![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pseydtonneI wrote this in response to an old friend's submission. It's not finished and I'm not used to writing fiction. Please let me know if it works or it's too clumsy.
--------
It takes eggs to make a cake.
Roberto ran a cake recipe through his mind. This was a far more successful distraction than any other he'd found today. Thinking about his cold fingers chapping in the acid rain just made him feel more raw. Thinking how long that old man had been standing in the middle of the potter's field made him angry. Thinking how anyone could get even two fresh eggs for a cake made him think his wife was up to no good. Thinking about a cake baking in an oven, watching the batter rise as the chemicals react, meant thinking about warm things.
He took another look at his father's watch. It said... wait, the big hand is on the eleven so that's... it said five minutes of six. That meant he could soon tell the old man to get out of the field and end the shift.
None of the good equipment from the old days seemed to work anymore. Only this really old stuff kept working, like dad's analog watch. Analog, analog... the word meant something to that old timer, he bet. To Roberto, it just meant you had to think about it before it told you anything you needed to know.
The potter's field looked as sooty as usual. Roberto was happy that a week had passed without any bodies coming up from the ground. Sometimes the topsoil eroded in the rain, almost dissolving the sticks that marked the graves. Other times the field turned to a swamp and there would be limbs and bones to gather or they'd end up in the creek. Every time bodies wound up the creek, more people died from water poisoning. Roberto still had a job because the last rich people hated having their children die from water poisoning.
He thought back to the conversation he had two days ago with his boss. "Bob, you need to keep working on your Spanish. Then you can come with me next year when I move the office to Guadalajara." This is why he would be Roberto from now on or he'd end up nobody. He'd look like the old man crying over the graves.
Potter's field. Dad called the graveyard that. He had no clue what a potter was. Some of the old timers talked about Harry Potter, a mythical creature that used a stick to make beasts go away. Maybe that's why this is a potter's field: all the sticks in the ground are magic wands pointed at the sky.
Bombs come out of the sky. Roberto decided not to finish that memory.
Roberto suddenly had another bad memory. He could see his father saying "I don't want to end up in that damn potter's field, son. Whatever happens, burn my body and keep my watch. It will wind itself if you work hard every day." As hard as he could wish to see the cake rise, he couldn't get that image of his father's left arm out of his mind.
"It's not a fake word that rhymes with sky," he mumbled to himself. "The X means ten and each I is a one, so it's ten plus one plus one and that's twelve. Three more minutes before the big hand reaches the twelve."
--------
It takes eggs to make a cake.
Roberto ran a cake recipe through his mind. This was a far more successful distraction than any other he'd found today. Thinking about his cold fingers chapping in the acid rain just made him feel more raw. Thinking how long that old man had been standing in the middle of the potter's field made him angry. Thinking how anyone could get even two fresh eggs for a cake made him think his wife was up to no good. Thinking about a cake baking in an oven, watching the batter rise as the chemicals react, meant thinking about warm things.
He took another look at his father's watch. It said... wait, the big hand is on the eleven so that's... it said five minutes of six. That meant he could soon tell the old man to get out of the field and end the shift.
None of the good equipment from the old days seemed to work anymore. Only this really old stuff kept working, like dad's analog watch. Analog, analog... the word meant something to that old timer, he bet. To Roberto, it just meant you had to think about it before it told you anything you needed to know.
The potter's field looked as sooty as usual. Roberto was happy that a week had passed without any bodies coming up from the ground. Sometimes the topsoil eroded in the rain, almost dissolving the sticks that marked the graves. Other times the field turned to a swamp and there would be limbs and bones to gather or they'd end up in the creek. Every time bodies wound up the creek, more people died from water poisoning. Roberto still had a job because the last rich people hated having their children die from water poisoning.
He thought back to the conversation he had two days ago with his boss. "Bob, you need to keep working on your Spanish. Then you can come with me next year when I move the office to Guadalajara." This is why he would be Roberto from now on or he'd end up nobody. He'd look like the old man crying over the graves.
Potter's field. Dad called the graveyard that. He had no clue what a potter was. Some of the old timers talked about Harry Potter, a mythical creature that used a stick to make beasts go away. Maybe that's why this is a potter's field: all the sticks in the ground are magic wands pointed at the sky.
Bombs come out of the sky. Roberto decided not to finish that memory.
Roberto suddenly had another bad memory. He could see his father saying "I don't want to end up in that damn potter's field, son. Whatever happens, burn my body and keep my watch. It will wind itself if you work hard every day." As hard as he could wish to see the cake rise, he couldn't get that image of his father's left arm out of his mind.
"It's not a fake word that rhymes with sky," he mumbled to himself. "The X means ten and each I is a one, so it's ten plus one plus one and that's twelve. Three more minutes before the big hand reaches the twelve."
