-popper lake.

“Remember that story you told me?” I ask. “About the flood?”

“Of course.”

“Was that the whole story?” I’m nagged by elfin girl’s reaction to it and what she said to me. “Or is there more to it? The ending, I mean.”

“That’s the point of the tale. There is no ending, not yet.”

“What’s the story from?”

“It’s a tale, not a story, and it isn’t from anything. Oh, let’s go this way,” she decides, tugging me by my elbow. “It’s been a very long time since I’ve been down this street. Your old babysitter used to live down here before she moved away.”

I don’t realize which street it is until we’re already halfway down it. Five houses in a row have been abandoned, their lawns overgrown with weeds, the pavement of the sidewalk cracked and uneven. A tree as old as time itself reaches its big arms out over the street, and all its ancient limbs groan and hiss as the night breeze dances through them.

“There’s only one reason you’re asking me about the tale of the lovers,” my mother tells me. “It means you’re going through a time of your own when you feel trapped.”

“I don’t feel trapped.”

She stops. We’re under the shade of the ancient tree, shielding us even from the streetlamps and the stars, darker than the dead of night. “Do you remember what the lover’s lake was … before it was a lake? Before the flood? … Do you remember how the tale began?”

There’s a noise above.

I look.

A muscular young man sits on a high, thick branch of the ancient tree. He’s in a tight black shirt that makes half of him disappear, yet somehow, I can still see him in striking detail. His arms bulge invitingly in that shirt as he clings to the nearby branches, supporting himself as he stares down at me, watching me, listening to our words. His eyes flash with excitement, with hunger, with daring.

It’s my dream boy.

He’s come to watch over me. He’s come to join us.

“Yeah,” I answer my mom while staring up at him. “It was a basin. A big, empty basin … like a canyon.”

“The lovers met at the bottom of that canyon to profess their love to each other.

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