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Kristi's Crypt

•  A Storm in Africa

    ©2006  Word Count: 1,000

  
  
  The day had been long, the sun had nearly completed its majestic arc over the skies of the plains when I sat in a nearly empty bar, with the only stranger being to my right. The grey tones in his beard told of his age and experience with the world, and his eyes hung gloomily just above his glass, seemingly lost forever, swimming for eternity in the scotch ocean below the rim. It was an open place and we, or rather I, looked out at the vast stretch of land before me.
  
  The green rolled over itself along the ground and eventually disappeared over the horizon. This was such a land of intrigue and mystery. Who knew what great beasts or civilizations or both laid beyond our view. Dusk settles here like no where else, smoke clouds the air, escaping from the inferno of the native fires. The scents and pungent aromas of game animals on spits fills the nostrils. Nearly everything was at peace in the bar that eve, but as I found out, the greatest thing in disorder was nothing of the natural land or its people. It was the singular soul of a foreigner.
  
  The man and I had seen each other the past several nights. We both propagated the empty tavern at about the same time, and we each nodded familiarly to the other as I entered and sat near him. There was something I had noticed in his demeanor, in his body language, over the last few days, I felt that he had a story to tell but perhaps needed a bit of coaxing in order to tell it.
  
  “Nice night.” I pried, almost asking as much as announcing the fact.
  
  The sentence barely punctured the fortifications of direness and distress in which this man dwelled. By the time he had looked to answer me, my view was elsewhere.
  
  “Yeah.”
  
  In this simple one word sentence I could feel the man’s pain. Nothing spoke to the bleakness of his soul more than his voice, its raspy quality wallowing out from the remains of the man. And with this simple start, this match that lit the fire, we began to discuss ourselves. Over many rounds I came to know the genius and horror of the man, and he in the same turn, learned of mine. He was, by trade, a writer of some importance, with moneys and the freedom to travel the world over. His disillusionment with his life was apparent, and it registered in some way in nearly everything that he told me.
  
  “I am bored with life.” He said a number of times throughout our talk, as though it was some great problem whose solution was to be revealed later. He had seen all there was of this world, his adventures had swept him to exotic places, with the most fascinating and dangerous perils. He had overcome all of them. Now, in the twilight of his life, he summed everything up for me with one sentence.
  
  “I am now only waiting to die.”
  
  The bottle from which we sipped was running fast by the time the real tragedy of this man became known to me. He waited to begin until our bartender had ventured from his post in search of a cigarette.
  
  “I was in the plains, completely alone.” He began with such graveness in his whisper that I wondered if he would be able to finish his tale. “And there > was no one around. I had hunted the greatest of beasts of this continent you see, and still I yearned for more.”
  
  The clouds outside the hut in which we sat now hung low. Thunder vibrated in the thin walls, lightning flashed along the plains in the distance. The storm raged and rain poured. The wind gusted and howled as does the nearly slain beast.
  
  “And I pointed the gun away from the animals, away from the game.”
  
  “Yeah?”
  
  “And I pointed at my guide. It was just us. There was such complete privacy, I couldn’t believe it! To be that alone in the outdoors!”
  
  “What happened?”
  
  “I fired.”
  
  “You shot him?”
  
  The storm outside had passed just over the thatched roof. The rain still wore on, but in much less dramatic fashion than the downpour of only a few seconds past. Now it was I that trembled at the response to my query. It was I that shook under the immense pressure of the storm.
  
  “I killed him.”
  
  I knew the words were coming and yet the knowledge did nothing to soften their blow. I was struck. My shaking hand clutched wildly for the glass, and upon seizing it I quickly downed its contents. The two of us sat, stranger still, in this bar in Africa.
  
  We paused, neither staring at the other, nor looking away. A man had just entrusted me with the most severe of confessions, the most serious declaration of sin. I finally, perhaps warmed by the scotch, dared further into the killer’s mind.
  
  “You saw him die?”
  
  At this even he, who had been steady through the extent of telling his story became nervous.
  
  “Yeah. He…he struggled for a long time. And I just stood and watched. I watched the man bleed, watched him succumb, watched his last breath.”
  
  “How did it feel?”
  
  The storm had returned. Gusts and gales howled to the extent that I thought the building would collapse. I had the sensation that we would all be picked up and carried away in this storm; that we would live forever in its rage and its fury.
  
  “I felt…entertained.”



~The End~
• Author Bio: Erik Linzbach, 22, is an aspiring writer living in Phoenix, Arizona. He's had a few things published, but not nearly enough to be considered an author. The complete list of his published work can be found at

  http://erikpoetry.tripod.com.

  His hobbies include writing and laughing at people who take themselves too seriously.
  
  Email the author:

  erik1831@hotmail.com.