Lot Visits His Wife

by Josh Maday  © 2007

 

Lot strolls the golden streets of Paradise with Abraham and Sarah after a time of reflection and communion in the shadowless forests. Even Joseph and Mary realized all over again how differently they would have lived on earth, knowing what they know now. Truly, the joy of heaven is beyond understanding, just as it has always been said.

 

Approaching a tall hedge, Lot falls back as the group turns uphill toward the temple. After they're gone he hurries along the barrier until he finds the old dirt path, well-worn and moist with sorrow. He turns in, pushing through thick curtains of vegetation. Diving deeper for what seems like forever, even here, he knows he is getting closer as the pure light dims from shade to shadow, and becomes a darkness he had almost forgotten. Deep, steady rumbling intensifies. The air grows hot and dry, wilting the vegetation. Soon the path becomes thick with briars, and pickers become thorns pulling and tearing at his flesh. His spirit writhes, wringing forth a fresh flow of tears. The heaviness grows until finally he bursts through the other side of the hedge and falls to the dirt, sending a cloud of red dust swirling around him. The sky is black and starless against the rusted soil.

 

Lot blinks and shakes away his tears, careful not to wipe them, remembering how the mud burned and clawed his eyes last time, blinding him. He finds himself at the edge of a cliff overlooking the great chasm. Constant gravity inhales, a bottomless hunger drawing everything into this pit of living darkness. Lot crawls back and wraps his arms around a charred boulder.

  

The crater is as black as the cave he led his family into on that terrible day. Only when they again found the courage to speak had the absence of his wife's voice taken shape in the nothingness of that cavern. And immediately he remembered the command not to look back. This same sulfurous sting hung in the air over Sodom and Gomorrah. And the same sound of suffering rose from the blasted, smoldering city so alive only hours before.

  

Now, lying there with his arms around the boulder, he listens. Just listens. For a long time the thunder overtakes everything, edging into him, finding his center and echoing back out. Every time he comes here he feels as though he is being taken apart from the inside.

 

After awhile the quaking fades and releases shreds of muted screams and moans, voices calling out for someone, anyone. Lot's eyes flow again. He clutches the blackened rock, wails, and tries to purge himself of this, but everything is sucked out over the cliff and swallowed in silence. Slowly, he releases the boulder, crawls toward the craggy mouth of darkness, and hangs his head over the edge. In an instant, searing wind shrinks his face, dries his hair and sends the brittle broken strands sailing upward, out, and back down again into the black whirlwind. He often imagines taking the same trajectory himself, but he knows he will not find her.

 

With his head now bald, singed, and coated with soot, Lot turns his attention downward. He clings to the edge, listening, sifting hoarse voices and following each individual strand down to the source, weeping for those he recognizes as well as the multitudes of those he never knew. Finally he finds his wife's voice, focuses in on her and listens. She should have been blindfolded by Lot himself, not now, not like this. How can she be punished for an instinct, damned for a natural reflex built into her being? Surely her heart did not look back.

 

Soon Lot bursts with rage, beats his fists in the dust. Despite his burning throat, he raises his voice to meet her screaming with a desperate harmony of his own. Holding his eyes shut, he lets the tears build. Then he opens them wide and blinks into the darkness, willing each drop to her tongue, if only for a moment's relief. It is not water or light or even a human touch, but it is everything he has.

  

 

Josh Maday lives in Saginaw, Michigan . His work has been published or is forthcoming in  Opium , Defenestration , Thieves Jargon, Right Hand Pointing , Johnny America , The Shantytown Anomaly , and elsewhere. Also, his work appeared in the Ultra-Short Edition of The Binnacle , where he was a finalist in the 2005 and 2006 Ultra-Short Story Competition.  Having never considered that fact that he will die someday, he fully intends to read all those books on his shelves