101 Words

“Sticks and stones will make my bones and words can always break you,” sang Hex as she pressed moss onto her forearm in the moonlight. But her flesh, while soft, was green. Hex added leaf after leaf. “Skin smells good,” she murmured, “but they will know.” She climbed a drainpipe and listened to Alice’s bedtime story. With each word, a leaf turned to skin and the moss to muscle. The light clicked off. Hex snuck inside and stared at little Alice in bed and whispered in a rustling voice, “Sticks and stones will take your bones, and I’ll be pretty instead.”

“I grant you one wish.”

The genie towered above the man, who stroked his new antique and mulled over his options. Dare he?

“I wish for infinite wishes.”

The genie bowed. “Thank you.”

That’s when it all went wrong. The man froze and the lamp fell when his hands faded into blue mist. He slowly began to rise and his body dissolved into mist. Meanwhile, the genie diminished, solidified, her skin increasingly opaque-transformed into a raven-haired girl who waved goodbye.

That was the last thing he saw before his antique lamp dragged him into its bowels and granted him his wish.

He picked up the trail just north of his ranch—a rider and three cattle. He tracked them eight miles, catching the startled rustler at the canyon rim.

To his surprise, his Winchester was aimed at Tom Slater’s wife.

“Tom in on this too?” he asked grimly.

“Tom’s dead.” Sobs shook her body. “I’m just trying to get my family through the winter.”

The law was clear: a rope, a dead woman slung over a saddle, a body brought home to waiting children.

He lowered his rifle. “Repay me in the spring,” he said softly as he wheeled his horse around.

Her bones itch for discovery. They have metal detectors and the tools to excavate. It’s not the find they think it is. Tape surrounds her waiting place. It was never her resting place. The ground has imprisoned her for centuries, keeping the foolish safe. The time of the ignorant is about to end. Excitement vibrates the air as they dig and brush. The skin of soil will tear, and then she’ll rise again. Self-mastery will be extinguished. A new master is on the rise. Pain will be the new currency and death a release few will attain. And the earth breaks.

Today, we lunch at a small roadside restaurant just outside Jerusalem. Our waiter, who looks strikingly like the Eurocentric Jesus pictured in the Baltimore Catechism back when I was a believer, approaches our table with a basket of bread and a stoneware pitcher. He places the bread on the table and asks: “Water, gentlemen?”

“Please,” my companion says, licking his parched lips as the waiter pours the inviting clear liquid into his glass.

“And you, sir?”

“Make mine wine,” I quip.

Unwavering, he tilts the pitcher over my glass and fills it nearly to the brim with a deep garnet liquid.

She’d watched several videos on the You-Can-Do-It website to begin her new hobby. The directions were certainly clear and led her to expect a bounty. Hydroponics on the cheap—it cost her forty-eight dollars to get started.

Rapid growth—Liz dropped the seeds in two months ago but only some have grown.

The mason jar with the most lettuce is still disappointing, while the others are an outright disaster. By now Liz expected a more robust crop to harvest. All the leaves are the palest of greens and limply hang downwards.

Seeing is believing, but today she just can’t do it.