02.11.08
At the Observatory
The scent of rotting meat accented the aroma of honey suckle. An open jar of hamburger sat slowly browning in the Valley heat.
The tilting wingspans of the three vultures cycled ‘round like the blades of a ceiling fan against a high, blue ceiling. Around and around, as though they were chained together like ponies at the county fair.
Her skin, anointed with meat, glistened in the sun where it wasn’t shaded by the deer skin.
Cindy lay atop the flat roof, enclosed by its 18-inch perimeter wall, with her right hand shading her eyes, still as possible, hoping to use her body as a lure, hoping to bring the great scavengers in a little lower. She grew drowsy in the warm sun, and let her mind drift off to sleep.
As she slipped under the conscious surface, he appeared to her once again, soaring twenty feet or so above her in the swimming subconscious air, breaking the rays of the sun with mighty wings as he drifted left and right on the heavy air.
She was jolting into consciousness as her sleeping body tipped slightly, and she woke to a wild flapping of wings, ten or twenty feet overhead, as the startled vultures strove to escape the sudden resurrection. In a moment, the sky was empty and silent. A moment later, Cindy pulled her clothes on, grabbed her bow and quiver, clambered over the perimeter wall, and eased herself down until her feet touched the top of the fence.
© 2008 Dan J. Jensen
